PHOENIX RESURGENT

A Mass Effect Story by Vyrexuviel

Disclaimer: The author of this story does not, in any way, profit from the story and all creative rights to the characters belong to their original creator(s).

Jedore knew something was going terribly wrong. It wasn't irretrievable, yet, but it certainly looked like she had a major problem. Five long-patrols had gone dark, and one checkpoint had failed to check in. The krogan starting to wander out of Okeer's base were hardly tractable, killing anything and everything they saw with reckless abandon uncharacteristic even for krogan.

"Kazorian. Get team Bravo scrambled, I don't like how the krogan are moving. funnel them towards points Gamma and Epsilon. They might slow down whatever's breaching our perimeter."

The scarred man nodded once, briskly, then moved off to carry out her orders. The man was calm, cool, and competent. Just what she required in an XO. Her previous XO had also fancied himself a ladies man, and had more than once attempted to get into her suit. Jedore's jaw clenched slightly, remembering how he had tried to dominate the diminutive woman. She had had the glorious satisfaction of watching his realization that he had vastly overstepped his boundaries. Just before she had blown his head off.

She stifled her sigh of pleasure at the memory and refocused on the here-and-now. She had troops to organize.

"So you found no evidence at the colony. Again." The Illusive Man's eyes lay on his second in command like a titanic weight. Miranda had to fight the urge to squirm and wriggle.

"No sir, we still haven't found any new evidence as to who has been abducting the human colonists in the traverse." Miranda managed to keep the slight quiver from her voice as she stood on the QEC. The real-time holographic communications array was about the only reason she had been allowed to take the new ship, still with construction crews aboard.

"Understood, still no word on the body of commander Shepard?" Responded TIM after he took a drag from his cigar.

"No sir, the trail just ends with the destruction of the Normandy over Alchera and the disappearance of several mercenary groups that traveled there." She managed to keep a straight face, but there -had- been what looked like an actual graveyard...

"Alright. I will have intelligence look into Shepard's location again, while you are going to collect a piece of cargo from the Prison Ship Purgatory. Is that understood?" He stated while making eye contact with Miranda. Even though it was a hologram that was transmitting the call from many light years away, Miranda could barely keep from flinching from the intense look that he was giving her.

"Understood sir. Operative Lawson out."

With that the hologram of The Illusive Man disappeared, Miranda held her composure for almost 4 seconds before she started twitching. She scrambled to pull something out of one of her belts pouches, finally managing to pull out an injector with a jerk. With a quick motion, she stabbed the needle into the vein in her arm and pressed the activator. The soft hiss from the injector provoked a similar sigh from the woman as the contents of the vial flowed into her arm.

Miranda steadied herself, back against the wall, waiting for the anxiety and tenseness to relax, giving a soft, almost sobbing sigh, struggling to get the image of the face of the dead woman out of her mind.

"Team Alpha ready, Commander." Jedore nodded. This had gone from being a mildly annoying day to a deeply frustrating one. First the missing patrols, then the checkpoints, now whoever was out there was mowing down her men at a frightening rate. She had kept Teams Bravo and Alpha in reserve, with Bravo at the main tributary, diverting the krogan off into the maw of the unknown, and Alpha keeping her personal bunker guarded. Still, she had lost close on fifty men already, and was down to about two-thirds strength.

"If they make it to the tributary, call Bravo back to the second line."

She nodded and watched the display as her orders were carried out. Now was hardly the time to indulge, but the prospect of battle excited her, as it always had.

It was all Lieutenant Commander Jeff "Joker" Moreau could do to keep himself from banging his head on the desk in front of him. The 24 reasons behind the impulse had just finished their latest training simulation and in his opinion they shouldn't be anywhere near a starship.

"Alright people, move onto your next class while grade these simulation reports, expect the results later today." Was all he needed to say before the class started to clear out as if the fire alarm had gone off. As he took a deep breath and looked at his desk, he wished that he was once again behind the holographic controls of a high performance ship instead of the holographic controls of a grading program.

Once again, just like everyday for the last two years Joker wished that he could of pulled Shepard into the escape pod before had been blown into space.

He blinked as his console chimed, indicating an incoming message. He frowned. Normally, his omnitool would screen out such messages without him having to deal with it, while he was at the academy. Curious, he opened his mail program and frowned. No header. No subject, no sender either.

