"Argh!" shouted Exedore as he stared once more at the sim in front of him. The data was the same, regardless of how he tried to work it, and it was beginning to grow frustrating. For months now, he'd been trying to get protoculture tech and eezo tech to function together, and having seen what he had three weeks ago, he knew it was possible, and yet, even the simulations showed instability if there was the slightest impurity in the eezo. Normally not one for outbursts, the Zentraedi let his rage flow into a single fist as he struck the controls in front of him, terminating the failed sim midway through.
"Prime Thinker, are you alright?" asked a small voice, and Exedore, his face slightly reddened, turned to his side, where a half a dozen quarians were at their stations, going over the data they'd been given. The one who's spoken was a low ranked, but rapidly rising, mind in his organization's Silver Research Team, a Ms. Daro'Xen.
"I'm fine, Xen, just having a bit of frustration with my latest project," he explained, smiling down at her. Behind her, the rest of the staff, working on some other project, ignored them. Most would never have bothered speaking to Exedore, given the man's mythic status among the scientific community they'd joined. Others were intimidated by his size, for while short for a Terran or a Zentraedi, he still stood several times their own height. Some just couldn't tear themselves away from their own projects,.
"Hmm, may I see?" asked Xen, and Exedore pressed a button on his station, transferring the data from his terminal to her own, so she could look it over. Quick as a flash of lightning, the quarian turned her head back to her monitor, and her fingers flew over her controls as she scrolled the data. Interested, Exedore watched the young woman work, impressed by the speed of her typing, despite the suit she still wore.
Around her, most of the other quarians were without their accustomed gear, having taken the gene therapy required to live without it. Some still didn't trust the Terrans of course, and refused the procedure, despite their neighbors and family coming through the tubes alright, though Exedore supposed he couldn't blame them. The project hadn't been their's after all, headed by the Red Research Team in the early days of the Quarian/Geth Alliance, and it was hard to trust another's work. Still, he idly thought back over his memories, and thought that Xen had indeed taken the treatment. Perhaps she just liked the suit.
"Ah, you're trying to equip the Terran Mobile Infantry with eezo cores," she said at last, as she looked over the data.
"Indeed, the advantage in mobility it would offer would be exceptionally useful, and for a defense, we could actually allow our troops to be guarded by more than just their physical armor," he said, and Xen nodded. She, without looking at her hand, pressed a button on her omnitool, causing a small plate to glide through the air from one of the serving stations, a steaming cup of coffee on it. Taking the mug, Xen took a sip through the emergency induction port, before diving into the work.
Once again, her fingers flew, vanishing into blurs as she typed, almost like the coffee had given her super speed. On her monitor, Exedore could see dozens of test models he'd run rapidly flashing through them to the point where they errored out, either the mass effect field collapsing into uselessness, or in the worst case, the protoculture engine back blasting, obliterating the soldier. That was due to running the protoculture over the eezo, the impurities of the element becoming more pronounced with the greater energy that protoculture provided.
Watching with interest, he saw a dozen of his models get farther than he'd been able to move them. Looking at the fine details, he saw that Xen was creating separate power grids, running the eezo core off an old style generator, while still keeping the suit's main protoculture engine in tact. Of course this increased the armor's mass by at least five fold, and made them unwieldy to use. Then he stared in awe as she took the separation a step farther than he had, including in the sim an entirely autonomous drone that attached to the suit, providing the mass effect field.
"Hmm, a decent solution, but that sort of drone would never do for a real combat situation. Too many variables for even the most competent algorithm, and it would simply be too hard to control from inside the armor," he commented, having considered the possibility himself, but dismissed it as unworkable.
"An external controller would relieve the soldier of the need to compute at all," she said, and then ran her sim again, this time with a shape in a bubble that housed another, smaller being. That one worked the controls of the bubble, a large pill shape, which attached itself to the back of the armor this time, out of direct line of fire. The mass effect field then grew to encompass the entire soldier, allowing the simmed combatant to run through all the trials that a recruit in the ground forces had to in order to be certified. In record time too.
"Now that is a new vector on this problem. Would any of your people be up for such a task, however?" he asked.
"I don't doubt many of the old Heavy Fleet pilots would jump at the chance to be part of a larger military force. How many of them have been clamouring for us to enhance the enlargement holos so they could fight the batarian wanzers after all?" she asked, and he nodded. Then they got to work together, going over the data as they passed it back and forth, soon having a few test units produced and ready.
