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Osiris	By : samanthalee Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 8333 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This work of fiction is meant for entertainment purposes only, and no profit is being made from it. Mass Effect is the property of Bioware

Chapter List
- 7
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- 9
Author's Note: So after my final (and insanely busy) year of university I finally have time to revisit this story and finally get it going! Hope some of my readers are still out there and enjoy the chapters that come in the next few weeks.

Now with the release of Mass Effect 3 (which is 99% AMAZING btw, go out and buy it just be warned, the ending kinda sucks but up till then its incredible story telling.) the plan I had for this story is, as I expected, branching wildly into Alternate Universe in the next few chapters. It probably will not be compatible with the Mass Effect 3 story.

Apologies for the short chapter but it is necessary to get the plot moving.

As always I hope you enjoy and REVIEW!

As he looked at it Garrus had to admit that the Ascalon hardly looked like much. He had expected a sleek, polished and elegant piece of engineering perfection: a Normandy miniature. Instead, he stood against the frame of an advertising unit looking at what could easily be described as a junker. The hull was battered and scorched, typical signs of poor maintenance in an old and weary ship.

However, Garrus was familiar enough with high tech systems to recognise the housing unit for a Thanix cannon mounted on the underside of the hull, an insane amount of firepower for a ship of its size, that cannon could punch a hole clean through a Dreadnought as well as anything else that got in its way. The Ascalon was a thresher maw dressed up to look like an old crone. The scores of dock workers and other civilians that passed by without giving it a second glance were each a testament to how well it wore its disguise.

It had taken hours arguing with Bailey to secure the Ascalon for his own purposes. As far as Bailey was concerned he was under orders on council authority that the ship was to stay secured and completely off limits, even to his own staff, until a council Spectre came to investigate. Garrus suspected that Bailey had only relented in the end just so that he could go home and get some sleep. Garrus had checked into a presidium hotel to rest up for the few hours until the daytime cycle began. Soft beds, gourmet food, complete silence, safety ... he didn't sleep a wink. The bed was too comfortable, the food was too fine and the room far too quiet. The lavishness of his surroundings seemed inappropriate given the severity of his mission. He would have been more comfortable in a military standard bunk with a course, heavy blanket; with army rations and the thrum of a starship around him. He had sat up all night, stripping down his weapon in the dark, cleaning and reassembling it over and over until the Citadel daytime cycle began. He couldn't help thinking about Shepard. Was she OK? Had they reached Invictus yet? Had Saren lead them into an ambush? Had he left Shepard at the time when she most needed his protection? He tried to push those questions from his mind. He couldn't change what had happened, and he couldn't help Shepard by worrying. All he could do was carry on and hope he could find some evidence and get back to Shepard before Saren could lead her to disaster. After rushing a breakfast he headed straight to the Binary Helix docks to find the Ascalon and wait for Wrex.

"Now THAT is one finely built beauty." Came the krogan's voice as he approached Garrus a short while later.

"What gave it away?" Garrus asked as he turned to face him "The thanix cannon?"

"Huh?" Wrex said as he turned to Garrus with a confused look on his face.

"The housing compartment ... on the hull."

"What the fuck you talkin' about?"

Garrus was now as confused as his partner seemed to be. "The ship!" he said, pointing.

Wrex followed Garrus' outstretched arm to the Ascalon.

"That's our ship?" he said, sounding underwhelmed "What a hunk of shit."

"What were YOU talking about?"

"That."

It was now Garrus' turn to follow Wrex's pointing arm. Looking across the docks, he was surprised to see that it pointed to a wreck of a taxi car, parked on a maintenance platform on the other side of the concourse. He was completely lost as to what about the ship had caught Wrex's interest until he noticed the rear of an asari mechanic protruding from where she was working on the underside of the craft. He couldn't help but laugh at his partner's sharp eye for a beautiful creature.

"Right," he said, tearing his eyes away from the admittedly appealing sight of the asari and back to the matter at hand. "What's in the case?" He asked as he noticed the lockbox Wrex was carrying.

"Later." Wrex said simply, looking at the crowds around them. Obviously something to be opened away from prying eyes.

"Well then," Garrus said, starting towards the Ascalon. "Shall we?"

Thankfully the inside of the Ascalon was not in keeping with the less than appealing exterior. As he had stepped through the airlock after the painfully slow decontamination process Garrus was bathed in the same soft blue glow that had come to represent a return home to safety aboard the Normandy. It hadn't taken him long to familiarise himself with the ship's layout. The cockpit was a much like the Normandy's, built for a single pilot and a maximum of two additional people manning the sensor and weapon stations. The rear of the ship was occupied by the banks of VI databanks, the small engineering space and the mass effect core. Cerberus had certainly liked the Normandy's idea of a huge core in a small ship, and had fitted the Ascalon with a similarly oversized core for its size, along with the Normandy's stealth systems. The midship was divided into a small mess hall with simple but plentiful provisions and an incredibly high tech armoury that almost made Garrus drool when he saw the vast array of stored modifications and attachments ready to be installed. The former also served as the crew quarters, with three bunks recessed into the far wall.

