Momentum – Grunt, Kal'Reegar
–
More…
Grunt had stopped eating, and his stomachs were not pleased. They roared their protests, clenching and burbling despite containing some thirty kilos of the Normandy's rations between them. It had been the first meal that hadn't been injected directly into his veins, and Grunt's body had been filled with sensations beyond his wildest imaginings. At first he'd stared at the protein bar in Shepard's open hand with some distrust, but as soon as the first morsel had touched his tongue, Grunt's eyes had widened and he'd been hooked.
He'd been dead to the world, dead to the shocked stares of the Normandy's human crew as he'd set upon the rest of the food with a crazed intensity. Handful after handful of protein bars disappeared into his wide mouth. He'd been too possessed to bother peeling away the foil wrappings, just mashing and chewing and swallowing and bathing in the radiant glow he felt on his tongue. Nothing in the encyclopedia imprinted in his head had said anything about flavor.
He'd eaten and eaten and eaten, his greedy stomachs expanding to take on every crumb, until at long last Shepard had called him away. "There will be more when we come back," the man had assured him, pulling on his massive, scaly arm. Grunt had stared desperately at the ruins he'd made of Gardner's kitchen as he was led away and had very nearly reneged on his promise to follow Shepard then and there.
But he'd stayed his hand, resisted the urge to hurl the commander through the med-bay's glass windows. He was not an animal. He did not pledge his loyalty lightly. He was better than that. He was pure krogan.
Unfortunately his stomachs did not share his self-control, and so now Grunt ignored them, a pained grimace on his face, as the salarian doctor scanned him from every conceivable direction. The orange glow of the doctor's omni-tool bounced off the armory walls as the slender alien's babble filled Grunt's ears.
"Skin tone atypical," the salarian muttered, "but healthy. Likely will pigmentize with time. Posture slightly recumbent, some risk of injury to joints if not properly load-equilibrated. Suspect a result of incubation tank orientation. Should self-correct with time and field exercise." Grunt did his best to ignore the salarian until he felt probing fingers latch onto a hold on his back. A fire of territorial rage ignited in his skull and Grunt roared, jerking around to face the alien doctor so quickly he stumbled into a nearby weapon rack.
The sound of weapons priming filled the armory and in seconds Grunt found himself face to face with three guns. The turian and the darker-skinned human looked positively grim from the opposite ends of their barrels, but Shepard's face was calm. Grunt stilled, snarling.
"Calm down, Grunt," Shepard said quietly, "Mordin is part of the… clan. He is trying to help."
"If he wants to help he should keep his hands off of me," Grunt grunted angrily.
"Simply removing unnecessary medical components of armor," Mordin explained, waggling a tiny piece of metal in his hand. "Armor served dual purpose in gestation tank – many auxiliaries superfluous after decanting. Did not mean to upset you. Will not happen again."
Grunt's gaze flitted back to Shepard, who looked at him expectantly. There was a long pause. "Better not," Grunt said finally, standing tall again. "If you want to keep your arms." The tension in the room bled out as the gunmen lowered their weapons and Mordin resumed his work. Nodding his satisfaction, Shepard dragged the turian and other human back into a discussion of proper shotgun choice, leaving Grunt alone with his thoughts and angry stomachs again. Thankfully Mordin did not take long and, after sending Shepard a satisfied nod, excused himself, muttering observations into his omni-tool as he paced away.
After the four or five seconds it took him to get bored just listening to the others conspire, Grunt busied himself studying the reflections on one of the tables. The way that they shifted when he moved, the way that they mirrored everything that he did. It was very alien. It took him a moment to realize that the krogan image that snaked across the table was him. He looked young. Untested. Grunt could feel Okeer's disrespect swimming in his mind, the echoes of old memories. Okeer had hated young krogan. Said they were weak, only fit to survive the genophage, not the great beasts of war they had been in his time. Something in Grunt's mind demanded he put a fist through the reflection. He looked away.
"Shepard, can we really trust him with that?" the turian was asking, and Grunt turned in time to see Shepard wave off the question. Grunt's eyes alighted on the heavy shotgun in Shepard's hands. Newly-synthesized by the ship's fabricators, clean and unmarked. Sized to a krogan hand.
"Grunt is part of our clan now, Garrus," Shepard insisted, presenting the weapon to his newest crewmember. "No matter what you or Miranda or anyone else says." Grunt accepted the shotgun without a word. He felt the weapon's reassuring weight slide into his hands like it belonged there. It felt good, it felt right. Okeer would have approved of this weapon. He looked to Shepard, who had a proud smile on his face. "Right, Grunt?"
Grunt's tongue fumbled for a moment on the words. "Right, Shepard," he said after a moment. He stared reverently at the weapon in his hands.
"You're welcome. Just don't fire it in the ship," Shepard said. "Now let's get out of here before Miranda shows up for round two."
Shepard, Garrus, and Grunt barely made it three steps out of the armory before being stopped by a white-clad human woman, who boldly stood herself in Shepard's path. "Shepard," she said, face exasperated, "you can not be serious. Trusting a potentially hostile krogan with a weapon? This is ridiculous! You're trusting yourself alone with him? What if he turns on you!?"
Shepard just pushed Miranda aside and kept walking. "We've been over this already, Miranda. I'm in charge of this ship, not you. I am going to Haestrom, whether you like it or not. And Haestrom is a radiation hazard, so I am bringing our two crewmembers that are naturally resistant to radiation." He pressed the elevator button and turned towards Miranda. "And nobody else."
"Shepard," Miranda said, "the mission-"
"The mission can wait. I'm going to help my friend. I understand that you don't approve. Lucky for you, you're not invited."
"The quarian turned you down once already," Miranda pointed out as the elevator opened and Shepard, Grunt, and Garrus stepped inside.
"Don't care." The door shut, and the elevator was silent.
"Is she part of the clan?" Grunt asked after a moment, hands wrapped possessively around his new gun.
3 days previously…
–
It was the end of the line. Kal'Reegar vas Heera nar Ondra was finished. Defeated. He could see it in the smug outlines of his opponent's luminescent eyes.
"Two, two, and… four," Seelon said, stacking two heat sinks neatly upon the pile he'd already acquired. "Geth eye. Take a walk, Kal." He laughed victoriously.
Kal'Reegar stared at the gameboard in disbelief. "You've got to be kidding me. Was that legal?"
"Definitely," Seelon insisted. He gestured to the tracks they'd drawn in the dust. "Two here," he said, pointing to one stack of heatsink game pieces, "over your three. Another two, gives me the decimal. And two more… ends up with four." He tapped his 'winnings' triumphantly.
Kal'Reegar shook his head. "I don't know what they teach you on the Colepsis but on my ship we don't cheat at six-stacks." He reached for the tube of nutrient-paste he'd left cooking in the harsh sunlight – it'd been there only minutes but it was already hot to the touch – and clicked it into the port beneath his mask.
"I didn't cheat!" Seelon insisted.
"Sure you didn't," Reegar said, mock disapproval in his voice. He knew Seelon's math was right. The kid was smart. Should have ended up on the science team, not the marines. Waste of a good brain, in Reegar's opinion. He rolled gracefully to his feet. "I'm done. I'm gonna go check on Tali'Zorah," he said, clapping the dust off of his suit.
"Again?" Seelon protested, resetting their gameboard. "She's fine! Come on, Reegar. One more game. I'm sure you'll win this time."
Reegar laughed. "Not a chance, Seelon. I just shoot things. See if Ayan will play, he looks like he hasn't gotten his ass kicked enough today."
