A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH

TWO: OUTGUNNED

Butler was intrigued by Ripper, not least because he'd never met a turian biotic before. The lack of tattoos on his red-brown skin was unusual as well, but he hadn't quite understood the significance of them until Sidonis had called Ripper a fucking bareface and accused him of being a traitor inserted by one of their enemies. It had taken a few minutes for Garrus to calm things down, ending with Sidonis sitting in simmering silence. Ripper had barely reacted. He reminded Butler of Melenis: both of them had an eerie sense of detachment to them, as if they were looking at the world from behind a window rather than actually living in it. Melenis was, in a way, but Ripper had no such excuse. He was sitting just across from Butler, but he somehow seemed a lot further away. And he's the man who put my head in his crosshairs.

To his credit, Ripper had apologised for that, though he'd maintained that it had been necessary to prove he wasn't there to kill them. Sidonis had objected again, but a harsh put-down from Garrus had shut him up. He was still sitting slouched in his chair to Butler's left, glowering across the table at Ripper.

He annoys Garrus, won't speak to Erash, barely interacts with me, Sensat, Melenis and Luc, and now he's carved out a new feud for himself... I don't think Weaver particularly likes him either. Not a man of many friends, Sidonis.

One of the few times Butler had seen Ripper display even a hint of emotion was when he'd first laid eyes on the kitchen table which pulled double shifts as their conference table. That had been a surprise. Butler remembered walking into the base for the first time and being taken aback by the total lack of military intensity about the place, but he'd had the intercepted communications to tell him that Archangel wasn't exactly professional. Ripper had had no such warning, and he looked comically out of place in his sleek black armour against the backdrop of a sink piled with dirty dishes. He wasn't the only one in armour, but it stood out nevertheless – Garrus looked a lot more casual in his worn blue plate than he ever did in civilian clothes, and Weaver had been known to sleep in his.

Ripper's story was fascinating, although he limited it to a few brief sentences. He seemed uncomfortable with exposing his past like that, and that past itself told Butler why. He tried to imagine cutting off contact with everyone and everything he had known and found that he couldn't. From what he knew about turian ideals, it seemed to him that Ripper was unusually dedicated to the selflessness they were infamous for. He wondered if there was some analogue among human special forces. The idea of completely giving up an identity was alien to him, but he wasn't a soldier. Looking around the table, it struck him just how many of his colleagues seemed to have cut themselves off from their pasts. Melenis refused to discuss his, Sensat apparently thought his was a dangerous secret, Erash didn't seem to care enough to elaborate, Monteague had been evasive and vague... and how much of my own have I told them about? Pretty much nothing. Born in Russia, raised in Chicago, now living here, and that's the most that they know. Most of them have probably forgotten my first name, if they ever knew it in the first place.

The more he thought about it, the less of an anomaly Ripper seemed.

Soon enough, they turned to what passed for business in the house of Archangel. Butler wasn't surprised; it had been fairly obvious that something more important than introductions was in the works, and when Ripper began explaining it, it all sounded rather familiar.

Ripper called up a relatively up-to-date map of Omega on his omnitool and projected it into the air above the centre of the table. It had taken Butler about a year to learn to read an Omega map even half as well as he could have done with any city on Earth; he could have seen an unlabelled grid of Chicago's streets and read it easily, but Omega worked in three dimensions. In some places, there were three or even four different networks of streets stacked vertically on top of each other, and sometimes they'd criss-cross and change level without warning. It hadn't so much been built as it had slowly congealed, leaving bizarre district shapes and streets that wound and curled all over the place.

He used the central irregular helix shape of the Core Road which ran most of the way down the station, going from the semi-affluent areas at the 'top' through the slums and abandoned areas all the way down to the warehouse and industrial areas, to orient himself, then looked through the wild orange webbing of the projection to the area highlighted in blue. It was near the edge of the warehouse districts, bordering the outer reaches of the crowded slums in one of the lowest districts. How familiar.

