In Torfan, no-one cares if you scream

by magkiln

It has been sixth months since the Skyllian Blitz and the galaxy has started to move on. But although their rhetoric has lost its edge, the United Systems are not prepared to let this insult pass. Twenty years ago, they taught the galaxy a lesson. Now it seems that some people need a refresher course.

5. The Battlemaster

Mass effect is the property of Bioware and EA. The Alien/Predator franchise belongs to 20th Century Fox

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So, EA and Bioware have pulled the plug. There will be no Andromeda DLC and despite the vague promise of a new Mass Effect console game, sometime in the future, it seems as though the Mass Effect franchise has run its course.
To be honest, my feelings are mixed. On the one hand, I love the universe the Bioware has created. On the other hand, the last two games were not living up to their heritage. In my personal opinion, the first game is still the best. It had a great story, a wonderful atmosphere and did a great job presenting its world. For me, the franchise peaked on Virmire, the first time I spoke directly with Sovereign. It made for such a great enemy. A Lovecraftian horror, utterly alien and completely merciless. The second game was still great and introduced some of the most memorable characters. Unfortunately, it started the progress of downgrading the reapers. Compared to Sovereign, Harbinger was just an obnoxious blowhard, who wouldn't shut up no matter how often I killed his proxy. Something that annoying just stops being scary after a while. Then we got ME3. It had some beautiful animations (thresher maw kills reaper) and I loved the multiplayer option, but it turned the reapers from impressive enemies into a moronic experiment, the ending was pathetic, and it spoiled some of the best characters. (Hi Samara, too bad you lost your brain between ME2 and ME3).
When ME:A came out, I was hopeful. It seemed a good way to give the franchise a new direction. But upon playing my opinion started to shift. There were too many glitches that required repeated updates. Many of the smaller sidequests amounted to stamp collecting, just running around a planet hoping that the next group of enemies will have a device that completes the set. I felt like I was playing an old Sierra game. And then we have the Remnant: Superpowerful technology build by people who seem to love Sudokus and mazes. They also have the weird habit of placing the on-switch in the most dangerous spot possible. That was a real let-down for me. So far, things in the ME franchise, even when built by aliens, tended to follow a certain logic. Hallways, rooms, corridors, control units, all more or less in the places where it makes sense to build them. The Remnant just turn their facilities into obstacle courses for no reason. (It doesn't even serve as a security measure. It just inconveniences the intruder a little bit.) Even the main character felt like a let-down. Shepard was bad-ass because he/she had worked hard to acquire skills and built a reputation, Ryder just happens to have an AI in his/her head. Instant Mary Sue.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed playing it. Bioware haven't lost their gift for world-building, I love the exploration aspects of the game, and you meet a lot of interesting characters. Still, it gave me the sad feeling that with a little more thought and care, it could have been so much better. So, like I said, mixed feelings. I would have loved to explore this new galaxy some more. I wanted to know what had gone wrong on the Quarian Ark and there were a bunch of other loose ends that I would have liked to tie up. Then again, perhaps it's better to end the franchise while it was still good, rather than letting it dwindle into mediocrity.

Ah well, I guess I'll just continue writing

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It moved in utter silence, no betraying buzz or hum. Still, it moved and for a Krogan, the product of millions of years of the most brutal evolutionary selection process in the galaxy, that was more than enough to attract notice. Weyrloc Brack stood motionless, waiting for the small sphere to come floating down the corridor and pass the corner where he was hiding. It would notice him, of course, but as long as he didn't move, it would not regard him as a major threat and continue on its assigned task of mapping the underground maze that was Torfan. Brack barely suppressed a grin. Someone has seriously messed up that part of the programming.

The tiny drone moved forward, twisting on its axes to allow its sensors a full view of the surrounding area. It passed the corner-

Smash! Brack's fist sent it flying against the wall.

Now he grinned. It wasn't as good as smashing your fist into the face of a living being, but somehow there was something intensely satisfying about smashing the humans' little snoopers. Still, enjoyable as it was, it ultimately didn't matter. They seemed to have an endless supply of the things and even in its death it would have relayed Brack's presence to the operator and that meant that the humans had found them again. That was the third time in as many hours. His fireteam had been holding the stairs to the colony's ground level and racked up a pretty impressive kill score, fighting off several assaults, but there were just too many of the damn little pyjaks and -give credit where it was due- they didn't shy back from a brawl. So they had broken away, to make a stand at the next set of stairs, only for the process to repeat itself. Brack had lost count of the number of humans they had killed, but still, they came throwing bullets, explosives and ultimately soldiers at each position until they finally overran it.