Reegar left a disappointed-looking Seelon, reclaiming his gun from where he'd left it leaning against an ancient stone column and heading for the science team's worksite. Pools of sunlight sizzled between the maze of shadows cast by Haestrom's primordial architecture, and Reegar maneuvered carefully around each one. His shields – all of the quarians' shields – were offline to save power, and their environment suits protected them from the bulk of the radiation, but they avoided the star Dholen's blinding, antiseptic sunlight all the same. Just seconds in the open made one feel almost ill, not to mention the damage it did to their visor displays.
The pumps in Reegar's mask chattered as they pumped his meal bit by bit into his mouth. It was tasteless gruel – its quality only mildly improved by his impromptu cooking – but Reegar did not complain. Most of what he'd eaten his entire life had been little better – unprocessed food was a rare treat on the Flotilla, and one not often wasted on mere marines. He'd had some on his brief tour of guard duty on the Liveship Hypha – everybody assigned to a Liveship got a piece of fresh Rannochian fruit, more to drive home how critically wonderful and important the Liveship was to the fleet than as any kind of reward. It had worked – the brief glimpse of the homeworld Reegar had gotten staring at the fruit in his hand had been one of the most stirring moments in his life. And then taking it to a clean room and eating it. Reegar was pretty sure he'd kill a thousand geth for another morsel like that.
Reegar picked his way past the marine team, which was spread out between various scraps of shade, playing games, talking, or sleeping the harsh daylight hours away. They were quiet. They knew they were deep in geth space, that at any moment the mechanical boogeymen that haunted their race as a whole might discover them and fall upon them with terrifying force. Most quarian missions into geth space – and Reegar had been on a few – went entirely unopposed. Aside from the rim of the Perseus Veil and a few key mass relays, the geth did not waste many resources patrolling their enormous territory. Still, Haestrom was known as a geth refueling and repair depot and the possibility of detection was very real. They'd come equipped with the best anti-geth equipment available – ECM grenades, jammers, GIGO codes, armor-piercing bullets – but each quarian there knew that if the geth came after them, there would be little defense.
The science team was no more exuberant. They had set up back behind the marine lines, scattered in the rooms that had once served this very purpose before the exodus. They stooped over their various projects, setting up instruments, taking readings down, and discussing findings in subdued voices. They did not acknowledge Reegar as he walked by. Well, except for one.
"Reegar!" Tali's voice always managed to cheer the marine. He found her in one of the back rooms, hard at work inside of a small mountain of electrical equipment.
"Ma'am," Reegar said, nodding. Tali's head was buried inside one of the twenty or thirty salvaged circuit boxes she'd affixed to the wall. Dense tangles of wires of all colors snaked between each one, connecting them into a web of mismatched machinery. Tali's fingers worked quickly, wiring and rewiring each piece with perfunctory grace. "What is this thing, Ma'am?" Reegar asked, tracing his eyes across the machine.
"It's an astronomical interferometer," Tali said instantly, her omni-tool alighting around her hand as she soldered a new component into place. "An aperture synthesizer. It helps collate the data from the different telescopes outside, putting all the feeds into one picture with better resolution than any of them individually." She stopped, and Reegar could hear her curse under her breath. "Or it will, anyway," she continued. "As… soon… as… I…" There was a crack, and she yanked an offending piece of circuit board away. Tali gave a bark of triumph as the interferometer came alive, a starfield of diodes spread across its many pieces filling the room with pinpricks of light.
"Damn impressive, Ma'am," Reegar said, and he meant it. Quarians were, as a people, both intelligent and well-educated. Reegar himself, despite his constant ministrations that he was only a grunt, was more than capable of repairing computers, weapons, and armor that the average galaxy-dweller would discard in a heartbeat. But Tali'Zorah… she was something else.
"Thanks," Tali said proudly, peering into one of the boxes. "I made this part out of our ship's air conditioner."
Reegar laughed. "Whatever gets the job done, Ma'am," he said, smiling behind his helmet. "Looks like you're fine. I'm going to go run a perimeter and check on Vandru at the gatehouse." He thrust a thumb over his shoulder.
"Really?" Tali asked, eyes lighting up (more than usual). "Could you do me a favor?" She ran across the room and started digging through a crate of equipment, resurfacing a moment later with a small, lensed object attached to a long fabric strap. Reegar looked at it curiously. "It's a radiometric camera," Tali explained. "It straps onto your helmet." She held up the camera and Reegar obligingly ducked down, allowing her to fit it tightly onto his head and pointedly ignoring the tingling sensation he imagined wherever her fingers touched him. She backed up a few paces to admire her work. "I want pictures of the buildings on that end of the station," she explained, pointing with one slender arm. "The scarring on the sides of the tall ones, mostly, but anywhere you see sun damage that looks interesting, that'd be great too." Reegar nodded professionally. "If you have time," Tali added.
"I'll make time, Ma'am."
–
Reegar made his way across the ruins towards the gatehouse, stopping every once in a while to take a reading for Tali. He wasn't sure exactly what she was looking for and so he took it slow, peering closely at every sun-blasted building for something she might find interesting. Most of the buildings had had shadows baked into them, broad arcs that had spent the centuries shielded from Dholen's angry glare. Where most of the ruins were bleached white and covered in a thin layer of ash, some spots were as clean and untouched as they must have been hundreds of years before when the Haestrom facility had originally been abandoned to the geth. Reegar found the depression of an ancient fingerprint in a chunk of exposed concrete foundation, left there by the original quarian builders. The print was perfectly preserved, even down to the thin edge of a clawed fingernail. Whoever had left it had not been wearing gloves. That thought boggled Reegar's mind and he took many pictures of these isolated spots, oases of the old quarian life.
Eventually Reegar reached the gatehouse and tapped quietly on the metal door. Observing standard protocol in geth space, he did not attempt to call the receiver in Vandru's helmet. The door slid open, and Reegar stepped inside. His friend and fellow marine Vandru'Tal vas Petha was stooped over an old optical telescope that protruded out a slit in the building. The ancient console at his side had been stripped to pieces – Vandru had apparently been passing the time by repairing it.
"Vandru," Reegar said, nodding his head officially. "Anything?"
"Maybe," Vandru replied at length, still fixated on the lens. "I definitely saw a ship go through atmo this morning. A good hundred, two hundred clicks away though. Shouldn't have seen us."
"Geth?" Reegar asked.
"Oh yeah."
Reegar frowned under his helmet. They knew they were playing it close by being on Haestrom at all. Any sighting of geth – two hundred clicks away or otherwise – was bad news. Still, the Admiralty Board had been convinced the research here was important, important enough even to assign Tali'Zorah to the project. Reegar would not object "Well, keep your eye on them," Reegar said. "If they find us, they find us. We'll give our lives for the Fleet."
Vandru finally turned away from his telescope to fix Reegar with what must have been an amused glare. "Kal, you know I'm your friend, and I don't mean to be ship-ist or anything, but you are the damn perfect capture of the good crew Ondra. Practically a walking stereotype." His accent dropped, replaced by his best approximation of Reegar's gruff brogue "We'll give our lives for the fleet," he grunted, squaring his shoulders and emphasizing each syllable with a rough, military nod of his head.