"My information indicates that this is the single largest slaving hub on Omega," Ripper said, in a smooth, deep voice. "It's more likely than not a part of the ring formerly based on Thekal, which was the largest based outside of Hegemonic space." Ripper didn't look at Sensat as he said it, Butler noted. Monteague did. "I wasn't able to get any detailed information past that a krogan named Kron is heading the operation. However, I'm confident that the lead is sound."

"Just to clarify," Weaver said, "is this a shady-meeting-in-dark-alleyway or an oh-God-please-don't-kill-me kind of source?"

"The latter," Ripper said. "Almost word for word, in fact."

Weaver made a point of stroking his beard thoughtfully. "Interesting."

Ripper magnified the area, focusing in on a complex of four large warehouses. "There are two ships in use by the ring, both of which look like old Valar 86 models; little more than merchant cruisers, although slavers usually augment them with considerable firepower. Do we have a ship available, sir?"

"...yes," Garrus said, after a second. Nobody had missed the 'sir', but for the moment nobody said anything. "The Hailfire, a customised Yane-Hesulin Cavalcade-class. Third-hand prototype CBT from a Union frigate, though we're not sure if it'll actually work as anything more than a regular array under fire, and we think the GARDIAN systems look pretty good for a ship that size."

"Has it not seen combat?" Ripper asked, though his mask slipped a little to reveal slight incredulity. Going from his V-33 to us... talk about culture shock.

"Oh, definitely," Garrus said. "Just not with us in it."

"I see," Ripper said, with a tiny edge of uncertainty in his voice. "Who is the pilot?"

"That'd be me," Sidonis said. It was hard not to mentally insert the word 'bareface' at the end of the sentence. "Not that I have a licence."

Butler fought back a smile at the obvious strain keeping up his professionalism put on Ripper. The turian was almost looking plaintive now, and Butler found himself wondering if that composure would ever crack completely. It would be interesting to find out if there was still an actual person underneath all the layers of military conditioning.

"In that case," Ripper said eventually, "I suggest a ground assault, with the Hailfire kept standing by to pick us up if the slavers manage to get their ships away. The Cavalcade-class is about 6.4 on the Minarax scale compared to barely 3 for the 86, so it should be simple to disable them before they escape through the relay." He looked to Garrus for approval.

Garrus nodded slowly. "We have plenty of margin for error with the speed of those 86ers, which means we can afford to be careful on the ground." He looked around the table, apparently making sure that they were all listening closely. "We do not let innocents become collateral damage. Our primary goal is minimising the number of prisoners killed when we go in. Eliminating the slavers themselves comes second to that. Understood?"

Butler joined in the murmurs of assent (and one crisp 'Yessir' from Ripper) going around the table.

Garrus winced. "Just 'Garrus'. Please."

"Yess-" Ripper started, then caught himself and tried nodding instead, getting a quiet ripple of laughter.

"Right," Garrus said loudly, silencing the rest of them. "Sidonis, you'll be stationed on the Hailfire. Keep it in the spaceport until we call you. It looks to me like some of those warehouses serve as hangars for their ships, so it shouldn't be a problem for you to land and pick us up if they get away."

Sidonis folded his arms and leaned back on his chair. "Can't I just shoot them down?"

"A lot of 86 models are outfitted so that slaves don't have to be disembarked," Ripper said. "They're kept aboard, often in communal holds, while the ships go from system to system and slowly fill up at various bases. There are almost certainly going to be slaves still aboard."

"Plus you'd cause massive collateral damage if they crashed or lost reactor integrity," Garrus said. "And don't try to take out their engines without us on board. We'd need dedicated gunners for that kind of accuracy."

"Got it," Sidonis said sourly. "No fun whatsoever."

"You also don't get shot at," Erash said. "Which, given the usual way we do things, is pretty damn likely to happen to the rest of us. Right, sir?"

