Chapter 10, in which the Master Chief plays ME 3's multiplayer against Collectors on gold difficulty and Shepard strolls around Tuchanka.s wasteland.
~0~
From what I have gathered, the effects of the three drugs found in the SS-project's Augmentation plan might be a desired one cooked up by Section One to stimulate the animal part of the brain during stressful scenarios, as doing so will result in a major increase in stamina, endurance and aggression, but they did not think about the aftereffects and side-effects of adding such drugs in the combination."
- Mental Health Specialist Jennifer Sunfield, logbook entry 4, 24th of August 2552-. .
~0~
Mil System
Chalkhos
Athame hospital
For what felt like the tenth time that day, Mirere Vani received some very disturbing news. In-between the constant gang-wars, farmers trying to sell their psychoactive substances and gene mods that had to be filtered out lest they cause tumors or dementia, the ancient Prothean ruins at the edge of the city were now actively glowing. Yes, the fifty thousand-year-old ruins left behind by an extinct species were glowing, lighting up like an emergency beacon.
Not that she particularly cared about that. As one of the few remaining doctors in this wretched place that was called a city, she had much more pressing issues to worry about. The constant infighting and drug trafficking between the gangs in the city took their toll on the health of the small population that lived there and new patients came in every day. She had gun wounds, stab wounds, chemical injuries and sometimes even dismemberment cases to deal with and on top of that, she had to scrounge together the weekly protection money that kept the Blue Sun "protectors" from ravaging the hospital.
Or people worse than the Blue Suns.
Mirere rubbed her temples, frustrated that her colleague would contact her of all people. "Can't you send someone else?" She asked, not even bothering to keep the frustration out of her voice. "I'm running low on medi-gel and our blood-stores are running low, I need to stay here."
Of course it wasn't that easy. The ruins that were found at the edge of the city were…important to the local populace. There weren't many experts on Prothean buildings and as one of the few remaining asari here, she was about the only eligible person to try and shut the damn thing down before it attracted every single gangbanger in the city.
The resulting casualties would flood the Athame hospital and the Blue Suns would force her to ignore the civilians to treat their people instead. That wasn't what she had signed up for; treating mercenary scumbags wasn't why she had remained on this hellhole.
But that duty for the people cut both ways. So Mirere grabbed her stuff, armed herself with an M-3 Predator and headed out. The gun was powerful and precise and could punch through any armor after she had Warped it. And though she was technically still in her Maiden stage, Mirere had enough experience as a warrior to know how to use it.
Sometimes, when she didn't spend those free hours at night sleeping, she wondered why she had not simply left this place behind. More often than not, the answer had presented itself very quickly and very clearly. Between her sordid past as an Eclipse trooper and her frustratingly-powerful conscience, there were very few jobs she could take that didn't involve violence in some sort. At least here, the occasional, bouts of violence were immediately followed up by her actually acting like a doctor.
The asari made her way to one of the two remaining X3M shuttles. Old, damaged and still reliable, the slow aircars had been a gift from one of the Eclipse mercenary groups when they had concluded their business on Chalkhos, three years ago. They could travel about six kilometers every ten minutes, though they took their sweet time charging up.
There wasn't much air traffic in the city anymore. Every now and then a Blue Sun gunship could be seen flying over a few buildings, or it could be heard as it helped solve a territorial dispute. The Blue Suns held the most ground in the city and everybody knew that. Most of the other gangs just didn't care about the carnage that would unfold every damn time they pressed their luck.
But what did Mirere know? She had yet to reach her first century. Her time as a mercenary had ended when she discovered what was expected of Eclipse troopers, especially gifted biotics like her.
She didn't stand for that.
The old aircar quickly reached the ruins that had caused her colleague so much distress. She had no idea how in the name of the Goddess she would deactivate it, as nobody even knew what was inside them.
Ruins also weren't the right word. These structures were the only ones in the city -and Mirere was willing to bet on the rest of Chalkhos too- that were completely undamaged. Oh, local gangs had tried to deface, vandalize or otherwise mess with the structure alright. It just didn't stick. It couldn't be damaged. The weird, blue-grey metal remained ever so brilliant.
The asari doctor stepped out of the aircar and locked it. It didn't look like the gangs had noticed the structure yet, but it did look very odd indeed. It wasn't so much shining as it was…transmitting. A single, tight beam of yellow light was shooting out of the top, straight into the sky in pulsating, four-second intervals. How very weird.
Somehow, the sudden activity unnerved Mirere. She didn't know what to make of it, but it caused her scalp to tinkle an/d a shiver ran down her spine. She had never seen anything like this before.
The Prothean structure -if it really was Prothean- looked a lot like a cross between a tower and a platform, taller than it was wide.
The asari approached the tower and looked around again. No Blue Suns, no gangs, nobody. She had some time.
Mirere made a mental note to thank her Eclipse friend and then approached the structure, looking for anything that could be used to shut this thing off. The last thing the city needed was a massive beacon that would attract even more unwanted attention.
However, as she walked around the tower, searching for a way to deactivate it, she felt increasingly stupid. As if a building like this was supposed to have an off-switch!
She called her colleague with her omni-tool, intent on giving the human a piece of her mind. "Abigail? It's Mirere. I'm at the tower."
"You are? Good, my patients are freaking out. Can you shut that thing thing off?"
"I'm not an expert on Prothean structure's, Ab."
"But you're an asari-"
"So? Just because I'm an asari doesn't have to mean that I'm an instant expert on anything Prothean!"
"Sorry. So can you find anything?"
"No! It's a giant beam of light, I can't-"
Just as Mirere was about to explain that there was no way she would be able to tinker with a Prothean building and that they had better get used to the lightshow, the illumination of the structure around her faded away, and the beam ceased to be.
"Oh what the -I'll call you back."
The asari doctor had no idea what had just happened. The building had stopped transmitting that weird pillar of light and it seemed to be…powering down. No way that the gangs had missed such a big sign in the sky. Things were going to get bloody.
Mirere was about to pick up and leave -casualties be damned, if she wasn't there to take care of the innocent people things would get much worse- when she saw something else. Something that made her stay, despite her fears of inbound mercenaries and gang-wars.
It was a human, lying on a silver platform that Mirere could have sworn hadn't been there before. He didn't move, and it wasn't hard to imagine why. His dark skin was marred by bruises and cuts, his dark-green outfit looked charred and bloody and his chest seemed to have been blasted apart by a high-power mining laser.
"Goddess," whispered the asari. She quickly ran over towards the battered human and knelt next to him, checking for a pulse.
She hadn't expected him to be alive with injuries like these, so when she found out that his heart was still beating, she was elated.
Finally, a good reason to have come here. If she could pull this human back from the dead…she would be one step closer to having redeemed herself.
"Hey, I got you. You're going to be alright," she said, carefully administering several doses of medi-gel to his wrecked chest cavity. The genetically engineered bioplasm was easily the best thing that the humans had ever developed; it was basically an anesthetic, disinfectant, and clotting agent all in one. Once applied to a wound, the gel would grip tight to the exposed flesh until it was subjected to a specific frequency of ultrasound, whereupon it would fall apart and be processed harmlessly.
But even then, she wasn't sure if this would keep him alive until she got to her equipment. His injury was horrendous; she wasn't sure if he even had both lungs anymore. She would have to find a way to administer oxygen locally, and also take care of those charred bones. What had happened? It looked like the man had been executed by a complete squad of Blue Suns, all firing their incineration module at the same time.
The chances of him surviving such grievous burn wounds were…slim. Very slim. And even if he survived and managed to recover, which would take weeks of extensive therapies, he might be crippled for life.
Mirere banished the thoughts of euthanasia and gently lifted the human from the ground with her biotics. "You are going to be alright," she said again. Her words rang hollow, but she had to try.
Sometimes, she wished her mother was still with her.
~0~
The massive wave of Husks was like the Flood, tenacious, ruthless and utterly unconcerned with losses. They were monstrous, uttering garbled and flanging groans as they chased the backtracking Spartan. Like the Flood, they were unconcerned with missing limbs and incoming fire and very numerous.
Unlike the Flood, they could be killed with single strikes. The Master Chief shifted his weight to his right leg and lashed out with his left, swiftly decapitating one of the red Husks before it could grapple him and subsequently explode. The headless corpse fell to the ground and then spectacularly failed to explode, unlocking another strategy for the Chief's already sizeable collection.
"Chief, now!" yelled Cortana. The Spartan whirled around, threw a Husk against an incoming cluster of the cybernetically-enhanced abominations and opened fire on the exposed Mass Effect core, which had both the form of an eye as the annoying tendency to randomly close like an eye. A heavily-armored, shielded eye.
He opened fire and emptied the last of his beam weapon capacity into the Mass Effect core, heavily damaging it but not destroying it. The weapon hissed dangerously when he continued to pull the trigger and he was quick to discard it, recalling a very close incident with the first Fuel Rod Cannon designs back on the first Halo.
