Bare-assed Krogan versus Batarian Slavers
Aug 1, 2017 23:11:21 GMT -6
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Post by Urdnot Thrak on Aug 1, 2017 23:11:21 GMT -6
Thrak woke with a start. His mind was no longer hazy, and he no longer felt any pain. The last mission left him bruised, bloodied, and on the verge of death, but the elcor who lived on the nearby world had taken pity on him and seen to his treatment. They did not know much about his physiology, but they had managed just enough for his regenerative ability to kick in and do the rest of the work. Waking up now, he felt fresh, almost as good as before the mission.
Alarms blared, as he heard a buzzing sound he knew all too well. Batarian slavers often used the outdated classes of shuttles which were quite poor at maintaining stealth. That went along with their preferred style, though, using the panic their arrival caused to throw off the peoples of rural worlds. Against any organized defenses, it would have been suicidal, but unarmed civilians were almost eager to surrender and spare themselves the horrors they had heard of. The batarians never did spare them, though.
Thrak did not consider himself sentimental, but he was damned if he was going to let himself or the people who had saved him suffer. He was out of the bed in a heartbeat. He cursed, as his armor and clothes were nowhere in sight, leaving him with only an ill-fitting elcor gown. Apparently, the commotion he had made to keep his warhammer and Raider by his side had not inclined them towards leaving him with any of the rest of his gear. At least they had left his omni-tool too.
"Well, that sucks," Thrak said, grabbing the hammer in one hand and the shotgun in the other, having nowhere to clip either.
As he made his way out of the room, he was unable to get any sort of cogent response from the staff, too terrified to answer him regarding the location of his armor. He ground his teeth, marching towards, as best he could tell, the front door. He checked his omni-tool, glad to see it was fully-functional.
"Mister! What are you doing?" an asari asked, running up behind him. He recognized her vaguely. It seemed he had heard something about her being a reporter documenting the formation of the new settlement.
"Going to go ask some batarians to kindly leave this place alone," Thrak said.
"Do you really think that will work?" she asked excitedly and turning on the professional-grade camera built into her omni-tool.
"Have you ever ignored the instructions of a bare-assed krogan battlemaster?"
She paused, uncertain of what to say. "Well... I guess not."
"See?"
"Sure... The door's back the other way," she said, seeming unsure how to handle him.
"Take me," Thrak demanded. She rushed off towards the entrance to the small healthcare center.
It did not take too much effort for the krogan to keep up, end they were outdoors in a matter of minutes. The colony was small, only a few hundred meters across- certainly less than a kilometer. Buildings were spaced close together, reflecting the close relationships elcor preferred. It was well-lit on the streets, but there were plenty of shadows, the elcor being a trusting race. The illumination was only really meant to drive off natural predators.
Thrak took stock of the situation, seeing four of the shuttles hovering around the perimeter of the settlement, each with a man on the vessel's sole weapon- a mounted turret. He knew from his own experience in mercenary circles that each shuttle would have dropped an eight man team. Thirty two men might have seemed insufficient to subdue a settlement of hundreds, but against a peaceful people like the elcor, and as heavily armed as the mercs would be, it would be an easy task. The sounds of gunfire shot straight into the air, of non-lethal weapons being used, and of terrified elcor and thriled slavers meant everything was going according to plan.
At least, it might have been if the krogan were not present.
He took to the shadows immediately. Normally, krogan were not creatures of stealth on a battlefield, but a sole asari and krogan could easily evade the notice of a group looking solely for elcor. It did not take him long to see the first two batarians herding a family of elcor towards the center of the settlement, where fences would be erected and processing of the soon-to-be slaves would occur. One used a neural shock built into his omni-tool and the other was using biotic lashes, taking sadistic pleasure in motivating the creatures.
Without his armor, only deep breathing and a soft thudding of his feet could be heard as he rushed towards the unsuspecting slavers. Were they true professionals, they would have known to stand further than the one meter apart which they did. Instead, he powered his biotic hammer and took off both of their heads with a single swing.
Before the elcor could speak, Thrak said, "Keep moving towards the center of the settlement. You'll be fine. I'll take care of these assholes."
Not waiting for a response, he stripped a sniper rifle from one of the batarians and threw it to the waiting asari. He quickly grabbed the bodies, dragging them into the shadows before anyone was the wiser.
