The bridge of the Hierarchy's border fleet frigate was filled with a working atmosphere. News that the USSR had stormed Omega, executing almost the entire ruling elite of the station, except for the Pirate Queen herself, spread across the galaxy like wildfire. In connection with this, the council of officers, advisors to the primarch, decreed to increase the combat readiness of the border guard units, increasing the number and density of patrols, fearing provocations.
Ordinary space fleet sailors largely reacted positively to the news of the defeat of the nest of pirates, mercenaries, and bandits of all stripes, regardless of factions. For once, the irreconcilables and supporters of the Order of the Last Frontier agreed.
"...I wish you clear space. May the spirits guide your way," the communications officer wished, disconnecting the channel with the Soviet cruiser.
The ship "Normandy," flying through this system with a strange Soviet name, blinked its running lights, executed maneuvering thrusters, and accelerated for warp transition. The patrol squadron, although it did not move from its position, escorted the uninvited guest until its departure using radio reconnaissance equipment.
Had the circumstances been different, the border guards would have searched the communists, but the SPЕCTR's powers deterred them. It's not that the Turians respected the laws of the corrupt Citadel, but they had not relinquished their duties as its knights, so they had to obey.
The communications officer could have added much about the squadron commander's reluctance to drown in the paperwork that would be required in vast quantities to justify the detention and search of such a ship... but he limited himself to his conclusions and wished the source of concern to leave his area of responsibility as soon as possible. He had only half an hour left until the end of his shift, and if all these procedures had begun, he could have forgotten about rest.
After waiting for the end of his shift, handing over his post to his replacement, the Turian stretched with a crunch and left the bridge. His thoughts, about whether a shower or a trip to the mess hall came first, were interrupted by his friend from the training camp, who secretly showed him a packet of tomato juice, trying not to be noticed by the watch. There was a risk that such a tasty treat would simply be confiscated by any Hierarchy native for personal consumption.
Not refusing the invitation, the communications officer decided to accept his friend's invitation to visit, and a couple of minutes later, having poured the red liquid with pulp into small glasses, they were fully tasting the drink.
"You are a proper Turian and drink tomato juice," the cabin owner remarked, washing down a bar of army ration with juice.
"I've always asked the spirits where this stupid phrase came from? I don't understand it, but the juice is tasty," the officer noted.
"That's because you grew up among the irreconcilables, and they're all from there," he nodded vaguely, spreading his mandibles, hinting at the land of workers. "It's from a movie... what's it called... oh, 'Frontier or the Flight of the Flying Rat.' Almost a biographical one about their mercenary, Xenobyte. Heard of him?"
"Who hasn't heard of that madman?" the officer chuckled. "May the spirits protect me from meeting him."
"That's a quote from there... even though the movie is a bit silly for my taste, it caught on, and was quoted everywhere. A classic that has aged quite well. At least, you can watch it after a shift with tomato juice," the interlocutor dismissed it somewhat carelessly, almost carefree for a Turian.
"If only it were easy to get..." the officer remarked.
"Exactly..."
Both legionaries sighed sadly. During the period of rapprochement between the Hierarchy and the USSR, when an alliance of the two states on paper seemed only a matter of time, the Hierarchy purchased the technology for a polyprotein vaccine that allowed Turians to eat any food. At the same time, the inhabitants of the Hierarchy, previously restrained in their eating habits, discovered the full diversity of tastes of other cuisines.
No one expected that tomatoes would have such an effect on Turians. Where a race whose diet was based on animal protein, and where a plant culture? But the taste of these huge red berries turned out to be so alluring to the knights of the Citadel that for a time there was suspicion of a narcotic effect among their biologists. Expedited studies refuted these assumptions, to the delight of the law-abiding population of the Hierarchy.
Everything was fine until the darkest moment in the modern history of the country of discipline and military craft. The consecutive murder of six primarchs at once, and not in battle, could not affect a society where military honor was paramount. The Turians responded to the challenge, bringing patriotically inclined representatives to power, who were conservatives. They kept the Hierarchy from upheavals, but at the cost of tightening the screws.
Perhaps there would not have been such destruction if the patriots had not been replaced by the military; the ceiling before was simply to remain in the military, without the possibility of entering politics... it simply became unacceptable to enjoy anything Soviet.
"Is there anything interesting happening at headquarters?" the cabin owner asked casually, pulling the officer out of his thoughts.
The Turian, mentally understanding why his friend decided to share the juice, decided to humor his friend, but without violating the regulations.
"Everything is quiet. The plans haven't changed..."
