Author's Note: Okay so almost remembrance day people, remember to wear your poppies. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!


Chapter 14: Tribulation of Omega Part 2

The stubbornness of Omega's mercenary gangs can be admired, in their own way. Humiliated without being able to fight back as they were the Blood Pack, Eclipse and Talon forces were still eager enough for blood that they had jumped onto his offer of revenge. On top of them he also recruited a faction of the Geth to their cause as well. As unbelievable as the concept appeared to have been, the Geth had factions within their ranks, one desiring reunification with the Quarian's and a faction who didn't who had broken off from the rest. Combine that with the Collector aliens that Sovereign had given him and the remaining Batarian pirates that the Union hadn't scooped up yet and he had quite the force gathered under him. But all of this was busy work in comparison to his real objective.

"General Desolas." A nearby coms had turned on by itself, from which a by now familiar synthesized voice echoed out. "I trust you remember the payment that we discussed before?"

"I'm connecting to the database now." With that Desolas downloaded the entirely of the files that he took from the Tebrid Console, every scrap of technological schematics that had been on file inside of the console and delivered directly into the Shadow Broker's hands. It was a waste to simply give it all away, but then again that was the plan after all, deprive the Union of Bargaining chips to make sure that the Shadow Broker didn't sell him out again, or at the very least make it very difficult to do.

"Pleasure doing business with you." Of course in exchange the Broker had to hand over equally valuable information, the location of every Prothean dig site in Council Space, and other particularly nasty tidbits as well. With locations set Desolas moved on with the second phase of his operation. Under his commands mercenary squadron's were deployed to every corner of Council space in order to pick it apart and take what he needed in order to guarantee victory against the Union and the Citadel. As he was getting ready to seize another location.

"That didn't take long." The Geth had a massive surveillance network throughout council space monitoring dozens of communications channels, he was actually embarrassed that he use to work for the Citadel. With the enemy nearing their doorstep Desolas stepped onto the cloaked Sovereign and left.


Hours later the Union would arrive at Omega and deliver their eviction notice to it's criminal element, of course the inhabitants of the station were given the chance to leave peacefully, but they had opened fire instead. At once the entire Station had been crippled with the sound of chittering laughter, the controls for all but the most primitive of the weapons stopped responding as targeting systems were over ridden by Tebrid hackers, the culprits appeared across various screens to deliver mocking laughter to the station's inhabitants. The Deflectors were disabled alongside the cannons, and then the custodians swarmed. The newest model of space capable custodians were shaped like insects with panels for gathering energy from microwave beams fired from Union ships and the tips of their legs outfitted with fabricators that had been scaled down to a billionth of it's previous size through removal of unnecessary or redundant components and replacing them with more effective and efficient Union equivalents. Under the influence of the millions of fabricators that had just attached themselves to the side of the station like ticks, it began to change. Some of the Station inhabitants have lived there their entire lives, while some may have an understanding of what an Earthquake was it was only now they could appreciate the gravity of the situation. Aria's carefully arranged choke points collapsed, burrowing Custodians tore their way from beneath the feet of the soldiers guarding them and in response Aria's forces panic fired and to the surprise of many the Custodian's simply burst open as a result. The surprise soon turned to joy as the Custodian's continued to pop their way out of the ground and were burst open by the focused fire of multiple shotguns, machine guns and grenades, it wasn't long before the mercenaries were literally singing and dancing in joy.

In the meantime a group of Turian Soldiers, wearing air tight hard suits with filters and re-breathers built in, emerged from the Tebrid tunnels, took one look at the singing and dancing Mercenaries and simply shook their heads in the negative. Many of them have already experienced the horrors of the Union's chemical attacks and wanted no part in it themselves.

"Alright let's clean this mess up." The Tunnels were widened as crates were dragged up through the openings, the mercenaries didn't even struggle as one by one they were disarmed and led into the crates. Various forms of ID were taken including facial rec, finger prints, bio-metrics and DNA, based on these each of the mercenaries were run for existing arrest warrants, not only that but they were being run through a vast criminal database to see if any of them were at the scene of any crimes across Citadel space, and depending on their final destination sort them into these crates appropriately to be shipped off to whatever sector of space they offended most severely. Garrus noted that he probably broke the all time record for arrests with this stunt, and his day was only getting started. Garrus's crew made their way through the station picking off groups of giggling mercenaries.

