Enduring the Flames of War

by Masterdude21

A joint Asari-Turian operation salvaged a "package" from a derelict wreckage in the Terminus Systems, whereupon they release a force of war beyond their reckoning. Hoping to avoid another war, Commander Shepard recruits the "package" into her team. A simple act of kindness, unwittingly paving the way for a clash unlike the galaxy has ever seen. Fate directs the flames of war.

46. Chapter 46: Ring of Steel part III

Chapter 46

So the total sum of Halo knowledge, science and calculations has reached a consensus; late-war UNSC MAC shots have an average effective range of 16,000 kilometers. This is not taking into account outliers like Big Sticks, different yields or munition.

That means I've got to restructure things somewhat.

Special thanks to the man, the myth, the beta: Manwithaplan13. He's achieved the impossible and set me straight when it came to my rampant abuse of Needless Capitalization. So you will be Seeing a lot less of that in the future!

Without further ado, chapter 46.

-(++)-

"Many species have observed that the newcomers to the galactic community, the Unified Earth Government, have a long-standing love affair with a very peculiar metal: Titanium. It is a major component in their most common forms of armor and weapons and specially strengthened at a molecular level for this purpose. Without access to any Prothean technology, blueprints or even ruins, the UEG had to develop all their technology from scratch. As such, it is difficult, if not outright impossible, to walk five feet in any direction in a United Nations Space Command armory without encountering at least seven things made of, or containing titanium

This translates to their munition as well. Often disregarded as primitive, the majority of the UNSC handheld arsenal employs a volatile chemical-based propellant to launch large projectiles at varying rounds per minute, with a focus on energy. The munition fired by their standard-issue weapon system, the MA series, is meant to bore as deeply as possible to deliver so much energy from the core of the round that it deforms to buckle the target's armor under multiple hits. This destroys the stricken location in its entirety rather than penetrating a small part of it. The impact also serves to deliver an incredible amount of shock, potentially scrambling internal systems or organs and causing severe bleeding. This would later prove invaluable in combating the Covenant during the Human-Covenant war in spite of the Covenant's superior shields and armor technology.

This destructive quality, combined with neural-laced targeting systems, advanced integrated electronics and an immunity to electromagnetic interference, allows the UNSC to hold their own without having to rely on Element Zero.

However, the reliance on oversized magazines and a complicated reload system when compared to mass accelerator weapons operated by heat sinks and thermal clips has not gone unnoticed. Many UNSC combatants have taken notice of the easy logistics of mass accelerators and complaints have skyrocketed since the UEG's integration in the galactic community.

One anonymous marine serviceman has gone on record stating: "Are you f*cking kidding me? I have to carry half my own goddamn weight in ammo, juggling twenty f*cking magazines when Joe Turian over there carries the same amount of shots in ten the size of my dad's ****** pills?"

CODEX ENTRY: THE UNIFIED EARTH GOVERNMENT: WARFARE: SMALL ARMS AMMUNITION

---

-(++)-

Krogan DMZ

Orbiting Tuchanka

---

The krogan outpost near the Shroud was ancient. The ancestral burial ground was as sacred and neutral as any place on Tuchanka could ever be. Outsiders weren't welcome there, but these were strange times for everyone. With some luck, the importance of the Hollows would deter the gathering clans from tearing each other apart in a power struggle.

Even if it didn't, the Reaper invasion force might keep the krogan too preoccupied.

It was a disgusting and vile ploy, to be expected of the Reapers by now. The new future of the krogan race would start at a sacred, revered place. Consequently, the Reapers were going to do everything they could to destroy that new future before it could even begin.

Smash that symbolism before any organics could get uppity.

The Battle of Tuchanka started the second the sangheili/UNSC/Alliance battlegroup entered the system. After several subjective weeks – though the mission timer indicated it had only been a few minutes - the bulkheads of the Condemnation finally opened.

Tuchanka hung below the Assault Carrier in all its desolate, irradiated glory, the hunting grounds of hundreds of single ship fighters and Reaper drones. The Shipmaster had parked his massive ship right on top of Tuchanka, shrugging off everything the Reapers had thrown at him to get the mission started. Dozens of teardrop-shaped Seraph fighters gathered into swarms and angled towards the hundred or so Oculi that surged to meet them, escorting a flock of those hard-hitting Harvesters

Through the cockpit of the Pelican dropship, Shepard saw the pinpoint laser artillery of the Condemnation swat dozens of the enemy ships out of the sky before her fighter complement tore into them. A second later, Cortana gunned the Pelican's thrusters. The gunmetal-green dropship hurtled out of the Condemnation's launch bay and into space, hurtling towards Tuchanka at a velocity and angle that would have made Legion sweat.

Their sangheili allies were hot on their tail. Spirit and Phantom dropships, closely escorted by Banshee fliers, plummeted towards the krogan homeworld in perfect formation. They would only split apart at the last possible instant, striking their drop zones with maximum aggression and speed to make way for the liberation army.

"Just like old times, right Shepard?" Wrex said, holding on tight as Cortana rolled the dropship to port to avoid a massive, twisted hulk of debris. "If you don't approach Tuchanka on fire, you're just not doing it right!"

"Wrex gets it," Cortana casually said as the Pelican shot past the whirling wreckage at a truly irresponsible velocity.

"Glad to see you're so relaxed," Shepard tersely replied. Reaper Oculi peeled off from their initial assault and headed on a direct intercept course. Their weapons etched and flashed against the black of space. Elite energy weapons cut through the night and explosions dotted the sky. Anyone gazing up at the stars from Tuchanka's surface would have witnessed a beautiful and haunting display, had they been able to gaze through the kilometer-thick dust cloud that served as their atmosphere.

"Dagger-Five to Sword-One," a hard, male voice crackled across the COM channel. "Mission is a go."

"Sword-One to Dagger-Five, copy that," Shepard replied. "Good luck out there."

That would be Three and the cabal team, moving in to pull the primarch's son out of the fire. Cortez's shuttle peeled off from the main formation and rocketed towards the platoon's last known location, closely escorted by half a dozen Seraph fighters.

The situation was pretty bad, even when compared to the massive clusterfucks that had been the previous ops. The Reapers had settled Tuchanka in force; Destroyers patrolled the ground and Sovereign-class capital ships prowled around the Relay, actively looking for any intrepid stealth-Frigates gutsy enough to try and cure the Genophage.

Had the Normandy flown in on their own from that vector, the Reapers would have made the Collector ambush from two years prior look like a friendly reunion.

"We're approaching the LZ. T-minus forty seconds," Cortana said. "Scans show ongoing engagements. Looks like the Reapers beat us there."

Shepard nodded in confirmation, then stepped through the cockpit's door into the troop bay to survey her squad and Eve. "The LZ is hot. Get ready."

The Pelican rattled violently as it hit Tuchanka's turbulent atmosphere. The members of her squad braced themselves against the padded crash seats, double-checking their weapons and equipment. John and James sat the closest to the hatch, followed by Javik and Johnson, Ashley and Garrus and, way in the back, Mordin and Eve.

Wrex made his way through the door as well, clutching the metal bars meant to store ammunition boxes as he wrestled his way towards the exit. "Reaper creatures are attacking the Hollows," he said. "We're going out guns blazing!"

"We kinda got that memo, Wrex," Garrus quipped as he hoisted the newest addition to his arsenal; a UNSC Battle Rifle, chambered somewhere between the MA5 and SRS in caliber. It was the same weapon Johnson had reportedly used during the attack on the Collector Base, to devastating effect.

Liara cast a purple-hued Biotic barrier atop her hardsuit. "We're going to catch a lot of attention, landing in the middle of a warzone," she said.

"That's why we – " James quickly gestured at John and him, " – are up front, Doctor T' Soni."

"Ten seconds!" Cortana's voice echoed through the cargo bay.

"This will be the defining moment in krogan history," Wrex growled as he unslung his custom Claymore shotgun.

"Five seconds."

"Krogan history filled with defining moments," Mordin dourly pointed out. "Most bloody. Hope this one better."

And then the Pelican came down atop the hostile LZ and there was no more time for any of that. The dropship's hatch descended amidst a roaring cacophony of gunfire, shouting, laughter and unnatural screeches.

John darted out before James had even brought his rifle to his shoulder. He took up his position at the left side of the ramp, methodically gunning down any Husks he saw. James joined him a heartbeat later, allowing the rest of the squad to quickly disembark.

Behind them, a sangheili Phantom came to a sudden, lurching halt and six black-clad aliens dropped down via its central antigravity beam. Two of them were armed with those sickly-green Carbines, another two dual-wielded plasma rifles and the last two brought a Fuel Rod Gun and some sort of elongated sniper rifle to the fray.

Shipmaster 'Kusamai had attached the sangheili Lance to Shepard's squad to bolster her firepower, but mainly to keep Eve safe. The Reapers were aware of their strategy here, and they would do everything in their power to keep that from happening.

"Move out, let's go!" The Commander shouted, waving the group forwards. Anarchy reigned within the Hollows themselves. The great chamber was all but overrun with Husks, its six colosseum-esque tiers crawling with the monsters. There had to be a hundred of them, easily, crawling in from every nook and cranny the Hollows had to offer.

Considering the outermost perimeter of the chamber consisted of a giant chasm who-knew how many meters deep, the krogan didn't have a lot of wall to put their backs to. They fought as they always did – valiantly, savagely and with no small amount of bloodlust – but with their scattered formation, some already proved to be easy pickings for the Husks.

Even as she entered, Jane saw two of the monstrosities ride a black-armored krogan off the circular platform and to his death, while another dozen Husks climbed their way up and over the edge. Another krogan was unable to reload fast enough, and two Husks rode him to the ground, ripping out large mouthfuls from his throat with inhuman ferocity.

"Pick your targets and watch your six!" Shepard yelled over the roaring engine of the departing Pelican. "Watch out for the drop, looks like a long way down!"

One of the Husks climbed up in the middle of the squad's formation as they hurried down to get to the center. It ignored the two biggest threats at the front and broke into a mad dash towards Eve, howling in naked aggression.

Wrex casually jabbed his shotgun towards the creature and blew away its head, together with most of its upper torso, with one blast.

Mordin stuck close to the rear to guard Eve, his SMG sweeping back and forth as he scanned for more targets.

As Johnson and the Chief held their positions, gunning down the Husks engaged with the krogan troops, Shepard steadily advanced. She lobbed a Singularity field into the midst of an advancing gaggle of Husks, jerking the monsters off their feet and crushing them into the immense gravitational fields. Behind her, James, Garrus and Ashley laid down a thunderous roar of fire.

Blue-white bolts of death arced through the air, blasting off limbs and heads and flash-boiling the innards of their targets. Pinpoint carbine fire put down the Husks at the higher tier, while the sniper-wielding Elite swept his weapon across the Husks trying to gain ground in the center. Instead of firing bolts of plasma, this particular piece of equipment fired a single, concentrated beam of…stuff. Yellow stuff that cleanly took off heads and other extremities with sustained blasts, like an oversized laser. Before long, the air began to reek of burned flesh.

With the sudden eruption of new firepower directed towards the Husks, the krogan were able to hastily organize a counterattack. With harsh shouts and mighty warcries, the krogan gathered into the center and then pushed back, hard. They fell upon the mass of Husks with unfettered violence, breaking their foes with their guns, blades, spikes, feet and fists.

Their assault wave thoroughly smashed, the Husks were unable to keep up the momentum. John and Garrus picked off the stragglers together while Javik, James and Ashley quickly circled around to close the perimeter around the krogan, methodically putting down any stragglers.

"They'll sing battle-songs about this one day," Wrex roared, strolling into the Hollows with a feral, struggling Husk held in his left fist. "Reaper blood has finally soaked our soil!"

The gathered krogan howled as Wrex lifted the Husk in the air for all to see. He tightened his grip, crushing the life out of the creature until it sagged and went limp. The krogan gathered on the platforms and rings around him went wild.

Wrex sure knew how to play a crowd. With a satisfied snort, he discarded the lifeless body and appraised his people. "Clan heads on me! We're going to take Tuchanka back and cure the Genophage!"

The resulting cacophony suggested that beyond these chambers, many more krogan had heeded Wrex's call than could be seen.

"I don't think I've seen this many krogan together without one ongoing firefight," Garrus said as Wrex met up with the Shamans and other clan heads. Mordin was right there, next to Eve.

"It's definitely a point in favor of curing the Genophage," Shepard replied, glancing around. The Elites kept their distance, perhaps out of respect for the sacred nature of this place. Even with their main religion shattered and their ideals of worship torn down, they still struck her as deeply spiritual people.

Garrus eyed her. "Do we still need points in favor at this point?"

"Calls like these are a constant math problem. Except the numbers are made up and the letters don't make sense."

Her friend nudged her playfully. "Speaking as an expert on mathematics, I think your call is just fine."

Jane grunted noncommittally. Wrex was just about done now, and he started to turn her way. He lifted his massive arm and waved at her. "Shepard! This way! We gotta plan our way to the Shroud!"

The Commander nodded to him and hit the team's radio. "Form up on me. Time to get this plan into motion."

It wasn't that far to the meeting chamber Wrex had in mind and the clan heads and Shamans were actually quite agreeable. There were a few exceptions, however, and they were very vocal.

"Aliens? In our sacred Hollows? Wrex, you have gone far too far!" One particular krogan bellowed. "Nobody said anything about this!"

"You wanna cure the Genophage on your own, dumbass?" Wrex replied without even looking at the brown and silver armored krogan. "Keep walking."

But the other krogan shoved his way past the other clan leaders and barreled towards Mordin. "They have no place here! Especially not that little runt - !"

Wrex practically threw Mordin behind him as he squared off against the other krogan. "The salarian is with us! Without him, there is no cure!"

"I don't think we've been introduced," Shepard loudly said. "Who are you?"

The other krogan turned to face with an impatient, frustrated air. "Urdnot Wreav, brood brother to our…" He paused, his expression one of scorn and disgust. "Illustrious leader."

Many of the gathered krogan seemed to take offense to that, if their growls and hisses were any indication. The krogan gathered around Wreav – quite a few Bloodpack mercs, Jane noted – started slamming their fists together in a display of aggression and provocation.

Of course. Galactic peace and stability for generations to come would come to a sudden, grinding halt because of an angry idiot.

Shepard wondered if squashing Wreav with her Biotics would count as an act of aggression.

"We share the same mother, nothing else," Wrex said with a heavy sigh.

"For which I am grateful! I still remember what it means to be a true krogan – "

Wrex slammed his forehead against his brother's face without force to knock him several feet back. "Enough of us have died! Because of these ideas, your ideas! We used to be a civilization! We used to have culture, we used to be people!"

