Chapter 23. Injustice

- Amazing, simply incredible. Yes, it is he who will be my flagship.—.

"Ivon?" Liara's voice distracted me from the huge super-dreadnought, the only one built by this shipyard at the moment. -If you want to take this monster with you, I have bad news for you. The two of us simply won't be able to control it, and when it appears, it will be immediately confiscated.—.

"Yes...yes, you're right." He reluctantly looked up from admiring the space giant, overwhelming with his mere presence and capable of competing with the Reapers in the lethality and strength of protection of both shields and plating.

And the best thing is that the main caliber is presented, albeit in one copy, unlike the Reapers, but is one and a half times more powerful in comparison with the guns of these synthetics due to the increased size and charge acceleration system, which more than allows you to penetrate with an accurate hit Reaper's shield. Also, the main caliber can be rotated thirty degrees in any direction, unlike dreadnoughts of other races, whose main caliber can cause hemorrhoids.

But putting repeater technology into the barrel is, of course, brilliant. Not just a mass relay, the principle of which is used in any modern weapon, but an analogue of a smaller copy of a secondary relay that displaces the charge of a high-temperature melt in space, which allows you to gain much greater speed than the same Reapers, without wasting extra space for the mass relay on the dreadnought. Modern dreadnoughts have a cannon inside the entire hull to accelerate the projectile, while my counterpart has only one compartment of the ship dedicated to the main gun. This also made it possible to install four similar smaller cannons in the center of the hull, on top and below the ship, normally covered by the skin.

In theory, it is even possible to strike with such a weapon bypassing physical obstacles by displacing the charge in space. But this still needs to be verified, but the prospects are colossal. At a minimum, hide behind the planetoid and shoot through it while remaining invulnerable to the enemy.

"You're right, everyone will immediately be interested in such a handsome man." We'll have to make do with something smaller, a cruiser for example." He turned his gaze to the patrol flying nearby, which was headed by the cruiser.

-Ivon! How do you imagine this?" Liara was instantly indignant. —Will you fly to Thessia on a battle cruiser only slightly smaller in size than a turian dreadnought and many times superior in technical characteristics? So what?—.

-Fine! Frigate! But I won't get on a fighter jet!" I was already indignant when I realized where Liara was going, but having received a satisfied, understanding smile from her and a loving kiss, I put aside the argument and plunged into work.

And as it turned out, I had quite a lot of it.

***

Attic traverse, Mrril system, planet Sorus. Secret prison of the Shadow Broker.

The consciousness of the experienced warrior returned with a jerk, and with it came rage. I wanted to jump up and tear his captors into pieces, and grab that impudent salarian, gut him and devour his liver in front of his own eyes. But the same experience advised not to give in to rage, but to first scout out the situation.

Well, the krogans had a wonderful sense of smell, but no matter how Shiagur sniffed, he could not feel anything. The room was sterile. He himself was lying on something hard. Finally, without really finding out anything, the krogan decided to open his eyes slightly and look around, and he didn't like what he saw at all. The room was small and extremely sparsely furnished. In a small box three by three meters there was a toilet built into the wall, a sink and, apparently, a hard bed on which he was lying. And right in front of him there was even an impressive-looking metal door with a built-in small window, probably reinforced. Shiagur did not understand what was on the other side; from his position it was difficult to see anything.

"Have you had enough of it?" came the voice of the hated amphibian from the speaker. —Get up, Mr. Shiagur, we know that you have woken up.—.

Once it was revealed, the krogan did not hesitate and first, taking a sitting position, climbed out of the bed and finally carefully examined his surroundings. I didn't find out anything new, except that on the other side of the window I saw a small corridor and the same cell as mine, only empty.

-Mr. Shiagur, we can still agree as civilized members of the galactic community. Just tell us what we want to know. Where did the asari and her companion go?" the speakers spat out the salarian's rapid speech, which echoed in the krogan's head as dull irritation.

-And if not, then what? Are you going to torture? Well, I'm waiting, you stupid amphibian, come on! Take the risk of coming to me!" the krogan bared his teeth in the corner, where the camera hung.