"I'm out," he called, slamming his elbow into the chest of an approaching Husk and destroying the internal mechanism that kept the tech-corpse going, as it slumped to the ground. The next one jumped at him, but the Chief easily caught it, pinned it into a headlock and ripped its head off, all without breaking stride.
"Then you need to get in!" Cortana urgently told him.
John instantly caught her drift and approached the core, which closed yet again. He held his ground in front of the technological marvel, fending off increasingly-large waves of moaning, running monsters in close combat. Cortana utilized his near-superhuman reflexes and incredible speed to their maximum potential by constantly highlighting the closest hostiles in yellow, allowing him to seamlessly flash back and forth between the Husks without pausing.
The super-soldier launched himself at one of the red Husks, decapitated it with a double-handed blow from the sides of it head and immediately leapt at another one on the other side of the room. His boot connected with its neck and the creature caved in underneath his strike, its limp body flung aside. Within four seconds, the Chief had slain the entire mass of Husks. The last one was thrown up in the air by the utter force behind his uppercut, which cracked its skull open and sheared its lower jaw off. He then caught the falling Husk on his knee and slammed both of his elbows down on its torso, breaking it in half.
His HUD flashed and an electronic trickle ran down John's spine. He spun around and faced the Mass Effect core that, after the last onslaught of reborn corpses, had opened up again.
"Do it!"
The Spartan burst into movement and launched himself at the shimmering blue core. The air crackled and hissed around him and his shields flared, slowly draining to ninety percent. Then to eighty.
For the Master Chief, time slowed to a trickle when he pulled back his fist to strike. His stomach lurched and his sight flickered for a second, but he would not be deterred. He struck the core with his armored gauntlets, again and again, until the fiber-thin layer that protected it shattered and exposed him to the full force that the core emanated.
Sixty percent.
The electric current that ran across his spine jumped to the rest of his body and he gritted his teeth. That sickening feeling in his stomach turned to outright pain and when the core suddenly burst with enough force to fling him off, he was silently grateful that it was over.
"I'm sorry," Cortana softly said. "That was the only way to destroy it without weapons…I believe your suit stopped the radiation…and the rest…and you alright?"
The Spartan shook his head to clear his vision and sighed.
"Chief, tell me you're alright!"
With the core offline, the Collector Cruiser was going to fall apart upon atmospheric reentrance. Thousands would die, because he hadn't been sharp enough to find a solution.
No. The deaths of these people were not on him. He had tried all he could. Sometimes, even Spartans were too late.
"Where do I pick you up?" asked the Chief. He glanced around again, half-expecting Cortana to eject some terminal for him to pull her out.
"There should be a terminal near our exit point. Where we...jump."
John picked up on her hesitation. "So how do we get there?"
"Yes…about that. There is only one exit to this room. The same as the entrance."
The Chief halted, remembering the narrow escape into this room. There would be more than fifty Collector troopers and several Scions waiting for him outside the door, ready to unleash hell the moment they saw him. Their coordination was sharp and their weapons hit hard. He would not escape this room unharmed. If they managed to perforate his MJOLNIR, he would not be leaving this ship at all. Decompression would be the end of him once subjected to the vacuum of space. "Can you find me an alternate route?"
"No," Cortana unhappily replied. "However, I can do something else. You're not going to like it however."
"You said that once. If it gets me out of here, I'll do it."
"Right. The Spartan Neural Interface allows me to interact directly with your brain. Normally, I simply improve the data transfer between your motor cortex and your suit´s processing unit, without actually interfering with your nerves."
"Simple," the Chief noted.
"Yes, I said that. However…the rate of action potential conduction limits the flow of information within the nervous system. I can…interfere directly, so I might be able to offer a noticeable boost in your reaction speed, at the cost of major discomfort and potential discrepancies in your body that might last for days."
Discomfort he could deal with, but that part about the potential discrepancies sounded troublesome. Nevertheless, if he wanted to get out of this place alive and return to the fight, he would have to risk it. "Sounds like a plan."
"You have to be certain, John. If I do this now…in my state, I might cause nerve damage, or harm something that should not be harmed. I might mess it up."
"You won't," replied the Master Chief. "The Collectors are a major threat. The Reapers are worse. Commander Shepard needs us."
"And we do everything for our duty, don't we?"
No question there. "Yes."
"Then you're sure?"
"Do it."
The doors opened.
Whatever Cortana had to say fell away when a sudden lance of pain shot through his head, reverberating through his skull and shooting down his spine. His hands jerked and his perception of reality fell away underneath an influx of adrenaline and whatever else Cortana set loose upon his body.
Two Scions stepped into view.
The Master Chief scanned the terrain ahead for the optimal path. His mind processed the information like a super-computer, immediately taking into account the thirty-thee Collectors that had gathered behind the doors, including one Harbinger-possessed one. There were four metal platforms that hid a total of five Collectors, all armed with beam weapons. Beyond that, multiple Cortana-controlled platforms were aligned in such a way that they could be used as stepping blocks. Two Praetorians patrolled among them.
The Scions raised their weapons.
The Chief's world had been reduced that one of shadows and motions, blurs and lights. He watched the enemies move like they were suspended in water, painfully slow and utterly exposed. There was no sound, only the steady beating of his heart and the feeling of molten metal that rushed through his veins. Cortana was right, whatever she was doing hurt. But it was not a bad form of pain. It was…difficult. It felt right.
The Scions took aim-
And John exploded into movement. He took several thundering steps, sped past the Scions before they could even register that he had moved and instantly spotted his path. The Collectors just didn't know it yet.
The Spartan moved like the lightning, fluid and impossible to pin down. He jumped and vaulted over one of the few pieces of cover, slamming his boot against the head of one of the Collectors that had been hiding behind it. He tore the rifle from its dying grip without breaking stride and leapt at the Harbinger drone, which was still trying to pin down his position.
He didn't give it that chance. He side-stepped it and gave it a kick in its spine, not enough to kill it but definitely enough to daze it. The Harbinger wasn't his goal.
The platforms were. On his blood he would get out of this place alive.
~0~
Tuchanka
Urdnot Clan grounds.
"Halt," said the krogan guard. He extended a hand towards Jane, but did not actually touch her. "You must wait till the clan leader summons you. He is…in talks."
The krogan turned around and glanced at the two large krogan bickering about traditions and Jane's instantly felt for the guard. Obviously he was stuck listening to the ramblings of an idiot. She could see the fun in listening to their rambling, but the ancient krogan sitting on the throne didn't seem to share her thoughts.
"Clan Urdnot must respond! Your reforms will not go unopposed! You risk appearing weak at a critical time!"
Urdnot Wrex looked bored utterly out of his mind. He sighed, tapped his large foot against the edge of his fancy-looking throne and glancing aside, like he was desperate for any form of distraction whatsoever.
And then his red eyes locked with green ones and a wicked smile formed on his scarred face. He uttered a single word and Jane knew that all would be well. "Shepuurd!"
The Commander smirked and crossed her arms. "He likes me more than you," She told the guard, who stepped aside, likely knowing what his clan chief would do if not given immediate room.
One other unlucky guard was not as wise and got completely bowled over as Wrex rushed down the platform like a bullet train, overjoyed and completely incoherent in his speech. "Shep, hah! Grah, outamyway! Shepurrd! MY FRIEND!"
Jane couldn't suppress a cry of joy as the massive krogan grabbed her arm and vigorously shaking it, nearly tearing it off in his enthusiasm. After the cold shoulder that Ash had given her on Horizon and the recent death of the Master Chief, this was a welcome change of pace.
The aged krogan half-pulled her back to his throne, soundly ignoring Grunt, Mordin and his own guest. "You look well for dead, Shep! Should have known the void couldn't hold you!"
Yeah, to say that Wrex and Jane had bonded in the weeks they had spent together before the destruction of the Normandy was an understatement. Her decision to spare the Council and save the Destiny Ascension despite her having very little reason to do so had surprised him. Her somewhat alternative view on life had amused him. As a result, he had taken a liking to her as well.
"Glad to see you found your place in the end," said Jane. Urdnot Wrex taking his place as the leader of his clan to drag it out of the pit that the krogan had fallen into was a very welcome sight.
"Yeah, Virmire was a turning point for the krogan. Destroying Saren's genophage cure saved us from his manipulation. I used that to spur the clans to unify under Urdnot."
"You abandoned many traditions to get your way," the krogan in his blue suit commented. "Dangerous."
One krogan headbutt later, Wrex continued. "Speak when spoken to, Uvenk. I'll drag your clan to glory whether it likes it or not."
The thought of the krogan clans finally coming together and rebuilding Tuchanka filled Shepard with glee. She had always held a soft spot for the big guys, even though many of them had tried to violently kill her in the past. Heck, Wrex looked downright huggable right now.
"Now, Shepard. What brings you here? Is the Normandy still…you know…blown up?"