"Curiouser and curiouser..." he murmured as he scanned the file for viruses. You could never be careful enough, he learned that from Tali. Finding none, and he kept his firewall and virus scanner programs up to date as he could, he shrugged and popped open the message.

Only two lines confronted him, but he felt a chill race down his spine and curl a steel wire about his gut.

When ship is tossed, and choice is lost; within her haunting eyes. / When demon stalks and soldier balks; watch the Phoenix Rise.

The words echoed through his mind, and he thought, "Just what the fuck is this..."

Jedore's headache was getting the better of her. It seemed -all- the krogan were starting to get dumped out at once. More than Bravo could handle alone, she had been forced to send Alpha to reinforce them, and then pull back the remains of both groups when the interloper team had passed. At least she -finally- had real intelligence on them now. A mixed group, turian, quarian, either an asari or human leading them, probably asari given her fluid movements. and backed up by a group of -geth-. Her head throbbed. She had had problems two years ago getting her forces to mop up small groups of them left over from the War, Geth were nothing to sneeze at, or turn your back on. But, apart from when Saren had teamed up with them, they hadn't been known to keep company with any save their own kind.

Whoever this was, they were bad news.

'Where is she?' was the thought that repeated itself in the mind of Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Alarei as he listened to the recording of the debriefing of the team sent to Freedom's Progress.

The team commander continued, stating that while they had been planning on how to get past the defenses that Veetor had set up a in a panic. Then two groups of humans suddenly showed themselves, but seemed to be from different factions. As he listened to the team he grew concerned when they stated that one of the groups was from Cerberus. Remembering the attack by the human splinter-group, the Admiral started to worry about his daughter. His concern grew when they stated that Tali acted strangely with the other human that showed up, and he was quite startled when the human identified herself as the thought-to-be-deceased Commander Shepard.

As he listened he let out a breath of relief when whoever it was wasn't connected to Cerberus but threatened them quite strongly. As the debriefing continued Real grew skeptical about the battle with the YMIR Mech, but was surprised when the team stated that they had taken recording of the battle between the two and the outcome of it. What really surprised him was that the unknown was in the company of a Geth, not a captured and reprogrammed platform but a full Geth with all of its programs intact and willing to help Tali and the others rescue the young pilgrim.

Reaching the end of the debriefing the team noted that Tali decided to travel with Shepard and the Geth on the Commander's request. The father began to worry. his daughter was out there with a declared dead human and a highly advanced Geth that could talk.

As the recording ended the Admiral leaned back in his seat and quietly sighed "Just like her mother, always running off without telling me." His dextrous fingers twiddled rapidly through his omnitool displays, calling up a conference call with the other Admirals. If his little girl had found -the- Commander Shepard, he wanted to verify her safety in person.

Jedore snarled as the bunker doors ground slowly open. She hadn't had to call a Blank Slate in close to a decade now, the call to destroy all evidence and evac. She was above such concerns, dammit, no puny group of six should be able to kick her, Jedore Karas off-world! To cap it all off, she had finally traced the release signals to Okeer's own console! the thrice-damned krogan was dumping his own experiments on her, premature and improperly trained! Her teeth ground together as the command center was rapidly packed into the first shuttle. She'd see to Okeer personally.

Shepard was in a good mood. For one thing, she found herself running through a few of the staff katas that Anvek had imprinted into the Prothean Cypher. For another, Garrus was proving -remarkably- snarky today, him and Tali bouncing the snark-ball back and forth with the gleeful ease of long friendship.

"Are you trying to commit suicide by suit puncture, or are you just fascinated by the color of krogan blood?" Garrus sounded honestly curious as Tali, giggling slightly, flipped him the bird. Quarian hands weren't normally designed for such, but Tali had learned from her experience with humans. The pair were apparently playing a game on who could kill the most, almost as a side bet.

Shepard's gun thundered once more, putting a gasping, foaming merc out of his misery. She turned and signaled the Geth to advance, one taking each side of the door before the third opened it for Legion. The unique geth had proved to be even better at managing subunits than a Prime, the squad of four moving like a long-drilled precision spec ops team. The tall geth strode through, swiveling at the movement, but holding fire.

"Shepard-Commander, we believe you would like to engage this one in speech."

