Disclaimer: I do no own Mass Effect, I do not claim to own Mass Effect, I am only doing this for fun.
Author Notes: I'm still alive! That's all I'll say up here.
Episode 36: The Profiteer
Shepard walked away from her conversation with Nihlus and Garrus assured that she was not simply unpardonably paranoid. Both had listened without saying a word while she laid out the facts. It was Garrus who broke the silence after she had finished and announced that her theory might just be verging on truth. He could see the how, based on what they knew so far, it really did look like Armistan Banes was making a move against her.
In the end though, Garrus went on to add that Cerberus had a single big problem if they wanted this frame-up to stick. The first assassination had landed on his father's desk. If this second killing was indeed connected, his father would take over. It would not matter whom Cerberus had on the inside, they would never influence his father. Then, if anyone could see the obvious problems and mismatch of skill, it would be his father, and he would pursue the ill-fitting pieces with all he had.
Shepard thanked Garrus, but she could not be as relieved as he probably wanted her to be. After all, Castis Vakarian also knew that she had pulled a fast one over him, and to protect Saren at that. That would have left the wrong sort of impression on him. He was not infallible. Would he overlook the nasty trick? Or would he see it as the hallmark of someone versed in complex manipulation? She had reasons to suspect that would make all the difference between seeing her as a victim and seeing her as someone who was playing everyone there. Shepard was a realist; she knew there was a probability that Castis Vakarian would take the evidence against her at face value.
When that meeting finally ended Shepard called it done for the day. Not because there was nothing more to do, but because she refused to do more. After getting some sleep she turned to figuring out her new gear. She received her new Valiant by the early next afternoon, Normandy time, and wasted no time getting started on the process of acclimatization. She took it to the only firing range on the Citadel that could simulate a kilometer-long range with varying environmental and weather conditions. Nihlus pulled strings to get her access to a suite for a whole six hours. All that time was spent shooting clips and noting results.
The process was absolutely necessary if she wanted to learn the rifle's idiosyncrasies and check it for manufacturing defects. She started in a rather convincing simulation of the Amazon jungle. She had been to the actual jungle a number of times, as the ICT's N1 core training courses were conducted out of Vila Militar outside Rio de Janeiro, a short shuttle hop away. Earth's familiar gravity and range of atmospheric pressures meant she could focus on weather factors like temperatures and humidity. At her request the techie added a full fine mist, just to check whether the water would cause a short inside the rifle. In the end, the rifle passed, but her poncho did not, so she ended up looking vaguely drowned, much to the amusement of both the techie and Nihlus, who had been up in the dry control booth. Next was the tip of South America, one of the windiest places on Earth, the single biggest factor on the sniper's list of forces to conquer. She masochistically suffered through the chilled gale blown by the simulator's fans in order to get a feel for the rifle's bullet drift.
After that came the practical verifications, with variations on gravity and atmospheric density, which had an effect on bullet drop and drag. It was then that Nihlus decided to challenge her to shoot drones through a simulacrum of the sandstorms that raked Palaven's Great Desert. Conditions there were similar to Death Valley, California: impossibly hot and absolutely dry, though windier and with Palaven's thicker atmosphere and higher gravity. Shepard did not think it too realistic as the sand was just a trick of the projectors, but Nihlus seemed happy. She strongly suspected that he intentionally chose a setting that would turn on the range's heaters, helping her warm up and dry out. Then he compensated for this kindness by having the techie dial up the simulated sand half-way through until it was almost entirely blinding her, and she had to shoot the remaining drones just by the twinkle of their status lights using a rifle that still felt a little out of place.
Soon enough the data tables were written, the ratios calculated, and she got a good idea of what the Valiant could do. She would rote-memorize the tables in time. So the last step was to name the rifle. It was a rather common practice for Alliance specialists, one of those things they became almost superstitious about. Arthur had thought of a famous line Appian attributed to Caesar, used in his letter to the Roman Senate as a blithe summation of his victory at the Battle of Zela in 47 BCE, "Veni, Vidi, Vici", or "I came, I saw, I conquered". Arthur said that was easily a sniper's motto. From there it was a grammatical leap. The saying's last verb was the first person perfect tense of vincere, "to conquer"; the source of the Roman name Vincentius, which needed only a minor trim to become Vincent. She had teased Arthur about it, but after Elysium she did not dare change it, only forego mentioning it.
She could not reuse the name and she was not particularly keen on anything fancy like it. Back in the ICT, Leif had started their squad's practice of naming their weapons from mythological sources; starting with his shotgun, Mjolnir. Shepard could follow suit. Leif had once called her Athena, for no other reason the fact that he thought he was clever. In some depictions the ancient goddess carried in her hand the winged figure of the personification of victory, Nike. The idea felt weirdly appropriate and she could not think of anything else. So her Valiant was christened "Nike" and that was that.
After that it was another twenty-four hours before her armor arrived. Shepard quickly double-checked it fit, synched, and operated properly before she knew they could move on to the job she promised Wrex. The destination he provided was Tuntau, the fourth planet of the Phoenix system in the Argos Rho cluster, though the main relay was in the neighboring Hydra system. First she conferred with Admiral Hackett to get her his authorization. Hackett was less than happy to hear about a known criminal hiding in the Phoenix system. It helped that the Hierarchy wanted Actus for tax evasion; that meant the Hierarchy would not protest the forceful eviction itself.
The wrinkle was that while everyone would have preferred her arresting Actus, she knew Wrex would be going for blood. She would have to play this off as if they had gone in with the intent to make an arrest, but the individual chose to resist. It was going to be one of the shadiest things Shepard had ever done. More than that, it was coming too soon after the assassination on the Citadel, so some with an agenda would use this to say it was part of a burgeoning pattern of Alliance-on-Hierarchy aggression. It was the sort of mole-hill incident that could easily become a mountain if someone thought they could benefit from it.
The whole thing had gotten complicated due to circumstances. She told Wrex she would help him before the admiral's assassination. Wrex would not see the logic of delaying the job; he would not care if some Hierarchy official might use this for their own agenda. Wrex would not appreciate the need for subtlety as she did. She would have to hope that Actus' criminal activities did not make him a sympathetic victim.
Thus, after the clerical matters were settled, Shepard ordered the Normandy to depart the Citadel. What boggled the mind was that the Phoenix system was not uninhabited. Its third planet, Intai'sei, was home to scattered settlements totaling around one hundred fifty thousand people. The desert world was equal parts geological laboratory, mining operation, and energy generation and storage factory. Then there was also the asteroid-based Pinnacle Station, a Krogan Rebellions-era Hierarchy command center turned top-secret training facility nominally owned by the Alliance, but operated on a strict Council-mandated share agreement with the Hierarchy. Actus was audaciously hiding under all those noses on the oddly pleasant planet which was overlooked simply because why bother with it while Intai'sei was one orbit over? She would give him credit for the panache.
As for the planet itself, Tuntau's 20 AU distance from Phoenix kept it from baking in radiation well enough that structures only needed standard shielding or burial, despite the fact that the planet had no magnetic field. Its 11,867 kilometer radius and 3.78 Earth masses created only 1.1g, which would not make bones creak. It rotated once in a manageable 66.7 Earth hours as well. The icing on the cake was that its 3.12 atm predominantly methane and helium atmosphere kept surface temperatures balmy, and no oxygen meant the methane would not burn.
