A/N If you still need a disclaimer, then you need to review what fanfiction really is.

What is this? A new chapter so soon? Witchcraft! Heresy! Finally finding time and being motivated! Yeah, probably that last one.

Thanks to all the reviewers from the last chapter. I think I have lost a few followers when I went on my accidental hiatus. Thank you all for sticking around and having patience. But the responses were all in range of what I expected so clearly I am doing a decent job. I still get movie review ideas so at least something I do is enjoyable!

Would you readers rather that I keep giving krogan reviews, or would you prefer I give more reviews from other races?

On with the story!

…

CHAPTER 23 – THE BIG REVEAL

We landed the shuttle in the bay of the Enterprise and disembarked, making sure that the latest group of newly freed slaves were directed towards Persei and Liserias. Persei had become more and more important to helping the newly post-slaves begin to come to terms with their rescue from slavery. Having been freed herself, she knew better than most how to help others make that adjustment.

There were not too many in this last batch. Only about twenty. Not the largest group we had freed. There were a couple of jobs a week or so ago that had more than a hundred freed from each, but still a decent number and the amount of mercs and slavers we killed was enough to be able to offset the lower number of freed slaves. It had were involved the entire ground team this time and even though the level of enthusiasm from Bolart and Octavio was disturbingly high, they had performed above expectations. They had even taken Torrin a little under their wing to help him fight like a turian soldier.

Beau had been extremely satisfied with how the last month had gone. He had planned most of the missions except the last two, where I had taken a shot at it. He had helped me to do it but I took the lion's share for those two missions. The guy was a model of competent professionalism and talent. The training he had given us had clearly paid off. Honestly, with how competent he was I am surprised that he had not been made a Spectre. He was skilled enough as far as I could see. I had the theory that it was more political than anything else. Still, he had been very open at how satisfied he was with the success we had been having.

The pokemon game was progressing much faster than I expected. It should be ready for beta testing in less than six months. I was getting regular updates from the gaming company and the artwork and rendering was absolutely amazing. I was looking forward to announcing the game and a release date. The gaming company had already started working on the announcements. I had decided on adding pichu to the first release to make up for there not being a porygon so there were still one hundred and fifty-one pokemon for the first release. Stupid AI paranoia.

In what also amounted to good news for me, quite a few of the slaves had indicated that they were willing to stay on with our crew and organization once they were cleared by the medics and psychologists. Considering we had been able to free nearly a thousand slaves over the last month, we had about eighty that felt like staying with us and helping the cause. That was enough for me to be able to crew a second ship and have two grounds teams stationed on each once they were trained up to an appropriate level. And if things kept going as they, we would be able to have many more going before the invasion happened.

Speaking of ships, now that I had the crew to justify it, and Nelathie had been able to finish the task of designing a massive MAC cannon that would fit in the cargo bay, firing projectiles three hundred tons at lightspeed, I had our shipyards dragged out to an empty system and began refitting the large asari cruiser with the new weapon. It had finally come back from the salarian shipyards with the two ultra-violet GARDIAN arrays, now it needed to be prepared.

Nelathie had been very concerned with what was planned for a gun that could effectively cause an extinction level event in one shot if it hit a planet but I had told her that soon I would be able to explain and justify the necessity.

And now that time had come.

"Mr Nielson," Persei said, approaching me with a concerned Ely and fidgeting Aleria. "I must express my concern at the pace that you are pushing yourself and the crew at with these raids."

"Oh?" I replied politely. "May I ask your reasoning?"

"Simply put, you are working them to exhaustion," she said immediately. "They need a break between combat zones, as do you. You are all are doing good work with the slaves that they have freed but you are not fighting a war."

"We are not saying that you should stop," Aleria cut in. "But maybe just take a break in between, give the ground team and shuttle pilots a few weeks off. It is not like there is a deadline for this."

"Except there is," I countered, knowing exactly where this discussion was going. It was about time that they knew something anyway. I didn't do my plans any favour by keeping my trusted team members in the dark.

The three ladies froze. "What do you mean, 'there is'?" Aleria asked slowly.

I took a moment to think about the best way to put this. "Aleria, come with me to the bridge," I said, moving past them to the cockpit, not even bothering to take off my armour just yet. "We need to plot a trip. I promise once we have made it, I will explain to you and the some of the crew."