Shepard raised an eyebrow and, with a mental shrug, stepped through. The asari crawling out from beneath the deck seemed familiar somehow, starting to speak even as she was dusting off her knees. "I shut down the security cams as soon as I saw it was you. Never thought I'd say it, but I'm glad it's you shooting up the place." She blinked, noticing Shepard was still keeping her under her gun. "Sorry, Rana Thanoptis. You let me go when you destroyed Saren's base on Virmire. Had to outrun a nuke in a utility pod, but it's still a second chance."

Shepard remembered her. Neuroscientist. Did studies on indoctrinated subjects to determine the cause and if there was any way to prevent it. "I assume you have a good reason for being here?"

Rana gulped and quickly reassured her, "Don't worry, I'm not wasting the chance you gave me. My work here - strictly beneficial. Not for the mercs. Jedore's on a standard power trip. But Okeer's trying to do something good. His methods may be a bit...extreme, but his hearts are in the right places."

Something about that rings a mild warning bell. "What's Okeer up to?"

The asari seems a bit hesitant, almost bashful. "It's...complicated. Jedore wanted a private army, but Okeer mostly ignores her, even if she is footing the bill. He's running the project with different goals. I created a mental imprint routine to educate his tank-bred, but most of them don't finish it. He dumps them for some reason." She shrugs, "He wants to help his people, but he's not going for numbers or a genophage cure. I don't really know what his end-goal is, I'm just helping as much as I can."

Shepard groaned internally. How could she have guessed... "Look, I appreciate that you're trying to turn your experience to good ends, but this isn't the way to do it. I don't usually give third chances, though..."

The asari nods, seeming almost cheerful now. "Don't worry, not that you've shown up, I'm going to get as far away from here as possible. Just, please, if you're going to nuke the place, give me a little time to get away, huh?" She gave a timid smile, reaching behind the desk and grabbing a knapsack. She slipped it on even as she exited, starting to jog towards the way already cleared for her by Shepard's guns.

Shepard couldn't quite suppress a slight smile as the asari started to run like hell.

Okeer watched, grunting quietly at the monitor feeds before adding a few more notes to his private file. The specimen was almost ready to decant, he only needed a few more moments. As he waited for the machine to finish prepping the last few imprint samples, he couldn't help chuckling over the images tapped from the feeds. Rana had done well hiding them from Jedore, but Okeer had root-level access to the systems, something not even Jedore had.

The figure in the video moved like a warrior, competent, self-assured. She wielded seemingly-puny weapons, but they packed quite the punch. He checked a few status readouts and nodded to himself. His footfalls were heavy as he moved over to the tank, now hissing and grinding slightly as the automated machinery ground it slowly onto the float-pallet, the figure within floating within the hyper-oxygenated fluid, now starting to gurgle away from the krogan within.

"Soon, my son, you will see a true warrior at work."

Jedore snarled orders into her comm pickup. "Flush the tanks! Get that heavy mech up here, we're going to-" She cut herself off as the door on the far end of the cargo bay burst inward. The smoke cleared rapidly, but her troops were caught by a blistering array of fire. Jedore swore. She didn't speak most languages, but she knew curses in asari, turian, quarian, krogan, and even some salarian, although those last were rather weak. She had six men with her, plus the heavy mech, and whatever krogan were still left in these tanks. She -really- didn't want to have to deal with this shit herself, so she assigned Kazorian to deal as she networked with her shuttle, giving them orders to land in this bay, not the secondary site. She wanted him to land -on- the fuckers, if needs be.

Four of her men fell in the first three minutes of fighting, Jedore screaming at them to keep the geth back, don't you idiots know anything? Once the krogan started in, though, she noticed just how dangerous that asari was, and started coveting those pistols of hers. No pistol she knew of packed enough punch to keep a krogan down after just eight shots. She readied her rocket launcher as the heavy mech strode into the bay, it's IFF transponder identifying targets she designated.

'Time for mop-up,' she thought, as she selected the remaining idiot trouper as well as the commando unit.

Shepard sighed as the mech strode into the bay. That loudmouth commander just -had- to have had one of those annoyances, didn't she. Well, at least she was getting practice. Two of the geth had been taken down by the commander and her second, but Legion had put a bullet through his shields and kept him from doing more damage. The krogan were more annoyances than real hazards, since her reflexes were fast enough to pump several times before their shields initialized.