When the Normandy arrived at Hydra, Joker pointed them right at Phoenix and put the ship in FTL. The distance between the systems was five light-years, which meant the Normandy's thirteen light-years top speed would turn it into a scant eight hour hop. Wrex only provided the planet; he did not pay his source enough to get him the exact coordinates. It would be up to EDI to find the base, and that would probably take longer than getting there.
The Normandy entered Tuntau's orbit in the middle of their night cycle, so Joker programmed the ship's navigation systems with a series of orbits that would allow EDI to conduct scans while he got some sleep. The ship's often unused VI auto-pilot could avoid collisions with space-borne objects, but it was not smart enough to avoid actual intelligence. EDI could easily pin-point structures on the surface, and by mid-morning she had the right location. It was rather hard to miss the only structure that registered as warmer than all the others, which meant an actively regulated environment inside.
Thus it was two after noon that Shepard went down to the Shuttle Bay, wearing her full gear, with Nike behind her back, helmet under her arm, and armor positively squeaking and still smelling of the factory and airbrush paints and sealants.
One of the shuttles was down on the deck, and Wrex was standing by the open hatch with his arms crossed over his chest. The marines and Tali were already waiting inside. "I'm surprised I don't have to glare your turians down." Wrex said as soon as she was within earshot.
"Don't start, Wrex, please." Shepard said as she stepped onto the shuttle. "You asked for them to sit this out. Don't go making me rue complying."
"Fine," he replied as he hit the panel to close the hatch with his fist.
Shepard turned to the rest of the team already there, "Now I said it before, but I'll stress it again, we are going in there to seize stolen property and arrest a person suspected of theft and piracy. He might not come quietly, but I do not want any of you to fire first. That includes you, Wrex. Standard policy applies. It's up to Actus to decide how things go down. Also in the event of a firefight, check your trajectories around any fuel tanks and crates with unknown contents; I don't want to lose evidence."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am." The marines replied in a single voice.
Shepard nodded. It went without saying that her suit recorder was running, to stage a little twist of perceptions and cover up that she was going in there knowing Wrex intended to kill. Actus, or likely his goons, would fire the first shots and become the villains of the narrative. Yes, she was using their likelihood of resisting arrest as a tool for her cover-up, but Actus was indeed a wanted criminal. Thinking about it like that kept a fraction of the guilt down. Still, she knew this was going to be one more of those things she would take to her grave.
When she turned, she found Wrex staring at her. His red eyes positively drilled through her, but there was a hint of a grin in the tip of his mouth. Shepard grinned back, which apparently communicated enough, he turned away to find a seat. She turned and moved toward the cockpit.
The descent into Tuntau's atmosphere was bumpy, and unpleasant. The Kodiak had to fight the atmosphere the whole way, and the entry corona had been rather bright, too bright for Shepard's liking. However there was little she could do about it. An actual pilot could have probably angled the craft a little differently, or come in a fair bit slower. The VI pilot performed a safe entry, not a skilled one, and they were flying through the night sky as well.
Tuntau's distance from Phoenix along with its methane and helium atmosphere meant the sky was a pale shade of blue during the day, but turned inky black at night. The high concentration of sodium and silicon dioxide in the crust made everything one of several shades of matte grey. The irregular, jagged, topography created wind channels, which invariably picked up desiccated dust. The planet's meager moisture was inadequate for permanent surface water bodies, but it fell as rain when conditions were just right. The interaction of topography and rainfall inevitably resulted in localized flash floods, with areas subject to frequent episodes having stream channels carved right down into the rocks. Flatter plains surrounded by crags bore traces of shallow lakes: quickly-eroding geometric patterns of mineral deposition along cracked dry ground and even the occasional tub ring where the mineralized water had pooled often enough to bleach the rocks.
Their target destination was set into what looked like a hollow in between some crags that had been filled in by dust. A few taps of the sensor console caused the Kodiak's LADAR array to fire off a few pings to triangulate dimensions. At barely two hundred meters cross, the little slip of flat land was tiny, but it was also well above the surrounding flood-plains, and on one side the crags opened up just enough to give it natural drainage. Sitting right on top of the little flat was a pre-fabricated structure of two levels, clearly the biggest thing that would have fit in such a tiny footprint. The infrared scanner easily picked out the three guards outside as well. There was no disguising the Kodiak's approach either, so there would be no element of surprise. Because of that the whole arrest ruse was likely going to become moot just as soon as the shuttle landed.
Out east from the little plain there was a small plateau ringed with tiny dim lights that were almost invisible above the dust. At less than a hundred meters square, it would do for their Kodiak, but hardly anything larger. She tapped at the console so the navigation system would flag the location for landing, and then flicked over to internal comm. "We're here. I'm setting the shuttle down on their make-shift landing pad. I saw three guards outside the structure, which is about a hundred meters west of the landing pad."
"So, we are waiting for one of them to open fire first?" Wrex asked.
"Something tells me we will not have to wait for long," Ashley replied.
"Good."
"Oh joy," Tali mumbled.
"We are still not rushing in there," Shepard cut in, filling the silence Tali created. "We handle whoever is outside at range if we have to. The Kodiak's kinetic barriers can give us all the cover we need, so that is what we will use."
"I figured you would say that." Wrex groused.
"Wrex, let's put it this way… why give them any chance to do damage? I don't play fair like that." Truthfully, she would have loved it if the guards realized their cause was lost and took the smart way out by surrendering. Sure they might end up facing prison terms, but was dying really preferable? If the guards were turian, she knew they would do their time, and then end up in the state's rehabilitation program, given honest work, with full pay, within a sector they had skills for, and the option of staying on the job after the tracker was removed. The Hierarchy did not institutionalize the sort of social discrimination that actually prevented petty criminals from rehabilitating. If a convict showed a genuine wish to make a change, they got every opportunity to do so.
"Alright, I want final seal checks and prep. We're coming in for a landing." She announced.
"Aye, aye, ma'am." The three marines replied in a single voice.
The Kodiak's ventral thrusters ignited to begin descend onto the landing pad, making the whole craft shudder. Shepard tapped at the console to bring the nose around to point at the compound, so as to not give anyone a straight shot at her team through a door. It would also point the Kodiak's own armament at the compound, although she would never actually open fire. Satisfied she reached up to do up her helmet's environmental seals. As soon as the last latch was shut, she heard a faint hiss as the breathing apparatus kicked in without needing to be told.
The VI landing system was more self-conscious than any pilot would be. It had to be absolutely sure that the landing surface was stable and large enough before the program would execute final maneuvers. A real pilot would have made that call with more leeway. It made Shepard realize just how spoiled she had become with Nihlus' piloting. He made everything look effortless, just a few taps of the controls here and there. The VI was slower, needlessly delaying every meter as it scanned and re-scanned the pad. The process was complicated by the sheer quantity of dust that the ventral thrusters churned up. As the shuttle finally touched down, the ventral thrusters cut out, and the Kodiak stopped shuddering, Shepard shook her head. What made her think like that now? She probably still had a wire crossed; concussions were good at crossing wires. She would blame everything on that.
