Turok

Chapter 9

By BigToFu

 

LAST TIME ON TUROK…

While searching for Quarians lost outside the bounds of the Fleet, Turok stumbles across a discovery that will change the way he views the Citadel Leaders.

 

Turok

Alexander the Great of his people.

My arrival at New Rannoch was an interesting one. My arrival was hot, hot, hot and with mass effect fields and IFF identifiers in place, I barely had to spot as I blasted into the spaceport. The landing was barely even shaky before my hand slammed down on the teleportation override, sending me directly from the bridge of my ship and to the scientific medical section of the planet.

 

Cayde could handle the Quarians while I handled this mess. The anger of the latest info-bomb still bubbled underneath the surface as my hands flew across controls and pulled in data from not only New Rannoch, but also every Guardian's ship connected to the subspace quantum communications network.

 

A red light flashed off to the corner and I checked it to find that the Doctor had arrived from her apartment, perfect. Hitting the command override, I dismissed the shower of blue light as she was also teleported directly into an open teleportation pad available for the medical division.

 

"Tu… Turok, what is the meaning of this?" She questioned as she stumbled off the pad a little, surprised by the immediate change of location.

 

"We have a situation," I grunted back, never taking my eyes off the streams of data coming in.

 

"Yeah, I know but it can't be so bad for you to teleport me here directly. It's only a five-minute walk." Rit'suko grumped.

 

Stopping mid-motion, I turned towards her and then swiped a hand at the open air. My implant was pinged for clearance and I pushed it through with my approval. A section of the medical wing glowed with multiple colors as the current position of the Quarian Flotilla appeared for her to see. Then, with a flick of the wrist, I shifted the sensor readings to three light years behind the fleet.

 

One of my camo drones, following very close to it, was a Salarian vessel traveling behind the Quarian fleet. It was very clear for all to see what was clearly a real-time tracking map of the fleet along with the straggler.

 

"Time is of the essence, Ri," I replied with a motion toward the map. "We've, no, I've already mucked up the status quo in the galaxy. It's only a matter of time before some upstart gets it in their head that things would be better without the Quarians around. We already have evidence, flimsy evidence, but we already have clues that the fall of our people wasn't a fall and might have been a push."

 

"Fine!" Rit'suko replied with her hands thrown into the air. "But we are going to need a lot more data points and not just this little bit from one data sample."

 

I stopped and looked at her for a moment, "I do have some Salarians in storage and Mara is heading towards Yorktown with the Krogan in question."

 

"Alright, so why are we here?" Rit'suko asked.

 

I snorted, "You made the discovery, so you are going to run shotgun over this."

 

She paused in her motions, turned and looked at me, "I can't do that Turok, I already have a lot on my plate with the genetic sequencing situation. The degradation is bad enough and I'm also fighting the effects of our already minuscule breeding pool."

 

With furrowed brows, I shifted my attention from the hologram to look at her. "I know it's bad, but we have a semi-decent population roughly around twenty million."

 

Rit'suko dipped her head at me even as an arm reached out, her omni tool sending data to the main holo terminal. "Be that as it may, we have been interbreeding with a set genetic stock for the last three to four hundred years." Data appeared and I could see where it was missing gaps but the data was clear to read between the lines. "Every death has closed off that line of genetic material and our immune issues haven't made it any easier."

 

"SHIT!" Was my reflexive answer to the information before me.

 

Rit'suko gave me a questioning brow raise, "What?"

 

I sighed, "I honestly didn't want to be right. I knew we had a population issue along with high death rates, but never foresaw breeding difficulties."

 

Taking a moment to think, I brought up the mainframe and had it take Rit'suko studies and combined it with my own Quarian immunity solver. Then, I turned and pressed the teleportation override on the center counsel. I would just leave the computers to solve that issue while I tackled another more important problem. One of the things people always forget about genetic mutagens is that you can use the same markers left behind by the creators to add more or change things later.

 

My people were still very much susceptible to Salarian interventions and I couldn't have that. Stepping out of the teleportation array, I waited for Rit'Suko to get her bearings once more before making a hand motion for her to follow me.

 

"TUROK!" She growled at me but I didn't care because we had things to do.

 

"Yes, yes, you're mad from the teleportation but have more important things to deal with right now," I reply with a negligent wave of my hand. "Grab a seat in the cabin, this won't take long and I need to go see if Cayde got the others off my ship." I was already walking out of the area while shouting back over my shoulder. "Make yourself comfortable; we'll be taking off soon."

 

"TUROK!" Rit'suko yelled but I was already walking away towards the cargo ramp.

 

With a chuckle, I kept on walking while ignoring the rant that was going on behind me. I walked into my cargo bay while Rit'suko made herself comfortable on my ship. Walking into the bay, I found the last of the stragglers thanking Cayde profusely. Even though they hadn't taken the immunity solution yet, they had their helmets off with a collapsible bubble shield around their heads allowing their face to be touched by the real sun.

 

It was beautiful and I could see more than one face tear up as they left the cargo bay of my ship. Standing back, I waited until they all vacated my ramp before hitting the close button.