After the altercation, the speakers fell silent, no one responded to his screams, threats and insults, and Shiagur had no choice but to wonder why the hell a couple of youths surrendered to the Mediator and how to get out of this situation. Ten minutes later, when the krogan had managed to run several circles around the room and settled down on a hard bed without a mattress, blanket or any kind of comfort, the sound of a door sliding open and the sounds of footsteps were heard on the other side. And also women's screams. Screams of a very, very familiar voice.

-Where are you taking me?! No need! "I don't know anything, let me go!" a beautiful asari appeared struggling in the hands of two turians and was dragged along the corridor towards the second cell.

-Arina? Arina! Don't touch her Warren burps, I'll kill you! You hear? I will kill you!" the enraged krogan pounded on the door at the sight of his ex-wife.

-Calm down, she can't hear you. Your cell is isolated, and the sound comes through the earpiece directly to me." The ever-memorable salarian, already dressed in high-tech armor of the salarian company SerisSol Armory, appeared in front of the window of the krogan's cell.

"You know, it's always been funny for me to watch how you, a species whose behavior depends on hormones, react to the opposite sex," the xenos grinned and moved away from the window, revealing to the krogan a view of two turians in the next cell, where the asari had already been dragged They beat her and then tear her clothes. —You are always so predictable.—.

But the krogan no longer heard him. He pounded as hard as he could into the closed door, growling furiously and threatening violence, but it was all useless and the only thing he could do was watch as two hated turians raped his ex-wife and the mother of his dead daughter.

—They went to uncharted regions! "I don't know, I don't know anything anymore!" the krogan shouted in the hope of ending this torture.

True, nothing stopped, and only when the two xenos finished with the asari did a salarian again appear in the krogan's field of vision, studying the krogan's face with a serious face.

"I believe you." The amphibian nodded and gave a signal to the turians, who managed to pull up their pants, and one of them, pulling out a large-caliber pistol made by Khaliath Armory, quickly, but without unnecessary fuss, blew out Arina's brains under the shocked gaze of her ex-husband.

"What's wrong with the krogan?" the turian asked after leaving the containment chamber. —Him too?—.

"No, Mr. Shiagur can still be useful as bait or a bargaining chip." The last thing the krogan heard before the door closed behind the retreating xenos, cutting off the sounds and leaving him alone with the corpse of his ex-wife, which had not yet cooled down.

***

Unexplored regions of the Termina systems, Nidavellir system.

As it turned out, there really was a lot of work. No matter how much of a genius you are, you can't foresee everything, although it seems that Ultron, if he didn't do this, was clearly extremely close to such an achievement. Due to small errors in design calculations and due to external circumstances, several sectors of the shipyard world could not operate normally and were either repurposed or mothballed, and their functions were performed by workshops suitable for this purpose with the help of Phalanx bots. All this reduced the performance of the world as a whole by 20-21 percent, and, in principle, did not require much work to correct. Somewhere to change the hardware, somewhere to make adjustments to the control program of the VI, here and there to modify the assembly line. Of course, if organic workers were doing this, the work would be colossal, but I had hundreds of billions of Phalanx bots on my side, completing work of any complexity in the shortest possible time; it was enough to make calculations, make adjustments to the drawing and give a command.

In the meantime, I was working on correcting errors in the performance of the shipyard world, this world was fulfilling two of my orders: a secondary relay and a frigate of the original structure and layout. And if everything is clear with the repeater, then the frigate is worth a special mention. Its size of two hundred meters already ranks it in the heavy class among its fellows and it is a powerful warship. Powerful enough to raise questions in certain circles, but that's an acceptable price to pay for such a beauty. The powerful plating made of artificial biosynth (which is not biosynth, but rather a polymer created on the basis of the Reaper's plating) is capable of withstanding a direct hit from the main caliber of a turian cruiser, and the shield is not at all inferior to asari cruisers. As a weapon, I borrowed weapons from ships designed by Ultron: a retractable cannon at the top and bottom that shoots high-temperature melt and the same one, only larger, at the front. Particle emitters are installed as protection and close-range weapons instead of lasers used in other warships of the Citadel races. True, particle emitters have more energy consumption, much more to be honest, but they also shoot much further and even cut the skin of cruisers, which sharply reduces the chance of getting close to my handsome man to use disintegration torpedoes. Well, the most important thing is four powerful repulsor engines, which allowed the warship to gain monstrous speed, more suitable for scouts, and six maneuverable engines on the sides and small repulsor engines throughout the hull allow active maneuvering during flight.