Shepard flicked the cameras over to see what was going on in the back. The others were in varying stages of getting to their feet. Wrex was first, with Jenkins right behind him, ever eager. Williams was performing a last minute check on all the attachments and straps of her webbing, lest some of her gear detach in the action, and Kaidan was triple-checking his helmet seals.
Tali was still in her seat, fiddling with her Omni-tool as she held it over the metal box sitting on the seat next to her. A second later the lid lifted away, revealing that it was a docking cradle, with Tali's new drone inside. The robot had a rounded saucer section no bigger than a serving platter, with what looked like a geth's sensor array at the front, fins on two sides and a vertical stabilizer on top from which sprouted a flexible antenna that sprung upright the instant the lid was lifted away. A moment later the drone's status lights lit up, and its kinetic barrier flickered. Tali shut down her Omni-tool and the drone rose into the air. When she got to her feet and the drone followed, taking up position over her left shoulder. "Chatika and I are ready to go, Commander." She announced.
"Is it just me, or is that drone almost… geth-ish?" Ashley asked.
"A little. I integrated a salvaged Heretic primary sensor array." Tali explained calmly. "The Geth -as loathe as I am to admit it- have some areas where their hardware is superior. Their sensor arrays are sensitive, precise, and small-sized. I was not going to get anything as good elsewhere."
"That's quite clever, Tali." Kaidan assured.
"Does that mean it can see like Legion?" Jenkins asked.
"Yes. Though at a reduced resolution, as Legion…" Tali stressed the name with a faint hiss, "Has more processing power. I would need to install Geth runtimes to use their nano-processors. I intentionally made Chatika entirely VI-operated. I am not bringing any more geth online."
Shepard was not going to comment, now was not the time. "Alright people, I'm going to start depressurizing, and I fully expect the welcoming committee to give us their gun salutes the second they see us. Heads in the game!" she ordered as she tapped the controls. They could not expose oxygen to the planet's methane, as it would be enough to create a single nasty fireball. She knew better than to give Actus' goons the opportunity. If it was her, she would have fired an incendiary round into the shuttle, just to punish the enemy if they were not smart enough to depressurize.
While the shuttle systems worked, she moved over to the comm station. With a couple taps she had the Kodiak scan the airwaves. It did not take long to pick up the single signal in the vicinity. The mercenaries were using lower powered, long-wave frequencies that would not propagate very far. She would give them her ultimatum across the band, and cite the log this would leave on the Kodiak's systems as evidence that nothing shady went on here. She reconfigured the Kodiak broadcast on that same frequency, but more powerfully, to highjack their signal. A final tap opened broadcast, "Attention to the individuals who are receiving this signal, this is Commander Shepard of the SSV Normandy, of the Earth Systems Alliance Fifth Fleet. You presence in the Phoenix system violates Alliance sovereign territory. I am authorized to place all of you under arrest. Be advised that I am aware of your fugitive status with the Hierarchy. Any resistance will be met with equal force."
A split of second silence and then the frequency was suddenly hissing with static. Shepard closed the link with a single tap. They got that message loud and clear and decided to scrap the frequency, flooding it with static. Now they would turn to suit-to-suit communication; with the hopes that after they got rid of the interlopers they could go back to using their regular equipment. Shepard grinned and opened the door that separated the cockpit from the cabin. "I announced our intent over the comm. They flooded that frequency with white noise, that's as much a reply as anything."
"Finally we're doing something my way," Wrex chuckled.
Shepard would not give Wrex a reply, not with her actions going on suit record. Instead she tapped the console by the shuttle's hatch to open it even as she reached behind her back for Nike. The door opened and suddenly the Kodiak's shield flared.
"That's their crack-shot," Shepard said blandly. It was the sort of wild turkey shot that indicated the shooter was audaciously announcing that he was there, as if he thought none of them had a functional pair of eyeballs to notice him when the shuttle had been coming in for a landing. Maybe he was also just poking the Kodiak's shield, trying to figure out how much it would take before coming down. Unfortunately for him the Kodiak's barrier could withstand a grueling punishment from infantry weapons. The shuttle was not compared to a cockroach for nothing. The crack she heard was definitely too high pitched to be an AMR. "I'm going to handle things here, give me a moment… going geist!"
She had configured the new armor to work on the same verbal commands as the old, simply because she was used to those. However, her new cloak used slightly newer firmware and emitter configuration, which eliminated some of the rippling, but the fundamental problem was the same, she had no shields while the cloak was active. She would use the Kodiak's own envelope as her protection.
Shepard stepped out of the shuttle as soon as the cloak settled. The Kodiak's shield did not start flickering, so that told her the cloak was functional. She lowered herself into a familiar shoulder-firing position as she stared out over the distance. The cocky crack-shot was on top of the prefabricated structure, where the elevation gave him almost the same protection as a sniper tower, but only just almost. The roof had no railing behind which he could duck, and turians were not known for their ability to minimize their profile by shooting prone, their armors tended to exaggerate their protruding breastbone, acting too much like the keel of a ship out of water.
Her HUD was flashing the usual wind velocity, humidity, temperature, and pressure readings, but at one hundred meters she had much more leeway to eyeball the whole thing. She brought Nike online and raised the rifle to eye-level and peered down the scope. Two of the three guards, those on the ground, were huddled behind a makeshift metal half-wall barrier, their rifles were in position and powered up, but even if they opened full auto on the Kodiak, its shields would take more than one of each of their clips, she had time to deal with them last. She turned the rifle up and found the crack-shot on the roof. He had his own rifle aimed right at the Kodiak's door. It was just his misfortune that she had a cloak and was about five meters left of it. Her left index finger slid off the guard and onto the trigger even as her thumb ghosted over the ammo mode selector and Nike whined as it charged a slug to disrupt shields.
"Skipper, I can see your rifle lights!" Ashley called urgently but without shouting.
Shepard cursed under her breath; if Williams could see the rifle's status lights through the cloak, so could the guards, which meant she had not configured the cloak correctly. "Eyes on me," she mumbled, to turn the cloak off.
The two guards behind the barricade leveled their rifles on her instantly, but then they did not fire. Shepard looked back up. The crack-shot had turned his aim as well. Had he told them not to waste their ammo on the Kodiak? Did he think he could punch through the shields himself? True she was about on the outer reach of the Kodiak's envelope, where the shield would have less density, but did he have a gun powerful enough to make that shot? Then her own kinetic barrier flared to life, layering under the Kodiak's, the marksman officially had no chance of killing her in one shot.
"Shepard, handle the idiot on the roof… and leave the other two to me." Wrex said as he stepped out from the Kodiak, kicking up new plumes of dust as he went, and his Claymore powered up with a loud whine.