"Yup," Jane cheerfully replied. "Collectors don't do things halfway. We're going to get back at them, don't worry about it."
"Hehe…of course. And you even got a bigger ship, with a bigger crew. Not with me though. My work here is too important."
As Wrex explained how he had reformed a large section of the clans, hoping to combat the genophage and strengthen the krogan, Shepard noticed Garrus becoming a little antsy. He, together with Samara and Kasumi, hung back together to let her speak. Mordin was too busy gawking at the varren fights.
They could wait. Wrex had provided neutral areas where discussions and exchanges could be dealt with, as well as shelter for the fertile females. It assured that many krogan would think twice about attacking clan Urdnot, but also flew in the face of many traditions.
If those traditions were like this Uvenk character made them out to be, Jane was happy to see them gone.
But all good things had to pass and though the Commander longed to chat about the good old times, she was here for a reason. "Sorry Wrex, but I've got business to attend to. I was hoping you could help me."
The big krogan chuckled. "Always busy, ain't ya? Know that we're making an exception for you, Shepard. The krogan don't generally like aliens doing business on Tuchanka."
"You make me feel so special. Alright then, I'll hurry it up. I'm looking for a Salarian by the name of Maelon. He was captured by the Blood Pack and brought here on Tuchanka."
"My scout commander can direct you. He's probably near the perimeter running target practice. Don't waste too much of his time; I need a constant lookout on the other clans."
"I won't. And then…Wrex Grunt, Grunt Wrex." She gestured at her teammate, who stepped forwards and met Wrex' eyes. There, introductions over. "He has some kind of sickness and needs treatment, I think."
Wrex snorted. "Where are you from, welp? Was your clan destroyed before you could learn what is expected of you?"
Grunt explained his true origins, which didn't seem to surprise Wrex one bit. The Urdnot shot a glare at Shepard. Seriously? It seemed to say.
Jane shrugged. Yup.
The other krogan did not take kindly to Grunt. "You recite warlords, but you are the offspring of a syringe."
That remark stung, harder than it should. Jane recalled the Master Chief, whose species she had never even gotten to know. What did it matter where you came from? Deeds mattered more than one's origins. "I bet Grunt could arm-wrestle you," Jane commented.
The Uvenk figure turned to face her. "What?" he said, confused.
Jane smirked. "In fact, I could arm-wrestle you."
Wrex chuckled again, his deep voice making him sound suspiciously like a cheerful grandfather. "Burned," he said, mirroring a comment Jane had thrown his way during the old days, when Tali had shown the old krogan that she could reassemble a shotgun faster than he could.
It looked like krogans were never too old to learn.
"I am pure krogan," Grunt bit at Uvenk. "You should be in awe."
With Uvenk burned and in awe, Wrex turned his attention to Jane again. He explained how being a tank-bred krogan, made by Okeer of all people, didn't make Grunt the most popular baby krogan on Tuchanka. Shepard had never really seen the importance of being popular -her school career had ended on Mindoir when she had barely reached her sixteenth birthday- so she really only needed to know one thing.
"Is he sick? Can we treat him?"
Wrex sighed. "He's not sick. He is becoming a full adult."
"Ah, puberty ritual," Mordin said, along with a whole string of other words that Jane was unable to process.
"I don't care what aliens call it. Krogan undergo the Rite of Passage."
The touchy Uvenk didn´t like that. "Too far, Wrex!" He snapped as he stormed off. "Your clan may rule, but this thing is not krogan!"
Had he not heard Grunt's invocation?
Wrex summed up what all three of them were thinking at that moment. "Idiot. So Grunt? Do you wish to stand with Urdnot?"
"Grunt? That's your call."
After a few moments of looking like the most thoughtful krogan Jane had ever seen, Grunt gave his answer. "It is in my blood. It is what I am for."
Wrex huffed. "Good boy. Speak with the shaman. Give him a good show and he'll set you on your path."
Jane nodded. "Mordin? You, Samara and Kasumi are going to search for Maelon. Talk to the scout commander. Garrus? You and I are going to escort Grunt straight into puberty."
Garrus groaned. "Can't we just take him to Omega and buy him a few drinks?"
"Were it so easy, Garrus," replied the old krogan. "You're with Shepard. You should know what to expect by now."
"Yeah, I guess so. Good to see you're still in one piece, Wrex."
Wrex chuckled and touched his own facial scars. "I see I inspired you?"
Garrus nervously laughed. "Took a rocket to the face. Somebody needed to fill the gap you left."
"Hehe…I heard Shepard had a thing for scars."
"We'll go looking for this shaman," said Shepard, not liking where this conversation was going. "Thank you, Wrex."
"Yeah yeah, don't mention it."
The shaman, as it turned out, had met the krogan Uvenk as well. And he was not amused.
"You go beyond yourself, Gatatog Uvenk! The rites of Urdnot are dominant!"
It appeared that Uvenk still didn't like the idea of Grunt. It was odd. Why would he care?
"How do we know it will challenge him? He's unnatural! The beasts of the rite could ignore him like a lump of plastic!"
Grunt and Jane approached the two bickering krogan even as the shaman shot down Uvenk's last complaint. "They know blood no matter the womb. Your barking does not help your case."
Grunt was not amused either. "I'll speak for myself!"
The shaman approached Grunt, getting up in his face. "This is the tank-bred? It is very lifelike. Smells correct as well. Your protests ring hollow, Uvenk."
Jane decided that she did not like Uvenk. "I don't care what this idiot says. Grunt has the right to be here!"
"There's some fire, and from an alien! Oh, the shame this heaps on those who whine like pups." Jane did like the shaman.
But Uvenk was not done. "If this must stand on ritual, then I invoke a denial! My krantt stands against him. He has no one!"
The shaman grunted. "My patience is tested, but Uvenk invokes correctly. Grunt, who is your krantt? Your allies willing to kill and die on your behalf?"
Wrex had explained the purpose of a krantt to Jane, back on the original Normandy. She understood the finer details behind it. "We will fight by his side," she said. "Who will serve as our enemy?"
The old shaman nodded. "Spoken well! Most aliens -and some krogan- do not understand our ways. I believe this human does."
Oh, the human understood them better than the Uvenk. Which was why said human stood firmly on Wrex' side.
"Aliens don't know strength!" Uvenk still had the guts to continue his opposing. "My followers are true krogan! Everything about Grunt is a lie- oomph!"
Jane, having already decided that she did not like this Uvenk, did what she always did when people had pushed her patience enough. She slammed her forehead against his with enough force to stagger him. As he clutched his head, so did Jane.
Did I just headbutt a krogan? She thought as she proceeded to rub her neck. The brain damage would be well worth it, but the next time, she would fling up a barrier before she did that. See how the big guy liked being thrown around the…room was stretching it a bit. Pile of rocks then.
"You…you dare?" Uvenk muttered, currently inhabiting a spectrum between utterly embarrassed and utterly confused. Any onlooker could see the thought in his eyes: did a human just headbutt me?
And the human would do much more if he didn't shut up now. She was fine with people insulting her, but insulting her teammates was unacceptable.
The shaman was overjoyed. "Ba ha ha ha! I like his human! She understands!"
Uvenk made his decision. "I withdraw my denial. This will be decided elsewhere!" And with that, he roughly brushed past Shepard and walked away with large strides.
"You have provoked him," said the shaman. "Reason enough for me to like you. They're your problem now."
Shepard had a hunch that this wasn't the last she had seen from Uvenk. She wasn't about to let a krogan with a grudge make preparations against her, not when she had another team walking around the clan grounds. "We're ready. Start the rite."
"Excellent."
He beckoned Jane, Grunt and Garrus to follow him, which they did.
Shepard wondered what this rite would bring. Krogan had this annoying tendency to glorify combat and war and kill for fun. This rite of passage and its 'beasts' would most likely contain a lot of fighting and killing, which she guessed was the best way to test if something was strong enough to live on Tuchanka. She didn't like it, but…
Jane chuckled and Garrus gave her an odd look. "Shepard?"
"It's nothing," she replied. "Just thinking about how fun this'll be."
~0~
Tuchanka
En-route to hospital
Weyrloc clan grounds
"Hey, Samara?" Kasumi Goto asked as the trio wandered across the devastated wasteland of the krogan homeworld, sweeping their weapons across its surface.
"Yes, Kasumi?" The elder asari gracefully replied, looking through the scope of her M-15 Vindicator. For a woman who found herself on what was basically the most dangerous planet in the galaxy, she seemed pretty composed. Well…she was an Justicar. A thousand years of awesomeness and biotic prowess to match them should be enough to see her through.
"I was wondering…what do you think about Shepard?"
It seemed that remark got her attention. Not Mordin's though; the fast-mouthed salarian was a lot more interested in scurrying around the landscape than paying any attention to the two women in his team. An old salarian, a Justicar and a master-thief. Man, Shep did know how to pick them.
"The Commander? Why would you ask?"
