A brief news excerpt from Palaven, dated 2184:
For the eighth year in a row, the lightweight bot competition was won by Palaven-native Tarkus Raetia. Raetia's bot, "Little Cutter IX," cleared the tournament field with little resistance, despite its limited array of weaponry including a short-range cutting laser, electrical burst rod and twin, spinning saws.
This year's competition was as good as ever, said Raetia, a senior researcher with the Turian Engineering Corps. He was prepared for many of his opponents, whom he had scouted extensively in qualifying matches. Little Cutter IX was a new bot that he had not entered in previous competitions and the tiny, maneuverable machine was designed to specifically counter his anticipated opponents.
"My hope was to win these battles before ever lowering my machine into the arena, and all that scouting really paid off," Raetia said. "Win or lose, I just love seeing everyone who comes out for Robo Royale each year. It's an honor to take home the trophy again."
There was a lot of metal around him here, and metal felt like home.
Nevermind that the metal here in this battle-blasted industrial zone of London was twisted and scorched and bent and useless. Metal was metal, and metal was the heart, organs and skin of Palaven. True, the Reapers sheared through all the metal as if it were paper, but they sheared through it a lot slower than they had through Earth or any of the other planets that had fallen before the Turian homeworld. Even now, he heard from time to time that his people were still fighting them back home.
Turian pride would see to it that if they were going to go extinct, they'd all do it with guns pasted in their hands. You only see a Turian's back when he's dead.
Tarkus ducked under the half ajar overhead garage door, flipping on the small flashlight mounted at his right shoulder. Half of the roof had caved in on top of this warehouse. Just as well, because it looked like some sort of plumbing warehouse, filled with plenty of useless pipes, fittings and fasteners. They didn't need running water. Well, they did need running water, but they needed it much less than they needed many other things.
He looked up toward the ceiling, tracing the conduit that snaked across the uncollapsed parts and following it down the walls. He stepped carefully over a crate that had spilled white plastic fittings all over the concrete shop floor and looked at the electrical box on the wall.
"AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY"
The yellow warning sign was slightly askew, the top bolt having fallen out, allowing the metal plaque to rotate to the side.
"That's cute," Tarkus said to himself as he lifted the latch and swung open the box, looking at the breakers and the sloppy wiring that was inside. He grimaced to see the shoddy workmanship. All human engineering was pretty amateur, but this looked like something his son had put together when he was a still a little squirt.
The kid never did have a knack for building stuff, but put a rifle in his hand and he could rip things apart with the best of them. He hadn't heard from his boy in forever. Communications were spotty at best and the 79th Flotilla was never in one place too long anyway. That, and Chellus rarely bothered to take the time to send a message home to his mother and father to let them know he wasn't dead even during more peaceable times.
He tried to nudge Chellus toward a more stable officer's track with a safer assignment. Or maybe moving into local training command where he could live off-base and maybe think about settling down. Tarkus had taken the initiative to poke around a find a few leads to send to his son, but the boy's short message of response over the net was more snippy than appreciative.
Maybe they Reapers had caught up with the 79th, finally. He doubted it, though. The big, albeit technologically brilliant Reapers, were too clunky and slow to keep up with quick-striking fleet.
The wires in the panel still appeared to be in good shape, despite their tangles. He pulled his pair of snips from his belt and began clipping the good ones, pruning the end and yanking the wire to get as much as he could out of them. As he snipped them, he coiled the wire into neat little bundles and wrapped a tie around the center of each, sliding them into his pack.
He'd have to have Clarke show him a couple of these old solar panels he was talking about. They'd need to get up on the roof, but so far he hadn't seen too many roofs to scavenge. If Clarke's expectations were that they might find this part of the city intact, it seemed he was misinformed. Hope had been sinking lower and lower as they walked down the narrow residential streets, seeing the level homes and twisted vehicles thrown everywhere. Whatever had happened here, it had been particularly more nasty than other places they had been.
Still, there was metal here. And metal was metal and could be used. Metal felt like home.
This area wasn't bad as that plaza when the Reaper landed. If Clarke hadn't shoved him down the stairs into the tavern as the building came down, they'd probably both be dead. He wasn't the most organized. And he certainly wasn't much of a planner. But the human was a hell of a fighter and had sharp sense under pressure.