The merc captain was proving more of a problem, though. The bitch had apparently picked up a rocket launcher, which she wasn't entirely certain she could deal with with impunity. So, with two major targets, she had to pick the more dangerous one. The heavy mech would probably be more of a threat. Priority one, then.

Shepard rolled from cover as the mech's latest missile blasted into it, pistols thundering almost as fast as it's Revenant as she rushed towards it, dodging the stream of slugs and skidding to a stop between it's widely-spaced legs. She grinned slightly as she rolled to a kneeling position. "Legion, Garrus. Keep Jedore pinned for a bit..."

She holstered her pistols, then pistoned her legs upwards, slamming her knife-hand blow into a joint between armor plates. The mech gave a mechanical squawk, and Shepard nearly giggled as Legion apparently told it to shut up. She ripped the tertiary access panel open and shoved in her other hand, her fingers arcing as she let loose the current bound within her arms, shaping the magnetic field to lance deep into the mech's balance control circuits. With luck... there.

The mech warbled and ground it's gears, it's legs, hips and arms immobilized, only able to swivel the flexible turret of it's gun now, and they could avoid it's narrowed field of fire now. "Clear."

Just then, something slammed into her back. Hard.

Jedore was absolutely furious. She had spent nearly a quarter of a million on that mech, and now it was nothing but scrap! She snarled as the rocket launcher rapidly assembled another round, and fired at the commando that fried it's inner works. She was, by gods, going to make that fucking bitch pay!

Shepard rolled and snapped up, both pistols out without conscious thought as the second missile whooshed from the launcher. Jedore had already ducked back into cover as the round accelerated towards her. Almost without being aware of it, her mind registered velocity, vector, attitude, acceleration, and orientation, her arm flexed minutely, and a bolt of electricity flashed through her gun.

The round, powered by that charge, snapped down the launch rail at accelerations normally found only in assault or sniper rifles, and left with the blue arc of an electric discharge snapping from the end of the barrel. It flew straight and true, intersecting with it's target and detonating the incoming missile round just as Jedore rounded from the cover to fire another. Instead, her eyes widened, jaw unhinging.

Shepard couldn't help it. She smiled.

Jedore was thunderstruck. She had shot the missile in midair! Almost without thought, she aimed and fired again. 'That had to be a freak-' her thoughts derailed as the other pistol in the asari's hands thundered and again, the missile detonated in mid-flight. Jedore's teeth ground together, suppressing a snarl as she flipped the machine from single-fire to rapid. 'Let's see if the bitch can keep up with this...'

This time, when she rolled out of the cover, the bitch was about halfway from the mech and moving fast. With a snarl of "Eat this!" Jedore pulled both triggers at once, setting the launcher into rapid-fire. The recoil was fairly light, but almost constant as rocket after rocket left the launcher, the next almost getting washed by the first's exhaust. She only had enough heavy weapon packs for about eight or ten of these things, which at this rate would be exhausted within fifteen seconds, but this bitch had really pissed her off.

Shepard rolled, dodged the first two, came up in a crouch and began to fire as she got to her feet. She had a good idea that the missile-wielding maniac was the boss of this particular group of Blue Suns, and she wanted to brand fear into the heart of the organization. she hadn't had much chance to do so with Tarak, what with not leaving him alive to report, but she could send this one back...

Her guns cracked with single, flat finality, each bullet precisely intersecting the targeting computer and detonation matrix of the missile, each one blowing prematurely as it's payload and remaining propellant cooked off. she began a slow advance on the now-backpedaling figure. Memories of Anvek washed through her, the image of his staff swinging in rapid blurs, both defensive and offensive, rippling through her mind almost too fast to comprehend. Six rockets so far and just five paces from the target. With a blurred motion, she dropped her right pistol onto it's magclamp, turning in a spinning arc to avoid the seventh rocket, her arm extending towards a piece of half-destroyed railing. She thought, visualizing the magnetic field as a rope of power stretching from her palm to the railing, a bridge of magnetic force that grew exponentially in power as more and more electrons were freed from their orbits, and sent whizzing round and round her arm's internal structure, generating the field her mind built field line by field line.

Jedore couldn't believe her eyes. No one is that good! This was no asari, it might be a new type of anthroform Geth, and if that's true, she had to destroy it and get the pieces back to Blue Suns HQ. They'd pay megabucks for the pieces. Her first two shots had gone astray, but the third through sixth had been shot down in midair, with single bullets. Missiles could be shot down with enough volume of fire so that at least one bullet would hit a vital spot, but this inhuman precision was beyond Jedore's experience.

