The collector vessel hung stationary against the vast blackness of space, a lazy spin its only motion as their shuttle flew away from the comfort and security of the Normandy's meticulously calibrated weapons systems and towards the gaping maw that would swallow them into the unknown.
The jagged hole was narrow, requiring careful navigation from the pilot as the shuttle slipped through the gaps from missing hull plates, floating between the bare bones of metal struts, exposed like a cracked open ribcage.
Alas they were a long way from the heart of the vessel and as soon as the shuttle touched down, Shepard's six sentient strong squad was swarming out, sweeping their sectors with a practised ease that masked their nerves as they hurried further in, leaving behind Vakarian's smaller security detail to secure the landing site.
There was a slight bounce to the turian's step as he moved to set up mobile defence turrets that had nothing to do with happiness and everything to do with a lack of artificial gravity on the seemingly dead ship.
Missing was the faint vibration of engines underfoot, the background hum that you never noticed until it was gone. His own breath the only sound to hit his auditory canals as Thane and Zaeed carefully took up overwatch positions around him.
'Silent as the tomb', he believed that was the human phrase. Certainly the chitinous walls and passageways looked more like rocky caverns and twisting catacombs than the sleek metal corridors he usually associated with space faring vessels.
Mandibles fluttered uneasily beneath his helmet, clenching tight in self recrimination a moment later as he realised he was psyching himself out.
Despite his best efforts, unease weighed heavy in his gizzard, and he had to desperately fight the urge to radio Shepard for a status report. To check the other team's progress, make sure they were still breathing.
He compromised, patching himself into their comm channel as a silent listener. He was more relieved than he cared to admit when he heard the distinctive unintelligible racket of human language, mere heartbeats before his translator kicked in.
"-compared the ship's EM signature to known collector profiles, it is the vessel you encountered on Horizon."
"Maybe the defense towers softened it for the turians." Shepard claimed, her original organic voice audible as an undertone beneath the translation software.
As if the Hierarchy navy needs targets softening for them. Garrus mentally scoffed. His offended patriotism was short-lived as he processed EDI's fact about Horizon. What if-
"Maybe the missing humans are on it." Grunt vocalised at the same time Garrus thought it. "Unless they're dead."
Ok, he didn't think that last part.
Ok, he did... but he wouldn't have said it outloud.
There were nicer ways of expressing the possibility, especially when surrounded by a half human groundteam.
Garrus shook his head with a sigh, Grunt had come a long way under Shepard's tutelage but he still needed to learn tact. Then again the same could be said for most krogan.
"Commander, up ahead." The warning had Garrus tensing once more. He couldn't see what the strike team could. With no clues to what was happening, his imagination was already warming up in preparation to run rampant.
"The same containers as on Horizon. Only empty." Great. Now he didn't need his imagination, he had his memory.
He shuddered at the recollection of sticky goo inside the hard shelled pods. Big enough for a human but too small for a turian to lay straight.
"It must have been horrible. Being trapped in something like this, being completely at the mercy of the collectors." Surely that couldn't have been Jack's voice? There wasn't nearly enough simmering rage in the hushed tone. It didn't sound like any of the other humans on the groundteam though.
He focused on the revelation of the young convict seemingly displaying empathy for the first time in an effort to fight off the clawing feeling of claustrophobia.
The walls around him weren't exactly close, he'd consider it a perfectly acceptable room size normally, but right now, here in enemy territory, he wished they were a little further away.
"Why would they just leave a pile of broken corpses lying around?" His comm piece flared back to life, the accent switching several times as the translation software attempted to keep up with the hodge podge of krogan languages Grunt conversed in. The subtle nuances of different clan dialects were indistinguishable to Garrus, all coming across as a steady, rolling rumble of krogan.
"Test subjects from control group. Discarded after experiment over." Fast jabs of salarian sound, followed by a more languid paced translation made Mordin easy to identify.
Garrus' mind worked overtime as it supplied possible visuals to go with the grim commentary from the strike team.
He imagined charred carapaces and torn mandibles, shattered plates and broken talons. All marinating in a coagulating puddle of blue blood. Kasumi's shocked voice reminded him that the bodies in question would be human, not his own people, and the scene in his mind's eye morphed accordingly.
Soft, torn flesh. Horror stricken lips and delicate smashed fingers. Red pools of blood. It wasn't any nicer.
"They're dead, nothing we can do. Keep moving." The commander's voice was hard as she kept her squad on track.