They didn't pick a fight they couldn't win and they didn't stick around in a fight that was turning against them. Tarkus could appreciate that. The man knew his limitations. A man should know and accept his limitations.
Tarkus never could.
He slipped the fifth bundle of wire into his pack and slid the snips back onto his belt. He'd better be getting back before the others came looking for him.
Clarke had said something about a shopping mall nearby. Maybe there they'd have a tech shop where he could find some fresh circuit boards filled with all the tasty components he'd need to build something useful. Or something not useful.
If he could create something, anything, maybe it would lift the funk of destruction hanging like gloom around them.
Tarkus wasn't sure if, mechanically, Krogan were capable of weeping, but if they were, Grog was about as close as one could expect.
The metal roof on the warehouse of the meat packers had completely collapsed. The metal was scorched. Grog was trying to lift up some of the fallen-down panels to peek inside. But even he had to be able to smell the putrid stink of rotten meat. The fume of that human food would probably give him a stomach ache just from smelling it.
"There's no way you're getting in there," Tarkus said as he eyed the heap of scrap. Structurally, it was a total loss. "Even if you manage to pull that piece out, the walls are just going to cave in on top of it."
Grog, not to be deterred, pulled the sheet metal back and tossed it aside. As promised, the rest of the metal creaked, the wreckage shifted and then with a creaking lean, the west wall began to slip and fell. A puff of dust and a wall of that rotten stink pushed out from underneath the pile.
The Krogan softly kicked a piece of broken metal back toward the fallen building and turned around, giving up.
"Hey Clarke, what's that word you humans use? You know, the one you guys shout when something bad happens. When someone kicks you square in the quad?" Grog asked.
"I think you want 'fuck,'" Clarke suggested.
"Yes! That's the one," Grog said with an appreciative nod. He turned back around toward the fallen building and squatted slightly. "FUCK!"
His bellowing roar did nothing to convince the building to be less destroyed. But it did echo across this otherwise quiet part of the city. No doubt they'd have reapers on top of them in a few minutes. His Krogan brain probably didn't think of that. Or maybe it did. Grog seemed to like fighting.
Tarkus calmly pressed the buttons on his omni-tool as he tossed the core up into the air, watching as the drone system flickered online and it hovered up above their heads. He scowled at the power bar running in the yellow on the display. He'd need to find a new battery soon.
"Perimeter sweep, two-hundred meter radius. Tell me what's out there." Tarkus delivered the succinct orders to the drone and it floated away, heading out over the mangled rooftops of the buildings to fulfill its duty.
"Did you find anything useful at least?" Clarke asked him.
"A lot of junk, unfortunately," Tarkus said. "Got some wires. Found a tube of omni-gel. Other than that, not much worth taking."
Clarke scratched the hair on his left cheek as he tucked his right hand into his left armpit. His mouth kind of hung open awkwardly as he glanced around the destroyed street. "Looks like this was a total waste of time then."
"The stroll was pleasant," Tarkus said as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Clarke, at least, chuckled at that and smiled. "So what kind of grade do we get on our buildings?"
"How do humans grade things?" he asked.
"Let's say zero to one hundred. Zero is bad. One hundred good," Clarke said.
"Maybe like a fifteen," Tarkus said without a moment's hesitation. "My wife could have pushed some of these buildings over. And she was petite by Turian standards."
Unlike his son, he at least knew Ardi was dead. Before the Primarch pulled off the moon, he had received the transmission from the homeworld. There were a few brief details. They weren't worth reading. He knew she went down fighting like any true Turian would.
He hadn't been able to recall the last conversation they had. Maybe it was that one about replacing the stove? He had been off-world for a conference. He told her he would take it apart and try to fix it when he got home. She made sure to point out he had been saying that for at least two months. He got short with her and she hung up the call. That's the way it had been for far longer than he cared to admit because he just couldn't let things be.
His omni-tool blinked and he pulled up the alert, checking the video feed. The drone was bobbing up and down - he would need to tweak its fields to steady it when he got some time - and locked onto a small group of humans walking down the highway.
