Chapter 12: The Approach

Garrus didn't sleep that night. It wasn't that he wouldn't, out of some misguided attempt to remain alert and ready for the "humans" to arrive. No, it was that he couldn't; his mind was a storm through the night. His every thought was tossed about in a hurricane of emotions and opinions.

He paced in his sparsely furnished apartment wearing his own clothes after he took off and tossed aside the ones given to him. He found his guns and omnitool laying on the dining table just as the Executor said he would. His guns needed to be calibrated again and his omnitool mailbox was packed with panicked messages from various C-Sec officers he had talked to once or twice and junk mail from companies trying to sell him something, but they were there and he was happy to see them again.

Now his new armor sat on the table, a solid bright blue like his old suit but also slightly heavier and more durable. It was still light armor though, as he simply hadn't built up the strength and stamina to wear anything heaver without turning himself into an easy target. He was determined to move up an armor grade and not have to worry about armor piercing rounds as much again. The cheapest armor piercing ammo mods couldn't go through medium armor.

But even heavy armors wouldn't stop a Protoform, even he knew that much. That was a detail that stuck out during his training: that when attacked by a Protoform, you must be quick and agile because it didn't matter what grade of armor you were wearing, those tentacles can crush you out of it like paste out of a tube of turian rations. He had no doubts that humans could do the same thing.

He had inspected and calibrated and recalibrated his guns to the point where even he had tired of it for the day. They were as perfect as they could get for now and nothing could improve them further.

He had no idea how to feel about the coming diplomatic party. On one side, there was the hope for a peaceful visit and a mutual exchange of technologies. One thing he remembered from his history classes was that every species new to the Council brought technologies that were unlike what the Council races ever developed and set off technological revolutions, but even he knew that what Nihlus described was far beyond that. These technologies were usually improvements in the same technologies everyone had. What the humans claimed (and shown) was completely alien to the Council Races.

And Nihlus struck a weak point with mentioning genetic modification, and Garrus knew that he knew it. That anyone, anywhere had the technology to manipulate genetics to such a degree that they could command wounds to heal themselves… he was a turian! A species alien to theirs. How did they ever create something that could heal his ruined shoulder as if it was never injured? And so soon? It gave fuel to his imagination for any who could create such a thing so quickly could probably do much more. It was like a miracle.

On the other side was the threat that these things brought with them. They were Protoform, or a subspecies of Protoform. Or the creators of the Protoform. Unleashers. Something.

No matter what they said there was an undeniable connection between their kind and the Protoform, and that connection was not going to go away. He did not doubt that they had developed tactics and tech specifically to take down those creatures, but he wondered how much of that was developed actually fighting the Protoform and how much was from fighting eachother?

They were just so similar to the Protoform. He would be an idiot if he forgot that. There was a potent, persistent fear in him that kept him worrying about how the humans would act at the meeting. Would they attack the Council like that thing disguised as a Spectre? If they did, would they succeed where it had failed? Or would they slip off into the rest of the Citadel and spread like the virus that created them? Or worse, could they create a version of the virus that created the Protoform and infect the Council Races with it?

Garrus recoiled in horror and shook his head. It was best to ignore such thoughts, particularly when they went down such disturbing avenues. He reflected back to the encounter with that Commander Shepard. He knew that the Citadel leaked like a sieve, Spirits, everyone with any kind of sense knew it. Smugglers, mercenaries, thieves, assassins, Protoform… Despite C-Sec, Spectres and the Citadel Fleet; people, beasts and contraband slipped in and out without warning all the time. And now humans shown that they could do the same and they hadn't even introduced themselves to the galactic community yet!

A third side was the opinion that honestly, the simplest way to insure the safety of the Council Races from whatever threat the humans brought with them was to send the whole Citadel Fleet into their territory and bombard their worlds with dreadnoughts until they became uninhabitable. But that side was unacceptable in Garrus's opinion because not only did it not look like that was going to going to happen any time soon, but that was the side that Saren was advocating and Garrus just didn't want to agree with him. Ever. There was something not right about that turian. Perhaps it was the way he looked at people; a hungry look, like a predator. It wasn't a Protoform look, everyone he brought his concerns to insisted so (that believed him anyway), but there undeniably something wrong with his gaze. It was as if the first thing he thought of when he saw something was how to destroy it. As if whenever he greeted somebody he was wondering how best to kill them. Perhaps he was paranoid, but whenever the officers off-duty sat around trading stories and rumors, he couldn't help but notice that whenever Saren was said to be somewhere the news would soon report a horrible, tragic disaster in the area. Garrus was sure there was a connection, even if his superiors were sure there was not.

His omnitool pinged from the table. Garrus put in on and opened his mail. The human ships were spotted entering the nebula. It was time.