…

The trip to Mnemosyne took us a day and a half worth of travel, with a short refill at a salarian owned refuelling station in the neighbouring system. I had no doubt that there was probably someone reporting to the STG there but a simple explanation that we were doing geological surveys, searching for minerals, seemed to be accepted, especially with the geological scanners the ship was boasting.

Aleria was confused by the direction to ignore the planet first and head straight to the brown dwarf sun. Ely was likewise confused at the direction to double the output of the engines to make sure we didn't get caught in the gravity well. I was told that the ship could only safely handle three hours at that output before the engines overheated and did an automatic shutdown. It should be plenty.

I was sitting in the cockpit with Aleria piloting, Hectar manning the sensor station, and Persei, Beau and Jurt coming to watch.

"Begin orbiting the sun," I ordered. "Keep all scanners active. We are looking for anything that doesn't belong. You'll know it when you see it."

That got me a few odd looks but Aleria followed my instructions without comment, bringing us in to a close orbit. It didn't take long.

"Uh, we got something," Hectar spoke up from the sensor station. "But I have no idea what it is."

"Get in as close as we can do safely," I said, looking at the familiar image. "Hectar, I want you to run every scan you can on it from every single angle we can get to. That includes the geological survey scans."

"There is a lot of debris floating around," Aleria cautioned. "I am also not sure how close I can get on the gravitational down side without either interfering with our movement, or that things orbit."

"Just do the best you can," I said. "Don't risk the ship but get as close as possible. We want as much information on this thing as we can get."

It was silent for a moment before Persei spoke up. "How did you know about this? What is it?"

"I will explain everything to you all as soon as we are done here and somewhere away from here," I said, as reassuringly as I could. "I just hope that none of you think I am crazy," I continued in a lower tone.

Beau and Jurt just grunted at that, staring at the screens to see the dead ship.

"Things massive," Jurt said, reading over my shoulder. "More than two kilometres long, five hundred meters wide. And it is sitting there with a massive hole in it. Not sure I want to know what the hell caused that thing."

"It wouldn't necessarily mean a big ship," Beau countered. "It could have been a fleet taking the thing out. Put a hole through it with a MAC once the shields are down, then leave it here to get caught in the sun's gravity well once it is dead in space."

"Can you please not talk about ships being dead in space right now?" Hectar broke in, his voice anxious. "That sort of thing doesn't really make for a happy quarian."

Beau chuckled as Jurt gave another grunt. Silence filled the cockpit as we watched the ship fill our screens. We stayed that way for nearly fifteen minutes before Hectar said we had everything.

"Aleria, take us out and put us in orbit over the planet," I ordered. "Put us at height to scan the planet and Hectar, you turn on the geological sensors. Make it look like we are searching for minerals. If anyone was to come by I want us looking as innocent as possible."

That got me some more confused looks but once again, my crew obeyed instructions without argument.

"In the meantime, I will take a look at this data," I continued. "When we are in a stable orbit, I want everyone here, along with Ely, Nelathie, Chop, Liserias, Horaxes, Torrin and Polisa to meet with me in the official conference room on the first level. I want it completely swept for bugs before we start."

Now even Aleria had stopped to gape at me after I said that. I could understand; I was taking this to a new level of paranoia, which was what I was going for to go with the backstory I had created for myself. Now I just had to see if I could pull it off. Without saying another word, I copied the data from the scans of the reaper to my omnitool and left the bridge.

…

Torrin looked around the converted conference room feeling confused and, if he was completely honest with himself, a fair amount of apprehension, even if he couldn't tell why. The people who had been on the bridge for the last part of the journey had all been far more serious than usual, even if they also didn't know the reason for some of the things that Brock had been saying. Whatever that had been.

He looked around at the twelve other people who were in the conference room with him. Brock was standing at the head of the table, patiently waiting for Ely and Hectar to finish doing a thorough scan. Everyone else was seated, fidgeting slightly while they waited for the two quarians to be finished. He noticed that Polisa was sitting closer to Jurt than would be normal. The two had only been out of each other's sight a few times since Brock had rescued her. Torrin knew that there were still things that Polisa had been working through in her attempt to come to terms with her newly regained freedom, but Jurt was being surprisingly gentle and patient with her… for a krogan. He had even quit drinking! Torrin would have thought the big alien had been born with a bottle of ryncol in his hands with the way that he drank.