Their conversation got cut off when they got attacked by the local wildlife. And by wildlife, Kasumi really meant giant fire-breathing crabs that exploded when shot enough times. There were two of them, until the team unleashed their collective tech and biotic abilities, after which there were none. Asari were really graceful with their biotics; Samara was almost as impressive to watch as Shepard.
"Oh, don´t get me wrong, I have a deal with her and I intent to see it through. I´m just curious; what do you think?"
They encountered another large crab-thing, joined by two large varren. Tuchankian wildlife like this wasn't that impressive and they too were quickly dispatched by a healthy combination of gunfire and biotics.
"I think that the Commander is an honorable individual," replied Samara, sweeping a chunk of meat from her shoulder. "And her affinity for combat is impressive, for a human."
For a human…yeah, that was somewhat an understatement. Kasumi had only been on one or two missions with Shepard by now -the only reason she was risking her neck was the greybox- but what she had seen had really impressed her. Asari were among the most gifted biotics in the galaxy and Shepard was more destructive than any asari that Kasumi had ever seen.
It was somewhat disturbing as well.
"I get all that honor stuff, but the Commander seems a bit…strange."
"Shepard's strangeness purely based on perception of world," Mordin told them from a few meters away. "Human soldier with peculiar experience in field."
"Yeah, but…I don't think it's just that. She's not like people I know. Her sense of humor is wicked, like she lives in her own little world, at times."
"The Commander possesses great political tact, as well as creativity that seems characteristic of your species," replied the Justicar. "Her eccentric behavior is merely a by-product of her experiences."
Mordin shot a Blood Pack vorcha in the face and replied, "However! Strange behavior confirmed in meaningless conversations or small talk. Once started conversation about sexually transmitted varren diseases-"
Kasumi shivered. Scale itch…she had been present during that conversation too, much to her regret.
"-and Shepard followed train of thought leading to overprized flowers in Citadel." The doctor took a deep breath and added, "Was taken aback."
"That's exactly what I mean!" Kasumi cloaked and then repositioned herself to shoot a charging krogan in his kneecap, sending him stumbling straight into a Warp field laid down by Samara. "She can so serious at times and then completely blow your mind with a ditzy remark."
More vorcha pyros then appeared, but Mordin got creative and targeted their backpacks with his Incineration tech. The gathered ball of hot stuff splashed across the back of one pyro who then gorily exploded into chunks of hot meat, blood and pieces of metal. Kasumi groaned and averted her eyes; she was a thief, not a butcher.
"I fail to see the issue still," said Samara. "I have yet to experience the Commander in that way."
"Point moot," Mordin then declared. "Need to find Maelon first. Can discuss human conversational habits later."
Alright, fine. Kasumi inserted a new heat sink into her weapon and sighed. "Sure. Why not?"
~0~
The Master Chief slumped down against the dark, metal wall and frantically eyed his surroundings for more hostiles, gliding across from one shadow to the next. His shields slowly recharged and he peered over the chest-high wall, brandishing a Collector rifle as he did.
A drone popped its head outside of its cover as well and he immediately took the shot, sending several rounds downrange. The rifle had never been designed for human ergonomics and because of that, it was difficult to handle.
More Collectors immediately pinpointed his position and hosed it with fire, forcing the Spartan to duck low and make a break for one of the pillars that were scattered through the room.
A door opened up behind him, releasing more of the blue-skinned freaks, all of them charging the Chief in earnest. It was necessary to scrub the lot of them before he could shift his priorities to yet another Harbinger-possessed drone. His head was pounding from the Cortana-induced boost his nerves had been put through and he had a hard time focusing. Some of his shots went wide with no possible explanation other than his own lack of accuracy.
One of the hostiles leapt through the air, supported by fluttering insect-like wings and landed next to him.
The Spartan dropped to one knee and opened up in full-auto, blasting the drone until the rounds tore through its shimmering shield and riddled whatever organs it had, toppling the monstrosity.
"How much longer?" The Chief barked at Cortana, who immediately projected a timer, with seven minutes remaining.
Seven minutes more of this? The Chief had long since run out of ammo for his own weapons and had to rip enemy weapons from their dead claws in order to stand a chance at the waves of troops the Collectors threw at him. Harbinger took every opportunity to possess his drones whenever they were close to the Chief, taunting him with disturbing lines and blasting him with searing firepower.
After winding through the confusion of hive-like chambers and long hallways filled with the Husks, he had finally made his way to one of the weak points of the ship that would disintegrate upon atmospheric insertion. Here he would retrieve Cortana and make a final stand until the Collectors reached the colony. However, they knew his location and they were throwing everything they had at him to take it back.
The Master Chief rounded the pillar and confronted the Harbinger drone that had been brazenly marching his way, pelting him with yellow-black projectiles that seemed to trail their target just like Needler rounds did. His stolen weapon was actually touching the Collector's chest when he pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately, the weapon clicked empty after two seconds and the rounds had failed to drop the Harbinger's shields. It struck the Spartan with a large ball of dark light, dropping the freshly-regenerated shields right back to sixty percent.
The Master Chief, not about to let something breach his suit and put him in the same death-trap that had ended Sam so long ago, responded with the ingrained violence and efficiency that had been drilled into him decades back. He shifted his weight to his left leg and lashed out with the right, bypassing the Harbinger's biotic barrier with a roundhouse kick and cracking the thick layer of armor that protected its body.
Dazed, the form stumbled backwards. The Chief immediately unleashed a flurry of punches at its chest, shattering what remained of its armor underneath the heavy blows. He then snaked his arm underneath the Harbinger's, redirected its desperate biotic assault to a charging Husk and then pulled the drone closer, slamming his head against the Collector's.
The Titanium helmet was strong enough to crack open Harbinger's head. It crashed to the ground and rapidly faded away, as all Harbingers seemed to do when killed. Some sort of self-destruct mechanism to prevent their bodies from falling into the enemy's hands?
With yet another alien weapon depleted, the Chief was forced to engage the enemy in close-quarters combat once more. One of the Collectors with a beam weapon had taken refuge at the top of one of the large pillars in the room and it was tracing him throughout its interior. The thin, yellow beam occasionally blasted through thin sheets of metal and protruding rocks, as the Collector effortlessly tracked him.
Tracking did not imply hitting, as the Spartan moved too fast for the sharp-eyed freak to follow. He sprinted across the outer fringes of the massive room, leapt over a console of sorts and slammed his boot into the chest of an approaching Collector, who then landed somewhere on the opposite side of the room.
He noticed several protuberant rocks in the sides of the pillar that the Collector was using as a vantage point and his mind instantly planned a way up.
"Chief, we have little time left. I can keep this thing at bay, but for too long. When you remove me from the system, every single door to this room will open."
Cortana said that as if it was news. The Master Chief was very aware of the reinforcement problem; every now and then, Cortana's fight with this intelligence in the system would result in one of the four entrances to this room opening for a few moments, allowing a dozen new Collectors to enter the fray. Who in their right mind would build a room with four entrances?
And who in their right mind would subsequently pick that room as suitable defensive position?
The Spartan effortlessly reached the top of the vantage point. Before the Collector sniper could process what was happening, he grabbed a hold of its weapon and then kicked its owner off the pillar, sending it plummeting into the ground.
"When should I yank you?" he asked.
"Preferably after the ship makes atmospheric insertion. Definitely before it shakes itself apart without its functioning mass effect core."
"So, no pressure?"
Their dialogue was interrupted as a variety of Collector forms took advantage of Cortana's momentary distraction and entered via one of the doors, quickly scattering into the dark room and opening fire. Suddenly the Chief was fighting for his life again, moving away from the pillar and back and forth across the room to minimize the fire he took, blasting everything that moved.
It became part of a familiar pattern. Collector drones would propel themselves high in the air with heavy flutters of their wings, only to be nailed down by precision fire as the Spartans targeted them. Husks came running at him like they were eager to be burned down under the energy weapon and another Scion marched into the room, taking aim with its arm-cannon.
And so it went, as the Master Chief fought and killed his way across the large chamber, stopping only to take cover when his shields were down and constantly sweeping back and forth across the various hallways that surrounded the large structure in the middle, until he rounded a corner and encountered that same Scion he had seen enter the room at the beginning.
The interior reminded him too much of the Library, but without the annoying presence of Guilty Spark and without the stench of cooked meat and dead bodies.
The Scion attacked immediately, but as the Chief had cleared his six from hostiles, he was free to retreat back down where he had come, slowly luring the Scion along with him. The nonstop fighting was starting to wear on him somewhat, as he had yet to gather an adequate amount of rest.
"Chief, the Collector vessel is approaching the colony. Yank me and take cover!"
Removing Cortana from the system would allow the intelligence she had been fighting to reclaim the systems. All doors would open, the forces would flood into this room and overwhelm his position.
The Master Chief was ready
"How much time is left?" He asked as he sprinted towards the console he had vaulted over an eternity ago.