The corners of Garrus's mouth twitched at the acidity of the last word. "Right," he said. "We'll call it 1800 tonight, meeting here to take aircars over. Ripper, how many are we looking at?"

"Minimum fifteen, maximum forty, sir. Likely towards the higher end."

This time, Garrus ignored the 'sir'. "Then we're going to need heavy offensive firepower. Weaver, Melenis, Ripper, you're our shock troops. We'll enter here." He lit up one of the doors of the nearest warehouse to the residential districts, which faced out onto a wide street, with the tip of his finger, turning it blue. "I'd like to have more entry points, but it looks like that's all we have. That means we need stealth, so Sensat, Butler, you have to find out what sensors and so on they have up and make sure they can't see us."

Butler nodded, already mentally making notes. With no law enforcement (or law, in fact), they won't be too careful... but it seems like the base is being kept at least somewhat secret, from what Ripper said. Probably some cameras... we can fool those... could be some proximity stuff, but that's less likely...

Garrus had already moved on. "Erash and Luc, you're with me. We're there to sow chaos while the big guns rip them apart. I can snipe. Erash, I'm looking for smoke grenades, flashbangs, lots of explosions. Can you do that?"

Erash smiled. "I'm insulted that you even ask."

Garrus looked over to Monteague. "Luc, you know your abilities better than me. Do whatever you can to confuse the hell out of them."

Monteague's bald head bobbed. "I suppose I can try."

"If it all gets too scary, you could always stand behind me," Weaver said with a mocking grin.

"It would only be natural for the apes to go before the humans," Monteague said acidly.

Weaver shrugged. "You call me an ape as if it's an insult. Just wait until I get my water cannon."

It's a madhouse, Butler thought.

"If we're going to be facing krogan, we have to keep a strong vanguard," Garrus went on. "Weaver, you've got your Revenant. Ripper, what are you packing?"

"Armax Brawler-C, sir."

"So that's more for precision," Garrus mused. "Melenis, we'll need something bigger from you to balance it out."

"We've been working on a heavy machine-gun that links into his suit," Sensat said. "850 shots per minute, capable of firing without thermal clips for eighty seconds. His body absorbs the excess heat."

Garrus clicked his tongue. "Impressive. Is that ready to go?"

"I believe so," Melenis said.

"Then that's perfect," Garrus said. He stood up and leaned over the table, placing his fists on it. "Listen, I can't repeat this enough. Save the slaves. The really lucky ones might end up on Illium. The lucky ones will be sold here. And the rest will end up in Hegemony space. There aren't a whole lot of things worse to be than an alien slave out there. Frankly, if the ships launch and somehow get to a point where all we can do is destroy them or let them go, we should destroy them. You've all seen the reports. Death is better."

Who are you to say that? Butler almost said, but he held his tongue. Not the time for moralising.

A few seconds passed in silence, then Garrus stood back. "Right. We all have preparations to make. Let's get to it."

In some ways, Ripper felt the lack of discipline and professionalism was refreshing. In others, it deeply worried him.

No, he realised, 'worried' wasn't the right word. 'Unsettled' was closer. 'Worried' implied he didn't think Archangel could get results, and if anything those doubts were much lesser than they'd been before. Nothing he had said or done had been revolutionary or brilliant, but Ripper couldn't fault him; it was his situation that was precarious. A man like that could have been a great general in time, if he'd stayed with the Hierarchy. For now... his tactics are unconventional, but he knows his troops better than I do. And, more importantly, he's my commanding officer.

The lack of good intel and support had been another awkward bump to stumble over. He could still do his job, but it was that little bit harder. It felt like trying to fire a favourite gun with the trigger an inch lower and the recoil three times as heavy: manageable, but difficult.