Reegar chuckled. Despite its small size, his birth ship the Ondra had gained a reputation as one of the most staunchly militant and traditionalist ships in the entire fleet. There was no such thing as a scientist nar Ondra. They were all marines – tough, no-nonsense, consummate soldiers, sought after by captains for their well-known skill and devotion but stereotypically called distant and isolated from other quarians, if for no other reason than their voices. Quarians were very attuned to the sounds of each others' voices – with their suits on they had little else to gauge physical attractiveness – and Reegar's exotic Ondran accent had drawn gossip and confused stares among his crewmates on the Heera ever since he'd returned from his pilgrimage.
"No offense taken," Reegar said, grinning. "It's not a stereotype I'm ashamed of."
"What's with the headgear?" Vandru asked, pointing to Tali's camera.
"Radiometric camera, Tali'Zorah said." Reegar struck a pose. "Pretty cunning, don't ya think?" He pulled it off his head and handed it to Vandru to inspect.
"Very cunning," Vandru agreed, turning it over in agile hands. He pried the back plate off of it and peered into its innards before rapidly reassembling it and setting it on the table.
"Keep your eye in that scope," Reegar said after a moment, voice serious again. "If you have any inkling that the geth know where we are, break radio silence and let me know. Then get the hell out of here."
"Yes sir squad leader sir!" Vandru agreed, voice back in his mocking Ondran accent.
–
Reegar stayed with Vandru for an hour or so, passing the hours talking about everything from the best way to kill a geth destroyer to the latest scandal about the always-tumultuous public spectacle that was Admiral Koris. As they spoke they took shifts manning the telescope and fiddling with the broken-down console. Some of its pieces had decayed away, but by and large quarians had always built things to last, and by the time the sun began to set they'd managed to summon a few flickers of activity from the dust-encrusted machine.
Night was falling when Reegar finally headed back to the main facility. Dholen had set and the temperature dropped quickly, much to his relief. Considering he'd spent the vast majority of his life on sterile, unchanging spacecraft, it never ceased to amaze Reegar to watch a planet change as it turned away from its sun. In the day everything on Haestrom was blinding and harsh, the air stifling even in an environment suit, but at night it was a different story. Pleasantly cool, the facility's crumbling towers ringing the world in blue-black silhouettes. Reegar walked slowly, listening to the beginning choruses of thousands of nocturnal insects echoing across the ruins.
So peaceful were the sights and sounds of Haestrom at night that Reegar barely minded when he realized he'd left Tali's camera back at the gatehouse. He started back, mind blissfully empty.
A hundred meters from the gatehouse, however, and the communicator in Reegar's helmet crackled with static. His calm evaporated in an instant. Reegar's eyes widened and he dove for cover, waiting to hear if there would be another, less-garbled transmission. Both the science and marine teams had been warned to keep their communicators silent unless absolutely necessary to avoid attracting attention, so whoever it was, they either needed help or a very thorough ass-kicking.
When a minute passed and no further transmissions appeared, Reegar broke cover and continued towards the gatehouse, hands wrapped tight around his gun. He moved swiftly, shifting from shadow to shadow. It wasn't long before he picked up a voice coming from the gatehouse. Vandru's. Even from a distance, Reegar could hear it clearly.
"Emergency," Vandru said. "The geth are here. I've stayed to buy the others time. Anyone who gets this, find Tali'Zorah. She and that data are all that matters. Keelah'selai." There was a pause, and then "Emergency. The geth are here. I've stayed to buy the others time. Anyone who gets this, find Tali'Zorah. She and that data are all that matters. Keelah'selai."
Reegar's face fell as the meaning of Vandru's words struck him. Almost as if on cue, the gatehouse door slid open with a resounding clatter, and Reegar hurled himself behind the nearest column. Peeking over the edge, he saw nothing at first, then a shimmer, and heavy footsteps as something big and bulky – and yet next to invisible – strode out of the room where he'd left Vandru. Unmoving, the object was almost impossible to pick out, but every time it moved the distortions twisted and flickered, like a distant mirage, and its form was unmistakable. The purr of electronic voices seemed to fill Reegar's head.
A light appeared in the middle of the distorted blankness as the cloaked geth turned towards him, and Reegar turned and ran.
Presently…
–
As the Kodiak made its way down to Haestrom's surface, Grunt busied himself running his tongue over his teeth. Exposed to air for the first time after almost two years suspended in amniotic jelly, they felt cold and ultra-sensitive, and the slightest breeze caused them to ache painfully. Grunt kept his mouth pointedly closed, hating the idea that he could feel such discomfort from something so simple.
"What are you going to say to her?" the turian – Garrus – was asking. Shepard just shook his head.
"I don't know," he admitted. "She told me she had a mission to do and that when it was done she could consider joining us. If I can help that along at all, I will."
Grunt rolled his eyes. "Are we really just landing to pick someone up? You said we would have great enemies to fight."
Shepard and Garrus stared at him from across the cramped shuttle cabin. "We are looking for an old friend of ours," Garrus said. "A quarian."
Grunt snorted in contempt. "Pfft," he rumbled, his wide mouth sneering. "Quarians. Pfft. Weak creatures."
Garrus' beady little eyes narrowed in anger.
"According to Okeer," Shepard pointed out, unconcerned. "And as I recall you don't share Okeer's opinions."
"No!" Grunt barked, his voice almost ear-splitting, even over the sound of the shuttle breaking atmosphere. Garrus and Shepard's brows raised in alarm at his outburst. "No," Grunt repeated more quietly. "Okeer's hatreds are not worthy of me. Too weak to compel me."
"Then perhaps when you meet Tali you can form your own opinions on quarian strength," Shepard said, turning to peer out of one of the shuttle's tinted windows at the fast-approaching planet surface. Grunt fell silent, considering this. Yes, yes, Shepard was right. He did not care what Okeer thought about quarians. It was hard to separate Okeer's opinion from fact sometimes – the ancient krogan's voice echoed incessantly in the deepest parts of Grunt's brain. Poked at his thoughts in ways of which Grunt did not at all approve.
Grunt absently stroked the stock of his new weapon, marveling at the polished feel, until he felt the shuttle's thrusters quiet and the sudden inertial shift as they made planetfall. "Your clan isn't a taxi service, is it, Shepard?" he complained again as the door opened, accompanied by a blast of hot, dry air. Garrus and Shepard recoiled from the sudden heat but to Grunt it felt better than the artificial smell of mechanically-cooled air inside the shuttle. "You did give me a gun so I could shoot things, right?"
Shepard sighed, pulling his helmet over his head. "I gave you a gun because this is geth space, but I hope you don't have to use it," he said, fiddling with the seals at his neck. "If you would rather sit in the shuttle, though, you're welcome to do that. I just thought you'd enjoy a little exercise."
"I am not a pet," Grunt insisted, but all the same he pushed past Shepard and Garrus and forcibly planted himself outside. He did not know if Shepard would really leave him stuck in the shuttle – human humor had not been among the topics covered in the tank – but he did not want to take chances. He cast Shepard a defiant stare, daring the commander to order him back into the metal box. Luckily for the both of them the human did nothing of the sort, simply hefted his assault rifle and stepped into the searing sunlight. The squeak of dying shields filled the air until Shepard stepped into a shady spot.
"Let's go," Shepard said, frowning as he checked the shield indicator in his helmet. "Aria's intelligence said the quarians landed at this facility. Garrus, you got anything?"
The turian, who'd taken up position behind a low wall a few dozen meters to the left, had his omni-tool out. "Not much, Shepard," Garrus replied, waving the orange interface in the air. "Long range transmissions seem more or less jammed. I'm getting something on all the short-wave channels but from this distance it's just noise. Definitely quarian encryption codes, though, and coming from the main facility." He checked his own shield indicator. "Sunlight increases shield load by two point seven ex."