But then the droid, figure, whatever, dropped one gun, spun it's back just as the seventh missile streaked past, and reached out it's right arm to a piece of railing. Jedore's eyes bulged as the railing bent, flexed, tore with a scream of metal, and flew to the outstretched hand just as her eighth and last missile tore free of the launcher.

Shepard heard the launch, and couldn't restrain a wide, manic grin under her helmet as she twisted, completing the spin she had begun earlier, using the fulcrum of her hips and shoulders to bring the piece of railing around in a brutal, flat arc, taking a lunging step sideways from the missile's line of flight. The thunderclap at the tip of the bar reversed Shepard's spin, and she used it, whirling back the other way and hurling the remaining half of the railing bar straight towards the madly scrambling figure.

Jedore had dropped the launcher as soon as the last missile was away, but she hadn't been able to keep her eyes from the figure as it hit the missle like it was a baseball with the length of polyalloy. 'Just what in the seventy seven hells is this thing?!' her mind babbled as she struggled to yank the SMG from her hip. She felt the thud against her armor and was falling before she realized what had happened. Then the pain ripped through her leg and she let loose a high scream as her left leg collapsed under her weight.

The segment of railing had neatly penetrated through her armor and shattered her knee. Evidently the thrice-blasted thing had hit her with some sort of overload to drop her shield. She felt the medigel dispensers struggling to deal with the injury, but it'd take a skilled surgeon to rebuild the shattered joint.

She sensed rather than saw the figure stride up to her, and lifted the SMG as it knelt. Through the fog of pain, rage and fear, she sighted and fired, fired until the clip was glowing white hot and the automatic shutoff clicked the weapon back into safe mode. The figure hadn't moved. It's shields had gone down, and it's armor was now pocked and scarred with bullet impacts, but evidently it was using some new sort of alloy designed to resist small-arms fire. It merely crouched there, both guns on it's hips now, and quite clearly designed with a female aesthetic in mind. Jedore gasped and hissed with the pain, her eyes slits of hate as she stared back in defiance.

Shepard studied the woman, not flinching as her shields cracked and allowing the cryoplate to take the brunt of the small-caliber weapon's fury. She wanted this one scared, so showed no fear as the woman let the weapon slump. She couldn't quite keep the amusement out of her voice as she spoke.

"What did you think that would accomplish?" She nodded to the discarded Tempest.

The woman spat in her face, or at least, on her cryoplate's helmet. "Go on and kill me, if you're going to."

'Valorous, but misguided. We'll have to break that.' Shepard considered a moment, then grinned. She had it.

"I'm not going to kill you. I need you as a messenger."

Jedore's heart lifted slightly. She had given her best and been beaten. She fully expected to die, as the weak always do. But this, this... This wasn't exactly charity, which she despised, but...

"What message?"

The figure reached up, under it's chin, snapping something there. Jedore went cold. If that was, indeed, a helmet... just what the hell species could have that level of precision?!

The helmet rose, hissing, and a blast of air so cold it created frost on the figure's shoulders emerged. The skin of the throat was blue, pale as deep ice. The eyes... the blue of a very hot flame or deep arctic ice and glowing with an inner fire that scared Jedore on a level she didn't know existed. Hair the color of snow, glistening white. But what stopped Jedore's breath and made her heart race was the shape of the face revealed. She knew that face. She'd seen it plastered all over the extranet for the past several years.

She breathed softly, almost willing herself to disbelieve the evidence of her eyes. "Sh-Sh-Sh-Shepard..."

Shepard's lips quirked slightly, and she gave a slight nod. "My message is to your bosses, and the rest of the merc forces in the Terminus Systems. Stay out of my way, and you'll continue to live. Obstruct me, or, gods help you, attract my ire..." She glanced pointedly around the shattered cargo bay.

the woman gulped and nodded, her eyes huge with fear now. Shepard nodded and rose. "I know you have a shuttle inbound. I'll wait until you're on board and give you one minute to clear out. If you're still in atmosphere when that time elapses, I'll have to find another messenger."

The soft whimper told Shepard she had made her point. She stepped over the prone figure, ignoring her completely as she moved across the length of the bay towards the sealed bulkhead door. Legion claimed that that was where Okeer was lurking.