"Got some survivors," Tarkus said as he zoomed in the feed. "No armor. Lightly armed. Not soldiers. They look young. At least compared to you, Clarke."
The human sent a dismissive smile back his way at being prodded at the same time as he patted Grog on the shoulder and tried to console him about going hungry another day. The Krogan muttered something and nodded, then slapped Clarke hard enough on the shoulder that it made the human stumble.
Clarke caught his feet and rolled his shoulder back, shaking his head. "Probably some stupid teenagers," he said. "Let's go get them before they get themselves killed."
Tarkus didn't know what qualified as "stupid teenagers" on this planet, but the three they had intercepted on the bridge certainly seemed to fit the bill.
The girl complained even more than Grog and the two boys were even more arrogant than Chellus had been at that age. The difference was that Chellus could back up some his boasting. Those two had nearly soiled themselves when Vorn came up behind them with his rifle trained on them and demanded they surrender. He was sure the boys would remember the encounter differently if they lived long enough to tell someone else about it.
In comparison, the company of the dead husk on the counter that he was poking around in with his tools was both charming and welcome. The husk didn't speak, at least. Although it did twitch hard once when he tapped a node with his screwdriver, so much so that he startled and put another round from his pistol into its brain just to make sure it was dead. Thankfully no one saw him jump. That would have been embarrassing.
The video game shop inside the Brent Cross Shopping Center was one of the less destroyed shops in the large mall. They had gunned down the husks just outside the shop and Clarke had agreed to give him an hour or two to poke around with the reaper tech while the others scavenged through the shops, many of which looked like they had been looted.
A little bit of tinkering would ease his wearied soul.
Tarkus glanced up at the promotional display for Arcturus Defense 3 - Betrayal again, shaking his head at the cardboard cutout of fictional Alliance hero Jack Charger exchanging pistol fire with an imposing black-clad Turian. The humans had made some liberal choices with their Turian antagonist General Annihilus. The ridiculous caricature wore uselessly exaggerated spiked armor, had snarly fangs badly in need of dental treatment and had some swirling black ball of biotic nonsense in his left hand. And of course, he had a long, wicked scar across one eye.
The game boasted "The most realistic gunplay on any console!" Tarkus had dabbled with Arcturus Defense 2 - Venegeance on the Citadel and found its mechanics to be clunky and babying. Apparently humans needed a hyper-masculine protagonist with oversized guns that did unrealistic amounts of damage in order to feel like they were capable of conquering the galaxy. The humans had been lucky the Council had stepped in during the First Contact War before the Hierarchy really got moving. Then the humans might have been playing some game like "Earth Defense" or "Extinction."
Sadly, everyone was being forced to play the real-life versions of Extinction.
Without Shepard, the Crucible and the galaxy-spanning alliances forming, the Turians stood little chance of surviving. The humans, by comparison, stood no chance.
"Find anything interesting?" Bug was folding up his long gun and tucking it behind his back as he stepped lightly into the shop.
"Everything about these reapers is interesting," Tarkus said as he carefully touched the husk with the tip of his voltmeter. Although it was clearly dead, he was still picking up electrical readings from the components. This husk was smaller, might have been a human woman at one time, and the least damaged of the group of five they had killed while exploring this part of the mall. "I wish I could get my hands on a live one."
Bug's eyes kind of squeezed shut as he smiled again. "I don't think anyone would like that," he said, his words a quick, condensed chitter.
"I do have an unusual opportunity here," he said those as he picked up his pliers. "It looks like this processing node is still at least semi-active."
He pushed the metal tips into the open chest cavity of the husk, turning his shoulder slightly so the light from his lamp illuminated underneath the chip. He offered the blunt probe with his other hand to Bug. "Take this and come over here. I need you to hold this part open while I extract this."
The Salarian wrapped his fingers around the tool and pressed it down, holding back the shreds of metal and dead flesh to create a small gap in between the two ribs. "Just like that," Tarkus whispered as he ducked down, carefully nudging the pliers underneath the still humming processor. These reapers were full of safeguards that would kill key components upon tampering, so he had to be careful. He picked up his snips with his free hand, cutting away some of the melted flesh around the corner so that the piece could start lifting away.
