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Utukku looked like a giant ball of mud and ice, mushed together and dusted with clouds before it was hung in the blackness of space. His Omni-Tool told him it was a mostly dead rock, aside from hardy plants, with little to no mineral wealth worth digging for and a lacking position in space. And yet, in the far distance, he could just make out what his VISR's internal systems designated a 'Reaper Constructor', a smaller variant of the Destroyer that carried Oculi reports stated were fitted with numerous assembly arms.

"I wonder what they're building…"

"Orbital storage, most likely, according to the Krogan's information." Javik offered from John's side, standing in the crew rec-room and staring out the window at it in the distance. He hummed, and Javik added, "What else could they be building? A defensive station is… Unlikely, for a mud-ball such as this."

"Storage implies value." He grunted, "Utukku has nothing we know about."

"Then it must have something else of value…"

"Such as the Rachni?"

"Perhaps." Javik nodded, turning, "The Commander waits."

"Right." He nodded, "After you, then."

They found the woman in the QEC room, nodding as the Admiral detailed statistics on rebuilding. He paused to pay each of them a nod in hello before he turned back to her and said, "The shipyards over Tuchanka are already starting to come online, whether the Council officially likes it or not. No major ones, not yet, but… It's a boon just to have somewhere safe to refit and repair. The First, Second and Fifth fleets' reserves are nearly refilled, at least in terms of the ships."

"Not manpower…?"

"Legislation to allow non-Human Alliance soldiers is coming through." He answered roughly, "Week's end at the latest."

"I've already seen non-Human soldiers, though…"

"Officially?" Hackett smiled, paying John a nod. "No. No you have not. Unofficially? Well… Mistakes happen on marching papers."

"Ah." He nodded, "Yes, Sir."

"Not in the Alliance, son." He shook his head, "Don't have to call me 'Sir'."

"No, Sir, I don't."

"Forgive him, Sir, he's a smart ass." Shepard snorted, reaching over to clap him on the shoulder hard enough it made him wince. Straightening her uniform, she turned and raised an eyebrow, "Anything to add, Javik."

"Not particularly." The alien smiled, stepping around to John's other side, and out of reach, before he added. "Ma'am."

"Oh, you think range will save you?" She snorted, turning to face them with both brows creeping up towards her hairline and her arms crossed, "I'll come over there, old man, don't test me. We have time before Wrex gets here."

"I am not old."

"You are at least eight thousand years old…"

"I was in stasis! It does not count!" He groaned, as if it were an age-old argument by now. And one John had missed, which left him feeling…

Well, left out, somehow.

"The hell am I walking into right now?" Wrex rumbled as he joined them, his mass pushing the other three to the side a bit. It was a tight enough fit for Shepard to wrap an arm around his shoulders, bumping her head against his helmet, while Javik stood between them and Wrex. Shaking his head, the Krogan sighed, "Nevermind. Forgot I was dealing with you absolutely insane scabs."

"Hey!" Shepard complained, "I am a perfectly sane woman, thank you!"

"Uh huh…"

"Now that the High-"

"Don't start that." Wrex, Shepard and John all cut in at once, the latter two in a droning voice that earned a scowl and a scoff from the ancient warlord. And a confused look from the old Admiral, too. Shepard just shrugged and offered, "Inside joke, Admiral. Wred hates the full title."

"Ah." He blinked, smirked, and folded his hands behind his waist. "Well then… Now that the High Warlord and Chieftain is here-"

"Ugh!"

"-we can begin the briefing." Admiral Hackett chuckled, shaking his head and waving his hand. In answer, his projected model shrank down a bit and slid to one side, projecting a feed of the planet they were slowly approaching. "Until recently, Utukku has been little more than a novelty. A planet with radical temperature variations where life still evolved, and is evolving even now, adapted to the environment. Beyond taking biological samples, scans found nothing of note."

"Until recently." Javik murmured, cocking his head. "An interesting choice of words."

"Indeed. But before I explain…" Hackett faced the Prothean, "I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about this world."

"Such as?"

"Anything." He answered flatly, "Research from your time, archives, hidden bunkers, battlefields. Anything strange."

"Not that I am aware of." He shook his head, "But I am a soldier, not a scholar. Not a scientist."

"Understood." Hackett sighed as three little pointing designators appeared, pointing at places along the equator. "Reaper dig-sites are located at these locations, with anti-air emplacements surrounding them. Each is exuding a strange signal and, until recently, this planet had three Reaper capital ships on station."

"The same number as the dig sites…"

"Exactly, Commander." Hackett nodded, "They left when the Eight fleet-"

"We have an eighth fleet?"

"We do now." He nodded, frowning thinly, "They were ordered to poke Reaper lines and get probes in towards Kharshan. In every way, it's to look like we're preparing to launch a strike, like we are conducting on Menae, Bekken, Kuat and Al-Sha."