Wreav snarled and pulled his shotgun from behind his back. "Until the galaxy gave us the Genophage! His kind! I've seen my children melt when I tried to save them from their eggs!"

The other guards pulled their guns, the clan heads and the Shamans did the same, and Shepard was just about to raise her voice when someone else beat her to it.

"Enough!" Eve barked. "Wrex is right. We used to be a people, but we threw that all away. And for what? For war? Violence? Death? The galaxy punished us for what we did. It is done. So you can stay here and let old wounds fester like krogan always have." She calmly walked past the other Shamans until she stood right next to Wrex. "Or you can fight the enemy you were born to destroy, and win a new future for our children. I choose to fight. Who will join me?"

Wreav's guards looked at each other, clearly unsure on what to do next.

Without hesitation, Shepard stepped towards Eve. "I will."

"And so will I," Wrex said, grinning at the Commander. "Now hold your heads high, like true krogan! There are Reapers out there that need killing!"

Wreav rolled with his eyes, but he lowered his shotgun and put it away. If he said something in response, it went lost over the resulting roars and shouts that the other leaders uttered in response to Wrex's words.

And Jane sighed with relief. Dangerous krogan dissent, squished. At least Wreav was being honest. The salarians could learn something about that.

The Commander pointedly ignored the irony and followed Wrex towards the planning chamber. From there, the krogan would assemble their mechanized assault force and head straight for the Shroud, while the Elite forces began hammering Reaper positions.

"We've got no time to lose," Garrus said with a hint of impatience as Wrex began laying out the plan to the krogan clan heads. "Every second we spend looking at old maps and scans, is another second the Reapers figure out what we're up to. If they destroy the Shroud, we're done here."

"The Condemnation's sensor suite gave us all the intel on the terrain, weather and infrastructure we need," Shepard quietly replied. "Wrex is trying to convince his guys our intel is solid. Last thing we need is the krogan heading in the wrong direction."

"I know, we just – "

Shepard held out her hand – Cortana just pinged her comm system, something she would not do without a good reason. "Go ahead, Cortana."

"Cortana to Sword-One. The Elite recon units have just completed their reconnaissance. The situation in space is under control, but the Reapers have parked two Destroyers in the AO of the Shroud."

An invisible hand grabbed Jane's stomach and tied it into a loop. "Come again? Two Reapers?"

"Positive. They appear to be guarding the Shroud."

Shepard cursed under her breath. This was the most dangerous course of action the Reapers could have taken. Could Shipmaster 'Kusamai take them out with precision fire? That close to the Shroud? Those things being grounded meant that their barriers were down, but even then, only the Elites had the firepower to take those things down.

"I'll discuss it with Wrex, see if he has any ideas," the Commander replied. "Do you have any suggestions?"

"Oh," Cortana coyly said, "I might."

-(++)-

Shrouded by his light-bending active camouflage, the Stealth sangheili Sar'Narum slowly curled his head to the right, watching the pack of mechanical abominations lurch by. True in their horror, a torturous existence. Puking wretched souls, wrapped in searing, writhing wires, violated by brutal invasive surgery.

It did not appear like they had seen him.

The infiltrator dared not blink. Dared not exhale the breath he was holding. Too close he lay to their soulless god, the monstrous entity known by this galaxy as the Destroyer among Reapers. His heart, though calm and steeled by the years, hammered too loudly in his chest. He willed it to still. The beasts might hear its beat.

Seconds passed by in an eternity. The Reaper creatures moved on. Before long, Sar'Narum was alone again.

According to the rangefinder integrated within his helmet, the distance between the first Destroyer and the second was five hundred meters. His own estimations put it around five fifty. The discrepancy could be attributed to the irregular terrain. This…Tuchanka was a husk of its former self, but it was not dead yet. The ghosts still haunted its desolate surface.

Narum slowly shifted to a different position, storing all the information he had learned of the Destroyers among Reapers. Their presence here complicated matters greatly. These steel titans did not belong in this plain. The Field Master would have to find a way to remove them.

Slowly, carefully, the Stealth sangheili rose to his feet. He knew his camo would emit heat, heat which his foes could use to track him down. Perhaps the fiery surface of the krogan homeworld would be his salvation. Everything above the ground was a hotspot of warmth and radiation. In that, the krogan were not dissimilar to the Beasts of Doisac. Warlike and savage, they might follow the same dark path as the jiralhanae.

Fleetmaster 'Kusamai had foreseen that. The Shepherd of Nations believed in second chances. She believed the krogan belonged in this galaxy. If they betrayed her trust, 'Kusamai would condemn them to the Void.

Hefting his plasma rifle, Narum began the arduous journey back to his Lance. The ruins were crawling with the reanimated corpses of fallen warriors and he did not have the time to wait them out, or otherwise circumvent them. His brothers were waiting for him.

His light-bending suit served him well. The fallen warriors never saw him coming. Underneath the scorching light of the sun, Narum began stalking and killing the Reaper infantry that stood in his way. A single jab of his energy dagger through the base of their neck put an end to their misery.

He constantly updated the Battlenet with the information he gathered, taking great notice of the enemy's force deployment, location and numbers. Other infiltrators would be doing the same, painting a picture of the Reaper operations.

Their numbers were great indeed. They must have called for reinforcements; thousands of the soulless abominations wandered these ruins, searching for more prey to consume

Defensive lines, difficult to breach.

The Field Master would know what to do.

Sand shifted underneath 'Narum's feet as he trekked along the sand dunes. He made his way through the abandoned structures that surrounded him, taking shelter from the harsh glare of the sun on occasion. This world was…taxing on him.

He moved for another thirty minutes like that, dodging Reaper patrols and lone, wandering abominations searching for warm bodies. Finally he reached the outer perimeter of the Field Master's staging ground.

'Kusamai had cleared a landing zone for the Field Master to gather his army. To counter the Reaper threat, the Field Master would have to smash through their opposition with a combination of brute force and special operations. Now that his scouting mission was complete, Sarum was certain he would partake in support of the assault. Sabotage, assassinations – everything the Field Master needed to break through to the Destroyers, and annihilate them.

Time passed as the Shepherd of Nations gathered the krogan horde and mustered their mechanized assault. The Lance attached to their forces sent in constant mission updates as well. They were aware of the presence of the two steel titans, and had reported that the krogan were almost ready themselves.

And so the Field Master gathered his battalion.

Two hundred and fifty sangheili warriors of varying ranks stood gathered in their individual Lances, in the process of a final briefing from their Major Domos. The Field Master had broken the battalion down into ten different assault groups, each containing around twenty sangheili and sixty unggoy and further divided into Lances, five of which to fill one assault group. Two of these groups were designated artillery support, serving to coordinate and protect the various support weapons in the Field Master's arsenal. Another two groups would serve as fast response units, using Ghosts and Specters to either exploit breakthroughs or reinforce struggling units

That left six assault groups for the main onslaught. These, Sarum had noticed, were the heaviest armed of all. The massive mgalekgolo who had chosen to follow 'Kusamai's fate would serve in these units – the true vanguards of this attack.

Seraph fighter craft circled overhead, guarding against unexpected Reaper attacks. In the rear of their formation stood their solution to the threat posed by the steel titans.

The sangheili in charge of the assault groups were just making their final preparations when the Field Master emerged from his command vehicle.

"Warriors," he roared, and every gathered soldier turned to face him. "This battle shall write history! The Reapers are scattered out there like vermin, daring to stand before us! Bathe the sand in their blood and bring forth the storm!"

Hundreds of sangheili and unggoy roared their approval. Even 'Narum, who had seen the old Zealot at his worst, felt impressed. He hid his inner turmoil well. It was likely that the thought of being at the frontlines, fighting in the ashes and the fire and the blood, invigorated him and washed away his doubts.

'Narum respected that.

The final preparations complete, the battalion readied itself for the onslaught. 'Narum grabbed his rifle, four grenades, a pistol and several power cells, then moved towards the gathering point for the other special operation units.

There were Reapers to kill.

-(++)-

---

Mechanized convoy en-route to the Shroud

Sitting within the heavily armored krogan vehicle, the Master Chief had a rare moment of introspection. He was about to disembark on a mission to save an alien species from extinction.

What would Daisy have thought? Or Grace? Cal?

What would Sam have thought?

So many of his brothers and sisters had given their lives to guard humanity. And now, he was risking his own life to bring an alien people back from the brink. A species that could very well turn on humanity the moment this crisis was over. Would his siblings have understood?

The Tomkah hit a piece of road in the long series of bumps and the violent shaking stopped, if only for a moment. The massive, six-wheeled IFV was as sturdy as it was cumbersome and not at all designed with luxury in mind. Mordin and Liara, being of the smallest built, were constantly thrown around in their seats.

But it beat the hell out of walking, especially with the enormous amount of husks that the Reapers had managed to get planetside. They were digging in, moving heavy equipment around. They were up to something.

"Not exactly smooth sailing here," Williams commented.

Wrex merely laughed. "But it's just like old times, ain't it Ash? You, me, Garrus and Liara, stuck with an insane driver."

"Everybody's a critic," Jane muttered in response. She rested her hands on her helmet in her lap and had placed her head against the back of the wall, almost like she was about to fall asleep. Her pale, confident face was a masque of indifference and calmness.

She always looked like that before battle. To the Chief, she seemed the most attractive right before the bullets were about to fly.

Johnson cast a questioning look towards Garrus, who snorted and cleared his throat. "Shepard never got her driving license in the Alliance."

"Did."

"Did not."

"Shepard has difficulty sticking to two dimensions," Liara added.

"Hey – "

"Among others," Williams snickered.

"I think the Commander drives like a true krogan," Wrex said. "Who's had one too many shots of ryncol."

Johnson leant his head against the steel frame of the Tomkah and arced a dark eyebrow, judgingly.

"It's not like that," Jane argued. "Come on Johnson. You know what it's like, driving when under fire."

"I'll wager it's a lot like driving with the Chief," Garrus continued. "Except he's got more tactics than 'I ram the enemy'."

"It's worked so far, hasn't it?" Shepard fired back, looking like a child that legitimately didn't know what they had done wrong.

"Sure it has, Commander," Garrus said, very patronizingly.

"I am starting to see why Wrex enjoyed serving with you, Commander," Eve said, the hint of a laugh just barely audible. "I would have liked to see that."

"Don't tempt her, she'll kick that krogan driver from his chair and laugh while doing it," Garrus said. "I've seen it happen, to friends and foes alike."

"Damn it Garrus," Johnson chided. "Where I come from that's a legitimate tactic! You haven't truly lived your life unless you've kicked a gas-sucking sonnovabitch from behind his wheel and manslaughtered his buddies with his own ride."

Wrex slammed his fist against his knee and uttered a deep laugh. "You're alright Johnson!"

"Sure, when he does it it's fine?" Shepard said, feigning affront.

"Commander, I'm three times your age," Johnson replied, taking out a cigar and lighting it. "And I'm an NCO. We can get away with everything."

The Tomkah shuddered once, then it hit an obstacle hard enough to throw the Master Chief from his seat. A split second later he felt the telltale rumble of an explosion, quickly followed by another three in rapid succession,

"Contact!" The driver bellowed. "Heavy Reaper forces! It's an ambush!"

"Deploy, deploy!" Shepard ordered. "Wrex, get these tubs out of the killzone! Cortana, get me some friendly birds to turn these assholes into glass!"

"Contacting the sangheili airwing now," Cortana replied before Wrex could even register that he'd been issued an order. "Commander, be advised, the Shipmaster has just registered new Reaper contacts in orbit! They've got several transport ships ready with a full escort."

"Copy that. Chief, get out there and defend this vehicle!"

"The scouts are directly ahead! We should push through!" The old krogan bellowed.

"Roger," John replied. Wrex rushed to the back of the Tomkah and tried opening the door. Krogan engineering being what it was, the mechanism jammed, and the frustrated Urdnot clan leader slammed his fist against the control panel.

Krogan engineering being what it was, the heavy door opened.

"Williams and Vakarian, to the left!" Johnson yelled. "Javik, we're on the right! T'soni, Biotic support! Go go go!"

Every member of the Commander's squad would have known exactly what to do in this situation, but it seemed like Avery's drills overtook that logic. To him, Shepard's squad was his squad, the Commander his superior. He handled this situation like any Marine NCO would with a mechanized column, and the Master Chief didn't see any reason to contradict that.

The others deployed with trained expertise, like they'd been doing this for years. Wrex came out roaring, surrounding himself with a thick layer of Biotic energy that would stop all but the heaviest weapons the husks carried with them.

Jane slipped on her helmet, wrapped herself in an aura of violent dark energy and immediately opened fire on the first contact she saw.

The Master Chief, meanwhile, took stock of the situation. It looked like the Reapers had indeed caught the convoy in an ambush; they'd taken generations' worth of krogan infrastructure and filled them with as many husks as they could fit. Dozens of Marauders, hundreds of Husks and Cannibals. It was distressing to see how disciplined these ravenous abominations could be when the Reaper signal was strong enough; there had been no sight of these things even with full allied air superiority.

Their Tomkah convoy had been boxed in in a rough U form. The friendly scouts that had secured a forward position would be a few hundred meters ahead, but it seemed like they were in a bit of a rough spot.

"Dad, watch out!" Mana yelled in the back of the Chief's head when a burst of fire splashed across his thoracic plate. "They've taken the ruins around you. Uhm, I'm marking their locations. And…based on your limited field of vision, I'm putting the total number of enemies at more than two hundred and fifty husks…I've got cover here, here, there and here!"

Enemy locations appeared on his HUD, vivid and moving in real time as if their cover didn't exist. No doubt Mana was extrapolating their movements and activities through some sort of complicated algorithm. She'd also highlighted several pieces of rubble and stone that could potentially be used as cover against their weapons, which even included several sections of the Tomkah's.

Her concern was touching, but the Chief had it under control. "I've got it. Track their movements. Protect the others."

As the rest of the squad fanned out and took cover, the Chief moved out into the open. With the Forerunner tech Cortana and Minerva had used for his new suit, the enemy's small caliber weapons were no longer a threat to him.

Dozens of Marauders and Cannibals opened fire as an entire assault wave of Husks charged from the buildings towards the pinned convoy. The first five Tomkah's quickly followed the initiative of the first and their soldiers deployed to counter. The Elites had been riding in the second one, right behind Eve's. Between their superb shields and the trigger-happy gunners of the Tomkah's, the Elites were impossible to pin down and they immediately returned fire as they moved.

Pinpoint blasts of plasma and carbine fire slammed into the exposed Marauders. Though their barriers were useless against the barrage, the Marauders kept fighting even with lost limbs and gaping wounds in their chests.