"That's the plan," she replied. Yet now she saw the guard turn, the muzzle of his rifle following Wrex's movements. The krogan was a target they did not expect! The sniper betrayed his surprise with his gut-check target change. She took a deep inhale and guided Nike's crosshairs onto his head, then began her exhale as her finger tightened on the trigger. Nike cracked, the sound echoing off the crags, the marksman's shield flared as he stumbled backwards. Wrex took it as his signal and charged, his body suddenly engulfed in a periwinkle-colored biotic flame.
Shepard inhaled again. She did not dare look away from the rooftop, not without confirming that kill. Vincent would have killed the crack-shot for sure, but Nike, even with a Spectre-grade rail extension muzzle brake mod, was shooting at ten percent less power. She did not want to find out that that the bullet had failed to kill.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ashley come up and kneel next to her, her own rifle drawn. "Commander, I will keep an eye on the roof for you."
"Thanks, Ash." Shepard replied as she turned her rifle down.
Wrex had reached the barricade behind which the other two guards huddled; now knowing they were pinned by a crack-shot. A moment later she heard the Claymore boom, its barrel pressed right to the metal barrier.
The two guards bolted as their shields flared, but then one clamped a hand to his side. Shepard raised a hand to her HUD to flick up the magnification. The turian was holding a breach in his suit shut, and there was blood trickling around his fingers. Some of the scattershot had clearly gone through the barrier and past armor where he had been pressing up against the barricade.
The other raised his rifle and fired full automatic at Wrex. Shepard turned Nike on him, but then Wrex stepped right into the line of fire and she had to keep her fingers off the trigger. The krogan's shields flashed even as his whole body erupted with a bright periwinkle corona, shields and biotic barrier absorbing everything. Then the mercenary's rifle clipped out and he did a rather comical double-take. Wrex chuckled, his left arm rose, fingers splayed, and the mercenary started glowing too. Then Wrex started turning his wrist, and just like that the turian mercenary's armor began to shear and fold up on itself, ceramics buckling and cracking apart. That was all she needed to see to dial back the zoom. She did not want to see what that powerful warp field was about to do to flesh and blood.
"Ugh…" Jenkins groaned. "I don't think any of us needed to see that."
Shepard could only agree. The implications of what Wrex had just done were unpalatable even for her. She turned Nike until she had the other turian in her crosshairs. He was stumbling toward the base's door, clutching his injured side, his rifle abandoned behind him. She leveled her crosshairs on his head, inhaled, and her finger dropped onto the trigger. A split of a second pause holding her breath she began her exhale as her fingered tightened. Nike cracked, and the mercenary went down. Shepard closed her eyes. Shooting people in the back of the head as they fled, weapon abandoned, would never sit well with her.
"Shepard, normally I do not like when people end my fights like that. But in this case…"
"Huh?" Ashley asked.
"I realize you only showed that coward mercy." Wrex finished.
"Mercy… right," Shepard powered down Nike and slipped it behind her back. She had to force herself to contain a little shudder. Her list of the worst ways to go was all the slowest, most drawn out ways. Being on the receiving end of a biotic warp, reave, or crushing singularity were high up there.
The thought of oscillating mass effect fields shearing and tearing at her gear and body was straight up nightmare fuel. The reave was even worse, as that ability targeted the victim's nervous system. She heard of an Alliance marine who had been reaved by a batarian pirate. The attack left him with permanent weakness and tingling in the extremities. He went from being healthy to disabled in thirty seconds, and some still called him lucky. As for the singularity, it took a very powerful biotic to generate enough apparent gravity within the field to seriously damage someone, but it easily put someone in a state of utter helplessness, to be finished off, and that was perhaps even more sadistic.
Shepard remained quiet as the group gathered by the building's door. Wrex was not even scratched, like the mercenary's effort had not mattered at all. Which it probably did not, as the suit had its kinetic shield, and Wrex had his biotic barrier as well. Shepard just turned to the door when Tali stepped past her and brought up her Omni-tool. Shepard sighed soundlessly and let the quarian work. She would be lying if she said she was not bothered by what had happened. Still, she knew that she could not show herself to be bothered. She needed to get her head back in the game. There would be time for those thoughts later.
Tali managed to get the door open in another thirty seconds. Shepard was not surprised to find a full airlock on the other side, which meant that the space inside the little structure was fully environmentally sealed. The outer door closed, and the system should have begun to cycle, but it did not. Tali calmly kneeled and pulled out a metal tool from one of her suit pouches and got to work on the maintenance hatch. Shepard did not need to be told what was up; the mercenaries had locked the airlock out. It would only buy them some time, but it also meant that they had abandoned the three men outside, which left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. If Actus had given that sort of order, she suddenly felt a whole lot less guilty about what Wrex would probably do to him. If there was one thing Shepard hated, it was those who left their own soldiers outside without them knowing. No one who would do that was worthy of being called a leader.
"I almost got it… just…" Tali mumbled inarticulately as she worked. A moment later the airlock began to hum, "There!"
"You did good, kid," Wrex said as he cocked his shotgun.
The airlock rapidly pumped out the atmospheric gasses and replaced them with breathable ones. Then the inner door opened onto utter darkness. Shepard raised her hand to bar Wrex stepping out and shook her head. He growled under his breath, but Shepard stood her ground. As far as she could see, the mercenaries had turned off all the lights to bank on their superior senses and the tactical advantage of their environment. She was not going to let anyone play into their hands. She flicked her fingers, indicating that all of them ought to take cover. The marines took up position on the right side of the door while Shepard remained with Wrex and Tali on the left.
"Tali, can Chatika give us an idea of what's in there?" Shepard asked.
"Of course!" The quarian replied, bringing up her Omni-tool to relay the orders to her drone. In a manner of seconds the drone zipped off ahead. Shepard idly expected the mercenaries to greet the little robot with a hail of fire, but as the seconds ticked there was only silence. She knew they were there, but they were clearly showing a great deal of discipline and control.
Tali brought up the relayed video feed from Chatika on her Omni-tool. The drone's Geth-based sensory was proving its worth, as the little robot could see things almost as clear as daylight. The resolution was a touch fuzzy as FLIR was never good for details, but the camera was very good at highlighting every source of heat, and this one in particular was sensitive to the point that Shepard could see where the environmental ducts and hot water pipes ran, inside the walls.
The thought that this clarity was still in a reduced resolution crossed her mind. Just how clearly would Legion be able to see in this sort of environment? Her previous supposition that the Geth and Heretics would never fall for a cloak had just been proven irrevocably. More than that, even pitch black darkness would not be her ally against them.
As far as Shepard could see the structure was just one giant square with a largely open floor plan. It looked to be two levels from the outside, but inside much of the second level was actually just a loft in the extension that hung over the airlock entrance. The lower level was nearly jam-packed with floor-to-ceiling racks of containers of every type and size. It was also not difficult to pick out the fuel tank right in the back, which was pitch black in the image, creating a blob of absolute darkness surrounded by the warmth of the wall and ducts behind it. The difference in IR emissions told her its contents were very cold, likely a gas condensed into liquid form.
"That's… a lot of things." Tali said.
"Yes, that is more than I anticipated." Wrex agreed.
"It can't be all Krogan things, can it?"
Wrex hummed thoughtfully, but did not say a thing.