"A smoke-screen." John nodded, "To get us in here without Reapers on us."

"Exactly." Hackett answered, gesturing at the display again as a fourth circle, this one red, flickered to life up towards one of the poles. "This is where the scouts Wrex sent landed, according to the Chieftain. And this," another one, further south by fifty kilometers, "is where his second team landed. Both before the strange signals we are detecting began to echo, and before the Reapers arrived. Beyond a few transports whose purpose we still don't know, that departed a few hours ago."

"Those can carry hundreds of thousands of people…" Javik murmured, "Or just as great a number of whatever else. We have no idea what they sought?"

"None." Hackett shook his head, "Reaper-constructor ships are relatively dumb, and won't notice a stealth insertion or the Normandy. We need an insertion at each of the Krogan landing points to find out what is happening down there."

"Understood, Admiral." Shepard nodded, turning to Wrex, "You take the northern one, I'll take the one further south? Your biology will handle the cold better."

"You can just say you're a pansy…"

"I can also beat your quad in." She shrugged, "You in or not?"

"I'm in." He rumbled a laugh, "I have my guards, but I want Vakarian, too. And the big Human- James. I want him, too."

"Done." Shepard nodded, turning to John. "You and me, then, John. We can hit the second for recon while the boys get loud up north. Keep eyes off us. Sound good?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"And me…?"

"Sorry, Javik." Shepard sighed, clapping him on the shoulder and smiling apologetically. "You're still too important for a blind-insert like this. But if you like, you can be on the third rescue unit and come in if we get into trouble?"

"That is hardly fair…" He sighed, shaking his head and nodding curtly, "Very well, then. But the first showing of true danger and I will come down there with whatever I deem fit. Understood?"

"Crystal." Shepard nodded, turning to the Admiral, "We'll dispatch in thirty, Sir."

"Good hunting, Commander."

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For all the many, many miles from the pole that they were, it was still deathly cold on Utukku. Enough he would swear it seeped through his insulated undersuit and thermal protection, and sapped at his stamina. The terrain did nothing to help, forcing them to clamber up and down muddy-hills speckled by short, barbed, ropey looking plants wrapped up right and protectively around themselves. They moved, just a bit, when he and Shepard passed by them, turning the thicker sides of their bundling towards them protectively and relaxing when they passed. It was strange but not overly distressing. Little more than a probably a confused reaction on their part, treating them like a blast of ice or snow, given that there were no real animals on the planet.

Either way, they gave them a decent berth as they slowly descended the muddy slope into the ravine, towards the coordinates they'd been given. Eventually, muddy slopes gave way to hard faces of rough, weather-beaten rock and stone. Creeks of water fell from above and, as they descended, the echo began to grow to a roar.

"Look at this." Shepard murmured as they neared the bottom. She turned her rifle-light on the wall and he could hear the frown in her voice, "The walls. They're so… Smooth."

"Mhm." They were almost perfectly flat this far down, nearly a mile below the surface - or, at least, the high hill they'd landed on. There were growths of rock along its surface, growing up beside trickles of water from above that collected in the wide, shallow creek beside them, but beyond that it was nearly perfect. "Reapers, maybe?"

"Maybe, but…" She shook her head, "Come on. We're almost there."

"Right."

Another few minutes of walking and they reached a corner. Not a curve, or a cut in where water flowed, but a corner. A perfect right angle, with another across a wide river the creek they'd followed down merged into, covered in thin sheets of ice and drifting lazily straight ahead of them and off around the corner. They followed the lazy river around the corner where it fed into a long, almost perfectly oval lake, with thick growths of ice along its edges where the water was shallowest and slowest-moving and the same stubby shrub-like plants breaking out from it in spite of the cold. At the other side was a wide, open area of sand where a sturdy grey prefab had landed, its landing thrusters still laid out at its corners.

And a dead Krogan warrior in all-black armor laying against the wall by a door he could see from there.

"Well." Shepard sighed, "There goes our rescue…"

"Maybe." He hummed, looking at the too-smooth walls of the hollow, broken up only by plant-growth, trickles of water and a pair of stone spires that reached out from the exact center of each wall, stopping twenty or so feet away from each other and covered in moss and shrubs and hanging rock growths. 'It's strange."

"You feel it too?"

"Hairs raising on the back of your neck?" He asked, "Like a fight coming?"

"Yeah." She hummed, "Or someone walking on my grave…"

The mud and rock gave way to sand after only a few yards, but it wasn't beach sand. It was thick-packed and hard, barely taking their footprints at all when he looked down. And it was quiet, too. Impossibly so - the river and creeks before had been loud, echoing off the ravine's walls, but here the sound was barely a distant rumble. And the wind that had howled overhead was nothing more than a muted whistling, barely even registering in his range of hearing. Which made the hairs stand even higher on his neck, and his heart beat in his chest. Loudly.

