Comfortable Old Boots

 

"Comfortable Old Boots"

Chapter Two: Garrus Victus

 

   Garrus Victus had been young for any sort of captaincy whatsoever- barely seven years out of military training. For all intents and purposes and in spite of his age, his political rank in the Hierarchy ought to have been higher. He was the son of a powerful family, some mishmash intermarriage of the best the turians had to offer when the rebuilding of Palaven had started three hundred years ago. Politicians advancing their own children was frowned upon in practice, but more common than the government liked to claim in any case. His mother's grandmother had been an offshoot of the Orakas, his father's mother descended from the Councilor Sparatus of the Eden Prime War.

   An obedient son for all intents and purposes, he'd tossed aside the first Intendant nomination nudged his way when he'd turned twenty-one. He'd strode right into the family home and announced to his vaguely stunned parents he intended to remain a career spacer if he didn't decide to sign up with O-Sec or Citadel-II security. They'd likely remained so calm about it because they'd written it off as a phase.



His siblings had raised their long, sharp fingers at him as they'd commented on his military “career.” They had been very well meaning, as every good turian politician had their years of experience in the art of soldiering. Time in the regiment was a way of life. What baffled them all was his insistence on starting from the bottom and working his way up- not to the position of council member or the coveted position of general over still recovering turian troops.



   He could argue that he felt he had a higher purpose in life. There was plenty he could say about wanting to help people, or to help strengthen the turian-krogan alliance by providing a fine example of how the two races could work together after Mordin Solus' genophage cure. The truth was, he was chafing at the idea of political restrictions by the end of his first year in the fleet and far more years of social get-togethers where his elders waxed about 'the old days' that had ended before they had even been born. Most of them set foot on a spacecraft no more than a dozen times in spite of rigorous military training. So, he decided not to sit and watch the world pass him by while he decided the best way to make a contribution to the world- he would become one of the spacers- and he would be a good one, finger quotes and parental nudging toward important missions be damned.

   Garrus had a faint strain of Vakarian blood in his veins, which his mother blamed for his tendency to go his own way when he decided to be stubborn bout something. All in all, something as flimsy as genetics were a convenient excuse.



   It would be a mistake for one to assume he had no desire to prove himself. He'd been irritated when all his parents had done was click their mandibles, wished him luck and had patted him on the back when he'd become the youngest soldier of the decade to be given command of their own ship. After all, he'd worked hard to achieve that rank on his own, even if the Kara II was a small freighter with an old power core and an elevator that refused to work half the time. Running a supply ship back and forth to the military bases dotting recovering planets gave him a chance to see the galaxy. No small feat and no small expense since the first relays had shut down.



   He was proud of that ship and proud of the crew, full of grizzled old veterans with a fondness for the Kara II only years of service could nurture. When she'd gone down, it had been with no warning, no blare of systems or urgent warnings from one of the women down in engineering. They'd had little time to strap themselves in as the pilot made that emergency landing, Garrus shouting orders and snarling out a 'brace yourselves, men, we're going down!' when the engines had sputtered last minute during the landing. His body had whipped forward against the restraints, head snapping back and then into the panel behind him. Stars flashed before his eyes; not figurative stars, but literal ones.

   As the Kara II scraped and screamed her way along the lush landscape outside Shepard's Stand and Urdnot Outpost, she had ripped up trees and great hunks of earth in the process. Bodies jerked and in some cases flew straight into the wall. Freighters were heavy and bulky, and even a minor emergency landing could be fatal to all inside a ship. The sound of those alarms would send most trainees straight to their prayers to the spirits. Garrus was unable to make out the chaos before him, unable to hear the curses. He saw fire, along with bits and pieces of the galaxy that had fascinated him since childhood. He saw-



 

   “Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly. Slap some face paint on there, and no one will even notice.” Her smile was unrepentant and welcoming all at the same time. She ran her tongue over her teeth, a lazy gesture even as she stood tall and upright. He could make out a slightly odd-colored flash where he thought some of her teeth must have been replaced.



   Garrus laughed hard enough it hurt, then grunted from the pain.”Don't make me laugh, damn it. My face is barely holding together as it is.”



   She was sprawled out in her underwear in bed, then, badly chewed fingernails poking at the mole on her shoulder and a gun on the bedside table. There was blood on his own face, along with a nasal voice in the air that warned them to 'not ingest.' He could smell a heavy odor of ozone in the air, and something a little like burnt flesh. He stared blankly at the head of a floating salarian before it vanished. There was a bottle of wine in his hand, something cheap and paid for on a vigilante's salary.



   “Don't ingest,” the salarian's voice warned for the second time. He found himself wishing the bobbing apparition would get the hell out of there. After all, Mordin was dead and time was short. Garrus turned back toward the now armored woman, scratching at a bit of his fringe.



   “What're you thinking about, soldier?” she asked him, pulling the last word out so that it was more a drawl than anything else. All at once, the fake skin patching the cybernetics on her face began to split and crack like hot mud baking in the sun.



   A mandible twitched upward. He could feel the flick of it even if he had no idea why he ought to be smiling at what he said next. There was a bright, brilliant flash of red light. Her gun was suddenly in his hand, primed to fire at the screeching hulk of machinery suddenly looming from above. “Mostly, I was thinking about London and lucky bullets,” he shouted above the din.