I actively modeled this ship during the flight for all four months, but after seeing the characteristics of the future fleet against the Reapers, I had to redo it, actively borrowing technology. At first I thought about taking an already built frigate and modifying it a little, but decided not to show off the style of the future fleet. And one of these innovations was the cooling system and capacitor discharge system. In addition to more capacious radiators and batteries, a new feature is their removability. That is, if the radiator or battery has accumulated a sufficient amount of heat/charge, they can be replaced during the flight. Why, right during the battle! And in case of danger, throw it into space, or pack it in special containers and discharge/cool it if possible. The batteries can be used to power the ship's systems, removing the load from the reactor.

Well, the ship was originally designed for direct control by one person with a minimum crew on board; there were few cabins for such a large ship, only six and each was quite luxuriously furnished. Well, in the sense that there were minimal amenities there: a bathroom with a fairly spacious bath, a built-in personal computer with an intercom, a holovisor for watching movies, but you still need to buy furniture and furnish the empty cabins with it. To service the ship, there is an entire Phalanx colony, constantly carrying out diagnostics, repairs and calibrations, which eliminated the need to have technicians to service such a large ship, of which there would be more than half of the personnel on a regular ship. And this made it possible to enlarge the ship's hangar enough to accommodate the transport shuttle, the Tungsten Fin, and still have some free space. I also allocated myself a room for a workshop, suspecting that I would spend a lot of time on this ship.

"What do you call it?" Liara asked when I finished presenting my new boat to her.

— To be honest, I have no idea. I was thinking something like "Will of Ultron" or "Wrath of Ultron", but for me it doesn't really fit. Plus, I can fall under the gun of the Batarian Hegemony, which is not very good." He honestly admitted, once again looking around the interior of the ship. —What, do you have any ideas?—.

In response to my question, Liara only smiled mysteriously and, approaching the pilot's seat, opened the interface, starting to walk through it with her fingers.

"Victory?" He looked at his sister in surprise. -Sounding, but simple. Moreover, the turians probably already have some kind of cruiser with that name. Although...-.

Succumbing to an inner feeling, I erased the name Liara entered into the ship identifier and entered my own.

"Victoria?" asked the girl looking over her shoulder.

- This means victory in a language that... which... which I don't know where I know from. Most likely, he was in the array of data that Ultron downloaded into me. He went into himself, trying to get to the bottom of these memories, but feeling Liara's warm, soft body squeezing me in his arms, he relaxed and threw unnecessary thoughts aside.

"So we're finally going home?" the little sister said, barely containing her joy.

"Are you really that tired of my company?" he asked a joking question, but when he saw Liara frowning, he hurried to answer. -Yes, in general, yes. A couple more days to diagnose the connected repeater and we can go.—.

Overall, the expedition turned out to be extremely productive. He was able to optimize the shipyard world, build a personal ship and pave a relatively short route for the transfer of the future fleet. Estimate the time frame for completing the construction of the fleet: 25-35 years, and there will be enough resources for another half of this same fleet without intensive mining in hard-to-reach places. Fortunately, we should also visit the other four shipyards, but not this year.

So, having carried out the last run-in of Victoria and diagnostics of the repeater with the already integrated friend-or-foe system (we don't need uninvited guests here), we finally jumped into the Nemean Abyss.

***

Terminus systems, Nemean Abyss, planet Tortuga.

The appearance of a battle cruiser of unknown origin near Tortuga made the pirates noticeably nervous, so the revival of their fleet and the movement of a small group of ships to intercept did not come as a surprise.

"Unknown, identify yourself and the purpose of your arrival," a noticeably nervous salarian voice came from the speaker.

"Frigate Victoria, arrived to meet with Shiagur, he..." I couldn't find what to say.

But is it true that I know about him except his name and the fact that he had a daughter from an asari?