After about 45 minutes the Mercenaries had wised up and were now wearing suits to protect themselves from the gas and the vacuum of space from chunks of the station opening up around them. Course the Custodians had taken some precautions to prevent people just being sent out to the soul sucking darkness of space at random, chunks of the civilian populace of Omega fled and huddled together into whatever area they deemed the safest place to be. In response, the Custodian's targeted these areas, hermetically sealed them, and then detached them from the rest of the stations using the micro-fabricators and built in laser cutters sending the resulting makeshift escape pods off to be picked up. The people inside would be similarly checked for criminal records and shipped off appropriately, as for those who were still fighting...

"Hello Mercenaries of Omega!" Kaiden's voice could barely be heard over the ratatat of hundreds of machine guns, snipers, and shot guns that were being fired off one after another into his dragon scale armour. "I'm sorry I said that wrong..." Suddenly a pulse of energy was sent through the room and into the skulls of everyone present. "HELLO MERCENARIES OF OMEGAAA!"

The words screamed into their skulls like nails on a chalk board, the Various Mercenaries were forced to their knees holding their ears with both of their hands. The weapons they were all carrying were telekinetically yanked out of their hands and thrown into a pile. That pile rapidly sunk into the ground as custodians formed a pit below the weapons and melted them into pure omni-gel, either being stored away for more of the Custodian's future construction or simply being put somewhere out of the way. The Krogan had not taken well to telepathic nails being shoved into their heads and responded as Krogan are want to do, charging ahead with the blood rage and getting ready to tear Kaiden apart. Beside Kaiden, the man that his telepathy had rendered unnoticeable raised a single glowing hand and biotically slammed the fools face first into the floor with several loud thuds. Saren wouldn't be able to hold them for long, but the Tebrids had already altered the floor softening it and pinning them down six inches into the ground, the floor welding around their armours and fusing them into the floor. The floor panels were then detached and the mercenaries were taken away by the custodians.

"We'll ask Wrex if he wants anything with them." Kaiden stated to wit his partner for this occasion let out a sigh.

"Great. Just what the council needed, more Krogan under Union employment." Saren stated as he let out a sigh. "Bag and Tag!" More Turian soldiers flooded into the room, dragging Mercenaries to their feet before shoving them away.


Shepard was looking down at a tablet depicting the transformation of Omega's station from a mining facility into a military outpost under the influence of the Custodians. That said, large sections of the station were still not under their control, the oldest parts of the station, the original mining facilities, weren't built using Omni-gel instead using more hardened materials from the early days of the council's space age, not to mention the massive network of mines carved through the Eezo rich asteroid that Omega was built from to begin with. The Custodians wouldn't be simply remaking these areas around the final few contingents of Aria's loyalist followers any time soon. A staging camp had been prepared consisting of a mixed Council and Union force that were preparing to take the mines by force.

Saren looked at the aliens the Union had brought along for the operation with suspicion. The Quarian's were familiar, and made sense: they have probably been living inside of outdated ancient facilities like this for literal centuries, if you need experts on this kind of technology they would probably be the ones to have them. The other group though, they would be hard to make out through the hard suits, were it not for the massive wings that were coming out of their backs: The Chozo. Saren fingers nervously danced around the hidden button on his arm. These were the creatures that negotiated the return of the Quarian's home-world. According to the information packet he read their home-world was the kind of radioactive hell hole that makes Tuchanka look nice and friendly, which then eventually exploded. They were forced to wander the galaxy scavenging, attacking and stealing supplies in order to survive like a band of thugs combining the worst traits of the Batarian's and the Quarians, they were close allies to the Tebrids and one other race that hasn't thus far made too much noise yet, presumably because their aquatic nature keeps them from acting. He felt a indescribable feeling of power coming off of their bodies, like warriors refined in countless battles, even their suits to playing war drums. If their intention was to be intimidating they've succeeded by every reasonable metric.

"Okay so this is gonna seem like a stupid question, but has anyone here been down there before?" Shepard asked indicating the access tunnel that they hadn't quite cleared yet.

Among the people Shepard had been asking were the Chozo, not natives to this region of space, Custodians, also not natives, Ashley and Kaiden, also not native, Saren and Garrus, relatively upstanding citizens only one of whom has stepped foot on Omega before, and Wrex.