"Bottom bunk is mine." Wrex stated as the eyed it.

"Fine by me," Garrus said, smiling. "This is well built, but I don't think I could sleep too soundly with half a tonne of krogan right above me."

"And I don't want your turian stink drifting up to me." Wrex quipped back.

Garrus ignored the jibe as he moved over to the metallic case that Wrex had left upon the mess table. He eyed it curiously.

"So," He said, pointing to the box. "What did you get for Christmas?"

Wrex wandered over slowly, a smug smile on his face as he gave his slow, grumbling chuckle and punched in the code for the magnetic lock.

"This," Wrex said as he slowly opened the case. "is Meg."

Garrus stood for a few seconds in silence, not quite able to comprehend what he was seeing. It was the largest pistol he had ever seen. A primitive looking bulk of metal that looked like a cross between an old human revolver, a Claymore shotgun and an orbital defence cannon. Like the Claymore, the enormous handgun had a brutal simplicity to its look that made it seem as if it was constructed by Vorcha with scrap metal rather than scientists with cutting edge materials.

"What the –"

"Special order I put in to a group of scientists a couple years ago. Humans might be small, soft little bastards but I will say this: They've got bigger balls than they do brains. Thousand years the krogan and turians been blasting each other's balls off and it's the humans that finally come along and give us two of the best shotguns on the market. Crazy bastards can't even hold the damn Claymore but that didn't stop 'em thinkin' it up. Anyway, I figured if they can do that then maybe they can give me a pistol with better kick."

Garrus was still struggling to take in the size of the barrel. "So ... how many laws does making this thing this break?"

"None that I care about."

Garrus had to smile at that.

"But the size of it ... How many shots do you get out of this thing?"

Wrex smiled proudly, as if he had invented the gun himself.

"It uses thermal clips and old style heat sinks. So you use up the five rounds in the clip then you can fire a shot every ten or fifteen seconds. Ammo block doesn't last so long though, the slugs this thing shears off are massive. Might get a hundred rounds out of it before it needs changed."

"You planning on shooting a hundred people in one day?"

"No!" Wrex said defensively. "Not that many. Some people I'll want to shoot twice."

"Nice. And ... "Meg"?"

"I dunno, some Earth fish or somethin', big teeth." Wrex said as he hefted it in his hand, getting a feel for the weight and grip. "But the name fits, I knew a female on Tuchanka called Meg. She was just as fat, twice as ugly and almost as vicious as this bitch."

"How romantic."

"Yeah." Wrex said dismissively "So what's the plan with Septimus?"

"He won't be here for a while, but I'll head out soon, just in case he has any friends coming early."

"And you think he'll just give up that intel?"

"Well, I didn't exactly give him much choice."

Wrex shrugged, "He's a military general. He'll know more than a few gun hands."

"No," Garrus said thoughtfully. "Septimus is Turian military to the bone, he has a very strict code. He lives by it."

"He's a smuggler and a drug peddler." Wrex countered, clearly unconvinced.

"He's a soldier. He never stopped fighting the Shadow War with the Terminus Systems. He still views them as a threat if they get themselves organised and the scary part is that he may not be wrong about it. He seizes the drugs coming out of the Terminus Systems, turns them around and sells them back to rival gangs, it keeps our streets clean and the Terminus gangs at each other's throats. He'll happily take the profits into his pocket but I doubt he'd kill a fellow turian on his own side to protect his cut for such a meagre price as a dead man's secrets. Plus, he's too smart to try something like that."

"You realise how convincing that sounds while you're loading an assault rifle?" Wrex chuckled.

Garrus hadn't even been aware that he had begun to maintain his Mattock assault rifle as he was speaking. Muscle memory lead his hands through the motions as he replaced the ammunition block and swapped out the thermal clips.

"Yes, well." He said, chuckling. "I said he was smart, not that I was stupid." He checked the time on his omni-tool. "Come on, its almost time."

Septimus entered straight through the main gate right on time, typical military. Apart from a quick scan of the area he looked confident with no sign of being suspicious, a good sign: treachery was, in Garrus' experience, always preceded with suspicion and paranoia. He should have seen it with Sidonis before he betrayed them; the man had been paranoid from the first. Garrus had dismissed it as nerves, a result of being one of only eight men on Omega that EVERY criminal hated. His men had paid with their lives for his poor judgement, and he had learned to be a lot less trusting since then.