"Get your pistol out," Tarkus said. "And when I say, pump a shot right into the heart over there. I think if I clip this while the rest of the system is experiencing a more critical shock, I can get it out without burning it up."
"Copy that," Bug said, slipping his sidearm out of the holster at his hip and pressing the barrel down to the twisted heart that was less flesh now than it was tangled metal and cords that snaked in and out of the breast like creeping vines.
"I'm ready," Tarkus said, positioning his snips. "Let me know when you're ready to hit it."
"Firing on my mark," the Salarian said, all business as always. "Three. Two. Mark."
Tarkus' face got splattered as the muffled round pumped into the husk's chest, but he was too occupied making the two small cuts he needed. A pulse of static burst out of the severed ends of the circuit as he lifted away the undamaged core.
Tarkus lifted it out of the cavity, holding it up in front of him in the beam of light. He could feel that swell inside his chest, that mix of happiness, pride and accomplishment as he looked at the squarish piece of metal slightly smudged with blood. It would feel even better once he could figure out what he wanted to do with it.
"Yes. That will work for me," Tarkus said as he palmed the item and slipped it carefully into a static-free bag.
He glanced down at the dead husk and shoved it onto the floor. It hit with an unceremonious thud. Done. Nothing more to be gained from that.
"Now if I can just get my hands on a few - what does Clarke call them? Mo-biles? - we might get somewhere," he said triumphantly as he stepped over the dead husk on the floor. "Let's head back. But first…"
He reached out and tipped over the cardboard cutout onto the floor, face down, so no one could see it.
"That's better."
"Did you hear how he made peace between the Quarians and the Geth? I mean, come on man, the fucking Geth?" the brown-haired male teenager said.
"Dude, I know, it takes some balls to do something like that," said the blonde-haired male teen with the shaggy hair.
"Shepard is so fucking cool," brown said. "I bet he gets so much pussy, wherever he wants, whenever he wants."
"You know it," blonde agreed. They punched fists together. "I mean, after you fucking disintegrate falling into a fucking planet and come back to life? Free V. Anytime. Anywhere. Chicks gotta be falling on their knees."
The female teenager scowled and tried to pretend like she wasn't listening.
Tarkus carefully tapped at his omni-tool, running through the diagnostics on the reaper processor he had tapped into. He would have to be quick, because he was tapping out these pathetic mobile batteries quickly with the intensive decryption program.
Clarke and Dess had found a mattress shop on the top floor of the mall, tucked into a somewhat defensible corner. The entryway into the anchor store had fully collapsed, so the only approach was down the wide corridor. Between large planters, stone benches and kiosks in the center walkway, there was plenty of cover packed in. And the shop had plenty of new, clean, comfortable mattresses. They wouldn't get an opportunity to bed down like this for a while.
Still, Tarkus had taken time to set up both of his sentry guns, Spinny and Grinder, outside. Just in case. There was something he didn't like about being backed into a corner. The auto guns would give them a fighting chance if someone tried to pen them in.
Although he would need to look at Grinder again. Despite taking the thing apart three times, the gun still made an awful grinding noise like something in the motor was catching every time the barrell spun up. If he fixed it, though, he'd have to give the gun a new name.
"Just grab the back and their head and…" the brown-haired one started thrusting his hips with one hand in front of his groin. His buddy laughed.
Tarkus looked over at Grog, who even looked unimpressed at the lewd display, despite doing something similar the day before.
"Oh. Oh I'm gonna bust all over this bitch," brown said.
"Do it, man. Get her!"
The brown-haired kid started simulating some obnoxious groans and moans, pretending to spurt all over the place. His buddy was laughing, trying to dodge the imaginary bursts of semen.
"I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite ho on the Citadel," brown said mockingly.
Tarkus looked up from the diagnostic readout scrolling by, having had enough.
"Hey!" he shouted, letting the flanging in his voice vibrate as he raised his volume. The two boys startled straight. "There's a lady here. Show a little respect. And shut up, before I shut you up."
If Ardi had seen that happening, she would have shouted at them until she fully emasculated both. If Chellus had been doing something like that, he would have hit him across the mouth. The humans should consider themselves lucky, either way, that they were just getting a quick, verbal scolding.
"OK," the blonde one said.
