Chapter One Hundred And Twenty-Nine

Imperial Fortress. Freedom's Progress.

Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay entered the meeting room along with some unimportant, to me at least, quarian officers she'd brought with her from the Migrant Fleet. They took seats and unlike with the Alliance they got to the matter at hand rather quickly. I assumed that since the quarians were always working to survive that they didn't waste time with needless small talk.

"As I understand it you want to help us retake our homeworld" said the Admiral.

That wasn't exactly the case.

"It's more that we want to wipe out the geth before they become a danger to us" I explained "To do that we'd have to wipe out all of their platforms and we can't do that without invading or destroying your homeworld, but I don't have enough troops to invade".

I had more to say.

"You have a fleet and enough bodies to try to retake your world. It would just be too costly" I was now saying "I can add a lot of firepower to your fleet by combining forces with you. I propose that we work together and once you have your homeworld back we go our separate ways. That is all I want from you".

It felt good to be able to talk so directly.

"I have three ships I can bring into battle, the smallest of which is bigger and better armed than a turian dreadnought," I said.

Dreadnoughts range from 800 meters to one kilometer long here in the Mass Effect universe and when compared to the Firestorm-class frigate which is 1.8 kilometers long even the local dreadnoughts seem puny.

"You've had a chance to go over the data I provided. You know what kind of fire power I'm willing to bring to this cause" I said.

The main weapon of a dreadnought in this universe is a 800-meter mass accelerator which is capable of accelerating one twenty-kilogram slug to a velocity of 4025 km/s (1.3% the speed of light) every two seconds. Each slug has the kinetic energy of about 38 kilotons of TNT, about two and a half times the energy released by the fission weapon that destroyed Hiroshima.

Imperial Macroweapons which made up most of my ships firepower, are ranks of large cannons typically mounted on starships. They destroy their targets through powerful broadsides and volume of fire. They have effective ranges vs ships on nearly the same scale as the Nova Cannon, which fires shells at near-lightspeed so not only did I have bigger guns they fired slugs far faster and I had a lot of them. That didn't even include laser cannons and lance batteries.

I'd compared it to bees trying to take down a bear because the only hope the locals had of even stinging my cruiser was if they were too agile for me to simply swat. To help deal with that I had fighters and two escorts which were much faster than my massive and bulky cruiser.

"You're willing to provide that kind of fire power to use against the geth?" I asked.

If I went for the quarian homeworld the geth would move to defend it by placing themselves between my cruiser and the planet allowing me to wipe out most of their ships. The tricky part would prevent any of the AI fleet from escaping and letting the geth rebuild elsewhere hence my need for the quarian fleet.

"Yes" I said "In support of your effort to retake your world".

Working with aliens was unclean and so it was best to get this over with as quickly as possible.

"What about these laser weapons of yours?" asked one of the officers "Will you supply us with them?".

There was no chance of that happening. They'd get their hands on some sooner or later because someone in the Alliance would sell the design but I would not give aliens any of my tech directly.

"No" I firmly stated "All I am offering is direct military support in destroying the get. That is all and it is not up for discussion. Take the offer or leave it".

They discussed it anyway. Some claiming not to trust me others thinking that they could barter with me if they just had something to offer.

"If I have to battle the geth alone I will simply burn them all" I warned the quarians "That means losing your home world and your colonies. Retaking them will be costly but you are a race of survivors and we have time to prepare. The Reapers won't be here for months".

The admiral stood up.

"We'll return to my ship and I will contact the other admirals to see what they have to say" she decided.

That suited me as I'd done enough talking today.