The Master Chief made sure to target these survivors as well, keeping up a steady stream of precision fire as he ducked and weaved across the battlefield, constantly throwing off the aim of his attackers. Behind him, the krogan shock troops began moving up. They pelted the entrenched Cannibals with literally everything that could be propelled their way. Spikes, explosives, explosive spikes, spiked explosives and of course, regular projectiles.

Explosions rolled across the battlefield. Husks screamed and fell underneath the krogan charge. Several krogan caught too much fire getting through their armor, and they dropped. Some of them shoved themselves back to their feet, roaring their defiance at the enemy as their Blood Rage took over. These krogan went berserk, sprinting towards the Reaper forces even as dozens of mass accelerator slugs riddled their bodies, shredding their organs and coating the ground with blood.

The chaos should have been difficult to keep track of, but somehow it wasn't. The Master Chief had a profound understanding of where each individual enemy combatant was, where his own troops were and how the firefight was proceeding. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, more so than he was used to. His situational understanding of the fight went beyond instinct, beyond experience.

He didn't have the time to dwell on it. Shepard and Liara used a Biotic one-two combination to rip apart a large section of the structure where the Marauders had taken cover, and half a dozen things came bounding from the dust cloud and falling debris.

These things were quadrupedal, another conglomeration of flesh and black metal, with blue pipes running across their flanks. It looked like the entire upper part of their bodies were crudely replaced by steel and tech. A wicked-looking spike or pole had been mounted on their heads.

Whatever they were, they were fast, fast enough to close the distance between them and the first krogan warriors in under two seconds. The Master Chief saw two of them pounce on a berserking krogan and snap at each of its arms – and shearing straight through them.

The armless krogan stumbled, snarling, and a third creature bounded up and impaled him through his face with its jagged spike. It had happened so fast that the other krogan hadn't even shifted their fire yet. The new Reaper hostiles immediately bounded their way like a pack of feral dogs.

He had seen wild dogs hunt. Pack hunters were supremely adept at flanking their prey to strike at their weakest member – and rip them apart.

Mordin. Eve.

"New contact!" Shepard yelled. "Varren husks on the field! Focus fire!"

The Master Chief spun around to engage this new threat. The Tomkah heavy guns were excellent at eliminating entrenched opposition, but they weren't meant for targeting these nimble, agile creatures. The varren would have to be brought down by the infantry.

He emptied his magazine at the beasts as they slipped by, downing one and clipping a second. Shepard threw a Singularity field at the approaching hostiles, but between the friendlies she had to avoid and the immense speed of these things, she only managed to pull in and crush two of them.

One krogan threw himself at one of the husks as it sprinted by him. Four hundred pounds of alien, guns and armor slammed into the creature and pinned it to the ground. The varren spun and twisted like crazy, snapping at the krogan with its vicelike head. A second krogan rushed over, roaring as he hefted his bayonet.

Three of them got through. They sprinted for the Tomkah that contained Eve with single-minded purpose. Gunfire raked the ground around them and the Chief saw several hits connect, but the varren powered through –

A cloaked Elite appeared out of nowhere. His sword was a blur as he beheaded one of the husks and cleaved another in half. As the superheated halves of the creature slammed into the sand, Liara thrust her hands towards the last remaining varren and caught its hind paws in a Stasis Field. As the husk came to a sudden halt, the asari lobbed another Biotic blast its way. The violent clash of dark energy fields detonated and completely disintegrated the beast.

The COMM crackled and the smooth, calm voice of an Elite came through. "Wing leader in approach. Stand fast for cleansing fire."

Before the remaining husks could exploit the breakthrough their varren had created, four Seraphs soared in from the east and dropped their plasma charges. They roared overhead at incredible speed, then pulled up and vanished again.

"Get down!" The Master Chief yelled. He'd seen enough Seraph bombings in his life to know that these ruins were about to become part of a new, glassy road.

The dropped plasma charges elongated into lances of boiling, superheated sapphire. Where they struck the ground they immediately detonated and fanned outwards, propelling across the Reaper positions at more than three hundred kilometers an hour by momentum and thermal expansion alone. The krogan ruins became a literal wall of flames, which were hot enough that even the krogan standing all the way by the Tomkah convoy had to cover their faces and flinch away.

When the plasma slowed – still boiling – the clouds of heat cooled and thinned to a dull gray. They left in their wake only crackling glassed earth and bits of charred bone, coupled with tiny fragments of molten steel.

Nothing had survived.

The remaining krogan raised their weapons and roared their victory to the sky. The Master Chief watched their boundless enthusiasm, wondering if they would still be so happy with the air support if they knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of it.

Shepard gathered her squad for a headcount, ammunition check, casualties and possible loss of equipment. Aside from superficial burns, cuts and enough combined bruises to color a tank blue, the other members of the team were unhurt. Vega had a nasty cut on his cheek where a fragment had graced his head and Williams missed a part of her left eyebrow, but they were good to go.

"That was close," Wrex said as he lumbered towards the first Tomkah. "Haven't seen those things before."

"The Reapers are stepping up their game," Shepard replied. "These things knew exactly where to find Eve. Either the Reapers know our exact force deployment – "

"In which case we're fucked," Vega said.

" – or they've got some sort of target acquisition role, combat scouts or something," the Commander finished.

Javik shook his head. "No Commander. The Reapers corrupt and amplify what is already there. These are pack hunters. They were excellent at hunting prey before the Reapers consumed them."

"Smell," the Chief said. "Krogan females must smell different than males."

"You saying these things sniffed Eve out?" Wrex asked.

"The Reaper Nano technology allows for boundless cruelty, boundless possibilities," Javik grimly said. "An enhanced sense of smell is not beyond their grasp."

They weren't too different from the Brutes, in that regard. Only these things were much easier to take out than the former Covenant members.

"Time for new cologne, then," Avery said. "Come on Commander. We got scouts to rendezvous with."

Jane nodded. "Johnson's right. Pack your gear, mount up. We're not letting anything stop us."

-(++)-

---

No turian had ever set foot on Tuchanka as far as the Hierarchy was aware. The ugly, radioactive husk of a planet would have invited orbital bombardment, not invasion, during the Rebellions, and anyone looking for a vacation spot was better off setting themselves on fire in a nuclear reactor than visiting the krogan homeworld.

Which made it doubly strange that the primarch had sent a platoon to its surface. And his own son, to boot. What could be down there that was so important?

As the shuttle whizzed through the burning remains of lost krogan infrastructure, the human pilot called that they were approaching the crash site.

"Scans show no signs of life," the human pilot continued. "Setting us down now."

"Try to raise the lieutenant," Tatilia said, strutting towards the shuttle door as it opened. She peered outside, surveying the damage done to Victus' craft.

It didn't look good. The shuttle had gone down hard, mangled pieces of metal jutting out in odd angles, its warped frame engulfed by flames. There was barely anything left to identify the shuttle by.

"Still can't believe the primarch sent his own son to this rock," Pollux hissed.

"I think the chain of command is hurting more than we thought," Kallen quietly noted.

"If there's even a chain of command left…"

The pilot's voice crackled over the comm again. "I've sent out a signal to the Lieutenant. Be advised, friendly birds have spotted Reaper units in the area. Scouts mostly, unaware of our presence."

"Reapers must know about Victus' mission," Laelea said.

Tatilia finished her sweep of the area. No hostiles, but no bodies either. That was good; the mission still had a shot at success, then. "We're going in. Stabilize any survivors you find. Pilot, have you raised the Lieutenant?"

The human replied, "I think I've got a connection, but it's pretty bad."

"Patch me in."

When the signal came through, Tatilia connected it to the rest of the squad as well. "This is Kabalim Laevicus of the Eleventh Creche, Sixteenth Cabal Unit. Do you read me?"

There was a burst of static at first, but then the connection suddenly cleared, and she could hear a distressed turian speak to her, already halfway through his sentence. "…lim, can you hear me?"

A pulse of relief spread through Tatilia's stomach. The Lieutenant was still alive. "I hear you. What is your situation?"

"This is Lieutenant Tarquin Victus of the Ninth Platoon. We're pinned by Reaper Harvesters and taking heavy casualties. There are pockets of my men scattered along the crash trajectory!"

The Lieutenant sounded frantic. His subvocals twinged with stress.

"Kabalim, I have his location," the Spartan suddenly told her. "We can move in."

Tatilia's first instinct was one of distrust. How would this human soldier suddenly know the location of a lost platoon simply from a transmission?

However, she stilled her distrust, and thought logically. The UNSC Doctrine was heavily based on integrated AI support. The Spartan Special Forces had access to the most intelligent advisors in the galaxy, second only to Reaper intelligence.

General – primarch Victus trusted the UNSC. She would do well to extend that same courtesy.

"Very well," Tatilia decided. "Upload the coordinates, then take point with Laelea. Pollux in the rear, Kallen on me. Move."

The group moved in silence, navigating the burning trail towards the Lieutenant's last known location. With the infrastructure as damaged and ruined as it was, the kabals were forced to take a vertical approach more than once. Laelea would indicate precisely where she started and remain where she stood until the next cabal was in her exact same starting location.

Spartan-003 lacked any type of Biotic abilities, but he proved an able climber nonetheless. It was fortunate that the path did not demand the kabals to phase through any obstacles. Perhaps the AI had specifically charted the route to avoid them?

Occasional bouts of gunfire reminded the kabalim of the importance of a rapid approach, but she could not help but feel like the Hierarchy's presence on Tuchanka was especially strange. Tarquin Victus was not the most capable leader. Spirits, the kid was barely experienced enough to serve, let alone lead a squad like the Ninth.

And what made this mission a matter of galactic peace? What could he Ninth possibly be doing here that justified military presence on the krogan homeworld?

Laelea flashed an alarm signal and the squad immediately faded away in the shadows. Tatilia glanced up, spotted her recon lying flat down on a large piece of debris, and made eye contact.

The older veteran signaled that she had contact up ahead, six of them. Tatilia gestured back, asking if they should move around or engage.

Neutralize, Laelea signed.

Tatilia relayed the info to the rest of her squad, then waved them forwards into position. She could not see the Spartan, but she assumed he had engaged his tactical cloak and had faded from view.

The kabalim slowly crept forwards until she lay at the edge of an overlook of sorts. The quarters were cramped, and the path would lead them deeper into what would have once been a series of hallways, now partially collapsed and filled with rubble.

And the Husks were right in the middle, huddled around two corpses.

Tatilia carefully lined up her shot with the first Husk. Her kabals waited for her to initiate. Standard operation procedures.

The turian pulled the trigger. Her Phaeston barked and the Husk she'd targeted slumped to the ground. Her fellow kabals opened up an instant later, and their combined fire dropped the cluster of Husks before they even realized they were under fire.

No need for a Poison Strike or the Nightshade Blades.

Textbook.

Her sisters joined her in the passageway, where Pollux stopped to verify that the Husks were indeed down for the count. As for the body…

"Escape pod," Laelea said. She knelt by the mangled corpse, then checked it for any usable equipment. "More bodies up ahead."

The Spartan approached the other casualties and examined them.

"We're taking their gear?" Kallen asked shakily. "Already?"

"It won't do them any good," Tatilia explained, for what had to be the third time the past week.

"They'd want their gear to be used against their killer," Laelea said as she moved to the shuttle. "Looked like they survived the crash. Harvester must have taken them out."

These men and women had not died easily. Of course, death was never pretty, but these deaths had been particularly gnarly.

"Looks like the Husks dragged them out," Spartan-003 reported. "Didn't wait for the Cannibals to use them."

Pollux made an indignant click and then snapped, "Hey, watch your fucking mouth!"

The Spartan did not reply. Perhaps it was for the better.

As the crash site held nothing for them but haunted Spirits, the cabals moved on. They had not traversed more than fifty meters before they heard the sounds of an ongoing firefight.

Laelea took cover against a large pillar, then signaled for the team to stop. "Visual contact. They're alive, but in a bad spot. Reapers haven't seen us."

"We'll take them by surprise," Tatilia said.

Her scout gave her a bitter smile. "Again and again."

"We're going in, close quarters. Kill these things quick, before they cause more damage. Pollux, Laelae, left. Three, Kallen, with me."

With that, Tatilia encased herself in a Biotic barrier and lunged for the first target in sight; a Cannibal that was showering the turian location ahead with suppressive fire. She appeared right on top of it and executed the creature with deadly precision, decapitating it with her venom-laced gauntlet. She leapt off its body before it could even start to drop, whipped out her Phaeston and downed another two Cannibals in rapid succession.

A split-second later, Kallen appeared by her side, several meters to the left, and stabbed her own Cannibal in the head with her left gauntlet, all but ripping apart its grotesque 'face' as the deadly combination of acids and poisons did their work. She rode the creature to the ground and opened fire with a Carnifex, taking down the shields of the Marauder organizing this whole mess.

Their sudden arrival allowed the pinned squad to provide more cover fire, taking out the stragglers that tried to take cover from this stab in their rear. They immediately dropped and took cover when one of those Harvesters dropped out of the sky and landed in-between the two teams. Its head whipped around to the kabal team, the twin guns warming for a deadly barrage –

Spartan-003 came out of nowhere and leapt for the creature's head. Its first shot went wide, which was apparently the only shot it was able to get out before the human super-soldier carved off half its face with a wrist-mounted blade, and then stuffed a grenade literally down its throat. He leapt off the Harvester before it could regain its bearings and disappeared again, seconds before the grenade detonated, blowing apart most of the Harvester's upper body.

The rest of the monster's body slumped to the ground. The enemy was neutralized.

Tatilia just hoped they'd stay that way.

"Don't stop for us!" One of the soldiers at the downed pod cried out. "Keep moving, we'll head for the main crash site! There's another pod ahead!"

"Form up, up that ladder!" Tatilia yelled. She started to make sense of the long-range vocalizations she'd been hearing ever before this engagement. Distress calls. These kinds of sounds could carry on a long way over lower frequencies. It was very likely that the Spartan hadn't even picked them up. Not even the salarians had managed to create a working translator for turian vocals and subharmonics.

The kabals pushed deeper towards the crash site, encountering more groups of Reaper Husks. These were close quarters though, and the Reapers were completely unaware of their presence. It wasn't so much a series of engagements as it was a one-sided slaughter with occasional bouts of silence.

And loathe as Tatilia was to admit it, having 003 with them was a big reason for that. The Spartan moved with uncanny speed and force, like a ghost in the ruins. Her girls were all crack shots, but he took it to another level completely, mowing down his enemies like it was just a shooting range. Though he mainly hung back and picked off enemies at range, Tatilia had the sneaking suspicion he was just as lethal in close quarters as he was at range.

Some Spec Op units had a reputation that was more hype than reality. The Spartans were definitely the real deal.

That made Commander Shepard's decision to attach one to her Eleventh a lot less insulting than Tatilia previously thought.