He pointedly didn't sigh, and went back to his methodical ritual of checking his pistol. He'd done it six times already, and it was as ready as it would ever be. It seemed out of place next to the pieces the other two members of the vanguard were hefting: Weaver's Revenant was a beast of a machine already, although the human was big enough that it seemed almost normal-sized in his massive hands, but Melenis's heavy machine-gun was something else entirely. It was probably one-point-five metres end to end if not more, a huge, dark, angular block of metal hooked into the back of the volus's suit by two thick cables. Melenis was fully unfurled, standing even taller than Weaver. Both of them dwarfed Ripper.

Another interesting new experience was that rather than waiting for the green light in a shuttle or drop-pod or ground vehicle, the three of them were in a dark, empty alley between two warehouses. The distraction team was positioned in the corresponding alley on the other side of the road, while Sensat and Butler had taken to the roofs to coordinate and seek out any sensors. Our techies sitting on flat, open rooftops! Even when there's no danger of sniper fire, that still goes against everything we ever did in V-33...

He had tried to get over V-33. It was impossible. Every time he'd put it out of his mind for even a few minutes, he'd glance up and see the glass cracking and creaking under an ocean's worth of the feelings he'd fought back for a decade. Sometimes, when he visualised it – and it wasn't even by choice, more as if the visual metaphor he'd constructed for himself had taken on a life of its own – the water almost looked like blood.

It seems so unfair. We did everything right on that mission. We neutralised their comms, slaughtered everything they sent at us, eliminated three of the most prolific slavers on record, located and secured four hundred prisoners... and then they detonated those charges and killed nearly five hundred people out of sheer, bloody-minded spite. That, or some insane krogan notion of 'glory'. And how many have died for that?

"Cameras looped, thermal sensors desynced from alarm systems," Sensat said over the general comm line. "That's all they had. The way is clear."

"OK, move up," Garrus said tersely. "Stick to the shadows."

Weaver snorted as he pushed away from the wall. "They aren't going to bloody miss us, you know."

The three of them began to move quickly down the street towards the huge double doors of the first warehouse, keeping to the shadows cast by the towering, featureless blocks of the surrounding buildings. Most of Omega was crowded and densely populated, but the warehouse districts were avoided by most. Vorcha still nested in abandoned structures, but the stranglehold of the gangs and merc groups was absolute down here. Just about the only rule anyone on Omega followed with any consistency was 'don't go down there if you know what's good for you'. Which is, of course, the exact reason why we're here.

"Erash, go ahead," Garrus said. "We'll cover you."

"Oh, yeah," Erash muttered, still audible over the comm lines as he broke away from Garrus's team and ran ahead. "Send me first. I say you're still just pissed because I shot you."

Somehow, that didn't fill Ripper with confidence.

The salarian reached the ten-metre-wide warehouse doors and unhooked a satchel from his shoulder. He took out what looked like a simple metal cylinder and placed it carefully against one side, where it fastened itself, then repeated it for the other side. That was the signal to get into cover, and Ripper followed Weaver and Melenis to the right of the doors, going another ten metres.

"Clear," Melenis said.

"Clear," Garrus echoed. "Let's go."

Ripper knelt down and covered his ears.

"Fire in the hole, boys and girls," Erash said.

The explosion wasn't all that impressive visually; all Butler really saw was a muted orange fireball and a venomous-looking cloud of dark smoke that boiled up and away towards the kilometre-distant ceiling as the doors of the warehouse disintegrated. What was impressive was the cataclysmic noise it produced, a huge earth-shaking snarl flavoured with the shriek of shredded metal. He winced as he took his hands away from his ears, which were ringing even this far away. He shuddered to think what it would have been like for the six on the ground. They'd already disappeared into the smoke, and as he watched he could just make out the telltale signs of gunfire, faint blue flashes flickering up through the cloud like a distant lightning storm.

He muted his mic and turned to Sensat. "That's that, then."

Sensat nodded. "Let's go."

They headed down the stairs and to the nearest aircar, listening to the sounds of battle all the way. The gunfire was audible only as a quiet series of muffled rattles punctuated by the occasional louder explosion. There was an odd detachment to the whole affair, Butler thought. Just for a moment, he felt a pang of guilt for not being there with them. And my own hands are still nice and clean...