Finally, Ely and Hectar finished their scans and took seats midway down the table and turned expectantly towards Brock.

"Holly," Brock called to the ship's VI, "seal the door and turn off all monitoring to this room. Don't turn it on again until the door is opened."

"Acknowledged," the feminine voice replied.

Brock now looked around the table. "Well, I guess I need to explain quite a few things," he began. "I just want to stress that what I am about to reveal is not a joke. It is not a lie. It is very real and I understand that it is very difficult to believe. I did not believe it myself when I was first told. I had to be shown evidence that I don't have to show you. So if you doubt me that is understandable, but I want you to at least hear me out."

Torrin's mandible twitched in surprise. A quick look around the room told him that he was not the only one to feel that way.

"Let me fully introduce myself," Brock continued. "My name is Brock Nielson. Human, born on Earth, twenty-seven years old, former prison guard and last living member of the Fastus Galactus organisation."

Torrin blinked. Fastus Galactus? That was Palava for Galactic Survival. And last living member? That sounded ominous.

"Galactic Survival?" Liserias called out. "I have never heard of that company before. Who are they?"

"The correct question to ask is who were they," Brock replied to the old medic. "As I said, I am the last living member. Fastus Galactus were an organization that has existed in secret for a few hundred years. The premise had been to gain information and prepare to fight against a very specific threat."

The human fiddled with his omnitool and an image appeared on the conference holotable. It looked like a sea creature from asari space. It had five splayed legs that narrowed before expanding to a wide body with a hole in it. Whatever the thing was, it was certainly not in a good way.

"This," Brock explained, "is a reaper. A race of living starships that were created by another race called leviathans. Their goal is to allow civilisations to grow to a certain level, to develop physically, mentally and culturally, along the levels of guidance that they allow through mass effect technology. Then, every fifty thousand years, they take a trip through the galaxy and wipe out every advanced race before resetting things, hiding most signs of their presence and vanishing to dark space beyond our galaxy. This," he emphasized with a gesture at the so-called reaper, "is the reason behind the downfall of the prothean civilisation and the inusannon races before them, and going back and back and back for more than a billion years. We just happen to be the current collection of races in the cycle. And our time is almost up."

Dead silence. Torrin could help gaping at Brock in shock. What the spirits…?

"That's a hell of a bomb to drop there," Beau's voice cut in to the silence, speaking slower than usual. "It's also pretty hard to believe right off the bat."

"I know," Brock nodded. "When I was told this I was the same. It seemed to be beyond the normal areas of acceptance for what sane people believe. Just another conspiracy theory. The thing that helped me was the evidence that they had collected which they were able to show. Unfortunately, when they were taken, nearly everything that they had left was destroyed with them."

"How did you meet this organization?" Persei asked in her quite, dignified voice. It was obvious to Torrin that her time as a slave had not removed the personality training that had made her a diplomat.

Brock smiled. "When I was twenty one, not long after I had become a prison guard, I had been doing some deeper research on the protheans. I, like many people in the galaxy, wanted to know about them and where they had gone. Going by the ruins that we are still discovering, they were extremely likely to have been far more spread out than our current civilisations are, they were more advanced technologically, but they were just gone. The only thing left behind, other than the ruins that are strictly restricted to planets, is the Citadel. But then I started to compare them to us and our civilisations. Where are their other space stations? Where are their satellites? Their communication hubs and signal boosters? What could possibly have happened that all of that would be gone and their worlds left in ruins. There are dozens of planets reduced to ruin and abandoned. These planets still have resources that can't just grow back such as minerals and ores so the worlds are not just drained dry. Yet the prevailing, Citadel approved, theory is that the protheans just left known space. But why would they do that?"

Torrin could see what Brock was saying. When someone approached it with that sort of thinking, it could be hard to think of why an advanced alien race would suddenly just abandon perfectly good planets for some reason. He had honestly never really given it some thought before but he couldn't immediately think of a reason why that would be the case. He knew that the turians would never willingly give up a planet. Going by the thoughtful expressions that was on Persei's, Beau's and Chop's faces, they likely hadn't considered it before either.

