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Getting to the system was a lengthier, riskier endeavor than one might at first assume. It was days spent flitting from planet to planet with the thermal enveloping online, trapping the ship's heat inside the vessel's armored hull, preventing it from leaking into space and giving whatever enemies might be around a heat signature that could be tracked.
Crossing a single system took days, once or twice, waiting for planetary orbits to get close to other bodies so they could rapidly vent the Normandy's built up heat straight into the planet's gravity well and then jet away, hiding in the gravitation and thermal shadow of a planetoid, asteroid, or whatever else they came across that could mask their presence. A dozen times, they could see Reaper or even Cerberus ships in the distance or on ladar systems, and once they had even seen an allied fleet limping away from one while the Reaper destroyer leisurely picked off the ships one after another.
Morale had lowered on seeing that, even further than days sweating in the heat of the ship had. But the crew were disciplined and skilled, and so did their duties regardless of what they saw in the black depths of space. Knowing it wasn't their call helped, though, he was sure.
"I just… Wish there was something we could have done." Shepard finally finished, sitting in a little chair she'd carried down into the hold he used as quarters, plopping into it backwards and spinning lazily in slow circles while he worked on his gear, still dressed in her bodysuit and pants. She'd changed, he knew as much from the minute difference in her pants now, so he supposed she was just a bit more comfortable this way and had decided to stay dressed as such.
For normal comfort or the use of keeping her cool in the hot ship, he wasn't sure, and pushed it aside when she started talking again, belaboring her anxiety in an effort to relax it. "I mean, I made the right choice. I know I did. It just… I don't know. You know?"
"Feels like the wrong one." He finished for her, only turning enough from his improvised work table and broken down rifle to catch her nod. "Nature of the beast."
"You mean the war, or command?" She sounded like either answer wouldn't please her, and for once the ODST was sad to say he'd have to disappoint her.
"Yes." He grunted simply, shrugging when the woman groaned. They fell into silence after that until, finally, he decided to address the elephant in the room, "Why are you talking to me about this? I'm not the most sociable one on the ship, and I don't know how to deal with these kinds of… Problems."
"Mostly?" She shrugged, "Garrus is checking weapon systems before we make final approach, in case there's any Rachni air power to contend with."
"So I'm the spare?"
"I mean, you said it, not me, Rook." She smiled so he knew she didn't mean it and, theatrically and for her benefit, he rolled his eyes in amusement. Only half faked amusement, he realized after a second, before he shook the thought off. "I'll get over it, just needed to vent, you know?"
"Hm." He nodded, the woman's pouting face sliding into view in the corner of his vision.
"You're doing the 'sounds as sentences' thing again, John.." He turned and she reached out with a hand to thump him on the forehead with the back of a knuckle, glowering at him all the while. "We talked about this. Remember? You don't get to be all quiet and closed off, you know it's better when you aren't."
"I don't-"
"I saw you with the Krogan, John." She cut him off, poking his forehead and wheeling back across the floor with her feet, wheels clacking quietly on the metal floor. Grinning at his grimace, she took his hesitation for the chance it was and went on, battering down his defenses and defiance with her hard evidence. "I saw how much happier, more relaxed, you were with them. You were more open with them, talked more and more often. You proposed things, John."
"I like them, the Krogan are… I like them." He shrugged, turning back to his weapon, working slower to clean the pieces before slotting them back together in a beautiful jigsaw puzzle of death. Sighing, he moved on to the firing mechanism, scanning each piece twice, once with his eyes and once with his 'Tool, as he explained. "The Krogan are hard, honest and have been fighting for their existence for centuries."
"You empathise." He nodded and the woman seemed to understand, nodding herself and dropping the subject entirely. Instead, she asked in a quiet, curious voice, like a child afraid to upset her parents with a question that might be unwelcome. "Do you… Miss home? Your universe, or, uh, whatever the terminology actually is, I mean. Do you miss it?"