OoOoO
"Argh! Mr. Urdnot! Please see our position," said the asari in front of him. She stood in the center of a group of krogan, her back straight, her dress clean, despite the dusty air outside, and most of all, with that condescending, angry look on her face. A year ago, Wrex would have slapped her upside her head, and told her to leave his sight. Now? He was the Father, and had to deal with these sort of things. Sighing, he leaned forward in his, for want of a better word, throne, which had been constructed in the middle of an old courtyard from rubble by one of the more artistic of the new krogan. He hadn't to tell the kid, it looked hideous. Interestingly, however, the thing was great for his back.
"I am trying, but I still don't see how this concerns my people," he told her as politely as he could. She seemed to take this response in, as if she were trying to find some hidden meaning in it, before formulating her retort.
"It concerns them because if they continue on this route, they'll make an already tense situation worse. We have been grateful for your efforts here, and can see the results in those plants you've gotten to grow, or the works of art you've uncovered. However, so many of your...people in a single place is beginning to make the wrong sort of people ask the wrong sort of questions," she told him, the word on her lips having been 'your kind'. Like they were animals or varren, and she was trying to scold them back into obedience.
"And what sort of questions are those?" he asked, smirking at her from atop his pile of rubble. He knew just what sort of questions. Most of them involved the return of the krogan horde, as it was rumored by many that the new Krogan Convexity was seeking a cure for the genophage. Some believed this new 'religion' of the krogan, deifying the Father and the Mothers was some kind of cover for something more sinister. After all, no krogan before them had ever cared to build something, and now here the Father sat, on a pile of rubble in the courtyard of what could only be considered an ornate castle, sculpted beauty formed from the stone of Tuchanka.
"The sort of questions that tend to be answered with 'glass the planet'. All we ask is that you start dispersing a bit, sending your people off-world again," she told him, and Wrex chuckled at her. A year ago, that answer would have been easy, a single transmission, and the Council could have sent a fleet to just obliterate Tuchanka. Now they had people watching them, species that wanted to see pillars of peace, rather than ruthless warlords. The Terrans had forced their hand there, at least, with the Titan War.
"You say that like I could. We of the Convexity do not give orders, Matron. We merely provide guidance for those who wish it. If they choose to come to us, because they can find something here that can't be found anywhere else in this galaxy, who are we to deny them?" he asked, gesturing towards his people. In the far corner of the courtyard, some of the latest members of the Convexity were working on their crafts. One was painting something that, to Wrex at least, looking like crap. The other, however, was sculpting something out of clay which he recognized as Kalros, which showed respect for the great beast.
"We understand, but your Convexity is growing large enough that it could pose a risk to your people. After all, with so few krogan left, what would happen should this place fall under attack?" she offered, and Wrex wasn't chuckling now. He knew what would happen. Namely he'd have a war on his hands, one that came about a hundred years too soon for them to really win it. Still, he tried to put on his best smile, a thing of sharp angles and sharper teeth.
"That would be a problem, true, but I'm sure, given our demilitarized nature, that the turians would leap to our defense. After all, isn't that a requirement of the treaty that denies us weapons with which to defend ourselves?" he countered, and the Matron before him scoffed. The 'treaty' to which he referred did indeed require that the turians defend them, and if they failed in that duty, well, it would mean that the krogan, as a whole, would face a lot fewer restrictions on their people, even if a large section of the population would die to gain it.
"That-~beep~" she began to respond, only to be interrupted by a tone from her omnitool. Turning so no one else could see her hands, she quickly responded to whoever was calling her, and then turned back.
"It would seem, my services are required elsewhere. I'm sorry we have to cut our dialogue short, but please consider at least encouraging your people to cease to gather," she told him curtly, and then left without another word, that long flowing robe of her's billowing behind her as she walked out of the castle gate.
"She knows her position is weak, and only empty threats can be made. Such people can grow very desperate, Father. We may want to keep an eye on the sky, just in case," said the Shaman sitting next to Wrex, and the leader of the Convexity chuckled again as he rose to his feet. He knew the danger they were in. This wasn't the first meeting with a Council representative, that had been a turian who was a lot less subtle with his threats. Now though, it was the asari handling things, probably to give a more diplomatic appearance to the talks.
"When the time comes, we shall have more than enough swords to slay any they send to end our people," he told the Shaman reassuringly, before headbutting him hard enough to make the holy man see stars. The younger krogan chuckled as he shook away the blur in his vision, and then walked away to help guide his fellows in their art making. Satisfied with his own strength, Wrex took a side passage out of the courtyard, and then into a very out of place looking lift, that slowly descended into the castle's depths.
Below the rather primitive looking structure, there were several feet of plating, salvaged from some old warships long since rendered inoperable on Tuchanka's surface. They'd been layered deep, with plates stacked on plates, to the point where the thick metal should be able to survive even should the castle above be obliterated. The older metal, warped as it was, also provided a sound buffer for the work going on below, and as the lift came to a halt, Wrex's heart swelled with pride at the sight before him.
