"We're not out of it yet. We just need to-"
Vendrix's body ached with muted agony as his eyes cracked open, taking in a shallow, ragged breath that stabbed at the inside of his chest, he wheezed and turned his head to get something, anything to orient himself on.
His entire body felt warm and wet and for a brief moment he felt the most absurd thought cross his mind. Had he pissed himself? The thought was mortifying, with what small shreds of awareness he could scrabble at he resolutely decided that if that was the case he'd take his blade and promptly slit his own throat. Another few seconds he feels a trickle run down to his mouth and he tastes the coppery taste of his blood.
Ah, I'm bleeding, much more dignified. He thinks again fuzzily, looking to his seatbelt before reaching up to unbuckle it. That's queer. The experience puzzled him, just as confusing as why he could've taste blood dripping up his body, or why his toes were growing noticeably numb. "Wait." He says aloud, his voice barely a whisper as he finally scans around the upside-down world.
Mentally, he's flailing about in the haze of concussion and shock but bit by bit he's piecing everything together, undoing the seatbelt with a soft click and grunting with pain as his already beaten body thuds to the ground, scraping against the dusting of shattered glass that covered the ground. The fuzzy edges of Omega's industrial sectors and smog belching production facilities come into view. Recollection bursts into his head like muzzle flashes.
Batarians, weapons, gunfire, briefcase-
He inhales again, not able to exhale before he's thrown into a series of hacking coughs, and in the process of clutching his side his hand bumps against a sleek metal briefcase. When his coughing fit passes he turns his attention back to the case.
Tentatively wrapping his fingers around the handle, he pulls it into his chest as he wriggles around. Trying to get his legs pointed towards the already damaged door of the skycar, once lined up with the door he delivers a sharp kick. He reels his leg back to kick again as he continues to gather his thoughts.
-vorcha, fire, chase, Thomas' neighborhood, Thomas!
The realization makes Vendrix freeze mid-kick. His eyes go wide as he looks up and over to the unconscious human wheelman. Thomas' body dangled from above, still strapped securely into his seat. His bruised face pointed down as the red blood dripped from several cuts across his lip, cheeks and forehead. An assortment of little crimson streams that streaked his face and created a macabre imitation of Vendrix's own red markings. The blood collects on his scalp and drips down to mingle with the turian's own fluids, smearing a purplish mess across the dashboard and seats.
With another sharp kick, Vendrix finally opens up enough of a gap for him to slide the briefcase through before finally worming his way out.
The world spins around him as he struggles to regain his bearings, feeling his way across the ground like a child before he drags himself to the edge of the platform. His hands move up to the body armor he was still wearing, it had provided enough protection to save him from fatal, if not serious injuries, but with the ceramic smashed to shards and the flexible under-weave shredded, it was useless. He pries it off and tosses it over the edge to careen down the gaping chasm.
He attempts to rise to his feet and is met with a searing pain through his left leg, a strangled cry of pain escaping from his throat as he balances between sucking in a breath and not aggravating whatever internal injuries he likely must have. He glimpses down to his leg and his tries to still his shaking hands as he lightly feels down the length of it.
About halfway down he feels the break in his carapace, causing him to throw his head back and groan in pain, which only aggravates his already damaged lungs, making him hack and cough up cerulean phlegm onto the ground. He once again attempts to stand, this time keeping the weight on his remaining good leg, quivering with the added weight, but holding. He looks back to the briefcase on the ground, leaning forward to grab it, fumbling with the locks and snapping it open to free the chip inside
Spirits damn me eternally if I let those savages get this. He thinks, prying it free from the soft padding that had saved it from the collision before sliding it into a pocket in his torn undersuit. He turns to leave but then he looks back to Thomas, his sharp features softening as he looks at the bruised and bloodied man still strapped into the mangled skycar.
In his condition there was no way he could carry the young man out, and if he stayed unconscious perhaps he'd be presumed already dead and left alone. But with so much of his crew already lost, could he afford to take that risk?
The deep growl of engine thrusters reverberating through the walls made the decision for Vendrix. With the credit chit in hand and a string of curses on his mandibles he hobbles away from the crashed skycar.
Falling into a hobbled but stable gait, Vendrix cuts through the industrial sector. Hoping to use the nonsensical urban sprawl of the station to lure away any potential pursuers. His blood painting a bright blue line across side streets and industrial service passages, double backing onto themselves and leading to dead ends.
Even as he applied medigel to his wound, finally taking action to stem the not-insignificant amount of blood he was losing, he wasn't sure if what he was doing was genius or insane. Would his misdirection lead the krogan and his bestial escorts astray and keep him alive for that much longer? Or had he just lost all this blood for nothing, he wasn't even quite sure if he was being followed at all, the way the world around him appeared, tinted blue and fuzzy-edged, he could very possibly spare the vorcha the trouble and get shot by someone he happens to stumble into.
He felt as if he was moving in a dream, unable to trace a coherent pattern through the maze of shifting alleys and interchangeable doors. Taking passages with no guess as to where they would lead. As the Medigel had finally begun to anesthetize his wounds and dull his senses he realized that he needed to rest. To his relief, he came across a door marked with a residential symbol.
The sight of the elevator inside made Vendrix's heart surge, at least one thing could go right today. Set besides the beginning of a massive stairway the antiquated thing creaked as Vendrix leaned up against it. His finger pressed against the button and it lets out a shrill cry, his heart sinks.
"Out of order." he whispered to himself despairingly, too tired to even bring himself to be angry. His head slowly lolls about to look at the staircase, his only alternative unless he wanted to slowly succumb to his wounds in front of a busted elevator.
