Chapter 4

The lightning brought back a pain, unbidden. It was the unnatural light of the Reapers over London, marking in relentless agony the beginning of the end. He was running through the chaos, bringing up the rear, keeping the squad from ambush as they made their way forward. Then the wounding—painful-but he'd had worse and could keep going. He was sure of it. But as he tried to walk, he realized that, no, he was now more hindrance than help. His fellow squad members would get hurt or worse trying to help him. Damn, he should have been killed then, rather than endanger them. Garrus knew the drill. It was a hard lesson of war. You can do more damage to the enemy by only wounding them. Then they are slowed as they try to help their comrades.

And so he had gotten aboard the Normandy, shame eating him alive with every step. He should have been able to go with his commander. He should have seen it to the end.

The Spirits would not have it. And so he left, only to find himself on some uninhabited moon after the destruction of the Reapers. After repairs were completed, they moved on, using one of the hidden mass relays that the Illusive Man had secretly built throughout the galaxy, twins of the ones that had been damaged in the final conflict. As big a bastard as he had been, he had been an insightful bastard. He knew that they were too valuable to the human race not to duplicate.

Garrus went home.

Palaven was a wreck. The turians had been essentially blasted back very nearly to their stone age. It made perfect sense. If you're going to attack, take out the strongest first. Infrastructure was decimated, nearly all public facilities were wiped out, and to add insult to injury, the massive fires were doing further damage to the planet's already thin ozone layer. Hundreds who had survived the first attacks were now dying of exposure and starvation. The ships he had pulled back from the Reaper attack were coming home, and many of the war victims were able to move aboard them during the first days after the war, but there weren't enough for all.

And he was chosen as the Primarch's Second. There was no one else with enough contacts and experience to begin the long process of rebuilding. Though he did not know how to hold a hammer, he had to try to figure out how to help his people put their lives back together.

Through five long years he had struggled to find the resources and diplomatic contacts to get his people help. He pulled in every favor he had. He relocated many of his people to the moon where the Normandy had initially crashed, relocated many more to Tuchunka, that being a good mutually beneficial option since relations had been repaired, albeit shakily, between the turians and the krogan. But he knew it wasn't enough. The turians needed the population here at home if they were to continue to be a viable civilization. Scattering the people, losing the breeding populations and setbacks to the continuing struggle to reassemble the planetary infrastructure were all contributing to the dismantling of his home world. The turians would not become extinct, but if they were to ever return as the galaxy's powerhouse, it would be a while before it happened.

And at that low point was when the strange message had come to him from the slowly recovering space port research and travel center. They were searching for new asteroid belts, ice comets for water or metals, and anything else out there that might provide much needed resources.

The run down: two comets could be towed, providing approximately 45 million gallons of water, an iron ore asteroid had been located, though it was too far for mining to be feasible, and the ghost planet had shown up again on scans.

The ghost planet. Palaven had been watching that bizarre anomaly for centuries. They had written it off as a quasar, a recurring dust storm, solar flares from the neighboring solar system: essentially something weird but not worth chasing. Except that it was showing up with some regularity now. During one of those episodes when it got caught with its pants down it had in fact been confirmed as a planet. Then it disappeared again. And the last time it had appeared, one technician declared that he had heard some sort of technological emission from it, radio background noise, a signal, something… but he hadn't been able to confirm it.

Until that morning. The ghost planet had reappeared, long enough this time for Palaven to actually get enough of a bead on it to map an orbit. It was Earth-sized, in the Goldilocks zone, and there were definite signs not only of habitability, but also that it was in fact inhabited. Then it vanished again.

There was a possible habitable planet in the next solar system? This could be some very good news. Except that… it was already inhabited. Maybe. But why was it always vanishing? A planetary cloaking system? That was very advanced. And very paranoid. If they realize that they're exposed now, how dangerous could they be? The good news was suddenly trying to turn into bad news, which he did not need.

Weeks passed as they watched the ghost planet. That particular spot in space had become a hot zone. Whoever they were, they might not be the sort of neighbors that wounded Palaven could resist, should invasion become a possibility.

Until one night when they did in fact make themselves known. A message was received. A female voice, quiet and authoritative, said that the K'OrSachean people wanted to explore a treaty arrangement with any neighboring solar systems in exchange for a possible sharing of technological information. To Garrus, that sounded like his neighbors might be in trouble. Exchange… ? Whoever she was, she had no idea who might be listening to her, or what monster might be aroused by the call. A real sign of desperation, if she went ahead and got on the intercom anyway. Had they been attacked by the Reapers, too, the attack having been cloaked and so missed by the turians? And what exactly was it that she was doing that was so different from what Garrus was doing, which was trying to find help. She was just new to the neighborhood.