Around him stretched a cavern system, miles upon miles in size, likely the result of thresher maws that had made Tuchanka their home since ancient times. Two large holes in the south and west walls showed that said home wasn't unused either, though they'd dealt with those two, and expected others to keep their distance. After all, it was rare to find even two thresher maws on the same planet, let alone in the same area, save during their mating cycles, and even though Tuchanka had a higher than average population of the great beasts, they tended to steer clear of areas where they'd been slain.
Inside the cavern were the workers, the artists, and most importantly, the builders. They had been down here for months, building things to either be displayed for all to see, or to be secreted away, for those days in the, hopefully, near future where they could be shoved in the faces of the Council, to see what they had so long suppressed. Some of these things were beautiful works of art, sculptures, paintings, and the like that were grander in scope than the small things being made on the surface.
Far more were tools, however. Not just tools of war, either, though there were a few of those. Many a krogan's claws were put to the task of building atmospheric reclamators, soil purifiers, or water filtration systems. Each and every one of these things were needed to repair Tuchanka. To Wrex, even though his warrior's heart burned with hate for the Council and all they had done, these things were the true tools of his revenge. Most weren't even unique, the designs centuries, even millennia old, and would fulfill the dream of a green world in a decade or less, compared to the Shroud that the salarians had built for them, which had only done a basic scrub in all the time it had stood.
"Father," said a young krogan in deference to his authority, saluting in the way the Mothers had shown him, the Terran way with the fist slammed into the heart. Smiling, Wrex returned the salute, looking over the atmospheric scrubber the young one had been building. It was a fine piece of machinery.
"Excellent work. A few more like that, and we can begin our grand revenge," he told the youth with a smile, and the youth reflected that smile back at him, before attacking the project with renewed zeal. In truth, it would be many years yet before they were ready for the project's full reveal to the galaxy, but every completed machine brought them closer to the goal. Giving similar compliments to others working, and a few kicks in the quads to some loafers, Wrex made his way around the floor, before finally entering an unassuming door on the opposite side of the chamber from the entrance.
"Ah, the Father returns," said a female voice as Wrex entered the chamber, the door sealing tightly after him. In front of him was the red robed Naamah, an ampule in her hand that she gently pushed into her chest, drawing the blood almost directly from her heart with a small grunt. She then, delicately, placed the ampule in a case alongside a hundred like it.
"More of the 'sacred blood'?" said Wrex, more of a statement than a question. Naamah said nothing, and leaned forward to pick up the case, but the stronger male pushed her back into her seat, her stance woozy from the blood loss. Picking up the case, he walked over to a small alcove in the room's side, which he pushed against in a particular spot to have the entire side of the room open with a slight buzzing sound. Slowly, the wall pulled away to reveal a thousand cases like the one he held.
Walking into the hidden chamber inside a hidden chamber, Wrex looked along the wall for an open spot, finally taking the first rack he could find, and placing the case into it gently, before exiting. The room shuddered a little in his vision, as the stasis field resumed, keeping all that blood fresh and ready for the coming days. Stockpiles like this were being made all over the Convexity, places where the 'sacred' blood of the mothers was collected, to be distributed when they felt the time was right.
"I saw you speaking with that asari," she said as he took the seat next to her's, and Wrex nodded at the statement.
"They're getting bolder, sending ones like that to us, ones that directly state their threats, even if they coach them in other language," she told him, getting another nod for his trouble. This was the first of the asari to do that. Mind, the one before her had out and out offered Wrex a billion credits, a true fortune, to just leave. To take the Mothers and vanish into space, allowing their Convexity to disperse. His refusal of such an offer, an offer that would have probably enticed even one of their turian dogs, had likely rattled them more than a little.
"Are you four still certain of your timetable? Perhaps we should speed things up," he asked, and this sent the red robed holy woman into deep thought, crossing her hands in front of her face in a gesture of supplication to the gods. Whether they heard her, or she came to her own conclusions, she soon shook her head.
"No, their threats, for now, are empty. Too many would turn against them should they strike at us while we are peaceful. At the moment, the only thing holding some of their constituents to the Council's side is just how thoroughly executed the Terrans' war with the batarians was. If they give any indication of having similar leanings, they'd have a full revolt on their hands in short order," she explained to the Father, who had already come to much the same conclusion.
"Stay the course, and when the time is right, we'll show ourselves to the galaxy as the true krogan we are," he affirmed, before offering the woman a hand, helping her to her feet, and then guiding her out the door, which sealed tightly shut behind them, as they made the rounds on the floor.
OoOoO
"Argh!" the voice shouted, slamming his huge fist into the console in front of him. The thing, designed for his occasional outrages, still breaks into pieces under the impact of the blow, sparks and shards of metal flying in all directions. A small hovering drone just barely dodges out of the way of one of the larger pieces of debris, before floating over to the form in front of it.
