Day 1. April 4, 2180.
Garrus's training regimen was not gentle.
He'd divided the two hundred and twelve volunteers into ten squads of roughly twenty, each assigned a section of the colony's perimeter corresponding to the most likely assault vectors. Morning drills started at 0500 — weapons familiarization, positional discipline, fire-and-movement basics. Afternoon sessions covered squad tactics, communication protocols, and what Garrus called "the art of not dying," which mostly involved learning to use cover and not shoot your squadmate in the back.
Of the two hundred and twelve, he'd flagged forty as functionally unable to participate in combat — too old, too injured, too terrified to hold a weapon steady. He reassigned them to logistics: medical support, ammunition distribution, civilian evacuation coordination. Useful work that didn't require trigger discipline.
That left a hundred and seventy-two. By the end of the first day, twenty-eight had quit. By the end of the third, twelve more. The remaining hundred and forty held.
"Not soldiers," Garrus told Webb over the tactical display in the operations center. "I can't make soldiers in two weeks. What I can make is a defensive screen — people who can hold a position, fire at targets in their designated zone, and fall back on command without trampling each other."
"Projected casualties?"
Garrus's mandibles pressed flat. He didn't sugarcoat.
"Forty percent in a direct ground assault. Higher if the shields fail and they get orbital support. Lower if our chokepoints hold and they have to funnel."
"Forty percent is eighty people."
"Yes."
The number sat between them. Eighty names that didn't exist yet. Eighty families that were whole right now and might not be in two weeks.
"Make it thirty," Webb said.
"That's not how—"
"I'll give you better positions. Better equipment. Better barriers at the chokepoints. You get me a training program that accounts for prepared positions with integrated turret support, and I'll get you the positions."
Garrus studied him. The mandible assessment. Then a slow nod.
"Thirty. Maybe. If everything goes exactly right."
"Nothing goes exactly right. Plan for that too."
---
Day 3. April 6.
The shield generator manifested at 0200 in the colony's central plaza.
He'd spent the previous day mapping the optimal placement using the territorial overlay — center of mass for the settlement, maximum coverage radius, accessible power conduit connections. At two in the morning, with the plaza empty and the night shift skeleton crew focused on their stations, he pressed his palm against the ferrocrete and spent 200 MP.
The construction was different at System Level 2. Faster. The components assembled with a fluidity that the Level 1 builds had lacked — like the system was learning from each deployment, refining its manufacturing protocols. The generator rose from the ground in eight seconds: a cylindrical housing two meters tall, inset with hexagonal emitter arrays, crowned with a sensor dome that immediately began calibrating to the colony's electromagnetic signature.
[CONSTRUCTION COMPLETE: SHIELD GENERATOR]
[DEFENSE RATING: +15]
[COLONY DEFENSE: 28 → 43]
[MP: 0/200]
Zero again. He leaned against the generator housing and waited for the trembling in his hands to stop. The construction at this scale pulled something from him — not physically, not exactly, but a hollowness behind his eyes that took hours to fade. The system's binding was at ninety-one percent now, and each major build pushed the integration deeper into his neural pathways.
By morning, Kowalski was circling the generator with a diagnostic scanner and an expression that had evolved past suspicious into something like bewildered acceptance.
"Hexagonal emitter arrays." The engineer's voice carried the awe of a man confronting technology that violated his understanding of manufacturing. "Each one independently calibrated. The power coupling uses a resonance frequency I've never seen — it's drawing from the colony's grid but converting at three hundred percent standard efficiency."
"Can you maintain it?"
"Can I—" Kowalski stopped. Breathed. "Yes. I can maintain it. But Webb, this isn't human engineering. This isn't turian or salarian engineering. These emitter arrays use a crystalline substrate that doesn't match any known material in the periodic table."
"Prothean-derived construction templates. The system builds using technology from a civilization fifty thousand years dead. Of course the materials don't match."
"I need you to maintain it, Kowalski. Not explain it."
The engineer's jaw worked. Then something shifted in his expression — the last wall of professional suspicion giving way to professional necessity. The colony needed this generator. Understanding it was a luxury. Keeping it running was survival.
"I'll need a full power consumption profile. And access to the internal diagnostics — if there are internal diagnostics."
"There are. I'll walk you through them."
They spent two hours at the generator. By the end, Kowalski had a maintenance schedule and Webb had something he'd been chasing since the water recycler: a reluctant ally who'd chosen practicality over distrust.
---
Day 5. April 8.
Guard Post Gamma went up at the colony's northern approach. Guard Post Delta at the southern. Emergency barriers — concrete-and-steel prefab walls reinforced with kinetic dampeners — at every major intersection in the colony's grid.
[DEFENSE RATING: 43 → 63]
[BUILDING SLOTS: 5/6 USED]
[MP EXPENDITURE THIS WEEK: 350]
[CURRENT MP: 38/200]
Three hundred and fifty points in seven days. The system's regeneration at Level 2 — two per hour, forty-eight per day — couldn't keep pace with the construction demands. He was spending faster than he earned, running a deficit that left him hollow-eyed and shaking after each major build.