Thrak repeated the procedure several more times, circling the perimeter of the settlement and drawing ever further in. Twice, he managed to scavenge rocket launchers from the corpses, which he promptly handed off to the asari. A couple times, he heard the turrets open up on fleeing elcor, and he cursed the lumbering beasts he had saved for not heeding his instructions. It could not be helped, though. There were always casualties in such circumstances.
Near the center of the settlement, where the slavers were setting up their processing area, Thrak finally stopped at one of the few three-story buildings. It was the sole surface-to-air defense cannon at the settlement. The slavers were down to twenty-four individuals on the ground, and they certainly realized something was amiss by then. He quickly ran up the stairs of the building. On the third floor, he unexpectedly found himself staring at four more of the slavers. These saw him and had time to react, but they hesitated at the unbelievable sight of a completely nude krogan armed with a shotgun and warhammer. That was their mistake.
Thrak charged straight into their midsts, forgoing his omni-shield for pure offense. One shotgun blast with his Raider at point-blank range eviscerated one of the flanking slavers. A spinning swing with his hammer took out the two in the center. As he finished his spin, he unloaded his other shot into the remaining man. Less than five seconds had passed, and they were all dead.
"That was amazing," the asari said, in awe. She had been recording every second, the idea of helping him never seeming to cross her mind.
"Heh," he said, "you haven't seen anything yet."
Twenty.
Thrak climbed up, onto the roof of the building. The batarians still were not paying attention to things like rooftops, knowing elcor, unlike other species, had no chance of hiding on roofs or escaping rooftop to rooftop. That suited him just fine. When he held out his hand, it took a few seconds for the asari to realize he meant for her to give him the sniper rifle.
Thrak lined up the shot for the first batarian on a turret. It was funny to him. If these mercs had attacked an asari, turian, or likely even a volus colony, Thrak never would have stood a chance. Their own complacency was getting the better of them, and the battlemaster was about to rain a hell on them that would turn them into the panicking crowd. The batarian absently held up a hand towards its face, appearing to be so bored it was yawning. A pull of the trigger, and there was a hole in the center of the man's four eyes. The dead hulk dropped from the craft, dangling by a flight harness.
It took several seconds for him to line up the next shot. It took three rounds before he put down the next trigger-man. After all, though a trained warrior of Tuchanka, he never fancied himself a crack sniper.
The shuttles were responding now, spot-lights on the turrets beginning to light up rooftops, while the pilots started the lumbering craft moving in a circle around the camp. The krogan put down the sniper rifle and held out a hand. The asari was quicker this time, handing him one of the rocket launchers.
That was a weapon Thrak knew how to use. The tracking rocket followed after one of the two shuttles. The brilliant bloom of flame that followed ensured that any and every batarian in the camp who as not aware of the situation became so. The vessel crashed heavily into one of the buildings, sending up an even greater blaze.
Holding out his hand for the other launcher, Thrak said, "Start up that cannon."
"Why didn't you have me do that first?" she demanded irritably.
A moment later, a spot-light fell on them as the remaining manned-and-armed shuttle came to rest a few dozen meters away from them, turret trained on the pair. Thrak raised his omni-shield just as he launched the rocket at the cockpit of the shuttle. Thrak shuddered, as turret tore into his shield again and again, but Thrak knew it would last. The pilot tried to veer away from the missile, but it was locked-on. The shuttle exploded in a brilliant flame, the shrapnel finally shredding through his omni-shield and leaving him with long gashes on his arms.
The asari cried out in fright.
"That's why," Thrak said, knowing none of the other shuttles had manned turrets.
The cannon activated slowly, the motorized articulation taking aim for one of the two remaining shuttles, even as the firing chamber began to emit a high-pitched whirring sound. Thrak picked the sniper rifle back up. He knew that between the rockets and the arming cannon, many of the batarians would already be preparing to aim for the rooftop, but he figured he had a few seconds. As expected, scoping in on the processing center, he quickly found one of the slavers, likely a newbie, frozen in shock by how horrible of a turn the raid had taken. Without the added protection of his armor, he only took the chance to execute that one man.
The first shot took out the nearest of the two shuttles. Thrak looked up, as the other shuttle began an approach mean to ram the cannon. The now-activated weapon was too quick, though, shooting it down and leaving the vessel crashing down in a nearby alleyway.
The slavers had no doubt hoped to take the weapon as part of the spoils of the raid. The men with heavy weapons would have been waiting to take out the cannon in the early moments of the raid, and the turrets would have been trained on it too, all with enough time to make it work. Now, though, the men on the ground would not have a clear line of sight on the cannon, and there were no turrets or shuttles left to take it out from the air.
