– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?
1st of January, 2179 CE
The coat settled over his shoulders smooth, clean, sharp enough to carry weight but not enough to feel like a damn costume. Blue synth-leather with black accents, tailored to move, to look effortless. Zedd adjusted the collar in the mirror, fingers tracing the seams by instinct. Everything had to sit right.
Had to be right.
First impressions mattered. More than they should. More than he wanted them to.
Professional. The kind of professional that made people forget he was barely eighteen, that turned a kid with a reputation into someone worth listening to.
A soft noise from behind pulled his attention. Nina shifted under his sheets, hair spilling over the pillow, curls a tangled mess that had no business looking that good. Her eyes, half-lidded, found his in the mirror.
"Where you goin'?" The words barely held together, voice thick with with sleep, vowels slipping soft, lazy. Her hand reached, searching for where he should've been.
Zedd turned and walked back. With a smile, he leanded down to brush his fingers through her hair, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Go back to sleep, babe. Just handling work."
Her fingers curled in his sleeve for a second before letting go. "The krogan thing?"
"Yeah," he said, softer now. "The krogan thing."
She hummed something noncommittal, already drifting back.
Zedd lingered, watching her settle into his sheets like she belonged there. Five days now, her clothes mixing with his, her coffee cup sitting in his kitchen like it had always been there, her scent wrapped into his space like it had no intention of leaving. Something warm curled tight in his chest.
Then he straightened, carefully adjusted his cuffs, and pushed that warmth aside. The Thunder Hammer waited downstairs. Time for business.
----------------
The morning hit like a slap, light cutting sharp across Providence's landing pad. Below, the ocean stretched out, endless and empty. Zedd's fingers tapped against the Thunder Hammer's case, his omni-tool running diagnostics he didn't need to check. Fifty-three hours of work. He already knew it was perfect.
The proximity alerts lit up like the Christmas day it no longer was—Wrex's ship hitting atmosphere right on schedule.
Then another ping: ground transport. Local.
Shit.
Zedd's eyes went skyward in another direction as the sound of humming engines came his way, a sleek white shuttle moving with speed and smoothness that spoke of the amount of money that it was probably bought for.
The transport dropped onto his pad like it owned the place—which, technically, it did. All clean lines and automated precision, the kind of tech that screamed 'Earth money.' The door hissed open, and—Yeah, of course.
The man looked exactly like a trust fund kid who'd decided to get his hands dirty for fun. Too polished to belong out here, but just weathered enough to fake it. His jacket probably cost more than Zedd's first shop, but the scuffs on the sleeves were real. His features were too perfect, sculpted by the best gene-mods credits could buy, but the frontier suns had left their mark—just enough to make him look lived-in instead of preserved. Taiwanese roots showed in the high cheekbones, smooth golden undertone to his skin, but his hair; jet black with a cultivated streak of silver at the temples, was pure, deliberate aesthetic. Not styled, just effortlessly arranged in that way that only came with expensive maintenance.
Behind him, Martinez was already resting a hand on her sidearm, like that would do anything against a near half-ton biotic demon king like Wrex. Chen stood beside her, datapad in hand, probably pre-writing the paperwork for whatever came next.
Zedd didn't move, past a tilt of his head.
Shen-Abraham's gaze cut to him, taking in the hammer case, the landing pad, the lingering defense grid alerts still pulsing in his HUD. His smile was easy, warm, the kind built in boardrooms and polished over decades. His voice matched. "Zedd."
Smooth, practiced. Warmth in the tone, but not in the eyes. "Care to explain why my defense grid is lighting up like a Holiday tree?"
The way he said my defense grid landed exactly the way he meant it to. A reminder. But Zedd wasn't about to get hung up on it. The guy had given him a house, more money than he'd ever seen—even if I did put 80% of that five million credits straight into the company—and carved out a whole consultant position just to keep him around. Shen-Abraham played the long game, always moving pieces on the board before anyone else even saw the strategy. The kind of man who never made investments he didn't expect a return on.
Zedd kept his face neutral, his smile professional. "Business meeting, Governor. Nothing to worry about."
Martinez shifted at his side, her fingers twitching against her holster like she was itching for an excuse to use it. "A business meeting," she repeated, slow, clipped. "With a frigate registered as belonging to a Krogan merc."
Yeah, like that was going to get an actual explanation. Like they'd get it if he did. His eyes flicked to Shen-Abraham, who was studying him now, expression smooth but eyes sharp, that particular brand of interested Zedd had come to recognize as someone trying to put him together in real time.
"Yes." He kept his voice flat, forcing the tick in his jaw to stay locked in place. "And you might want to tell your defense grid to stand down. Urdnot Wrex doesn't appreciate an unfriendly welcome."
Shen-Abraham's mouth twitched. His eyes almost narrowed, something between amusement and calculation playing at the edges. His hands settled behind his back, casual but deliberate, the same way every movement of his was. "Urdnot Wrex." He rolled the name out like he was weighing it, like he was already running through the possible outcomes in his head. "The Battlemaster."
Zedd smiled back, only a little mocking. "You've heard of him?"
Chen cleared his throat, datapad scratching away. "Governor, section 47 of colonial—"
"James." Shen-Abraham didn't look away from Zedd. His voice lost a fraction of its polish, just for a second. "Not now."