"We'll stay out of it as much as possible then," Shepard concluded, pointing off towards the main facility. "Let's move."
The three of them moved slowly and silently through the ruins towards the skeletal quarian towers they could see in the distance. Garrus and Shepard had squad movements down to a precision science, each taking turns moving from shady spot to shady spot while the other covered without a word of coordination between them. Grunt, on the other hand, ignored the commander's warnings and marched purposefully down the center of the wide streets. He didn't wear shields – he didn't need them – and the ferocious sunlight barely tickled his thick, armored skin. He got a sick sort of glee out of watching the human and turian scurry about in the dark. Like insects.
Heh heh heh.
As he walked, Grunt's head swiveled about, taking in the sights. The quarian buildings were broken, pocked by signs of battle and hundreds of years of neglect, and yet to Grunt still quite striking. Okeer had had nothing at all to say about quarian architecture, and so staring at the ashen stone spires conjured up no foreign thoughts in the back of Grunt's mind. Quarian buildings were pure, free of Okeer's contemptuous influence, and Grunt's opinion of them was truly his. The way the air felt against the olfactory pits in the roof of his mouth – stale and hot though it was – was Grunt's too, and he breathed deeply, feeling the scents register in a way the fluid bath he'd lived in for so long had never allowed. Okeer's imprinting had included smells – Grunt could identify an enemy's species and sex from a distance without a beat of hesitation – and yet the smell of dust and mold and ash. It was almost overpoweringly strong to his virgin nose.
The sound of scratching up ahead put the squad on alert, their guns raised before their chests until they rounded a corner and a great, red steel gate came into view. A looped recording blared from the half-open door of a nearby gatehouse. Even from a distance Grunt could see the quarian corpse flattened on the ground inside. He could practically feel the commander tense up.
Shepard directed them with silent hand-gestures as they approached the building, ordering Grunt to stand guard outside while he and Garrus rushed in to investigate. Grunt sighed audibly as he listened to Shepard checking the fallen soldier's vitals. They were wasting time.
When the scratching sound returned, Grunt's eyes widened in curiosity. Following the sound into a nearby corner, he found some kind of shiny-plated torso, having been separated from its legs by a shotgun blast, scrambling around on clumsy arms. He chuckled darkly and yanked the creature out into the open by its bizarre, headless neck. Its metal skin reflected brilliantly in the sunlight. He stared at it impassively as it scraped at his armored arm, turning it this way and that and searching his memories for what the creature was. The geth that the quarian recording mentioned, no doubt. Shepard's enemies.
Grunt started to squeeze until the geth's armor began to crumple in his hand. Still the creature struggled. Sturdy little bastards, whatever they were.
"You can't choke a geth," Garrus said, stalking out of the gatehouse with the quarian soldier's communicator in his hand. Grunt just cast him a withering glare and, with a quick twist, yanked the geth's head from its torso. It gave an electronic squeal and died, its white, mercurial blood spilling onto the ground. Grunt let its corpse drop.
Ancient servos started to whine as the massive gate slid away and Shepard emerged from the gatehouse, his determined expression obvious even behind his helmet.
"Looks like 617 Theta, Commander," Garrus said, still fiddling with the dials on the salvaged communicator. "Though I don't hear any activity on it at the moment."
"We don't have time to wait," Shepard said, "We need to move. Now." Without waiting for a reply, Shepard ducked under the gate, his rifle brandished aggressively in front of him.
Grunt laughed, wiped the geth blood from his hands, and followed. This was more like it.
3 days previously…
–
"Everything needs to be off," Tali's voice was quiet – she'd turned the speakers in her helmet off. "Shields, instruments. No communications of any kind. The geth are drawn to these things like magnets. Switches stay off until they are right on us."
Reegar did not bother pointing out that he knew all this – most quarians did. "Yes Ma'am," he said instead. It was blessedly dark – not that darkness was much hindrance to the geth – as Tali and Reegar made their way to the high-security vault at the rear of the facility. Their guns were drawn and, though they moved quickly, they checked each corner and crevasse for hidden synthetics. Even in the dark, Reegar could see how Tali's fingers fidgeted on the grip of her shotgun. She was nervous. He didn't blame her.
"You'll have to keep fluid," she continued. "Ready to move, scatter at any moment. Make the geth spread their forces thin. Sneak behind their lines. Move erratically." More standard geth fighting techniques. Reegar guessed that Tali was saying them more for her own benefit than his.
"Understood Ma'am," he said all the same. He'd issued much the same orders to his squad as soon as he'd sprinted back to base, and they were already hard at work helping the science team box up its equipment and spread into scattered hiding places. They had all prepared for this contingency. Too bad that didn't make it any less terrifying.
Tali seemed to run out of things to say and fell quiet. For a while the only sounds were their footsteps against the ground and the nighttime insect songs. They both expected to hear the chattering tones of geth speech – or at least gunfire from back where they'd left the rest of the team – at any moment, but neither did.
Just as the vault door came into view on the far side of a pair of bridges, Tali stopped so suddenly that Reegar nearly ran into her. She peered back towards the main facility, her glowing eyes standing out like stars behind the dark purple of her mask. "We should go back, Reegar," she said hopelessly. "They need our help. We can help them." She turned to face him. "Let me go back."
Reegar didn't like saying no to Tali – even aside from the fact that she was smarter than him – but he had his orders. Rael'Zorah's last commands to him still echoed in his head. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Ma'am," he said firmly. "They know their jobs, and I know mine, and mine is to get you to safety so you can do your job." He imagined her disappointed facial expression. It hurt, but all the same he gestured for her to continue.
"I can handle myself," she said, reluctantly resuming their journey towards the vault. "I've fought geth before. Maybe even more than you."
"I believe it, Ma'am," Reegar said. "But if you have to handle yourself here, it will only be because you are alone in that vault with every other quarian on this rock dead at the door." His voice was solid, unwavering as he swore to give his life to protect her, and Tali looked at him. "I will put you in there if I have to drag you by your veil," Reegar promised, and he meant it. Tali nodded.
They got to the vault and Tali opened the massive steel blast doors with a few waves of her omni-tool. Cool air belched out of the entrance as the two quarians approached. Tali hesitated at the threshold, looking to Reegar one last time.
Reegar searched his mind for something to say. Something to calm her nerves (or his – he wasn't picky). "Their safety is not your responsibility, Tali'Zorah," he said after a moment, though it came out considerably less tender than he'd intended. "It's mine."
His head must have drooped a little, a little of the shame and fear he was bottling up must have broken through, for Tali set a slender hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry about Vandru," she said, voice barely above a whisper.
"Me too Ma'am," Reegar admitted. He stared at her helmeted face for a moment, wanting for all the world to stay with her in the bunker, defend her to his dying breath, but that was not his choice. He had other quarians to save. The rest of the science team, his own marines. There were geth to be fought. He quashed his feelings under military duty, gave Tali a curt nod, and turned away, back towards what would soon be a warzone.
"Don't die, Kal'Reegar," Tali commanded quietly – almost inaudible over the sound of the vault doors closing.
Presently…
–
"I should hate you," Grunt observed, breaking the silence in the room in which their team had taken refuge. Garrus looked up from his omni-tool long enough to cast the krogan another disapproving look. They'd ducked into the nearest safe spot after, four hours into their stay on Haestrom, Garrus had started getting intelligible radio chatter. Most of it – hundreds of channels – was full of heavily encrypted patterns, streams and streams of numbers. Even the dozens of decryption protocols Garrus had saved into his omni-tool over the years had been next to useless – only three or four of the channels could be resolved, and even then only into nonsense. It was as if someone had smashed randomly on a thousand keyboards and then bothered to encode the resulting mess.