"This is worse than I thought," Laelea said as the kabals got closer to the crash site. "Look at this. Everything is on fire. How the fuck do you even crash a fucking warship in a place like this?"

Tatilia wouldn't be caught dead talking bad about the Hierarchy's chain of command and leadership in front of her kabals, but she agreed nonetheless. There were bits of ship and escape pods everywhere. This didn't look like the ship simply crashed on descending. It was almost…almost like Victus tried to fly between these buildings.

"If the Lieutenant's not fit to lead, why'd he even take the position?" Kallen replied.

"Do you think he is trying to live up to his family name?" The Spartan suggested.

"Victus is a big military name on Palaven," Laelea conceded. "Few turians ever go against their family's name."

A loud screeching from above broke up the conversation. Another Harvester soared overhead. No secret where that one was heading.

They reached the crash site after another few hundred meters. Just in time too, since Victus radioed in, sounding even more anxious than the last time.

"kabalim, do you read me?"

"I hear you Lieutenant. What's the word?"

"We're taking heavy fire! What's your ETA?"

Through a private channel, Laelea said, "Three minutes."

"Four minutes top, Lieutenant. We'll be there."

"Copy that. We'll hold them off the best we can!"

The sounds of gunfire got louder and louder. Finally the Eleventh came upon the crash site of Tarquin's vessel and it was messy. Victus and his men were holding their ground in a large courtyard of sorts, dotted with broken walls, fallen pillars and slabs of collapsed concrete. They were under attack from the north as well as the west, and they had their backs to the wall. The Reapers were getting closer and closer. Victus wouldn't have lasted another hour.

Tatilia had to act, fast. "All right, Laelea, Kallen and Pollux, you're going to hit that formation," the kabalim said, quickly highlighting the Reaper flank in their tactical overlay. "Spartan, you're with me. We're going to beat back that spearhead. Prioritize the Cannibals and Husks – I'll take the Marauders. Strike!"

As one, the cabals dropped down and went to work. Tatilia bounded down the stairs, threw up a Biotic barrier and lunged for the Marauder leading a group of five Cannibals.

She appeared right in its face, the dark energy fields surrounding her scraping and biting at its own shields. As her Biotics washed over the Marauder's body, Tatilia wrenched its gun-arm down and plunged her gauntlet into its throat until she felt its spine. Then, she wrenched sideways and the Marauder dropped.

She immediately slipped to the right to avoid the retaliatory fire – but it never came. A hail of powerful, precise gunfire had already torn the Cannibals under the Marauder's command apart.

Her eyes widened as she saw the last one spin and fall. Logistically, those UNSC weapons seemed like a nightmare, what with the constant reloading and having to carry twenty large magazines instead of a couple of thermal clips. But by the Spirits those things were effective. Four rounds just tore through that plated Cannibal and just annihilated it.

Tatilia risked a quick look over her shoulder. Three forewent taking cover, instead putting himself out in the open to draw the enemy's fire. The Reaper forces evidently registered him as the biggest threat, since they stopped trying to nail Victus and focused all their attention on him.

A clever tactic.

The Reapers had been right on top of the Lieutenant's location when the Eleventh arrived. Now, they were paying for that. The turian Vanguards ripped into their forces with focused bloodlust and Biotic focus. The shielded Marauders found their barriers useless. Cannibals faltered and fell in puddles of their own gore and the smaller Husks were all but an afterthought, unable to even reach the intangible warriors, let alone harm them.

A Brute roared and stomped on the battlefield, holding its massive, pincer-like claw in front of it to ward against small-arms fire.

Getting that close to such a monster seemed unwise. Instead, Tatilia waited until the creature charged her way, and then launched a volley of Nightshade Blades. The blades exploded across the front of the beast in a large, cone-shaped area, much like a massive shotgun blast.

The Brute swept at her with its massive claw, but Tatilia deftly evaded its blow in a wash of Biotics, and the armored pincer slashed through empty air.

That was when the concentrated acid within the blades began spreading through the Brute's body. Perhaps it no longer had any organs that would be affected by the toxins, but the acid was a completely different story. Its armor hissed and crackled as the concentrated chemicals began chewing through its plating.

The creature staggered, holding its other arm against its abdomen. Blue, pulsating cables slipped past its claws. It whipped its grotesquely-small head around and shuddered as it literally fell apart on the inside.

Tatilia put it down with a sustained burst of fire. It almost felt like doing the thing a favor. Was this what the organics were to the Reapers? Just meat and dead bodies to be haphazardly slammed together against all laws of nature?

What for? What even for? What could the Reapers possibly gain by doing all this?

Her sisters had secured the other flank. The Spartan put down the last of the stragglers. As the last echoes of his shots faded away amidst the burning ruins, the kabalim turned towards the survivors.

Victus was examining one of his men. The poor bastard had taken a heavy burst of fire to the gut and lay there in a slowly widening pool of his own blood, gurgling and flailing weakly. Someone had tried to seal the wound shut with Medi-gel. Either there hadn't been enough available, or the wound was simply too severe.

Tatilia shook her head. It was not her role to judge. "Lieutenant Victus?"

He flinched when he heard his name, but rose nonetheless. He was tall and lanky. Too young to have properly filled out.

And yet…Spirits, he looked just like his father.

"Thank you, Kabalim," Victus said. "For saving so many."

Tatilia made it a point to look around, meeting the eyes of the other soldiers as they strode after their commander. She didn't like what she saw in their eyes. She noticed that the Spartan had joined her there, as well. He sure moved silently for such a large man. "What happened here?"

Tarquin opened his mouth, but one of his men beat him to it. He snarled as he seized Tarquin by the front of his armor and dragged him closer. "He screwed up!" He yelled, glaring daggers at his commander

The young Lieutenant, weary and shaken, shouted back, "Stand down soldier!"

"These men are dead because of him!" The distraught soldier roared. Tatilia wasn't sure if that was meant for her, or someone else.

"I said, stand down!" Victus repeated, trying – and failing – to sound intimidating enough to get his more experienced subordinate to release him.

A part of Tatilia wanted to interfere. This was the primarch's son, after all. Yet if he had made such an enormous error that his own men – trained and experienced soldiers – wished to attack him, she would only insult their unit by stopping them.

The soldier growled with exertion as he wrestled the Lieutenant down to the ground. He was larger and more muscled. It really was no contest.

The cabals gathered around. Kallen started forwards, but Pollux grabbed her shoulder and held her back. Whatever was about to happen, would have to happen.

As the soldiers of the Ninth Platoon gathered to see what would happen, the Spartan moved closer. Taller than even the largest turian and much more massive, his movements were still calm and precise. He reached for the shoulder of the furious soldier and gently – if firmly – pulled him back.

Snarling, the man whirled around with a raised fist, but froze midswing.

"Let's stay calm," Three said. "We have a mission to complete."

The soldier looked back to Tatilia, making it very obvious that he wasn't giving in to…well, he probably knew that the Spartan was at least human. He angrily jerked himself free and stalked off. The disgruntled soldiers backed off as well, albeit reluctantly.

"Lieutenant, what happened here?" Tatilia demanded.

The kid sighed. "I…I made a bad call," he admitted. "This is all on me. The situation changed and I chose caution and clever tactics over a head-on attack." His voice quivered for a moment. "And my men paid the price."

"How so?" Tatilia pressed.

Tarquin shut his eyes and took a shuddering breath. "We saw on holo that Reaper forces blocked our intended path. Staying on course guaranteed casualties. So I chose a safer path, skirting the enemy, which took us through these ruins. When we encountered resistance, there was no room to maneuver." He glanced over at the crashed ship. "Suddenly we were in a fight for our lives. A lot of men lost that fight."

Ah. That explained it. Damnation. "I understand. What about the mission?"

He blinked at her, clearly confused. "The mission's over, Kabalim. We're down thirty men. Going in there now would be suicide. Besides – " He caught himself, then looked away, shame and grief all over his features.

"What exactly is your mission here?" Tatilia growled.

"There's a bomb," the Lieutenant bluntly said. "The Hierarchy sent us to diffuse it. That's not possible anymore."

"And why the hell not?" Tatilia demanded. Where that bomb came from and who had planted it was not important anymore. This was the damned mission and any turian soldier would have chosen death over abandoning it.

Tarquin met her eyes for the first time since. "There's Council teams all over that bomb," he said bitterly. Asari, salarians, humans – official business. A Spectre's leading them. They've got orders to detonate it."

Mortified, Tatilia took a step back. "Oh," she said, comprehension dawning. "Crap."

---

-(++)-

Field Master N'thyt 'Sakam roared as he fired both of his plasma rifles into the ranks of the Reaper troops. The white-hot bolts tore through them, but the filthy beasts kept coming. The human ones howled as they feverishly sprinted for him, maddened in their charge. Plasma punched through their chests, leaving enormous holes that flash-vaporized whatever evil technology the Reapers had used to reanimate them. They dropped like puppets with their strings cut, but there were many more to take their position.

The Field Master could afford no mercy. He advanced one step at a time, steadily leading his brothers and sisters from the very front of the formation, but progress was slow. The cursed machines had fooled them all, even the Shepherd of Nations. They had turned this world against her own children, corrupted its beasts, its flora and its very ground to fulfill their grand design.

"Filth," 'Sakam snarled. One of the abominations – a Husk – leapt at him from above. There was no time to evade, no opportunity to shoot it. The Field Master allowed the creature to fall upon him, taking its blow across his broad shoulders. The mindless abomination attempted to find a hold around his throat, but 'Sakam's powerful shields repelled it.

As the creature slashed and raged against his impervious shields, the Field Master slammed his back against the nearest pillar. The first time, he felt the creature's grip slacken. The second time, he heard its bones crack – and the pillar shuddered.

The broken creature slipped from his shoulders and fell to the ground, where one of the Unggoy in his group paused to stomp its head off.

A turian creature – 'Sakam believed they were called Marauders – suddenly emerged from behind a discarded piece of machinery to take aim at the Field Master.

One heartbeat later, the Marauder went down with blood and steam whistling out through a neat hole in its head. Its ambush was sloppy and had been noticed long ago; the sangheili's motion trackers could guide them even through a total eclipse.

Field Master 'Sakam led his own assault group into the abandoned tunnel that would lead to the great plaza, where the real battle had begun. His own sector, Zone Three, was straight ahead. The enemy's anti-air presence was significant. Eight Banshees had been lost already, and the Seraphs were too busy fighting off the enemy's Oculi.

The enemy knew that, to take the homeworld of people like the krogan, they would need more than their normal troops. Deployed between the Shroud and 'Sakam's battalion were dozens of checkpoints and weapon emplacements, hundreds of shock troops and thousands of infantry. A swarm of their Oculi drones patrolled around the staging area, operating within the range of their own anti-air installations. In the distance, the hulking mass of the steel titan, the Reaper Destroyer, stood guard over the Shroud, using it to poison the sky.

"Vile monsters," the Field Master growled. He cared not how ancient the Reapers were. He cared not how insignificant living beings were to them, nor how unfathomable their stratagems were supposed to be. He would see them burn.

Taking Zone Three was quick, yet brutal. The enemy had massed their Cannibal units there, who sought to swarm the Field Master and his warriors with massed small-arms fire. Mighty as his personal energy shields were, 'Sakam doubted they would stand up to the combined fire of thirty gunners, and so his approach slowed.

The Unggoy in his Lance fanned out, peppering the enemy with plasma fire and needles. One of the Cannibals caught a flurry of needles in its chest as it burst from its cover. The crystalline projectiles should have shredded its organs and bones before ever detonating, but the abomination mindlessly charged on, completely oblivious to the crippling pain and damage it had been dealt.

Then the needles supercombined, tearing the monster into bloody chunks and shreds. Its messy death was one of dozens as the rest of the Field Master's assault group came into position. Sangheili warriors with carbines took down Husks with pinpoint precision, blademasters rushed forwards to engage Marauders in close quarters. Overhead, Banshee fliers swooped across buildings, providing air cover at extreme close ranges. Blasts of superheated plasma neutralized some of the more massive Husk forms –lumbering giants created from krogan bodies and controlled by a gaunt-looking turian skull.

They were nightmarish sights, but just like nightmares, their power waned when dragged into the light and confronted. One of these beasts erupted from a pile of debris where it had been waiting for the Field Master's approach.

In turn, the Mgalekgolo pair tasked with escorting the Field Master sprang forwards to meet it. The leftmost of the pair, Wofaba Teya Duga, bellowed a challenge as it moved to intercept it. The Mgalekgolo rushed forward at a speed that far belied its massive bulk. He and the amalgamation slammed into each other with such violence that the ground shook and the stone underneath their feet cracked and shattered.

The violence was a sight to behold. The Mgalekgolo held the beast at bay with his massive shield, the interlocking plates of its enormous armor covering the multitude of worms that made up its gestalt. He uttered a battle roar that shook the very air around them and then punted the abomination back several meters.

It landed on its back, rolled with the momentum and slammed its chitinous claw into the ground, perhaps more so in aggression than in an attempt to climb back to its feet.

Wofaba visibly huffed, then cocked its massive shield back.

The Husk pounded the ground twice and then lunged for the Mgalekgolo, rearing its massive claw back for a massive blow.

Neither 'Sakam nor anyone else dared to interrupt. It would only insult Wofaba. As the Reaper abomination came close, the Mgalekgolo struck. Again, far faster than its massive weight should have allowed it to, Wofaba battered his foe's claw aside, this time with such force that it shattered the limb and sheared off half it's mass.

As the shards of metal and bone fell to the ground, Wofaba leveled its assault cannon and fired a single, lethal bolt. There was a flash of pure green light as the blast enveloped the husk's body.

That there were still remains left was a paramount to the Reapers' skill – and another mark of their cruelty. Most of its upper body had been vaporized, leaving only a piece of reinforced spine with metal ribs attached to it sitting atop a blackened, smoking lower body. The half-molten skull of the turian could be seen somewhere in the glassy remains.

An undignified demise, but the souls of the victims were free now.

Wofaba unleashed another deafening war cry that rattled the Field Master's bones. Then, it joined its Bond Brother in battle once more, perhaps eager to show his brother how to repeat his feat.

Five trios of unggoy rushed forwards to positions they had memorized before the battalion rode to war. They erected deployable energy shields, allowing gunners to deploy their plasma turrets in safety. Their helpers quickly plugged in the plasma batteries and energy cells, allowing their gunners to open fire within moments of their arrival there.

Plasma fire streamed down the hill, cutting down scores of husks. The heavy bolts tore through stone and metal alike, with only the heaviest of krogan ruins able to withstand their scathing glare.