"Broker, your console appears to have taken damage, would you like me to order a new one?" asked the drone, and for a moment, the Shadow Broker idly toys with the thought of smashing the thing as well for the question, but then sighs out of his mouth, a sound like a rock grinder.
"Yes, get it here as soon as possible," he tells the thing, before climbing the nearby stairs and then going into his apartment, where he tended to stay when a work crew came in to do repairs, a task that had been rare, with only four occurrences in the decade since he'd taken over, but now had done no less than sixteen times in the last year. Every time before this year, the reasons for the repair had been the storm outside moving in unexpected ways, a lightning bolt through the window, or some leak in the ceiling, now it was always his fists that caused the damage.
And that was because of these Terrans. They were so...isolated, and off the grid. In the previous year he'd expended no less than a full percent of his resources to try and get an agent somewhere in their ranks, and to date, not one of his attempts had borne fruit. That wasn't, of course, to say that the Terrans were clean. Black markets existed, even among their culture, and a few of the colonists on the outlier worlds were willing to trade even their precious protoculture for things that weren't easily obtained in their own circles, but even then in such small amounts it was basically worthless.
Thinking of the green glowing goop, the Shadow Broker looked towards the side of his apartment, where he kept a sample of the stuff his own personal study, with equipment he himself had setup. He was no scientist, but he wasn't about to trust another's word on this either, and wanted to get his own claws dirty in finding info on it. As they'd admitted, eezo had nothing on protoculture. Infinite energy, take even a few drops out, wait an hour, and the container would refill.
You would think, given that regenerative property that even a single sample would be able to be spread around, and you would have as much as you wanted, but as many a lab had discovered, you had to keep it in motion, otherwise, it settled and well...that had been the reason for one of the cleanups in his chamber. Worse, once it had left the so-called engine, the stuff had a shelf life of only a few minutes, which resulted in meaningful studies of the stuff being near impossible for most labs staffed by professionals, let alone an amature like the Shadow Broker.
That was the least of his concerns though. He wanted to know about them, not just their technology. He wanted dirty secrets, little white lies, and all the things they wanted that he could give them in order to make them move as he wanted. The problem was they were so isolated, and what secrets they had guarded by those who wanted nothing, that he'd found none of the usual levers to pull. He'd actually considered, for a flash of an instant, to go himself, maybe see what one his kind could wring from the giants, but that fantasy was quickly dismissed as too much of a personal risk.
And then the Titan War had happened. At last, his agents would be in their space, watching them work, seeing how they operated, getting all the little nuggets of information he could pan from the streams of data. Streams that should have come from Rannoch, before those agents had ceased reporting in. He'd had a few of his people look into that, and either discovered that their sources were weeded out and put in positions where they couldn't be contacted, or worse, had gone completely native, and yet, had little fear of reprisals from him due to their giant protectors.
Regardless of the failures of his people on Rannoch, he was so well seeded in the Hegemony that there was no way all of his sources there would dry up, and he'd finally have what he wanted. Then the war was over, so fast that even his head had spun a bit, and now nothing, silence from every station, every agent, every bug in every government office. Nothing from batarian space in the last month. What little he'd been able to learn had been from second hand sources, or from what few batarians had fled successfully from the oncoming giants, who claimed that they had decapitated the government so thoroughly that none of his agents remained.
It was at this point that he realized how much he'd messed up. The batarian society was so rigid and structured that every source he'd had, every field agent he'd employed, had been of the upper classes, the military and politicians. Most of those had ended up being executed by the Terrans, for violating either the Council or the batarians' own laws. And none of the plebs, the lower rungs of their society were on his payroll due to their uselessness, and while in the days before the war it would have been easy to recruit some, now they had full bellies, healed wounds, and he'd even heard rumors that some had begun to worship the Terrans as some kind of gods.
Sighing, rubbing at the spot between his two left most eyes to massage a nerve, the Broker began to make plans. His contacts, once they got inside the Terran machine, went dark, and he knew why. They felt safe from his reach, and thus any reprisal from him. He would have to make that safety seem more of an illusion, and that meant striking at someone in a high profile position within the Terran Federation. The giants themselves were out of the question there, but they had begun integrating a fair few of the lesser races.
A quick look through a directory, and some called placed from his personal terminal, and the Broker was smiling in that horrid way of his people. The events he'd set in motion would remind those in his employ that his reach was far and wide. That no matter where they ran, they could never truly escape the shadow's hand. Outside the vessel, the storm, as if sensing the dark thoughts, sent lightning playing over the hull, creating a flash of shadows and light playing amongst those rolling clouds.