No one spoke up to object either.

"I must have looked into this for months. At some point, I started asking myself the question 'what if something took them out?' That they hadn't just vanished quietly into the night? Why would they pool the resources of dozens of planets and make a single space station that is not near any of them?

"I found out that at some point, my research and questions had drawn attention from some people. I was approached one day, on Earth, by a turian who introduced himself as Corlinus, who started to talk to me about what I had been looking at. He was the one that introduced me to Fastus Galactus. It took me a few hours to convince me that it wasn't a hoax but eventually I was convinced enough to let them take me to a place in a shuttle that I was unable to find the navigational computer. It as a base that they were using to house most of their findings. I later was told that they used it for meeting all potential recruits because that's where they kept their evidence so that they wouldn't have to go to multiple places to convince people of their cause.

"The things that they showed me, the evidence that they had access to… that was some truly impressive, scary and convincing stuff. And while I don't have access to that anymore, I still remember quite a few things."

"Like the location of that thing?" Beau asked, nodding towards the hologram still on the screen.

"Exactly like that," Brock nodded. "Along with a lot more. I have a pretty good memory, but remembering things is not a match for having data files and other records. I went through their base for a solid couple of weeks learning everything I could, and made a few return trips over the next couple of years which helped me with it. So while I don't have their resources, I hope that I can remember enough that you don't think I am making this all up.

"Now as for Fastus, their aim was in the name. the information they had collected warned them that these ships, who the protheans named 'reapers' were going to be coming soon and would do their best to wipe out all life in the galaxy that had progressed to being spacefaring civilisations. They had been getting information and trying to build things up to get things in place where the galaxy would be able to handle the invasion and would be able to defend themselves.

"However, I thought, and I told them this directly, that their approach was too passive. They had a lot of information that they could use in a more proactive manner so that we could be even more prepared, if only they were willing to be more daring. So when I found out that I was the last one left, I decided to use my ideas to get things done in a more assertive manner. So I made a company, hired all of you to help me and have been trying to get things moving in a way that the rest of the galaxy won't really take notice of."

"Why don't you just tell everything to the authorities?" Horaxes asked. "Moreover, why didn't the others in this organisation?"

"What makes you think that they didn't?" Brock countered.

The old turian just clenched his mandibles in a disgruntled way.

"As a matter of fact, they did tell the authorities," Brock said. "Whatever authorities they had access to. Many times, they were laughed out of the office before they could get anywhere. Others were able to get some to see a remote possibility of the truth. One time, nearly a hundred years ago, one of the members on the Citadel tried to upload all the findings to the extranet. It was deleted in less than ten minutes and everyone assumed it was just a hoax. The results of all meetings and attempted revealings was always the same. The one who revealed the truth would end up missing or dead."

That left the room in silence. Torrin didn't know what to make of that. "The authorities killed them?" he asked in disbelief.

Brock shook his head. "No, or at least, it is unlikely that the people that killed them were the same ones that they had reported it to. Sometimes it took a few days, sometimes a few weeks. However, all of them ended up going missing. The ones they found had all been killed, with signs of torture."

"Is that what happened to you?" Liserias asked. "These beings captured you and tortured you?"

"Actually no," Brock replied with a shake of his head. "My injuries didn't come at their hands. As I was the newest person in this organisation, and had a career in place, I had not been overly involved in the day to day. I would only check in every few days, go visit them every other month, stuff like that. My injuries are a bit of a curse and a blessing all at once."

"How so?" Beau asked.

"Well, as you all know, I got my injuries when gangs affiliated with the prisoners I had been guarding captured me and tortured me in an underground safehouse of theirs. I was gone for nine months. When I got out, one of the first things I did was try and make contact with the organisation to let them know I was alive. But I noticed that a general call had been put out about three months earlier to get to the base. No one was answering the calls so I went there before I came to the Citadel. Everything had been destroyed and nearly everyone that was part of Fastus had been killed in unrecognisable ways. My having been captive was the only thing that had spared me the same fate."

Torrin gave a hum at that. "That's… nice?"