Sensat piloted the car as they headed back to the spaceport. The short journey passed in silence between them, but all the way there was the sound of Garrus's voice, giving orders and getting updates. They'd found bodies. It was impossible to ignore, a constant reminder that there were people putting their lives on the line as he listened to it, one made all the more jarring by the juxtaposition with his own comfortable surroundings.

I'm not a killer, he tried to tell himself, but he knew that one was a lie.

The slavers came, and the slavers died.

Ripper had automatically taken stock as they emerged through the smoke and into the cavernous depths of the warehouse. It was maybe fifty metres by forty by eight, unusually empty for such a huge room. Then again, its wares are hardly normal. To the left, there were maybe a dozen blue shipping containers of a type he recognised all too well. They were small enough to fit on the back of a standard truck, and big enough to hold about twenty people. There was a truck for each one, accompanied by twenty or so battered aircars parked almost at random.

On the right, there were prefabricated buildings, obviously only meant for temporary shelters. There were a few batarians in sight, jumping up from the table where they'd been playing cards, and more of them began to pour out of their accommodation at the sound of the explosion. About two thirds of them were armed, and there were only about twenty.

The next few seconds happened very quickly. Ripper was aware of all the component parts – Erash's smoke grenade that landed right at the feet of one unfortunate slaver, Archangel and Monteague's sniper fire, Weaver's Revenant chattering away to his left and Melenis's cannon to his right, his own pistol firing again and again at the shapes staggering through the smoke – but all he focused on was his own aim. It was difficult to see, but he thought that he'd brought down at least two.

The gunfire died down and stopped. The slavers hadn't even come in range of his biotics; as the smoke swirled away, almost two dozen bodies were strewn across the floor.

"Everyone feeling warmed-up?" Archangel said, after a short pause. "Let's go."

"Sir," Ripper said quickly, "those containers might have people inside-"

Archangel cursed under his breath. "You're right. Check 'em. Fast."

They spread out among the aircars towards the containers and began smashing their way inside. A few of them were already open and empty, but the one Ripper came to was doubly locked: once with an antique-style padlock and once with two heavy bolts. Manual locks. Effective. Fitting, as well: slavery's a relic. Why not its trappings too?

He wrenched back the bolts with a pair of rusty screeches, then stepped back and concentrated. Pins and needles raced up his left arm and sent icy shivers flickering down his spine, and his hand took on an eerie blue glow. One twist of his wrist shattered the padlock, and another yanked the door open.

They'd been and gone. The container stank of too many bodily fluids, but there was another overpowering stench in the air. It was emanating from the dead turian lying face-down on the floor. He looked about twelve, but it was hard to tell. He'd been dead for days.

He closed the door again and breathed in deeply. Do not react. Do not let yourself be ruled by emotion. Do your job.

He had seen worse. In the end, it was just another drop in the ocean.

"Nobody alive," he reported.

"Dead asari in here," Weaver said. "Nothing else."

The reports came in one by one. Six bodies total, all beginning to decay. Ripper's hadn't even been the youngest.

Archangel's voice was painfully cold when he spoke. His face was hidden by his helmet, but Ripper could hear exactly how set his jaw was in his voice. "They'll pay for this. Let's move."

Agreed, Ripper thought, and then immediately reprimanded himself for it. Personal, but not revenge. Remember.

They'd wasted no more than twenty seconds on the containers, but it had been enough. The doors to the next warehouse were already sliding open as the six of them started to head back that way, and then heavily-armoured krogan were pouring through the gap, wrestling and shoving each other out of the way in their haste to get to the battle.

The accommodation must have been segregated, Ripper reasoned. The batarians had been easy prey on their own, but krogan were another matter, and there were a lot of them. Twenty batarians could go down in one good volley. Twenty krogan would laugh it off. Archangel was right, then. That was the warm-up.