"Any followers, Wrex?" Garrus asked into the comm. system in his visor.

"Only my old drinkin' buddy."

Garrus saw him enter a few seconds behind Septimus, the same bodyguard that Wrex had so gently sent to sleep at the bar a few days earlier. He was noticeably more cautious than his boss. He hung back, checking the whole area with sharp eyes for any sign of ambush or threat. Septimus, on the other hand, trusted his instincts. He had his opinion of Garrus, and seemed content to trust to it enough to approach him as soon as he saw him with little or no thought of any treachery.

"Septimus." Garrus greeted him pleasantly and extended his hand, hoping that the exchange could be done amicably. The general left the hand hanging in the air while his face betrayed his indignation at being bullied into his current situation.

"Vakarian." He said coldly, the last name term clearly indicating that this would be a business exchange with about as much warmth as deep space. Another good sign; if he was planning to have Garrus killed he would be in a better mood.

"Do you have the intel?" Garrus asked, dismissing the niceties and getting straight to business.

"It wasn't difficult, but you've drawn attention to yourself by digging around in this, there's a lot of unsavoury people with name "Vakarian" on their tongues and some even worse people saying the name "Archangel""

"They can talk all they want, I have things to do."

"Well you and your friend should keep a low profile if you want to have enough time to get them done before your old friends catch up to you."

"I'll keep it in mind." Garrus said dismissively, "Now, the assassin."

The general's aggravation elevated at the mention of the information he was being forced to give up, information about a suspected former member of one of the most respected and covert Turian military units. He opened a file on a datapad and scanned over the data.

"You're assassin wasn't hard to find. Facial tattoos indicated he was from Cipritine, Palevan. That and his age made it easy. His name is ... or was Primus Nero before you damn near blew him in half. Decent political connections through his father who drank with half of the hierarchy. Standard enrolment into the military at age 15, showed exceptional skill as a combatant but no real command potential. Volunteered for special operations right out of training, got his wish and proved his mettle against Terminus pirates and gangs for the next few years.

"His recruitment by the Talons came at an opportune moment when he was nineteen, it saved him from a court marshal for excessive brutality against an unarmed captive on an anti-smuggling operation the year before. His father probably greased the wheels to get him transferred before the case could go to the tribunes. Served with the Talons in covert operations, mostly in the Terminus Systems for six years, got a bad reputation for under-the-table deals and taking too much pleasure in his wet-work but he was a good fire-team member so they kept him on.

"He finally snapped the leash at age twenty-five when he was given his own fire-team to lead. An operation against a Batarian slaving station went sideways when he decided to go off mission for a bloodbath in the slaver barracks. A lot of Talons died that day; most of them didn't have to. He was confined to quarters but skipped off-world and fell straight in with his underworld contacts as hired muscle and we lose him for a few years until he turned up as part of a small mercenary group with a huge price tag. They eventually developed into a well run and brutal gang that blew away the competition for years until a power struggle got him kicked back onto the street. After that it's pretty standard, he's spent the last 20 years as a high cost merc for pretty much anyone with the credits to afford him ... but he stayed well clear of the bigger gangs."

"You're saying he hasn't worked with Eclipse for twenty years?" Garrus asked, confused.

Septimus paused doubtfully, "Well that's the hitch, he NEVER worked with Eclipse. In fact they just put a price on his head that could buy you a few months in bed with the Consort herself. His original gang had another leadership coup, he went back to join them and it seems Eclipse are nervous about the competition's new leadership and want him permanently retired, along with the rest of the new execs. "

"That doesn't make sense, he was working with Eclipse hitmen in Chora's Den when we took him down."

"Well, he's a Blue Suns' boy, no doubt about it." Septimus said.

"Wait ... what?" Garrus said, "New leadership. In the Blue Suns?"

"Yeah," Septimus continued, "Vido Santiago met a less-than-pretty demise and the killer took control of the Suns, called back all his old crew including Nero and started running things ... aggressively. No intel on the new boss yet, or Nero's movements over the past few weeks."

"No need." Garrus said as he turned back towards the Ascalon, he had heard all he had to. He spoke into his comm. unit. "Wrex, we're leaving."

"Vakarian!" Septimus called from behind him, he turned to meet his hard eyes. "You shouldn't have played this like you have, don't come for help from me again. You and I are no longer on good terms."

"I've got friends, Septimus." Garrus said coldly. "If I have to have you as enemy to protect them, then that's fine by me."

With that he turned and walked back to the Ascalon without looking back. Wrex was just approaching the airlock as Garrus stepped inside.

"Where we headed?" He asked.

"We're going to see an old friend." Garrus said icily. "We're going to ask Zaeed Massini why he tried to kill Shepard."
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Osiris