Brock replied with a bark of a laugh. "Yeah, not something you say is good but it stopped another bad thing happening to me. Still don't think I can be happy about it though."

Torrin couldn't help but agree with that. No one could be grateful for torture. But it stopped his friend being dead. So Torrin could kinda be grateful for it, because of how much Brock had been able to help him and the whole crew out. Jurt especially seemed to be completely loyal to Brock after freeing his partner.

"Back to this though," Brock continued, "one of the dangers with the reapers is that they are able to both actively and passively indoctrinate those who are in their proximity. The prothean remnants that Fastus had been able to find had shown that active indoctrination could happen in a few days, so long as the target was in constant proximity with the reaper or their artifacts. Passive indoctrination would come from being in the proximity with a reaper or a reaper artifact over the period of about a week to three months, depending on the individual in question. This was unfortunately discovered when a team was sent to board this reaper here." He pointed at the holographic display of the broken ship.

"The recordings of the boarding team began normally. After a three week period, the researchers were experiencing memory loss. After a month, they had lost mental individualisation; that is, they all had the same memories and believed that they were the people that had experienced it. It caused open fighting as the crew members all believed that they had married the same woman and that the others were cheating on them. After another week, all research had stopped as the researchers lost their minds. It was only because a second team had been sent in to investigate that this much had been recovered.

"Worse than this though was the discovery that the reapers had the technology to completely subvert biomatter, being the body of any one of our citadel species, and convert it to a bastardised android version of itself, incapable of independent thought, recognisable communication or recovery."

"How the hell did they manage that?" Beau demanded.

"They had these devices that someone in the organisation had nicknamed 'dragon's teeth'. They were basically these long spikes that a being was impaled onto through the abdomen. They were then thrust into the air as the machines converted the living tissue into some weird tech-biomass hybrid, before lowering again and releasing their new puppet."

"And how do you know about this?" Persei asked. Torrin looked over at the asari, noticing that her skin had become more pale than usual.

Brock gave her a grim, lopsided smile. "What do you think happened to the research team?"

"There's something on the ship that did that to them?" Jurt demanded.

"I don't know," Brock shrugged. "The recovery tem didn't find any other life forms. It is possible that they were hiding elsewhere but the prevailing theory was that the indoctrinated researchers had done it to themselves after their minds were completely gone. The only reason that the recovery team knew that they were the researchers was because they still had scraps of clothes attached to the bodies."

Torrin felt his mandibles clench involuntarily. While this whole thing had seemed farfetched at the beginning, it was beginning to seem less and less so as Brock kept revealing very specific information.

"I just wish I had the recordings to show you. The two humans that had been on the research team had been turned completely black like they had been burnt. Their veins and arteries looked like they had been replaced with glowing blue cables that went through the whole body. Their hair was completely gone and their eyes glowed blue, like they had been replaced with little lights. Their ribcages looked like they had been replaced with radiator piping. And they gave out a screeching noise that was piercing, even through an audio recording. The turians looked like they had been dyed black and their eyes also glowed, this time a yellow colour. And it looked like they had a weapon moulded into its arm. But the worst was the asari."

Brock gave a shudder. "A converted asari looked like it came straight out of a nightmare. Its face was warped, its lips were gone. The teeth were always visible and looked like a shark. The cheeks looked like the skin was missing and the fibres were all that was visible. The breasts look like they had dropped, their stomachs were distended. And they screeched like banshees. But on top of that, their biotic abilities look like they were enhanced further. They floated everywhere and would do multiple biotic charges to reach a target quickly."

Torrin was still looking at Persei as Brock described the twisted asari. Her face was now a pale lilac colour and her hands were shaking.

"But despite how bad these creatures were," Brock continued. "They were still not the worst of the tools the reapers had. The indoctrination is worse, because you have no idea who is indoctrinated until the reapers order them to start killing those around them. And I know for a fact that they have left multiple artefacts around the galaxy that were just as capable as this dead reaper at indoctrinating those in its presence, if not more so."

"Where are they?" Polisa spoke up for the first time, drawing Torrin's eyes to her.

"Well," Brock said with a smile, "I know that this here is one. I also know that there is one in an asteroid field in batarian space, another had been taken to a temple in turian space, though from what I have been led to believe that one is now destroyed."