Garrus wished he could move but he was stuck here, helplessly on guard. He almost wished something would attack just to ease the tension and break the monotony.
He scanned his surroundings hopefully, but Zaeed and Thane remained the only signs of life. The drell so still as to be questionable.
Switching his visor to thermal mode reassured him Krios was still alive, but nothing else popped up.
He checked LADAR and EM targeting options as well, aware that they'd found Husks on Horizon but no dragon's teeth. Husks had a nasty habit of appearing from nowhere, but the ones on Horizon had to have come from somewhere. If they were transported on this ship, if there were more still aboard, he wanted to know about their presence before they were in electrical discharge range.
"That's a collector." The groundteam couldn't have advanced more than a corridor before Kasumi's voice split the silence. Vakarian's senses strained, struggling to distinguish what was happening. "Were they experimenting on one of their own?"
The turian had so many questions right now, but it seemed nobody had answers. Shepard uploading the data from a nearby terminal to the Normandy in the hope EDI could decipher it.
"Data received. Analysing…" He didn't have time to develop even a vague theory before the AI revealed: "The collectors were running baseline genetic comparisons between their species and humanity."
Why humanity? Garrus found himself wondering, not for the first time. It was natural to compare other species to his own: krogan were tougher, salarians cleverer, asari better biotics, the only things humanity brought to the table were tenacity and chaos.
"Are they looking for similarities?" Shepard asked. If there was emotion in her voice it wasn't one he knew how to identify.
"I have no hypotheses on their motivations. All I have are the preliminary results."
Make a guess. Out of nowhere Garrus was hit with a wave of nostalgia, a memory of Noveria. Wrex and the team goofing about with the facility's VI, 'guessing is outside my programming parameters.'
"A quad-strand genetic structure, identical to traces collected from ancient ruins." EDI continued her report, oblivious to his trip through memory plaza. "Only one race is known to have this structure: the protheans."
Spirits. Shepard had relayed her suspicions to him before. The similarities between the collectors and the protheans in her beacon induced visions. 'Like husks to humans' she'd said.
He'd acknowledged the possibility, but it was different somehow. Hearing it scientifically confirmed by the AI's cold, steady tone.
"I knew it!" There was vindication in the commander's voice but even she had a faint audible trace of disbelief. Like she'd known but never quite accepted it. "Don't you just hate being right sometimes?"
"I have yet to experience the feedback you describe." EDI answered the clearly rhetorical question. "However it would be inaccurate to still call them protheans. They show distinct signs of genetic rewrite. The reapers have repurposed them to suit their needs."
"You'd think somebody would pick up on this." Shepard seemed nonchalant, but he was willing to bet she was anything but.
"No one has had the opportunity to…" EDI proceeded to provide a ginormous info dump including words like 'reduced hetrochromatin' and 'superfluous junk sequences' that Garrus was sure went over the heads of the entire groundteam.
Ok, Mordin probably understood it, and Miranda back on the ship, but to the rest of them it was superfluous junk.
"Whatever they were before, they work for the reapers now and we need to stop them." Shepard summarised it in layman terms.
"No shit," the layman's response was eloquently voiced by Jack. "I'm not letting the reapers turn me into some kind of fucked up bug thing."
"Let's find what we need before the collectors come to salvage this vessel." Shepard's call to action had Garrus glancing warily to his rear. Back to their shuttle and the blackened void visible through the hull breach behind.
Would a collector response team use the same entry point?
More importantly, there had to be survivors from the fight with the turian patrol, where were they all?
Surely they must have realised the strike team's presence by now?
His sense of unease grew with every step Shepard took unmolested. Drawn deeper and deeper into enemy territory. Further and further away from a quick extraction.
"Up on the ceiling, more holding containers." Mordin's words were just as fast as usual but softer, reverent.
"There must be hundreds of them. I wonder how many are full?"
"Too many." The commander's voice was grim.
"I detect no signs of life in the pods Shepard." Even the AI understood the sombreness of the occasion. "It is probable the victims inside died when the ship lost primary power."
Damn, Garrus hadn't been holding much hope for this turning into a rescue mission but still, what a way to go.
"Commander, you've got to hear this." Joker's voice appeared on mission comms for the first time.
Don't say there's another vessel on approach. Garrus silently pleaded, grip on his rifle tightening, eyes flicking to the void. Don't say…
"-On a hunch I asked EDI to run an analysis on this ship."
Thank the spirits! Wait, where is this going that's so important we need to hear it mid mission?
"I compared the EM profile against data recorded from the original Normandy two years ago." EDI took over. "They are an exact match."