"If you want an up to date layout of the mines down there we need to take this office." When Many Krogan are first starting their mercenary careers it's normal for them to journey to Omega, their own little pilgrimage if you will. Among the tasks given to fresh meat like them is clearing the tunnels of unruly Vorcha squatters so that they can be mined in relative safety. "As for what you can expect to see down there, there's a pretty substantial colony of Vorcha present, biotic every last one of them."

Vorcha are highly adaptable to their environment, let alone when everything they are born in, breathe in, sleep in, and eat is covered in Eezo. A newborn Vorcha will reach adulthood in less than a year. In the wake of the Krogan rebellions news had reached the Krogan of the Vorcha, in their own way the Krogan's opposites, short lived, physically small, highly Fertile but also vicious, savage, and highly adaptable. The Krogan scooped them up in vast numbers from their home world and literally beat them into shape. Now any place that Krogan can be found in any significant number you can expect to see Vorcha too, and Omega was not an exception to this rule.

"Just having Eezo in your veins isn't enough to be biotic." Saren stated bluntly. "You still need implants in order to be effective in battle."

"People die down here every day." Wrex snapped bluntly. "And the Vorcha aren't stupid. Every last one of them are smart enough to extract the implants from whatever cocky Biotic that comes down here thinking that just having a little power is enough to survive numbers. If the Vorcha sees that you have a implant they won't head shot you like they normally do, instead they'll get all stealthy, sacrifice the ones too old or wounded to live much longer to lure you deeper in, break your barrier by shooting out your legs, take you from behind." Wrex made a gesture of grabbing something at waist height and then twisting it around so that it's facing backwards. "The Vorcha get another biotic, and suddenly the tunnels down here are a little less safe for everyone." Wrex watched some of the Quarian's give a satisfactory gulp, good, they should be scared. "The gravity down here is going to be heavier too." Wrex stated in no uncertain terms. "The damned cockroaches dialled up the artificial gravity, forces them to develop stronger hearts and leg muscles too, when they do come out for food it's like trying to fight a biotic Elcor."

"Food?" Shepard asked looking suspicious. "Do they mine the Eezo down here or something and trade for it?"

Wrex turned on Shepard, looked her dead in the eye, and said... "They snatch up the rest of the station's inhabitants to use as food." Desperate times. Wrex should probably be happy Shepard is actually asking questions she's curious about instead of plucking the information from his mind.

"Why is Aria down here? Can such unruly creatures even be reasoned with? Is the thought of surrendering to us really that bad?" Shepard asked shaking her head at the sheer displeasure of the situation.

"For her? Yes it is, but I doubt she's 'reasoned' with the Vorcha at all." Wrex stated making his opinion known.

"Meaning?" Shepard asked and Wrex shrugged his shoulders.

"I've recently gotten to know a group of people that can screw around with people's minds like they were moulding clay." Wrex stated with a shrug of his shoulders. "If they can do that, then who knows what people might be capable of."

"Okay then." Shepard began rubbing her temples as she felt the headache coming on. "I'm gonna see if I can reason with people. I'll be back soon." Shepard found a rock to sit on and entered the lotus position, meditating as she sent her mind down into the tunnels below them.


Blue skinned Vorcha were crudely dressed in whatever hard suits they could salvage from their enemies, wielding guns of various generations. The Oldest of the Vorcha weren't wearing armour at all, intending to sacrifice themselves in the defence of the tunnels while the others would get the chance to live on. Such was the cruel reality of their lot in life. Shepard's attention was drawn to the oldest of the Vorcha, scar tissue having formed a hard crust over where his right eye used to be. The space around him changed, part of it disappeared and was replaced by a cold and sterile room, with a woman in scaled armour sitting across from him.

"One of the Dragoons of the Union. Aria has spoken of you." He didn't seem surprised to see her, half blind and yet far more experienced than any of his kin lives to be it would seem.

"You don't seem surprised to see me. Even Wrex tried to draw his weapon on me." Shepard replied bluntly.

"I am an old man." The Elderly Vorcha replied shrugging her shoulders. The Vorcha predominantly interacted with the Krogan, so it surprised Shepard that the Vorcha weren't communicating in a Krogan language but rather one of the more complex dialogues of the Asari.