"There," Cortana. "That console will do. I estimate sixty seconds until the superstructure shakes itself apart, tearing the sip to pieces. We will be exposed to the gravity of the colony. How successful is your drop-rate again?"
The Chief hastily inserted Cortana´s chip and immediately placed himself in front of it, allowing his shields and armor to shrug off the immediate fire that inadvertently came his direction. As the chip worked its magic and interfaced with the console, his shields dropped to half their power, then a quarter.
Then, he started taking hits.
Cortana's exclamation that she was in came coupled with a flood of sensation as the AI joined him within the confines of the armor's neural network. As always, it felt as if someone had poured a cup of ice water into his mind, followed by a momentary jab of pain, and a familiar presence.
The Spartan immediately exploded into movement, getting the hell out of that open position and diving for cover when two Scions opened fire at once. All four of the heavy doors had been opened and as predicted, complete platoons came marching into the room.
His shields started recharging.
"You delay the inevitable," the booming voice of Harbinger echoed through the room even as the Spartan backpedaled, firing short controlled bursts into every Collector form that too close. There were dozens of them everywhere he looked. Even with his reflexes kicked into overdrive and protected by his energy shields, he was unable to process everything that happened around him and enemy fire splashed across his chest.
"Fifty seconds!"
The Chief slammed the butt of the Collector beam weapon against an approaching Husk and then ducked low to avoid a series of blue lasers that a Praetorian fired off at him. He counted four of the monstrosities, coming at him from all directions.
"The Descendants' time is at an end," the Harbinger declared, boiling away what little cover the Spartan had with a heavy biotic explosion. "Your reclamation will never come."
The Master Chief glanced at his shields, noticed that he had about twenty percent left and leapt at a different pillar, where two collectors were trying to pin him down. He immediately engaged them in close-quarters combat and eliminated both of them within seconds, grabbing their rifles and raising them, one in each hand.
He opened fire on the seemingly-limitless Collectors, prioritizing the unshielded drones to lessen their fire. His superhuman reaction speed allowed him to avoid the majority of their fire, but when the minority that did find their mark was enough to riddle a Scorpion MBT with holes, that meant very little. His shields broke again and the Spartan cursed under his breath, ignoring the sea of red that his motion tracker was trying to pick up on.
"Forty seconds, Chief. Marking the Praetorian movement."
Wave after wave of Collector infantry slowly pushed him back to one side of the room. Outflanked on both directions and facing an army directly ahead, the Spartan felt every direct impact on his MJOLNIR. Though the outer layer of his suit was designed to strongly abrade penetrator rounds and shatter smaller caliber rounds, he could still feel the impacts rattle his body.
The Chief downed two Collectors with headshots to his left and three to his right. Six of the red Husks charged him from several directions and he immediately prioritized them, killing them with shots that perforated their chests and let their volatile bodies violently explode, staggering the Collectors near them.
He broke away and took cover behind another small wall, wishing that his shields would recharge faster. He immediately backed away when a Praetorian crept up on his left flank as he fought, disengaged and fought again.
"Twenty seconds. Chief, your vital signs-"
"I know," the Chief barked, cutting her off. He discarded his empty weapon and punched a Husk when it came close enough. Its body crumpled and fell to the ground, missing half its head.
The ship shook heavily and the floor seemed to creak with exertion. One of the pillars cracked at the base, but it held, just barely.
"The superstructure is buckling sooner than I thought. Hang on!"
Right as Cortana gave the call to hang on, the ceiling collapsed. Large pieces of rock and metal slammed into the floor, which started to tilt dangerously. It took the Master Chief a few moments to figure out that it wasn't just the room shifting its axis, but the entirety of the ship. The walls warped and buckled, impaling an unlucky Collector that had been standing too close as a sudden piece of metal sprang.
The firefight slowly broke off as the individual forces understood what was happening. Some retreated, others flew to different positions of the floor, but the most of them then reprioritized the Spartan. It was telling how much Harbinger wanted him dead if, even with his ship collapsing, he still wanted to waste valuable time with taking him out.
The Chief wasn't too happy to oblige, but it turned out that there was no need to. The floor ripped itself apart under the massive forces that were now exerted on it and more than a few enemy troops vanished in the holes and gashes that were opened up. Through them, the Master Chief could see the outlines of clouds rushing by and occasionally, landmass.
It dawned on him that he was about to pull a maneuver he hadn't performed since Earth. Even then, he had been lucky that Johnson had found him.
"Chief, if you have a plan, now is the time!" Cortana cried out, not even bothering to hide the panic that now laced her voice.
As a matter of fact, the Chief did have a plan. He risked a short sprint towards the other end of the room, dodging most of the fire that was still poured on from all directions. He accelerated to forty miles per hour in a matter of seconds and rammed a section of wall that had been ripped free by the forces that were tearing the ship apart. The metal frame buckled as half a ton of MJOLNIR slammed into it and nearly broke free. The Chief then stepped back and easily spotted the flimsy pieces of dark metal still attaching the outer wall to the general form of the room. Simple blows served to loosen them and the Chief bashed against the plating again, ripping it free from its frame.
"What are you doing?"
The Chief didn´t answer her. Instead, he dove after the dark piece of wall that would serve to protect him from most of the heat of the atmospheric insertion. He would be coming down with terminal velocity and failing to properly time his landing would result in his organs being crushed against his impervious MJOLNIR armor.
He saw the sky and earth flashing in rapid succession before his visor and he forced his arms and legs open in a spread-eagle position to control his tumble. He caught a glance of the Collector ship before he managed that. The vessel -attempting to land vertically like a great pillar- was literally shaking itself apart. Massive chunks of rock had already broken off and the metal rings around it soon followed.
Among the grim satisfaction of seeing the Collectors die a certain death, the Chief felt something akin to a rock hitting the bottom of his stomach. How many people did I just kill?
The air tore at the MJOLNIR armor as the Master Chief passed the thousand meter-mark. He grabbed a hold of the metal plate in front of him and did not let go. Already the metal was starting to heat up.
Five hundred meters to go.
The Master Chief braced himself against the flat sheet of thick metal, only feeling a slight hint of trepidation. It reminded him of his Spartans on Reach, who had been forced to leap out of their Pelican when it took fire, a mile above ground.
Four of their brothers and sisters had died on impact.
The Chief banished the memory of his burning home and focused on what needed to be done.
"Cortana, overpressure the hydrostatic gel layer before impact."
"On it. John…"
Memories of the Ark. Him, on the Dawn, the Arbiter making his way to the bridge.
Not then and not now. "We´ll make it."
"…I know."
~0~
Surface of New Canton
Local time: 17:48
Bomis Khra'shak's day had just become a lot more complicated. He, along with his partner Folly, had been responsible for mapping the remaining human hideouts for future raids when a massive ship had appeared, somehow bypassing the frigates that Captain Adek Gor'vak had stationed around the colony. The huge vessel had only barely begun entering the atmosphere when something went horribly wrong with it. Some defect, or perhaps even sabotage. It had fallen apart as it descended, tearing itself to pieces under its own weight.
The two of them had taken their teams, five well-armed soldiers per team, to take cover and rightly so. That massive ship had started churning itself into a thousand pieces of junk and debris. Said pieces of junk and debris were as large as some of the houses that the humans lived in and turned the large forest that surrounded the industrious city into a giant scrapyard.
Not that Bomis particularly cared about that. After all, whether the humans died in the attack didn't matter. They would be sold on the slave market or they would get crushed by the falling debris, but either way there would be less humans and that he did care about.
Knowing Captain Gor'vak, he would probably use the sudden appearance of the massive ship to his advantage. The pitiful attempt by the humans to engineer their dens properly had ended in houses that burned down for nothing! Often with their owners in it, too. It made for very little places for their men to sleep, because the industrial area didn't seem to contain much luxury or comfort at all. Perhaps Gor'vak could have his troops do some good with all this debris, turn it into makeshift camps or something.
Bomis had no clue how humanity had managed to spread throughout the Attican Traverse when they couldn't even build their colonies right. Their shacks easily burned down, their industrial zone could barely be used to station their troops at all and the profit of this raid wouldn't even be that high! A few hundred slaves, a thousand at most, that was nothing compared to the more successful raids.
Well, maybe they could salvage some of the debris that the strange ship had left behind. The thing had looked really expensive -even though the Captain had most likely blown it out of the air without so much as taking casualties- and they might find some tech that the black market might be interested in,
Folly and Bomis withheld their teams from scavenging the area until the violence had died down. The few humans who had managed to flee into the forest were most likely dead by now, so it wasn't much use to go after them either.
Still, he wasn't about to blindly walk into potential ambushes. He grabbed his Terminator Assault Rifle and unfolded it, as did the other batarians in his team.
Bomis had never understood why the Citadel races would make the switch to thermal clips. His old Terminator still had the integrated cooldown mechanic so he could keep pouring down rounds at his target.