Shepard kept her attention on Chatika's video feed. The drone drifted along the closest wall, sweeping the aisles. It easily identified seven turian figures on the bottom level, just waiting for them to step out of the airlock. The only reason they had not yet stormed the airlock was probably because they did not want to damage what looked to be the only exit. At the far left of the space Chatika also caught a glimpse of an all-metal stairway that led to the loft, but it was not flying at the right angle to see what was in the loft itself. The elevation would be a key advantage to the enemy, especially given that the racks were all perpendicular to it, providing little to no protection from that angle. "Tali, can you direct Chatika to give me a view of the loft?" she asked.
"Ah yes… just a moment," Tali replied as her fingers flew over the keys to issue new commands.
The drone rose into the air slowly and turned on its axis. There, bright as candles in a pitch dark room, Shepard could see three turian figures standing close to each other. Two had assault rifles, but the third had an HVR, evident by the IR emissions coming from its long warmed up rails. "I knew it," Shepard muttered. "We have seven targets on the bottom level, and three in the loft." She announced for the benefit of the marines, who were simply not in position to look at the feed. "The storage racks make four aisles, perpendicular to the loft, with two enemies in each, except the second from the right, which has three. The three on the upper level-"
Suddenly an assault rifle came to life, barking full automatic. Chatika veered sharply to avoid the volley.
"Oh no you don't…" Tali growled, as her fingers flew over her Omni-tool's keys. "Weapons unlocked… go get them, Chatika!"
A moment later a second, higher pitched rifle returned fire. It took Shepard a moment to realize that the bark sounded very much like an Alliance-issue weapon. Had Tali cannibalized more than a heretic unit to make her little drone? There would be time for those answers later. She could hear footsteps above as the mercenaries in the loft took cover. Shepard knew that they had only a scant few seconds to make their move. She shifted mental tracks and took a deep breath, "Wrex… you and I are handling the loft. Tali, I want you to follow team Bravo for now… Bravo I'm placing you in charge of the mercenaries on the bottom level, but first I want support and suppression until Wrex and I reach the stairway."
"Got it," Kaidan nodded, reaching for his own assault rifle. Ashley and Jenkins followed suit, powering theirs up with twin whines.
"Use the airlock for cover until Wrex and I distract those in the loft. One of them has a sniper rifle. Do not expose your backs until I say I have the situation well in hand."
"Yes, ma'am."
Shepard peered around the edge of the doorway and was utterly unsurprised to see that the mercenaries on the lower level had gathered close to the airlock door. Chatika was still zipping about, being a nuisance, but the drone's aim was off by whole zip codes. It only drove the mercenaries back into cover whenever its erratic bursts chanced to get too close. She reached down to turn on both Sin and Dex and looked up at the krogan standing on her right, "Let's do this."
"I'll take point, they'll shoot at me first anyways," Wrex replied.
Shepard nodded.
Wrex rounded the door jamb, hefting up his shotgun as his biotics ignited anew. Shepard followed a split of a second later, drawing her guns as she went.
The mercenaries closest to them opened fire, but Wrex was making a straight dash toward the stairway. Shepard raised Dex and fired two at shots at the mercenaries, sending them back into cover, though only one of their shields actually flared. Chatika passed over her head, firing another burst at the mercs, its bullets peppering the space around them, driving them deeper into cover. Then, Bravo joined the fray, two assault rifles spraying down the mercenaries that allowed any of their body parts to become visible. There was a single crack from above, and Bravo's rifles to fell silent.
"Wrex, I got this! Go!" Shepard whirled and looked up. The sniper was right there, aiming his gun at a rather very awkward angle at the airlock. He would not hit anyone in there who did not clear the jamb. She raised Dex and fired, causing his shields to flare. Shepard fired again, and saw the sniper duck away from the railing as his shield collapsed. Just the fact that it took two bullets from her guns to bring it down told her that he was wearing a customized hardsuit.
She did not get to mull on it for very long as an instant later her own shield flared as some of the mercenaries rounded on her with their weapons. Even before she could react properly two assault rifles retorted from the airlock, driving some of the mercenaries back into cover, and there was a single thud as a body hit the floor. Yet her shield status continued to whittle down. Shepard saw a figure duck from inside the airlock, making a beeline toward her. A moment later her shields stopped flaring as Kaidan stepped in, assault rifle in his right hand, his left raised, fist closed, as he projected a compact biotic barrier around the both of them. Shepard heard booming footfalls on metal, Wrex had reached the stairway.
"Give us a few seconds, LT!" Ashley called as she emerged from the airlock, her rifle in one hand. In her other, Shepard recognized a flash-bang grenade, and the gunny already had her thumb in the pin ring. A moment later she pulled it free with a casual twitch, "If you don't want to be blinded or deafened… look away and mute externals… NOW!" She called as she threw the canister. Its safety lever dislodged just before landing. Shepard had barely enough time to holster both her guns, turn away, and slam a thumb on her helmet controls, and then there was an iridescent white flash with a sharp crack that she still heard through the suit.
"Jenkins, now!" Ashley called.
Jenkins did not reply.
Shepard turned back and raised her hand to her controls again, activating her external microphone again. Ashley's rifle cut in mid-burst, beating a controlled staccato. Shepard caught Jenkins come out of the airlock, holding two much larger cylindrical canisters. He yanked the pins on both and flicked his hand, sending one skittering across the floor to stop between two of the closet aisles. Then he wound up like a baseball pitcher and hurled the other clear across the room, where it landed and bounced twice before skittering some distance.
The first cylinder gave a loud pop and hiss as it began to billow blinding smoke that quickly filled half the room. The other charge took a second longer, but it too popped and began to smoke, hissing all the same. Jenkins whipped out his own rifle and joined Ashley in descending on the now completely blinded mercenaries. Bravo was clearly taking no prisoners. Shepard looked to Kaidan as the smoke reached her and began to billow around her legs. He had drawn somewhat closer, keeping his biotic barrier up.
"We got this." He said.
There was a loud crack from above, Wrex's shotgun.
Shepard looked up, but the flash-bang had done its job a little too well, she could see little more than whatever was emitting light: hardsuits and weapons. She looked around, but now the smoke was such that she could not even see the other mercenaries at all. She did see Tali come out of the airlock, her Omni-tool up, her fingers dancing through its glow as she directed Chatika to swoop into the fray. Then Kaidan turned and the barrier he had been projecting vanished. He raised his own rifle into firing position and unleashed his own barrage.
Shepard turned and bolted for the stairway, and she just reached it when the marines clipped out. The eerie silence did not last long as suddenly there was a deep-pitched whomp. A moment later Shepard heard something crack against metal and then thud again the floor. She turned and grimaced. There was a set of flickering armor lights piercing the smoke at the base of the closest industrial shelving units, and it was no great mystery how someone got there.
"Actus!" Wrex bellowed at the top of both sets of lungs. His footfalls positively thundered across the loft's floor.