Now they were in the lower levels, just above the slave pens. They had been driven away from the stairs, again and were holding position in the corridors. Somewhere far behind them, Craldar Gos'radah, the so-called governor of Torfan was cowering in whatever hiding place he'd managed to find for himself. Brack snorted. The pathetic weakling had had the nerve to insist that Brack's Blood Pack unit stay with him, 'to form a wall that would protect the governor's valuable person'.
Brack smirked. If there was any value in Craldar he hadn't seen it. Just a useless sack of flesh and bones. If he managed to get hit by a bullet meant for someone else, the four-eyed bastard would have reached the peak of his usefulness for an entire lifetime. Still, he had money, and just enough sense to pay the Bloodpack on time. So now Brack found himself fighting through the tunnels of Torfan with a mixed group of Blood Pack soldiers. Batarian engineers, vorcha flamethrower teams, and a handful of picked Krogan mercs. Just the way he liked it. Four-eyes to push buttons, vorcha to mess things up and stop enemy bullets, and Krogan to do the actual thinking. Torfan hadn't been a bad post either. Things were reasonably quiet, most of the time, and what with all the slaves being moved through the place had some nice perks. Of course, it wasn't as entertaining as Omega, with its barely contained state of semi-anarchy. But then again, working for a snivelling little coward like Craldar was a lot easier than having to deal with Aria T'Loak's unpredictable temper. No, it had not been a bad post. Until now.

There was motion at the end of the corridor. Human soldiers, alerted by the demise of their drone, were approaching cautiously. Brack raised his Spikethrower, but hesitated. The humans had already demonstrated the amount of firepower they could bring to bear. An exchange of fire along the corridor seemed like a bad idea. What he needed was a way to close the distance. To get to point blank range, where his strength, bulk and the firepower of his shotgun would have the maximum effect.

"Hold fire, let them come forward."

The human soldiers advanced down the corridor in pairs, covering each other as they moved. It wasn't a bad tactic, but then again, under the circumstances no tactic could solve the fundamental problem that they had to move along a narrow path without cover. Area effect weapons like grenades or rockets would have been useful and Brack half expected them to use on or the other, but it didn't happen. Perhaps the humans had run out of them or perhaps they were hesitant to use them so deep underground for fear of triggering a cave-in. EIther way, they seemed to be relying exclusively on their rifles. A few steps more...

"NOW!"

The blood pack opened fire. Two, three humans went down in the initial salvo, but the ones behind them dove to the ground and returned fire. A batarian went down, riddled with bullet holes, a vorcha collapsed when one of his legs was shot out from under him. The humans were dying too, but they had the weight of numbers behind them as more and more poured into the corridor.

"Burner, MOVE!"

One of the vorcha stepped out into the corridor and unleashed a stream of liquid fire. Humans soldiers caught in its path screamed in agony, then either collapsed into smouldering heaps or ran away even as they burned, adding to the chaos.

"Push forward!"

The vorcha unleashed another wave of fire, then started down the corridor. Some of the humans tried to shoot him, but they were rushing their shots and vorcha took a lot of killing. At the other end of the corridor, a single human soldier stepped forward. With the flames inbetween it was tough to make out, but he appeared to be larger and bulkier, as though he was wearing some sort of heavy armour, and he seemed to be carrying a massive gun.

The human soldier fired without even raising the weapon to eye-level and the gun cut loose with a noise that drowned out both the roaring flames and the screams of the burning humans. The burst tore straight through the vorcha and hit the fuel tank he had been carrying on his back. The result was spectacular. One moment, a determined if not too bright vorcha was advancing down the corridor with his trusty flamethrower, the next moment a shrieking figure, wreathed in flames was running down that corridor, bouncing off the walls, spraying burning liquid in all directions.
The human stood his ground, firing another burst that put the vorcha down for good.

Brack cursed. They'd encountered these weapons before. It took at least half a dozen eezo based guns to match the firepower of one of these human guns. If you didn't take them out right away, they completely dominated every firefight.

"Hack him!"

The last remaining batarian engineer in his unit lifted his omnitool, searching for a connection. He must have found something because his fingers started sliding over the interface.

"I have .. something here. Cannot be sure but.."

" I don't care, whatever it is, take it down."

"Shutting down... now!"

There was no visible effect, no sparks, no power surge as would be expected with normal weaponry, but the human soldier stumbled, one hand coming up to claw at his helmet.

"All of you, follow me!" Brack was already moving. Without waiting for his unit to fall in, he stormed down the corridor, bounding over the smouldering corpses and firing his Graal as he moved, desperate to close the distance. The human fell back, trying to get into cover around a corner, but krogan could move much faster than their bulk suggested and there was no way Brack was going to give him time to recover. Whatever the hack had done to the human's equipment, clearly his weapon was still functioning, for he opened fire again, spraying bullets all over the corridor. Brack felt two of them tear into his armour and flung himself to the side. WIthout even hesitating, he grabbed one of the vorcha behind him and flung the unfortunate creature bodily at the human.