He didn't buy all that Geth nonsense that the Council kept reporting about. A race of machines following a turian Spectre to attack a human colony? And then proceeding to attack the Citadel itself? It was total crap.
And they accused the batarians of propaganda? Hah!
The twelve troopers started moving around the landscape, occasionally stopping to search ruined houses for human survivors. Captain Gor'vak had established several camps around the city to hoard the slaves. They would be stripped of clothes and valuables, implanted for easier control and then locked in cages that were rigged for easy transport.
Yes, the Captain knew how to work his shifts. He was one of the most successful slavers in the Attican Traverse and the Terminus Systems, as his large amount of hardware and soldiers could prove. On this filthy colony alone he had deployed four Frigates and five-hundred troops, as well as varrens to help sniff the humans out.
Who would have thought that krogan warbeasts had a taste for human meat?
Bomis and his group slowly started spreading out across the forest, taking up good positions to avoid falling into an ambush.
If there was one thing that the batarian had learned throughout his slave runs, it was that humans were crafty and devious creatures. They would commit themselves to whatever option they might see to achieve victory and in these sorts of attacks, their victory was the same as survival. It wouldn't be first time for Bomis if he suddenly found himself in a human-led ambush.
However, as the batarians pushed deeper into the forest, they failed to stumble across any human trickery. Not one of the filthy monkeys had the guts to attack them and eventually, Bomis stopped worrying about potential counter-attacks altogether. The little worms were gutless and cowardly; they wouldn't even try to rescue their lost family members?
Bomis Khra'shak's stopped, letting his thoughts wander to his own family. Despite the low yield, the Captain would be paying them royally for this operation and almost all of that money would be going to his family back in the Bahak system. Things weren't going so good back there -the economy had nearly crashed a few years back and the people were still recovering from that.
After another hour of searching they still had not found anything. No scavenge worth their while and no humans either.
However, Bomis didn't have anything else to do at the moment. The other troops on New Campton were either busy processing the humans or transporting the cages to the Frigates.
Yes, the most boring part of slave runs like these was the waiting.
However, things were about to change very rapidly. One of his soldiers gave a sudden cry of surprise and immediately, the team sprang to attention.
"Sir! I've got something here!" Yelled the trooper.
Bomis cursed under his breath and quickly approached his subordinate. "What is it?" he impatiently asked. He took notice of the charred remains of trees around him, as well as flattened ones.
The trooper stood at the edge of a small crater, in which a piece of debris had flattened itself against the ground. The metal edges were still smoldering.
A few meters away from the crater, tracing a wide gash in the dirt, lay what could only be described as a heavily-armored mech.
A very large mech.
A large, heavily-armored behemoth of a mech. Green, to perfectly blend in with the forest. Was this a human design?
The batarian's two first and foremost responses contradicted each other so heavily that neither of them actually came through. The first was riddling the mech with bullets and the second one was to turn around and just walk away.
But since neither of them came through, Bomis sat there staring at the giant synthetic. It took his subordinates a few times to get through to him and even then, he didn't quite get them.
"Sir?"
The large mech gave off some bad vibes, but it looked expensive as hell. It would net them quite a nice sum of credits on the black market.
In the end, the batarian's greed won out over what his gut told him and he made his decision.
"We're taking this thing with us," said the batarian. The other troopers didn't dare protest. As two moved towards the inert synthetic however, Bomis noticed something interesting and he mentioned for them to halt.
"What is it?" the leader of the second team asked him.
Bomis glanced at the back of the synthetic's head, where something akin to a slot could be seen. A data port? Interesting. Perhaps one of their techs could crack that thing and see what this thing was all about. Perhaps they could even hack this thing, turn it against its former human owners. That would be interesting to watch.
The batarian carefully searched the little port in the back of the thing's helmet. It took him a while to find out how to actually eject the damn thing and when he did, he was surprised to find that it was actually a small chip the size of his thumb. Maybe even smaller. It was blue, shimmering like a ripple in a pond.
The second Bomis actually touched the chip, a spark of sorts jumped across his suit. His kinetic barriers flared and died and he stumbled backwards, confused.
The tech was on him like a hungry varren and scanned him with his omni-tool. "Looks like it was rigged or something. Better take this to the other camp first, have them crack it."
The bastard didn't need to sound so disappointed about it!
Bomis slowly crawled back to his feet, checking his armor with his omni-tool to verify the damage for himself. But his kinetic barriers recharged as he started running a program and it didn't seem like anything was wrong.
Some sort of electric discharge?
Odd.
"You," the batarian snarled, pointing at the other squad leader. "Take this to camp three! I don't want to see the cursed thing again!"
"Sure," the officer said as he took the blue chip. Nothing happened with his shields. "Just don't take all the humans without me. Some of their females look ripe for the taking."
Bomis chuckled. "Then hurry your sorry ass up. They won't be staying ripe much longer."
"Yeah yeah, I'm going…"
He took half the team with him and before soon, Bomis stood alone again. He gestured at his men to pick up the mech and orientated himself towards his own base. Or what was left of it. He didn´t know if it had been smashed by debris or not. He should probably call, but then he would have to explain the strange synthetic to them. Better take it there secretly, take the first shot at hacking it.
The batarian glanced at the two men he had sent for to take the mech with them and much to his surprise -and definitely frustration the two worthless pyjaks were still moping around with it!
"What are you two doing?" He exclaimed.
"It's heavy!" One of them replied. He grabbed the mech by its left arm and hauled, but the thing didn't budge.
The other soldier joined him and grabbed the right arm, but mirroring their position in fancy asari dance-clubs, they couldn't get it up.
"What do you mean, heavy?" Yelled Bomis. "It's not a fucking YMIR!"
But however much they tried, the heavy mech didn't move. Its golden faceplate seemed to be staring oddly at the batarian, who felt his sense of unease increase. These men were capable of dragging adult human males across the streets without a problem. They were strong, proud batarians with military experience. How was dragging a single mech a problem?
"You three, assist these pyjaks and get that thing back to base!"
Bomis took a breath and calmed himself down. It was no use lashing out at his subordinates. He had to focus on the positive aspects; hundreds of slaves, a military-grade mech and enough salvage to build a house out of it.
Things were good.
~0~
Krogan DMZ
Tuchanka
Clan Urdnot rite grounds.
Jane propelled her body backwards with a flare of biotic energy and unleashed a singularity at the clutch of varren, helplessly lifting them into the air. The dark energy sphere created a powerful mass effect field which immediately sucked in the warbeasts, setting them up for some serious shotgunning from Grunt´s side.
The big baby krogan might be young, but he sure knew his way around a shotgun. In a way he resembled Wrex, in sheer durability and skill in distracting enemies with his big adorable face. But he was not Wrex, and Shepard had to constantly remind herself that she needed to keep an eye him. As much krogan as he was, he made mistakes that could potentially result in his ass meeting the ground.
Luckily, Jane was there to prevent that from happening.
Grunt chuckled deeply as he gunned down the massive wolf-like creatures and then turned around to face down another two varren that had crept on his flank. He bellowed and charged them like a true korgan, knocking one out of his path and grabbing the other one with both of his large hands.
Shepard watched the krogan snap the varren's neck and smirked. This was just like those hunting sessions back on Mindoir, be it without the tracking and the vigilance and the stealth and with a lot more firepower and krogans and Garrus…
…actually, this wasn't like the hunting parties at Mindoir at all. For one, her gun was a lot less precision and a lot more storm of lead. Or whatever it was that these bullets were made of. It was a difficult and confusing experience, having to actually reload a weapon instead of popping the heat-sink.
Shepard slapped a charging klixen in the face with a heavy warp field, utterly annihilated the chitinous armor that protected it and then unloaded the rest of her clip into the weird thing that functioned as a face. The bullets easily tore through the creature and left large, gaping holes in its body.
And then it prettily exploded
Yeah, this submachine gun was different from her Tempest alright. It had to be handled differently too. Jane had made her first mistake when she had emptied the first magazine into the face of a particularly-upset klixen, whereupon her N7 training had promptly taken over her motor control and forced her to slap a thermal clip against the weapon's side.
She had bashed the clip three times against its frame before her mind could process the stupidity of the situation. It required a manual reload, which meant an awkward and sometimes challenging process. The N7 program had been wide enough to encompass how to reload certain ballistic weapons -just like it had encompassed that Fury training she had been longing for since she had first met the pretty four-eyed faces of the batarian slavers, mere months after Mindoir- but experience like that didn't just pop up like that.
So, in the time it took her to reload the SMG, Grunt simply charged the last klixen and bashed its face in against his knees, all the while being set on fire by the thing's fire-breathing capabilities.
"Grunt," yelled Jane. She finished reloading her weapon just as the klixen exploded all over the big krogan, charring his armor and covering him with bits of red meat.
The krogan stopped to look at himself and then uttered a short, barking laugh.
"Now look at yourself," Jane commented, stopping to check her teammate's armor. Not surprisingly, krogan armor was designed to shrug off animals exploding point-blank in their faces. "You're all dirty!"