One channel, however – the one on the communicator he'd taken from the dead quarian – had contained voices, and now Shepard stood near the doorway, deep in conversation with the quarian squad leader, leaving Grunt and Garrus to twiddle their thumbs. It had only been a matter of minutes, but already Grunt's blood called out for more violence. More of these… geth to kill.
"Do you?" Garrus asked absently.
Grunt stared at him, thinking. Okeer's hatred for turians had been strong. Very strong. "No," he admitted. "Not if you hand over your food." Grunt's eyes alighted pointedly on the blue-foiled ration pack at Garrus' side. He'd already eaten his own supply and Shepard's, but his stomachs demanded still more.
Garrus lifted the ration pack and tapped the warning label on the front. "Blue means dextro, Grunt. You don't want this."
"Don't tell me what I want," Grunt growled, eyes narrowing dangerously.
"It'll make you sick."
"I don't get sick." He lifted his shotgun, leveling it with the turian's face. "Give it to me or defend it. Your choice."
Garrus stared at Grunt in disbelief for a few seconds, trying to gauge if he was serious or not. He certainly looked serious. At length, Garrus shrugged and tossed the package, which Grunt deftly caught. "Don't say I didn't warn you," Garrus said. "Now go away and be quiet until Shepard's done. We don't want to call more geth here."
Grunt didn't bother disagreeing. He tore open the wrapping from Garrus' meal and shoved it whole down his mouth. A few half-hearted chews later and it disappeared with a snap. It tasted different than what he'd eaten so far – sweeter, he guessed would be the word. When several seconds passed and Grunt didn't feel sick, he cast a triumphant grin in Garrus' direction. The turian ignored him.
Grunt sighed as the boredom overtook him again. He looked at Shepard, still talking into his helmet, and snorted in contempt. Humans sure liked to talk. Talk was stupid. He turned around and scanned the room for something more interesting. Pile of rubble, four walls, and a moody turian. Nothing. Grunt snorted again. He holstered his shotgun and ran a hand along the wall, marveling at the texture and at the way clouds of dust ballooned everywhere he touched. His fingers met the edge of a blast crater (clearly the result of some kind of explosive slugthrower, his borrowed memories told him, maybe a small grenade launcher) and he scraped away some of the ash, drawing idle patterns on the bleached walls. Eventually his hand met the end of a jagged piece of steel that jutted from the crater, exposed by the ancient explosion.
He cast a guilty look over his shoulder – Garrus and Shepard were too absorbed in their work to pay attention to him. Grunt grinned widely and wrapped his hand around the metal bar. He gave it a gentle tug. It held fast, anchored in the concrete. He pulled harder, watching the concrete dust trickle out from around its base, but still it did not budge.
Grunt frowned and gave a mighty heave. The bar came loose. Along with the bricks it had been embedded in. And most of the wall. Grunt gave a triumphant cackle, staring at the mangled steel in his hands. He was so absorbed in twisting it into a ball that he did not hear the building start to rumble or Garrus' exclamation of surprise.
A piece of concrete shattered on Grunt's head and he looked up with an angry snarl. His scowl disappeared as he saw the ceiling move. The building was coming down. He took a moment to stare accusingly at the twisted steel bar in his hands, then turned back to watch, transfixed, as the ancient tower started to crumble and die. Cracks louder than thunder echoed across the ruins as great fissures snaked their way up the building's sides. He heard Garrus and Shepard scrambling for safety as the tower listed drunkenly to one side and held the pose. There was a pregnant pause, filled only with the tortured sound of snapping support beams.
"Grunt!" Shepard was shouting from outside. "Get out!"
He couldn't pull his gaze away. For a second Grunt was convinced the building would stay up, but there was a sudden, explosive screech and it collapsed atop him with thunderous report.
There was a brief period of blackness and Grunt lay where he fell, twisted and disoriented under the rubble as he listened to the building's creaking remains settle. He blinked drunkenly, trying to stop the way his vision danced in every direction. He could feel his hearts beat faster, could feel his organs quiver and clench and the bloom of heat in his chest that meant his body had kicked its famous regeneration processes into overdrive, and in seconds the surge of adrenaline cleared his head. He had to get out. Pinpricks of light illuminated beams of dust from above, and Grunt gave a mighty shove, hurling stone rubble out of his path.
By the time he'd dug his way to the top of the rubble and felt Garrus and Shepard's hands drag him the rest of the way out, Grunt was grinning earhole to earhole.
"What the hell was that?" Garrus demanded, mandibles flickering furiously under a thick layer of brown-gray dust.
"Glorious," Grunt said, wiping the trickle of orange blood from his face.
The radio in Shepard's helmet answered. "I'll give you one thing, Shepard. You sure know how to conjure up a distraction," the voice said. "Whatever the hell you just did, it pissed them off bigtime."
Shepard nodded. "Roger that, Reegar. We'll try to draw them off. You stay on Tali, we'll join up with you when we can." Shepard hefted his assault rifle and looked to his companions. "Looks like we're about to have company. Reegar says get ready for a fight." Shepard, in his usual collected manner, barely registered that they were standing atop a ten meter tall pile of debris where a building used to be, and headed pointedly towards the nearest alleyway, from which the sound of mechanical feet could already be heard. Grunt laughed, pulling the shotgun from his back and stomping down to join the commander.
Garrus was last, his eyes filled with anger as they surveyed the building's wreckage. He was trained for stealth. Precision. Effectiveness. And then Grunt drops a whole building on top of them. That moron krogan could have killed them all.
He felt a little better when said moron krogan finally doubled over and vomited his first dextro-amino meal across the pavement.
2 days previously…
–
Seventy-one active geth, twenty-seven deactivated. Fourteen living quarian marines, three dead.
Kal'Reegar held them all in his mind as he ran. Names, positions, guns. Reegar had little trouble keeping it all together – it was just like an elegant machine, each cog moving and being moved. Geth were mathematical, sensible enemies. You had to be mathematical to fight them.
Reegar's mind worked quickly, but his feet worked even quicker. He and four other quarian marines hurtled through the ruins, dashing down ash-covered corridors, sprinting across rooftops, and leaping rubble piles with a grace and speed no other sentient species could match. Not even the geth. It was all they had, and everything about the quarian ground forces depended on it. Quarians couldn't survive a front-line fight – not for long, anyway – and so fighting always came down to their heads and their feet. They could scatter and be halfway across the battlefield at a moment's notice, their formations fluid and open, their movements chaotic up close but secretly ordered.
They skidded to a stop at the intersection of two ancient roads. Reegar's breath was coming in exhausted bursts as he checked his radio.
"Give me something, Soro. Got us?"
A voice materialized out of the static to answer. "I've got you. You have… five geth moving on your position. Two rocket launchers."
Reegar swore under his breath. "ETA?"
There was a pause as his scout calculated. "Not more than three minutes."
Reegar nodded and shut off his communicator. "Eli, Monva. Two minutes' rest," he said, pointing at two of his marines. They nodded gratefully and their shimmering eyes closed. "Seelon, cover our ass. Cos, we need another drone." He gestured to the top of a nearby building with his chin. Mumbling his assent, Cos holstered his gun. The two quarians' powerful toes wrapped around the decaying wall's edges as they bolted sure-footedly up onto the roof. Immediately their shields protested the sunlight.