It would be the same all over the battlefield. Thirty plasma turrets laying waste to the Reaper infantry. It was only the start. The officers in charge of the assault groups would mark and identify the largest threats in the battlefield on their own discretion. The support groups would be about to –

There! Several mortar tanks had fired in unison. Blue-white orbs of fire, trailing tendrils of energy, arced high through the air, falling with an almost peaceful slowness. When they struck, they did so with all the fury of a star, annihilating everything within twenty meters around the impact. It did not matter how sturdy the krogan built, or how insidious the Reapers were. Everything within the range of the mortar tanks vaporized.

That was the lesson the Field Master intended to teach the Reapers this day. Everything burned.

Across the debris-littered plains of Tuchanka, the Reaper army moved to engage the Condemnation's battalion. Scores of Marauders died to precision marksman fire, hordes of Cannibals disintegrated under heavy plasma barrages and Unggoy did not fear the suicidal charges of the humanoid Husks anymore.

That was when 'Sakam spotted a new threat. The first warning he got was when one of the Unggoy turret locations went up in flames. The Field Master did not see what happened, but he caught some sort of detonation in the corners of his eye, and when he looked over he saw one of the plasma turret locations had simply exploded.

No infantry weapon could have punched through those portable shields. The enemy's air support dared not leave their perimeter. Motion sensors would have betrayed the presence of cloaked units. That left only one possibility.

"Enemy artillery," the Field Master growled into his communicator. "Be alert. Silence them!"

He scanned the battlefield again, but he could not see any enemy artillery pieces, nor did he spot any munitions coming in. His forces steadily advanced, pushing ever closer to Reaper Destroyer. Their Walker was destined to bring ruin to the enemy, but 'Sakam dared not call it closer with this unseen enemy artillery in the area.

It happened again. Sturdy cover a hundred meters to the Field Master's right simply exploded and a group of sangheili and Unggoy were thrown to their feet. 'Sakam did not see any direct casualties, but he could not imagine the unshielded Unggoy surviving a blast like that.

Damnation, where did that come from?

Moments later, the human construct provided the solution he needed. "Field Master be advised, the Reapers have placed artillery units around the AO. UAV imaging suggests they are huskified elcor, a heavy-world quadrupedal species known for their heavy firepower on the battlefield. Judging by the incoming fire, the following locations seem likely."

On 'Sakam's HUD, the construct placed several waypoints on the battlefield. All of them were a great distance away and hidden behind cover or ample troop support.

The Field Master knew better than to ignore the construct's advice. This one was legendary even among the myriad of other constructs. Some within the Zealot Order believed that, on very rare occasions, when a human died, their soul would return with far more power and wisdom than mortal creatures could imagine. These soul constructs would offer advice and information to their mortal comrades, allowing humans unparalleled military intelligence and awareness.

'Sakam knew not if that was true and neither did he care. He believed her, and barked an order into his radio. The mortar tanks at the rear location fired again, this time aiming for the coordinates the construct had given him.

One of the plasma bombs landed, detonated and blew an enormous crater into the side of an ancient bunker. What crawled out of said bunker, having used the smallest of gaps to pour fire into the sangheili ranks, utterly disgusted 'Sakam. It crawled along the stones like a venomous pest. It was six-legged, though the middle pair of legs looked more like the pair of forelegs the creature had. Grafted from an unwilling donor, no doubt. Like the other husks, this abomination was an unholy fusion of technology and flesh, its limbs and torso grafted through by sickly glowing cables and patches of circular metal. Its head was sickening, appearing like a misshapen fetus instead of anything else. A head and a half, or one head haphazardly molten into the other. Its glowing eyes appeared vacant and its mouth had been forced open far beyond the breaking point, also glowing with a dull light. Lifeless. Screaming.

The strategist within 'Sakam immediately noticed the oversized cannon this monster had been burdened with. A massive weapon that ended not in a platform or stock, but a bulbous sack of rotting flesh and protruding barbs, dotted with patches of glowing metal. What should have been a stocky foregrip seemed to grow into the creature's dominant skull, making it appear as if a sickly tree grew from its head.

Damaged but still active, this new abomination scampered for cover, its six limbs moving like those of an arthropod's, further adding to the Field Master's disgust.

It appeared they had found the enemy's counterbattery.

"All units, advance!" 'Sakam ordered. "The Reaper awaits us!"

Despite their fierce resistance, the Reaper infantry could not stand up to the Condemnations' battalion. The immense heat and force behind their plasma weapons was anathema to the Reapers. Millions of years of grooming these other civilizations for their own gain had rendered them vulnerable to anything outside the scope of their own technology.

It was likely the Reapers had never planned for the agony that the sangheili could lay down upon them.

The Field Master advanced deeper into the ancient krogan city. Past this city, the tall, sleek form of the salarian Shroud dominated the horizon. And there, right next to the Shroud, stood the Reaper Destroyer.

Jet-black and heavily armored, the enormous abomination strode across the horizon. Its thunderous steps could be heard all the way across the city, and its distinct cries of war taunted the Field Master.

To answer the Reaper's challenge, 'Sakam had but one reply. "Bring forth the Deutoros."

The pounding steps of the heavy attack platform were audible long before it entered the fray. The lumbering behemoth tore through the broken infrastructure with ease, answering the Reaper war cries with its boundless persistence. At a mere sixty meters tall, it was no match for the Destroyer in a normal fight. The steel titan was three times the size of the assault walker and it needed only a few direct hits to destroy it.

But that mattered only in a fair fight. 'Sakam had come to believe that, when one truly sought victory over glory, one had already lost if one engaged in a fair fight.

This madness had to end.

The Reapers continued to harass the battalion with their artillery husks. The sheer ferocity of 'Sakam's forces allowed them to push through without taking too many casualties, and the rapid-response assault groups a major factor in their breakthrough.

Husks were meant to demoralize and terrify their opponents into hesitating at the worst possible moments. In that, they were like the Parasite. But the Reapers had not yet laid their claws upon any former Covenant species, and so their raping of the natural order only served to enrage the Unggoy, sangheili and Mgalekgolo forces. They wished to keep the battalion at a distance, so 'Sakam forced his enemies into close quarters as much as he could.

His unggoy sub-commanders whipped their subordinates up into a frenzy. The Unggoy, knowing that tens of millions of their kin had been sent to their deaths for no reason at all, had reacted to the news with all the fury and rage of a starving Jiralhanae clan. The ones serving as Shipmaster 'Kusamai's army sought not just repentance, but a new way of life as well. When they learned that the Reapers represented everything they despised, their reaction had been…bad. It had taken 'Kusamai two full days to calm them all down, and their ravenous fury still slumbered beneath the surface.

They rushed forwards without fear, keeping up a steady barrage of plasma and needle fire. The enemy, hindered by the suppressive fire of the plasma cannons, could not move for better cover. They all withered and burned.

The six assault groups advanced steadily. The Mgalekgolo took the lead, their impervious armor easily shrugging off the massed fire sent their way. Their retaliatory strikes were devastating; fuel rod blasts detonated with earth shaking force, engulfing Cannibals and Marauders in green fire that left naught but glassy craters and bits of carbonized matter in their wake.

Seraph bombers cleared the heavier entrenched units, obliterating those siege units the construct's UAV's had located. And without counter-batteries to put pressure on the mortar tanks, the Reapers could not withstand the plasma bombardment.

The Destroyer turned to face this assault on its territory. On its own, it could perhaps have destroyed 'Kusamai's battalion. It certainly could have turned the Scarab to molten slag under its own power. But just like the Destroyer had circumstances sparing it from certain destruction, so had the Field Master.

Krogan infrastructure littered these plains. The savage species built to last and they built grand. Their halls could have concealed an entire armored assault. Even a consciousness as massive as the Reaper could not pinpoint the assault forces without a line of sight – not when constantly harassed by Seraphs.

And the Scarab came closer and closer. Its massive footsteps shook the ground. Whatever Reaper drones still remained in the air simply disintegrated underneath its ultra-heavy plasma cannon.

"We are in position construct," 'Sakam said on his radio.

"Excellent. I've provided the crew with targeting support now. Have a good hunt."

The Lekgolo steering the superheavy walker adapted to their promised information with peerless focus. It clambered up the side of an enormous pile of rubble that could have once been a great hall or spire. It peeked the chassis of its ultra-heavy focus cannon just over the edge, where it would have minimal exposure to the Reaper's firepower. Its eyelike cannon began to glow a sickly green.

But the Destroyer was no fool. It spotted the Scarab nonetheless and its own weapon glowed crimson, getting ready to fire.

The Scarab was faster. Whether it was the construct's targeting aid or the Lekgolo's expertise, the Field Master would never know. The focus cannon discharged and a nearly capital ship-scale energy projector slammed into the Destroyer.

The superheated plasma washed over its eye, where its vital functions resided. The beam of energy completely bypassed its kinetic barriers and boiled through tis many layers of armor with pure righteousness. The focus cannon burned through its armored shell and secondary explosions buffeted the Reaper from within.

Still the monstrosity fired, but it was a shot fired in desperation. Its magnetic weapon missed the Scarab and speared the sky, after which the massive walker quickly backpedaled behind cover again.

"All units, fire at will!" The Fleet Master roared into his radio. "Grant this abomination the burning death!"

The Reaper staggered, red lightning crackling across its battered armor. Seraph bombers soared overhead, their advanced targeting sensors telling them exactly where to put their explosive payloads.

Once more, the Scarab emerged from the ruins of krogan civilization. It was almost fitting that the ancient krogan had safeguarded their people's salvation. Thus protected by the ancestors of the krogan, the Deutoros fired once more, and history would be written.

Unbeknownst to Field Master 'Sakam, the Reaper's death – and cessation of its signal – was felt planet-wide. Almost instantly, the countermeasures placed by its brethren were put into motion, and a new threat headed towards the last location anyone wanted it to go.

The hunt was on.

---

-(++)-

The location of the krogan scout party was dead ahead. The Seraph bombing had created a new avenue of approach and the Tomkah convoy was already on the way. Enemy resistance was intensifying, but between the sangheili airwings and heavy krogan firepower, it was manageable.

So the Master Chief shouldn't have been surprised when they hit the first snag.

"Dagger-One to Sword-One, over."

"Sword-One here. Go ahead, Dagger-One," Jane replied.

There was a moment of hesitation on the other side, as if the turian squad leader still wasn't sure what to say. "We've secured Lieutenant Victus. The Ninth Platoon has taken heavy casualties, but they're still operational. The situation has deteriorated badly."

That couldn't be good.

"What's the matter?"

"There's a bomb on Tuchanka. It's huge, and the Ninth was sent to defuse it. There's Council presence in the digsite and they've been ordered to detonate the bomb."

"Come again Kabalim? Did you say detonate?"

"I did," the turian grimly replied. "Victus says they're led by a Council Spectre. A combined task force of salarians, asari and humans. They've been ordered to detonate the bomb ASAP. What are your orders?"

John could practically hear the Commander string together Zaeed and Jack's favorite curses under her breath. "Give me a minute, kabalim. I'll get back to you."

"Roger that Commander. Better make it quick."

What followed was a moment of silent shock as everybody in the Tomkah turned to stare at Shepard. The Master Chief could easily imagine the dilemma Jane now faced. Engage Council forces to diffuse the bomb to win krogan support, but risk the home front falling apart. Let the Council forces detonate the bomb to stay on good terms with the other races and definitely lose the krogan support Palaven needed. Damned if she did, damned if she didn't.

"They what!" Wrex bellowed. "The turians put a bomb on our home planet? That's what that pyjak of a primarch wanted you to do?"

And then there was the angry krogan side of the conflict to take into account.

"What is going on here, Commander?" Eve asked, looking at the Commander with curiosity…and a hint of suspicion.

"The Hierarchy put a bomb on Tuchanka at the height of the Rebellions," the Commander explained. "To be detonated only in the worst case scenario. The turians realized their mistake and went down there to dismantle it once and for all."

"What, the Hierarchy wants to dismantle it, but the Council doesn't?" Wrex bellowed, his voice trembling with rage. "Do you expect me to believe that!"

"Damnit Wrex," Jane hissed. "The Primarch sent his only son down there to fix this, that's how important this alliance is to him! This happened centuries ago!"

"It was a war, Wrex," the Master Chief calmly said. He wasn't going to sit by and watch this all fall apart. "The turians lost three colonies before they decided on this."

Eve quietly sighed. "Indeed. Let us focus on the bigger picture, Wrex. Commander, can your turian squad defuse the bomb before the Council detonates it?"

"Not going to be easy," Jane replied. "Even if they force their way past that Spectre and get to the bomb…if this is official Council business, we'll have a diplomatic incident on our hands. Worse case scenario, it might cause a war."

"They screwed us over on Sur'kesh as well!" Wrex snapped. "They are not going to get away with it this time!"

"Commander, if I may?" Cortana said. "Councilors Sparatus and Valern have been good for their word so far. Anderson is still fighting on Earth and nobody has heard anything from Tevos. If we let bureaucracy do its work, who is going to be left to make a problem out of this once the dust settles?"

"You can't be suggesting what I think you're suggesting," Williams nervously said.

"I don't think killing our way through a Council excavation team led by a Spectre is going to go over well," Garrus cautiously agreed. "Even if Sparatus and Valern condone it, someone is going to spin this in the worst way possible."

"Likely the same someone who ordered this shit," Johnson said.

"Is your team even equipped to fight and defeat what should be their own allies?" Eve asked.

Garrus cleared his throat with a dry chuckle the way only he could. "The Cabals won't be having an issue there."

"They got the firepower to blast through that Council team?" Wrex then asked.

"Yes," both Avery as John said. The two UNSC men eyed each other for a moment, before John nodded. "Three's with them," Johnson continued. "You've seen him in action on Sur'kesh. They'll get this mission done, don't you worry about that."

Wrex leant back in his chair, nodding approvingly.

"Right," Shepard muttered. "I'm not about to unleash a war between the krogan and the turians. Let the politicians sort this one out. Sword-One to Dagger-One, do you copy, over?"

"Dagger-One here," the Kabalim impatiently replied. "What's the call?"

"Dismantle that bomb whatever it takes, Dagger-One."

"Roger that Sword-One. Dagger-One out."

"A wise call, Commander," Javik commented. "You cannot afford your allies to slow you down, or the Reapers will make you destroy each other."

"Yeah, I just – "

"Contact!" Cortana yelled over the TEAMCOM. "Right on top of the first vehicle!"

That was the moment their convoy hit the second snag. Their Tomkah shuddered violently and the driver just screamed, after which the vehicle crashed into something solid and came to a sudden and violent halt. Had they not been strapped down, the entire squad would have been sent pinging through the interior like shrapnel.

The Master Chief looked over at the driver, only to see that the entire front part of the vehicle was gone. Something had sheared the entire front away. The edges of the ruined metal smoked faintly, as if they had been slathered with acid.