Light flashed behind his eyelids, the yellow beam from the collector ship cutting through the SR-1 like an omni-blade through ration paste. Brief flashes of orange as pockets of oxygen exploded and were snuffed out. Sheets of metal drifting loose in the void.
"The same ship dogging me for two years?" The commander's voice was tight. The words unsaid echoing loudly in his mind. The same ship that destroyed Normandy. The same ship that claimed Shepard's life. That stole his friend from him. That had haunted all their nightmares, his long ago and hers still fresh.
"Something doesn't add up, Commander." Joker was nervous too. Undoubtedly plagued by the same thoughts. The same memories. "Watch your back."
Garrus growled deep in his subharmonics, too low for his non-turian companions to hear. Watching Shepard's back was supposed to be his job.
He hated being so far from the action. Not that there was any action so far. It made his plates itch.
He glanced around the tunnels with fresh eyes. Still no sign of the enemy, but he entertained himself imagining the rocky corridors engulfed in a racing fireball. Of the walls cracking and breaking as this ship exploded. Debris condemned to swirl aimlessly through the void.
It needed to happen. This ship needed to be destroyed.
He wondered idly if Shepard had any demolition charges on her. She liked to be over prepared.
It didn't matter. The carefully calibrated canons of the SR2 could take care of it. It would be much more fitting. Poetic even.
Sadly Samara's serene voice broke through his daydream and returned him crashing back to the nightmare of reality:
"They could take every human in the terminus systems and still not have enough to fill these pods."
How? He tried to picture what Shepard's squad was seeing. Tried, and failed.
He knew what a collector pod looked like. Knew what ten, twenty, thirty looked like. He could easily imagine a hundred, maybe even a thousand. But the millions needed to empty the terminus system of humans? It was inconceivable.
"Only one conclusion. They're going to target Earth." Mordin was smart enough that Garrus usually believed whatever he said without question, but how was that the only conclusion?
"Not if we stop them first." His translator claimed Shepard said. Without it, if he'd been asked to guess what she said based purely on the hard, determined, inturian sounds of her original voice, he would have assumed an order or a statement of fact. 'We will stop them before they get a chance. Youwill help me and I will send them all to hell.'
Several heartbeats passed before it hit him: The Charon relay was the only relay into the Sol system. To reach Earth the collectors would have to pass through the Arcturus Stream. A fact the Alliance had built heavily into their home planet's defence plans.
Thing is, not only did the Arcturus Stream contain a minimum of two Alliance fleets at all times but also several colonies. And on one of those colonies was a town. And on the outskirts of that town was a house, and in that house lived Shepard's wife and son.
Garrus had thought he understood the horror of these colony disappearances. That he comprehended the scale of the tragedy unfurling against his fellow sentients. He just realised he didn't have a clue. He couldn't even begin to appreciate the stress his human crewmates were under. The daily despair and worry.
He was fighting beside them because it was the right thing to do. They were fighting in case their friends and families were next.
Sure he could empathise. He could pretend: 'what if it was my people?' But at the end of the day it wasn't. His parents, Solana, his aunts and uncles, they weren't at risk. Not even the asari cousin that certain grandparents liked to pretend didn't exist.
When he fought he thought of a figure to avenge. A statistic. An obscenely high number. The humans fought for a small group of faces. For a handful of names engraved deep in their hearts.
"There. Control panel on the platform." Garrus missed who said that. His translator had a Digeris accent so it must have been a human.
"Should be dead collectors." The Normandy's resident krogan was easy to identify. "Something's wrong."
Alarm klaxons blared in Garrus' head. He knew the strike team hadn't had any engagements with enemy forces. He would have heard warnings and orders shouted over comms.
Still, he had assumed that they must have passed collector corpses on their trek through the ship. That it simply hadn't been worth mentioning because they were the enemy and they were already dead.
He swallowed past the lump in his throat, forcing it down until it became a weight in his chest instead.
"Careful Shepard." For the first time he broadcast on the other team's channel rather than just listening in. "Something's not right about this."
He'd watched enough vids. Hell, he'd been on enough missions that went sideways to know from experience, this was the moment when everything went to tarc.
"Relax Vakarian, I'm always careful." Spirits damn her, he could hear the smirk in her undertone. Even though the only words he understood were his name and a personal pronoun. Even though she'd damn well died once already.
The lightness vanished in her next sentence. Voice professional, but taut and battle ready:
"EDI, I'm setting up a bridge between you and the collector ship. See if you can get anything useful from the databanks."
