Chapter One Hundred And Twenty-Four
The Migrant Fleet. Terminus Systems.
"I saw the ship myself, Auntie Raan" said Tali'Zorah as she met with one of the fleet's admirals "The scans don't lie, it really was five kilometers in length and look at the size of those weapons. What else can we call it other than a super-dreanought?".
Every test that the two of them had done on the data while working in Raan's lab had confirmed that what Tali's ship had scanned wasn't fake data. There really was a massive super-dreadnought out there and it hadn't appeared by itself as there had been another ship in the system.
"And you spoke to the Captain of this vessel?" Raan enquired.
Tali confirmed that she had.
"I didn't get the chance to know him since we just stopped off to pick up Veetor and I wanted to bring this news to you before speaking to my father or the other admirals" the younger of the two women replied "This Captain Thrax wants to met with our leadership and arrange a joint attack on the geth so we can recover the home world".
This was a lot for the admiral to take in.
"Keelah se'lai!" she almost yelled.
The admiral quickly soothed herself, this was a time for sound thinking.
"We've always talked about retaking the homeworld" she was now saying "But to have someone come along and actually offer us an alliance so we can actually do it. I did not expect this".
Neither had Tali she'd just been expecting to pick someone up before heading out on her next mission. Now she was thrown for a loop.
"I think that I need to talk to the other admirals one on one" said Raan "And then try to arrange a meeting between us and this Captain Thrax. Meanwhile you have another mission to worry about".
That didn't seem so important to the young combat engineer yet she had her orders.
Before the geth revolt 300 years ago, the quarians colonized Haestrom in order to study the mysterious instability of its sun, which threatened premature eruption into a red giant. As a scientific outpost of minimal military value, Haestrom was ill-equipped to repel geth forces during the insurrection and fell quickly under their after, all communication from the planet and its attendant space stations simply ceased.
The geth have shown no signs of treating Dholen as a sight of interest over the past three centuries other than establishing several space stations near it. Dholen's magnetic eruptions and solar output overwhelm most communications near it, and it was unclear how the geth have compensated.
That was one of the things that the admiralty board wished to know more about, also there was the matter of spy probe scans indicating recent extensive orbital construction around Haestrom, housing thousands of geth platforms and an unknown amount of geth software in that system.
It is not known how many geth are on the planet's surface: spy probes face interference from Dholen, making remote scanning difficult. Resource estimations based on geth mining, refining, and fabricating practices suggest that the planet has at least 20 more years of use before it is exhausted.
Whatever was going on that world as if it was important to the geth and so it was important to the quarians as they would need to know what their enemy were up to.
"Very well" said Tali with a sigh "Guess I'll have to go and do the hard work while you sit around in endless meetings sucking up to this Captain Thrax".
They couldn't afford this chance to make a powerful ally, but they also couldn't assume that someone would come along as do all the work for them so Tali's mission was vital.