"Hm." Did he? He wasn't sure, really, if he did. His old galaxy and this one were both war torn, full of hellscapes, and every step had a real chance to be his last equally. But… "I don't know, Jane. I will always wonder what would have happened to me there, what happened to my people too, but I'm not there. I'm here."
"In a new place to call home?" The question was gently phrased and softly said, the woman probing him for his reaction carefully. Like a ship navigating a minefield, wary that each wave broken could mean their ship falling to ruin.
"Maybe. Don't know yet, really." He shrugged unsurely and, understanding him by now, she let the question drop entirely. For a moment he considered asking why she bothered having these strange conversations with him but he knew she did this to every member of their team. So he let it go and instead asked, "How long until we reach Utukku, Ma'am?"
"Touchdown tomorrow morning, around oh-seven-hundred, on the planet." She answered clippedly, straightening and stretching in her seat as she internally switched gears and slid into her commanding persona. "The Krogan will be on the ground, and the scouting flotilla will be hiding in the system's asteroid belt to avoid eyes. The Normandy joins them and we take a shuttle down to Utukku, where the Krogan have established a forward operating base on the planet."
That meant thirteen hours to rest, eat and finish his kit's mandated upgrades for the fight on the planet…
"Understood, Ma'am." He gave her a curt nod, adding in a polite and hopefully firm tone, "I'll need the time, Ma'am. To get ready. If you don't need me for anything, Ma'am."
"Fine, fine, I can take a hint. Sometimes, at least." She grinned at a joke he didn't understood, or ask about, and stood. One hand snaked around the head of her chair and hoisted it onto her shoulder and the other gave him a mock salute, the woman grinning at him and taking a couple steps back and away. "See ya out there, Lieutenant Commander Doe."
He sighed and considered tossing another barb at her, likely about how she had had him promoted so she didn't get to poke fun, but instead just turned back to his work quietly. Which, from her pout, he knew was a better stinger than anything he could have ever even tried to retort with.
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"It's dead, the scout flotilla managed to kill it when they jumped in-system with only moderate casualties." Shepard assured them when they convened on the Normandy's engineering deck to file into the shuttle. "It's dead, but it's there. Which means two things. Point one," she raised a finger to count them off for the armored soldiers around her, both the specialist teams and the Marines who'd gathered in case they had to be called down to the surface as well, "the Reapers have a presence here, in this system, and on that planet. How bad, we don't know."
"Two," she continued, looking between the soldiers to gauge their responses to the first revelation, "the Reapers will realize their frigate was destroyed. Those are used for transport, so they will notice when the Rachni don't show up like they plan. Or maybe another transport frigate will show up and see the dead one, if it's cyclical."
"Either way, the bastards will have ships showing up soon enough in-system." Garrus filled in from the lines of soldiers, standing beside him in his armor and with his hands holding the front of his carapace armor. "So whatever we're doing down on the planet, we have to do it fast. Unless we want to try getting past a Reaper fleet."
"Exactly." She nodded, "Which means we land, get the objectives handled, and leave. Nothing fancy, nothing that needs us to stick around, we get in, get out, go home. Understood, troopers?"
A chorus went around the engineering bay in various forms and shapes of 'yes, ma'am', and the soldiers started to disperse. The Marines filed away to standby positions around the 'bay, weapons held across lightly armored chests while they idly, anxiously, talked amongst themselves. And he and the specialist team filed into the shuttle, one by one taking seats around the craft's interior. The fit was tighter than any would have liked, and he wounded up pressed in one one side by Garrus, and the other by Shepard, all three holding their weapons in their laps and exchanging snipes and barbs at the proximity.
