Author's Note: Epic battles, epic deaths, and if a surrender can be called epic, then there's that too. Sadly, this chapter is suffering from a critical lack of epic elcor, but you haven't seen the last of the Kahunas.
Shepard's banter with Saren had been a stalling tactic, to give her enough time to quickly designate their battle plan. Even with nineteen krogan, they were still outnumbered around three to one. Then they had to hope they could take down Saren and Aria without either of them managing to escape, and do so in enough time to go back for the rest of the Kahunas. To do so, they had to whittle down these forces quickly. As the old saw went, it wasn't the bullet with your name on it you had to worry about, it was the thousands labeled 'occupant.'
With that in mind, she'd designated the husks primary; the yahg and brutes as secondary; then Saren and Aria on her harvester. Sure, a brute could kill you in one or two hits – but if they had room to dodge, it'd give them slightly better odds. She at least had the pleasure of watching Saren's gobsmacked expression as her perfectly targeted shot took the marauder next to him right in the mouth, its mandible spinning up into the air as it dropped.
To her surprise, the krogan had timed their shots in unison, a slamming wall of gunfire as they scattered. All three of the Gatatog warriors charged the lines of husks, putting their shotguns to better work in the close quarters. Khel Ucard and his three clanmates retreated to a nearby aircar, then seized it by the corners, lifting it above their heads as their shields shimmered, hurling it with brute force at a yahg. The muscular creature was staggered, but not dropped, by the impact. Jack decided to help by hitting it with a shockwave, spinning the car around and knocking the yahg and a half dozen husks over the edge. Of course, a four story drop might not be enough to kill a yahg, but at least it would be out of the combat for a while.
Hearing a shriek overhead, Shepard rolled away only a fraction of a second before her cover vanished, clutched in one giant harvester paw. A moment later, it banked away, coming back to hurl it, smashing three husks and Gatatog Prak into paste.
Her HUD pinged, and Shepard fired wildly at the elcor husks, currently pouring flame down indiscriminately at all the krogan. All but one or two batarian husks were down – along with three of her krogan, and Ucard was limping as he dueled a brute. She looked up, following the prompt, to see a tanker hanging off an upper level, just stable enough not to fall – yet. "Garrus, I hope you know what you're doing," she muttered, using a singularity and a throw to send the thing tumbling free towards the open space.
A moment later, Jack hit it with another throw, hurling the tank towards the harvester. Aria saw it coming, trying to pull her mount aside, but two sniper shots blew through the tank, hydrogen gas spewing out as it thudded into a hind leg with an audible crack. Then Jondam fired a plasma flare at it.
A fireball the size of Afterlife engulfed the harvester, both the beast and the banshee shrieking in agony. The fireball sucked everyone towards the edge before throwing them back again, fighting for breath. Yet when the flames cleared, Aria and the harvester were still there, wings flapping mightily to stay aloft. "You think cheap tricks like that can stop me, Shepard?"
Her response was a singularity, aimed not at Aria, but right below one of the wings right as it hit apogee. As the wing came down, it met the singularity, and ripped a hole through the wing large enough to admit a krogan without touching the sides. It immediately tried to save itself, trying to glide towards the open street, only for its tail to catch the singularity again. As the unfortunate beast lurched downward, its head slammed into the street level, giving Khel Larad a chance to put his shotgun right up to one eye and pull the trigger.
As it slid backwards over the side, Aria leapt off, stalking towards Shepard and gathering biotic power in both taloned fists. "How dare you," she shrieked, swatting aside Ulluthyr Mirad as the krogan opened fire. "Omega is mine! I am queen! I rule the Terminus, and I will not let some jumped up monkey take that away from me!"
Shepard dove out of the way as Aria let loose with one throw after another, blasting holes in the walls and storefronts, rolling desperately to keep herself free from having an aircar thrown into her. The banshee was laughing hysterically, her power seemingly bottomless. It took Shepard a moment to realize it had cut off, and she rose trembling to her feet.
Jondam was standing behind her, Aria's mouth moving silently as blue blood pooled out the back of her neck. "Her biotic barrier was tuned for high-velocity impacts, not slow intrusions." He held up the glowing omni-blade. "Severing spinal column halts biotic abilities, while possibly allowing retrieval for questioning."
"Jondam, look out!" she shouted, even as she reached out to put a biotic barrier around him.
Before it could take effect, Saren had grabbed the salarian by both horns and yanked his hands apart. Jondam's skull shattered under the cybernetically enhanced strength, blood and brain matter spraying over Saren and Aria both. "I have had about enough of you, Shepard," Saren sneered. "First you go and kill my clones, you destroy Sovereign, you blow up the Conduit. Now you dare to threaten me here? The Reapers will win, Shepard! Nothing you do can stop it! All you're doing is undermining my ability to save some of us from extinction."
