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Requested by : Laurel
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Tuchanka was a world known for great deserts, rubble seas, arid basins, and cracked plateaus made into steppes by the rubbled cities around them. But, further north and south, the land emptied of ruins. In the old world, centuries ago, civilization had never really reached the poles. Not beyond outposts and monitoring sites, at least, making sure no one else decided to use the regions for any tactical gains. Which meant that when everything went to hell - any of the times, that was - the north and south poles were left… Relatively unscathed.
Relatively.
It was still arid, and covered in snow and ice sheets, but the region had always had ground under the ice. And as Tuchanka warmed, the ice retreated, exposing miles of cleaner land - again, relatively - and here was where what little non-lichen based vegetation grew. Vast tracts of tundra played home to sparse grasses and stubby trees like a cross between a stubby cactus and pine-analogue trees from his imprinted memories. The trees were rarer, of course, and the wood was thin and springy, and rotted swiftly, which made it worthless for construction.
But it gave them a lot of their air, growing up in the shade of great glaciers and mountains that crawled and weaved throughout the region.
They had found a hollow in one of those glaciers, with a small incline out the front with a cluster of the thin trees to hide their fire-light, and made camp for the night.
"You think he's still watching?" The Krogan on watch with Grunt asked as they knelt just inside the entrance, letting the others rest.
"Maybe." Grunt rumbled, "Maybe not."
"Humans have to sleep…" The other, older Krogan rumbled. It was the same one that the Human in question had shot a couple days prior. He'd healed in time to be dropped off, of course, Krogan being what they were. But…
Well, he seemed to have a bit more humility to spare, at least for the one Human in particular…
"Alliance has stims. Maybe he's on those?" Grunt shrugged, hand flexing around his Katana. He didn't like it, it was too light for his tastes - but the Alliance had only been able to make a barrel ionizer for their training rounds for standard gear. He heard a rustle outside and flinched, half-raising the weapon and rumbling, "Did you-"
"I did."
They waited for a long, quiet moment, watching the entrance for explosives rolling in and pressing against the walls in case weapons fire did instead. But nothing came and, after a good ten minutes, they relaxed as much as they had in the thirteen hours since they were dropped off. Outside, the sun sat at an angle, ghosting along the horizon because this time of year it would never truly set - but if someone kept their back to it, the glare would blind them. Or, if not, then the sun-eyes would make it hard to see in the shade and darker parts of the ice-covered arctic tundra.
It wasn't worth the risk, they'd decided…
"How's Tar?" Grunt asked finally, as the tension that could leave drained out of them and they rested back onto their haunches.
"Leg won't move." The old, scarred warrior rumbled. "Arm won't either."
"Crippled."
"Mhm." The Krogan's eye turned on him from the side already facing him. "The others are talking of leaving him behind."
"Even if we did," he rumbled, "bastard would tag someone else. He's doing it to whittle us down. Test us. Leaving a man behind? Doesn't look good and won't help."
"How can you be sure he'll do that?" The old warrior asked, "We win if we last two days. Whittling us down doesn't help him."
"He can handle bigger aliens." That much had been made clear to him - and not just when they'd met. Wrex had stressed that he had Commander Shepard's personal trust, which was why she'd left him to handle this while she handled other affairs. "So if he whittles down enough of us, slows us down-"
"He can hit us proper." The old warrior rumbled, "I see…"
"Even if he doesn't take us all out," Grunt added, huffing, "that doesn't mean we pass. If only one or two of us make it, that's hardly high marks."
"Fair." The old warrior rumbled, turning as another pair of Krogan approached. Standing, he sighed, "Our shift is done already? That went fast."
"Time flies when you're having fun…" Grunt sighed, waving the Krogan off when they cocked their heads in question at the saying. "Forget it. Make sure you whelps eat while you can. We don't know what the Human has in store for us when the horizon eases."
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John lay prone in the snow on top of a decent hill with a nearly-sheer end he looked down off of and a gentler slope behind him, covered in smatters of snow, rocks that stuck up from the eroded soil, and clusters of short, hairlike lichens. Apparently, according to the Codex, Krogan farmers had taken to cultivating the various lichens that grew throughout Tuchanka, and the brownish ones found in this region were considered particularly tasty - although they did not keep well once ground into powder and mixed with salt for baking.