"Yeah, sorry," the brown added.
"That's 'Yes, sir,'" Tarkus admonished, just as hard and serious as he forced his black-streaked mandibles to push out a little from the sides of his mouth.
"Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!" The brown one rolled the other way and curled up on his mattress. The blonde one retreated to the other mattress and laid down, looking at the ceiling.
He kept his eyes trained on both, and when neither spoke for a few peaceful seconds, he returned his eyes to his screen. The decrypt had finished and the data was his for the taking. The Reapers were good, but not good enough to outsmart a little Turian ingenuity.
Tarkus laughed to himself as he cracked out a can of his dextro rations. They tasted like garbage, but garbage from home was better than garbage from Earth. And he deserved a little celebration.
He tapped the button to have his VI start searching for anything of note as he dug his small collapsible fork into his can of pinkish-brown meat paste that filled the canister. He got the first forkful to his mouth, taking in the glory of the garbage-tasting gunk and stopped it stuck halfway in his mouth. His tongue slid the mushy paste off the utensil and he quickly swallowed.
"Uhhh, Clarke," he called out, turning his head back toward where their human leader was chatting with Dess on one of the larger beds. "Clarke, you better come look at this."
Hovering in front of him in the soft orange holographic glow was Earth. And above it, the image of hundreds of Reapers and a narrow, dart-like structure that he recognized all too well.
"What is it Tark…" he started to say, but as soon as he caught a glimpse of the hologram, he stopped. "What the fuck is…"
"The Citadel," Tarkus said, spinning the 3D image, looking at the unmistakable ring at the far end. The arms of the Citadel were all closed, tucked and sealed tightly together. But there was no doubt, the massive station was clearly above Earth.
"Why is the Citadel here? How is it here?" Clarke asked. "I didn't even know the thing could move."
"Don't know," Tarkus said, punching a short string of code into his tool. "Let's ask the Reapers."
He hit the button, sending the short ping out. He was connected through the husk's core, so he hoped that it would look like an inquiry from the ground, from a friendly, and not from the hacker behind it pulling the strings.
Lines of code sprung up, data packets going out and coming in, his tool encrypting, decrypting and translating. His eyes tracked as it all flew by, before the fragments cleared and began clipping together. Then the translated response started becoming clear.
"It's just arrived," Tarkus said. "Today. Here."
"But why?"
"No, Clarke," he said ignoring the question. "It's here. Literally here." He changed the map, changing views to the overhead of London and the beam it showed transmitting between the orbital station and the city.
Clarke's face was scrunched up as he looked at the images, trying to figure out what was going on. "I know where that is, it's…" he stopped as the image began to crack up and collapse. "What's happening?"
"I'm losing the connection," Tarkus said as he began punching keys. The code was scrolling faster and faster. His encryption was being pushed. He could see a small amount of smoke beginning to rise from the husk core as it got hot and began to burn the fabric of the mattress below it. "Bad. That's bad. Very bad."
"What? What's wrong?" Clarke asked as he looked at the sizzling husk core.
"They're in," he said.
His fingers flew across the keys, trying frantically to pull up extra walls. He wasn't going to get another chance like this. He needed a data dump, to pull whatever he could off the core before it burnt up. But the system was rapidly degrading and someone, no, something, was hooked in on the other end. The download was transmitting rapidly, fifteen, twenty percent.
And then the screen blanked out.
And that low-frequency scream came across the system. That fear-inducing rumble. His tool seized up.
And where his interface was, now there was just the red holographic outline of a Reaper, it's tentacles slithering and reaching out through the digital toward him, that bone-chilling vibration rattling through him.
I see you, Turian, it seemed to say to him, the hologram staring him down.
Tarkus pulled his pistol and shot it into the husk core, shattering it to pieces and blacking out the Reaper hologram before him. Still, the system on his omni-tool was a wreck. He heard the crackle of electric and the humming of machines as he lifted his head to look up at Spinny and Grinder, their joints pivoting and barrels spinning, before both guns seized in a fit of sparks and smoke. Both sagged in death.
"We need to get out of here, Clarke," Tarkus said as he looked at the fried guns in the corridor. "Now."