"WHAT!" both Horaxes and Liserias jumped up at that. "What do you mean that one is in a turian temple?" Liserias demanded. She seemed to be more offended than the gunsmith. Torrin was surprised but didn't really care. He was not very religious himself.

Brock was completely unmoved by the response of his turian crew. "Yep," he said. "It was stolen from Shanxi during the invasion there. Human mercenaries were tasked with finding out what happened to it. They found that the artefact had actually done partial physical conversion to the turians in the temple, led by General Desolas Arterius. His brother, the Spectre Saren Arterius, caught the human mercenaries and when he found out what was happening, he agreed to help them. He even contacted Palavan Command and ordered an orbital strike to destroy Temple Palavan, saying that it was to prevent a bioweapon emergency. He died a slave, but no one knows that it was because he had been completely indoctrinated by the artefact. Saren now blames all of humanity for his brother's death because of what happened, thinking that we are the cause of it all and need to be put in our place."

The two older turians sunk near boneless into their seats. "I had no idea," Horaxes muttered. "I heard about the death but the details were kept completely hidden from anyone. Most think it was either an experiment gone wrong or an attempted coup. To most people he was a traitor. To think that he was not as guilty as everyone claimed."

It seemed that this little nugget of information was what finally convinced the older turian into believing Brock's story. A quick look around at the group showed that everyone seemed to believe it.

"Why now?"

Torrin, and the whole room, looked over at Hectar who had asked the question. "Why are you telling us all this now? Why tell us at all? Or why wait this long?"

Everyone turned back to Brock, who was looking at Hectar thoughtfully. "I am telling you now," Brock began slowly, "because people in this very room have been wondering what I am doing. They are wondering why I am pushing us so hard, why I am expanding so quickly and why we are raiding so much so quickly. All of this is the reason why. I have quarian ship specialists looking for lots of medium sized freighters so we can get a fleet worth of ships that can be converted for combat. I hired an asari capital ship weapons engineer to design a weapon capable of destroying these ships, who from the prothean records that I saw from the organisation, could charge straight through capital ships and come through the other side with the same damage as a bug on windshield. I bought shipyards and maintenance drones to be able to handle the installations. I am getting closer to leaders in various factions so that we will be able to have allies, hopefully, for when the attack comes. I have been conducting these raids for a few reasons. One is to obviously free slaves. Second is to get combat experience that we will all need for when their invasion hits, so we won't be mowed down like weeds. I hired a turian gunsmith to design weapons that are above Spectre class to give us an edge in combat against these enemies. I am offering all slaves that we free a job with us to help free more slaves and to expand our company so that we will have crews that we can hopefully trust to man the ships when the invasion comes. I am also…"

"The asteroids!" Aleria blurted out. She flushed as everyone turned to look at her. "You got the asteroids from this Fastus group, didn't you?"

Brock gave her a smile and nodded. "Yes, the thirteen eezo asteroids had originally been found by the organisation and had been logged in case they were needed later on. I only remembered where eight of them were though so that is what we have to work with."

He turned back to the group as a whole. "But to summarise, everything I am doing now is to try and help us prepare somewhat so that when this invasion happens, and it will happen, we won't go the way of the protheans, or the inusannon, or the countless other civilisations before them. I mean for us to be able to live beyond their efforts."

A silence broke over the room again. Torrin thought about everything he had heard. On one hand, it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. It reeked of conspiracy theories that were beyond what any sane person would conjure. Some professionals would probably think that the trauma that Brock had suffered had rendered him insane and probably needed to be committed to an institution for the rest of his days.

But, he knew Brock. He was one of the best people he had ever met. The guy knew things that he shouldn't know, but he did know them, like Aria's daughter and this giant reaper. They were not false things. He didn't make them up. They were able to be seen, clear as day. If Brock said that this was coming, then Torrin would do his best to be ready.

"How long?" he asked.

Brock sighed. "Going by the estimates that the organisation had, less than five years. Maybe less than two. The first thing that will happen is that a vanguard ship will be sent to open the relays stations through the Citadel. That will be the first sign of the invasion. At least, that's according to the prothean records. I could get more information if we don't care about being careful, but it would be a death sentence."