Thrak was not phased in the least when the cannon readjusted and fired off numerous shots in quick succession. He knew that, somewhere in orbit, the slaver's ship was being disintegrated by the cannon's heavy slugs. The crew would be lucky to even have time to make it to escape pods.
He knew most of the remaining batarians would be rushing into the building, and there were nineteen to go. Looking to the asari, he added, "Don't put yourself at risk, but use that rifle to take out a few more if you can."
She was shaking her head vigorously. "I've never even fired a gun before."
Thrak sighed. All on me. "Fine."
Flicking on his omni-shield, he charged down the levels of the structure. He was surprised not to run into any slavers until on the ground floor. What happened next was impossible for him to say, having been gripped more powerfully by the blood rage than he had been in decades. He was unsure if it was the fact that he was just barely recovered from his previous injuries, the increased threat of imminent death that his nakedness represented, or the flesh wounds from the exploding shuttle, but he could barely manage his actions. All he knew was that, as he charged out of the building, he left ten dead batarians behind himself.
Later, he would be awed by the footage the asari managed to capture of him taking on the nine remaining batarians, all of which had abandoned their victims and gathered outside the building, to prevent his escape. They had been spread out, but Thrak managed to either gun down or crush with his hammer eight of the remaining batarians. Between his natural barrier, his omni-shield, and a swiftness of movement he never realized he possessed, he managed to take minimal hits, only a few rounds to his arms and legs.
The final batarian- he assumed the leader- wielded a shotgun and actually managed to bring down all of Thrak's defenses. He even managed to score a direct hit to Thrak's abdomen, severely damaging many of his organs. Leaving behind his weapons, Thrak had headbutted the batarian into a pulpy mass oozing out of twisted scraps of metal before passing out.
It was another week before Thrak woke back up. Apparently, one of the frightened elcor managed to get off a distress call, and the salarian cruiser which responded had more skilled medical personnel than were present at the hospital. He had been told it took five surgeries to remove all the shrapnel and get him back on his feet. None of it sounded familiar to him.
The elcor offered to let him stay with them; it was an offer he refused, just as he refused every reward they suggested, save for that of a modest supply of credits. After all, he had not been contracted for a job. As he saw it, he was just repaying a debt of his own.
Besides, without knowing it, that asari reporter had provided him with a video he would enjoy for years to come. That was a fine reward.
Alarms blared, as he heard a buzzing sound he knew all too well. Batarian slavers often used the outdated classes of shuttles which were quite poor at maintaining stealth. That went along with their preferred style, though, using the panic their arrival caused to throw off the peoples of rural worlds. Against any organized defenses, it would have been suicidal, but unarmed civilians were almost eager to surrender and spare themselves the horrors they had heard of. The batarians never did spare them, though.
Thrak did not consider himself sentimental, but he was damned if he was going to let himself or the people who had saved him suffer. He was out of the bed in a heartbeat. He cursed, as his armor and clothes were nowhere in sight, leaving him with only an ill-fitting elcor gown. Apparently, the commotion he had made to keep his warhammer and Raider by his side had not inclined them towards leaving him with any of the rest of his gear. At least they had left his omni-tool too.
"Well, that sucks," Thrak said, grabbing the hammer in one hand and the shotgun in the other, having nowhere to clip either.
As he made his way out of the room, he was unable to get any sort of cogent response from the staff, too terrified to answer him regarding the location of his armor. He ground his teeth, marching towards, as best he could tell, the front door. He checked his omni-tool, glad to see it was fully-functional.
"Mister! What are you doing?" an asari asked, running up behind him. He recognized her vaguely. It seemed he had heard something about her being a reporter documenting the formation of the new settlement.
"Going to go ask some batarians to kindly leave this place alone," Thrak said.
"Do you really think that will work?" she asked excitedly and turning on the professional-grade camera built into her omni-tool.
"Have you ever ignored the instructions of a bare-assed krogan battlemaster?"
She paused, uncertain of what to say. "Well... I guess not."
"See?"
"Sure... The door's back the other way," she said, seeming unsure how to handle him.
"Take me," Thrak demanded. She rushed off towards the entrance to the small healthcare center.