"And why is this war with the space suits necessary?" his interlocutor asked rhetorically to the spirits.
"Do you want the official version, which even the irreconcilables themselves don't believe, or what contradicts the thoughts of any Turian, but is more likely to be true?" the officer shook his head tiredly, clenching his mandibles.
"Salarians!" they proclaimed in unison, making the word sound like a furious roar.
"It's not for us to discuss who our government is friends with," the officer remarked, stating the obvious for every warrior of the Hierarchy.
"But we will have to die when the order comes," his friend countered, also being right. "You and I, spirits see, will carry out any order, no matter how much it stinks of rotten meat, as long as it benefits the Hierarchy... but..."
"Will it benefit us?" the officer concluded, not understanding why they couldn't simply come to an agreement with the Quarians. He, like many others, was disgusted by what was being planned...
***
Glancing at the crowd of refugees, I ask my husband:
"There are quite a lot of Quarians, don't you think?" I send him a mental image, trying not to glance at the sentient beings who are looking at us a bit too intently.
"Don't scare them or provoke them unnecessarily. After the capture of Omega and passing the filtration, the civilians who lived on the station were clearly not themselves. You don't need to be a psychologist or feel their emotions to understand what thoughts are in their heads."
"You know yourself, many are fleeing their Fleet, going into voluntary exile or not returning from the Pilgrimage," Sergey reminded me about the intelligence reports.
"It's one thing to read it, and quite another to see it," I reply to him with a sad mental image.
The galaxy was rapidly heading towards war. On one hand, this was what we needed, otherwise, the Citadel Space wouldn't have been prepared for the Reaper invasion. On the other hand, seeing the consequences of this...
"Everything has a price. You have to be strong to see this path to the end, not to turn good intentions into a road to hell..." my father told me. I can understand it three times over, but seeing how children hide from you, it's hard.
How simple it was to blindly walk into bullets, following orders. One of the advantages of youth is that you rarely think. And you have nothing to lose except your own life. At this age, you don't fear death, feeling almost immortal. Although science makes it so now, we live only once in one body, otherwise, life itself loses its meaning.
My husband, noticing my melancholic state, put his big paw on my shoulder, splashing warmth of support through my neural network.
"It's hitting me," along with the word, I send everything that lies on my soul. That I don't like what's happening around, the games in politics, and simple worry for the children...
"I'm worried about Sasha too," Sergey replies to me, reinforcing it with an image of our eldest son on the command bridge of the ship.
I should be proud that he's already all grown up, commanding a small squadron in the Citadel's defense fleet. Just think, he was recently a little, but so serious child. He used to run around with his figurines, and my husband would chase him with his toy ships, imitating engine sounds... Only I know that the enemy will strike there first.
I can't shake off the insidious thought. I can only remind myself: he's a man. A warrior. Just like me. Sasha won't bow to bullets either.
Glancing at the crowd again, I note that this is by no means a courteous society. All of them, one way or another, worked for pirates and mercenaries. That's why they fear us now. The best way to calm yourself down is to embrace adventure and look at the problem from another angle. Besides, if I get stuck, who will think?
"How much longer are we here?" I ask my husband.
"The meeting decided that we're here for another week," Sergey sent me a memory packet, which included the meeting. Indeed, it won't be before a week that most of the ships will finish repairs after the battle. There was also one detail...
"Did you send 'Pegasus' to help Artyom?" I try to look at my husband reproachfully, while quietly chuckling to myself. "Don't you feel sorry for Captain Green at all?"
"I feel sorry for my nerves," Sergey replied. "You can say about her that if in the word 'team'..."
"Sergey," I say to my husband with emphasis.
"And how did such a daughter come from the Seleznev family..." Sergey waved his hand, vividly recalling the last report from this individual, which made my temples ache with a headache, and not metaphorically.
"As my father says, if she had gone into science with her energy and restless character, it could have been worse," I remark, mostly trying to calm myself down.
"Instead, she first terrorized the borderlands, then the space fleet, before ending up in the detachment... You remember yourself how they asked us. Even from the head office! Because if we hadn't taken her, she would have run off to become a freelance hunter. And old Xen is too old for such a..."
"Sergey," I couldn't help but object, but agreeing with the description of this little brat. "But she handles heavy equipment well."
"The best in the detachment," my husband agreed, who, from excess emotion, almost started swearing again. "And we stripped her skin in training, hoping to dissuade her. No need for a girl with her brains to tread in the dirt..."
"Her husband will be unlucky..." I shudder, remembering her then still a teenager, who could only be described in one word: stubbornness.