That got everyone's attention. "What do you mean by that?" Ely asked. "How can you get more information. You said everything was destroyed."

"I said that everything from the organisation was destroyed," Brock corrected. "But the clues that were left behind by the protheans can still provide us with quite a bit of data."

"What clues?" Nelathie asked, speaking up for the first time.

"Why, the prothean beacons, of course," Brock said with a cheeky grin.

Silence again. Torrin couldn't help but marvel at how easily Brock was able to get everyone to stop talking with just a few words. This whole meeting seemed to just be their leader showing off his ability to stun people into silence.

"But there are currently no active prothean beacons," Persei spoke up. Having been a politician for so long, Torrin guessed she would probably know about that.

"That is not true, actually," Brock said, looking at the asari who had quickly put herself into position as the human's personal assistant. "I know of at least four active prothean beacons and a separate active prothean VI."

This time, even Torrin couldn't help his mouth dropping open in shock. It was common knowledge that any functioning prothean technology could make the seller a fortune. If Brock knew where to find this information, then the eight eezo asteroids that he had found would pale in value to what they could earn from that.

"Then why haven't you got that info yet?" Jurt's voice rumbled out.

Rock raised an eyebrow. "Just because I know where they are doesn't mean that I can easily get them," he said drily. "The first one would make me an immediate target of a human-hating Spectre. The second one would make me a target of the entirety of the Asari Republics. Number three would see me listed as a traitor to humans and a target of the Human Alliance. Number four is functioning but still not dug up yet. It is hidden in the dirt on a claimed world. I would again become a target. And the prothean VI is on the planet Ilos, which I can't yet get to because the Mu Relay that led to it was knocked off course by a supernova and no one seems to know where it is. In fact, after this meeting, I want Hectar and Persei to go through any old records that you can on it and try to find out where it got pushed to. I know that it was in an area of space that used to be populated by the rachni."

Torrin's mind was awhirl with this new information. Functioning prothean technology, a galactic invasion by massive sentient killer starships called reapers, rachni (which had Jurt growling) and probable kill contracts with multiple governments if they were to try get the technology in the first place. The shocks just kept coming.

"But the governments have all signed treaties to share prothean technology," Persei objected. "Surely if they had these beacons we would have heard about them?"

"The asari beacon is hidden in plain sight and is the reason that the asari can claim technological dominance over the salarians in the galaxy," Brock countered. "If they didn't share the beacon's identity two millennia ago when they first met the salarians, why would they do it now and lose their edge? As for the humans, the have only likely dug up one of the beacons. The markers that Fastus had showed that the beacons were active but the second one was likely to be underground."

"And how would they know this?" Persei demanded.

"Because they had an active beacon at one stage," Brock replied, his tone very matter of fact. "I don't know what happened to it, but it stopped functioning long before I got there. It was still enough time to figure it out."

Persei stopped objecting and fell into thought.

"Now," Brock continued, looking over the room that had been so thoroughly stunned by the whole conversation, "our current goals and actions are still the same. We are going to continue attacking slavers, freeing slaves, expanding our company and building weapons. Once our orbital defence platforms are up and running, Persei will take the lead in negotiating sales. I will continue making plans and doing what I can to get the galaxy in shape to be ready for this invasion. I will take part in as many ground missions as I can, but Beau will be in charge of the ground teams overall.

"Above all, don't go telling anyone what I revealed to you today. For your safety and theirs. I know I dropped a lot of heavy stuff today," he paused while most of the people in the room gave a snort or grunt at that, "but focus on the now. We are still doing the same work that we have been doing for the last month. I will ask some of you to do things from time to time that you may think I am crazy for asking, but I promise you that if it is successful, then we can beat this. I am telling you all this because I believe in every person in this room. I know that all of you here can handle what I told you, that you won't get caught up living your lives in fear. I told you all of this because I trust each and every one of you here with my life and the lives of everyone else in this room.

"If I am being honest with myself, if I could have got away without telling you all of this, I might have. But despite everything I have planned, everything I have done and am doing, I can't do this alone. So my question now is, are you with me? If not, then you can walk away from me, from this ship, and you can go live your lives however you want. I will not hold anything against you. I want you all to stay but I won't force anyone to do this. So, I ask again: are you with me?"