Grunt grumbled and turned away from her. "Just hit the keystone…"
Shepard shook her head and did as he asked her. She wondered what else the Urdnot clan rite would be throwing at them for this rite of passage; armored reptile-wolves and fire-breathing face-beetles weren't the deadliest animals on Tuchanka, she knew that much.
So, there had to be worse things that were about to happen to them.
Mere seconds after she had ran that thought through her head, as if to verify that yes, worse things always happened, the ground started shaking.
Shaking very hard.
Hard enough to shake itself apart, revealing the twin set of blue tendrils that those with knowledge of biology and Alliance history would know not to ever shoot.
Grunt, being the culturally-educated krogan he was, instantly recognized the Thresher Maw and responded like any non-culturally-educated would.
By promptly shooting it.
Shepard groaned in frustration and the next twenty seconds were spent by playing the miserable little game called 'where the hell would that thing pop up next'. She, Garrus and Grunt would be running around the field, dodging deadly globes of acid and hoping that the ground underneath their feet wouldn't eat them.
She hated Maws. Absolutely hated them. Damn things had nearly ruined the Mako back during her hunt for Saren! And nothing ever damaged the Mako!
"Shepard!" Yelled Garrus. He sprinted towards one of the square columns to take cover, but the Thresher Maw was on him and spat a ball of acid at him too, destroying the metal tower with ease.
How does that even work? Thought Shepard. What krogan would ever build something that could get wrecked in a single Thresher Maw hit?
The Maw disappeared underground and burrowed its way to the other side of the battlefield. Grunt laughed and slammed a new heat sink into his shotgun, while Shepard took aim with her SMG, waited until the Maw popped up again and then opened fire. She tore through the sixty-round magazine in a matter of seconds and the Thresher responded as any monster would when pelted with high-explosive armor-piercing rounds.
Jane was amazed at the properties of the weapon; it was about as heavy as her Carnifex and lacked the heavy recoil that her Tempest had. Oh, it was recoil-heavy alright, but much easier to keep aligned with the target. Her Tempest had much less average recoil, but was much harder to keep on target.
It lacked the different ammo types though. That sucked.
At least it didn't need specialized mods to help it punch through the Thresher Maw's armor, as its caseless rounds tore into its carapace and caused large, bloody holes that looked much too big to be caused by SMG rounds.
The Maw responded very poorly to that treatment. It seemed to shiver, before fleeing underground once more. Figuring out where it went wasn't difficult; the ground in their midst exploded outwards and Shepard's reflexes, coupled with years of experience, kicked in. She engaged her biotics and rematerialized a few feet away, turning through the air to take aim at the sudden emergence.
The SMG spat out a solid stream of rounds, but the massive Thresher Maw shrugged them off as it hauled itself out of the ground, It targeted Grunt and then slammed its head into the patch of dirt where the krogan had been standing, completely enveloping a large section of the stone plateau with its massive jaws.
Time seemed to slow down as Shepard pulled all biotic energy out of her barrier and into the Thresher Maw's head and tentacles, trapping its head within a thick layer of mass effect fields. preventing the thirty-meter beast from pulling back out. The corona of dark energy rushed across its head and Shepard felt her legs wobble dangerously as the immense effort started consuming her energy reserves.
Garrus immediately aimed down his sights and sent a shot downrange, chipping its armor and flaking off a piece of the chitinous layer that protected the outside of its face.
"Grunt!" Shouted Jane. "Can you-"
The krogan was way ahead of her. She could hear muffled explosions coming from within the Thresher Maw and then, just as the biotic fatigue was starting to weigh on her arms as well, the Maw seemed to explode.
A wave of blood and flesh surged outwards from the Thresher's head. Shepard ducked low to avoid a piece the size of her chest and Garris was knocked off his feet when a meter-long part of a tentacle impacted on his head.
The Thresher Maw, missing half its 'head', seemed to rebound backwards for a few, slow moments, after which its massive body slumped to the ground, shaking the stone plateau for one last time.
Grunt, drenched in the thing's bodily fluids and pieces of meat, glanced at Shepard. Bright, blue eyes met piercing green ones and the Commander shook her head.
"Ah," Garrus groaned and wiped his face. "That's enough alien juice for today…"
Too bad shields didn't protect against gore. Shepard could have sworn the saw Grunt smile at her for a moment, though it could have also been a grimace.
She walked up to her krogan teammate and plucked a thin tendril of orange-red flesh from between his scales. "Huh…looks just like noodles."
"Spirits…Shepard, please don't smell the dead piece of Thresher Maw," said Garrus. "And Grunt! Don't eat that!"
Grunt stopped just when he was about to shove a flab of meat into his mouth. His eyes widened when he noticed that he was being watched and then flashed from Shepard, to Garrus and back to Shepard.
Jane shrugged. "Let´s be fair here…the Thresher Maw ate him first."
Uttering what was slowly becoming a familiar chuckle, Grunt then shoved the piece of meat in his mouth and turned around when he heard something.
Shepard heard it too and she immediately grabbed her SMG again. She watched as a group of krogan appeared from behind the ruins and subconsciously reached for a thermal clip.
"I know you," Garrus told the lead krogan, who indeed wore a very recognizable armor with blue lights running across it. "You're that impolite bastard."
Jane slowly pressed her thermal clip against her SMG, watching Grunt and Garrus approach the trio of krogan warriors. What should she be more annoyed about? Trying to reload a ballistic weapon with a thermal clip or having Gatagog Uvenk start shit again?
"You live, and you brought down the Thresher Maw. No one has done that for generations. Urdnet Wrex was the last one."
Well, Wrex did like to compare Jane to him. This didn't settle the debate of who would win in an arm-wrestle contest between them, but it came close.
"My krannt gave me strength beyond my genes," Grunt retorted, "Which are damn good."
Uvenk approached Grunt with a very self-assured gait. Jane reached a conclusion for herself; Uvenk starting shit was more annoying than her slapping the side of her gun with a thermal clip. At least the latter issue could be fixed with a normal magazine.
Well, if push came to shove, both issues could be fixed with a normal magazine.
"This will cause discussion. I wonder…you say you are pure? No alien meddling in your construction? Just the warlord Okeer?"
"He is pure krogan," Shepard informed Okeer, because she had the feeling that it hadn't stuck the first time. "You should be in awe."
"It would be a reason to accept you," replied Uvenk. He started pacing, as if the prospect of recruiting Grunt was a source of great conflict for him. "You are a mistake, but your potential could tip the current balance of the clans."
"You spit on my father's name. On Shepard's name! But now you stop ranting because I'm strong?"
Jane glanced at the three other krogan. They were fully geared up and not so subtly preparing their weapons.
"With restrictions. You could not breed, of course. Or serve on an alien ship. But you'd be clan in name."
"I don't think you really want him," Shepard then pointed out. She wasn't willing to go in guns blazing, because Uvenk was still Wrex' guest. "You only want him as a prize. See that dead Thresher Maw over there? It wanted him as a price too. Do the smart thing. Walk away."
Unfortunately, the krogan only listened to the first half of her sentence. "Of course I don't really want him! I didn't really want to cooperate with clan Urdnot either. But I had to. Clan Gatagog is on the verge. Either of greatness, or the Dust. I will get traditional support if I fight you and reformer support if I back you. Your rite of passage tipped that balance, too."
Shepard had the feeling that Uvenk still wasn't in awe. She was growing tired of his idiocy, too. And if he wasn't willing to assist Wrex, Tuchanka would be better off without him. It was clear he wasn't willing to listen to reason, either. "If I know Grunt, your answer is coming at muzzle velocity."
Grunt glanced at her like she had just told her that it was his birthday. There was a little sparkle in his eyes, too. "You do know Grunt! This varren is dead!"
And with that, Grunt tackled Uvenk to the ground, his krogan flunkies opened fire and the battle was joined.
Finally, things were starting to slip back under Shepard's control.
~0~
Aralakh System
SSV Normandy
"Mister Moreau?"
Joker sighed. "Yes, EDI?"
"Though Shepard has yet to return from Tuchanka, I have received a message from The Illusive Man.`
The Flight Lieutenant rolled with his eyes at that. "Great. Does he want us to go recruit that Thresher Maw Shepard fought? Or did he find us a new ambush to fly into?"
"I am uncertain about the Thesher Maw. However, the latter is partially right. Cerberus has intercepted a transmission from a human colony, New Campton. The Collector Cruiser was detected in its orbit."
Against his better judgement -which told him to run away from ancient insect monsters in massive ships- Joker immediately hit the communications channel and started hailing Shepard. "Let me guess, now he wants us to investigate it?"
"That does appear to be his motive."
"Great. I am not risking the Normandy again, you hear me? Shepard can stop all the abductions she wants, but I am not going to park next to that thing again."
"That will not be necessary. According to the reports, the Collector Cruiser fell apart upon entering the atmosphere."