 

"Cayde, let's roll," I called to him one time while I checked to make sure the locks and seals were in place.

 

He snorted while turning around, "Come on Boss, we can't just hang around for a little bit."

 

"Nope, you know what we are dealing with, times of the essence," I called back over my shoulder while walking down the hallways.

 

"You know Boss-man, sometimes you just gotta go sloooooow," Cadye spoke as he walked by my side.

 

I snorted at him, "If I had taken things any slower, you would still be inside of that suit."

 

"Alright, alright," Cayde replied with his hands up in surrender.

 

Ignoring him, I went about doing flight checks before directing us out of the system and into hyper-space. With a slight rumble of the engines, we were off. Checking the navigation system, it would take us a little over four hours within hyper-space before we arrived at the secondary location.

 

With a sigh, I pushed my chair back and just tried to be in the moment. There was just so much to do that it almost felt overwhelming. How could I uplift my people if they had a design flaw written into their biology by some outsider….

 

Just sitting I was able to enjoy the peace that was brought to me, even more when Cayde got bored and left the bridge for the shooting range. Enjoying the peace, the time slowly slipped away into the either, then it all changed as the blue warped field of hyperspace faded away to be replaced by all black and twinkling stars.

 

With a grunt, I buckled myself back into my pilot's chair, leaned forward and grabbed the controls. From where we were flying into the system you had a full sight of all the magnificence that had built up over weeks and months as I had sent drones out here to do the construction for me all under the guidance of an AI. A moon had been strip mined along with a couple meteors to build my Yorktown.

 

Not only that but if you zoomed in closer to the sun, you could see a dyson sphere under construction to harness all of that power. Everything was beyond premium and built to quality and standards never before seen in the galaxy. The sun flared a little and I could see the trails of blue eezo mass effect fields pull at the solar flare. I waved an idle hand over the screen to take a closer look.

 

What I discovered were massive tanks double the size of my own craft being rapidly filled with molten material, then the tanks were rotated out on a system as more were allowed to be filled. Everything moved like clock work as that material was then delivered to a space port and ejected into a vacuum sealed vat. From the bottom of the station more drones were birthed, ships, and an assortment of materials which were then taken towards Yorktown. I could only shake my head at the efficiency of it all. Only an AI with open invitation could create such a system. Almost reminded me of those Warhammer 40k forge worlds

 

Swinging my attention from that, I turned to Yorktown even as I dismissed the extra viewing screens. It was a shining beacon off in the distance, but that rapidly changed as we flew closer and closer. Around what was a marble out here in the vast blackness of space was a massive construct with many flying drones buzzing around its surface. You could even see them move in and out underneath the massive expanse of clear alloy-metallic-glass that held the atmosphere inside from the outside.

 

At five locations around the massive moon sized structure, we're gigantic open ports to the void. As we approached it all looked like openings were covered by a blue plasma field but I could only smirk as I flew my ship through the openings. The combination of mass effect fields, active scanners and multitude of various other things took in time data on everything. From the cargo hold to the people on board. I removed a copy over my implant because I was the leader of the station, but also the quartermaster of this docking station, the station's commander, the security officer in charge and a list of other people. The star trek scanners were showing their value as it scanned everything down to the nuts and bolts in the hold.

 

There would be no slaves smuggled off my space station, and if they want to deal black market drugs and guns, then they would have to pay the damn fee or pay the fines after everything got confiscated. The underworld can't be destroyed only controlled with a tight fist.

 

As I brought us through Yorktown, Rit'suko burst into the bridge with excitement vibrating from all her frame. The moment she stepped into the cockpit, the open viewport caught her eyes and she stopped in her tracks.

 

"Ohh, my!" Rit'suko breathed as she watched as I flew us around the Yorktown station. This was only possible because I had the space torn for medium and smaller ships deeper within the station. The larger ships could be docked closer to the ends since they would also have more space to maneuver and less chance to blow my damn station up because some Turian had a misplaced trigger finger.

 

"This is… how, when, where?!" Rit'suko muttered, stunned at the amazing revelations before her.

 

With a chuckle, I dropped us into an open hanger and started my shutdown routines while an airlock walkway attached to the cargo bay of the ship. Once the ship was off, I jumped out of my seat and made for the cargo bay with Rit'suko right on my heels. Even though I was the first into the cargo bay, I wasn't the first off my ship as Rit'suko ran off into the space station.

 

First, I sighed, then rolled my eyes and looked towards Cayde, his hands instantly went up in a defensive posture.

 

"Hey, that's all you boss," Cayde replied, instantly cutting off anything I could say. Then his hand came around as he checked his omni-tool. "Would you look at that? I'm needed at the security counter."

 

With a glare, I watched as he ran away knowing damn well he was just going to one of the open bars. With a hand movement, I brought up the map of my own omni-tool and sent out a general call for the location of the good Doctor. The station's Ai instantly sent a return and I discovered that the doctor hadn't gotten too far. It only took a quick jog and a left turn to find the Doctor standing before one of the open skyways. Humming a soft tune from one of Micheal Jacksons' famous songs, I walked up to the Doctor as she started out the window with wonder. Her wrist was alight with information about the station since the Ai was also programmed to offer everyone general information once they connect to the network.