A long silence penetrated the room. It went long enough that it began to be uncomfortable. Finally, of all the people in the room, Jurt stood up first.

"When I first joined up, I told you that my condition for being here was that you would help me rescue Polisa," his deep voice rumbled. "You did just that. You even bled so that it could happen. While you didn't do it the krogan way, you saved her, you freed her, and you brought her back to me. For that alone, I will follow you to the end of the galaxy, fool's quest or not." He thumped his fists together and sat back down.

"You saved me," Persei said. "You came and got me out of that hell that I lived in for eighty years, when I had been abandoned by the government I had served for nearly two centuries. You healed me and brought me back to life again. I am finding my purpose with you and this company. I do not understate things when I say I owe you a debt far greater than I can ever repay. No matter what happens, I will be by your side as it does."

"Working with you over the last couple months has made me feel more alive than I have in years," Beau said. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

"I told you that I was with you for the long haul, Cap," Aleria said, her tone lighter than it had been in weeks. "You aren't getting rid of me that easy."

"You dragged me out of the ducts on the Citadel," Torrin said, feeling the need to speak up. "You gave me a life and a chance to help others. You have become my family. I don't abandon family." He felt a little uncomfortable at how open he had been with that but a look around assured Torrin that everyone was supportive.

Everyone else in the room also gave their assurance that they were sticking around, even the quarians. By the time everyone was done, Brock looked extremely relieved, like a weight had been taken off his shoulders.

"Thank you," he said solemnly. "You support means more to me than you will ever know. Just, thank you all so much." He gave a big sigh. "Now, I have dropped a lot of information on you all today so why don't we leave it here for now. I will be available to answer any questions you have, if I can give them. Now that you know what we are up against, I won't hold the information back from you, so long as we are alone with other people in the know. Now, why don't we break it up for now and everyone go take some free time for the rest of the day to try sort things out. Report back for regular duties tomorrow. I will fly the ship to our destination at Arcturus and get us ready for our next appointment. We can deal with any planning tomorrow."

A murmuring of agreement ran through the room as everyone stood up and started leaving. Torrin couldn't help but notice a few people heading to the bar. He shook his head. Alcohol was ok for some, but he didn't think that was what he needed right now. Making up his mind, he headed towards the nearest elevator. He needed to run it off and clear his head.

…

The Krogan Word

Ognut Grax

Citadel Weekly Factoral

Independence Day

This movie kicks ass. I gotta say, that President guy would be a great leader to have. If we could get a krogan warlord to be able to whip fighters into shape with a speech like that, we could probably unite the krogan under a single banner… on second thought, unlikely, but still, he knew how to pick a fight. Also, the pilot did a good job but the stuttering and screaming of that scientist guy reminded me too much of a salarian for me to be able to enjoy.

…

Independence Day 2

Huh. What a letdown. The first one was awesome. The second one is now only going to go down as a film with some idiot taking a leak in an alien ship. The characters had none of the charisma of the first one, even the ones that were there too.

Still, that hunter guy, taking the aliens with swords, now that is something I can get behind!

…

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Looonngg! But that balrog! Ooh that made my blood sing! That thing was better than dinosaurs! I need to find me one of them! Or, you know, find a failed salarian experiment that makes one. Same thing really.

…

Godzilla

Oh yeah, THAT'S what I want to fight! That thing is like a dinosaur, mixed with a thresher maw, pumped up on steroids and given licence to destroy! HA! Oh, the ladies I could pull if I was to even try taking one of these one. I would have breeding rights for the rest of all time if I could take one of these down! Hey STG, in the words of the humans who made this up, 'help a brother out!'.

…

A/N Please review and Follow/Favourite as you please.

Because you asked for them so much, I gave you a few more reviews. I hope you enjoyed them. I put them in to ease up some of the intensity of the chapter.

So yeah, this chapter was the reveal of the future, with a twist. A fictional organisation who no longer exist is the source of his information, while the amount of information he had is the reason they believe him, along with the trust that they had in him from having worked with him so far. It was a lot of talking and not much else, I realise, but now we can move forward and stuff can happen.

See you next time!