It did not take too much effort for the krogan to keep up, end they were outdoors in a matter of minutes. The colony was small, only a few hundred meters across- certainly less than a kilometer. Buildings were spaced close together, reflecting the close relationships elcor preferred. It was well-lit on the streets, but there were plenty of shadows, the elcor being a trusting race. The illumination was only really meant to drive off natural predators.
Thrak took stock of the situation, seeing four of the shuttles hovering around the perimeter of the settlement, each with a man on the vessel's sole weapon- a mounted turret. He knew from his own experience in mercenary circles that each shuttle would have dropped an eight man team. Thirty two men might have seemed insufficient to subdue a settlement of hundreds, but against a peaceful people like the elcor, and as heavily armed as the mercs would be, it would be an easy task. The sounds of gunfire shot straight into the air, of non-lethal weapons being used, and of terrified elcor and thriled slavers meant everything was going according to plan.
At least, it might have been if the krogan were not present.
He took to the shadows immediately. Normally, krogan were not creatures of stealth on a battlefield, but a sole asari and krogan could easily evade the notice of a group looking solely for elcor. It did not take him long to see the first two batarians herding a family of elcor towards the center of the settlement, where fences would be erected and processing of the soon-to-be slaves would occur. One used a neural shock built into his omni-tool and the other was using biotic lashes, taking sadistic pleasure in motivating the creatures.
Without his armor, only deep breathing and a soft thudding of his feet could be heard as he rushed towards the unsuspecting slavers. Were they true professionals, they would have known to stand further than the one meter apart which they did. Instead, he powered his biotic hammer and took off both of their heads with a single swing.
Before the elcor could speak, Thrak said, "Keep moving towards the center of the settlement. You'll be fine. I'll take care of these assholes."
Not waiting for a response, he stripped a sniper rifle from one of the batarians and threw it to the waiting asari. He quickly grabbed the bodies, dragging them into the shadows before anyone was the wiser.
Thrak repeated the procedure several more times, circling the perimeter of the settlement and drawing ever further in. Twice, he managed to scavenge rocket launchers from the corpses, which he promptly handed off to the asari. A couple times, he heard the turrets open up on fleeing elcor, and he cursed the lumbering beasts he had saved for not heeding his instructions. It could not be helped, though. There were always casualties in such circumstances.
Near the center of the settlement, where the slavers were setting up their processing area, Thrak finally stopped at one of the few three-story buildings. It was the sole surface-to-air defense cannon at the settlement. The slavers were down to twenty-four individuals on the ground, and they certainly realized something was amiss by then. He quickly ran up the stairs of the building. On the third floor, he unexpectedly found himself staring at four more of the slavers. These saw him and had time to react, but they hesitated at the unbelievable sight of a completely nude krogan armed with a shotgun and warhammer. That was their mistake.
Thrak charged straight into their midsts, forgoing his omni-shield for pure offense. One shotgun blast with his Raider at point-blank range eviscerated one of the flanking slavers. A spinning swing with his hammer took out the two in the center. As he finished his spin, he unloaded his other shot into the remaining man. Less than five seconds had passed, and they were all dead.
"That was amazing," the asari said, in awe. She had been recording every second, the idea of helping him never seeming to cross her mind.
"Heh," he said, "you haven't seen anything yet."
Twenty.
Thrak climbed up, onto the roof of the building. The batarians still were not paying attention to things like rooftops, knowing elcor, unlike other species, had no chance of hiding on roofs or escaping rooftop to rooftop. That suited him just fine. When he held out his hand, it took a few seconds for the asari to realize he meant for her to give him the sniper rifle.
Thrak lined up the shot for the first batarian on a turret. It was funny to him. If these mercs had attacked an asari, turian, or likely even a volus colony, Thrak never would have stood a chance. Their own complacency was getting the better of them, and the battlemaster was about to rain a hell on them that would turn them into the panicking crowd. The batarian absently held up a hand towards its face, appearing to be so bored it was yawning. A pull of the trigger, and there was a hole in the center of the man's four eyes. The dead hulk dropped from the craft, dangling by a flight harness.
It took several seconds for him to line up the next shot. It took three rounds before he put down the next trigger-man. After all, though a trained warrior of Tuchanka, he never fancied himself a crack sniper.
The shuttles were responding now, spot-lights on the turrets beginning to light up rooftops, while the pilots started the lumbering craft moving in a circle around the camp. The krogan put down the sniper rifle and held out a hand. The asari was quicker this time, handing him one of the rocket launchers.