The wailing, high-pitched shriek of a banshee told him that it was already too late. The piercing scream perked up everyone's head, all eyes fixed on the corridor, the only way in and the only way out of the mall now.
Tarkus knew he had a bad feeling about this place and now he knew why.
Vorn was already on the move, clicking a clip into the bottom of his rifle as he quickly marched past them toward the door. "I'll try to keep that banshee occupied," he said simply, as if it would be no big deal. As he stepped out into the hall, the blue fire wicking up around his body. As the shell wrapped around him, he lurched forward and was gone, the flash of light followed seconds later by the sonic crack and boom of his biotic departure.
"Can you get those guns back online?" Clarke asked.
Tarkus looked at the smoking sentries in the hall, standing like they had already been defeated.
"You better hope so," he said, glancing down at his tool. The entire thing was still scrambled. No doubt the Reapers on the other end had trashed it. It wasn't ready now, if it would ever be ready. He slipped it off his wrist and tossed it onto the smoldering mattress. "I need your tool."
Clarke unclipped it from his wrist and handed it over without protest. Bug was already rushing out of the mattress store and setting up the tripod for his rifle on the thick stone and tile planter. A moment later he was already opening fire.
"They're here!" Bug shouted from the hall, pumping a second and third shot down the long, narrow corridor.
"Shit," Clarke swore as Dess pushed his rifle into his hands and she bolted out the door to join Bug. "We'll do our best to cover you. Get the guns back online."
"I'll get it done or die trying," Tarkus promised.
He was dodging fire the second he got out into the corridor as he spied multiple targets coming down the lane. The cannibals were spraying fire all over as husk after husk charged past the storefronts, their mechanical rotten arms flailing as gunfire tore them down before they could overrun the others.
Tarkus slid behind Grinder, snapping Clarke's omnitool onto his wrist as he pulled the back panel open. He blew into the compartment, forcing the smoke out as he peered inside to survey the damage. His eyes flew over the components, noting spots of damage in the circuitry where it had been overloaded by the hacked burst from the Reaper. As his eyes glanced over it, his hands were working independently, checking the hinges on the gun and spinning the barrel to make sure it wasn't jammed.
Nothing wrong mechanically. Some minor damage done to the electronics. Power shot. Likely a software issue. He slid the tube of omnigel out and began pressing the nozzle to the board, squeezing beads of gel out sloppily in his haste over the damaged areas and counting on it to do its thing to repair the busted up connections.
"Make connection, TurTech Sentry Gun Model 42A032B Mark II, model numbers 00152-14630 and 00152-18939. Authorization Tarkus Raetia, TEC Level 5, ID 5554555. PIN 9093." He rattled off the voice commands to the tool as calmly, clearly and quickly he could with the background noise of gunfire, biotics and the crackle of tech attacks blaring just a few feet away.
He touched the plastic nozzle to the last spot of noticeable damage and ducked down, rushing across to the other side of the hall to attend to Spinny. The omni-tool buzzed and responded in a woman's voice. "Model 00152-18939 connected. Unable to connect to 00152-14630."
"Give me a second," he said to the tool, but more to himself as he lifted the back plate on the other gun, seeing noticeable more scorching on the board than on the other and began applying the gel to the damaged spots.
"Watch the right flank!" Clarke shouted.
"I got it!" Dess shouted back and Tarkus could hear the crackle of her ripping a singularity open as he watched the small bit of smoke pull away from the gun toward the right side.
Grog was roaring, sounding almost like laughter after each blast out of his shotgun and the crackling of electric and buzz of husks falling. There was a rumble as a biotic combination burst on the right side of the hall, no doubt the Krogan playing off Dess's singularity.
"Come on you pyjacks! Get out here and fight if you don't want to die!" Tarkus lifted his eyes, seeing Grog yelling back at the teens cowering behind a mattress. The Krogan's yelling only caused them to duck down and out of sight. Grog turned back to the fight. "Fucking cowards-" the burst of shotgun fire drowned out the rest of whatever he was yelling.
Tarkus smeared the last of the gel inside of the panel, tossing the tube over his shoulder and onto the floor. "Attempt reconnect with 00152-14630."
