Note: Welcome everyone to a new segment of the SRC-mediated introspection of the Mass Effect universe~ Today, we revisit the first meeting between Humanity and the Quarian Pilgrim Saami'Zorah, and the two Battlemasters Urdnot Wrex, and Urdnot Grunt. Since we have seen slightly more of the consequences of the former meeting, the following few chapters (I will writing down my predicted chapter count because they are always wrong, haha...) will explore the other half, and we get to finally see what happens between the Krogan and Humanity.
Of course, being Krogan, it would be considered an insult to offer them protection. But serendipitously, Humanity, via Cerberus, has a lot more that needs to be done that could use a ... distinct application of force.
Kind-of-important Note: I highly recommend looking at this week's chapter icon, as it is the emblem for the KSSF. I am soliciting opinion on whether it looks simple, but menacing enough to have been designed by Krogan!
| [The Solar Research Council x Mass Effect]( r/MinimalistMusings/collection/8c229702-4e70-44af-8392-68df4c49ff19) | [Chapter Icon]( r/MinimalistMusings/comments/omc0gx/20210717_srcxme_262_emblem_of_the_kssf/) |
| My latest composition broadcast for more cute background music: [Muses Composes Music](YouTube | AJT5BQ18Vg8) |
Note: I will be adding in the year numbers since the first battle at relay 314, for easier record keeping.
The KSSF
Year FC 1 (Year 1 of the Human First Contact Era)
He listened with polite interest as Saami gushed about the Human dockyards and the technology available to the Quarians. These hulls, if the Admiralty accepted them, would allow the Migrant fleet to sustain almost double its current population. This, however, presented the Krogan with a problem; Saami wanted to leave as soon as possible, to bring the news back to the Fleet, but Wrex himself was still debating the merits of the proposed "Krogan Security Strike Force" (KSSF).
The offer from Harper had been interesting. Humanity wanted to fund an entire Krogan fleet to act as an arbiter within the Attican Traverse and Terminus space. From the way that the former had phrased it, he assumed that the security force would be wholly retained by Humanity with more work than they could possibly accept. The duties of the Krogan Security Strike Force would be to escort and enforce peace for all Human and Quarian-related travels, with the secondary goal of taming piracy action within the active zones of the KSSF.
When he brought up the problem of industry and the Krogan lack of fleets, Harper merely waved his concerns aside. According to her, Humanity was willing to provide the fleets, built to Krogan specifications based on Krogan, Human and Salarian technology. Before he could even bring up the question of payment and sovereignty, he was pre-empted by Harper confirming Krogan ownership of the resulting vessels. In return, the fleet and the supply and maintenance thereof would be deemed necessary and sufficient as payment for the continued services of the KSSF until a mutually agreed end of the retainership.
While the reasoning made enough sense to the Krogan, he did not think it was the entire story. As if she sensed his doubts, Harper leaned in conspiratorially with a smile, "I'll be honest with you, Wrex. Humanity needs the KSSF as an industrial sink. Because of this war, our frontier systems have gotten so much war-time investments that their industrial capacity will soon outgrow the ability for our own military to absorb. Even with the birth-rate incentives in place we will run into excess consumer manufacturing within twenty years. Expansion is how the SRC has kept relative peace within Human society, and if I am able to divert a good chunk of excess military industrial capacity away, it would allow life to return to normal within the rest of SRC space. That is why we need the Krogan Security Strike Force, just as much as you need us."
In the end, it was Grunt who pushed him to agree to a preliminary Memorandum of Understanding. The youth pointed out that they had been sitting in a stagnant society for too long, and that Wrex himself had grown too comfortable in his nihilism and stopped taking risks. What hit the millennia-old Battlemaster particularly hard was when Grunt brought up their shared history,
"- and so more than three hundred years ago, you risked your own life, and that of a fertile female to rescue *me*, some runt kid, from being another experiment to Okeer. In the decades that followed, you taught me everything that Okeer's programming could not. You taught me about what it meant for Krogan to be Krogan; to rise above the programming of our evolution, and to tame our instincts. This is the opportunity for us to do this, not just for us, or clan Urdnot; but for *Krogan.*"
He looked to Grunt, his own protégé. The boy was correct, ever since he threw caution to the wind in that rescue operation a few centuries ago, the two of them had been constantly in search of a way to rebuild Krogan culture. With cards hurled on the table so hard, it was difficult for Wrex not to laugh at his adopted son's earnestness. For a whelp like Grunt, who preferred action over words, this was the equivalent of pouring his heart out. It left him no other choice, Grunt was right of course, he himself was not getting any younger, and out of all the old remaining Battlemasters, he was one of the only few who had a chance of being heard if he brought back a new success story.