However, I didn't have to invent anything, because almost immediately an answer came from the speaker. —Shiagur has gone missing, presumed dead. All his guards were killed. An investigation is underway, but the alleged culprits have already disappeared and have not yet appeared in Termina. - The xenos stunned me with the news.

That's it, that's not what I expected when visiting Tortuga. Having digested the news, he asked for information on the culprits and, to the obvious relief of the local outcasts, turned around and flew to the relay leading from the Nemean Abyss. Since Shiagur is gone, we need to figure out where and how to get permission to own a frigate. Could it be assigned to FreeMan Armory as a research vessel? However, although such a move will save me from problems with the law, there will be problems with Benezia. Moreover, you will have to obtain a pilot's license just to have the right to fly your own ship. Damn, how many problems arose out of the blue.

***

Citadel space, sector of the Asari Republics, an agricultural world near the border with the sector of the Turian Hierarchy.

After several weeks of flight, we finally reached the asari territories, but there was no desire to fly further to Thessia and answer questions about where the ship came from. So we stopped in an asari agricultural world with a large population, but a small military garrison, so that Victoria could be hidden on a large enough asteroid and reached the city by shuttle. We handed over the "Tungsten Fin" along the way at one of the branches of a ship rental company.

So now, sitting in one of the cafes of the local capital, Liara and I were getting used to normal food and natural taste without neurostimulants.

"Perhaps you'd better tell your mom everything?" Liara once again asked, lazily leaning back in her chair.

"Yeah, and you also propose to tell us about what we've been doing for four months?" he chuckled cheerfully, watching how the asari became embarrassed. -No Liara, this option is not suitable. I'm thinking of renting some semi-legal and large enough parking lot for the conservation of Victoria until I receive a military education and a pilot's license and escape from Benezia's tutelage, but I still need to find him.—.

"Well, we still have six months, so..." Liara spoke, but I was no longer listening to her.

Something flashed in the periphery made me take a break from the conversation and start looking for this anomaly with my eyes.

No matter how much I looked for something that caught my attention, I could not find it and, instead of calming down, I jumped up, told Liara that I needed to leave for a while and went out into the street. It was as if something was pulling me, some instinct, and trusting it, I walked half a block until I turned into an alley, where I found myself firmly slammed into the wall by a steel hand.

The appearance of Ultron, and even in reality, turned out to be a complete surprise for me, but instead of some kind of constructiveness, he again spoke in riddles, as usually happens in dreams.

-Look. Look carefully," the synthetic's steely voice rasped, and his hand smoothly but inexorably turned my head to the right, to the level of the second floor of a commercial building engaged in transportation.

No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't understand what exactly I should be looking for, until I noticed in the window the silhouette of a beautiful, stately asari in a red tight-fitting jumpsuit with a deep cutout in the chest area.

"Justiciar...Samara." information about this particular representative of the ancient and noble Azari order came to mind.

If the Citadel Council has SPECTER, and the salarians have their special response team (SRT), then the asari have justiciars. Justiciars are an order above the laws of the asari, whose representatives administer justice according to their own understanding. Although our culture is full of various stories, books, films and games telling about the adventures of justiciars, their image is mostly highly romanticized. Although all these stories agree on one thing: justiciars are excellent warriors. Typically, asari are accepted into this order with extensive, usually several hundred years, experience in intelligence work, crime investigation and combat. Many justiciars are superior in skills to SPECTERS, and their only drawback for the asari government is their enormous independence. Fortunately, justiciars, again, as a rule, operate exclusively in the worlds of the sector of the Asari Republics, otherwise, with their principle of doing business, when they can shoot any suspect without official detention and investigation, a state scandal may break out if, for example, a justiciar shoots some "respected" turian or a salarian with a lot of capital, running a not entirely honest business, but smart enough not to leave evidence.

If someone like a justicar takes on my training and I show myself well during this time... Well, the prospect of becoming a SPECTER has appeared on the horizon again and now does not look so unattainable.

"So you need to impose yourself on her," he voiced his decision, but after a second he looked around, because while I was busy thinking, Ultron literally disappeared. "We need to do something about these visions." They can be useful, but they already scare me.—.