Suroc Temple, Tuchanka
Day 1, 0515
"Alright, back up. What the hell's a maw hammer?"
"Seismic device," the Suroc chieftain grunted. "Drop it, and if there's a thresher in the area, it brings it running. Err... crawling. Maybe slithering..."
"And we know there is one in the area," Vaner interrupted. "That's what attacked us earlier, right?"
"Probably... but why's there a hammer down here anyway?"
"You don't know your history, do you Jarr?" Yui scowled. Then, he reconsidered. "Of course you don't. You don't even respect your history..."
"If you're so respectful, clanless, then explain it."
"Firstly, I'm not bloody clanless-"
"- then you're a relic. Either way you don't matter-"
"SHUT UP, JARR!"
Yui's roar actually stifled the Suroc chief – he took a step back, and stared dangerously at him. The other krogan turned to Vaner and Kyra, and carried on as if nothing had happened.
"During the Krogan Rebellions, the popular line is that we were winning before the Genophage, that the turians never got close to wiping us out. But that's not entirely true... They used the Shroud to distribute the genophage – it's not far from here, on the border of Urdnot territory – which meant they had to get to the Shroud. That was the only time, before the Reapers, that a hostile force ever launched a ground war on Tuchanka. However tough our ancestors were on the surface, the turians had orbital control. They bombed them out of their homes before the infantry swept in. The krogan had to resort to using any shelter they could get. I'm guessing that included this place..."
"They turned a temple into a fortress?" Vaner gawped, with mild disgust. "This is a burial place!"
"It's also a brilliant holdout," Yui sighed. "Huge stone walls can hold off orbital bombardment for a while, and an infantry force would have to climb that staircase to get close to the defenders. If either attack breached the upper mausoleum, the defenders built these tunnels beneath. Orbital strikes can't hit that deep, and if the turians marched in on foot, the krogan would just disappear inside and hold them off tunnel by tunnel."
"Wait..." Kyra murmured, as a realisation popped into her mind. "The defenders built the tunnels? Does that mean..."
She looked back down the previous corridor, at the sarcophagi lining the catacombs.
"Yeah... These graves? They hold every warrior who died defending this place."
A dull shiver passed down Kyra's spine, and it began to make sense. The murals she had noticed in the upper mausoleum – they showed great heroes, leaders, religious figures. That was clear, even in the primitive daubs. But the illustrations down here? They showed warriors, fighting and dying. They showed turians, in bizarre, bird-like form. Chillingly, she suspected they showed just how each warrior had been killed...
"What about the maw hammer?" Jarr interrupted, impatiently.
"Last resort," Vaner scowled. "God, this is what I don't like about our people – ruthless pragmatism. If the turians overran them here, they summon the thresher. It kills them all and destroys a holy site, but hey, it was worth it, we killed some turians. Hey, we just lost a dozen females, but it's alright, they weren't fertile, now let's share out the one who is! We're not working on a cure for the bloody genophage, but it's alright, because we get to play at kings and live in the rubble!"
The clanless krogan was heaving with anger, breathing heavily and glaring around him by the time he finished his rant. Both Yui and Jarr were staring at him in shock, and Kyra was sorely tempted to take a few steps back, to get out of arm's reach.
"Well," the Suroc chieftain sneered, finally. "Thanks for the input, but I think I'll ignore the opinion of clanless-urk!"
With a whip-like crack, Yui headbutted Jarr across his brow, knocking the chieftain to the floor in an unconscious heap. He glared at him for a second, and one hand considered his shotgun, before he stopped himself.
"Suroc wants their chieftain back alive," he grunted. "Or I'd break him."
"What do we do now, then?" Vaner asked, still trying to look angry but apparently suppressing a grin at Yui's handling of the chief.
"We camp here," Yui replied. "I'm not carrying that bastard out. If we wait until he wakes up, that gives the others some chance to contact us."
"What if there are husks down here?" Kyra murmured, as that particular worry came to mind.
"We'll hear them coming. Besides, I don't think they'll risk coming near the maw hammer. They have to know what it does, Reapers aren't stupid – unless we set it off, they've got no reason to force our hand."
"Smart."
"Now, Vaner..."
"Yeah?"
"You've got some explaining to do."
"What?" Vaner scowled.
"Where did all that come from?" Yui persisted. "Ruthless pragmatism? Playing at kings?"
"It's all true," the other krogan shrugged, as Kyra watched on, curiously. "Look at Jarr. What did he do? He killed his father, just so he could sit in a pile of rubble and say he owned it. Now, the genophage is cured – I'm clanless, I'm screwed either way, but him? He could take his men out into the stars and make them heroes, give them families, while I sat and watched. Instead, it's the other way round. The chieftain's sitting here in the dust, clinging onto his broken crown, while the clanless helps save his people."
There was an awkward silence, and Kyra looked between the two. It occurred to her that both of them were rather remarkable – Vaner especially was far more eloquent than most krogan, and his speech was actually touching. That in itself was noteworthy...
"Then here's to the future," Yui grinned. "And not having one..."
"You've got a future," Vaner sighed, shaking his head.
"What future? You heard Jarr – they think I'm clanless already. The rest of Clan Hei's dead, all I have is a shack in the wilds with two asari daughters in it."
"That's still a future, Yui... It's still a family. Appreciate it, or you're as bad as him," – with the latter words, Vaner nodded at the unconscious chieftain.
There was a slight pause, before Yui steered the conversation down a different avenue.
"You know you could always go back? Your clan's not unreasonable. I'm sure they'd have you back. Failing that, Urdnot would take you..."
"I don't want them to take me... That would be admitting a mistake, and I haven't made one. If I go crawling back, I'm basically saying that the clanless can't be anything more than failures. I refuse to say that..."