Cos' omni-tool glowed as he locked a tiny metal drone into the utility rail on his gun, pointed it skyward, and fired. The drone's silvery body arced high into the air and disappeared from view. A second later, video feed filled the inside of Reegar's helmet. The bird's eye view of the battlefield painted a grim picture – Reegar could see movement throughout the ruins as the six dozen geth spread out on their tireless hunt for the hidden quarians. He frowned but said nothing, watching as the drone's cameras scanned in all directions. Eventually he saw what he was looking for.
There, not half a kilometer from their current position, was one of the two geth dropships, its purple-gray insectoid bulk resting lifelessly in an ancient courtyard. The glow of five or six geth eyes guarding it was impossible to miss, and Reegar swore again.
"Two minutes almost up," Cos said wearily. "Time to move again."
"We're almost there," Reegar promised, clapping Cos on the back. They hopped back down to the ground. Seelon was just placing the last ECM mine, his hands shaking so severely it took him several tries to get it properly activated. "Time's up," Reegar grunted. Four pairs of eyes stared at him. "Time to move. If they catch up, we split. If you catch a geth alone, kill it. More than one, keep running." He looked solemnly at his squad. They were tired and outnumbered, but they were still standing. "Ready?"
The sound of heavy metal footsteps at the end of the street was all the answer he needed, and the five quarians sprinted away.
–
It was two hours of dodging and weaving, doubling back and hiding before any of them reached the landed dropship. They'd cornered and killed six geth in that time, but Cos had taken a round to the head and died on the spot. Sixty-five geth, thirteen marines. They were losing too many. Reegar hoped Tali'Zorah was getting the data she needed.
Sunset found Reegar and Seelon alone, not fifty meters from where the dropship rested. They were hidden behind a partially-collapsed building, but the rhythmic stomping of the geth patrols was impossible to miss. Reegar stole a glance around the edge – he could just see the pair of geth at the ship's rear intakes between the stone buildings. Two others were working on a heavy console next to one of the ship's open cargo ports, no doubt attempting to get a proper signal established. It was lucky that Haestrom was a refueling depot – as far as Reegar could tell, the dropships didn't have the fuel to get offworld, or he presumed they would have done so and summoned reinforcements by now. Still, with persistence the ship's onboard communicators might have the strength to get a signal out, so the dropships remained a deadly threat.
"H-how long do you figure we have 'till they find us, Reegar?" Seelon asked, voice chattering. Reegar looked at the boy. He looked terrible, almost shaking in fear and exhaustion. Every part of his previously-beautiful environment suit was caked in a putrid patina of ash and dirt caked together with geth and quarian blood. Reegar felt for him.
"Not long," he said, stealing another glance at the dropship. "We have to move." His mind struggled to come up with the best way to take the ship out. They were going to have to use the GIGO, and even then, they might not make it.
"We're going to die here, aren't we Reegar?"
"Probably," Reegar said simply. "Are you ready for that?"
"No. I… I don't want to die here. Not for sun readings."
"That's not why we're here," Reegar said, stooping to count the tech mines he had left. As usual, they made every effort to recollect the ones they left that the geth never sprang, but even so, he was down to three. He would have to make them last. He pulled one of the high explosives out and slid it into the utility rail on his hand cannon with a final click. "We're here for the Fleet. You would die for the Fleet, wouldn't you?" Seelon was silent, eyes downcast until Reegar put a fatherly hand on his shoulder. "Admiral Zorah himself gave me the order, you know," Reegar said.
Seelon's eyes widened curiously. "Really?"
"Really," he confirmed. "He said that the fleet needed this data to come back. Needed Tali'Zorah to come back. Told me specifically to protect her, whatever the cost." Reegar forced a smile, though Seelon couldn't see it. "Made me promise my squad and I would lay my lives down for Tali, for the fleet, if it came to that. I told him we all knew our duties. That no amount of geth would make us forget." He squeezed Seelon's shoulder. "I didn't lie, Seelon."
"No sir," Seelon said, swallowing his fears. "No you didn't." He slid an ECM grenade into his own weapon and gave Reegar a nod.
"Good. I'll give the GIGO signal and we attack before the geth get their heads back on straight. We're going to have to hit this thing together and then move. Dump a grenade into both of its engines, just to be sure. I'll take right, you take left." Seelon nodded. "You ready?" Seelon nodded again, glowing eyes narrowed in determination. Reegar took a deep breath. He turned on his communicator, opening a channel with all marines in range. "Turn on the GIGO," he said. There was a brief delay. Suddenly, the channel filled with noise. Numbers, thousands upon thousands of numbers poured into every frequency. Reegar traded a significant look with Seelon. "Go."
They sprang from their hiding place in unison and descended upon the geth. One of the guards sputtered and clattered to the ground as Reegar's first shot struck it center in the eye. The GIGO streams were doing their job – the remaining geth seemed to flicker with uncharacteristic indecision, giving Reegar time to fell another before they opened fire, setting his shields aglow.
There was a noisy hiss as Seelon let the ECM grenade fly. It sailed through the air and struck the geth console in a magnificent flash of light, sending tendrils of lightning snaking across the ground. Two geth, caught in the explosion, froze solid as the electricity arced through their systems. Their eyes glowed brightly for a moment before the diodes exploded and the geth died to the tinkle of glass.
Reegar and Seelon kept moving. Reegar leapt over the fallen geth corpses and took cover behind one of the dropship's engines even as another geth – one of the larger varieties, painted head to toe in gray and yellow, stomped its way around to meet him. Working quickly, Reegar jammed his gun barrel into the ship's outtake and pulled the trigger, listening with satisfaction to the thunk of his grenade clattering into the engine's interior.
"In place!" he shouted to Seelon, darting under the ship and quickly loading a combat drone. "Thirty seconds!"
"Having trouble!" Seelon shouted back. Reegar cursed as the geth destroyer peered its long neck down under the ship. A plume of fire erupted from its weapon, chasing Reegar all the way out. He scurried out from under the ship's nose, sparing a moment to gun down a geth trooper with two neat shots to the base of the neck.
"Ten seconds!" Reegar bellowed again. "Get it placed and get out of there, Seelon!" Reegar sprinted for the cover of the surrounding buildings. The destroyer on the far side of the ship stood and followed him with mechanical persistence, sending another great plume of burning fuel sailing towards him. His mouth muttering a constant stream of obscenities, Reegar took aim and fired again, sending the combat drone arcing over the top of the ship to where Seelon was fighting for his life. He saw the drone's flashy holographic panels balloon to life as it descended, forming the biggest, brightest target to draw geth fire.
"Bomb in place!" Seelon shouted, relief evident in his voice. "Running for cover!"
There was an almighty blast as Reegar's grenade went off. The dropship's engine was swallowed up in a massive belch of fire that sent shrapnel raining across the battlefield. The force of the blast knocked the destroyer pursuing Reegar to its knees – Reegar finished it off with a quick shot to its fuel tanks.
"Seelon, are you clear?" Reegar roared into his headpiece. There was no answer, even as the destroyer's fuel tanks ruptured and it exploded, adding to the devastation. "Seelon!?"
Only static and numbers. Reegar stared back at the burning hulk of the dropship, looking for a dark shape to dart out of the destruction. None did. Surviving geth, still sluggish as they fought to make sense of the GIGO streams flooding their systems from every channel, seemed to lose track of Reegar as he threw himself behind a battered building.
Reegar stayed where he was until he heard the second explosion go off. Bits of burning metal rained down upon him, but still there was no sign of Seelon. Reegar slammed a fist into the wall so hard it hurt, turned tail, and ran off into the darkness.