Grimacing, he decides to take them. Placing an unsteady foot on one of the first steps before something inside him simply gives out, he teeters from side to side, his second step turning into a staggering fall as the world around him fades away and he collapses onto the stairs.
BANG!
Victory, Narn believed, was determined by the losses you could inflict upon your enemy, whether it be material, territory, or people. Anything that you could take from them, without losing more in return, was a success.
By that metric, the krogan warlord was very, very victorious today.
BANG!
He still was relishing the satisfying pop of the human whose head he stomped upon, feeling the skull split like a melon beneath his boot and leaving it's sticky, grisly pulp upon the hard ground beneath. It evoked the same feeling one would feel finishing a good book, and he let out a contented rumble as he reminisced.
The weapons stolen from the batarians didn't just resupply their nearly spent reserves, but provided enough of a surplus to apply overwhelming force to a few key fights, the few smaller gangs that had been utterly crushed by his band were warmups, but this batarian mob was a real power around this stretch of the station, and taking them out would prove that Narn had the means and the quad to go up against the bigger forces on Omega, soon enough they would know his strength, and krogan from the Blood Pack and beyond would defect in droves to join him.
Of course, the credits that were meant for that band of amateur smugglers were still unaccounted for, and hopefully the vorcha could hunt that turian bastard that had gotten away. There was also the matter of that batarian whore, Pughnoh. She and part of her entourage had escaped the ambush. But he would be solving that particular problem very soon.
BANG!
On the other side of the door, the muffled voices grew in frequency and volume. "Get the Matron out of here!"
"The second he's through, light him up!"
"That door isn't going to hold much longer!"
Good, good. Keep panicking, batarians. Narn thought happily, another forceful ram of his shoulder into the door produced another dent and the metal groaned as the structural supports grew that much weaker, the hallway behind him was littered with the corpses of the rest of Lady Pughnoh's security detail, along with half a dozen mechs.
Narn had taken a team of all krogan with him on this particular attack, no need for dim-witted vorcha, they didn't need the meatshields for this.
The warlord shoulder charges the door again. The tremendous mountain of armor and reptilian flesh barreling down like a living battering ram. The door finally gives, crumpling inwards like a piece of paper as it's torn off it's supports.
The bullets cascaded upon Narn, a delude of metal that pinged and sparked off the door that was still hanging over him as he advanced, when it fell away from the brute with a heavy clang, his rifle was already drawn and firing as his followers filed in behind him.
Only five krogan, himself included, stood opposed to the dozen or so batarian thugs, flipping tables and hiding behind the sculptures that dotted Lady Pughnoh's conference hall. They did next to nothing to provide cover as the tracers from their heavy guns raked from end to end, shattering the hardwood of the tables to splinters and reducing the once elegant statues to rubble.
Explosions erupt all around them as grenades were lobbed haphazardly by the thugs over their quickly diminishing cover, bursting into bright flashes that leave only smoking craters around them, the priceless artwork hanging from the walls are sheared and shredded with shrapnel. And in the center of the destruction are the krogan, completely in their element.
The storms of gunfire lasted for only a few minutes, and that was mainly due to a few of his followers getting overly excited and spraying bullets about the hall with no regards for what they hit. But once a sharp headbutt had knocked the sense back into one particularly excited member of his following, Narn could freely wade through the death and destruction, slotting the heavy rifle onto his back.
Stepping over a collapsed statue, he strode pridefully over the dead batarians, their mouths agape, eyes wide and glazed over and bulging when his heavy boot landed on their stomach or chest.
Curled up besides the ornate throne, Lady Pughnoh wrapped her arms tightly around her midsection, writhing in agony as she bled profusely from a duplet of bullets she had caught in the stomach, her flowing orange and yellow dress taking on an increasingly crimson hue.
She looked up at Narn, her intense agony only seeming to reinforce her burning hatred of the Warlord.
"Fucking...krogan." She gasps, her punctured diaphragm causing her to breath in choppy, whistling inhales. "What's wrong...got tired of shooting things on your irradiated rock of a planet?"
She smiles at him through bloodstained teeth, attempting a laugh but ending up breaking into a fit of coughing before she hawks up a gobbet of blood and tissue onto Narn's armored boot.
"Or could you just not cut it in the Blood Pack...?" She continues as she lets out a pained, wheezing laugh.
Nobody laughed at warlord Narn.
With a single hand he grabbed the wounded woman by the neck, hoisting her up and off the floor and replacing her labored laugh with a gasping splutter for air. Kicking at his torso and beating at his armored forearm to no avail, those four eyes lock onto him, and even as she struggles for her life, Narn never sees her let go of the absolute hatred reflected in her eyes.
"I am warlord Weyrloc Narn!" He bellows, projecting a deep, booming voice that reverberates across the desecrated hall and grabs the attention of all his fellow krogan.
"The Blood Pack is a band of complacent mercenaries. Bending over for a handful of credits to do the dirty work for soft, squishy races like yours, batarian. I'll carve a nation from the flesh of Omega, one where krogan can exercise the right to live on their own terms! And all the other races will abide by those terms, or die." he thunders, his words more meant for his followers than her.
Pughnoh coughs. "Wishful. Thinking. Someone will stop you, and you'll end up the same way as the rest of your sad, pathetic race. Extinct!"
Narn gives her a cruel, toothy leer as he speaks. "Don't hold your breath, batarian."
With that, his hand tightens into a fist. And in one nauseating crunch, crushes Lady Pughnoh's windpipe, tossing her to the ground with a thud.
Turning back to his krogan, the warlord pumps his fist into the air and lets out a tremendous war cry, promptly echoed by his followers. From the top of the former batarian stronghold the sound of their roars carry on the wind for blocks.