His two krogan companions, huddled over a tangled nest of bent and mangled piping, jerked upright with mingled growls and grunts of surprise. The plate rebounded off the wall and caught the closest, Kaje, across the temple, earning a pained shout.
“What’s the idea?” Wratch bellowed, stepping in front of the howling grunt.
Arvex growled right back, dropping one foot heavily to the deck plating as if digging in to charge. Arteries leading from every organ pounded and pulsed under his tough krogan hide. “I am sick of the wait,” he roared, hands splayed in fist-crushing fury. “Nakmor did not sign onto this floating wreck to be janitors.”
An old argument. A common one. Impatience and frustration and sheer centuries of fighting instinct. Another day in the structure mines. Another hour spent waiting for the technicians supposedly coming to fix the failing conduits outside.
Another brawl between clan brothers.
Kaje shouldered past Wratch to stomp, slowly and with effort in the low-grav environment, toward the sealed door. “Can we get back to welding or not?” he demanded.
He already knew the answer.
Arvex glared at him anyway. “Not until the life-support grunts get here. Now stop your whining and get back to peeling off those scored plates.”
They were in one of the warehouses, sorting through the twisted mess of ground vehicles tossed like pyjaks in a box. Those that survived, anyway. Not three meters away, the warehouse—and the vehicles still on this side of it—abruptly vanished on a ragged edge of shorn-off metal, hanging wires, drifting junk.
Beyond the emergency bulkhead, only the endless black and blue and whatever other fancy colors other species liked to look at glittered.
Arvex didn’t care. Space was space. He was Nakmor born, Tuchanka forged, and mercenary hardened. Whether in this galaxy or the Milky Way, he didn’t give a varren’s wet turd what it looked like.
What he cared about—what he wanted—was the same thing all of Nakmor wanted.
New territory, carved by strength and glory, and made worth protecting by the first of the krogan females to give birth to a new generation.
For all their posturing, Kaje and Wratch felt the same.
Arvex would stake his life on it.
No more losses. No more dead. The genophage had claimed enough krogan spirit. With the genetic prodding the clan leader had subjected them all to, there was a chance—a possibility—that any one of the krogan here could be fertile.
Could bypass the damned salarian-designed plague meant to cow them.
Arvex crouched at the verge of the sheared edge, glowering into the vast emptiness of space. Not even the ripped-off wreckage of the Nexus remained in view anymore. Whatever had torn it off, nothing had gotten in its way to halt its drift.
Except maybe the weird tangle of energy out there.
“Scourge, huh?” The words rumbled from his chest. As close to musing as Arvex ever bothered with.
Wratch heard. He dropped a large structural beam into a pile with others, each twisted as if superheated to some ungodly degree and bent beneath its own weight. It bounced a bit. Clanged every time. Before it even settled, he pitched his voice to carry. “Heard someone say it broke the sensors.”
“That’s what you get for listening to garbage,” Kaje shot back, pushing away from the door. “Sensors can’t see it. It’s different.”
“Yeah,” Wratch grunted. “Like your ugly face.”
“Suck on a hanar, Wratch.”
“None around.”
The krogan snapped his teeth in reply.
Arvex’s lip curled with his grunt, but he didn’t bother shouting them down. Whatever this ship-twisting, station-wrecking star-pocked web of destruction was, it wasn’t something the krogan could shoot at, wrestle, or burn.
His eyes narrowed as spots of color gleamed from inside the tendrils.
The sounds of work continued behind him. Arvex held his position, trying to figure out if the damn stuff moved or if staring out into the dimensional cavern of space just made his eyes think it moved. It didn’t help that enough junk floated around, debris and bits of once-functional station, to make the whole scene a bloody eye-boggler.
When the comm in his helmet pinged, he grunted into it. “Arvex.”
A smooth voice filled the line. “Calix Corvannis here. I understand you need a few of my crew?”
Irritation had Arvex surging to his feet. But he didn’t yell. Kesh had at least pounded that much into him. Into most of them, at this point.
Hardest bloody head this side of Nakmor Morda. Or maybe Drack.
Damned female earned her blood by way of one hell of a grandfather.
So, instead of risking another meeting with Kesh, Arvex growled, “You’re late.”
“I’m sorry about that,” the male voice said. Flanged. Turian. Ugh. “Three of mine are available now. Have you prepared the site?”
Arvex looked down at the ragged ribbon of torn-off hull.
He didn’t care if his laughter sounded like a challenge. “Oh, yeah,” he said, folding his arms over his wide chest. “It’s ready.”
The turian hesitated. Then, with a directness Arvex recognized, said, “My engineers are in your hands, Nakmor Arvex.”
Yeah, yeah. He almost shut off the comm link without a reply, then thought better of it. A little respect from a turian seemed a decent way to keep Kesh off his back. “We’ll make sure they keep their delicate feet on the deck plates.”
Whatever Calix Corvannis might have said, Arvex didn’t care to hear it. Promise made, link cut.
“Wratch!”
A huffed sound of acknowledgement.
“Kaje!”
“What?”
Arvex’s wide, thick lips peeled back into a toothy grin. “Lay out the welcome mat, boys. We got squishies incoming.”
“Are you sure about this?” Na’to’s nervousness translated easily over the comm link, and visibly in the set of his narrow salarian shoulders.
Reg laughed heartily, tinny through the faceplate of his helmet but nevertheless loud. “Relax, Nacho. What’s a few krogan?”
“Intimidating,” he muttered back. They approached the sealed dock doors in a wedge formation, and somehow, Na’to had ended up in front. Not sure how that happened. Reg, with his overdeveloped human physique and thick skull, should have been first to face the krogan on the other side.
To his right and behind him, he heard Andria muffle a laugh.
A nervous laugh, he noted. He wasn’t the only one worried.
But they all seemed intent on behaving as if this were well within regular patterns. Whether it was for him, or for their own nerves, he didn’t know. But he could play along. “And,” he added in clipped tones, “it’s Na’to.”
“Whatever you say.”
Na’to adjusted the tools strapped to his waist, firming his resolve. Nothing had quite unfolded as expected, but in many ways, this hadn’t come as a surprise to the salarian. Things rarely did; or at least, people who planned would do best to plan for multiple contingencies.
Failing to do so, he reflected grimly as a heavy, wide silhouette passed in front of the viewport, was how they got krogan.
He paused outside the doors, keyed in comm frequencies and waited for them to acknowledge. They did. Well, one did. Mostly by a growled, “Yeah, yeah, hold your soft—” Whatever it was they were supposed to hold went unsaid, as the comm abruptly winked out again.
Na’to turned back to look at his other teammates, hoping the I told you so look on his face could be seen through the faceplate of his helmet.
All he got back were reflections. And a shrug.
“Well, this is off to an excellent start,” he said dourly.