Author's Note: For Iunctio readers, this chapter takes place between the events of "Ruin" and "Whirlwind".
Threat
Geth were strange and different foes. Even the way they moved was different. It wasn't exactly graceful, but then after seeing an asari commando in action, it was hard to call anything else graceful. Who could compete with a killing blow practiced and refined over three hundred cycles? Still, the way the geth moved belied a smoothness in measured step or whip-fast spring that imperfect protein muscle-fibers could never match.
They were never messy in the way organic creatures could be, either. They never fled, never raged, never begged or bargained. The geth went about their business with singular purpose, moving with sinewy steps as they executed their inscrutable task. Only when their numbers were badly depleted did they start to falter. In Wrex's experience, lone warriors were often the most dangerous, the most desperate and creatively unpredictable. But as the geth died, their shared neural network diminished in capacity, and with it the remaining geths' competence.
On his flank, Chief Williams seemed no more perturbed by the seemingly endless machines than Wrex himself. Around the corner, a new geth appeared, towering over the smaller drones. As it advanced, Wrex immediately picked out the yellow stripes along its tall shoulder vanes. The humans designated this configuration 'destroyer', though whether it lived up to such a name was another matter.
The krogan swiveled on the ball of his foot, rolling behind the cover of an upthrust wall. On cue, a shattering blast tore through the air as the destroyer unleashed its shotgun blast. The geth could think, that much was certain, but they were even more lacking in creativity than turians. Wrex also knew the destroyer's internal power systems could only manage such an explosive shot at extended intervals. He stepped out of cover.
Firing carefully, Wrex dispatched the drone immediately beside the destroyer. As the larger geth's lamp-eye swung around to face him, the krogan negligently gunned down another of its subordinates. Tactically, he should have focused on the destroyer- it was the larger threat, as well as a larger hub of their neural net... But Wrex was getting bored. Despite the fact the Armstrong Cluster was crawling with the machines, they rarely managed to do anything interesting.
Even if the destroyer wasn't versed in the protocol of a challenge, no one with a vestige of intelligence could mistake Wrex's message as he blew the knees out from under a third drone.
The giant geth charged. Its long legs devoured the distance between them as it dropped a sculpted shoulder vane, its lamp-eye a bright gleam of deadly intent. A quick bubble of dark energy would have easily kept the destroyer at bay, or flipped it head over heels into the wall, but Wrex wanted to taste threat.
The destroyer was fast for its size. Its body twisted unnaturally at the waist as it threw all of its weight into the blow. Wrex was a lot of things, but fast wasn't one of them. He tried to swivel out of the way, but the destroyer's plated forearm crashed into Wrex's shoulder and helmet. The thick plates of his armor and the corded muscles of his neck took the worst of the impact, but the world still wheeled precariously.
Then the stupid machine wasted its follow-up strike on his hump. Had no one taught the geth that you can't kill a krogan from behind? Even a volus knew that. Wrex planted his feet and threw his considerable weight back and to the side, letting his assault rifle drop to the floor. Robbed of its swing, the geth's third blow skipped uselessly off Wrex's helmet. The mercenary snatched one of the flailing limbs and, bracing it against his forearm, bent the shoulder joint back until it snapped with a loud pop.
As he pulled the machine down and around, Wrex saw the smooth muzzle of the pulse rifle coming up. He kicked the geth in the knee. The destroyer lurched, and the sound suppression of Wrex's helmet deadened the worst of the crackling explosion that went off beside his head, taking a chunk of his shoulder plate with it. The krogan grabbed the muzzle of the waving rifle, then pulled the pistol off his belt with his free hand.
"Kagh!" Wrex growled. Six!
Two for your eyes, that you never see your ancestors. Two for your stomachs, that you never sit at their table. Two for your hearts, that your fire is ended for all time.
The geth had only one eye, and who knows what else in its composite metal and plastic torso, but six rounds nonetheless silenced it. It was a small measure of satisfaction to go with his ringing head and aching shoulder. He rolled his neck experimentally as the geth slumped to the ground with a dying, mechanical whine. The mercenary grunted with satisfaction- the pain would pass quickly, and the dreaded charge of the destroyer geth... not such a dire threat after all.