He pulled his Carnifex and poked his head out from behind the sentry gun, tracing a husk rushing up the hall. The gun jumped in his hand as the powerful round struck the husk, stopping its advance a few meters ahead of Bug. The Salarian turned his gun, the shot from the long gun splattering the husk's head off its shoulders.
"Model 00152-14630 connected. Guns offline. Critical protocol failure. Systems inoperable."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know," Tarkus said as he brought up the keypad. There was no time to figure out what exactly was damaged. It would be quicker to just scrap the whole thing and start with something crude.
"Initiate quick format. Dump cache. Establish live connection."
He could see the shimmer of blue light as the barrier stretched from wall to wall of the corridor, its shifting, liquid-like form deflecting incoming fire.
"Do you see Vorn?" Clarke called out.
"Negative," was Bug's quick response as his rifle boomed again.
"I won't be able to keep this barrier up for long," Dess already sounded desperate and tired, Tarkus thought.
"How's it coming back there Tark?" Clarke called out to him.
His fingers were flying across the keys, scripting line after line of code, creating a rudimentary firing protocol. The targeting would be for shit and it wouldn't be able to tell the difference between friend and foe, so he hopped that Vorn didn't come right back into the middle of the crossfire. He could overcharge the motor and push the firing rate to max at a risk of overheating the thing, but he needed a lot of cover, right now.
"This is delicate work, Clarke," he responded. "Can you keep it down up there? I'm trying to concentrate."
"How much longer?" Clarke pressed over the chitter of his rifle.
"Two minutes!" Tarkus shouted back. He really needed more like four or five, but he doubted Clarke would want to hear that. The human would think he could hold the line for two minutes. He would try to hold it for two minutes.
He hoped none of the reapers would try to hit either of the guns with an overload. He didn't have time to try to build in any protection against a tech charge. Full forward shields, no backup, no power spared for recharge. Full power diverted to firing systems. Dissipate extra heat through the chambers instead of through normal cooling ports. That would add a little extra pop toward the ordinance at the risk of melting the entire front of the gun into a useless blob of metal.
"I can't… hold on…" Dess's voice was laced with exhaustion as the blue light of the barrier collapsed and fell.
A few errant shots whizzed past his left shoulder as the barrier collapsed before him. A third ricocheted off the side of the gun, a loud ping as the shot bounced off wide and shattered the glass of the mattress store. The teenager girl within screamed as the glass broke.
"Where are my guns, Tark!" Clarke shouted.
"They're coming!" He shouted it back. Field of fire, 45 degrees left, 45 degrees right, 30 degrees up, 10 degrees down. Bypass and skip firing on any chambers where obstructions or damage are detected. Emergency shutdown if 75 percent of chambers are unable to fire.
"Marauder. Right side, fifty meters," Bug said coolly across the comm. "I don't have an angle on him."
"Moving!" Clarke shouted back. Tarkus could see him roll from cover to cover out of the corner of his eye, the human lifting his gun back up and planting shots down field.
"My shield is down!" Dess said over the din of her submachine gun chittering.
"Husks breaking through on the left!" Grog shouted. A blast of shotgun fire. Tarkus could feel the pulse of Grog's tech armor bursting. "One coming your way, Tark!"
The charging husk had its arms over its head, screeching as it shambled toward his position. Tarkus lifted the Carnifex from his side and fired two rounds into the husk, watching as it crumbled to the ground, where he put another two rounds into its back to make sure it stayed down and slipped the pistol back into its holster.
"Tark!" Clarke's voice was strained.
"Thirty seconds!"
"We can give you ten!"
Good enough. It would have to suffice. He punched the button to upload, watching the bar quickly shoot across the display as the rough program uploaded into the guns. He looked out from behind the cover, seeing dozens of cannibals and husks baring down on them, the glowing of marauders, once-Turian, once his people, at the far back of the lines supporting them.
"Program uploaded. Guns online," the voice from the tool relayed as the turrets lifted on their hinge and turned toward the field, but as he expected to hear the hum-whirr of the guns spinning up, instead he heard nothing. "Warning. Insufficient power. Firing protocol halted."
The reapers were nearly on top of them now. More fire sprayed around him, striking the back wall behind them. Clarke ducked down as a shot nearly took off his head. Sparks were flying off Grog's armor as round after round plunked into his shield, the blue field fading and collapsing. He kept shooting, even as the shots began to strike his armor.