That was a weapon Thrak knew how to use. The tracking rocket followed after one of the two shuttles. The brilliant bloom of flame that followed ensured that any and every batarian in the camp who as not aware of the situation became so. The vessel crashed heavily into one of the buildings, sending up an even greater blaze.
Holding out his hand for the other launcher, Thrak said, "Start up that cannon."
"Why didn't you have me do that first?" she demanded irritably.
A moment later, a spot-light fell on them as the remaining manned-and-armed shuttle came to rest a few dozen meters away from them, turret trained on the pair. Thrak raised his omni-shield just as he launched the rocket at the cockpit of the shuttle. Thrak shuddered, as turret tore into his shield again and again, but Thrak knew it would last. The pilot tried to veer away from the missile, but it was locked-on. The shuttle exploded in a brilliant flame, the shrapnel finally shredding through his omni-shield and leaving him with long gashes on his arms.
The asari cried out in fright.
"That's why," Thrak said, knowing none of the other shuttles had manned turrets.
The cannon activated slowly, the motorized articulation taking aim for one of the two remaining shuttles, even as the firing chamber began to emit a high-pitched whirring sound. Thrak picked the sniper rifle back up. He knew that between the rockets and the arming cannon, many of the batarians would already be preparing to aim for the rooftop, but he figured he had a few seconds. As expected, scoping in on the processing center, he quickly found one of the slavers, likely a newbie, frozen in shock by how horrible of a turn the raid had taken. Without the added protection of his armor, he only took the chance to execute that one man.
The first shot took out the nearest of the two shuttles. Thrak looked up, as the other shuttle began an approach mean to ram the cannon. The now-activated weapon was too quick, though, shooting it down and leaving the vessel crashing down in a nearby alleyway.
The slavers had no doubt hoped to take the weapon as part of the spoils of the raid. The men with heavy weapons would have been waiting to take out the cannon in the early moments of the raid, and the turrets would have been trained on it too, all with enough time to make it work. Now, though, the men on the ground would not have a clear line of sight on the cannon, and there were no turrets or shuttles left to take it out from the air.
Thrak was not phased in the least when the cannon readjusted and fired off numerous shots in quick succession. He knew that, somewhere in orbit, the slaver's ship was being disintegrated by the cannon's heavy slugs. The crew would be lucky to even have time to make it to escape pods.
He knew most of the remaining batarians would be rushing into the building, and there were nineteen to go. Looking to the asari, he added, "Don't put yourself at risk, but use that rifle to take out a few more if you can."
She was shaking her head vigorously. "I've never even fired a gun before."
Thrak sighed. All on me. "Fine."
Flicking on his omni-shield, he charged down the levels of the structure. He was surprised not to run into any slavers until on the ground floor. What happened next was impossible for him to say, having been gripped more powerfully by the blood rage than he had been in decades. He was unsure if it was the fact that he was just barely recovered from his previous injuries, the increased threat of imminent death that his nakedness represented, or the flesh wounds from the exploding shuttle, but he could barely manage his actions. All he knew was that, as he charged out of the building, he left ten dead batarians behind himself.
Later, he would be awed by the footage the asari managed to capture of him taking on the nine remaining batarians, all of which had abandoned their victims and gathered outside the building, to prevent his escape. They had been spread out, but Thrak managed to either gun down or crush with his hammer eight of the remaining batarians. Between his natural barrier, his omni-shield, and a swiftness of movement he never realized he possessed, he managed to take minimal hits, only a few rounds to his arms and legs.
The final batarian- he assumed the leader- wielded a shotgun and actually managed to bring down all of Thrak's defenses. He even managed to score a direct hit to Thrak's abdomen, severely damaging many of his organs. Leaving behind his weapons, Thrak had headbutted the batarian into a pulpy mass oozing out of twisted scraps of metal before passing out.
It was another week before Thrak woke back up. Apparently, one of the frightened elcor managed to get off a distress call, and the salarian cruiser which responded had more skilled medical personnel than were present at the hospital. He had been told it took five surgeries to remove all the shrapnel and get him back on his feet. None of it sounded familiar to him.
The elcor offered to let him stay with them; it was an offer he refused, just as he refused every reward they suggested, save for that of a modest supply of credits. After all, he had not been contracted for a job. As he saw it, he was just repaying a debt of his own.
Besides, without knowing it, that asari reporter had provided him with a video he would enjoy for years to come. That was a fine reward.