As he bent to retrieve his assault rifle. Williams appeared, looking him over with a quick, sweeping gaze that lingered briefly on his smoking shoulder-plate. Wrex tried to decide if she appeared disappointed in his survival as she spoke into her comms, engaged with Shepard in their quick military banter.
Wrex glanced back toward the destroyer. A challenge issued and met, head on, and ended with an ancestor's curse. The krogan chuckled softly at his own nostalgia. His grandfather would have beaten him soundly for wasting such a rite on a mere machine- certainly the rachni never merited such consideration. But ritual was for those who still had a culture to mean something. Now they were just empty words.
Williams signaled him with a wave of her hand, and Wrex fell into step behind the human as she hurried along a corridor. The geth installation had been blasted out of the rock of this world, then buttressed with prefabricated sections of their distinct, sweeping architecture. It was also pressurized with a moist, oxygen-rich atmosphere- a comfort that was surely not for the benefit of the geth themselves. Wrex opened the external vents of his helmet, then inhaled, letting the air flow across the scent glands in the roof of his mouth. It was faint, but sure- there was another krogan in this complex. His pulse quickened with anticipation.
"We're not done yet," Wrex rumbled warningly.
"Good," Williams murmured.
The krogan glanced at her sidelong. The chief hated the geth, there was little doubt of that. One machine at a time, she extracted the blood price for the lives of her fallen unit on Eden Prime, her eyes alight with battle-fury. Wrex had a hard time thinking of Williams, or any human for that matter, as female in anything other than an abstract sense- they were so small, weak and alien, nothing close to what he considered appealing. But still, fighting alongside the chief was an interesting experience.
Her shape made him want to think of her as asari, but Williams was nothing like most of the genderless blue aliens he'd known. The asari tended to flow like water around obstacles, patient and flexible. The human, on the other hand, rammed straight into her opposition with a raw immediacy. Wrex was forced to admit he liked the fiery little human. In a strange way, he could trust her more than many others he'd dealt with in his lifetime. Whatever she felt about him, she made no secret of it. There was no guile at work between them- only a common enemy. Warriors with a job to do.
"We wouldn't want the fun to be over too soon, now would we?" Wrex said quietly as they approached an open doorway.
Williams glanced back at him. "You have a strange definition of fun, you know that?"
"Do I? The smile you were wearing back there makes me think you share it."
"I'm nothing like you!" Williams flared indignantly.
"Huh, you doing this for free, then?"
Her smooth human face contorted into a grimace under the visor of her helmet. "I'm fighting for a cause I believe in."
"So am I," Wrex smirked. "The best one I know of. Mine."
The chief rolled her eyes.
"I'm sure that clause in your contract that legalizes your use of lethal force on the battlefield is what makes all the difference," the mercenary went on. Needling the prickly human was something of an amusing game, and Williams was a far more entertaining player than the scholarly asari or the stolid Lieutenant.
Williams shot him a narrow glare. She opened her mouth to retort just as Wrex's proximity sensors lit up.
"Here they come," he said with satisfaction, raising his rifle.
The chief's mouth snapped shut and she dodged into the room, heading for a flanking position among the geth's mysterious architecture. Within seconds, Williams' assault rifle exploded to life. To their left, Wrex caught a flash of movement through the sweeping, stacked machinery. He took a few steps toward it, tracking with his gun.
Out of the stacks stepped his eagerly anticipated target- a grey-armored krogan. The warrior was a hulking mass of overdeveloped shoulders, with the segmented crest of a youth plating his unhelmeted head. A broad, challenging grin split the warrior's face as he stepped forward, planting his feet solidly.
Wrex knew that move, and knew what was coming even as the biotic corona boiled up around the other krogan. As gravity lurched violently around the mercenary, he was already summoning his own dark energy. The air coiled with blue-black distortion as the two fields crashed into each other, surging and pulsing as they fought for supremacy. Between the two krogans, a metal shelf distorted with a tortured shriek.