The territorial overlay showed the progress in cold numbers. Defense Rating 63 wasn't impenetrable — a concentrated fleet bombardment would overwhelm the shield generator, and a ground assault with four hundred fighters would stretch the militia beyond breaking. But it was enough to make the colony expensive. Expensive enough that Razor might decide the cost exceeded the value.
Might.
---
Day 5 — Evening.
The dissent meeting happened in the Rusty Claim.
Delacroix — the council merchant who'd questioned his appointment — stood at the bar's far end with thirty-eight colonists arranged behind her in the formation of people who'd decided something and wanted someone to hear it. Arms folded. Faces set. The posture of a grievance that had been building for days.
"We want evacuation options." Her voice carried the clarity of someone who'd rehearsed. "Not suggestions. Not promises. Options. Ships, routes, destinations. Half the colony shouldn't die because you decided to pick a fight with a warlord."
The bar was quiet. Luis polished a glass behind the counter with the dedication of a man determined to be invisible.
Webb stood near the door. He'd come alone — no Garrus, no Vasquez, no militia escort. Deliberate. Showing up with authority figures would have turned a conversation into a confrontation.
"You're right," he said.
Delacroix blinked. The thirty-eight people behind her shifted.
"Evacuation should be an option. If we had ships and a safe destination, I'd be the first to organize it. But we don't have ships. The relay corridor is controlled by Razor's forces. The nearest friendly port is six weeks at sublight in vessels we don't own. And the last three convoys that tried to run this route were destroyed."
He pulled up his omni-tool. The intelligence from Rolan's interrogation — redacted for operational security, but the core facts were there.
"This is what Razor does to colonies that surrender."
The display showed three examples. Colony designations, population figures before and after. Occupation. Conscription. Forced labor quotas. "Disappearances" of colonists who'd resisted, listed in clinical batarian administrative language that made slavery sound like filing.
Delacroix read. The thirty-eight people behind her read. The bar stayed quiet.
"Surrender means we lose everything and our children get sold. Running means we die in space. Fighting is the only option where we might keep what we have."
A pause.
"I'm not telling you to be brave," he continued. "I'm telling you the math. And I'm telling you that in the last week, we've built defenses that would make a military outpost jealous. We have a shield generator, four turret positions, a hundred and forty trained militia, and a sniper who could take the wings off a fly at a thousand meters. Razor doesn't know any of this. He thinks we're the same soft target his scouts found."
Delacroix looked at the display. At him. At the display again.
"What are our odds?"
"Better than you think. Not as good as I'd like."
Honesty. The kind that cost something to give and was worth more than comfort.
The meeting dissolved. Not with agreement — with the absence of alternatives. Delacroix left last, stopping at the door.
"If we survive this, Webb, you and I are going to have a conversation about governance structures. This colony shouldn't be a military dictatorship."
"Looking forward to it."
---
Day 7. April 10.
His twenty thousand credits were gone.
The money — Webb's escort job payment, the sum total of his liquid assets — had been spent on supplies. Thermal clips, bought from a Terminus trader who'd docked briefly for refueling. Medical supplies to supplement the dwindling reserves. Ration packs to pad the colony's food stores. Emergency repair materials for infrastructure that couldn't wait for system-built components.
Twenty thousand credits. Five weeks ago, that money had been a lifeline — enough to pay Kragen, cover Sara's child support, and still have something left. Now it was thermal clips in militia hands and medi-gel in the colony clinic.
"Sara. Emma. I owe them two thousand credits and I just spent the last of my money on bullets for strangers."
He ate dinner in the militia mess — reconstituted protein paste with aggressive seasoning, the same food everyone else ate. The recruits sat around him with the particular energy of people who were terrified and pretending not to be. They talked too loud, laughed too hard, ate too fast.
A young man named Ito — early twenties, former mineral surveyor, hands that shook when he held his rifle — sat across from him.
"Advisor Webb?"
"Just Webb."
"Is it true you built the shield generator? People are saying you built it."
"Kowalski's team built it. I contributed components."
"From where?"
"From contacts."
Ito nodded. He didn't believe it. None of them did. But the generator was real, and the guard posts were real, and the barriers were real, and when you were about to fight for your life, questioning where the miracles came from seemed ungrateful.
"Are we going to win?" Ito asked.
The question every soldier asks. The question that has one answer, regardless of truth.
"Yes."
He didn't know if it was true. He said it anyway. Because Ito needed to sleep tonight, and sleep required faith, and faith required someone to say the word.
The War Council timer pulsed in his peripheral vision.
[RAZOR KHET'SARN — ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 6 DAYS]
[COLONY DEFENSE RATING: 63/100]
[MILITIA: 140 TRAINED]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 41%]
Forty-one percent. Up from twenty-three. Almost doubled by a week of construction and training.
Not enough. But closer.
He finished his protein paste. It tasted like effort and desperation and the particular quality of food eaten among people you were responsible for. Bad food. Important food.
Six days.
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