He could hear it…

"Doe." He still as they got closer to the Krogan and Shepard knelt. "VISR."

"Right." He nodded, adjusting his grip on his 'new' rifle. The Lancer was an old model, but modified with an integrated sight that interfaced with his VISR system. He used it to scan the outside of the prefab for traps or sensors and, when that failed, lowered it to scan the ground and Krogan closer to him. "Nothing, Shepard."

"At all…?"

"No." He shook his head, "No power, no systems, no heat."

"Strange…" She hummed, "Let's check the prefab. And then…"

"Please don't say the cave."

"Fine." She chuckled, "I won't say it."

"Ugh.."

They both turned to the ominous tear in the rock off to their side, that the prefab had landed in front of and John had pointedly been ignoring. It was a ragged thing, surrounded by scorch marks and broken but not yet fallen away rock, which gave it an almost webbed look, and with overhanging spines like teeth. It felt foreboding in a way he couldn't explain. He'd gone into schools behind Covenant lines, hidden in burnt out churches, and more, and not felt the instinctive dread the cave put in him.

"Doe…?"

"Sorry." He grunted, turning back to her. "What do you need?"

"You didn't hear me…?"

"No?"

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Shepard." He sighed, "Just… I don't know, something feels off. What are your orders?"

"Breach the door," she waved at it, and the Krogan corpse beside it, "I'll be back up, but sweep that first for traps."

"Understood."

Up close, what had killed the scarred warrior was obvious - his armor had been burned away, and hunks of meat were flecked on the prefab behind him. The metal was burnt, too. Like incendiary explosives had gone off on him repeatedly, which he knew from manuals was a textbook - if brutal - way to deal with Krogans. What was odd was that he was by the door, outside, and that seemed like it meant he'd been on post. So whatever had hit him had done so with multiple incendiary detonations, but before he could move. His Katana shotgun was beside him, and when his VISR checked, the thermal clip was empty, and his bandolier of trades was full, too.

"He didn't fight back…" He shook his head and, louder, announced, "Nothing, Commander."

"Right." She grunted, "Inside. I'll go right."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Inside, the barracks were simple, prefabricated and dull. It was two-story, and the bottom was split more or less at the door's entrance with two wide openings to either side of it. One was labled 'cantine' and the other 'armory'. Both of which were barren. Not just empty and quiet, but barren. Tables and work places lay empty, and at the back, shelves had been mostly cleared out but for a handful of food and water rations and a few scattered thermal clips.

"They left in a hurry…"

"They did." He nodded, waving a hand at the end of the hall that split the prefab, "Check the sleeping area?"

"We should, yeah."

Upstairs was just as quiet, but less barren. Krogan bunks were a lot like Human ones, albeit bigger, and filled half of each room they passed as they each went down the hall. The beds were built for Krogan, but left in disorder. Blankets were tossed aside, half-eaten food lay on the ground, and drinks were overturned on small tables. One room even had a card game, set for two but left unfinished, in a corner. In one, though, he found a still open and active datapad.

'Wish me luck, my distant flower, for we have been ordered into the cave by our commander. I think it mad, but who am I to disagree? A poet - the others say it like a slur. Soft in the head. Something in it has taken Kanat's wisdom, I fear, but none will listen to me. We know the Rachnic are down there, but…' It trailed off there, cutting to another, shorter paragraph, 'I will do what I must, however. For us. I love you. May my bones shelter our family from the storms that ravage - blue roses shielded by twisted bone and metal.'

He frowned…

Then downloaded the message and stood, "Commander, anything?"

"No." She called back as she joined him, "You?"

"Negative." He shook his head, "Only a message to family. It says the scouts here were sent into the cave by their commander. But…"

"But?"

"The Krogan that wrote it said it sounded insane to him." He shrugged, "Something about that cave is off. Aside from the Rachni being down there."

"It's confirmed?"

"The message mentioned it." He nodded.

"Right." She sighed, "The cave, then…"

"We're still going in there, aren't we?"

"We are." She chuckled and flicked him a look, cocking her head to the side. "Scared?"

"Terrified." He drawled sardonically, "You lead the way, then. I'll cover."

"Why John, are you hiding behind me?"

"No." He answered, following her down the stairs, "I took point on the door, you get the cave. Seems right to me."

"I think the cave is bigger…"

"I said 'right to me'." He smiled, "Not 'fair'."

"Ah." She snorted, "Come on then, you ass."

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I'm sure this cave is a completely natural formation… Like the rest of it. And the Reapers totally have no interest here. .

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Crazzy Tony :

not very subtle cough* About that…