"Vanguard, form up," Archangel ordered. "Cut them down."

Ripper was already shadowing Melenis, and Weaver appeared on his right as the first shots flew. A machine-gun roared on either side of him, sending electric sprays of fire scything into the krogan ranks. The krogan didn't have the time or the inclination for tactics: a wave of twenty was coming at them like a tidal wave, firing inaccurately as they went.

Inaccurate, but numerous. Ripper winced and staggered as some of their shots impacted against his barriers, throwing off one of his shots. He steadied himself, placed his feet well apart, wrapped both hands around the heavy grip of his pistol and fired back. His first target only took two of his shots before a sniper round drilled straight through his crest and into his head, sending a ton of dead krogan crashing down like a felled tree. He shifted his fire left, linking up with Melenis to punch through the shields of an eight-footer. The krogan was coming too fast to reliably aim for the head, forcing him to shoot for the centre of mass. It took nine shots from him and probably ten times that from Melenis to finally bring him down, and even then he was still moving on the ground as yellow-orange fluid pumped out of dozens of wounds.

A grenade went off, bringing down one and blowing the arm off another, who didn't even slow down. Ripper's ears rang again. A couple more fell to sniper fire. The machine gunners brought down three or four, and he got one more by sheer luck, his last bullet before his thermal clip died happening to pulp the krogan's brain. That didn't stop the wave.

He didn't have time to reload. The first krogan was already on top of him, towering two feet over him with a roar like a jet engine. A shotgun the size of a child was aimed at his head, close enough to utterly eviscerate him. Ripper regarded the situation calmly, and dodged. Sparks flew where the bullets missed him, and the krogan whirled – slow, too slow – to find him again. Ripper's arm buzzed with power, and he summoned up some firepower of his own.

It was something of a unique talent, at least as far as he knew. Certainly nobody else in V-33 had ever been able to do it, although Hammer had been able to achieve similar effects on occasion. Butcher liked to refer to it as Ripper's party trick, and insisted on a demonstration for any new members of the team on their first mission. That had been the culture: the more blood you shed and the more impressively you did it, the more respect you got. Ripper had learned that early on, when he'd been the new meat whose lifespan all the old hands had been taking gentlemen's bets on. He'd outlasted most of them, but he'd outgrown the new kid label on his first mission when he'd shown them just what he could do. He'd earned his name faster than most. Before the mission, he'd been 33. After it, he'd been Ripper, by more or less unanimous acclamation.

His hand pulsed with raw biotic energy, and the krogan raised up his shotgun, looking to use it as a bludgeon. Ripper glanced up at it, then back down. The key was to look for the weak points, the stress points: on the krogan's ramshackle armour, the seams and joins were obvious, but without good knowledge of krogan biology... there.

His hand jerked sideways like a knife. There was a terrible sound, a crunch and crack and squelch all rolled into one, and the war-cry became a scream. Two halves of a krogan slammed into the ground. Yellow fluid pumped out from the remains like water from a hose.

He could hear Tsunami's voice in his head, still as clear as the day he'd heard her say it all those years ago. Holy shit, 33! You ripped the son-of-a-bitch in half!

Ripper shook away the memories and put a round into the krogan's skull, cutting off his dying screams. The battle was raging all around him; Melenis staggered past, grappling hand to hand with another krogan as his machine-gun dangled abandoned at his side, and Ripper reached out again with his mind. The krogan's left arm separated from his torso with a harsh tearing noise, sending him stumbling back in shock as Melenis recovered enough to snatch up his gun again and finish him off with an inescapable hail of short-range fire, then Ripper was ducking away as another krogan levelled a shotgun at him and fired – half the shields gone, can't take another one of those – and blasting the huge alien ten feet into the air with a two-handed burst of biotic energy, then he was firing on another as it bore down on a backpedalling Weaver, just in time to kill the krogan's shields as Weaver slammed his new thermal clip into place and shredded its entire torso into an explosion of yellow fluid and disintegrating flesh inside two seconds, then stumbling back as another grenade went off with a shattering bang and vivid orange fireball, and then he remembered to breathe.