–
It was morning on the third day when Reegar was finally alone. It wasn't something he realized all at once – Dholen's radiation meant that he couldn't read his team's vitals from afar like he might normally – but steadily the reports grew farther and farther apart, and soon they didn't come at all.
He and the other marines had kept up their harassment without pause for more than seventy hours, steadily whittling down the geth numbers. But they were losing. The GIGO streams which had proven so effective at first were now just an afterthought, the geth having processed them away and decoded them. They were back to their surgically quick, deadly selves, and hunted Reegar and his marines without tiring. After the loss of one of their dropships they had wisely taken flight with the other, and it had been harrying the quarians' positions ever since, virtually impervious to their attacks. The quarians had been pushed further and further back, back towards the vault that housed Tali'Zorah.
One by one, Reegar's team had fallen silent.
Now he was alone. His blood swam with injected stimulants that threw off his aim but kept him on his feet. He was exhausted – his legs burned with three days of running. Most of his suit's systems had shorted out and his mask – usually a mural of HUD's and helpful information, had long since faded to blackness. Worst of all he was out of grenades, and his last three heat-sinks were looking mighty lonely on his belt. He wanted nothing more than to just lie down and have it be over.
But Kal'Reegar was a marine. It was his life for the Migrant Fleet. He was at the edge of what he could do, he knew that, but the human was coming. Shepard. He'd heard Tali describe the man, seen the way she'd adored him. Shepard could save her. Reegar just had to hold the line, a little longer. Then he could die well.
He pushed on, pushing the thought of his fallen friends and comrades out of his head. The geth were moving on Tali'Zorah and until Shepard arrived he was her only defense. As he peered out across the bridge leading to her hidden stronghold, watching the behemoth armor plated back of the colossus pick its way past ancient storage crates, he remembered what he'd told her. How he would see all the quarians on Haestrom dead at her door before she had to defend herself.
It looked like she was going to get the chance after all. Reegar stared warily at the geth from his cover, his hands wrapped tightly around a missile launcher he'd reclaimed from their now-abandoned base camp. Half a dozen geth were lined up on either side of the colossus, prodding at the door's security controls. Far and away more than he could ever hope to take on himself, even if he weren't about to drop dead from exhaustion. But it didn't matter. Reegar had no doubt that Tali would have locked the doors up tight, but still, it was only a matter of time before the geth would break through.
"Don't die, Tali'Zorah," he said to himself, echoing her words from two nights before.
He leapt up and fired.
4 hours later…
–
The battle was won, but Grunt's work was only beginning.
The krogan snickered to himself as he lugged three of the geth corpses towards the massive steel carapace of the downed colossus. The geth bodies left behind long trails of goopy silver liquid, and in the past hour since Shepard had gone into the vault to speak with the quarian they had apparently done all this to rescue, Grunt had managed to cover nearly half the battlefield in geth blood paint strokes as he collected every body he could find. The mechanical gore sparkled in Haestrom's harsh sunlight as Grunt tossed the three geth into his steadily-growing pile.
Garrus and Reegar watched him from their position in the shade as he turned to fetch more bodies. "What are you doing now?" Garrus finally asked. "Trying to make something else collapse?"
"Making a pile," Grunt said. He picked up one geth that had been so damaged that it practically fell apart in his hands. Shrugging, he tossed it over his shoulder and kept going.
"Why?"
"To climb on."
Garrus just shook his head.
"Watch out you don't wake them up," Reegar called out, voice weary as he massaged just above his wounded leg. "Geth can be tricky that way."
Grunt snorted in contempt and picked up another geth corpse. "I am not afraid of geth."
"You should be."
"Quarians might be afraid of geth," Grunt said, tossing the newest body into the heap, "but if they are then quarians are weak." He didn't need to see past Reegar's mask to tell the quarian was frowning.
"I've been awake too many days killing these bastards to listen to you say things like that, krogan," Reegar growled.
"Then take a nap," Grunt suggested, shrugging. He stared up at his pile's height and nodded in satisfaction. Brushing his hands off, he walked to the back then started to climb. The pile of blood-soaked corpses shifted and bent under his weight, but with a little persistence he was able to find solid footing and scramble to the top to perch upon the colossus' massive silver back. "Take your nap while I stand upon a mountain of my kills!" Grunt roared, stretching his arms threateningly out to Haestrom's sun.
"Your kills? I've been here for three days. One of them by myself."
Grunt snorted dismissively. "Then I did in a few hours what you couldn't do in three days," he taunted. "Where's your pile?"
Below him, Reegar pulled out a heavy pistol, almost causing Grunt to draw his shotgun. The quarian simply examined the weapon, however, before staring back up at the krogan. "Quarians don't waste time making piles," he insisted. "We fight like soldiers, not like animals. We fight careful. Know how many geth I got with this thing yesterday?" he asked, holding up the gun. "Seven." Grunt just snorted again and waved his hand, unimpressed. "You know how many times I had to fire?" Reegar continued, fixing Grunt with what was surely a disapproving glare. He paused for effect. "Four."
"You should have brought more ammo then," Grunt said. "Maybe you'd have killed ten with seven shots." Reegar just shook his head.
"Ignore him, he's an idiot," Garrus told him. "You did well, Reegar. Saved Tali. I know how hard fending off waves all alone can be, believe me."
Reegar stared at the turian for several seconds without speaking. "You haven't said why you're here yet," he pointed out after a moment, "but I can guess easy enough." He leaned his head back, letting it rest on the wall behind him. "Shepard's a good captain?" he asked, voice not concealing his worry. "Won't let her get hurt, will he?"
"Never," Garrus promised. When Reegar didn't respond, he went on. "You will never meet a man who cares more for his people than Shepard. He won't let anything happen to her. And neither will I." Garrus looked up at Grunt. "And neither will the bastard up on the geth pile, if he knows what's good for him."
Reegar nodded weakly, ignoring the foul hand gestures Grunt was tossing down at him. "Good. You find that changes and you send her home, or give me a call, you got it? I didn't do all this just so you could get her killed instead of me."
–
The vault was still dark when Reegar limped in to say his final goodbyes to Tali. Shepard and his team had fanned out to mop up any remaining geth and ensure that the quarian ship was clear and untampered with, leaving the whole facility as silent as a tomb. It was strangely appropriate.
He found Tali hard at work on a console. She turned at the sound of his footsteps.
"Reegar," she breathed, approaching. "I'm so glad you're alive."
Reegar smiled. "For the moment," he confirmed, leaning a little lower on the geth rifle he was using as a crutch. "We'll see how this…" he gestured loosely to the bloodied rags tied around his leg, "we'll see how it goes. I've already downed enough antibiotics to kill Shepard's pet krogan out there, though, so I think I'll pull through." Tali embraced him, and Reegar, for once, was thankful his face was concealed beneath his helmet. He didn't need Tali to see how close he was to breaking down. Mercifully, Tali pulled away from him and just stared in silence for a moment before pulling a silver OSD from one of her pockets. Reegar accepted it wordlessly, nodding.
"Did… anyone else?" Tali started to ask as Reegar slipped the data into one of his own pockets. The reason they'd fought and died here, small enough to fit into his hand. He tried not to think about it.
"Three of the techs made it," he confirmed. "Looks like I'm the only marine, but Shepard said he'd keep an eye out for more."
"I'm sorry."
Reegar shook his head. "Don't be," he insisted. "My fault, not yours. You got the data, you did your job. Leave the guilt to me."