By now the human had raised his weapon all the way to eye-level and his next salvo was far more accurate, nearly tearing the vorcha in half. Unfortunately for him, that did nothing to stop the momentum of the corpse, which slammed into him and toppled him backwards. Brack was on top of him before he could recover. He fired one shot into the human's stomach, then his Graal overheated, emitting a cloud of steam. Brack swore. There was no way to tell how long it would take the shotgun to cool down. He had been using the weapon a lot and heatsinks became unpredictable with repeated use. Nor could he avoid to wait. Already, he could hear a new group of human soldiers approaching. He looked around and his eyes fell on the heavy human weapon that had fallen next to the dead soldier.

The weapon wasn't any kind he was familiar with, but it had a barrel. That was all he needed. Brack placed one foot on the corpse's chest, grabbed the gun with both hands and pulled; hard.
with a grating noise, the frame that held the strange weapon to the human's body came apart, leaving Brack to hold the weapon. It was big, much bigger than a normal rifle or shotgun, but for a krogan, that was just fine, if he could only figure out how to use it. After a moment's investigation, he found a simple handgrip protruding sideways from the left side of the barrel. The second grip was vertical, but off-set to the right of the firing mechanism. As Brack's fingers closed around it, he grinned. He had been worried about the shape of the trigger. Humans had small hands, with a thumb and four fingers. Krogan only had two fingers and their hands were much bigger. That could have been a serious problem. Fortunately, whoever had designed this weapon seemed to have been thinking ahead and instead of the single-finger trigger that their other weapons favoured, this one had a trigger that was as big as the entire grip. A human or asari could have squeezed it with all four fingers at once. Brack couldn't get both fingers around it, but one would do the trick. He pulled the trigger and fired an experimental burst in the general direction from which the humans seemed to be approaching. The roar of fire was impressive and from the size of the ammunition drum it seemed unlikely that he would be running out of ammo anytime soon. The only problem was the lack of a proper sight. There was a scope attached to the barrel, but it lacked a proper eyepiece. Instead, some sort of wire had connected it with the soldier's helmet, but that would be no use to Brack. Then again, a weapon like this didn't need much in the way of sights. Brack raised the weapon and fired a long burst toward the approaching soldiers. Most of the shots went wide, but a t least one of the soldiers stumbled and fell. Behind him, the few remaining Blood Pack mercs opened fire.

Again, bullets streaked back and forth along the corridor. With only the corpes of the slain for cover, the battle couldn't last long. Brack felt repeated hits slamming into his armour as he fired again and again, killing one human after another. With each victim his admiration for the weapon he held rose. No wonder the human stuck to their old chemically powered guns. This was power! A human soldier with an identical gun appeared, spraying the corridor with bullets, killing a vorcha and Bracks's last batarian. Brack returned fire, cutting the human down as he continued to fight.
By now the last of his unit was down. There was no way out. No way to survive. But he had known that from the beginning. Brack no longer cared. Survival had become irrelevant. All that mattered was the fight. He felt the change in his mind as the bloodrage took over. Time seemed to slow down as everything and everyone around him started moving in slow motion. More humans appeared, and he swung his weapon around, firing burst after burst. Some hit, some didn't but even the ones that missed served a purpose as they forced the human soldiers to dive for what little cover they could find. Another bullet hit him, but by now the bloodrage had taken over and he hardly noticed. The gun finally clicked empty and Brack roared in rage. He could have tried to pick up another gun. His Graal was lying around somewhere and would certainly have cooled off by now. But that didn't matter. His focus had narrowed to only one thing. FIGHT. He tried to move forward, swinging the gun like a club, but his leg gave way and he fell sideways against the wall. More bullets slammed into him, tearing chunks out of armour and flesh alike. By now the humans had overcome their fear and were closing in on him, trying to get a clear line of fire. He saw the muzzle flashes through a bloody haze. Then two, three hard impacts, much more powerful than ordinary bullets-

The three grenades went off as one. Not even a krogan could withstand that kind of damage. The surviving human soldiers approached cautiously

"Now that was one tough toad," someone remarked.

"They're all like that. They say these freaks have, like, three hearts and six lungs. So, you need to kill them three times"

Someone snorted. It was no time for laughter, but sometimes, humour was all that kept you sane.

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Thermal clips are being introduced in this era, but it takes time. Brack's Graal was an older model that had a fixed heat sink.

Meanwhile, humanity has introduced a new version of the smartgun. The idea is that this model has a grip/trigger assembly that actually makes sense. Look up the original model from aliens. The triggers (multiple!) are very strange. It's also linked directly to the soldier's helmet, rather than having that monocle sight. Unfortunately, that leaves it a bit more vulnerable to ME style sabotage.

The trigger I describe is actually a 'cold weather trigger' designed to be used by humans wearing heavy gloves. No particular reason for this weapon to have one, but it's the only way a krogan could fire an unmodified human weapon.