"Data-mine in progress Shepard." The AI seemed uniquely unconcerned by the situation. Then again it hadn't been programmed to feel concern.
Garrus' eyes darted around his position. Checking for the umpteenth time for danger.
Nothing. Like always.
The only change his visor noted was an increase to Zaeed's heart-rate. The human's fight or flight instincts kicking in, adrenal glands activating.
He'd probably watched the same vids.
Heck, who was Garrus kidding? The merc had probably made a career being on the other end of traps and ambushings and back-stabbings just like this. Of course he'd recognise the signs.
Thane's vitals, on the other hand, remained unchanged. An oasis of calm. Garrus didn't for a minute believe the drell was ignorant of the situation.
Bloody assassin, it was inturia-... He cut the thought off as he realised that of course a drell's actions weren't in keeping with turian standards. Still… it didn't seem right. Didn't seem natural that he could remain so unaffected when the tension was palpable in the air.
Thick enough to slice.
Just how long did it take to data-mine a ship anyway!?
"Uh, that can't be good." Came over the comm. Human. Male. Background noise consistent with the Normandy. Joker.
"What the fuck just happened?" Jack. His self preservation instincts had quickly taught him to recognise her voice from a roomful of humans.
"Normandy, sitrep?" Shepard, the voice of calm in the chaos.
"Major power surge. Everything went dark but we're back up now." Joker explained.
"I managed to divert the majority of the overload to non critical systems." EDI continued. "Shepard, this was not a malfunction. This was a trap."
A trap. Of course it was a trap. He'd been expecting a trap. Every fibre of his being had been screaming 'trap' since they'd set boot in this spirits damned trap… ship… same thing.
He raised his scope to his eye, sweeping his surroundings.
Nothing.
"We need a little help here EDI." Shepard called out.
"I am having trouble maintaining connection. There is someone else in the system."
Garrus wanted to ask what was going on, ask how he could help, but he already knew what he needed to do. His mission objectives had been clear from the start.
Secure the shuttle. Make sure the strike team had a way out.
Shepard already had the heavy hitters on her squad specifically so she could punch her way through the enemy defence. If she wanted him to do anything else she would tell him. Until then he had to stick to the plan.
"Connection reestablished." He never would have believed anyone if they'd told him he'd be this pleased to hear an AI. "I need to finish the download before I can override any systems." Ok, maybe he wasn't that pleased.
"You better get it done fast EDI." Shepard ordered, gunfire audible in the background.
He scoured his surroundings. Searching for a target.
Nothing.
"More hostiles incoming." Each of Mordin's fast-paced words were accompanied by a squeeze of the trigger. The heavy thump of a Carnifex pistol.
"See anything?" Garrus asked his own team.
"Negative." Came back their responses, confirming what he already knew.
"Samara, one on the left." Shepard dished out targets.
"Strike! Fucking A, Blue!" Was Jack trying to get the justicar to kill her?
"Or all of them, all of them works too." Shepard muttered.
"I want biotics." Grunt pouted.
"Focus kids, we've got more inbound. EDI, how we doing?"
"48%"
"Speed it up."
A flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. Garrus twisted his head for a better look.
Nothing.
He switched between modes on his visor. Thermal, EM, LADAR.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
A trick of the light maybe.
He turned away. Suddenly twisted back.
Nothing.
"84%"
"EDI," there was a touch of warning to Shepard's voice. "Get us out of here."
"I am simultaneously fighting collector firewalls in 8000 nodes. I am tasked to capacity." Garrus had to do a double take, was the AI just snarky? Or merely giving a status report?
'Then stop talking and keep fighting' The expected glib response from the commander never came. The turian assumed she must be following her own, well… his imagined, advice.
It was disorienting, the change between the loud, chaotic cacophony of conflict and the sudden oppressive silence. Frequently flipping states at the press of a button. A button outside his control.
Whenever a member of Shepard's squad activated their mics, their voice was nearly drowned out by the accompanying symphony of war. He tried to use their words to paint a picture in his mind, to help visualise what was happening.
It was a picture of bright muzzle flashes, of yellow collector particle beams and blue biotics.
He could only hope there was no rainbow of blood.
For the first time he disliked the fact that Shepard trusted her squad's competency enough that she didn't distract them with needless orders. Issuing commands only when necessary and not every ten seconds.
"Shepard, you must manually reestablish my link to the command console." EDI finally spoke. Presumably that meant the Normandy's cyber defences were now secure.