Joker blinked a few times "Come again?"
~0~
New Canton
Batarian slave camp
Local time: 18:53
The Master Chief woke to the sound of a gunshot.
Consciousness, however, was a slight overestimation of his current state. His blurry vision slowly came into focus, but there was nothing to see except for darkness.
He struggled to stay awake and alert, but his body was not in any way proving helpful in that endeavor. He attempted to move, but his limbs didn't obey him. His legs and arms were locked in awkward, half-bended positions.
But his vision slowly cleared itself and he tried to blink away the blurriness. There was a coppery taste in his mouth and something was dripping from his chin in small droplets. Something was very wrong with his insides. They hurt, like they had been torn to pieces and put back together completely wrong. Instead of helping him stay awake, the pain seemed to lure him back to that dark state of blurriness and darkness.
He knew from experience that this was the effect of shock and that he needed to fight it.
Slowly, he started to regain his vision. The first thing he saw immediately demanded his attention; someone stood bent over him, holding some sort of tool. The distant whirring and buzzing, together with a high-pitched whine, made him realize that it was in fact a power tool.
He ignored the pain of his body and decided to undo the lockdown of his armor first. He used his direct neural interface to reboot his HUD and then disengaged the systems that caused the lock-down of the hydrostatic layer.
His shields were down. Nonresponsive. Even the alarm was gone. A blown shield generator, then.
A small groan escaped his lips as his limbs sagged, multiplying the chafing pain that was rocketing his body.
Memories of the escape from the Collector vessel slowly came back to him. Disabling the core, the narrow escape and the last stand that had culminated into the ship breaking apart.
He was alive and he had escaped. Cortana had been right on that mark-
Cortana
She should have spoken to him by now.
Where is she?
The Chief shifted his focus to the figure above him, which had sprung back when he had disengaged his armor's lock. It was back now, wielding that same power tool. It was attempting to open his suit? Remove a piece of his armor? Impossible. Even small arms would not put a scratch on the MJOLNIR.
But if this thing was a Collector…
They had taken Cortana from him.
Not again.
The Master Chief set aside his pain and fatigue and stood up. The ground underneath him spun and flickered oddly, but he ignored the garbled messages of his senses.
He reached out and grabbed the figure by its arm, pulling it closer for observation. It wore a faceplate to protect its head from its power tool. The head wasn't wide, elongated or tapered.
No Collectors.
Where am I?
The figure attempted to struggle free, but he increased his grip on its arm and forced it to drop its tool. No violence, no fighting. Had the Commander found him?
The thought of Shepard having somehow come back to him filled him with a relief that lasted only seconds. As he looked around his whereabouts -a hastily-put-together shack that contained metal cages, power tools and other crude forms of equipment- it became clear to him that he was not back on the Normandy.
He reached for the AI port in his helmet. Cortana was gone.
The realization, though predicted, rattled him. Suddenly wide awake and alert, he turned to face the creature that had found him. His mind, still sluggish, processed the snippets of information as they came to him. This was the surface of a planet. Cortana´s chip was missing. He had been found by an unknown faction.
He was about to test if his translation software still worked and address the still-struggling alien when he noticed the cages again.
Metal. No larger than one by one meters. Each one contained a human. Nude, injured, bloodied. Unmoving.
It was at that point that the Chief noticed the stench that came through his filters. It smelled like blood, feces and urine.
Convinced that he had been taken captive by Collector husks, he ripped the alien's mask from its head and moved to interrogate it.
He was not faced with the visage of a Husk or insect-like freak, but with the strange appearance of a four-eyed alien. One pair of eyes was set in wide, prominent bone sockets and the second was smaller, closer together. They were completely dark as well.
The Chief changed his grip and grabbed the creature by its throat instead.
Though he had never encountered one before, he recognized this alien as a batarian.
The alien struggled mightily, jerking at his immovable arm, kicking at his impervious armor and even tried to pull its gun out, but the Chief snatched his wrist out of the air before the alien could even touch its sidearm and increased his grip, pulverizing the bones its wrist.
The batarian screamed in agony and a dull thud could be heard from an adjacent room. It heard the noise as well, as its eyes immediately flashed to a door at the side of this shack.
He placed his hand upon the alien's sidearm, threw the alien down on the floor and ripped the gun free. He then shot the batarian twice in each leg and intercepted the second alien as it burst from the compartment, brandishing a wicked-looking knife.
The Master Chief was slow, but not slow enough to let the alien hit him. He took a step backwards to avoid the large knife, allowing the bladed edge to narrowly miss his chest. He then intercepted the weapon as the batarian stumbled from the near-miss and pulled the alien in a wrist-lock.
He effortlessly retrieved the weapon and knocked the alien to the ground, refraining from using lethal force.
They had taken humans prisoner. Locked them up like animals. Why? For what purpose? Food? No, the circumstances of their detainment were abysmal, unsanitary. Their capture had a more nefarious purpose. Target practice was unlikely. That left one option.
Slavery.
The Chief glanced inside the room. Four by four meters, a few weapon lockers stood at the walls. At the far end of the room, slumped over against a wall, lay a human female. Nude, deceased. Blood dripped from a hole in her forehead and from between her legs, mixed with a different liquid, staining the inside of her thighs.
He had awoken to the sound of a gunshot.
Disgusted, the Master Chief grabbed the knife he had taken from the batarian who had been 'busy'. It had a long, tapered point, perfect for what he had in mind.
It was too late to help these people. There was only one thought on his mind now; find Cortana, and get out of this place.
"Where is she?" He demanded, but the batarian that lay on the ground merely laughed and said nothing.
The second one was still groaning and holding his bleeding legs with his intact wrist.
Neither of them were willing to talk.
He had neither the time nor the patience for a prolonged interrogation. Secondary interrogation tactics would have to suffice.
The Master Chief grabbed the knife knelt down next to the second batarian and stabbed him in his lower right eye, slowly inching the knife inwards until the point penetrated his brain and the screaming stopped. At that exact moment he pulled the knife out and observed the distance it had taken for the insertion to become lethal.
Now he knew where to stop.
The Spartan took two large steps towards the other batarian, who was warily eyeing the bloodied knife of his partner.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
He grabbed the alien by his throat and pulled him to his feet, slamming his body against the wall. "Where is she?"
"I -I don't know what you are talking about!"
The Chief blinded the batarian's upper left eye, making sure not the pass the lethal threshold and accidentally kill the alien. "There was a data chip contained within my helmet. What happened to it?"
Talking hurt, but there was no alternative here. He had to know. He had to find Cortana.
"Please! I beg you! He will kill me if I talk!"
Wrong answer. The Chief lashed out again, claiming the upper right eye. It wasn't his job to make things suffer. He had always deemed methods like these despicable, but the alien was making this very hard.
"I will do worse if you don't talk," growled the Chief. "The chip."
The batarian was whimpering and sobbing, but managed to recollect himself long enough to say, "…Other camps…t-the other camps! T-techs took it! Y-you'll find it there! You ha-have to believe me!"
The Master Chief did. He broke the batarian's neck and dropped its bleeding corpse on the ground.
He was alive. Cortana was gone. Taken by batarian slavers to a different camp. There were human prisoners, but these ones bore marks of either torture or experimentation. They were dead. The Collectors were nowhere to be seen. The logical conclusion was that he had ended up on a human colony in the middle of a slaver raid.
Find Cortana. It was the only thing that mattered now.
The Master Chief paused to pick up the heavy pistol and several thermal clips and then moved out.
~0~
[SECURITY ACCESS GRANTED. UNSC TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATION CODEX UNLOCKED]
SUBJECT: M52Z BODY ARMOR
The M52B Body Armor is the latest personal armor system in use by the United Nations Space Command, first adopted in 2553. The basic M52Z is worn over the UNSC main BDU and incorporates chest, back, side, and groin protection, with additional collar, upper arm, and upper leg protectors available as required.
The new armor system, derived from previous breakthroughs, successfully implemented the alloys found in Unggoy carapaces, Sangheili suits and Mgalekgolo plates. The M52Z's protection system is based on a multi-layer system. The first layer consists of thin Titanium-A that provides some heat resistance against plasma weapons. It is also designed to abrade after being struck, the fragments interfering with laser or particle beams or plasma bolts, weakening their effectiveness.
The second layer is a thin sheet of boron carbide, which comes with a very effective resistance against bullets and a high melting point, further boosting protection against heat-based weapons. This layer of boron carbide is backed by a thicker layer of an experimental composite armor composed from Covenant alloys found in vehicular armor. Informally dubbed BEHEMOTH armor, the ceramics used offer superior resistance to both plasma as kinetic weapons.
The hardness of the tiles causes a "shatter gap" effect: a higher velocity will, within a certain velocity range, not lead to a deeper penetration but destroy the projectile itself instead.
After the Battle of Installation 00, Hannibal Weapon Systems acquired production rights for the M52Z Body Armor, and has started mass-producing them.