Tali looked like she was about to say something, but instead just touched Reegar's arm. "Thank you for not dying, Kal'Reegar."
He couldn't help but chuckle. "Of course Ma'am. Just following orders."
–
Codex Entry: The Quarian Military
Ancestral quarians were not a particularly militant race. They lived in isolated clans, each of which would generally claim one of the thousands of geologically active glades that pocked the planet Rannoch. Ancient quarian population density was relatively low, with few clans larger than 500 individuals. The relatively difficult travel from valley to valley likely contributed to the insularity of quarian culture, though it is clear that a great deal of interclan mixing occurred nonetheless. High altitude plateaus had relatively little food but were considered neutral ground, and there quarian clans would meet to trade goods, technologies, and breeding-age individuals. While wars over territory did occur, they were relatively rare – modern sentientologists believe the ancient quarians ultimately maintained the peace as a matter of economic practicality, as each valley tended to develop its own unique set of resources and crafts that could be traded to neighboring clans.
Like modern quarians, ancestral quarians were masters of technology. The relatively high energy content in the fruiting grass nectars that made up much of the quarian diet may have allowed them to adopt a largely sedentary lifestyle without extensive agriculture. Rather like the human Paleolithic agricultural revolution, this facilitated the division of labor, and many ancient quarians were full-time craftsmen and engineers, developing new tools for their clan. These technologies were oftentimes traded between clans, and, in the case of military technologies like advanced metallurgy and, later, explosives and firearms, may also have led to the unification of the quarian people, as merely showing up on neutral ground carrying superior weapons was often more than enough to earn the respect and subservience of other clans without the need for actual fighting. By the time the quarians reached the space age, most quarians had allied under a handful of gigantic intercontinental nations. International war was relatively rare, with the cold war of each nation's rapidly advancing technology acting as deterrent to the others.
As a whole, advanced quarian militaries embraced a strategy of maximum destructive effect for minimum cost, especially in regards to lives lost. Quarians went to great efforts to avoid casualties whenever possible, and ultimately developed machines and technologies to do most of their fighting for them. Long-range pinpoint weaponry, capable of bombing distant targets or shooting out invading ships or missiles well before they endangered lives on the ground, were built all over Rannoch. Many of these weapons systems were unmanned, controlled instead by sophisticated computer systems only a few steps short of true AI's. Cyberwarfare was common, with many threats disabled from a distance using only destructive computer coding.
When deploying troops was unavoidable, quarians tended to support fast, well-equipped ground troops with support from high-speed aerial interceptors, again generally focusing on delivering overwhelming firepower and fleeing before the enemy was in a position to retaliate. Salarian military analysts at the time largely agreed that, despite its relatively low population, pre-Morning War Rannoch was the second best defended planet in the galaxy, after only the turians' Palaven.
Despite their advanced military, however, the quarians fared very poorly against the newly sentient geth during the Morning War. While few geth models were designed for fighting, geth labor was critical in the maintenance of the quarians' technologically advanced army. Without geth to refuel and operate their weapons systems, the quarian military was significantly crippled, and in fact by the end of the war the quarians were having their own guns turned on them. Cyberwarfare approaches were largely useless against the rebelling geth, which had been specifically designed to resist quarian viruses so they could operate on battlefields without fear of friendly fire. Perhaps most importantly, geth were so numerous within quarian cities that most quarian defensive points were overrun from within hours of the war's beginning.
Ultimately, the retreat of the quarians from Rannoch solidified the militant structure of their modern society. A great percentage of the quarians that successfully escaped the planet were the crews of military capital ships and any civilian craft they were able to escort past the now-geth-controlled emplaced batteries. Geth used stolen artillery to destroy thousands of escaping ships, the plummeting remains of which were so numerous as to set off massive infernos on the planet's surface, and only the lucky or well-shielded managed to escape with their lives.
The remainder of the fleet, including three quarian dreadnaughts and more than two hundred frigates, collected survivors from the dozen or so quarian colonies and formed the beginnings of the Migrant Fleet. The captains of the five largest ships formed the first Admiralty Board and the quarians began their never-ending exodus under martial law.
The three centuries since their exodus has seen the steady demilitarization of quarian cultures, as civilian governments came to replace – in practice if not in name – the military leadership. The current Migrant Fleet, however, remains a formidable military presence. Nearly all of its fifty thousand ships are armed with conventional and cyberwarfare weaponry. Advanced scanners found on many of the Fleet's smaller ships, along with a complicated communications network unique to the quarians, allows threats to be identified, targets painted, and enemies eliminated at range and with only seconds' delay, typically before any damage can be done to the Fleet's ships.
The marines – the infantry-based branch of the quarian military – have been vastly expanded since their departure from Rannoch. Every ship (with some rare exceptions) is expected to meet certain quotas of soldiers for the Fleet as a whole. Marines typically only officially join the military after their pilgrimages, but because captains are often eager to accept marines onto their crew to meet their draft quotas, military training (and even active military duty) is often encouraged before and even during pilgrimage to improve the chances of being accepted. Though the quarian marines primarily fill the role of civilian police, they remain in the military chain of command and are also employed as ship security, boarding parties, and escorts for miners or scientists leaving the Fleet.
Modern quarian marines differ significantly from their pre-exodus counterparts, having developed with minimal resources and a heavy emphasis on anti-geth tactics. However, like the quarian military doctrine in general, they are trained to inflict maximum damage while avoiding casualties or direct conflict at all costs. Their formations are flexible and fast-moving, but relatively poorly equipped and oftentimes fragile. Equipment is generally low-performance but reliable, armor is light, and shields strong.
Some of the most potent anti-geth weapons in the quarians' arsenal are GIGO ("garbage in, garbage out") codes, which take advantage of the geths' hierarchical programming. Geth coordinate processing in large numbers with a set of distinct hierarchies, with lower-order processing requirements – like those to physically operate mobile platforms and find enemies – taking precedence over higher-order processes like advanced battlefield-level tactics, which are only seen when geth converge in numbers of a few dozen or more. GIGO codes are streams of data that quarian marines transmit through short and longwave communicators to disguise their communications. While the GIGO streams contain no actual information, each stream is constructed using an elaborate algorithm intending to closely mimic encoded battlefield communications. As a consequence of their programming, geth prove generally incapable of distinguishing between GIGO nonsense and legitimate communications, and set to work deciphering every channel simultaneously. As deciphering is a lower-order, higher-priority process in the geth mental hierarchy, decoding the streams occupies a significant portion of the collective geth processing power and prevents the geth from moving onto higher order tactics, regardless of the number of geth present. Thus, GIGO streams have a collective dumbing effect on geth formations, forcing them to subsist on only their most rudimentary programming until the codes can be deciphered. However, geth are very adept code-crackers and each GIGO algorithm can only impede them for a matter of minutes to hours before it is broken. This requires the constant creation of new GIGO codes, many of which are made by modifying or combining previously-existing algorithms. Truly new GIGO approaches are rare and difficult to come by, and often seen as more than adequate pilgrimage gifts.
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UPDATED 10/13/21: Mostly grammar and readability. Some minor continuity tweaks.
A/N: I return!
Anyway, everyone's second-favorite krogan and second-favorite quarian, together at last. Love them both dearly. They don't have all that much to do with each other, and I did consider cutting one of them to make this chapter less bloated, but at the end of the day I had stuff I wanted to do with both of them, and Haestrom was where I wanted to do it, so there we go.
I imagine you know who gets chapter 10.