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The valley was a long, deep depression in the ground sequestered on either side by two towering mountain ranges that stretched for hundreds of miles. Most of their peaks were dotted by ancient ruins, fortifications long since destroyed by time and worse, but a few further out had construction instead. The Kelphic Valley would, apparently, play host to a wide, encircling defensive network for Wrex's purposes soon enough, whatever they were. Wide clusters of ruined buildings dotted the valley, surrounded by dirt and rock and, in places, stretches of arid looking ground covered in short, tough looking plants and even a few tall, spindly looking trees. Some of which even seemed to be protected by barriers of rock and stone, though he couldn't be sure of that.

Cultivation of some kind, maybe? He knew Krogan grew some manner of fruit and grain to brew Ryncol, but…

He couldn't tell, not from where he was, and had more important work for his scope.

John knelt at the edge of a cliff, cast in the shadow of an overhanging ceiling from a building that had long since fallen away with the part of the mountain that had collapsed down below. It had buried a few ancient hab-blocks at the end of a swathe of them that stretched from one mountain range to the other, with towering watch-posts sprinkled along the steep inclines on either side, most of which had fallen. At the center of the ruined, samey-apartment blocks rested the remains of a huge manufactory that would have enclosed multiple city blocks on its own, before it had been apparently bombed a third of the way into rubble and been left to rot. A wide circle at the corner of the factory was just gone now, ringed by rubble and blasted out rooms where Cerberus had been working.

At least, judging by the huge, three-legged thing standing up above the hole with what he presumed to be the bomb resting in its clamps.

"Seems too easy…" Wrex rumbled quietly, kneeling behind the third of a wall they were using for cover with a pair of Alliance binoculars pressed against one side of his face.

A comical look, but a needed one, since the Human design wouldn't have let him look straight into them past his wide nose.

"I'm counting forty three hostiles." He grunted, watching the Troopers and Engineers moving along metal walkways propped up along the dig-site's edge. "Not counting whatever I've seen moving through gaps in the apartments around it…"

"Yeah, well…" The Warlord hefted his Claymore, running a thumb along the brutal bayonet he'd fitted onto the end of the weapon. "That's the job. Isn't it?"

"I suppose…" He sighed, rolling his fingers along the grip of his Mattock and missing the familiar shape and weight of an MA5-series in his hand. Shaking the thought off, he sighed and said, "You shouldn't be out here."

"Krogan don't lead from the rear, Doe." Wrex growled, dropping the shotgun abruptly, its blade cutting into the dirt beneath them both. "This is the Kelphic Valley. I leave it to other clans' warriors, Turians and a Human to do this, I'll be dead by the end of the week. And everything I've worked for will be water in the dirt."

"You don't have a successor…?"

"First, the successor to a coward wouldn't get the respect of a challenge. He'd get a bomb." Wrex corrected him, shaking his head, "Second, if I die and a successor tries, he'll spend weeks just on the challenges to leadership. By the end, half the clans I've brought to heel will be in the wind, dead from clan wars, or have new, very bitter leaders after their Chieftains are killed by my successor."

"I still don't like it…"

"Yeah, well…" Wrex shrugged, "Welcome to Tuchanka."

"Indeed…" John sighed, checking the time on his HUD and frowning behind his visor. Polarising it, he rechecked his rifle for the fourth time and said, "Five minutes until the attack starts."

"Yep." Wrex rumbled, "I know. Krogan have very good internal clocks."

"Really?" John hummed. He hadn't known that. Setting the minute discovery aside, he asked, "Your people won't care about us sneaking in the back like this?"

"As long as I fight…" Wrex shrugged, smirking toothily, "Besides, I'm big and brightly colored. We'll get spotted soon enough, and when we do, well… Not much sneaking to do then, is there?"

"You're not funny…"

"No, I'm not joking." Wrex snorted, "I'm hilarious."

"Uh huh…" He sighed, turning as the distant echo of gunfire cracked across the valley. "Contact."

"Really?" Wrex rumbled, "Not training?"

"I thought you were funny…"

Nemesis sniper-lines reached out from the highest of the ruined apartments, blinking out as they fired their lethal payloads into a slowly approaching line of Tomkahs and their infantry support. A few of the Tpmkahs' cannons swung around to devastate the sniper nests they spotted, but smoke mortars fired from the periphery of the dig-site before more than a few could fire, filling the battlefield on both ends in the strange, electro-static smoke that his briefings told him Cerberus soldiers could see through with specialised scopes.