A split-second later the Spartan realized that they hadn't slammed into a wall at all. An enormous thresher maw had erupted from the ground just as they were driving over it and the monster had bitten right through the Tomkah.

The Chief looked up…and up…and up. Through the laser focus of Spartan time distorting his perception, he was able to make several key observations before all hell broke loose.

The maw was big. This massive tubular beast had only just breached the surface and already it was higher than a Covenant Scarab. A hundred meters of metallic skin and blue, glowing cables –

Realization set in.

This isn't a normal thresher maw.

"Watch yourselves! We've got a Maw!" Wrex yelled as he hurried to undo his straps.

"Husk husk husk!" The Chief yelled, rushing back into the ruined Tomkah to help the others evacuate. "Get out, now!"

The Reaperfied creature had stopped emerging. It would come for them. Chew up the entire vehicle in one bite – and Eve along with it.

Shepard used her Biotics to rip her straps off, then moved to free the female krogan. Johnson began hurrying to get Garrus and Williams off the vehicle, but they were slow. There was too little time.

Wrex ripped Mordin's strap off and the salarian scampered out of the doomed Toomkah as well. Outside, mass accelerators began discharging. Not all of them came from the krogan convoy. Some of them came from up high.

"It's coming for us, get clear!" Vega yelled. He and Javik rushed after Johnson and opened fire. Wrex grabbed Eve by her hand and jerked her with him. Liara bounded after him. She looked up and her eyes widened with fear as she realized just what they were dealing with.

A massive shadow loomed overhead. The maw was coming down, its many guns raking the area all around her with automatic fire.

Shepard and Javik moved as one and used their Biotics to shove their teammates out of reach.

One of the AI's placed a danger zone around the Chief – an impact prediction. Shards of rock and stone rained down among them. He had seconds left.

John lunged for Wrex. He struck the krogan with a double open-palm strike and put his weight behind it. The old Battlemaster barely had the time to register what was going on before the blow sent him flying – out of the predicted impact site.

Shepard whirled towards Eve. She extended her hand, but her movements were slow. Sluggish. Without augmentations, she couldn't make full use of the Copperhead's systems. She simply wasn't fast enough.

The Spartan bounded towards Eve. He slid in-between her and the Commander and grabbed the krogan's forearms. Despite the horrifying experiments, despite her imprisonment at the STG base, her arms were wiry and muscled. Good. It might save her.

His momentum carried him onwards. He put his heels in the dirt and heaved – slinging Eve out of the maw's killing range.

The Chief tried to move as well, but then the Reaperfied titan was on top of him, and his entire world went black.

The BRAHMASTRA's shields flared as dozens of sharp stones and juts of metal slammed into his body. His stomach lurched as gravity sucked him down deeper into the darkness, occasionally broken up by flashes of blue light.

He bounced off large pieces of debris and rubble as the world spun around and around until finally, everything seemed to settle.

John carefully tested his limbs. It felt like he was lying on his back in a pool of liquid. His shields were still at ninety percent strength, and he still had some room to maneuver. His legs still obeyed his commands, but it felt like they were stuck under the rubble. His vision, already adapting to the darkness, suddenly cleared as his HUD overlaid several filters.

"Dad?" Mana's voice whispered in the back of his mind. "Are you hurt?"

"No," John replied. He blinked a few times and saw what looked like a dark, irregular tunnel above him. It looked like he had walls all around him…that pulsed and waved organically. "Please tell me that I'm not where I think I am."

"Hate to be the bearer of bad news…but you totally got swallowed by a giant Reaper worm."

He sighed, taking a moment to close his eyes. Priorities. Something as huge as a thresher maw would take enormous quantities of time and resources to convert. The Reaper tactics thus far had shown that the larger, more complex husks were generally more specialized and intelligent than the smaller ones. Kasumi would say the bigger they were, the badder they were.

"Is – "

"ELEMENT package is up and running."

"Good."

The Chief climbed to his feet. It looked like the maw had swallowed half a city along with him, but its stomach was too small to contain it all. Everything was all smashed together, wrecked beyond ruin. The air inside of this thing was toxic and blinding.

How had telegraphy and scans missed something so big?

"Commander, do you read me?"

The response was a warbled mess of radio signals and messages. He heard several different voices, but the interference was too much.

Jammers? Something powerful enough to block the BRAHMASTRA's communication system? "Mana, can you reach the others?"

Mana's tiny avatar appeared atop his shoulder. "I've tried. The big worm has some heavy jamming technology, far beyond anything we've seen from the Reapers so far. I can get a signal out, but anything the others send gets swallowed up."

"Can you find the source of the jamming signal?"

Her tiny head turned to face him. "I can, yes. You're not going to focus on getting out?"

"No."

She grinned. Her eyes were so lifelike, so human. "Are you going to kill the big worm?"

"Yes."

Her grin grew even wider. "So cool. How are we going to do that?"

"I'm going to find its heart," the Chief assured the little AI. "And I'll rip it out."

The sheer glee in Mana's eyes was a bit troubling…but John had to admit that it looked really satisfying as well.

A minute later, he was navigating through what he believed to be the beast's stomach. The process felt hauntingly familiar. Though he'd never been swallowed by a titanic animal, he had spent more than enough time wandering through halls of flesh and bone walls dripping with filthy liquids that swallowed all sound. He did not want to be here. Mana's casual remarks kept him focused enough, but this place…husks were merely reanimated corpses, but this thing was different. It did not want him here. The Reapers wanted him dead and they would move heaven and earth to achieve that.

He was not alone.

To his left, a section of the reinforced inner lining burst open, releasing a mess of tattered flesh and robotic appendages. The Master Chief immediately took several large steps backwards and raised his shotgun. What looked like a swarm of robotic worms lunged for his face, snapping at the air with surgically grafted metal pincers.

The first blast of Soellkraft 8 Gauge tore two of the creatures to shreds. A second and third blast were sufficient to thin the swarm, allowing the Chief some room to maneuver. The hostiles looked like miniature thresher maws themselves,

These things moved as one coordinated swarm. Four of them zigzagged across the ground in an exact, identical pattern, before surging up from the ground and snapping at his knees. Not eager to see how his shields would hold up against their bite strength, the Spartan pulled his leg out of reach, then stomped the creature to death.

Another SOB came from above and latched itself on to the Spartan's left arm. It couldn't find a solid grip thanks to the suit's energy shielding though. Before it could start biting down, the Chief snatched its neck with his right hand and tore the creature away, before decapitating it by crushing the husk's neck in his fist.

The slippery bastards had numbers, but they were frail. The Master Chief stomped two more to death, paused to slice one of them in half with his wristblade, then stumbled and nearly fell as the humongous Thresher Maw began moving again.

One of the buggers tried to cease the moment and went for the Spartan's throat, but it was still far too slow. As it lunged, the Chief merely extended his wristblade and impaled the worm through its head.

After that, he managed to put down the remaining stragglers with a few precision shots of his sidearm.

"I can't imagine these husks were anything other than an immune reaction to your continued movements," Mana suggested. "Other than the inherent funniness of tiny worms living in a big worm, I don't think there's any other reason for them being here than to prevent people from doing what we're about to do."

"Let's hurry then, before anything else 'funny' comes our way," John replied.

"Good idea. I'd estimate the heart – or hearts – to be that way."

A waypoint appeared on his HUD.

John raised an eyebrow. "A heartbeat?"

"Or the next best thing. Your suit picked up faint tremors and echoes throughout the big worm's internal structure."

"I didn't hear anything."

"That's because your biological senses aren't sensitive enough. Don't worry; I'll keep an ear out," Mana assured him.

His motion sensor kept picking up transient contacts throughout the maw's body. The deeper he ventured into its alien cavities, the worse the results of the huskification process looked. At first, the Spartan found himself crawling through "tunnels" of flesh lined with tubes and patches of jagged, death-black metal. The deeper he came though, the less common the fleshy textures became, until his surroundings were more metal than anything else.

When he was within a hundred meters of where Mana guessed its first heart to be, he encountered yet another snag. Even though the internal structure now resembled the insides of a dead Reaper more than anything organic, but not entirely. He soon realized that its organs were still intact.

A mistake. He should have known better than to assume his movements to be free of obstacles. "What am I looking at?" He asked, placing his hand against a dark, slimy barrier. Ropy cables ran through its outer layer at several junctions, looking like a morbid intubation.

"According to what little information available on thresher maw biology, I'd say you found an intestinal wall. We're at the end of its digestive tract."

"Is this the right way?" The Chief asked, putting more force against the intestinal wall. It was elastic enough to stretch, but not by a lot.

"To its thoracic region? Yes. Are you going to blow your way through with explosives?"

The Spartan engaged his wristblade. "No."

-(++)-

---

Kelpic Valley

Estimated bomb location

"I can't believe this," Pollux muttered under her breath. "He's not fit to lead this platoon."

"The Kabalim was just as young when she started at her position," Kallen replied.

Pollux' mandibles jolted up with anger as she hissed, "The Kabalim's family were outcasts. They had no reputation to destroy by her actions, the Lieutenant does. If he fails here, the Primarch's reputation is going to be ruined."

Kallen flinched at that, as though she'd been struck. "But this isn't on him!"

"Doesn't matter. He promoted his son to this position. If the people learn that the Hierarchy's top leader made such a mistake, they'll lose faith. They'll think him unfit to lead."

Tatilia sighed. Loath as she was to admit it, failure in this situation would fall on the Primarch. If that bomb went off, it would mean war between her people and the krogan. No reinforcements for Palaven, no UNSC boots on the ground.

Killing the Council team sent after the dig-site would be almost as disastrous. Shepard had given her the green light to engage, but was that really the only solution here?

"Haven't these men sacrificed enough?" She heard Tarquin plead.

"We all make it someday," the Spartan quietly replied. "Some sooner than others. It's our duty."

"My men have lost hope! I can't force them to do this!"

Three didn't respond to that, oddly enough. He looked away for a moment, then back at the Lieutenant.

Tatilia ground her canines together, then briskly approached the two. "Wrong. It's your job to make hem care."

"How?" Tarquin snapped back.

"If they don't finish this mission, your men will spark a war between the Hierarchy and the krogan!" Tatilia growled. "Do you know what that means, Lieutenant? It means Palaven burns!" She jabbed a talon at him. "But we have a chance to prevent that from happening. The best chance you're gonna get!"

Tarquin took a shaky breath. Her comment about Palaven burning had been a low blow, but it connected nonetheless. "What if they won't listen?" He asked, his voice laced with uncertainty.

"Make them listen," Tatilia snapped. "This, right here, is the war to end all fucking wars! Remind them of that. Shoot them if they argue, I don't care. Just do it!"

Tarquin reeled back at her suggestion, his eyes wide with shock. But he didn't argue. He turned to face his men – who were listening to every word being spoken.- and cleared his voice. "Men! I owe what happened today! But you heard it yourselves – we have to keep going!"

One of the larger soldiers yelled back, "No we don't! Who cares about a few dead krogan?"

Laelea silenced the soldier with a sharp click and yelled, "The krogan are going to march on Palaven and kick the Reapers off the second we cure the Genophage! You don't want to see that happen, Corporal? You don't want to see the UNSC help take Palaven back?"

"N-No ma'am," the soldier hastily replied. "I-I do want to see that!"

"You know what our sacrifice here means today!" Tarquin continued. "If we fail here, the entire galaxy will suffer! We are here to build a line of defense on Palaven. We're not going to fail today, because we are turians! Let the heroes of the Ninth Platoon be remembered for their courage and determination!"

Overhead, the Hierarchy's shuttles circled above. Tarquin looked up at them, squinting his eyes to protect against the dust. "Shuttles are here. Time to make your call. Are you going to retreat, or will you advance?" He paused to let his words sink in, then shook his head. "I know what I'm doing."

Tatilia watched the soldiers contemplate what their Lieutenant said. It was subtle, but it was there; the straightening of their spines, the resolution on their grim faces. They had heard his silent question and they had answered him.

"Looks like the Ninth is going to carry on," she quietly said to herself.

"Shoot them if they argue?" Three asked just as quietly.

The Kabalim rolled her eyes. "Worked, didn't it? You weren't very compelling today."

He thought about that for a moment. At least, Tatilia assumed he did. Hard to see anything going on underneath that bucket of his. "Leaders must be inspiring. I'm not."

"It shows," she replied. "Doesn't matter. Not everyone is fit to lead."

"Maybe," Three conceded. "But Victus got dealt a bad hand. Situation like this? Casualties were inevitable."

"True," Tatilia said. "Is that why you broke up that fight?"

His visor turned towards her.

"If he hadn't gotten that under control, I don't know if I would have interfered," Tatilia explained. "I didn't think you cared."

Three looked away again. "I don't," he said, his voice quiet and…almost uncertain. "Or didn't. Victus…all of you are aliens. I spent my life hating you." He glanced over at the crashed wreckage. The fire had almost consumed it completely. "My only motivation. For the longest time."

Tatilia lowered her gaze. She had read about the Human-Covenant war back when the UEG first made itself officially known to the galactic community. Back then, she'd only memorized it as battlefield trivia. Even now, she hadn't made the connection on a personal level. That was negligence on her part, especially now that Three had been attached to her squad.

"Even though you know it wasn't us?" She asked, keeping her voice even and neutral.

"Rationally. Doesn't change it."

Tatilia sighed. "So Tarquin?"

Three's visor tilted upwards a few centimeters. "…I'm not sure. Back then, they were just soldiers. Angry. Scared. Human."

The Kabalim took a deep breath. Spirits, the Spartan sounded almost as uncertain as Kallen did on occasion and she was the rookie of the squad. How could someone be so effective in combat, yet so conflicted on the inside?

She reminded herself of how young the Spartan had looked. Human or not, out here he was her responsibility. "I appreciate your honesty with me. I know that's a difficult thing to do."

The soldiers from the Ninth Platoon hurried aboard their shuttles, casualties first. Tarquin made sure he was last. He waved the soldiers in, and then turned to Tatilia when she approached. "Ma'am, you're coming with us, right? We're a shell of our former self. We could really use the help. Might even resolve this peacefully."

Tatilia sincerely doubted that, but kept that thought to herself. "Point us to a shuttle. We're coming."

She led the Eleventh Crèche into one of the shuttles. The Sergeant in charge there gave her girls a nervous look, then a very nervous look once Three stepped aboard the shuttle.

"Last man," Three informed her, pointedly ignoring the stares he got from the rest of the turians. Seems none of them had ever seen a seven foot tall super soldier clad in starship-grade power armor.

Tatilia nodded. "Ready for liftoff."

With no time left to lose, the bolstered Ninth Platoon raced towards the dig-site. They encountered no more enemy resistance – the sangheili force had pounded the Reapers flat. That they hadn't also blown up the Council ship hiding behind Vaul was a miracle. Commander Shepard must have an enormous amount of goodwill.