He had answered her. "This is Garrus Vakarian, Second to the Primarch, of the Turian home world, Palaven." And the exchange had begun.

Over the next several months, communications were exchanged as the two planets tried to understand each other's civilizations and intentions, trying to be friendly, trying not to be afraid, worried, offensive, desperate…

The K'OrSacheans were indeed a long lost colony of humans, having been taken from Earth several hundred years earlier by an extraordinarily advanced, though equally paranoid, race called the Zeenis. They had been taken as food animals and slave labor, along with a huge assortment of Earth's flora and fauna. At some point in their history, the humans had figured out the Zeenis' Achilles Heel: the worm-like creatures went into hibernation every ten years. These early humans had invaded the Zeenis sanctuaries and killed them, thus inheriting the planet. The human population had no idea that their home was cloaked until much later in their civilization and, when they did, they realized at the same time that the technologies, which they themselves had not actually built but inherited, were starting to fall apart. They were a highly advanced race, these humans, and had learned to repair and replace much of this exceptional technology. But they couldn't fix the planetary cloak. And they were also their own worst hindrance, isolation and a rigid governmental hierarchy contributing to a strange kind of advanced society that was also, disturbingly, antiquated.

At the same time as they were advancing as a civilization, the K'OrSacheans had been listening to the galaxy. They heard the turians, but couldn't understand them until the turians actually started to speak English in some of their transmissions. They listened to other civilizations for a bit, again, not understanding them. Finally, they heard Earth, and knew that they were the children of that planet.

So what Garrus was discovering as he talked to this woman, Queen-Elect Grace St. Clair Chehada, was that K'OrSachea was like a new Earth. They had in fact managed to elude the Reapers, whom he guessed the Zeenis had been hiding from, too. The plants and animals that the Zeenis had brought along with the humans had thrived. It made his heart sing, knowing that this place existed, had always been there, right under their noses.

The offer had been resources and technology exchanges. The treaties were sent back and forth by transmission, agreements were made, and reassurances were offered. A meeting would take place. Garrus was chosen without debate, taking into consideration the fact that he had lived and worked among humans for many years. He was accustomed to them and comfortable around them, and he in return was able to make them comfortable with him.

The Second agreed. But the agreement was given with great reluctance. He truly felt that he could serve Palaven best at home, managing the logistics of several turian and off-world contractors with debris clearing, reclamation and reconstruction. But he simply wished to do what was necessary, one thing at a time, to get his planet back on its feet, and if the Primarch thought that this would be a productive endeavor, he would do his best to execute the mission to perfection. So he chose his staff, and he went to K'OrSachea with the caveat that he would return to Palaven within a year, once he had set up all the necessary support parameters that the contingency of turian delegates and advisors would need.

When he had arrived, Garrus was amazed by both the beauty and the stark dichotomy of the place. There were two distinct castes here, one that lived above ground in cities and on vast farms. These were the Commoners. That sounded distastefully racial to him, and it immediately put him on guard. The other caste lived underground in huge subterranean cities, protected from the elements, refined and pampered. Later he came to understand that the Elitists, who lived in the caves, were considered the masters of this planet, mandated by something called the Council, a small group of politicians who inherited their positions generation after generation. All were controlled to a limited extent by the Queen-Elect, who was both the mediator and, in several ways, the captive, of this system. She had the power of oversight and, to a limited extent, the power of veto, for one side or the other as befitted the majority. But he came to understand as well that it was in fact the Council that had final say. Her powers were limited and carefully controlled. But he also learned that Grace was essentially a Supreme Court in and of herself and, with legal expertise and a group of specialists at her command, and she was able to slowly erode the powers of the Council. Her family, the Chehadas had, in fact, been working to short-circuit the Elitist Council for centuries.

But this night and this encounter had changed the balance. He was not certain what she had meant by having been sentenced to either celibacy or a marriage that would degrade her status. Marriage to a Second, an individual of high-ranking military and strategic significance, albeit of a different species, was somehow preferable to marriage to one of her peers? Then again, these people didn't think of her as a peer if they refused to allow her to marry a member of her own caste without relegating her to a subservient position. What political undercurrent was at play here? Whatever it was, it was one that he had no interest in, frankly. Politics were meaningless except where they might affect the ongoing restoration efforts of Palaven. That did interest him.

He had in fact aligned himself with the individual with the most power in this government. And he had ensured beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were paired. He would do what was best, and what was necessary for his people. But by his actions this evening, her people had become his people, too. If he had mated a Queen, did that not make him a Queen's Consort? But then again, what power play had he stumbled into? That he might have been using her for the benefit of his wounded brothers and sisters was a hard thing to swallow, but he'd had no choice.

But what advantage did entangling him provide for her people?

What next….. ?