But two could play that game…

His VISR couldn't pierce the fog entirely, but thermals picked up the vague heat of the lasers the Nemesis snipers used to mark, designate and target enemy combatants. Tracing them to their sources, he checked his VISR's distance measurements, did the math, and opened broad-comms, "Artemec, are you on station?"

"Low orbit, waiting for request." The Turian commander, Artix, answered almost instantly, "Delivery in three minutes or you get an extra payload."

"Concussive rounds to clear smoke, front fire." He answered, "Secondary, anything that can punch through several floors of concrete and bring the hab-block down."

"Coordinates?"

"Forwarding secondary targets and current battle-line." John answered, forwarding the numbers with a flick of his Omni-Tool.

"Received." He answered, "Moving now. Chieftain, do you-"

"Skip the formalities and hit 'em, Turians."

"Yes, Sir." Artix answered, "We have signal jammers on standby as well."

"Effectiveness?"

"Anyone not on our channels will be jammed." He answered, "Long-range on ours will be as well, but… Well, we don't have any support after this. Not danger-close into buildings, at least. Not without a damn good reason."

"We'd wipe ourselves out…" John agreed, nodding and turning to Wrex, "Thoughts?"

"Can you relay comms?"

"If need be," Artix answered, "I can keep my wing nearby. Cerberus doesn't have a lot of interceptors left in-system now, we should be able to hold."

"Drop 'em." He rumbled, "Krogan comms are spotty as is. And most part, we're on a 'shoot anything black and white' rule."

"Yeah, fair." He shrugged, "Artix - deploy the jammers too. Hold at best range after for relay."

"En route."

Two minutes and forty eight seconds later, the seven ships that now made up Artemec Wing shot by, screaming through the air at speeds only possible with Mass Effect technology to deaden G-forces. In their wake, several missiles streaked down to the ground in two quick waves. The first were a half-dozen high power concussive missiles, typically used to scatter debris in space or to frighten infantry. Here, though, the air-blast the weapons utilised scattered the smoke away and up, where it thinned in the air. It threw dust up to replace a decent amount of it, but dust fell - the electro-static smoke was designed not to. His comms squawked, too, as the fist sized signal jammers - broadcasting junk data, recordings and the like on known Cerberus signal frequencies, and broad-band - filled the air with static, sewing confusion in the defenders'.

Just in time for the second wave to slam down on them, trailing only seconds behind the first.

'Cookie-cutters', as he'd heard them called, were high powered, heavy and barely-guided bombs that came down like the wrath of Tuchanka itself. The apartments he'd designated didn't simply shudder or fall in their wake. They were annihilated wholly, blasted apart with such force that their neighbouring buildings collapsed too, and the streets were covered in a new layer of dirt and debris that he saw crush a few Atlas mechs, a dozen mechanised infantry, and at least a hundred Cerberus soldiers throughout the theater.

But his VISR's zoom let him see survivors already scrambling back, reforming a new defensive line with only a couple blocks of lee-way to the rough north and south of the bomb-site.

All just in time for the Krogan lines to meet them, which made him curious enough to ask, "I thought you said this would be a low-manpower operation… Where did the reinforcements come from?"

"Ona." Wrex answered, rumbling a deep laugh, "She sent word out before we even got there, yesterday. Females answered, along with the mate-hopefuls in their camps and whoever they could collect in time."

"That's why not all the Tomkahs are armed…"

"Oh, they're armed." Wrex grunted, pointing at one of the ones lacking a rear turret as it rolled up a street, machine gun fire pouring out of it wherever the occupants noticed movement. These had wider rear ends, too, he noticed, with large couplers at the backs that Wrex explained, "Cargo Tomkahs. Usually a few will haul crap while the ones with the top turrets cover. But, well… We needed everything we could get here."

"I see…"

"Mhm." Wrex nodded, standing and rolling his shoulders. "You ready to, as you say it, 'drop feet first into hell'?"

"Hell is a few blocks away…"

"Eh, close enough." Wrex shrugged, "Unless you would rather I throw you?"

"You still aren't funny…"

The sheer drop from their cliff-top perch was almost a hundred feet down, according to his VISR estimates. But, like the other sheer drops alongside their own and on the other end of the valley, it was unguarded aside from a few drones standing stock-still on the rubble below. So, taking a deep breath, John took a step back to stand beside his Krogan companion and, with a nod…

They ran, and leapt.