His own shield lit as it stopped a shot, the crackle of blue static washing momentarily across his field of vision.
This was his fault. He had gotten them into this mess with his tinkering. Was it really worth peeking in on the Reapers, just for that minute, just because he could? Was it better than creeping around this dead city, skittering from building to building in the shadows and trying to keep just out reach?
The enemy was here now. They brought the fight. They wanted the fight. A Turian never turned down a good fight, not even when the odds were out of his favor. Palaven had gone down in flames but gone down battling every last second of it. Ardi had gone down fighting. Chellus was out there fighting.
He had never turned down a fight, with either of them, or anyone.
Maybe that's why both were half the galaxy away and he was here instead. Maybe that's why TEC was working around the clock on the Crucible and he was here instead. Maybe that's why he had decided to follow Clarke around instead of returning back to Turian command.
He had promised Clarke that he'd get those guns firing. There was only one way left to get that done.
No one would say that Tarkus Raetia wasn't a true-blooded, proud Turian.
He stood out of cover, lifting his Carnifex and picking his targets, firing down the field as he stepped to the exposed middle between Spinny and Grinder. He didn't blink as the shield stopped shot after shot, the barrier stressing under the load. Close enough to get both guns, he hoped.
"Get down!" he shouted to his squadmates.
As his pistol clicked empty, he let it fall from his fingers and hit the button on the wrist tool.
The jolt of energy discharged, the electric field crossing both of the guns.
Tarkus grimaced as he heard the grinding noise in the right gun as the turret spun up, soon drowned out by the beautiful high-speed music of the guns spraying death down the narrow corridor of the mall.
Clarke pressed his body hard into the edge of the planter to avoid any shrapnel bouncing around as the turrets mercilessly shredded the reapers. He couldn't hear a thing as the auto guns roared and could barely see anything beyond the bright flash of light and smoke coming off the rapidly spinning barrels of the turrets.
He glanced left to Dess, who was huddled up behind a bench, breathing heavy but unhurt. Bug was crouched down, white-hot fire spraying just above his head but calmly crouching with his rifle across his lap, waiting for his next opportunity. Grog to his right was brushing blood off his shoulder where a shot had strafed him.
The auto guns stopped firing, the one on the right spinning down and stopping. The one of the left looked like it was on fire as flames were crackling out of the housing on the back. Bug already had his gun back up on its perch, glancing down the field.
The Salarian peered down the scope and then lifted the gun. "We're clear."
"We need to get out of here before they regroup," Clarke said. "Hug the right wall. Down the escalator and out. I'll contact Vorn."
"Copy," Bug said.
"Got it, Clarke. I'll clear a path," Grog said and lumbered over his cover, chugging away.
"I'll get the kids," Dess said as she skirted past him toward the storefront.
Clarke pushed himself to his feet, looking at the burning auto gun now fully engulfed in flames. No doubt Tarkus would pissed about losing such a valuable piece of tech.
"Good work, Tark," he said, only then spotting the Turian slumped on the ground, a pool of dark blue liquid pooling around his head. "Tark!"
He crouched down, lifting the Turian's body and immediately noticing the dead, dull, black eyes in his head. A single shot had pierced his right cheek, a neat, blue, bloody hole just beneath his eye. His body was heavy and limp.
The omni-tool at his wrist was still on, the orange interface blinking silently. Clarke slowly lowered Tarkus back to the ground, lifting his left arm and looking at the list of commands that had fired to get the guns working. He unclipped the tool from the Turian's wrist, clipping it back around his own as he read.
Initiating upload…
Uploading…
Upload complete.
Initiating protocol "Work Or We're Dead"
Error: Insufficient power
Command: Transfer power from personal shield
WARNING: Shield utilization detected. Disabling of shield may result in personal injury or death.
Confirmation required. Discharge shield? Y/N: Y
Preparing for discharge...
Discharging…
Discharge complete.
|
The still body of Tarkus Raetia on the floor was an indistinct shadow behind the rhythmic blinking of the cursor waiting for the next command, the electronic heartbeat he had used to give his machines life.
To give the rest of them life.
