[GARRUS VAKARIAN]
The turian's name was Rolan Decius, and he was three days past brave.
Garrus stood outside the detention cell — a converted maintenance closet with a reinforced door and a monitoring terminal that Webb's engineer had wired in overnight. The militia guard, a woman named Petrov with forearms thicker than most people's thighs, sat on a crate with a Predator pistol across her knees and the bored patience of someone who'd been watching the prisoner sleep, eat, and stare at walls for seventy-two hours.
Rolan sat on the floor. His armor had been stripped. The graze wound on his arm was bandaged — colony medical supplies, applied by the same doctor who treated the colonists he'd come here to subjugate. His mandibles hung loose, the turian posture of resignation that Garrus recognized from a hundred interrogation rooms on the Citadel.
Except this wasn't the Citadel. There was no legal framework here, no advocate waiting outside, no oversight committee reviewing recording transcripts. This was the Terminus, and Rolan knew it.
Webb stood beside Garrus. The human looked better than he had a week ago — the shoulder wound had closed properly, the exhaustion had faded to a baseline tiredness that seemed permanent. But something else had changed. The way he stood. The way his eyes tracked movement in the corridor. Webb carried authority now like a jacket he'd grown into, not one he'd borrowed.
"Ready?" Webb asked.
"I was ready three days ago. He needed time to understand his situation."
They entered. Rolan's eyes tracked them — upper pair on Garrus, lower pair on Webb. Four-eyed species were unsettling in interrogation because you could never tell which pair was doing the real work.
Wait. Rolan was turian. Two eyes. Garrus caught himself and filed the error under fatigue.
"Rolan Decius," Garrus said. He pulled up the chair — the only chair, deliberately — and sat. Webb leaned against the wall. "C-Sec Auxiliary Division. Stationed at Kithoi Ward. Transferred to 'inactive reserve' four months ago. Except your records show you never actually left the Citadel payroll. You just... stopped reporting."
Rolan's mandibles twitched. The micro-expression said: how do you know that?
"I know because I spent fourteen months investigating the same pipeline you were working. The weapons in that warehouse came from C-Sec evidence lockup, and the authorization codes on the manifests match a network I've been tracking since before you changed careers."
Silence. Rolan's eyes moved to Webb, then back.
"You're Vakarian." Not a question. "They said someone from C-Sec was digging. We were told it was handled."
"It wasn't."
"Clearly."
More silence. The kind that had weight. Garrus let it stretch — interrogation technique, learned at Academy, refined through years of practice. Let the silence do the work. People filled voids because emptiness was more uncomfortable than confession.
Rolan broke at the four-minute mark.
"The operation is run by a batarian named Razor. Full name: Khet'sarn vas Torfan. Former slaver, moved into territory acquisition about three years ago. Bought C-Sec protection through a combination of bribes and blackmail — I don't know the specifics, I was too low in the chain. But the weapons flow from the Citadel to Terminus distribution points, and Razor controls the distribution end."
"Fleet strength?" Webb's voice. Flat. Analytical.
"Eight vessels last I was briefed. Two modified cruisers — old batarian naval surplus, upgraded with stolen tech. Six frigates, mixed manufacture. Crew complement around four hundred, plus whatever local muscle he picks up at each port."
"And Haven's Point?"
Rolan's mandibles pressed tight.
"Haven's Point is on his expansion map. Independent colonies with mineral resources and no defense capability — that's his target profile. The warehouse was a staging point. We were supposed to establish a distribution node, evaluate the colony's resistance capacity, and prepare for absorption."
"Absorption means what, exactly?" Garrus asked, though he already suspected.
"Occupation. Install a puppet administrator. Redirect mineral output to Razor's network. Conscript able-bodied colonists for labor or combat. Anyone who resists..." He trailed off. The mandibles shifted in a pattern Garrus recognized from his own reflection on bad nights. Shame.
"Gets sold," Garrus finished.
"Or killed. Depends on market prices."
---
Webb pulled him aside in the corridor after. The detention area's recycled air tasted metallic — every part of this colony tasted like the machinery keeping it alive.
"Eight ships." Webb's voice was controlled, but his jaw was tight. "Four hundred fighters. And we killed six of his scouts and captured four more."