He didn't mind the bread the Krogan made, when he'd tried a nibble of it that morning out of curiosity, and he wondered how this kind tasted…
It didn't do anything to keep him warm, of course, though. For that he'd brought along a thick thermal cloak that lay around him loosely, connected by hooks attached to his chest by magnets. It had a hood, too, and all of it was lined on the inside by a thermal foil similar to what was used to protect ship hulls, with an outer cloth layer muttered in whites and browns to blend into a frosty, tundra environment. It kept his heat in, which kept him from trembling in the near-arctic temperatures, and let him lay still without so many worries about being spotted if one of the Krogan managed to slip away and end up on his flanks.
None had, of course - but it was always best to cover what gaps you could.
"Doe." Wrex's voice rumbled in his ear, just the faintest bit staticy from a combination of distance, his cloak interfering, and the old Krogan equipment the Warlord was doubtless using. Ancient, it all was - but it was sturdy and did its job.
More and more, he was favoring it.
"Affirm." He grunted quietly, watching the cave entrance with his rifle laid horizontally in front of him, just under his chin, and his hand wrapped around the little cylinder he'd been holding for hours now. "Go."
"Status?"
"Mine or theirs?"
"Yes."
He rolled his eyes and sighed, "Cold. And stuck in a cave."
"You're doing that poorly, eh?"
"No," he grunted, "I'm just cold. There was a period there for me. For them, it was a comma."
"Ahhhh." Wrex huffed, "You're in a mood today."
"I'm cold." He agreed, "What do you need?"
"I have an update on the Kowloon project we got going, like you wanted." Wrex answered, sounding distracted. Like he was rattling off a list and looking at something else entirely. "The pods are mostly done, just tuning. The launchers are the same. When you get back-"
"Hold." He snapped, "I have motion."
"Heh." Wrex rumbled just before Doe cut the comms, "Have fun…"
Of the six Krogan, he'd disabled one's leg and arm, forcing another of the warriors to help him move while a third covered them. So when only three stepped out of the cave, two flanking to check the sides and letting one pace out quickly and turn, looking up along the glacier as though he could be laying against the sheer cliff. Still, he lauded their thoroughness and carefulness. Krogan had a reputation for berserking and taking risks but Aralakh Company seemed… Different, somehow.
Grunt's influence, perhaps.
Regardless, it was wasted, and he waited, eyeing them over the lip of the hill with a helmet he'd coated in snow to hide it, until Grunt appeared himself. And then the 'wounded' Krogan and his aid. Grunt took a wary step out into the open as his warriors fanned out through John's killing field. Grunt was wary even as the others seemed to relax, ever so slightly, though. His large eyes flicked as his equally large head turned and he let his fingers play along the edge of his Katana. He must have spotted something along the hillside, because his shoulders bunched and he took a step back, mouth opening to issue an order. Or a warning.
In either case, Doe didn't let him, thumb depressing the little blue button of his detonator softly.
Five grenades, modified by his own hands and buried in the snow along the hill, all went off at once. They showered the Krogan, the cave, and the wall around them in light, harmless - to Krogan - shrapnel, smoke that obscured much of the hill and, most importantly, a swarm of around a thousand of the little red stun pellets he'd requested for training. The wounded Krogan dropped, along with two others, from an unlucky spread pattern on the improvised explosive devices and John rose, slinging his Avenger around in his hands and sighting the stumbling Krogan that had, moments ago, been helping the 'wounded' one.
He peppered the alien's legs until the stun rounds made it collapse, sprawling with one usable arm in the snow.
Grunt bellowed a roar and the other surviving Krogan, one arm hanging limp at his side, sprayed the hillside. The rounds were wild, fired in a long arc along the hill's edge in an effort to suppress him while Grunt grabbed the one-armed Krogan and propped him up against the cave entrance, shoving a Katana into his hand and taking his Avenger to turn on the hill, too. He pinged the Krogan on his VISR and ducked behind the hill, replacing his Thermal Clip and grabbing a smoke grenade off his belt. Even with the smoke his VISR would let him-
The whining engines of a Tomkah trundling up reached him a moment before he turned and heard the rambling wheels. It was the same red-painted one that had brought them all in that morning and he stood, raising his rifle by the middle as the smoke from earlier thinned out and the Krogan could see him. When Grunt returned the gesture, he stepped over the hill fully and sat down, sliding down the steeper ridge and stumbling forward a few steps while Grunt went to work with a little cleanser-baton that nullified the effects of the stun-rounds while he turned to watch the Tomkah come rolling over the hill and slam down on its wheels, turning while the chassis bounced and rolled to take the impact.