The ride was short, the Normandy and scout flotilla both tethered to large asteroids at the edge of the asteroid belt near where the planet was at this time of year. A brief few minutes of nothingness as they sailed through the dark void of space, before the violent and brief tremors from initial reentry, followed by the final gentler, persistent rocking of the wind buffeting the shuttle as it descended through the layers of atmosphere towards the surface. At one point, for a minute, the sounds of hail could be heard as they passed through high altitude storm clouds, flush with frozen water collecting ahead of the eventual rain to come. For many soldiers, this was a time of stress, anxiety and worry about the number of things that could go wrong.
For the ODST, though, this was barely even noticeable, and for a moment he considered closing his eyes.
"On landing approach. Brace for maneuvers." Cortez warned them quietly, voice crackling over the intercom and echoing in their headsets, redundancy at its finest, as the craft listed to the side. A few more seconds passed and the shuttle shuddered gently as it hit the dirt and stone below, engine noise fading to a weak, idle whine. "Clear landing, Krogan waiting on us, and nothing on either radar or ladar systems. We're green."
"Rook, you and me are first out the door." She called out as she rose from her seat, hunched over slightly while he followed behind, a hand on the small of her back in case she tried to stop and so she knew he was following her orders. "Friendly faces for the Krogans out there, make a good impression. Vakarian at the back, and helmet on. No one out there wants to see your ugly mug."
"Hey now, Commander, you know I'm beautiful." He snarked back dryly, snorting in amusement as the shuttle fell silent.
"Shepard!" The Krogan voice cried before the shuttle door had even fully raised, a silver hulk shooting past him fast enough to startle him, a hand on his Carnifex at his thigh warily. Instead of an enemy, though, it was just a large Krogan warrior, crushing the woman in a massive hug that had her feet dangling and hands awkwardly patting his sides. "It's so good to see you, Shepard! It has been too long."
"Grunt… Dying." She wheezed, helmet protrude from a spot between his shoulder and head and wiggling back and forth. "Freedom… Please… Life… Slipping away…"
"Bah! As if a simple Krogan welcome could actually hurt you, Commander!" Regardless, the Krogan warrior did let her down, the woman staggering only slightly but reaching up to pat the alien's massive head after a second. He rumbled pleasantly at that for a second before standing and turning to the other soldiers around him and her, grunting, "Vakarian. Your face still split open if someone tells a joke?"
"Grunt. You still let your mom give you head pats?"
"Oi, I'm right here, you assholes." Shepard chided loudly, voice telling him she was smiling under her helmet. Sliding into her job, something he could see from the straightening of her shoulders and back, she asked in a clipped, no nonsense tone. "What's the situation, Grunt? We saw the dead Reaper, so I'm assuming Reaper forces are in the area?"
"Scattered 'round the planet." He turned, thumping away into the wide, ramshackle camp and waving a hand for them to follow. They did, and Grunt made sure to speak loud enough for all of them to hear, voice booming over a din of camp life that silences as they passed. "We get scouting parties and raiding groups around our perimeter, but Aralakh Company is made up of Krogan raiders and warlords willing to fight out here. They don't do anything to us 'cept serve as target practice."
He could believe that, looking at the Krogan they passed, returning their respect filled nods one after the other. Their armor was all fine, for Krogan standard anyways, with thick, heavy plating covered in scars both new and old enough to have been painted over. Their weapons were equally battered and old, and random as well, from longer, slimmer looking Avenger models to heavy, red weapons he recognized as Revenants, and everything in between. Many sported melee weapons as well, a couple carrying the massive Biotic hammers wrex had told him about and others carrying different ones. He saw jerry rigged swords of what looked like armor plating and old, heavy pipes as well as massive chain swords, single handed war axes, a glaive of some kind with a telescoping handle, and one even carried a heavy slab of armor with a handle welded onto the back, a white and black Eviscerator hanging off the back of his waist.
And, he noted with surprise, the Krogan sported a helmet with a front visor and sectioned plating that looked like his own, albeit shaped to a Krogan head rather than a Human one. The front of the shield, he noticed as the heavily armored and scarred alien moved towards them, was painted with his symbol in bright red streaks on the front.