The mercenaries on the lower level began to recover from the flash-bang, but now the smoke was curling up toward the ceiling, making them nothing more than faint moving streaks of light in the gloom. A non-Alliance assault rifle began to beat its tempo somewhere behind her. Shepard moved to turn, but stopped herself. This was not her fight. Kaidan said they could handle it; she would have to trust him, even if her overprotective instinct wanted to jump into the fray and help her team. It was still four of them against five, maybe six mercenaries. Shepard had to shake her head to come out of it. At the end of the day four versus five, or even six, created a relatively equal ratio. Wrex was facing two on his own.
She was on the stairs and climbing as fast as she could. She paused near the top to peer over the last stair even as she yanked out her knife. With her night vision effectively shot and the smoke from below now high enough that it had begun wafting across the loft's floor plates, she could not trust herself not to shoot Wrex. She would be less likely to mistake his enormous form for an enemy at close range. If anything, getting that close to an angry krogan was more dangerous for her.
What she saw made drawing her knife seem redundant. Wrex had already pushed Actus back into the wall. Judging from the position of the turian's suit lights, the krogan also lifted him off the ground, likely by the neck. Shepard could not be sure right at that moment, but it seemed like something Wrex would do. She drew near, making sure to keep the knife pointing down.
"Wrex, it's just me… so don't lash out." She said as a warning.
"Relax Shepard, I got everything under control. Here, let me introduce you… this pile of sniveling varren shit is Tonn Actus. He bought and sold my people's cultural legacy for a dirty cred."
"You say that like I diminished something." Actus replied. "Your cultural legacy of wanton barba-"
Wrex lifted him away from the wall only to slam him right back into it again, choking off the rest of whatever he was going to say.
"Mindless brute!" Actus gasped out.
Wrex lifted him away from the wall again, but at that moment Shepard chose to step in and place her hands on Wrex's arm. "Wrex, don't. There's no point in prolonging this." As gruesome as what Wrex was going to do was going to be, she did not want him dragging it out. Torture and the sight of someone enjoying it had never, and would never sit well with her.
"You're in luck, Actus." Wrex rumbled.
"Yes, I am in luck. The mindless brute takes orders from a human."
Wrex turned his head to look down at her, despite the fact that because his helmet visor was opaque, she would not be able to look in his eyes, "You hear that, Shepard? Those are his last words."
Suddenly Actus was choking and gurgling. It took a moment too long for Shepard to realize that Wrex had tightened his grip around the turian's neck. Before she could open her mouth, Wrex slammed Actus into the wall again. There was a resounding crack and fragments of ceramics began to fall to floor, tinkling like shards of broken glass. She chose to bend down and sheath her knife. Wrex let go, and Actus dropped like a lead weight, slumping into a sitting position, his arms dropped to his sides. From her angle Shepard saw how his neck turned. There was no mistaking that angle for anything but what it was. Wrex had broken his vertebrae. She could not help but shudder. At least that was a relatively quick way to go, she hoped.
"Commander, is everything alright?" Kaidan asked.
"Yes." Shepard replied automatically, if a touch numbly.
"It is done," Wrex added.
"We finished the mercenaries down here as well," Ashley slipped in. "Which means we control this place."
"What now?" Tali wondered.
Shepard knew this was another time where an old saying was apt, in for a penny, in for a pound. For there to be even a slim chance of justifying this and chalking it up as a win in her ledger, she needed to finish it. She straightened and looked away from the place where Actus had slumped over. "First thing first… we need to get the lights back up. And maybe find the environmental controls… see if we can vent some of this smoke."
"Ah yea… I realize two smoke grenades might have been too much. Sorry, Commander," Jenkins said sheepishly.
"I could have told you," Ashley added.
"As long as you guys are not harmed, then two smoke bombs are just right." Shepard replied.
"I guess I'll go see if I can find the environmental controls," Tali slipped in quietly.
"We'll help," Kaidan replied.
Shepard turned to Wrex and watched as he rolled his shoulders, as if shrugging off a huge burden. Then he turned and looked right at her. Shepard lowered her gaze to the floor, "Wrex, I hope you have a plan for what to do with all these things."
"I made some arrangements. First though, I want to find my clan's armor."
Despite the relative small size of the compound, it still took Tali nearly half an hour to find the utility closet. The door was cleverly installed to be flush with the surrounding wall and thus completely invisible in the darkness. Its control console was likewise hidden under a flush panel that had to be shifted out of the way. Tali had to resort to Chatika's highest sensitivity setting and following the electrical conduits in walls, which the drone could just barely see at that setting. Even then, whoever had actually built this place had taken the easy route and wired the conduits along and to the underside of the environmental control ducts, which were actually warmer than the cables themselves, and so overcast the wires, swamping the FLIR image with undetailed white blobs.
Nevertheless, when the lights flicked on, Shepard clapped the young quarian on the shoulder and hailed it a job well done. Now that they did not have to stumble in the dark, finding the environmental control overrides was much easier. Soon enough the air scrubbers were working at maximum capacity to remove the smoke chemicals from the air. Then they turned to the most important matter at hand, figuring out where Actus had stashed the Clan Urdnot ceremonial armor, what else he had there, to whom it belonged, and what they were going to do with it all.
Thus Shepard found herself in Actus' living quarters slash office, which was up in the loft. The place was more of a micro-apartment than an office, and it definitely looked out of place, much too posh to be there. It also spoke volumes about its owner. Actus had not been an aficionado of Krogan things alone. The room's walls were bare and grey, but covered with works of art of various sources. Shepard thought that some of the geometric shapes and splashes of color were Turian. She could not begin figuring out what they were supposed to represent.
The office area floor was dominated by a large dark blue and cream rug, on which stood a real black wood desk, lacquered to perfection in order to show off the rippling grain. The profiteer had been relaxing when the alarm had sounded, as he had left his crystal decanter of spirits on the table, the matching crystal glass still had two of her finger-widths in whatever it was he had been drinking.
His sleeping area was separated from the rest of the room by a large folding screen made of the same dark wood, and set with what looked like copper panels etched with geometric designs. One peek behind there, merely in the interest of securing the room, had told her plenty about the man's vices. He had not even bothered to hide his bottle of Hallex. She was pretty sure that if she went digging around she'd probably find other things as well. Shepard honestly did not want to dig that deep. She only took a cursory peek into the tiny bathroom attached to the space in order to ascertain there was no one hiding in there. Once she confirmed that, she made her way back to the office portion.
By now Tali had perched on the comfortable plush executive chair in front of the turian's terminal. Wrex stood off to the side, leaning on the wall as he waited for her to hack through the security on Actus' terminal. Ashley stood inside the room, her back to the doorjamb, arms crossed over her chest. Shepard could see Kaidan and Jenkins on the other side of the door, keeping watch though Kaidan was eating a protein bar, replenishing the energy he burned with his biotics.
"Are you alright, Kaidan?" Shepard asked.
"I have a mild headache, Commander, but I can safely say I've had much worse," The lieutenant replied.
Shepard nodded, "Good. I'm glad."
"I'm in!" Tali chorused suddenly. "He had relatively weak security. It's like he never figured someone would track him down and get here."
"Let's be glad that greed and pride lead to these sorts of mistakes. It's the only reason they get caught." Shepard said.
Wrex pushed off the wall and moved closer so he could peer at the screen over Tali's shoulder. "Do you see the inventory logs?"