"You must be. You've had time to learn a language a lot of people struggle with. Why are you working with Aria? I was given to understand she treats your lot like vermin." Shepard asked confused.

"We are Vermin." The Old Vorcha stated in no uncertain terms. "As such we are dependent on those that we are able to steal from in order to survive. There is no future here for us without Omega."

"And we aren't trying to get rid of Omega, simply change it to suit our needs." Shepard stated bluntly. "Next to Omega is the gateway to hell, we need a guard station to keep what's on the other side out, and we need guards."

"And you would have us take that role?" The Old man asked sounding suspicious. "The Union's Declaration of Rights for Sapient Beings." Shepard brought out a psionic document, each word conveying the meaning being the document.

"Sapient beings are not vermin, we may ask you to implement population control, but we don't intend to suppress you." Shepard stated bluntly.

"Without our rapid reproduction survival is impossible for us." The old Vorcha stated bluntly.

"Not necessarily." Shepard however disagreed. "Look into my mind. See the things that they did to me." Shepard stated revealing schematic after schematic of the various biological modifications that she had been put through. Sophisticated Bio-medical suite, including self replicating Medi-gel to flat out replace cells that are no longer able to function. Psionic treatments to unlock higher functions in the brain and improve the body's ability to regulate its various automatic systems similar to the Asari. Multiple artificial organs cultivated from various races throughout the galaxy offering Krogan like life extending processes. "Extending your life span is not difficult, provided that your people have the patience to put what is done to them to good use."

The Vorcha seemed to consider something, how long he had to live being chief among them, and the options to deal with the situation before him.

"You'll have Aria shortly." The Telepathic conversation ended, and not a moment too soon either. Aria was still inside of Afterlife when the club suddenly turned into piping hot Omni-gel, a biotic barrier saved the majority of her body from suffering third degree burns but one of her legs was caught in a sudden wave of gel so she couldn't walk very well and had to be helped by one of his great grand children, so she also brought her own witness along as well.

"Get ready to go, they're going to breach the tunnels any moment now." The Old Man smirked at her, his smile all teeth and malice, really the only one Vorcha knows. "What are you so happy about old man?"

An old man he may have been, but he was very good with Biotics, a lift brought the pistol Aria had been carrying with her to his head, and a push pulled the trigger. An old man he may have been, but he was the Vorcha's leader. His destiny was to die in glorious combat, leading his brothers, sisters, sons and daughters casting barriers so that the Vorcha behind them would have a few more moments to fire their weapons and strike. Instead he was cruelly struck down by a self proclaimed ally for not answering an insignificant question. Hearing the Howling of the Old Man's grandchild the rest of the Vorcha swarmed, Aria was the strongest Biotic on the station, she had over seven hundred years to master her abilities and the best implants on the black market to support them. Under the weight of Aria's flares the Vorcha were packed tightly into a ball with enough force to crush many of them, with Reave they were slammed into the ground and dragged across the rocks, with lash they would be pulled forward, their heads cracking open on the tunnels around them, she even got her money's worth out of her side arm cutting down hundreds of Vorcha as she fled the tunnels. But the Vorcha numbered in the thousands, and there were expensive arms, armours and implants among them as well. The Union was lucky to get Aria alive.

"That's enough of that out of you." Shepard tapped a struggling Aria on her head and made her fall asleep, Garrus attached some kind of device to the side of her head, apparently a C-Sec contraption designed to disable Biotic implants. Afterwards Aria was dragged away. "Honestly I kind of expected you guys to kill her, or eat her which ever one would come first." Shepard stated looking behind her at the blue skinned Vorcha that had brought them Aria.

"This will hurt more." The Vorcha replied glaring.

"What'd she do?" Shepard asked curious and more than a little concerned.

"The man she killed was a leader among us, a visionary, without him we are... less." Vorcha don't hold any respect for anyone from what Shepard heard.

She doesn't blame them. From what she's heard they tend to only really interact with two kinds of people: Krogan who treat them like cannon fodder, or Asari who think they know how they should live their lives, the old man came from the latter, the Vorcha of Omega the first, now they exist in this sort of middle ground between the two. In comparison to either Krogan or Asari Vorcha lives were simply too short, like animals, or pets, one uses them as attack dogs and the other wishes to domesticate them.