"Urdnot." The warrior greeted, sparing a nod first for the two 'Urdnot' and then for him, this one deeper. "Maw-Singer."
"Kralt Tartog, my lead assault trooper for obvious reasons." Grunt explained for their benefit as he returned the gesture, the heavily armored warrior returning his gaze to him and letting his shield rest on the ground. "Report. How are the wounded warriors? Can they fight?"
"No, Battlemaster, they are not. Most will need days to rest before the acid wounds are healed enough. Not a kind of time we have to wait." They'd had skirmishes already, then, which explained the sounds of maintenance echoing around them. Damaged armor and worn weapons, being tended to as best they could be in the brief rest in the moderately safe camp until the next fight started. "I think it's best if they go back now, to the flotilla, to have their wounds tended. We could defend them here, if the camp were more secure, but it isn't safe here even if we could spare the Krogan."
The camp was certainly not safe, made of two large prefabricated buildings set to either side of the small canyon leading up to a section of a third, vanished into a hole at the back of the camp, and little else of note. Nothing more than a forward base to plan and rest in, for a moment, between one fight and the next.
"Shepard-"
"They'll have to cram in, but use the shuttle we came in." She cut him off, stepping forward with a small nod for the armored soldier. "It's rigged for stealth running, so you should be fine. Get the worst wounded aboard, get 'em out of here."
"Battlemaster?"
"Do as she says, Tartog. Commander's shuttle, Commander's call, end of the day. Was gonna ask her anyway, so whatever." Grunt grunted and shrugged, the other Krogan pounding a fist to its breast and turning to trundle heavily away without another word. Turning to speak over his shoulder, the warrior grunted, "Entrance to the cave system where the Rachni are comin' from is over here. Blew a little hole in, they heard, so they dug up the ground around it and dropped the building the scout team built in, looks like."
The sinkhole was massive, easily thirty feet in diameter and twice that deep, the other half of the prefab building at the bottom in pieces, a couple Korgan bodies mixed into the clutter. On the opposite end, a cave entrance had been made by the collapse and explosions, and in there was where he assumed the infiltration team would be headed to find the Queen. By themselves, of course, because the Commander didn't do a damn thing the sane way. That wouldn't be fun, he was sure she'd say.
"We'll rappel down, into the hole, and head through the cave system." The woman explained, kneeling at the edge of the crater with her Avenger held in front of her, relaxed but ready to snap up if a Rachni soldier showed itself. Or anything else besides, of course. "You said the scout team before us mapped them?"
"Suicidal bastards, those Uncured can be, when somethin' gets rougher than they'd hoped." Grunt sighed, shaking his great head and then nodding. "Yeah, they marched in with sonic grenades. Little blue things, Turians made 'em. Radio central over there," he gestured to one of the standing, occupied buildings with a dismissive wave, "read the sonar, mapped the tunnels. That leads to a big cavern in the middle. Same as ours."
"Then everyone knows their jobs, so let's get to it." A chorus of assent went off around her and he turned, following the dozen Krogan left fighting for Aralakh Company away from the tunnel, towards their own entrance on the opposite end of the camp site and past the hole.
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Two of the Krogan drew short straws and had to stand guard over the entrance outside, to cover and protect the exit from ambushes and help them retreat when the time came, but the rest descended into the cave system in pairs of two. He and Grunt took lead, his VISR system allowing him to see better than the Krogan could in the dark with only their gun and helmet mounted lights and the odd, bioluminescent slime and fungi lining the caves to see by. Behind them, Tartog followed, heavy shield perfect for them to fall back behind if trouble came running.
Navigating the caves and tunnels was, relatively speaking at least, an easy going affair. The ground sloped gently or was flat, save the edges where the rounded passage curved up, and as an unnatural system made by the Rachni, lacked the spiked stone of stalactites or stalagmites to impede their journey. Instead, all they had to worry about for some time was the ooze on the walls, which was slippery to step on. Like oil, or blood.