The old warlord was just putting the final touches on the tank when the door clanged open. He turned, grinning widely at the sight. Such a warrior. He had watched with an awe he had not felt in centuries as the figure decimated the forces arrayed against her with a brutal viciousness that was very krogan. The quartet of geth marched at her back, the quarian and turian at her right and left hands.

"Welcome to my laboratory, Warrior. It was a pleasure watching you work."

The figure stopped, it's helmet under it's arm now, and giving the warlord a slow, appraising stare. "Are you Warlord Okeer?"

"Yes. If I am what you seek."

The figure nodded, pursing her lips and moving forward. One hand handed off the helmet to the turian, the other removing something from her belt. "By the authority invested in me as a Council Spectre, I arrest you in the name of the Council. if you come quietly, there won't be any need for restraints. Fight me, and...well. You saw."

Okeer nodded. He had somewhat expected this, but had hoped it wouldn't be quite this soon. He rumbled, "I will come quietly, as long as we bring my legacy."

The woman's brow arched, and she glanced at the tank. "What legacy? Another Krogan? what's so special about this one?"

Okeer couldn't resist the urge to explain. It was one of his bad habits, long known and equally long fought. "I acquired the knowledge to create one pure soldier. With that, I will inflict upon the genophage the greatest insult an enemy can suffer. To be ignored! We will not need numbers. My soldier is a template. It is a greater threat than all the phantom siblings that would have been at its flank. The galaxy still bears the scars of the krogan horde. But it will learn to fear the lance."

The woman's eyes narrowed, but she only asked, "Will you come without fuss? Or will I be forced to knock you out?"

"I will come quietly. My work here is finished." And with that, Okeer, Warlord, Scientist, Veteran of the Krogan Rebellions, bowed his head and offered his wrists to the restraints.

He had heard voices this time. Not the ones in his head, and the images before his sight weren't the crystal-clear ones of the imprint. They were pale, muted, muddy, and smudged around the edges. He didn't know why, or why he should care. He lay, awaiting some sort of trigger. He didn't know what, and it didn't matter.

Shepard finished securing Okeer's wrists as the Blue Suns shuttle landed. She watched through the transparasteel window as the squad dashed out, ducking from cover to cover as they recovered the wounded woman and the bodies of the squad that died defending her. She regretted the loss of life, but she was a Spectre, and sometimes you had to break things to get to your target, even if those things were heads.

The shuttle lifted off with a powerful boost of it's engines, sending debris whizzing through the cargo bay as it boosted hard. Her lips twitched slightly. Evidently she had put the fear of God into the woman if they were willing to risk damage to the shuttle by boosting at max power in an enclosed space.

She nodded to the geth to lead Okeer away as she turned back to examine the tank. It stood mostly upright, the krogan within unlike any she had seen so far. Instead of a single head-plate, he (she assumed it was a he) had several. His eyes were open, an astonishing pale-blue. He was fully armored, though how Okeer had managed -that- she wasn't sure she wanted to know. She checked and found the control panel easy enough, and she recognized the tell-tail coils of a float-pallet at it's edges. She navigated menus as best she could with a Krogan to English translator function on her omnitool.

The sudden hisssss and the draining of the fluid in which the krogan floated made her jerk back in surprise. The tank split open, the krogan falling forward onto his knees. He hacked and spat to clear his lungs, gasping in a lungful of air. As he regained his feet, his strange, blue eyes stared into Shepard's, seeming to glow in the deep recesses of his brow. 'Almost like mine,' floated through Shepard's mind before the krogan let out a loud roar and rushed.

He knew what to do, but not quite how to ask. He pinned the figure to the nearby wall, transparasteel, and spoke. His voice hurt after so long in the tank, but pain was nothing, a thing to be ignored.

"Asari. No. Not Asari. Unknown. Female. Female? No matter. Before you die, I need a name."

Shepard hadn't expected a newborn krogan to be docile or helpless, this one less so, but still. She reacted on instinct, getting her fingers wedged into his gut before he noticed what she was doing. "My name is mine. Give me yours before I allow you to know mine."

"Not your name. Mine. I am trained. I know things, but the tank... Okeer couldn't implant connection. His words are hollow."

Shepard struggled a bit, but she couldn't break his grip. She was strong, stronger than any human had a right to be, but she didn't have the raw brute strength of a krogan, especially not this one, what Okeer called his legacy. "I don't know what your name is. Didn't Okeer give you one?"