"Is there a hierarchy among the Vorcha? Someone I can speak to who represents the rest?" The Vorcha snorted in derision. "Right then. If I told you our terms can you give them to the rest of you?"

"What need do we have for terms? We live quite well feasting on the flesh of Aria's forces, we'll feast well on yours too." This one considered that living quite well? This is going to take some work.

"Then I'll give you ours." Shepard tapped her finger on the Vorcha's head as her eyes went wide.

'Form a new Mercenary cartel from the Vorcha of Omega. Man the station to fight anything that comes through the relay. In exchange food, medication, Biological enhancements, proper armour, weapons and military grade training.' That was the carrot, now the stick. 'A vision of Omega, it's facilities stripped to the bare minimum, even less than that, it's criminal element replaced by cold machinery, life support systems, hydroponics bays remade into cooling systems, cold machinery excavating the entire Eezo mines and jettisoning them into space, hollowing the giant impregnable half moon into the galaxy's biggest shield.'

The Vorcha's pupils went back to normal as she stared in Shepard in a mixture of shock and awe, trying to piece together what she just saw... heard... felt!

"Is that good enough or do you need more?" Shepard smirked looking at the Vorcha knowingly.


Omega soon finished it's various renovations, successfully being transformed into a military base like establishment. After a round of negotiations with the Citadel Select prisoners would be sent into Omega's Eezo mines in order to work off their debts to society, while much of the Eezo would be sold off to various companies mostly of the ship building variety no small amount was being funnelled into a research laboratory on Omgea. As embarrassing as it was to admit it, the union who never before had a significant biotic presence among them now had a entire Cartel, The Void Devils, dedicated exclusively to Biotic soldiers, and no means by which to outfit them with implants to help augment and control their abilities. Several companies eagerly applied for the joint project, submitting the latest and greatest in Biotic implants, and now their best scientists were watching a group of Tebrid's replace, update and adapt the components with Union technology to try and squeeze in as many innovations as possible. Others got to witness augmentation chambers filled with the means to produce super soldiers not unlike the infamous Dragoons. Most important of all, the contents of Omega's computer database.

"Near as we can tell, Desolas distributed his combined forces to these planets." Therum, Noveria, Feros, Virmire. "We don't know why though." Tali sneezed as she spoke, her immune system was still being whipped into shape by the Union's nanite program. "Excuse me. We presume that there is something on these worlds that he needs to get his hands on bad."

Shepard simply shrugged her shoulders in response. "Then we go through them one by one." Shepard stated and the others nodded their heads by way of reply.

"Noveria belongs to a company, Binary Helix." Saren stated bluntly. "You lot go you need a warrant to go there, I need only my Spectre clearance."

"Therum was an archaeological dig site." Wrex had a vague memory of some Asari scientist posting a job advertisement for bodyguards for a Prothean Dig-site on Therum. "Somehow I don't think that Reapers would be after Prothean tech." Even in the unlikely event that the Protheans made some bit of technology the Reapers found significant enough to add to their arsenal then odds were good that they already have it for tens of million years. "The Asari scientist who posted the advertisement on the other hand is the daughter of a Matriarch of some influence in citadel space, they may be trying to blackmail her into helping them with whatever insane plot they are hatching."

"Feros should be a colony if memory serves." Garrus stated as he brought up the familiar to him brochure. "Albeit a colony sponsored by another company, Exogeni, they should be the worst off in terms of defence."

"One up on Virmire." Tali stated before she sneezed again. "Augh Bosh'tet. *Sniff* It's on the edge of the Terminus system, even though it's a garden world no one is insane enough to go there, the Citadel has already lost at least three Colonies to Batarian Slavers." Tali explained holding up three fingers.

Virmire is seemingly not important, Noveria and Feros are covered in red tape, and while they didn't need evidence to launch a investigation they also didn't have any leads either, Therum is seemingly their best lead.


Author's Note:

scyfly: Numbers are rarely useless. They're going to try and take them apart and study them, blowing them up means destroying entire sectors of space after all, whereas learning how they work may mean learning how Reapers work.

Gianfranco Cembran: Thank you for saying so.

RonaldM40196867: True, True, No.

Winterwolf23543: Very True.

Guest: Thank you for saying so.