"Just like they saved the Protheans, right?" she retorted. "What about the Inusannon? Maybe you should ask the Keepers how much they like their subjugation." Her eyes were flicking rapidly around the battlefield. Half the krogans were either dead, or at least incapacitated, but the enemy was down to four yahg and one elcor. Legion and Garrus had vanished from sight, but Ashley was teamed up with Brant and Mirad, staggering shotgun blasts in a steady rolling blast, forcing another yahg back towards the edge.
Right as Saren opened his mouth to respond, Jack came leaping at him from behind, fists glowing. Without even looking, he reached back, grabbing her by the throat and unleashing a full-force punch to her ribs. "The grown-ups are talking, child," he mocked, tossing her aside. She hit the ground heavily, sliding sideways, frothy blood spraying from her mouth. "Recognize the inevitability, Shepard! Help me save as much of our species as I can!"
Pushing up onto her elbows, Jack laughed at him, in between coughing for breath. "You think that's going to stop me?" she demanded, spitting blood. "I grew up as a fucking Cerberus test subject!" She levered up to one knee, then stood shakily with her left arm clutched carefully around the bottom of her crushed rib cage. "The Illusive Man talks a better game than you've shown yet."
"Are you really going to let your pet mouth off, Shepard?" Saren said, one hand dropping to his own pistol. "Maybe I should just put her down here, and end her pain."
"Jack is many things, but she's no one's pet. You, though?" Shepard sidestepped slightly, increasing the distance between herself and the other adept. "You're just another pathetic clone."
Saren's face twisted in fury, and as he raised his pistol, Shepard's hand was already clenching. Her singularity shot out, causing him to jerk his arm quickly to the side. He was no brainless harvester, after all. Then Jack shoved him into it anyway. The turian's eyes went wide, his mandibles drooped, as the singularity carved a hole the size of his head straight through the middle of his abdomen. His body flopped to one side without spinal support, the singularity finally winking out and dropping a heavily compacted ball of organs and viscera to the ground.
"Shepard!" She looked around wildly, trying to track the voice, finally settling on Urdnot Brant. Her vision was spinning from overusing her biotics, static clawing into her peripheral view. "They've retreated into the club! We need to go after them!"
She hesitated, turning towards Jack, even as the younger biotic was busy smearing dollops of medigel over her entire torso. "Go, damnit. I really have had worse." Jack paused, coughing up another mouthful of bloody froth. "Not lately, maybe," she conceded as Shepard carefully pulled a tattooed arm over her own shoulders to carry her.
"If I leave you out here, you'll be overrun. It's just good tactical sense," she said as they hobbled forward. "Brant! Is the inside clear?"
"How the hell should I know? Ask the quarian, she said something about hacking the security cameras," the krogan shot back. The nine remaining krogan were forming up for a charge, with the occasional quiet plink of a bullet being forced out by regeneration and hitting the floor.
Shepard looked around, realizing that at the moment, the only people standing were the krogan, herself, and Jack. "Where did everyone else go?" she shouted. Not Garrus, she thought numbly. Not him, not after I finally got him to recognize how I feel, not now that he returns it!
The krogan spread out, looking through the devastation, but it was rather quick work to determine that the only dead turians and humans were the husks, and there were no quarian or geth either. "Where the hell did they go?" Khel Larad demanded. "They couldn't have just vanished."
"Did the yahg or the husks knock any of them over the edge?" Shepard asked, her voice trembling.
"Ucard, Mirad, look inside, just in case they beat us inside," Brant ordered. The two krogans hustled up towards the front doors of Afterlife, which opened normally for them. The corridor into the club was dark and deserted, the doors into the main part of the club closed.
"We have to keep moving," Shepard said, her voice still trembling. Jack coughed up another wad of blood and mucas, landing it right in the open mouth of a yahg corpse. As much as she wanted to scream and rage and cry, run through the corridors of the station looking for her friends and her lost lover, she had to get in there and regain control of the station. She knew Garrus and Tali were tough, or they'd never had survived Haestrom and becoming Archangel, so there was a chance they were still alive. "We need to get in there and take control of the station."
Brandt looked at his fellow krogan before nodding decisively. "We're with you, Shepard." Grimly they trooped forward, Shepard's arm still supporting Jack as her free hand put more medigel on her ribs. The two remaining Ulluthyr started ripping the couches free, bolts shrieking as they pulled out, and they quickly had a small barricade. "Whenever you're ready," Brandt said, crouching by the door control.
Inside was a rather tense stand-off. Garrus and Ashley had their assault rifles out, standing back to back, with Legion and Tali taking up the other two points of their square, a combat drone floating in front of each of them. Surrounding them, standing a deceptively close ten meters away, was a circle of eight yahg. All of them were armed, holding pistols that probably had more force than Tali's shotgun. The central bar had been ripped out at some point, which is why everyone had enough room.
Across the room, a massive figure stood up on Aria's balcony. "You would be the leader of this expedition, then," the female said loudly. To Shepard's surprise, she was about the same size as the Shadow Broker, which might mean they were both runts, or it might mean that like humans, the females were smaller than most males. "I think we have much to discuss."