"And unlike Shepard, she charges like a tank. That's why I sent her with Green. A family friend can at least dampen her impulsiveness. And where Artyom went, her father is on an expedition in that area now. And he himself will look after the reinforcements. Even if they only have experience in shooting well, they are operatives..."
The Normandy, having crossed the territories of the Turian Hierarchy, set course for the planet Feros, where the cruiser was to meet its assigned escort and Pegasus, which was carrying reinforcements for the ground operation. Shepard, waiting until the ship jumped into warp again, left the bridge, cursing the meticulous Turians, for whom SPECTRE identifiers were not enough.
In this region of space, due to the topology imposed by the relays, the territories of states sometimes intertwined in very peculiar ways, forcing the ship to make small jumps, which slowed down time. The USSR did not need another political scandal now, so the lieutenant colonel decided to exercise caution, as his premonition was literally screaming about impending trouble. Therefore, he decided to make all possible preparations as early as possible.
The Normandy's landing party and the forces assigned to reinforce it, which the cruiser had not yet unloaded since the skirmish on Eden Prime, were preparing for landing, rejoicing in advance at the presence of heavy walkers and reconnaissance armored vehicles on board. The infantry were getting their necessary equipment. They were awaited by a not-too-hospitable planet, where ruins were interspersed with lush vegetation, dotted between rocky elevations. The complex terrain was not something that could be neglected.
The Argentum operatives and their support groups were practicing interaction, striving to achieve complete mutual understanding and synchronicity. Although the Collective allowed for almost instantaneous interaction, turning any unit into a cohesive mechanism driven by a single goal and calibrated, greater efficiency, with a sense of camaraderie, was achieved through exercises.
It was not enough to know what your comrade would think or do; you also had to be able to adapt to a unified style, making your own decisions quickly so as not to delay the reaction of the unit's pseudo-organism. And one cannot forget such a factor as elementary trust, without which communication would be unstable and glitches could occur. Therefore, the fighters of Argentum, along with their teams, took turns occupying the training rooms and the ship's training hall.
The seasoned fighters also felt with heightened intuition the coming troubles, which made the seemingly calmed atmosphere on the cruiser nervous again, spurred by recent events...
In orbit around Feros, a squadron of the Salarian fleet lay drifting, escorting a science frigate. The scientists' vessel, having entered the dense layers of the planet's atmosphere, began spraying a special compound...
"Are you sure it will work as it should?" asked the squadron commander, who was on the observation commission for the experiment.
"Although the communists are cunning, they won't keep fraudulent information in their own laboratories," the GOR observer assured him of its safety. "Especially not at a production complex."
"We've checked everything!" exclaimed one of the scientists, too agitated to control himself. "And we've conducted preliminary tests! Our compound has replicated the effect of the USSR's biopolymers! You can't imagine the prospects it promises."
"That's why I don't believe the Soviets would just give away their secret," the fleet captain doubted, instead of being reassured.
"I personally stormed that laboratory," the GOR employee assured him. "Only thanks to a surprise attack and heavy losses did we manage to obtain samples. My group was lucky that the communists diverted some forces to help the expedition to Eden Prime."
"Still, too easy..." the fleet observer continued to disbelieve.
The GOR employee didn't try to convince him again, otherwise, he would have had to violate secrecy. The compound would have remained dead weight if not for the Soviet dissident, the disgraced academician Lebedev. It was a great stroke of luck for the Salarians that this man needed a series of delicate services, otherwise, the deal wouldn't have been made.
"And what was that laboratory studying?" the fleet officer continued to press.
"Some flora from the Pandora sector. We, alas, didn't have time to extract all the documentation then," the GOR fighter dismissed him.
"The process has begun!" the scientist declared enthusiastically. Even through the observation windows of the bridge, it was visible how vegetation began to grow on the planet.
"You see, it's a complete success!" the GOR representative smiled reassuringly at the fleet observer.
Neither he nor the scientists knew that Lebedev had deliberately revealed the location of this particular complex, knowing full well that his Salarian colleagues would want to experiment with its contents. The academician had calculated them, pushing them towards a certain outcome.
Below, on the planet, an ancient biological weapon, isolated into a mutagen and enhanced by polymer additives, was now actively interacting with the complex flora of this world. DNA chains were breaking, changing, mutating, giving birth to something that, in the future, could make the Rachni seem like an insignificant threat. In principle, this was what the disgraced academician had counted on, not taking into account, however, the Normandy, which had emerged from warp to catch the culmination of the process...