That, or the repercussions of Council species infighting were even more dire if they blew up a special operations warship. Who were they going up against anyway? STG? Huntresses?

"We're coming up on bomb-site in a few minutes," Victus said over the comm. "We should have time to recon the location. Scans showed – "

"Sorry to interrupt Lieutenant, but we've got the intel taken care of," Tatilia interrupted. "Cortana?"

"Thought you'd never ask!" The UNSC AI replied. Cortana, as the Kabalim had learned, was a sentient AI based on an organic brain. She was, for all intents and purposes, and actual mind and an actual person. Whereas the geth could be considered nothing more than networked software, Cortana was alive.

Cortana also loved the spotlight. "Turns out the Council's attempt to spoof their presence from the krogan military was no match for the advanced sensors of a CAS-Class Assault Carrier. Go figure. Hyperscanner reveals a sizable Council presence. Lieutenant Victus, with your permission?"

"Uhm…who are you, exactly?"

A couple of soldiers exchanged uneasy looks.

"I'm Cortana. I'm a UNSC Artificial Intelligence paired up with Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan-117 – you know, the man who is currently curing the Genophage with Commander Shepard?"

There was a moment of silence on the comm, before a rather subdued Tarquin replied, "I…I know about the Master Chief. Continue please."

"Right. Uploading the tactical assessment to your omni-tools now. As you can see, the AO is about two grids large. Thirteen salarian engineers spotted, with three groups of human and asari soldiers to guard them. No eyes-on the Spectre yet."

"Impressive," Tarquin said. "I'll take all the help we can get. Alright…this is what we're going to do…"

Tatilia followed the Lieutenant's plan on the holographic overlay of the terrain, quietly taking notice of the terrain, the enemy troop deployment and the location of the bomb itself. Victus' approach for the mission was sensible enough and it made full use of the Eleventh's specific Biotic talent. They would be the ones to punch through to the bomb and dismantle it. In the meantime, the Ninth would secure the flanks and lay down enough covering fire to force the enemy to dig down, before sending a mobile element to reinforce the Cabals.

Nobody balked at the idea.

"I've got an incoming transmission!" The lead pilot yelled through the comm. "Patching it through!"

A second later, a female voice came through the intercom. "Turian shuttles, you are entering a restricted area. Please alter your course."

"This is Lieutenant Tarquin Victus of the Ninth Platoon. You are interfering with a sanctioned Council operation! Cease your operations immediately!"

The female chuckled lazily and Tatilia felt a chill run down her spine. "We are the sanctioned Council operation here, Lieutenant. Hasn't daddy informed you? The Hierarchy's on their own on this one. Turn back now and I'll forget about your transgressions here. Keep heading on your trajectory and you won't live to see the diplomatic incident you'll unleash."

That got a few frantic reactions out of the soldiers. The Sergeant silenced them with a quick snarl, but he couldn't stop his subvocals from calling out his own stress.

"I don't know who you are," Tarquin continued, "But if you detonate that bomb, it will mean war between the krogan and the Hierarchy!"

"As sanctioned by the Council. And if you try to stop us, it will mean war between the Hierarchy and the other Council species. Which would you prefer, Lieutenant?"

Tatilia assumed this to be the Spectre. That smugness in her voice made her blood boil, but the ultimatum genuinely frightened her. A war with the krogan could be handled easily as they were now. A war with the salarians, asari and humans…it would bring ruin to the entire galaxy. Nobody would survive that.

Damnation, would she be the one to lead her squad into that? Risk their lives for more suffering?

"She's bluffing," Laelea said. "Gotta be."

"I don't know," Pollux said in a subdued manner. "Spectres don't screw around. Chances are even. I don't like it."

Tatilia turned towards Three. She ignored the whispering soldiers and asked, "What do you think?"

"…it's convenient," he said. "Humans. Asari. Salarians. No turians. A joint-species operation on Tuchanka to sabotage the war effort despite the Council having agreed on the cure."

Tatilia narrowed her eyes. "You're saying she's bluffing."

"I'm thinking we complete the mission. Let the higher-ups handle the fallout."

Kallen spread her talons, a smile teasing the edges of her mandibles. "It's so sad. The Spectre's operation was foiled by the Reapers. Their fighting dismantled the bomb, too. What a tragedy."

The Kabalim found herself chuckling despite the situation. "Fine." She hit the comm and pinged Victus. "Lieutenant? Ignore her. We're going in."

"Approach the LZ!" The Lieutenant ordered across the comm not two seconds later. "They'll be expecting us. Go out guns blazing! Group leaders, get ready!"

The soldiers readied their Phaestons and got into position by the shuttle door. Three stood at the very front. He clicked the safety off his rifle, then set the stock to his shoulder.

"Five seconds!"

Explosions buffeted the shuttle, but the soldiers held fast. The shuttle door opened and a hail of gunfire pinged off its side. Half the men there flinched back and took cover and the other half instantly returned fire on full auto, hoping to put down enough suppressive fire for the enemy shooters to keep their heads down.

Three moved out with inhuman speed, sweeping his rifle back and forth as he engaged the enemy. A storm of bullets cut through the air, hitting targets none of the turians had even seen, and he hit them with laser accuracy. Retaliatory fire splashed across his chest and legs, but his shields visibly flared in response to the impact – a golden, shimmering layer that repelled every round that hit him. He didnt even flinch.

His fire nailed a number of the troopers and the others scampered for better firing positions, launching tech attacks and Biotic blasts. The lull in their fire was enough for the Ninth to move up and get a foothold. They fanned out amidst the ruins, breaking up into squads and starting the approach to the bomb.

Three calmly marched forwards, his left hand blurring to replace his empty magazine with a new one, faster than any reload with a thermal clip could be. He resumed firing within a second.

Impressive work, but Tatilia knew she couldn't afford to watch him work. She had a job to do.

She spotted a pair of humans rushing to a ruined building and she instantly opened fire on them, directing her fellow cabals that direction as well. The approach to the bomb was a labyrinth of rubble and debris, with plenty of opportunities for a pragmatic Spectre to lay ambushes.

Especially with thirteen salarian engineers.

Not even ten seconds went by before she was proven right. One of the turians screamed as a pair of drones materialized next to him, shocking him with electric attacks.

Another soldier simply dropped when a sniper put a round through his head, his shields too weak to shrug it off.

The shooter relocated, but he was too hasty. Tatilia caught his sudden movement from her corner of her eye. As the sniper moved, the Kabalim was on him in an instant. She darted across the battlefield in several Biotic 'jumps', throwing off any fire that the enemy could have thrown her way.

When she rematerialized, she did so almost right in top of the bastard. The human was just about to take aim again when the cabal put two venom-laced talons through his throat. He fell with a heavy thud and started thrashing around.

The approach to the bomb was difficult and messy and throughout it all, that Spirits-damned Spectre kept taunting them with arguments against the cure through some sort of speaker system.

"After the war, the Citadel didn't abandon the krogan!" Her voice echoed across the battlefield. "The Council rewarded them greatly with new planets to inhabit! Why are you dying for a people like that, people who will hate and turn on you the minute they get the chance?"

Tatilia ignored the taunts and pushed on towards the central platform. She darted through a booby-trapped room in a wash of Biotics, calmly gutted the salarians engineer responsible for them, then shot a human soldier as he rushed around the corner.

"The krogan had decades and decades of aggressive expansion before the Council finally put their foot down when they tried to take an asari colony."

She 'jumped' again, phasing through a wall and almost crashing face-first into an asari. The blue-skinned soldier reacted instantly and cast a Biotic blast her way.

Tatilia ducked to the ground, rolled once as the asari began shooting her, then phased through a pile of debris for some cover.

"During negotiations…"

Her shields were at half strength, but another asari came rushing around a corner and opened fire. Tatilia scrambled to her feet and slid out of her line of sight, but the first asari rounded the corner and unleashed a second bolt.

Tatilia didn't see what mnemonics she used, but half a second later the bolt struck her sternum like an invisible battering ram. She skidded across the rocks and came to a rough stop against a crumbling wall, wheezing and coughing.

"…representative physically attacked the Councilors."

Broke something, she thought dazedly as she struggled to get back to her feet. Must have been a Throw.

The second asari came within view to finish her off -

Tatilia raised her right gauntlet and launched a volley of Nightshade Blades. The neurotoxin tipped blades slammed into her body with enormous kinetic energy, half of them ripping straight through her barrier.

The blue-skinned bitch had about one second to scream at the top of her lungs before the toxins took a hold of her internal systems and shut them down. She fell to the ground, utterly paralyzed, as the venoms started to dissolve her organs.

"…ruthless in their Rebellions – "

Gunfire raked the ground around her. A burst of fire struck her right side and Tatilia hissed in pain when some of the rounds punched through her suit.

" – conducted meteor strikes - "

No time to dwell on that. The other asari leapt over the pile of debris in a biotically enhanced jump. She pulled her hand back to toss a lethal bolt of energy. At this range, she could not miss.

" – three turian worlds uninhabitable – "

The asari landed atop the rubble and unleashed a handful of whirling gravitational fields. At that instant, Tatilia encased herself in a Biotic barrier and executed her Poison Strike. She felt her gauntlets rip through something soft and warm as she slashed through the asari soldier. She landed atop the pile of debris, her gauntlet pressed against her bleeding chest, and risked a look over her shoulder.

It didn't look like the asari's next of kin would get a look at her remains.

"And the Genophage does not even hinder their population increase – "

The Kabalim focused her Biotic energy and atavistic muscle structure. Slowly, the pain became more manageable, and her movements less sluggish.

Biotic Focus was one of those abilities unique to turian Cabals. The heightened Biotic state would aid her barrier in reducing damage, as well make her move faster and stronger. It didn't last long though. Like with a stimpack, she only had a couple of minutes to capitalize on it.

Furious harmonics echoed across the battlefield as the Ninth pushed deeper into the AO. Tatilia phased through a sheet of metal and stumbled at the platform that held the bomb. It had been completely unearthed, left dangling over a giant crater.

A large building to the left shrouded the platform from the sun. It had been cracked open long ago, but plenty of hostiles had taken up superior firing positions with good cover. They had abandoned the bomb itself for a better position.

Tarquin and a few of his men had broken through, but they were under heavy fire from salarian and asari soldiers alike. Kallen was the first to have made it there; she zipped back and forth across what little cover she had, taking potshots at the enemy with an SMG to force them back into cover, away from Victus.

"They've set the bomb to detonate!" Tarquin yelled across the comm. "I've got to separate the trigger!"

Damnation! Where was the Spartan?

"Do it!" Tatilia yelled back, firing a long burst of fire into the closest target she saw. Her fire caught the salarian by surprise. He was unable to take cover fast enough before the Phaeston overwhelmed his shields and perforated his bulbous head. He dropped, but another took his place.

"Move Lieutenant!" Kallen yelled, dashing for cover when someone threw a grenade her way. "They're aiming for you!"

They were so preoccupied with the enemy forces in the building that they didn't see the figure uncloak at their flank. A well-armored asari with red warstripes raised a rocket launcher and lined it up.

Tatilia felt her heart race as she sprinted towards the woman, firing her rifle until it overheated. Before she could pop the heatsink, two more asari uncloaked out of nowhere and opened fire on her, forcing the Kabalim to break off amidst a hail of mass accelerato fire.

"Missile, missile missile!" She yelled into the comm.

Too late. Just as Kallen whirled around, the asari fired. A missile rocketed her way.

The youngest of Tatilia's squad threw herself to one side. The explosive detonated at the edge of her cover. Shrapnel tore through her shields and ripped up her left side. She screamed, other soldiers uttered shaky cries of sympathy, but nobody was able to do anything.

Furious, half-mad with rage, Tatilia threw herself at the two asari Infiltrators. One of them whipped out a huntress sword and met her headfirst. The other backed off, drew an SMG and started circling around to find a better position.

And the third – the Spectre – flashed her a cruel, satisfied little smirk, and drew an oversized handgun. Then, she moved in for another kill.

Tatilia repelled that damnable sword three times in rapid succession, backed away to get a clear shot for a Nightshade volley and barely managed to dodge to her right in time to catch the sword on her shoulder instead of her face.

The second asari broke off to get a better firing position, while the Spectre casually strolled towards her, taking aim with her gun even as the Kabalim struggled to fend off the huntress. She snarled as the blade cut into her left arm, slicing through her hardsuit and into her flesh. In turn, she ducked low and lashed out at the asari's leg, delivering a few shallow cuts in her thigh with her gauntlet.

Too shallow, too low. The poison would take a few moments to take hold. She didn't have that time.

That other asari had circled around and started taking accurate single shots with her SMG. Tatilia felt her shields flicker into existence with each hit, but they were draining rapidly. The Spectre came within spitting distance and raised her handgun – a Carnifex.

Panic seized the Kabalim's stomach. A shot at that range would be a crippling blow at best – and an execution at worst.

As the huntress delivered another blow, Tatilia shot forwards and pinned her sword between her gautlets. Immediately, the asari enveloped herself with a corona of Biotic energy, getting ready to unleash an explosive burst.

With her shields at maybe thirty percent, Tatilia knew she wouldn't be shrugging that one off. Afterwards, a single Carnifex shot would be enough to unite her with her ancestors.

Through her Biotic Focus, the Kabalim saw it all unfold as if in slow motion. She snarled, struggling mightily to break the stalemate – to change something, anything at all – and get to her fallen.

The Spectre stepped out from behidn the huntress, casually lining up her pistol with Tatilia's skull. She pulled the corner of her mouth up in another lazy, manic grin –

Someone grabbed the Spectre's wrist and jerked it back. Out of nowhere, Spartan-003 stepped into the fray, moving with a speed and grace that utterly defied logic. He slammed his right gauntlet into the Spectre's forearm, warping its armor and shattering her bone. At the same time, he stepped in front of the SMG-wielding asari and blocked her shots with his body. Before either had a chance to respond, he then slammed his right hand into the neck of the huntress, right where her Biotic amp would be.

The human super-soldier pivoted, moving like a blur and hurled the Spectre over his hip and onto the ground, damn near ripping her body in half in the process. His left hand came up with a pistol and he blew apart the huntress' skull with three quick shots in the nape of her neck. With his free right hand, he pulled Tatilia out of the remaining asari's line of fire, pressing her close against his armored chest as he lobbed something at her feet.

Tatilia saw the asari's eyes go wide when she recognized the object. She started surrounding herself with a Biotic aura, but the Spartan calmly shot her twice in each leg and she collapsed.

Two seconds later, the grenade underneath her curled-up body went off. Her shredded remains rained down amidst a rain of dirt and stones.