"No. He spoke at me, but not to me. The tank gave me knowledge, but no meaning. Give me a name."

Shepard thought for a beat, then came to a decision. She worked her jaw minutely, opening a comm channel. "Okeer. Your...Legacy wants a name."

"WHAT?!" The roar of Okeer's voice resounded in her ear. "You were supposed to move it, not open it!"

"Well if you put the damned directions in English I would have! Legion, get that overgrown toad back in here. His creation wants a name."

The door opened, this time Okeer in the lead, striding with the ponderous momentum of his race. The blue-eyed krogan glanced at him, eyes narrow, studying, then back to Shepard.

Okeer grunted softly, gazing at the living proof of his success. "A soldier you were born and bred to be, so your name shall be Soldier."

The new krogan glanced at him, taking in the restraints and the lack of weapons in the presence of armed warriors, then back to Shepard. "You name me. He is not master here."

Okeer roared at him, "I created you! I! I spent blood and pain on your design, thousands of prototypes washed out, to make you, the perfect krogan! I made you to be the perfect soldier, a fighter, a trooper, Infantry, the finest grunt that the galaxy has seen!"

The blue-eyed krogan blinked slowly, resembling a lizard even more acutely. "Grunt. That word has no meaning. It shall suffice. I am Grunt. If you are worthy of your command, prove your strength and try to destroy me."

Okeer stepped back, eyes narrowing, and recognizing this situation at last. Shepard gritted her teeth, and her eyes blazed with iridescent fire, and she let a large jolt of power flow through her arm and into the krogan. One of the nice things about them was that their dual nervous systems kept them on their feet despite massive damage. On the flipside was that it was also an easy path for electricity to follow.

The new-named Grunt gave a cry as she poured the power into his body through a rent she had forced into his armor. It wouldn't be enough to kill him, but it'd cause considerable pain and his muscles would spasm. "If you so desire."

Grunt dropped her to the floor, staggering away as Okeer lurched forward, only to be dragged back by the four geth surrounding him. Garrus laid a hand on Tali's shoulder, giving her a squeeze.

Shepard followed smoothly, her body flexing and snapping up a leg in a perfect half-spin, catching the new krogan square on the chin. The force imparted spun him almost ninety degrees, pirouetting on his toes, then he gave a roar and lunged back at her. This time, she was ready and swept out of his grasp, dropping to one knee and slamming her elbow into his knee at terrific velocity.

Grunt gave a grunt of pain and went to one knee as Shepard regained her feet in a fluid sidestep. She laid her hand, almost gently, on the back of his head, fingertips pressing into the cracks between plates. "You're dead. One wrong move, and I fry your brain. Even a krogan cannot recover from that."

She lifted her hand slightly as the young krogan gave a slight sound of affirmation. "Best decide what you want. You can stand alone here, a free krogan to do as you will. Or side with Okeer and share his fate." Her eyes glowed fiercely as she gazed straight at Okeer.

"I feel nothing for Okeer's clan or his enemies." Okeer started slightly at that. "I will do what I am bred to do - fight and determine the strongest. But his imprint has failed. Without a reason that's mine, one fight is as good as any other."

Shepard thought for a moment. "I have a strong ship and a strong crew. The geth follow my command. With you, we would be stronger."

Grunt gave a short laugh. "If you're weak and choose weak enemies, I'll have to kill you."

"Our enemies are worthy." Shepard relaxed her hand slightly.

Grunt seemed to consider for a moment. "That's...acceptable. Very well. I'll fight for you."

Shepard withdrew her hand and helped the youngster back to his feet. "I'm glad you saw reason. I would have had to knock Okeer out if I had been forced to terminate you. I don't want a rampaging krogan on my ship, though. One wrong move and I'll have you sedated for the rest of the trip." Her eyes snap to Okeer. "Both of you."

Okeer bowed his head, eyes gazing intently at her. "Understood."

"Good. Then let's get the hell off this rock."

AN: Sooooo sorry for the length of time between the last update and this. I keep having to hunt longer and more extensive missions to locate and retrieve my muse. This time I managed to get this written up and polished over one weekend of frenetic activity, but I have no idea when my next bout of inspiration will strike. Please forgive me for the irregular updates! *Hides from thrown veggies, toasters, and grenades*