"Razor won't send another scouting force."
"No. He'll send the fleet."
They stood in the corridor with the weight of that between them. Through the wall, Rolan sat in his cell. Through three more walls and fifty meters of prefab infrastructure, the colony hummed with two thousand lives that didn't know what was coming.
Garrus's omni-tool held fourteen months of investigation. Authorization codes. Manifests. Names. A corruption network mapped from the Citadel to the Terminus, every node documented, every connection verified. Enough evidence to burn C-Sec's evidence division to the ground.
And none of it mattered if Razor's fleet turned Haven's Point to rubble.
"I need to send my evidence package," he said. "The Hierarchy's internal affairs division operates independently from C-Sec. If I transmit through the colony's comm array—"
"Do it. Today."
"It won't help us here. The Hierarchy doesn't deploy assets to the Terminus for corruption cases. But it'll stop the pipeline at the source."
"Then your investigation is complete."
The words landed between them like a door closing. Fourteen months of work, compressed into a data burst across a comm relay. The case that had ended his career, filed and finished, leaving him standing in a Terminus colony corridor with nothing to go back to.
Webb looked at him. Not with pity — Garrus would have walked away from pity. With something closer to recognition. The expression of someone who understood what it cost to burn your bridges and was standing on the other side offering to build something new.
"Stay."
"I already said I would."
"I know. I'm saying it back. Not as a favor. As a commission. Security Chief of Haven's Point. Formal position, formal authority, formal pain in the ass."
The mandible shift. The one that was almost a smile.
"Security Chief. That comes with a pay raise?"
"It comes with a sniper nest and two thousand people who think you're a hero."
"I'm not a hero. I'm a cop who ran out of criminals to arrest through proper channels." He paused. "But I can work with a nest."
---
[Haven's Point — Operations Center, 1600]
Vasquez signed the emergency powers authorization with hands that trembled at the edges. Garrus noticed. Webb noticed. Nobody mentioned it.
The document gave Webb expanded authority over colony defense — military asset allocation, emergency construction, conscription powers if necessary. It was the kind of authority that colonial administrators gave away when the alternative was extinction. Vasquez's signature was steady. Her hands were not.
"How long do we have?" she asked.
"Best estimate: two to three weeks," Garrus said. "Razor will consolidate his fleet, plan the approach, and move when he's ready. He won't rush — he has eight ships and we have a mining colony. He thinks he has all the time in the world."
"We need to make sure he's wrong," Webb said.
He opened his omni-tool and pulled up the colony's tactical display. Perimeter defenses. Chokepoints. Sensor coverage. Every weakness drawn in red, every strength in blue. Red dominated by a factor of four.
"Current militia roster?"
"Two hundred and twelve volunteers as of this morning," Vasquez said. "Word about the first attack spread. People want to fight."
"Two hundred volunteers and six building slots."
Vasquez looked at him.
"What do building slots mean?"
"Careful."
"It's a term I use for construction capacity. How many projects we can run simultaneously given our materials and labor. Right now we're maxed out."
She accepted it. People accepted things when they were scared enough. That was a tool he didn't enjoy using.
Webb opened the War Council tab in his peripheral vision — invisible to Vasquez, invisible to Garrus. The threat assessment for Razor had been updated with the interrogation data.
[WAR COUNCIL — THREAT UPDATE]
[RAZOR KHET'SARN — THREAT LEVEL: HIGH]
[FLEET: 8 VESSELS (2 CRUISER, 6 FRIGATE)]
[PERSONNEL: ~400 COMBAT OPERATIVES]
[ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 14-21 DAYS]
[COLONY DEFENSE RATING: 28/100]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 23%]
Twenty-three percent. Less than one in four.
He added "Razor Khet'sarn" to the active threats list and watched the threat assessment gradient shift from yellow to angry, pulsing red.
Outside the operations center, the colony continued its daily routine. The water recyclers hummed. The atmospheric processor chugged. Children — those same children with their mining drone — ran between buildings, laughing at something that didn't matter and mattered more than anything.
Two hundred colonists had volunteered for militia training. Two hundred people who'd picked up weapons because someone told them their home was worth defending.
He was going to make sure they were right.
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