"Kas, do it. Everyone else, overwatch." Overwatch, not covering fire, Garrus noted with relief. Inferring a current lack of enemies from her words.
"I have retaken control of the platform Shepard." An involuntary shiver ran down his back at the thought of an AI having control of anything.
He knew EDI had control over the majority of the Normandy's systems. Knew the AI had only helped and not attempted to harm them so far. Although he questioned how much of that was thanks to the shackles keeping her under control.
His whole life he had heard only a single narrative concerning AIs, and his own experiences so far had backed it up. It took effort to fight against his instincts and he was fairly certain he didn't want to be around if the shackles ever came off. Just in case.
"I thought we were going to have to take on every damn collector here." Shepard joked. Garrus took that as confirmation her team hadn't suffered any serious casualties so far.
Certainly no fatalities at least.
He was less sure about her own health. He wouldn't put it past her to keep joking even if her arm fell off.
That scenario was unlikely, he decided a moment later. She'd be making arm specific jokes if that were the case.
"Perhaps you should consider upgrading my hardware." EDI… also joked?
Garrus really didn't want to speculate whether or not the AI was engaging in banter.
He couldn't imagine Cerberus programming it with a sense of humour.
Not when they seemed to put such effort into hiring humans who lacked one.
"Did you get what we needed?" Shepard asked and Garrus could only assume her team were on the move once more, not merely standing around waiting for more enemies to find them.
EDI confirmed that she did, but also that the collectors had been responsible for the turian distress call they had been responding to.
The Hierarchy would need to be informed, Garrus decided, running through a list of old contacts in his head.
The secondary encryption had been corrupted, but enough was present that many a captain wouldn't risk not answering the call. Not only did the Hierarchy consider it dishonourable to ignore an emergency distress call in space, but many turians believed it invoked spirits' doom.
'Bad karma' he believed he'd heard humans call it.
Speaking of spirits' doom, it appeared the Illusive Man deserved some. Apparently he wrote the detection protocols that enabled EDI to find the anomaly, and the AI considered it impossible for him not to have noticed before forwarding them the mission details.
"He knew it was a trap? Why would he send us into a trap?" Joker seemed shocked.
Why wouldn't he? Garrus thought. It's not his life on the line.
"Behaviour within norm for Cerberus, not unexpected." Mordin agreed with his analysis.
Just because it was expected didn't mean it was welcome though. Garrus was sick and tired of talons in the back. First Sidonis, now this.
He just hoped he got out of this one without taking a rocket to the face.
"Uh, Commander? We've got another problem."
Why did Joker never have anything nice to say?
"The collector ship is powering up. You need to get out of there before their weapons come online. I'm not losing another Normandy!"
The pilot's fear flooded Garrus' veins with adrenaline. Pure energy burning through his bloodstream like fire.
His eyes flicked constantly for a target that refused to appear.
Body screaming out for him to fight or fly, but there was nowhere to run.
No foe to face.
Nothing to do but watch and wait.
"I don't have full control of their systems." EDI warned Shepard. "I will do what I can. Sending nav route to shuttle point."
At least she… it… could do something. Garrus was feeling as useless as tits on hanar.
His mandibles fluttered in impotent frustration as Shepard's squad scrambled to make a tactical retreat.
Along the way they seemed to encounter an entire clock face of collectors. Contacts yelled and quickly dispatched as they fought their way through the ship.
"PRAETORIAN!"
The shout near stopped his heart. He remembered that monster. As tall as a troop transport en route to basic training, and containing just as many empty skulls.
"Fuck! husks!"
Now the blood pumping organ was pounding fit to burst. Those were two enemies you didn't want at the same time.
"Samara, Kas, husks. Everyone else, big motherfucker."
In hindsight the rest of the mission so far had been a relaxing foot massage compared to now.
His muscles wound tight as a tourniquet, organs seemingly rearranging themselves contrary to biology.
Heart in mouth.
Stomach in boots.
The first time they'd encountered a praetorian it had taken the entire groundteam to put it down. Nobody had walked away from that fight without a trip to Chakwas' medbay.
They'd had the advantage of open space then. Room to manoeuvre. Here? Enclosed inside a ship? Garrus shivered involuntarily as a chill crept down his spine.
"Get her out of there!"
Get who out of where?
This mission was taking years off his life expectancy.
Providing more stress than all the bureaucratic red tape and paperwork in C-Sec combined. Ok, maybe not all...
"Fucking finally! You fucking fuck!" Jack needed to catch her breath and expand her vocabulary, but Garrus assumed that meant the praetorian was down.