The sheer lethality of Archangel's team was beyond his wildest expectations. Somehow, they all seemed to be working more or less in sync; the sniper fire was devastatingly accurate, the explosives were throwing the krogan into even more chaos, and the machine guns were linking up to lay waste to the oncoming horde. If the krogan had been smart enough to use their superior firepower to pin them down and force them into cover, there might have been a problem – but they were krogan, after all, and they much preferred close combat. That suited Ripper fine.

It had been about fifteen seconds since the krogan had started pouring into the room. More than half of them were dead, and the floor was slick with gore. The last few were being cut down even faster; their shields were already damaged and their cover (namely the other krogan) was dead on the ground. Another one made it through the MG fire and came for Ripper, and he threw himself out of the way of another deadly shotgun blast. He twisted on the floor, summoning up every scrap of biotic energy he could muster, but Melenis had got there ahead of him and was riddling the krogan with holes, the roar of his gun enormously loud in Ripper's ears. Ripper scrambled up, making a note to thank the volus later, and saw yet another krogan coming at him. I must look like an easier target than Weaver or Melenis... that, or they really despise turians. Likely both.

This one seemed to have forgotten he was holding an assault rifle – more like an LMG, actually – and was using it as a combination battering ram and club, looking to smash Ripper's head in. He had to concede that given the usual krogan accuracy and quality of his own shields, it was actually more likely to kill him like that. His hand was still singing and prickling with biotic power, and he reached out with his mind. Tearing krogan apart took a lot out of him, and he'd built up a heavy biotic debt over the last twenty seconds, so he looked for an easier option than dismemberment. He found it.

He turned his mind into a knife and stabbed straight down behind the krogan's scratched green crest, then changed the knife into a jack and poured every iota of power he had left into it. The entire crest shivered, then peeled away with a sound like lacquered wood being snapped in half. The krogan dropped to his knees, his gun discarded, screeching in terrified agony and trying to hold his head together. Ripper shot him five times, then reloaded and added three more. He looked up.

Twenty-three krogan lay dead on the floor.

"Jesus," Weaver said, coming up beside Ripper to look down at the krogan whose crest he'd torn off. The barrel of his Revenant was still hissing with excess heat."Guess that's why they call you Ripper, huh?"

"Any wounded?" Archangel said. There was something odd about his tone, Ripper realised. It was as if he wasn't expecting there to be, but with that volume of fire and that many krogan surely somebody had taken a hit.

"I think we're good," Erash said. "In every sense of the word."

"Then let's go," Archangel said, and headed for the door the krogan had come through, picking his way through their corpses. His boots splashed in the great pools of yellowish fluid leaking from them.

That's his response to six men taking down two dozen krogan without taking a single injury? He wasn't even surprised! Nobody was!

Ripper followed him, ignoring the sharp pains across his body as his punished biotic cells regenerated. He didn't understand how it had happened. Six members of V-33 might have gotten the same result, but they were the best, the most highly-trained professionals the Hierarchy's armed forces had to offer. There was no conceivable way that such a disparate group of what were, at best, talented amateurs could match that performance. Is there?

Perhaps I underestimated Archangel even more than I thought I had. Or perhaps he's just riding his luck to an extreme degree.

"Vanguard through first," Archangel said as they reached the door. "Go."

Ripper went through first, with Melenis and Weaver on either side of him. Nobody came to greet them. The krogan accommodation was a chaotic mess of old converted trailers and ramshackle prefabs, and some of them had obviously been camping out on the floor. There was nothing else in the warehouse. The sheer amount of unused space was highly unusual, Ripper thought, but then he realised why that might be. They're still recovering from Thekal, but they think they can get back on their feet. This isn't wasted space. This is room to expand.