His stomach shot up into his throat as he came down, but he killed the scream that tried to brew before it could give them away. Instead he tipped back and spread his feet, ready for Wrex's manuever to go exactly as they'd planned it. At fifty feet left, his anxiety started to creep. And then at twenty, he turned to where teh Krogan was glowing a luminescent blue less than two feet away, turning to smirk at him.

"Am I funny?" He asked toothily.

"You're an ass."

"Hah!"

A droid below looked up at the barked laugh just as a wide Biotic field slammed down onto it, staggering it away as he and Wrex landed, their inertia dispersing outwards thanks to the field. At least mostly. Enough that stinging pain shot up his legs, but faded quickly - which told him nothing had broken or sprained. The Loki mech whirred a warning just before John's rifle barked twice and its neck came apart, followed by its waist. Wrex rushed the other two as their weapons came up, crushing one with a fist and using the wide bayonet of his shotgun to carve another from shoulder to groin.

They collapsed, sparking and whirring distortedly, but John's head was already on a swivel.

The collapsing land above had taken most of a hab with it, and left the walls at its edge pockmarked by age-worn holes and ragged tears. Only a few of these were large enough for a man, though, And only one of those was on ground level so, when an Engineer poked around the corner to check the noise their entrance had made, his Mattock was already ready, and four rounds more or less rendered his entire head into the past tense.

"Clear." He reported, "Advancing on the door."

"On your rear." Wrex rumbled, "Stay close and I can project a barrier."

"Wait for heavy fire." He ordered smoothly, turning to lean against one side of the door while Wrex took the other. Nodding at the alien, he slid around, nearly throwing himself against the hall wall opposite the entrance to make space for Wrex to step around the corner, Claymore ready.

He caught movement and his Mattock barked three more times just as Wrex's Claymore did similar. The Trooper that had been retreating up the hall, towards a corner a few dozen feet away, collapsed as two rounds severed a leg at the back of his knee and a third caught him in the small of his back. Neither broke the armor on the other side, which left his left twisting strangely as he screamed and fell, and a final round into his head cast the hall into silence.

"Clear, reloading." He grunted, kneeling in the hallway and changing his Thermal Clip out smoothly while Wrex rumbled and turned, keeping one eye down either hallway. Standing, he asked, "Which way?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"It's a Krogan building…?"

"And that means I know the layout? What, you think every Krogan is the same?" Wrex bemoaned, shaking his head, "For shame, Doe. For shame."

"I reiterate," he sighed, "you're an ass."

"Yeah, but an ass that knows the way." Wrex rumbled, holding up his arm as an Omni-Tool burned to life. "I got the old lay-out, to get us through."

John nodded and lowered his rifle to let Wrex take the lead, turning to walk just to his side as they went, watching the gaps and holes in the wall as they advanced.

With communications jammed so thoroughly even Doe's long-comms were laced with static, and gunfire echoing from either side, no one noticed the casualties they'd inflicted on their entrance. Advancing through the dilapidated habs, and the Cerberus security posts they'd erected in the ruins. Most were understaffed, with most of the active combat units pulled to respond to the obvious assault, and he and the Warlord were able to rip through each one of them before they'd had much time to even properly respond.

Until they got to the last exit before the bomb site…

Here, the buildings had collapsed around it, fallen into soe manner of sinkhole that left the edge of the bomb-pit raised up by several feet, reinforced by silver steel plating. The crane assembly above anchored to it with heavy bolts supporting the massive pulleys used to safely pull the ancient weapon up, with a control and monitoring station built on what had been the second or third floor of an ancient, nearly nonexistent now, complex split by an old, battered road.

A warehouse, maybe? He couldn't be sure…

All that was left now were scattered support columns, and piles of rubble where walls and floors had collapsed and been cleaned away, topped in places by metal posts with sentry guns set up on them. There were three on each side, split by the low-ground, with cables running back along the ground to a pair of armored generators under the raised mound of rubble where the control station had been built, directly across the killing zone they were standing in front of.

"Six Engineers." He reported, kneeling in the second-floor door a few feet from the edge of an open stretch of concrete that had been a room, long ago. "Supported by three Troopers and a Centurion in the control room."

"Not a problem…"

"That is." He grunted, bobbing his head at a tall antennae that slowly extended, rising above the control center and extending three dishes that slowly turned. "They're setting up a secondary comm-line."

"To punch through our jamming…"

"Mhm." He nodded, "When we hit them, they'll be able to call for back-up."

"Doesn't matter." Wrex rumbled, tapping his shoulder to get him to turn around. When he did, Wrex offered him a data-spike, which was more or less just a dagger grip with an Omni-Gel head. "You or I get to the controls and punch that in - it has a self-destruct execution code."