"I'm looking for those, Wrex. But this hard-drive is massive. Ugh… and there's quite a bit of pornography." The quarian's discomfort and distaste were obvious for all to hear. "I need to understand how he sorted things."
Shepard drew near the desk to peer over the quarian's other shoulder, but the girl must have been using a suit HUD overlay translation program, since the terminal was definitely set to display in some Turian script. She turned and looked up at Wrex. "Alright while we're waiting on that… Wrex, you said you made some arrangements?"
"Yes, I rented a long-duration storage unit on Intai'sei, in one of their old mineral mines. I have my own connections, Shepard. My contact ought to be on Intai'sei right now, waiting for my word. I was promised he would have a shuttle capable to ferrying all those containers over."
"Unless that shuttle can land where our Kodiak is…" Shepard replied. "And if it can, then this is going to take more than one trip."
"Yes, Actus has more of our property than I was initially led to believe," Wrex replied.
"Where did you learn about this, if I may ask?" Shepard asked.
"The Shadow Broker." Wrex replied. "I ran some bounties for him a few times. It was about time I asked for a favor back."
Shepard was glad that her closed helmet was enough to prevent Wrex from seeing her grimace. That little revelation made the bad taste in her mouth even worse. The Shadow Broker represented an unsavory realization: information, gossip, and secrets had become just one more commodity. She had never dealt with the Shadow Broker, or his agents, and would have preferred to keep it that way. The price tag on the information did not list all the surcharges, and not all of those were in credits.
One could not even be sure what or whom the Shadow Broker was. Some said his or her reach surpassed even the Salarian STG's. A few insisted that the Shadow Broker was the STG. Then some said no single individual could ever possibly have such an extensive network in the first place, thus there had to be multiple Shadow Brokers. After all, to surpass the STG, which was an organization of countless thousands of agents, there had to be just as many Shadow Broker agents. The theory was supported by the fact that the Shadow Broker had existed in some form or another for over a hundred years.
Shepard dismissed the idea that the Shadow Broker was either affiliated or part of the STG. The Salarian Union made no great secret of the fact that the STG was always watching, nor that the organization had their share of assassins, saboteurs, and what they were capable of. The Salarians were also not very fond of spreading what they knew, so it did not make sense for them to have an arm of the STG that was all about leaking what they knew to the highest bidder. Could the Shadow Broker have a double-agent in the STG? Maybe. But the STG did not wear the Shadow Broker like a mask.
Beyond that, she was of the opinion that the truth was somewhere in the middle of all that was left. The Shadow Broker had to be a corporation that dealt in information and secrets, and it had the onion layers of agents to match. However she did not think the network would have survived the death of its original operator. After all, organized crime of that sort lived and died with the charisma of its leader. Thus this leader would have to be either Asari or Krogan. The former seemed more likely than the latter. If she was right, then she would not be surprised if the whole thing ran out of some swanky Nos Astra high-rise. It just made sense that where one could openly buy the contract for an "indentured servant" in one lounge and a year's supply of hard drugs in the next; one ought to be able to buy blackmail in the third.
"I found it!" Tali chorused loudly.
Shepard quickly realized that Tali found the man's accounting and inventory log database. Right then she the screen displayed the transaction records. The column for acquisitions was much longer than the one for re-sales. Just the fact that he used the term "acquisitions" instead of "purchases" was telling. The profiteer clearly bought and sold art in general, though he kept a great deal of material for his own personal pleasure.
"Hmm…" Tali went on as she switched over to the database's integrated inventory management module. "This is meticulously organized. Unlike the rest of the system."
"Can't buy and sell if you don't keep your books in order," Shepard murmured.
"Yes…" Tali replied. "I'm looking for Krogan armor, but… oh wow. The clan names are right here! Let me just-" Tali trailed off as she brought up a search line and typed in a series of symbols. The screen flicked and brought up a list of three things. "Yes! Here it is. Krogan artifacts labeled Clan Urdnot. One ceremonial blade and… two suits of armor?"
"If he went for the set," Wrex explained, "One would be the clan leader's and the other the shaman's."
Tali's fingers flew over the keys as she brought up the database entries for all three items. "Well… the blade is apparently in the same crate as the clan leader's armor, so you're looking for two containers. Here, these are the numbers that are on the crates. The manifest says they ought to be in the back of row one, that's the one closest to the airlock. I can have Chatika show you."
"I will find them myself." Wrex replied.
"Alright." Tali nodded.
"In the meantime, send the whole database to my Omni-tool."
"Alright, it'll take me a few minutes." Tali's fingers resumed moving over the keys.
Wrex did not linger though. Shepard watched as he breezed out of the room with all the intent of someone on the war-path. Kaidan and Jenkins practically had to leap out of the way. A moment later Shepard decided she had earned the right to be a little curious, so she followed him.
She caught up to Wrex on the stairs as he made a beeline toward the opposite back corner and tried her best not to pay much attention to the bodies. She knew that Admiral Hackett would send in a clean up crew. They would transfer the bodies to Hierarchy hands, to be handled however they saw it fit.
Wrex's Omni-tool lit up as the database began to download, but he ignored it as he walked. Shepard remembered the arrangement of symbols that ought to be on the suits of armor. Actus had done them all a favor; the two crates differed only in one digit. Finding them would not be as hard for those who could not read the script.
Wrex finally stopped a few meters down the row where Tali said the crates would be, "Found them!" he called. "They're on the top-most shelf."
"You want to take a look at them now?" Shepard asked.
"Yes. I don't want to find out that Actus was actually an idiot and bought fakes. I don't need someone else's ceremonials either."
Shepard looked up; the cases were quite large; she could imagine the armor pieces were laid out like they would be inside her mobile locker. Except if Wrex had a mobile locker, it would be the size of a large cupboard. His armor was almost bulkier than him, and even then he was not even wearing one the bulkiest models there were.
She glanced around and smiled when her eyes landed on the counter-gravitic container lifter docked in its recharge cradle right in the very corner. It had much in common with the gantries at the old international container sea ports, except the smaller flying drone model designed for lighter loads used magnets and metal plates instead of rotating hooks that fit into holes in the container's corners. Shepard grabbed the remote and fired it up, and after some poking around to figure out what all the buttons did, it was a matter of guiding the frame up to the containers.
Flying the darn thing was easy, aligning it just right to latch onto the box's metal plates? That proved a little tricky, Wrex watched her fail at it with a growing sense of amusement, judging by his harrumph. Still, the remote control flashed green, indicating the magnets finally had a good latch; the whole box was suddenly surrounded by an extended mass effect field that reduced its mass, allowing the drone's propeller thrusters to shift the whole thing at her command. A few more commands had the whole thing down on the floor.
"Now I know why you let Kryik do the flying," Wrex said.
"Yes well, we all have our flaws, even you, Wrex." Shepard replied as she decoupled the lifter and steered it right back up to get the next box.
"Yes, I suppose you can't be perfect at everything you do, no matter what you'd like everyone to believe."
