The Price of Revenge

Sorya was the kind of planet you like looking at pictures of, but being here kinda sucks unless you're in a sealed suit of power armor. How the hell 148,000,000 people live on a planet damn set on covering everything with fungus I will never know. The amount the population must spend on respiratory treatments has to take a big chunk out of however much they make digging up the various resources of this rich world.

Interestingly enough the Blue Suns mercenary gang run this world. The various corporations that settled on Sorya all pay the Blue Suns for security, and they obviously run a tight enough ship that no one tries to buck the system. Too bad for them Zaeed, Jack, and I landed in the jungle outside a foundry run directly by the "Co-Executive Officer" of the Blue Suns.

I didn't miss the irony that Vido launched a coup and very nearly assassinated my pal Zaeed over the issue of hiring batarians, and later had to surrender de facto leadership of the gang to one of those batarians landing him right back where he started, just with the blood of his partner on his hands and a bunch of terrorist scumbags working for him.

Normally we would sortie with the entire ground team, but not now. Zaeed refused to let the high road be taken on this mission, and so he demanded that only Jack and I come with him. Shepard only pushed back with token resistance. It was good that the Space Momma wasn't coming with us, the foundry was built of matchsticks and gasoline and luck, and luck ran out the moment our boots hit the gross spongy jungle soil.

I sparked up my Fortification, Tech Armor, and Devastator Mode abilities, absolutely humming with lethal power and Zaeed and Jack joined me in sparking up their own Tech Armor. I finally convinced the man to shell out and up his armor to full coverage and start running with the holographic protection. It's not like they had any tech abilities that the added protection would interfere with. Hell, the technomancy actually increased Jack's biotic damage. For a steep credit investment the quarian kid and I hooked Zaeed and Jack up with a strong enough power supply and the emitters to run both tech armor and whatever ammo mutation struck their fancy.

Armed to the teeth, we started our trek through the jungle. Zaeed tapped into the Blue Sun communications, giving us the heads up that our drop off was spotted and that the mercs were sweeping the jungle for us. It wouldn't be hard to spot the glowing orange trio approaching.

We found leavings from an execution not far from our first contact with the enemy. The Suns didn't need to prove they were heartless bastards to make us feel good about killing them all, we'd have done that gratis with a grin.

Turns out that supersizing and supercharging a Revenant Machine Gun has explosive results. Every missed shot tore up dirt and foliage like a rock saw trencher and the rounds that hit tore people to pieces. Blowing people in half with my machine gun was pretty dope.

Zaeed used the opportunity of me pinning everyone with an ounce of self preservation down to find good positions to engage the enemy with his sniper rifle augmented with disruptor ammo to tear through the shielding common among the well off mercenaries.

Jack just had fun throwing people around with her mind, a woman of simple pleasures.

As we were extending a retractable bridge to cross a ravine separating us from our target, Zaeed's comm unit alerted us to the enemy amassing in the courtyard of the foundry.

"You want me to blow this Vido ass away?" I asked the veteran merc with a massive axe to grind.

"Absolutely not." Zaeed denied, "I want Vido to fucking suffer."

"I can make that happen old timer." Jack offered.

"No doubt, ya crazy bitch." Zaeed shook his head, "Just let me handle the guy myself. Every other free range asshole is open season."

We didn't encounter any resistance till we opened the gate to the courtyard and found Vido and his goons camped out on the second level pointing their guns at us.

Oh no, they have the high ground.

I couldn't help but belly laugh.

"You think something is funny, cunt?" the trumped up accountant shouted at me.

I tried to answer, but broke out in even more laughter every time I tried.

"I'll tell you what's funny you fucking dipshit!" Zaeed yelled, "It's you thinking you can stop us with so few men!"

Zaeed started the shootout by clipping the gas lines that ran along the second level, and his next volley set them off, killing the guys next to it and knocking the rest off their asses, giving Zaeed the time to easily make it over to some cover before they started shooting back at us. I signaled Jack to cool her heels behind me while Zaeed started wailing on a valve, his strikes eventually causing a chain reaction that killed all the ass hats on the second level - but not Vido as the prick started fleeing the moment he got up from the initial blast - and opened up the next gate giving us proper access to the facility, a facility completely on fire.

Remember when I said they built this place out of matchsticks and gasoline?

Some rando civie came out screaming about how they couldn't get to the shut off valves and how we needed to help or all the workers would die. Did we look like fucking firefighters? We took off in pursuit of Vido without any need for conversation while the guy screamed, 'No! No!' until an explosion took him out.

Apparently the Blue Suns have a killer life insurance policy, because they kept throwing themselves into the meat grinder in a burning building. It was honestly a little overwhelming how many of them kept coming out of every nook and cranny as we moved across the foundry.

In what some might call a moment of full retard, I popped an overload on a folded up YMIR mech place between us and our target and just started shooting it with a fresh clip from my machine gun, advancing forward into it's own machine gun fire. By the time I got into its face I'd shot its gun arm off and the whole unit was smoking and sparking something fierce.

With a grin I got behind it as it tried turning to keep me in its line of sights on its battered servos. I launched a front kick to its chassis while screaming "I AM KROGAN!" sending the big mech over the guard rail and down the thirty foot drop into the basement level below.

"That was pretty badass, kid." Zaeed told me as we exited the burning building and saw Vido limping to the off site helipad, "Now watch the master at work."

Zaeed got Vido's attention with a shot across the bow, then shot the dickhead in the thigh preventing his escape. Vido collapsed onto the pavement, his blood mixing with all the spilled fuel leaking from a poorly maintained tank. He begged for his life offering anything Zaeed wanted to spare him.

"I want you to burn." Zaeed growled while ejecting his heated up thermal clip and tossing it onto the shining fuel which lit up in a blazing ring that consumed Vido as our guy turned and walked away, not even thinking to look at the explosion.

"He is so fucking cool." I whispered to Jack.

"Fuck yeah he is." she whispered back.

My girl just fucking gets me, man.