In the end, the agreement made sense to him, Humanity would obviously know of the rebellions of his people and have the information from the Salarian, maybe even Asari perspectives; and he knew that they were, rightly, taking precaution. By arming the Krogan now, and maintaining the supply lines to the fleets, Cerberus would ensure that the Krogan could not outgrow and turn on them. Sure if the Krogan absconded with the fleets, they could probably refit the ships to use another source of ordnance, but who would they go to for engineering works on this scale, and how long would it take? The Citadel Council? No, the Krogan would have the pride of their fleet, sating their mercenary instincts and allowing them to start growing as a species.
So it was with a mild ceremonial flourish that he sat down with Harper, lumbering Krogan and small Human, to sign a Memorandum of Understanding between Humanity, as represented by Cerberus, and Clan Urdnot, represented by himself and Grunt.
With the ink barely dry on the Memorandum, Harper already had a job in mind for the KSSF. Saami needed to return to the Migrant Fleet to present the Human offer and Cerberus wanted to hire the nascent KSSF as an escort for the young Quarian. In the end, Grunt volunteered to take Saami. He and Wrex had decided to bring a few of the more progressively-minded elders of Clan Urdnot back to the Human planet of Shanxi to discuss the next steps.
The benefits for Grunt were immediate; as the younger Battlemaster prepared to leave, he was inundated with access to Cerberus weapons, equipment, and ships. For Krogan, it was considered almost a social faux pas to refuse weapons when offered freely by ones friends, and so the boy and his Krantt took to the expanded armoury with joy he had only seen in Asari getting ready for a week of shopping. In fact, their enthusiasm was so contagious that even Saami, who was rightfully anxious to leave, had to join in and willingly postponed the departure by another day so that everyone, including herself, could have their fill.
For Wrex though, the pain was only starting. The Memorandum he signed was only the start of the negotiations that he would have to carry out. It soon became clear that the document was only the skeletal outline, and that each part of the KSSF would have to be negotiated in detail. The only other place where he had seen such beautiful quality of bureaucracy was when he was working with the Shadow Broker.
The negotiations actually turned out to be a great opportunity for Wrex to manifest his own thoughts of Krogan culture. After two millennia of watching his own people fail to progress culturally, he had a good idea of what was necessary for a Krogan future. Even though the KSSF would provide an opportunity to create the future culture of the Krogan in a new Galaxy, they needed to start with the *current* Krogan, a people that were heavily invested in nihilistic profit-taking.
Of particular interest to Wrex was the offer of adapting surplus space station hulls for KSSF use. While Harper had hinted that there were viable planets for the Krogan adjacent to Human space in the Attican Traverse, the subtext in her words implied that this would only be acceptable if the Krogan could be trusted to run it without devolving into Civil War. Even though he wanted to argue against her point, he knew that she was correct. Left to their current mindset, they would not be able to take advantage of an unspoilt planet.
The space stations on the other hand were a much more interesting consideration. These would be, just like for the Quarians, completely empty hulls that the Krogan could develop as they needed; coincidentally also demonstrating that Humanity was not creating specialist spying platforms. While they never went into it in any amount of detail, he had the impression that Harper knew that this was an extremely sensitive topic. To Wrex, a station was the perfect starting point if they were to address the nihilism that had settled on his species.
For continuity's sake a new Krogan culture had to remain respectful enough to traditional values that it could be accepted by at least some of the old guard. Thus left tactfully unsaid, but very clear in the subtext of her words, was that Harper hoped the KSSF and associated stations could provide a face-saving out for many Krogan who were tired of their mercenary lifestyle, or female clans who wanted a new start for their offspring.
Perhaps even more surprising to Wrex was his meeting with a group of Salarians. He was already tickled when he heard from Jorort Ayor that the Salarian defectors had formed a Meritocratic Technocracy composed of the predominantly male Salarian prisoners of war, many of whom were extremely determined to never go back to the Matriarchy that awaited them in Citadel Space. Even when he pressed, he could not get the Salarian to divulge whether the latter was speaking of the Dalatrasses or the Asari.
So he found himself now, with his Krantt, sitting in a meeting with the representatives of the Salarian Scientific Collaboration (SSC). It was extremely interesting to him that there was absolutely no Human presence in the meeting. Though he had no doubt that they could be watching the meeting, it suggested that this was to be considered an issue that was completely external to Humanity. A shrewd move, that helped both the SSC, and himself think of themselves as independent states rather than clients of a massive industrialized overlord.
He did not have to wait at all for the representatives of the Scientific Collaboration to get to the point. Even before he had completely settled on forming the KSSF with Human-provided equipment, the SSC wanted to hire the organization for a special and most secretive assignment. At the end of the presentation, Jorort entered the conversation.
"- and more importantly, Wrex, the Scientific Collaboration wants to make right the mistake of our ancestors. But for that, we need the help of the Krogan Security Strike Force. We need the Krogan to help save our cousins in the Terminus Systems. The Lystheni are essential if we are to undo the damage of Genophage. "