"You want to blow up a bomb…"

"Fusion bomb." Wrex nodded, "We destroy it without a fusion sequence, it'll go up enough to take out a block instead of, you know… A valley."

"Hmmm…" He sighed, queuing his comm-line to Artemec and asking. "Are you online?"

"Down two birds, but online."

"Casualties?"

"One K, one W." Artix answered, his voiced laced by what little static the Turian comm-frequency couldn't keep at bay. Even if they designed the jammers, they were too broad-band for even them to fully get through it. "We're still delivering, though, if we're at danger close levels of nonsense."

"I need intel, not bombs."

"Oh, that's good." Artix grunted, sounding exhausted enough to excuse the less than Turian demeanor, "I don't fancy pasting friendlies."

"What are the battle lines looking like?"

"Holding four blocks in either direction." Artix reported crisply, "Reports are Cerberus set up reserve bases and fortifications there. Mechs, drones, the works. Friendlies are getting hammered trying to punch through."

"I see…" John nodded, "Doe out."

"So…?"

"Warp the generators, as hard a hit as you can." He ordered, shouldering his Mattock and taking a long, deep breath. "I'll follow behind. We take the cntrol center, drop the bomb and blow it. Then exfil."

"Sounds like a plan."

John nodded and stood, and bobbed his head out the door, "After you, Chieftain."

Wrex didn't hesitate, turning and thundering out the door to leap off the old concrete platform while Biotics wrapped around him. He landed a few feet from the first sentry-topped heap of rubble and threw his hands at it, suffusing it with Biotics. Rock and metal became shrapnel as he hurled the debris, gun and cabling away in a wide splash that ripped apart the wall the generators had been built against, and scoured the armored fronts.

The Engineers scrambled away while the Centurion turned, barking orders at a pair of Troopers who opened fire on Wrex, but they were thrown back by five round bursts of Mattock fire that turned their stomachs into splashes of red and pink before they could manage much. Which let Wrex's Warps slam home in the compromised armor of the generators, ripping, tearing, and reacting with the latent energy inside and coating it to set off a Biotic explosion that ripped the wall apart in a spray of stone shrapnel that ripped apart the two closes guns and the retreating Engineers whole-sale.

"Jesus…" He murmured, shaking his head and dropping down to move forward as Wrex finally brought his Claymore out and blew apart a Trooper trying to drop down to his level.

The Centurion, left alone, turned as he and Wrex clambered up the ragged landings that lead up to the control center. He didn't fare any better than could be expected - coming apart at the waist as he tried to bring up a Phalanx.

Leaving the corpse, John turned to keep overwatch while Wrex punched the spike into the console and got to work checking on the bomb. His analysis only lasted a moment before he swore and growled, "They've started the fusion sequence."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning we can't get clear of the demo-blast before it'd go off…"

"Well…" John sighed, thinking quickly and gesturing at the way they'd come in. "You said you had a good barrier, right?"

"I said I had a barrier I could throw up…" Wrex nodded, "Not one good enough for this, though."

"Yeah, well…" John shrugged, "What would make you look like more of a badass than surviving this?"

"...Alright." Wrex sighed, "You're definitely funnier than I am."

"Of course I am." He chuckled, standing and stretching his leg out - it still ached from taking the gun battery back. "Set the charge for ten minutes-"

"We have eight until fusion is unstoppable."

"Five minutes," he amended, "then set the cranes to lower the bomb. We run, and hopefully between the hole, space, and your Biotics, we survive."

"Yeah, you're absolutely insane." John turned to him, but Wrex was already lowering his glowing arm. Shrugging, he laughed and said, "Leg it, Doe. We need to make space for your batshit plan."

John blinked…

Then turned and ran.

They made it a tenth of the way back to their entrance before Wrex grabbed him, threw him in a corner, and knelt over him. Biotic energy crawled over his skin like electricity, itching and tingling, and John tossed his Mattock away to curl up into a tighter ball, wrapping his arms around his head.

"Here goes noth-"

Fire and fury roaring around them both cut him off before he could finish.

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I hope you all enjoyed the action sequences, and the battle over-all. I really wanna convey the alliance slowly building and melding together here, and felt that unlike in the games, a proper military action would serve far better. To be clear, though, the Turian Blackwatch DID participate - just elsewhere. And did suffer as usual in canon.

This is less a change to this mission set than a tweak, to fit the themes of the arc better.