"Eyes." He called back, rifle snapping up as his VISR highlighted a still mass on the ground a half-dozen feet ahead of them. His flashlight, and rifle beside, on it they closed on the thing and he sighed, kneeling beside the dead Krogan and asking Grunt, "Scout?"
"Yeah." He sighed, looking at the half of a Krogan they'd found, rifle melted beside him and innards strewn from the base if his chest a foot down the cave. There they saw his legs, wearing the same melted black armor he did. "Acid burns, obviously been eaten some, and there's nothing 'round here that could overpower him."
"Rachni, then."
"He died good, did some damage before he went down." The Krogan gestured at his weapon, or more accurately the inch of what looked like a bayonet left on the bottom, to illustrate his point. "Got that in the bastard. Cut him good, hehe… Like a Krogan."
"What color do Rachni bleed?" The Krogan grunted at the question and the Rookie nodded his head forward, down the tunnel and past the lower half of the fallen Scout. Bright orange drops continued past, disappearing down the tunnel further than their lights could reach. "Unless you think this guy walked all the way up there..."
"Hm." The Krogan grunted but didn't answer, standing and waving a hand forward, heavy, blocky Claymore held in both hands and his wicked bayonet glinting from his flashlight.
Following the trail and the tunnel both, they came to a split in the tunnel system. Two separate passages, each one leading down and then turning to the side where the light from their flashlights ended. Grunt joined him, kneeling at the crux of the passage and using his VISR to look down both in hopes of seeing something more than stone, glowing ooze, and the trail of blood that went down the left passage and vanished around the corner.
"Krogan survivors or the Rachni that got him back there went that way." Grunt said shortly, pointing the jagged blade he sported down the left side of the tunnel. Then he turned and pointed down the right, adding, "The first main cavern is that way, though."
"Which means?"
"Down the other side is just more tunnels. Waste of time goin' down there, and the sonics stopped goin' off a week ago. Computer up top said they had a dozen spare, too, so they'd have used 'em." Or come back up, if the job was done well enough to not need more, he didn't bother to add. Grunt would already know something that obvious, surely. "So we go right, much as it pisses me off not to be able to avenge my men."
"The scouts were yours?" He'd assumed they were separate.
"Yeah, forward operators for Aralakh Company. All the battalions that use cured Krogan have scouts and assault units made up of Uncured ones, so the species stays secure." He rolled his shoulders with the explanation and then turned, barking orders, "Tartog, Grantal, forward. We're approaching the first cavern, so get your flamethrower hot, Grantal. Tartog, don't get burned by it again, I'm not draggin' your ass out of here."
"Yes, Battlemaster." The two Krogan chorused in response, the shield carrying warrior sliding by to the right entrance while the heavily armored Krogan came up behind him.
His armor was different as well, with heavy armor sections that were thicker on the front and sloped, like the top of a roof. So that liquid, like napalm or Rachni acid he guessed, would slide more easily off. His helmet was heavy too, with a thin visor that stretched from eye to eye and heavy tubes that ran back from the top of the helmet where they'd be safest to tanks of air on the backs his shoulders, a thicker tank with a caution symbol for fire on the front hanging across his waist. Now, those two lead them, the heavy shield carried in front of Tartog warily while Grantal's flamer hissed quietly in the silence, aside from heavy footfalls and equally heavy armor shifting. He'd done marches like this before, but…
Why was he so on edge now?
The tunnel ended quickly and opened up into a wide cavern, with roughly hewn walkways between four deep, cool looking ponds of fresh water. Massive, obviously Reaper, cables webbed from the ceiling to the ground, ending in several eight foot tall, three wide pods covered in spikes. Small insects flitted about, crawling on and around it, but Grunt was quick to order them burned.
"Rachni worker drones. Gotta burn 'em out or they crawl all over you in the middle of a fight, spit and burst acid." He explained while the pyro-Krogan worked, scorching the machine with reckless abandon and laughing while he did. Once Grunt was satisfied, he ordered the Krogan back and on to the next of the three, another Krogan covered in heavy pouches lumbering forward to plant bombs on the thing. "Weird, though."