By the time Wrex stepped off the ladder down from the Tomkah, the Krogan were all back up, grumbling and chuffing at each other for the ambush, and John had come to meet him.
"What is it?" He asked, knowing the warlord would never have interrupted their one field training chance before test-drops began unless there was an emergency. Terrified, he asked, "Reapers?"
"Not quite." Wrex sighed, bringing up his Omni-Tool and projecting a holographic display of… Not quite blueprints, there wasn't enough detail for that, but an outline of an installation with an obvious, prominent purpose. Voice tight, the warlord explained, "This is one of Tuchanka's only functioning defensive cannons. Anti-orbital. Took some doing, but we got it and another one like it up and running a few days ago."
"Capabilities?"
"Surprising the hell out of anything in a cone of fire in front of it." Wrex grunted, inputting a command that brought up a smaller, secondary display of Tuchanka with two orange circles on opposite sides of the planet. "Together, the two we have running already cover fifteen percent of our orbit. It fires a heavy slug, solid metal, at speeds fast enough to hit a ship in far orbit. Lunar, even, if they're slow."
"That's a MAC…"
"MAC?"
"Mass Accelerator Cannon." He answered, leaning close to inspect the schematics and asking. "Can you make more?"
"Part of the restoration process was studying the damn things to maybe do that." Wrex shrugged, flicking the planetary model away to focus on the installation. "So maybe, maybe not. Planetary cannons that can fire like that are just about magic to me."
"What about orbital…?"
"Don't have the expertise now, didn't have the tech back when they were built. A lot of it's archaic like that. Lost." Wrex hummed, "But…"
"But?"
"Ideas for later." Wrex shook his head, "An hour ago, both sites were hit. Cerberus."
"Damn…" He frowned, already knowing where this was going. Shaking his head, he tugged his hood up against a chill breeze and asked, quietly, "Casualties?"
"Most of the defenders and scientists at one of the sites, all of them at another." Wrex explained, leaving the rest implied but clear enough - one site fell, the other held. Moving on, the Warlord said, "The lost cannon took out several of our scrapper satellites and a wounded Turian frigate en route for repairs before we could clear out. I've reinforced the other position, but…"
"You need to retake the one." John nodded, mind racing a mile a minute, "You plan to use Aralakh Company?"
"Yeah, but only first squad." Wrex rumbled, dropping the display and frowning deeply in a way that, somehow, still seemed… Eager. "Twelve hours from now, the Kowloon will move to a site and launch you and your team alongside long-range saturation missiles from a restored destroyer. You'll be right at the edge of the kill-zone."
"Risk of taking fire?"
"The destroyer will go down." Wrex said it like a fact, sighing, "I have volunteers for it, and we're retrofitting as much as we can to operate remote. They're your cover."
"I see…" He didn't like the idea of running a combat drop as a test, but… "I'm guessing we're all you have that can handle this?"
"Cerberus set up artillery at the site, too." Wrex nodded, "We try and approach the normal way, we'll lose. A lot. More than a single scrapped together destroyer, easy. But your drop isn't combat first."
"No?"
"No." Wrex confirmed, "You get eyes on, and you decide if you think it's doable. If not, pop a flare and armored regiments just outside their artillery range will launch an assault. Infantry to follow."
"We're forward-observation and combat lead…" John murmured, surprised, "You studied my tactical dossier?"
"Of course." Wrex smiled, tapping his head. "The mind is the greatest weapon, and the only one nobody can see. I'm not going to waste it. So, you up?"
Smiling, John nodded, "Yes, Warlord."
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Malgrath :
Do bear in mind, Shepard has his memories. She knows what Spartans could do, and unlike him, she has the Cipher and Prothean experience to process stuff far more readily than he does. Not to Javik's level, ofc, but still damn high.
As for more ME stuff…
Most of it will be concepts, not items. Like ODSTs as an idea, and the training rounds, and ODST doctrine, loosely. The Rook was always meant to be more subtle, for the most part, with the crossover - Doe is just a man, contributing what he can to a galactic affair.
Evil Statistic :
I do too! We just need ONE MORE PERSON and things will be genuinely smooth sailing…
Random Reader :
Details are where I SHINE lmao.
Ace :
XD
JGThorncross :
It brought training!
Surprise!