In the barely contained chaos of the preparations, Garrus found himself a position overlooking the Presidium docks. A well hidden sniper nest that would give him a perfect shot at the first sign of treachery from the humans. Then he could find out how much shapeshifters like incendiary ammo mods.

He had his visor tuned into the news station that was commissioned to report on the humans' arrival. The optics only gave him a different angle of what he was overlooking, but the excited asari reporter's voice was proving to be quite effective at soothing his nerves.

A shape came into view in the distance of the nebula. A speck of black in the sea of colorful gas and dust. Then it came closer and he saw it.

It was being escorted by the flagship of the Citadel Fleet, the Asari ship Destiny Ascension. Maybe of a plan to show the Council's power compared to humans'. Which backfired spectacularly.

It was huge. A massive dark orb that dwarfed the Destiny Ascension. Garrus recognized it instantly as the ship in the hologram but the image before could not compare to seeing it in person. It looked like someone took a small moon and covered it with darkness and tentacles which visibly stuck out evenly across the surface and seemed to sway in a nonexistent current. It wasn't the size of a moon; something that big just wouldn't make it through a Relay. But that's what Garrus's mind immediately compared it to. It had a presence.

Garrus roughly guessed it was three times the size of the Destiny Ascension. He could see as the fleets approached the Citadel frigates kept drifting towards the ship, like it had a powerful gravitational pull. Garrus wondered how much mass would it take for a ship to have its own gravity. The drive core to move such a ship would have to be enormous. But it would have to be completely solid, super-dense matter on the inside to have that kind of effect for its size, wouldn't it? That can't be right…

Then, suddenly bright red swirling patterns of light flared across its surface, and Garrus felt dread.

"Did you see that?!" the asari reporter's voice cried out. "Pull up and replay the thermal scans for our viewers!" The feed on Garrus's visor changed to that of a thermal scanner, the emissions from the drive cores and thrusters from the Citadel Fleet lit up along with the panels that followed the contours of the ships, but the human ships had their emissions in stripes and swirls and patterns that seemed to have been chosen for reasons other than efficiency. Even the flagship had the heat patterns all across it, even following the lengths of the tentacles. Then the ship shape suddenly brightened as the whole outside of the ship emitted heat at once. It was like looking at a sun, albeit a small and dim one, close up.

Garrus knew for a fact, right then, that all of the Council had no idea what they were dealing with. If the data already collected didn't prove it, that flagship did. All other species built all their ships similarly to each other, anyone with a passing knowledge of ships could guess where the drive core was located, where the pilot sat, where the cargo bay was and so on. This, he had no idea where the drive core was. The center, maybe. If he had to take a wild guess where the cockpit was, he would guess somewhere on the end facing the direction the ship was going. Cargo bay? Where was that at? And he couldn't even find an area where the cannons could be located.

Eventually, it became apparent that the human flagship wasn't coming any closer, which was a good thing in Garrus's opinion; the ship was clearly having an odd effect on the Citadel ships that were closest to it. And it was obvious that it was too large to dock.

A smaller frigate-sized ship pulled into the presidium dock instead. It had a familiar shape like that of a glider. Many ships hung back, like some dreadnought and cruiser-sized ships that looked like one of the holograms he'd seen; long like single tentacles that seemed to wriggle in space (what was the point of that?) and large tubes with tentacles on one end. Garrus wondered which end of the last type of ship was the front.

The electromagnetic locks came down upon the frigate and held it in place. Garrus was amazed that they worked, after all, don't these humans grow their ships? Then the bridges extended towards what he could only assume was the airlock because he hadn't seen any obvious sign of one and sealed against the ship. Now all that was left to do was wait and see what came out and hope it was friendly.

******************** The Approach: End *******************

Talk for reader:

And we're back to being short again. Damn. I'm sorry. Meeting the humans is the next chapter, I promise!

Why are so many reviewers hating on Saren in the comments from last chapter? He was just introduced and all you knew was that Garrus hates him, and that his ideas for how do deal with the Blacklight-infected humans consists of "kill 'em all" in various ways depending on the threat level presented. Garrus kinda agrees with him on the "kill 'em all" idea, and probably many aliens would in this universe. In my opinion, Saren is like Renegade Shepard: cool, badass, and quick to start shooting (and blowing things up). Nihlus, in contrast, is Paragon (with some Captain Exposition thrown in): quick to talk and make friends but is badass when he has to be. Garrus hasn't built up either Paragon or Renegade points yet, but he can go either way. Tela Vasir is a surprise and if you want it to remain that way, don't look her up on the wiki.

The big ship is about the size of Sovereign, but spherical (and not counting the tentacles). And between the ship's size and design, it is completely unable to dock at the Citadel…