"Kallen…" Tatilia stammered. She shook herself out of her shock and rushed towards her fallen comrade. "Kallen!"

The young Cabal's side was slick with blue blood. She lay there curled up, trembling and pressing against her wounds to stem the bleeding. Small.

Alive.

Kallen was panting, taking short, superficial breaths. Shaking. Either the shock was about to wear off and the pain would drive her insane, or the shock was getting worse and she would die.

"Hey, hey, I'm here," Tatilia snapped, not even bothering to keep her subvocals under control. "Easy. Missile got you bad. Mangled your armor, your arm..." Spirits, half of Kallen's arm was just gone. Blood oozed from various open wounds, but the blast had disrupted her tissue enough that the stump actually bled less than the lacerations. "I'm giving you something against the pain."

Using her omni-tool, she applied generous doses of Medi-gel on Kallen's worst injuries. Next, she jabbed her with a Stimpack. It would keep her sharp, alert for the next few minutes, and dull the pain.

Pollux slid to a halt next to her and held on to Kallen's neck, fixing it in place just in case she had any damage there. "Called in a medevac. Ships are on their way. Laelea's with Victus. The bomb is secure."

Looking up, Tatilia saw that the Lieutenant was consolidating with his men at the bomb itself. More soldiers had made it through this mess than she would have thought.

"Kabalim," Pollux said sternly, "You're hit."

Tatilia nodded firmly. "I'll live."

"No," Pollux snapped. "You need medical care too! Who had the other dose of…" her voice trailed off and she looked down at her fallen comrade again, mandibles widening with realization.

"Busted in the explosion, or I would have used her dose on her first," Tatilia said through clenched teeth. Focus was wearing off. The pain was setting in now.

A shadow passed over her. She looked up to see Spartan-003 kneel down next to her. Various colors of blood clung to his limbs, but as far as she could tell, none of it was his.

"Where in the Spirits have you been," she angrily hissed.

"Too many shooters. Needed to clear through that building," Three replied. He reached for an armored satchel on his hip and took out a gray cylinder.

"Boss," Pollux gently said. "He was with us. He cleared out that entire building in minutes. Most of their forces and heavy weapons were in there."

"We should have been faster," Three said. He offered Tatilia the canister. "This is biofoam. Self-sealing, space-filling coagulant. It prevents infections and promotes tissue regeneration."

Pain stabbed through her ribs. She bit her tongue to keep it from showing. "I'm a turian. Won't that – "

"It's safe for turians. No amino incompatibilities."

"Fine. Do it."

The Spartan inserted the tip into the holes in her armor, gently pushing it through one of the open wounds in her scales. The little tip felt cold, but that was nothing compared to the absolute bone-deep chill that followed as he sprayed her with the biofoam itself. Tatilia gasped as the stuff froze half her internal organs, but the pain immediately dulled.

A moment of uneasiness followed as all three looked down at their fallen comrade again. Now that the fight was over, the silence following its wake was deafening.

She'd make it – Tatilia repeated that to herself. Of course she'd make it – but that was rational thinking. Soldiers always seemed to struggle with reality when it came to their comrades. Always argued for the opposite.

She'd make it. She'd make it.

Pollux hated silence. She opened her mouth again after just a few seconds. "What now?"

"Now?" Tatilia repeated. Absent-mindedly, she caressed Kallen's face, wiping what blood she could off her cheek. "We did our duty. It's out of our hands. The rest is up to Shepard."

-(++)-

---

Shroud

When the Master Chief finally gained access to the core of the maw's circulatory system, he almost wished he hadn't.

The "chamber" reminded him very much of the Flood-infested High Charity, but with cybernetic tech instead of flesh. Spines of Reaper nano-tech hung throughout the sternum, interconnected with the floor and the ceiling like thick, black spiderwebs.

At the center of the sternum stood a room-sized and grotesque amalgamation of pale red flesh, black metal plates, barbs and luminescent cables. The Master Chief didn't need to get close to see that not all protrusions were tech. He saw arms sticking out of the bulbous mass. A leg. A few broad heads that stared blankly ahead. Fused into the giant, huskified organ were the partially digested remains of at least half a dozen krogan.

Endless bands of black wire wrapped around the mass. Four barbed spears had been inserted into the heart, each at a different angle and direction. Power sources? Control mechanisms? The Spartan couldn't tell.

"That's it," Mana cheerfully said. "This place is brimming with power. It's stable enough…for now. The Reaper signal is the strongest here. No, that's not right…each husk functions as a sort of transmitter node for the Reapers. The Signal, it's what…what controls the husks."

The Spartan slowly approached the maw's "heart". One of the krogan bodies hung limply in the grotesque organ, with only one of its hands visible. Half its face had been digested by the maw's gastric fluids. Parts of his skull were visible. He could only surmise that these krogan had been eaten alive by the maw, but why hadn't they been crushed in the process? For that matter, how had they ended up all the way here, in a completely different section of the maw's biology?

"I can overload the power flow going through the heart, send a pulse through its internal systems that will damage them beyond repair. Or, better yet, I can try to co-opt the Signal."

"What do you mean?" John replied. He leant closer to the krogan, a horrible sensation spreading through his stomach.

Mana sighed in exasperation. "I mean that I can try to wrestle the signal away from the Reapers, give me control over the big worm."

That sounded extremely risky. Even if he set aside Mana's…more alien AI matrix, nothing good had ever come out of messing with Reaper technology.

"Too dangerous," John replied. "We should focus on killing it."

"But we can use this thing against that Reaper. Unless you want to overwhelm the Destroyer with firepower and risk a stray mortar or shell hitting the Shroud, possibly dooming the krogan forever?"

The partially digested krogan blinked.

"…can you set this thing on a collision course with the Destroyer?" The Master Chief asked.

"Can do!"

"Good. Have it incapacitate the Reaper. I'll do the rest. Cut off that signal the moment anything goes wrong, Mana."

His motion sensor all but exploded with motion. All around him the walls tore themselves to shreds as dozens upon dozens of the larval maws flooded into the chamber, hissing, gibbering and slithering. They clambered across the heart, through the web of cables and spikes, careless of casualties. Behind them, a flood of vile, black liquid followed in their wake.

As the Spartan engaged them all, putting out a storm of fire to make the husks wilt and fall, something more horrifying happened. The cable web started to come undone. More of that black liquid spewed forth into the room, already getting up to the Spartan's ankles.

Blood, the Chief realized. Somehow, the maw knew what was going on, and its arteries were pulling loose to drown its own heart in blood.

Not that it hindered the parasites now swarming the chamber. The Master Chief shot three of them out of the air, then hurried to sidestep to avoid when a cluster of them flung themselves off the flailing arteries and towards the back of his mind. He switched back to his pistol and wristblade, then almost crashed to the ever-growing pool of blood when the thresher maw itself suddenly changed direction.

"There!" Mana said with a strained voice. "One big worm…now on a collision course with the Destroyer!" She giggled. "The Reaper didn't like that. Pain of the mind, unlike any Reaper has ever felt before. They're still screaming."

The Master Chief ripped a pair of larval maws off his chest, cut them in half with his wristblade and stumbled closer to the heart. The blood was getting up to his shins. "What now?"

Mana chuckled weakly. "Mom taught me this trick. Cut along these angles and only these!"

Yellow lines appeared across the maw's heart in a rough T form, with a red dot below its left. The Chief paused to gun down a trio of slithering worms, swatted a fourth out of the air and then slammed his blade into the nano-tech organ. A surge of electricity erupted from his suit, through his wrist and into the amalgamation.

The Spartan ignored the gallons of blood that erupted from the opening and focused on cutting. The cables flickered, dimmed once and then flared. His shields drained a solid thirty percent as Mana used their power to work her magic.

"There. Reversion complete, total overload imminent. Do you want to have the honors?"

Without a word, the Master Chief took one of his remaining grenades, pulled the pin and then jammed it into the T-shaped pattern he had just carved. He didn't pay attention to what he saw within the maw's heart. He didn't want that sight burned into his mind.

Black ooze continued to pour into the chamber from literally directions. The Master Chief labored through the knee-high pool of blood, making it several meters before the grenade detonated, ripping the unholy organ apart and completely opening the blood valve.

All the while, the larval husks kept rushing about, oblivious to their imminent demise. Even with their grafted metal jaws, they were unable to get a grip on the BRAHMASTRA's shields.

It took the Master Chief a few moments to realize that he could barely see where he was going. The claustrophobic innards of the giant thresher maw weren't exactly well lit. With all the violent thrashing and course corrections the mega-creature performed, it was impossible to tell which way was up or down. Mana placed a waypoint in the dark, messy sea of blood, and the Spartan double-timed his way towards it.

The maw spun and the entire room was flipped upside down. The Chief was forced to claw his way towards an orifice barely large enough to allow a Grunt to crawl through. The constant rush of blood helped push him along though, and he managed to squeeze through.

"Mana, get us as close to the outer layer as possible."

"Are you sure? You might get stuck, and m-maybe you won't be able to cut your way free!"

John struggled to remain patient. His hectic environment must have been more stressful than he thought. "Just do it. Someone'll be there. Just signal our exact location."

"Anything could be out there."

"I'm betting on it."

The enormous amount of blood made it all but impossible to see. Even with his enhanced eyesight and the powerful imaging hardware of his suit, his surroundings were simply too dark, too alien to navigate by. When his sight wasn't obscured by the black gunk, he'd be jammed against some sort of tissue layer or nano-enhanced metal shell.

How she did it, John had no idea, but Mana navigated him through a maze of tubes and corrupted organs. Sometimes he'd have to cut his way through membranes or sheets of metal, but there was always another route the little AI was able to find.

And through it all, the maw's movements were getting more violent and intense. Sometimes, the Chief thought he could hear the distinctive sound of a Reaper's main weapon going off, but he couldn't be sure.

"There, the outer layer!" Mana yelled, and the waypoint on his HUD turned a bright green. "What…what do we do now?"

The Master Chief braced himself against something soft and cold in total darkness. The dying maw's blood had completely enveloped him. It would die of internal bleeding long before he'd run out of air, but the sensation wasn't pleasant. "We cut our way out."

Though his surroundings kept him from seeing, it didn't keep him from hearing. As he carved into the reinforced plating of the maw's cuticle, his suit's audio sensors caught a cacophony of noise coming from the other side.

Above the myriad of sounds and tremors, the Chief was all but certain he recognized the loudest two sources.

"Picking up activity from the outside. Audio suggests power tools and laughter."

Seconds later, some sort of extremely violent, blade-tipped, rotating power tool tore through the maw's outer plates. Blood burst free from the wound, but whoever was trying to free him didn't seem to care. A pair of armored gauntlets punched through the weakened section and grabbed the Spartan by his arm. They clasped his wrist, almost reassuringly, before pulling him out of the wound with superhuman strength.

The Master Chief tumbled out of the open wound in a waterfall of blood. It was a slippery and disgusting affair and he enjoyed every second of it. As he reflexively wiped his visor, he saw none other than Urdnot Grunt step into his view. The tankbred krogan looked down at the Master Chief with an expression of sheer glee, and he quickly discarded his power tool to offer him a hand.

John took it, and allowed Grunt to help pull him back to his feet. "Master Chief!" The krogan yelled, affectionately grabbing the Spartan's shoulders. "Back from the shadows! Slaying giants under Aralakh's gaze!"

"Thanks for the help," the Spartan replied. He looked around to survey Mana's work. The thresher maw had wrapped itself around the Destroyer like a snake. It had crushed its outer shell and rendered it completely immobile, leaving both of them easy pickings for the krogan convoy and Elite armor.

Beautiful work.

Grunt wasn't alone. He had a platoon of well-armored and heavily armed krogan with him. The ground around them was littered with dead husks and pieces of Reaper debris. Scorch marks and craters pocketed the land. A single burning Tomkah stood fifty meters away, its turret having been blown from its chassis.

Shepard wasn't here. Neither were Wrex, Eve or Mordin. Good; that meant they were about to finish the mission.

"Looks like I missed the fight – " John said, but Grunt immediately interrupted him.

"Missed it? He he he. Chief, you were the fight! You were the entire battlefield!"

Half the gathered krogan began bellowing and pumping their fists in the air.

"That maw was about to ruin our entire plan, but then it just headed straight for the Reaper and threw down," Grunt continued with an almost manic glee. "That was you, wasn't it? That's what you do!"

"It wasn't part of my plan, but I see it worked out nonetheless," the Spartan replied. "Good to see you, Grunt. If you're here…"

"Our Battlemaster is with Mordin, already on their way to the Shroud!" Grunt excitedly said. "She's about to cure the Genophage, Chief."

John turned to look at the Shroud. Banshees and Seraph patrolled around its top. Phantom dropships hovered nearby, their turrets constantly spinning to acquire new targets. Krogan patrols wandered around the base, while in the distance, a humongous Scarab walker kept its watchful gaze between the two destroyed Destroyers.

After a moment, Cortana's avatar appeared. She sat on the Chief's right shoulder, looking up at the Shroud as well. "Looks like we did it, John," she quietly said. "While you were out slaying giants, Jane rallied all forces and stormed the Shroud."

"Is the cure going to work?" He replied.

Cortana gave him a gentle smile. "Of course it will. Mordin and I saw to it together. He should be just about done."

Mana materialized mid-jump and landed on John's left shoulder. "Dad and I slayed a dragon together!"

"Did you now?" Cortana replied. "Look, there it goes."

A cloud of greenish golden light erupted from the top of the Shroud. It spread across the plains of Tuchanka at an enormous velocity, going further and further as it reached the atmosphere.

"A cure for the Genophage," John whispered. After four decades of death, violence and warfare, he found himself surrounded by friends and family, having helped to save an entire sentient species. He felt…odd.

"And a new future for the krogan," Cortana said. She looked at him again, her eyes happy and content. "Penny for your thoughts?"

John watched the cloud of golden light spread across the sky. He was aware of Mana's gaze as well. His actions and feelings would help shape her mind. More than that, they would dictate their future. Together. Cortana and Shepard. Now Mana too.

He raised his hand and watched a speck of golden dust tenderly float down. It landed on his outstretched palm.

"It's a start," he replied, unable to keep himself from smiling.

-(++)-

---

AN: that about wraps up the Tuchanka arc. Time to close the titular Ring of Steel and haul it to Palaven…

In the meantime, I'm inviting the entire internet to go to Youtube and search for "What if the Halo Theme was an Anime Opening?" It's an awesome remix with vocals from a guy who has some capital-T talent.

Inbetween the meantime I'll continue to try and survive 2022. It hasn't been my best year and I'm trying to find as much enjoyment as I can, where I can. Luckily, that also includes writing.

Don't forget to leave a review if you liked this chapter. I've already laid down some groundwork for the next update, but it might still take a while. Until then.