 

Now that I thought about it, I was still on the line about offering free internet service or charging for it since millions, maybe billions would be on the network. Nahh, free internet but charge for use of the billing service. I was going to make money hand over fist anyway and I was already going to put my foot on the neck of the Citadel, no need to rock the boat anymore.

 

Dismissing all of those thoughts for later, I placed a hand on Rit'suko's shoulder to pull her attention. Since she wasn't paying attention much, I of course scared her and her face blushed a very nice shade of purple.

 

"Doc, we have places to be, you know." I stated even as I leaned against the clear class.

 

Her hands waved as she let out a cute little squeak, "Ohh, I'm so sorry, I got completely distracted." Rit'suko stated as she waved her arms in front of her face.

 

With a chuckle, I placed a hand on her back and directed us towards one of the taxi ports.

 

"It's fine Doc, I just would like to get to the bottom of this sooner rather than later. " I replied with an easy shake of my head. "I need you to give me a time frame because this is going to force me to up my time frame by a mile."

 

Her hands clapped a little as she looked at me with large doe eyes, "Does that mean you are going to be able to get me the data from the Flotillas archives?"

 

Thinking about it for a minute, I gave her a nod of the head before holding out a hand and calling one of the little automated golf carts. We hopped into that and rode it for another five minutes as the doc looked around stunned and in awe at everything she was looking at. Then once we arrived at the surface, I gave the doctor a minute or two to absorb it all.

 

Stunned was the word to use because even I was in awe of the sight before me. When this had been first pulled from the Star Trek charges, I could never have pictured the scale of it all. Now though, I had a new appreciation for absolutely stunning creation before me. This was interrupted by one of the sky cabs arriving at the local stop.

 

Holding the door open, I let the doctor get in before me, then followed after and gave the vehicle's vi a destination. Then I decided to give commands to take a route to let the doctor get a good view of the space station. Relaxing in my seat, I smiled at the doctor's excited look on her face. The sky cab took us on two full loops around the station before arriving at the main medical hospital located in the center of everything, sitting right between the main police station and the command center.

 

Hopping out of the sky cab, I offered the doc a hand even as I waved off the security force that came to greet us. From there it was another rapid 5 minutes before we arrived at the medical wing with the Krogan in question and a few others waiting around while eyeing my life-giver huragoks.

 

Rit'suko didn't even wait for a go ahead as she just dropped her things and started a sterilization beam all over herself. She did three turns under the beam before she was happy when it dinged green for all clear.

 

"SO is this the Krogan that's offering us a genetic sample?" Rit'suko asked as she looked the Krogan over. A free hand was out stretched for his medical chart.

 

"Yeah, we are also on the hook to curing the genophage," I replied with a grunt even as I leaned against the wall.

 

She signed even as her face pulled into a look, and I could totally understand how she felt about that. Yet, I had my worries because of another reason. I might not have been to the Krogan's homeworld, but I have heard about the mountains of dead babies. Yet, even that wasn't my issue, no. My issue would be the birth rate of the Krogans and how I would need to solve that along with the genophage.

 

It would be highly stupid of me to cure them and then allow them to breed me and my people out of the galaxy. Then there was also the little matter of that puberty rage that they shared across the entire species.

 

SO much to fix with so little time available.

 

My distraction came with the doctor speaking once more after she looked the krogan over.

 

"I know the computer said one thing, but I'll have to run my own independent test just to confirm that nothing was lost in translation during the data transfer." Rit'suko stated with a firm nod.

 

One of the others in the medical wing raised his hand, "Sorry, but when are we going to get the cure?"

 

"Ohh, once we get a DNA sample and have you go through a 24hr watch, the cure will be administered before you will be allowed onto the station." Life Giver 5 stated.

 

Rit'suko peered at the floating medial helper.

 

With a grunt the Krogan stood and went to loom over Rit'suko but I was already there at her back staring him down, the Omni-tool on my hand glowed an ominous red.

 

With a snort, the Krogan held out his hand for the doc to get her blood sample, "You got a quad on you, Quarian."

 

I shrugged while deactivating the Omni-blade, "Only a quad can keep all my ladies happy." I replied with a chuckle before going back to chill against a wall.

 

The Krogan snorted at me before turning away after his blood was drawn.

 

"You're Quarian?" One of the Suited Quarians asked me, and from their body posture, they were far too scared to get any closer.

 

With a sigh, I pushed off the wall and walked over to them, and offered my hand, "Yes, and so is Dr. Rit'suko."

 

The body language shifted again to that of shaking, I looked them both over with a frown.

 

"I thought you were already told?" I questioned as I looked from one to the other. I watched as he shook his head, and sighed. Of course, Mara just shipped them here and just kept it moving. Shaking that away, I brought up a hologram and began to explain to them some of the changes they would go through once the cure was allied.

 

Settling with them all gathered around, I communed with my people. I could worry about the Salarian issue later, my people needed me more.

 

Note's ::: Don! Don! DON! And look what's back!