"What is?" He asked, VISR pinging around them, looking for motion that wasn't the swarms of scurrying bugs that the Krogan were watching closely.
"Where are the Warriors?" He asked lowly, raising his shotgun and letting the barrel rest against his shoulder, pointing across the room. "Only one tunnel out, and this looks like a water source. Insects need 'em. So why isn't it guarded? And where are the dead scouts?"
"It's a trap?" He guessed as he pinged with his VISR again, but saw nothing around them beyond the scurrying workers. Eyes narrowed, he held up a hand to silence Grunt who, looking offended, fell silent while he turned, pinging again and again. "My VISR system isn't detecting the ooze or the Workers any more. Something is blocking my VISR detection."
"Battlemaster!" Grunt turned to an armored warrior, shuffling forward with a damaged little cylinder, made of black metal with a red button. Scratches were scored across it, as well as acid burns. "We found it by the far exit. It looks to have been set off there to map the area, but these are not Krogan scratches."
A second passed before Grunt's eyes narrowed and he looked around them, bellowing, "Krogan, circle up! Prepare for a-"
Around the roof, several sections of stone finally gave way to the Workers' efforts, massive slabs falling away and crashing to the ground and water below. Krogan warriors scattered, one crying out in anger as he tried to run and was crushed by a massive slab of stone, dropping their force of Krogan to seven aside from Grunt. From the half-dozen holes, Rachni swarmed from the holes, some with bulbous and orange bodies and guns mounted to their sides and others with sleeker, brown and black bodies, sections of metal and wires mounted to their heads no doubt controlling them.
It was a trap indeed.
And they'd walked right into it.
'Oh well'. He thought as he turned, rifle snapping up to send short lances of fire up into the holes, shredder rounds tearing chunks out of the Rachni there. One fell far to the ground with a shriek, splattering acid and blood when it hit. He didn't wait to confirm the kill, slamming a boot down on top of a Worker than skittered towards him and then booting the crunched bug away before finally sliding his sight to the ground, blasting a hole the size of his head in a tendril-covered Rachni Warrior's side until he could see through it, and the Krogan it had been mounting to kill threw it off his back with a defiance filled roar.
Instincts screaming at him he spun on his heel and sank to a kneeling position, tendrils whipping by where his head had been, and came face to face with a Rachni Warrior. It hissed in anger and, calm as though he were simply getting a drink, he brought his Harrier to bear and bored a hole through its head until he saw the cave on the other side and it slumped to the ground. Two more like it scuttled to either side and he rose, backing away and sending long bursts through them as well while his other hand retrieved a fresh Clip from his belt. Kicking aside another Worker he pulled the almost entirely spent Clip from his gun and hurled it into the face of another Warrior, reloading while it shrieked in pain and then killing it.
"Sand-Swimmer!" He turned, a hammer crushing a fourth Rachni behind him, to see a massive white-armored Krogan behind him, covered in blood both his own and Rachni and bleeding from a dozen small wounds. He hefted his hammer and turned his back to him, laughing loudly in the cacophony of the battle, "I will take your back, Sand-Swimmer! You will be safe with me, on my honor! For I will die before you."
He was used to dogged fighting in close quarters, and traps besides, so he leaned against the warrior and brought his rifle up.
This was his element.
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7th Maniac :
Glad you're enjoying it, and I almost didn't give a taste of the combat at the start and instead left the cliffhanger with the falling slabs of stone. Changed it at the last minute to be nicer, and give a bit of payoff. Feet First into Hell indeed.
Predator 1701 :
Have another fix, then, eh?
Grape Fanta :
Do I? I confess to some apprehension there, I am not too practiced with those kinds of characters.
Adoravke :
They will meet, I can confirm that much at the very least.