"I never said I was perfect." The second crate latched on easier, as she now had some idea of how to move the drone into position. Soon enough it too was down on the floor and she ordered the drone to go back to its cradle. Once the robot had landed, she powered it down and set the remote control back where she found it. When she turned around she saw that Wrex had unlatched the crate, lifted the lid, and peered in.
Then he straightened and looked back at her, "It's the real thing!"
Shepard peered into the crate. Just like she had expected, the armor was in pieces, laid into foam padding. "Well… It's seen better days," she said.
Wrex laughed, "Seen better days… that's an understatement! It's a piece of crap!"
Shepard had consciously chosen to make an understatement so as to not be seen stating the obvious. The armor was essentially worthless for combat. Not a single plate was entirely in tact. All of them were chipped and dented at the very least. The paint, which she assumed had been crimson at some point, had faded in most places and gained a slight orange tinge where it had not been scratched off entirely. The shoulder plates were perforated. One of the thigh guards was outright shattered and glued back together, though whoever had done it matched the pieces up near perfectly and used only minimal filler for areas where tiny slivers were missing. The helmet, as Wrex had said before, was horned, and one spike was badly bent out of shape. The worst damage was on the chest-plate, and Shepard could not even begin figuring out which scratches, nicks, and flaws had been caused by over a thousand years of exchanging hands, and what might have been there originally.
"I can not believe my ancestors ever wore it…" Wrex went on, his voice dropping lower, more thoughtful. "But I am glad I could get it back. Thank you, Shepard."
"You are welcome." What more could she say? She would not be caught dead revealing the qualms she had about the methods they had to employ to get the suit. "I help my crew however I can."
"Yes, after what you did for Tali, Vakarian, and Kryik… I figured you would. You're the best employer I've ever had."
"Thank you." Shepard replied.
"You're probably the best friend I've ever had too."
Shepard blinked, honestly surprised. Since when did Wrex go about calling people his friends? Calling her the best employer he ever had? That would be a professional compliment, but a friend? Wrex kept people at arm's length most of the time. Did his time on the Normandy make him trust her that much? "Thank you." She repeated.
Her uncomfortable feeling only swelled, except now it was made worse by the arrival of guilt. Wrex was being honest with her, but she was not honest with him. The deeply cynical part of her told her to keep her mouth shut, as admitting to what she really thought could only make things worse. However the honest part said that no relationship could be founded on lies. Even her cold war with Saren was fundamentally honest, with no pretenses or artifice. He would know that she would use him as a pawn if she deemed that expedient, and she knew he would bury her career six feet under if given an opening. Basically each knew where the other stood.
The issue of lack of actual trust between Wrex and her was different. "Wrex, I'll be honest with you… this whole thing just does not sit well with me. I mean I'm all for helping my crew, but the timing could have been a little bit better." She figured now ought to be a half decent time to come clean. They had secured the things. Wrex ought not to react too badly. "It's not even your fault. More like… someone on the Citadel is assassinating Hierarchy officials, and they're making it look like it's on Alliance orders. Now here we are… and I don't even have Nihlus' involvement for the deniability."
Wrex hummed. "It's that admiral, right?"
"Yea, he was the captain of the ship that fired the first shots of the First Contact War."
"And he gets killed on the anniversary of the armistice."
"Yep. No coincidence there."
"And then I asked you not to involve Kryik." Wrex went on.
Shepard nodded. "You can see how this appears, right? The point is… I can't be that detached from political considerations. There are consequences to my actions."
Wrex stared right at her, suddenly deathly serious, "You could've told me. If it was that… I could've tolerated Kryik."
"Hah. I didn't want to step on your toes."
"Wouldn't have felt it if you had." Wrex replied, amused.
Shepard shook her head, "There's one other little issue I got. It's what you did to those mercs. Warping that mercenary outside, and then breaking Actus' neck. I just…" She trailed off; suddenly she realized that Wrex would know where she was going with that. "Watching you warp him… made my skin crawl."
"I see. So the great Commander Shepard can be bothered by something?"
"You're not…" She trailed off.
"Angry? Listen, Shepard, I know what you're capable of. I've seen you wreck a former commando to protect Kryik the day we met. You're a fierce fighter… so I can respect the difference between our methods. We are good."
"Thanks, Wrex." Shepard sighed. She would not dare and ask him to tone it down next time, but maybe it would be something he kept in mind. One could hope, right?
"Now come on. I want to show you the shaman's ceremonials. They ought to be in much better condition." Wrex turned to the other crate.
Shepard nodded and said nothing at all. If Wrex wanted to show off his clan's treasures, who was she to tell him no? When did anyone ever get to see a krogan talk about something like that? Wrex must have been in very good spirits right then to be in this sort of mood.
Author Notes: Now that you enjoyed that, hopefully, I want to apologize about being a month late. I got absolutely hammered with busy times, and on top of that I went and broke my glasses in a moment of utter carelessness. It took two long weeks for everything to process to get a new pair. I have a high index (- 6.25) in both eyes and astigmatism. Worst two weeks of my life. They just compounded the stress of everything else.
General Notes:
Drone Changes – Here I've eliminated the allowances required by game mechanics. Drones no longer pop out of hammer space as glowing orbs of energy. They actually have hardware, so they're bulkier, and require recharging, resupplying, etc. They can also be permanently destroyed. Disposable drones exist, but Tali's is not that type.
Chapter Notes:
Magnetic Belts – For a terrestrial (rocky) planet to generate a magnetic field, it needs: (1) A differentiated core/mantle composed of enough heavy metal. (2) Temperatures that keep the insides molten, with convection between core and underside of crust. (3) The right rate of planetary rotation. Here's some examples of how things come together. Mercury has a weak field. It rotation period is 58.7 Earth days, and its mean density is (5.427 g/cm^3). Earth got a stronger field, at 24 hours and (5.514 g/cm^3). Venus (5.243 g/cm^3) turns in -243 days (the minus only indicates it turns clockwise), and has none. Mars (3.9335 g/cm^3) turns in 24.5 hours, also has none. Luna (3.344 g/cm^3), turns at 29.5 Earth Days, and has no field. (Jovian "gas giants" generate fields differently.)
Matter of Density – Density gives us clues to the composition of the innards of planets. We know the densities of naturally-occurring elements, so if we look at a planet's mean density we can get an idea of what it might have. Now, I ran the calculations; Tuntau's mean density is (3.217 g/cm^3); less than our moon! Comparing it to Earth's density, given what we know of its metal contents, it's an educated guess to say that Tuntau does not have enough heavy metals to have a magnetic field.
Muzzle Brakes / Rail Extensions – A muzzle brake is a slotted attachment that sits right on the tip of a gun's barrel. A conventional firearm uses the gasses released from the gunpowder to propel bullets. The brake channels these gasses through its slots, letting them expand much more rapidly at the muzzle, which helps with unwanted barrel rise. In this setting it actually helps with cooling. When the slug crosses the muzzle, the heat generated is dispelled to the air that circulates freely in the slots. The rail extension part gives the slug extra acceleration and thus kinetic energy, but the muzzle brake part keeps that from putting extra heat load on the thermal clip. The trade off is that with the rails exposed, they're more sensitive to "shorting". A strong gust of wind can also knock the projectile out of the firing channel as it passes through.