11 The Diary of Jane

Garrus returns to Paleven.

Palaven 2183-3 The Memoirs of Garrus Vakarian

Palaven 2183-3. I did not make it back to the Citadel before the Normandy disembarked. I did send Shepard e-chat by a public account. Her reply had its headers cleanse of source nodes by the Alliance military. The Normandy was silent running and I could not join the crew now. She missed my valuable insights and humor. The ship was safe and they'd seen no action so far.

I wanted to tell her a great deal but with the Alliance brass clearly reading the chat I confined myself to some professional "its been and honor to serve" comments and a polite reminder that I still owed her a drink.

Since I was "officially" back in the turian military ("whether you like it or not" were the Primearch's words), I had access to mass relay transit information. I was able to keep track of where the Normandy cruised; somewhere primarily in the regions of the Omega and Hourglass nebulae.  

On Palaven the Hierarchy had not been expecting me exactly, they had sent for me, but it had been an invitation to arrive at my leisure as a hero of sorts. It the turian councilor, Sparatus, that had me shanghaied, as it were, and it was years, before I understood the motives behind this action.

I received a medal for helping to bring Saren to justice, but no one was interested in hearing much about the Reapers. I was offered a position as a SPECTRE candidate level five. Let me make this clear; in turian military society such 'offers' are orders and a level five meant I'd train for three months with a turian Special Forces unit and then become a SPECTRE, no choices. I did discern that I'd be able to rejoin the Normandy when I was promoted to the SPECTRE division and that the hierarchy, at least most of them, approved of having a human and turian SPECTRE work joint operations on a ship of human and turian design.

This was a satisfactory arrangement and since I had no other job, I agreed. My father was of course infuriated and let me know. My mother was pleased I'd be on Palaven for most of the three months and also let me know. My sister knew me too well and expressed suspicions about my motivations to quietly reenlist after having been all too happy to go to inactive reserves. I told her the Reapers were coming and she said that wasn't the reason. Solana was always the insightful one in the family.

A month later I was on a target range testing a high powered rifle for accuracy when I was suddenly overwhelmed by a spat of nausea. I didn't vomit but I had to sit down and put my head between my knees. Something horrible had just happened and my first instinct was to call my mother. She assured me that the family was fine, enjoying a sunny beach day fishing with some friends. My next thought was of Shepard so I sent a message to her public account and one to Joker's as well. I can't describe the uneasy feeling that gripped me, but I told the unit officer a lame story about eating bad salad and took leave for the rest of the day.

At roughly oh two hundred hours the next morning, Serratus, my assigned assistant (read 'minder') and the youngest of general Victus' large brood, knocked on my door and again delivered my marching orders. The Councilors wanted to see me on the Citadel right away and he was to escort me there. I knew that bad news was coming.


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