The fleeting question of where Saren got so many krogan biotics drifted through Wrex's head as he doggedly pushed forward against his rival's field. They were usually so rare the mercenary could easily go many cycles between sightings of another biotic, but since meeting Shepard, they seemed to be everywhere... and working for the renegade Spectre.
With a roar, the warrior shifted into another stance, and gravity heaved again, this time yanking Wrex forward. Suddenly overbalanced, he stumbled toward his opponent, who yanked a pistol off his belt. Wrex wished he had his shotgun in hand instead of a rifle. To compensate, he marshaled his forward momentum into a vicious swing with the butt of his gun, aiming for the warrior's exposed eye.
His opponent ducked his chin, letting the blow hit the armored crest on his head even as he fired wildly with his pistol. Bare inches away now, Wrex's kinetic barrier was useless. Shocks of impact traveled up his torso, but pain was distant, buried deep under the fiery adrenaline of battle.
Dimly, Wrex was aware of movement around him. He knew he needed to end this quickly. He batted the pistol away, then pointed his rifle at the krogan's hip and fired one-handed. The muzzle of the gun bucked, uncontrolled, but at point-blank range, several rounds still punched through the warrior's under-armor, into his hip joint and the nerve bundles buried beneath. The other krogan lurched sideways with a startled grunt. Wrex took a step back, and with a deep breath, summoned his biotics.
It was a dangerous move at such a close range. He risked pulling himself into the attack, or pummelling his own body with the shearing edge of the field, but Wrex's command of biotics had been honed over countless battles. Instead of an uncontrolled storm, the dark energy pulled in on itself as it slammed home into the warrior's chest, concentrating the force of the attack down into a narrow, bone-shattering crunch.
As the warrior crumpled to the ground, Wrex spun around and sprayed the space beside him with a wild burst from his rifle. The advancing geth troopers faltered just long enough for the krogan to duck behind cover. A numbing pain throbbed in his torso. As plasma fire rained around him, he quickly tapped a command into his armor interface. The medical system in his armor was crude, but effective- he didn't need the complicated diagnostic tools and onboard VI many other species favored. He grunted as the delivery system jabbed into his neck, feeding painkiller directly into his secondary neuroconductive system. He could feel the familiar wave of discomfort that signalled one of his internal organs shutting down. But after so many years, he trusted his body to take care of itself. It would compensate, shifting resources to secondary organs while the wounded ones healed. He would be grumpy and hungry for a few days, but he deemed the gunshots far from fatal.
The penetrating thud of an explosion sounded from around the corner, followed by the chatter of a human assault rifle. Wrex pushed himself out of cover and found the clump of geth that had pinned him down were now scattered by a grenade. The survivors, caught between himself and the advancing Chief Williams, had nowhere to go.
"Good grenade," Wrex commented as the roar of gunfire finally died.
"They were asking for it," she said offhandedly as she strode up. "Were you hit?"
"Still breathing." He shifted, glancing around the room. The floors were littered with white geth blood and broken machinery. Finally, a good fight- but he didn't feel the satisfaction of it.
"I dropped another krogan over there..." Even through the layers of armor, Williams seemed to sense his disquiet. "We won. What's eating you?" she inquired, resting her still-steaming rifle on her shoulder.
Wrex grunted irritably. "I'm not sure yet. Maybe I should ask."
He turned and stumped across the room to where the other krogan warrior, the one Williams had fought, lay face-down in a pool of orange blood.
"... He's dead," the chief said doubtfully as they approached.
Wrex wedged his toes under the body and rocked the recumbent form over on its back. The front of the warrior's torso was shredded, the armor torn and bent inwards by close-range assault rifle fire. Thin wisps of smoke trailed upward from the wound, dissipating slowly in the dead air, and his broad mouth hung slack.
"Probably," Wrex pronounced.
"Probably?" Williams quipped as Wrex moved away toward the other krogan body. "I swear I put half a slug of incendiary rounds into him."