"EDI, the doors?"
The AI said something about firewalls but Garrus was no longer listening, his attention caught by a faint whir as the mobile defence turrets warmed up.
Suddenly his visor lit up like a Spirits' Day festival, husks pouring towards him in a macabre mirror of a street parade. Although lacking the precision marching of any turian event.
Without orders his squad simultaneously opened fire. The first rank falling like drops in the ocean. Another wave surging forward in their place.
His earlier tension melted away under the heat of battle.
Muscles easing into the familiar motion of aim, fire, reload, repeat.
"Uh, Commander? I hate to rush you but those weapons are about to come back online. Might want to double time it so we can, you know, leave before they blow the Normandy in half."
Garrus growled. Did the pilot not understand that that didn't help? Did he think Shepard's squad were taking their time to go sightseeing? Strolling casually down the corridors, checking each corner for dropped credit chits and souvenirs?
"Going fast as we can." The spectre confirmed, breath rapid and voice pained.
The turian refused to be distracted from the fight, despite the urge to ask if she was ok. She needed all her breath for running.
A flicker of blue biotic light announced the other team's presence in the distance.
Grunt and Jack leading the charge as they bulldozed their way through their foes.
Mordin and Kasumi protecting their flanks while Shepard covered the rear.
Samara doing her best to encase them all in a barrier to make up for their depleted shields.
Garrus signalled his squad up into a crouch. Continuing to lay down covering fire as they receded toward the shuttle.
As the strike team neared he noticed Shepard ran with a limp, Jack's pistol arm dangled at an awkward angle as she threw shockwaves single-handedly. The entire team's armour scorched and dented, some sections missing completely.
Mordin stumbled. Without breaking stride Samara waved a hand, levitating the salarian off the ground and flinging him toward their escape vehicle.
It was hardly a dignified mode of travel but the scientist seemed exhausted as Thane helped him to his feet and bundled him inside.
Garrus counted the squad into the shuttle, himself and Shepard stepping aboard at the same time in joint last.
He managed a final headshot before the door shut and he no longer had a say in his fate.
Each thundering heartbeat had the potential to be his last as he lay his life in the shuttle pilot's hands. Relying purely on luck and another person's skill as they flew back to the Normandy.
The moment the cargo doors closed and pressure equalised, Shepard was tearing out the shuttle towards the CIC.
The whole vessel shook as Joker attempted to dodge the collector's weapon beam, his shouts for EDI to get them out of there ringing inside Garrus' helmet.
"Specify a destination Mr. Moreau."
"Anywhere that isn't here."
It was risky giving such an open order to an AI. If they ended up in a black hole Garrus was going to kill the pilot.
For now he focused on getting his wounded comrades to medbay. Which considering both Grunt and Jack were among those dripping blood onto the deck, was almost as dangerous as his part in the mission.
Fortunately Samara helped with the herding, no one willing to argue with the justicar despite her drained appearance, her biotic reserves presumably reaching their limit for the first time since joining the Normandy.
Dr Chakwas was waiting for them. Tools ready. Eyes already triaging them while she waited for the indepth medical scans to finish.
Hands dispensing antibacterial wipes and medi-gel as she made her way to her first victim.
Garrus was just glad it wasn't him.
Almost as glad as when Joker's voice came over the intercom informing Shepard that the Illusive Man wanted a word, predicting she had some words for him in return.
Garrus wouldn't want to be him either.
…...
Author's note:
Oof, finally. Sorry for the obscene delay with this one. I had terrible writer's block.
Hopefully it was worth the wait. Feedback welcome as always.
Also, personal head canon: krogan clans seem very tribal in nature, I imagine each one having slightly different dialects if not whole languages from each other. Okeer wasn't an Urdnot, it's possible Grunt just speaks Okeer's original clan language and uses a translator on Tuchanka, but I decided Okeer would have info dumped all krogan languages into his 'ultimate krogan' 's head (or at least the major/dominant clan languages)
I don't know if you've ever listened to a young child raised in a bilingual home, they just speak the thoughts in their head and a sentence comes out their mouth that works perfectly, only the words are a mix of languages. It sounds beautiful and flows so naturally because they're simply verbalising their thoughts, they don't even realise they're switching languages. I imagine Grunt does that, only because nobody on the Normandy speaks krogan they can't pick him up on it. Instead they just have really weird sounding translations when different translation apps kick in to deal with the different languages. Just a random thought I had that I liked so decided to run with it.