"We killed a couple dozen of you on the way here, and now you want to talk?" Jack blurted out before succumbing to another coughing fit.
"Now you have proven your strength and demonstrated you are worth sharing words with," the female continued calmly. "Unless you really want to pit your strength against ours." In the higher tier around the room, more yahg stood, brandishing weapons.
Ah, shit, we're outnumbered at least two to one, Shepard thought. "What did you want to talk about, exactly?" Maybe if I'm really super fucking lucky for once, I can stall long enough for the Kahunas to get here.
"Your strength, and the lies clearly told to us by the one called Saren." She hardly finished before leaping off the balcony, landing just behind her ring of guards, walking just behind them over towards Shepard and the krogan. "He told us he was part of the mightiest force of the galaxy. But I listened to your words. He is a copy, and you have slain his copies before." She finally stopped on their side of the circle, in clear view under the lights. Unlike the Shadow Broker, her exposed skin was a brilliant shade of orange-yellow. "You are stronger than he is."
"Damn straight," Shepard blurted. "So, what exactly does that mean? Aside from your dead buddies here, I haven't dealt with your species."
"The strongest lead. The weak follow, or else they become food. Is that not how it is with all intelligent species?" The yahg stilled, all eight black eyes focused on Shepard – as far as she could tell, anyway.
"It's a little more complicated than that. There're different kinds of strengths, after all," Shepard hedged, desperately trying to draw out the conversation.
"You are a greater leader than Saren. You are greater in battle than Saren. What else is there?" They locked stares for several moments.
Taking a breath, Shepard raised one hand, summoning her biotics. "Strength of the mind. Strength of focus, or of personality. Strength of skill."
"And these allowed you to defeat Saren. Yet he still lives. So are you the greater strength, or not?" The yahg did a little side shuffle, reminding Shepard of a nature documentary Kaidan had been watching once on spiders, sensing movement on their web.
"So far, I've beaten him three out of three," Shepard said, putting as much bravado into her voice as she could manage.
"So you say. If so, then perhaps you can solve the issue with him." The yahg stopped in silence, again staring with hard focus at Shepard. "We followed him because he claimed to be the strongest, and even when he died at the hands of our warriors, he came back again the next day. His flesh was poison to all who ate it, as are all of his species. So we cannot challenge him under yahg law."
Knowing she was going to regret hearing the answer, Shepard asked anyway. "Then how do you settle disagreements under yahg law?"
"The two wronged parties fight to the death, the loser is eaten, of course. But we cannot eat Saren, nor any of those who have been converted into his army." Shepard tried, very hard, not to tremble noticeably. Of course, she could see even the krogan revolting at that thought. "How does your fragile, tasty species settle disagreements, that you can be stronger than Saren?"
Shepard swallowed hard before answering. "Normally, we appoint someone impartial, who will gather all of the facts in evidence to present to another impartial judge. Depending on the crime, the judge will then render punishment."
"And what kind of punishment does your species deem sufficient?"
"That depends on the crime. For something small, it can be paying fines, or performing service. Larger or more important crimes include imprisonment or death."
"Imprisonment?" The yahg laughed, amused at the idea. "How is that a punishment?"
"Oh, that's not so hard," Jack spat at her. "Step into this corridor. Then stay here. You'll eat here, food that someone else brings you. You'll shower here, shit here, sleep here. You will never set foot outside this room unless the guards, who are all better armed than you, bigger than you, more trained than you, decide to let you out for something. All you'll ever see are these. Four. Walls." She turned aside into another coughing fit.
"And before you start thinking that we can't lock you up, can't cage you, think about how many of your people are out here in space. The Citadel Council has wiped out one species, and come damn close to doing it to a second one. They might have already decided to kill all the rest of the yahg in existence, based on the videos we got from the station," Shepard said, aiming for nonchalance. She wasn't sure how much of her body language was being properly understood by her opponent. "I mean, you were all brought here. You don't have your own ships. One or two big rocks, and everything on your planet dies. Not all at once, though there'll be plenty of that, but by inches. A dust cloud thick enough to block out the light of your sun for a year, and all the plant life dies. Then the herbivores, your prey animals, die. And when there's no food, at all, what happens then?"
"The clans will tear themselves apart, until no one is left alive," the yahg whispered.
"So what you need to be doing right now is convincing me why I should spare your pitiful, overly-muscled lives." Shepard was bluffing; with the way Jack kept coughing, she'd be useless in a fight, and if it came down to gunfire, then Tali, Legion, Ashley, and most importantly Garrus would be dead in seconds.
There was silence, broken only by the heavy breathing of the krogan and Jack's weak coughing. Finally, the yahg slowly raised one hand to her face. "To all yahg, we are surrending to the invaders. The forces of the Shepard are strong; the forces of Saren are weak. We follow their lead. So declares Sarolan."