Wrex wondered idly how many krogans the chief had thought killed but in fact survived. Or any human, for that matter. Most aliens could not relate to the sheer survivability of the krogan body. Unless you pushed a krogan out into the vacuum of space naked, their bodies would try to repair themselves. When badly wounded, they could lapse into a coma-like state while their tissues regenerated, drawing sustenance from their massive hump over days and even weeks.
Certain very specific things could kill a krogan outright. Any warrior worth his weapons knew them, but Wrex was in no hurry to educate aliens who didn't take the time to do so themselves. He reached the grey-armored krogan and hoisted the warrior's massive body, shoving it against one of the geth's smooth-sided power generators.
For a long moment, Wrex considered the other krogan. There was something about his techniques that tugged at Wrex's instincts.
Wrex reached down and drew the long combat dagger from its sheath. Supporting the other krogan with one arm, the mercenary wedged the point under the other krogan's large shoulder guard. Working the blade back and forth, he finally forced the point through the woven undersuit, penetrating the fleshy gap between the hard, plated skin underneath. The point of the knife found the nerve cluster buried there, and the biotic warrior twitched. His large head rolled around as his body tried to fight off the doping effects of the regenerative fugue already spreading through his system.
Williams inhaled in surprise as the warrior's eyes fluttered and finally opened. His breathing was a labored wheeze. His internal organs were probably a pulpy mess mixed in with shattered bone.
"Who taught you?" Wrex growled, giving the warrior a shake.
The grey-armored krogan's head lolled to one side, fixing Wrex with an orange eye. His pupil dilated as he tried to focus on his tormentor.
"Biotics, varren turd!" the mercenary repeated. "The Fire! Who taught you?"
"...Ragnagaar," the biotic croaked.
Wrex narrowed his eyes at such an unbelievable, pompous declaration. He couldn't quite place the krogan's accent. It sounded like the staccato language once spoken commonly in the southern reaches of Tuchanka's largest continent, but mixed with something else. Like the edges had been worn down.
"Ragnagaar is coming... Urdnot..." The warrior bared his teeth in defiance of his impending death. "The glory days-"
Wrex yanked his dagger free and jammed the point into the other krogan's neck, severing his windpipe. He didn't want to hear it. Orange blood splashed over his hands as he shoved the warrior back to the floor with a snarl.
No matter how many blows the krogan people took, it seemed there was always some among them willing to buy into these pathetic declarations that the krogan empire would rise and conquer the galaxy once again. Perhaps the blindness and denial was easier than the sharp edge of reality, but Wrex had no patience for it. And to declare a Ragnagaar on top of it...
Williams arched a questioning eyebrow. "All that for who taught him? Was he that good?" Her expression was hard and unreadable.
"No," Wrex growled, "just the opposite." He cocked his head toward the human. "I've seen you practicing your hand-to-hand fighting, going through the forms. Do you take those forms to the battlefield?"
Williams frowned. "The forms are just that, practice, going through the motions to teach you to react without thinking... I don't stand around posing in a real fight."
"Exactly. That krogan's forms were perfect. Like he was on the practice field, not the battlefield."
"Like he learned them from a vid?"
Wrex grunted assent, staring down at the warrior. He was probably really dead this time- the wonders of the krogan regenerative system still required oxygen to function. Still, it would take a while for his tissues to catch up to the situation.
"So he was a stupid kid, trying to be impressive and fight with the adults." The chief tossed her head. "Fatal, as mistakes go, but he's hardly the first to make it."
Wrex stayed silent. In his mind, it was more than that. But he wasn't interested in educating an ignorant alien about the rarity of krogan biotics, nor the long and storied history of the Battlemasters. A dying history. No krogan biotic ever just learned from a vid...
"What was that word he kept saying?" she asked, breaking his reverie. "The translator didn't pick it up. Rag... Ragna-something? That someone you know?"
Wrex bristled, but stilled himself. Small wonder the word wasn't in her database, no one had used it in a long time, since even before the Rebellions. "Ragnagaar," he corrected shortly. "Warlord... above all other warlords."
"Like a king or something?"
Sovereign.
Wrex gave a dark rumble. "Or something."