   “Go big or go home, Vakarian-”

   She laughed.

 

   The first thought that entered his mind as he came back to reality and the crew began the painful process of counting out the casualties and seeing to their wounded was a strange one. 'I wonder where this tendency to expect the worst came from?' There was no time to puzzle over such a thing, or to be grateful for the fact he didn't think he had a concussion. 'Captain Victus' had his priorities, after all, and those priorities had involved the realities of gunfire from human colonists with too much pride in themselves and not enough sense.

   Garrus had never been to the colony- after all, it was his first flight to planet Normandy- but he'd heard of the people there. Every one of the human settlers claimed to have been descended from that crew, though most of the colonies had sprung up within the past fifty years when the quarians and salarians had somehow managed to recover bits of the old jump stations to cobble together a rather limited leaping system. The people of “the Stand” were the worst of them all the humans on Normandy, rumor had it. Their mayor was called 'Shepard.' They had built a memorial out of pieces of the old ship and historical value to the rest of the galaxy be damned. They celebrated 'Normandy Day' and left flowers and such out by one of the old wings four times a year. Colonists there would rename the sky Shepard's Blanket if they thought they could get away with doing so.



   It was a miracle none of the humans who had come to scout out the accident had been killed. Navigator Antius had taken a shot to the arm by the time a man with a weathered face and palms so dirty Garrus could see the grime even against the dark skin had stepped in to play peacemaker. He went by David- “Captain David when I was with the Alliance,” he'd said, as if that would be enough to defuse tensions between xenophobic humans and angry turian soldiers after little more than a comm line and a place to recover away from burning rubble.



   Humans snarled, pointed and generally glared as four turians sat rigidly in the backs of terra cruisers, Garrus privately surprised at how easy it seemed to keep it together under the circumstances. He hadn't been pleased to go with the colonists and a few of his more able-bodied crew members back to the Stand, particularly since some of them had wanted to see human blood on the ground. Nobody said the business of being captain was pleasant, he noted. After all, he was alive and most of the Kara II's crew were unhurt. Let it not be said a Victus was unwilling to slog through shit so others could get some fresh air on the other side.

   “Always was a bad name for a ship,” one cool-headed private muttered alongside him, drawing her knee toward her chest. He'd brought her because she'd proven herself to be particularly steady through this entire ordeal, far more of an asset than a liability. He couldn't remember her name. At this point, he didn't even try.

   “Quiet, soldier,” Garrus ordered automatically, more concerned with his surroundings than common ship superstition. There was little tactical advantage offered by the trees, far away as they were. Any of them would be shot down by the time they made it to higher ground. There's no reason it should come to that. The worst is over. He rubbed at his throbbing head, blinking hard once or twice.

   When Anderson David led him to what he knew had to be the local jail, he went straight-backed and without any sign of resistance, pointedly ignoring a less than quiet whisper from behind them that it was a 'damned stupid choice.' Luckily for his crew, his gamble paid off and logic won the day, as the head of the colony was waiting for him in a large, leather chair that seemed too luxurious for such a battered old building.



   “You have to understand these are good people, Captain Victus,” 'Shepard' Miranda Donnelly told him in that vaguely smug, pleasantly modulated voice of hers. She was married to the head security officer- something Bailey. “- but we're isolated here and as you've no doubt realized, we like it that way.” He found it telling that she was meeting with him in the local jail while the rest of them- humans and turians- waited just outside. Garrus didn't respond at first, thoughts back with the wreckage of the Kara II and the small pile of bodies being draped over with tarps by surviving turian soldiers.



   “Ah- yes, Shepard,” he managed, jerking himself back to attention. The word felt odd and heavy on his tongue. He disliked it, and the dark-haired woman who claimed to be 'one of them' even if she spoke with an accent he recognized as different from the humans she led. She twitched one dark brow upward and smiled faintly.

   He smiled back, tight, controlled, and wondering if she even knew what it looked like when a turian smiled at someone. “The Hierarchy appreciates your cooperation during this difficult time. My concern is contacting Urdnot as soon as possible-” He had the distinct impression neither of them wanted to walk out to find more wounded because someone or other wanted to have a pissing contest over who had rights to which area on which planet. With luck, David was as competent a peacemaker he had appeared the first time he'd opened his mouth. Old soldiers tended toward one or the other- peace or violence.



   The burning eezo fumes seemed entirely too close when the wind blew through the open window. Damned crashes carry further than you'd think- At the time, he didn't know that there had been a smaller explosion further out, that a terra cruiser had caught fire not far outside Shepard's Stand. The smell was sharp and pungent enough that he actually had to breathe through his mouth, turning his head for all of a second in the direction of: “Huh. Hey.”

   He'd met enough human women to know which ones were beautiful and which ones fell short of the standard. The one he could barely see in her cell was not at all like Miranda Donnelly, who was one of the prettiest he'd ever set eyes upon. She loomed over the Shepard, all corded muscle, fuzzy hair and aquiline features. For a split second, he saw only red light where she ought to have been standing. His mouth went dry.



   “Ah. Hey.”



   Garrus dropped his datapad on Shepard Donnelly's foot.