He bit back hard on the anger the idea that they were planning on running thousands of slaves through these warehouses stirred in him, forcing it away. Do not let yourself be ruled by emotion, he said inside his head. Do not let yourself be ruled by emotion. Do not let yourself be ruled by emotion.

Sometimes, it seemed like that mantra was the only thing keeping the glass overhead intact and the ocean at bay.

"Move out," Archangel said, and began to say something else before being drowned out by a painfully loud roar, one that shook the entire foundation of the building under them. Archangel ran for the next door with the rest of them in hot pursuit, the cacophony still blasting away, but it was fading by the time they got there. When the door slid open, all there was to look at was a near-empty hangar, its only contents nests of wires and supports and access tubes lying discarded on the floor. The roof of the warehouse had slid open, and through it Ripper could see the rapidly disappearing lights of two ships, their engines still echoing faintly through the twilight.

"Damn it," Archangel hissed. "Sidonis, have you got Sensat and Butler?"

"Yep," Sidonis said. "Need a ride?"

"Yeah," Archangel said, clearly unhappy. "The third warehouse in. Make it quick."

"There in two."

"The buggers won't get away," Weaver said, shrugging. "Not with pieces of crap like the 86, anyway. We'll stop 'em."

"With boarding actions?" Monteague said. "They'll fight to the death. If they saw we were winning, they'd probably hit the self-destruct."

Weaver snorted. "Afraid?"

"Sane," Monteague shot back.

Monteague mentioning the self-destruct was a punch in the gut for Ripper, though he doubted the human knew it. He grimaced, and forced back more upstart memories. About the only thing worse than being dragged down with your enemy when you've beaten them is being the only one to survive it. He'd told Garrus that he'd survived with cuts and bruises, which had been true. He hadn't mentioned the crippling radiation sickness that had come with the miniature nukes. Or the subsequent four-month stay alone in a secret military hospital. Or the funeral. Thirty-two coffins, nine recovered bodies, a hundred unidentified body parts, and exactly one mourner.

Perhaps death would have been better. When the choice is dying for nothing and living for nothing, it's hardly a choice at all. Just semantics. What did survival bring me other than pain? I should have died then, and then there would have been thirty-three coffins and no mourners. It would have been a much neater ending... yet here I am. A walking epilogue.

He stood there and listened to the bickering and joking, not really taking any of it in. He wondered if history was about to repeat itself, if the slavers would press the button and correct the mistake of his survival with nuclear fire. The more he thought about it, the more attractive it seemed. Death is quick and painless. If only life were as well.

…

No.

Stupid. Stupid, selfish, emotional. You're better than that, Ripper.

He'd had the conversation in his head a few hundred times before, but he ran through it again anyway.

The moment you think that your pain is so unbearable, your suffering so tragic, your life so utterly all-consuming in its importance, you're worthless to yourself and to everyone else. Self-pity is poison, but all it will do is make your death slower and more painful.

A part of him answered: I don't think that's possible. He pushed it away, disgusted with himself, but he'd never be rid of it. He knew that much. And no matter how easily I can see that it's absolutely pathetic to think like that, I'll never stop.

The ship hummed into view overhead a minute or so later, setting down with a heavy clang. He barely noticed it. Its airlock was already open, and a set of metal stairs unfurled. Ripper was the last on board.

It's been so long, and I don't know what I want. No purpose. I wonder, did I join Archangel because I wanted to do the right thing, or because I was looking for someone to tell me what to do? Or was it because I knew it was practically suicide?

The deckplates rumbled beneath him as the ship fired up its engines and blasted away into the twilight.

Or perhaps because I was looking for a purpose. Archangel has one. Would it be so surprising if I was drawn to him? Maybe I'm not alone in that. I told him he was a purpose. Did I believe that? Do they? Does he?

Too many questions, but perhaps that's better than no questions at all. At least it's a start.

It's a start.