The air tightened. Martinez's hand hadn't moved. Chen's datapad kept scratching. But Shen-Abraham just kept watching, head tilting slightly, putting Zedd under the kind of pressure that didn't need raised voices or threats to be effective. He wasn't even pretending anymore. The trust-fund-kid-turned-frontier-governor wasn't just an act, which somehow made him even more annoying.
Then the sky cracked.
Zedd barely had a second to brace before the sonic boom slammed through his chest, rattling in his bones, setting off every half-functioning defense grid system in a hundred-mile radius. His omni-tool lit up with warnings, blaring proximity alerts screaming about unauthorized alien vessels breaching atmosphere.
He didn't even have to look up to know who it was.
But he did anyway.
The dropship cut through the morning haze like a sledgehammer through glass, bigger and bulkier than anything humans would design. Krogan engineering at its most direct—no stealth, no finesse, no subtlety. Just presence and heft.
The kind of ship that announced itself, because it had never, not once, had a single reason to hide. Scarred hull, battle-worn plating, modifications stacked over modifications, a long history of taking hits and surviving them, the heavy frigate stood out. Zedd's fingers twitched against the Thunder Hammer's case, already breaking down the systems in his head. Those weren't standard configurations. The weapon mounts, the additional shielding, the reinforced forward plating—this was a warship built by someone who expected to be outnumbered.
And expected to win anyway.
Shen-Abraham's gaze tracked it, calculated warmth slipping just enough for Zedd to catch the flicker of something real behind it. Something that was at least 50% concern. The man was already moving the pieces in his head, shifting priorities, recalculating.
"I assume," Shen-Abraham said, smooth and careful, the kind of tone that handled crises over breakfast, "this demonstration of yours won't be adding to my infrastructure budget?"
Zedd's mouth twitched, well aware of how much he'd wrecked in New Abraham and the issue of clearing out some of his… surprises.. "Nah. Just testing over water." His fingers drummed against the Thunder Hammer's case. "Unless you'd prefer a land target."
Martinez muttered something that might have been a prayer. Chen's datapad scratching intensified, a furious rhythm of bureaucratic panic. But Shen-Abraham—he actually laughed, short and sharp and real.
"Mr. Victors," he said, his polished accent wrapping around Zedd's last name like they were old friends, "you do keep things interesting."
The ship dropped, closing the distance, casting a long shadow over the cliff face. The engines roared, mass effect fields washing over them in a static hum, heavy enough that Zedd's omni-tool buzzed with at least fifty different alerts. The landing gear hit with enough force to shake the ground beneath his feet.
Then the ramp descended, slow and heavily.
And there he was.
Urdnot Wrex filled the doorway like he owned it, like gravity had to work harder just to hold him down. His armor, blood-red and battle-scarred, caught the light in jagged reflections, worn by time and war, the kind of damage that wasn't just from fights but history. Every scrape and burn a marker of something that had tried and failed to kill him. Some of those old plasma scorches looked ancient enough to have been from the Krogan Rebellions, or maybe even before.
Zedd's breath stilled.
Seeing a krogan on a screen was one thing. Being in front of one, standing close enough to feel the weight of their presence, was another. There was something about them that felt like a threat, a slow, unspoken certainty that every movement was a choice. The part of him that belonged to the 21st century wanted to run immediately, the primal part of his brain that felt like standing within sight of a polar bear was bad news ringing loud and clear.
One massive hand rested lazily on the shotgun strapped to his back. The thing looked old enough to be an heirloom, if krogan believed in passing things down instead of taking them.
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Wrex's eyes swept across the gathered humans with a kind of lazy dismissal before settling on Zedd.
Jesus. Zedd barely kept the word from leaving his lips. His fingers flexed, resisting the urge to adjust his stance.
The Battlemaster's voice hit like distant artillery, low and slow, every word weighted like he was deciding if it was even worth saying. His Krogan accent curled the words just slightly, a growl at the edges.
"Whelp." His gaze dragged down to the case at Zedd's side. "Show me what you've built."
Martinez moved before she even realized it, weight shifting just slightly, but Zedd had already set the case down. Fast. Precise. The click of the latches felt too loud, or maybe that was just in his head.
Then the lid lifted.
The Thunder Hammer Mk 1.
Sleek. Heavy. Engineered destruction, compacted into something that felt inevitable. No wasted space, no useless flair—pure function, honed to the edge of physics itself. The composite plating caught the light, black and red, every line exactly where it needed to be. The mass effect cores pulsed in a slow, steady rhythm, like it was breathing.
He barely realized he was speaking until the words were already there. "Triple-stacked mass effect cores. Primary handles mass manipulation, secondary stabilizes field harmonics, tertiary directs impact distribution. Grip's got neural feedback sensors, tracks muscle tension, predicts movement patterns. Adjusts as you fight, learns your rhythm. Feels natural, like an extension of—"
"It won't snap my arm in half." Wrex's voice rumbled through the landing pad like distant thunder. Grinning. Too many teeth.
Zedd didn't bother hiding the smirk. "Yeah. That."
The Battlemaster reached for the handle, slow, deliberate. Not hesitant, just sure. The kind of certainty that came from centuries of knowing exactly how much force his body could take. His fingers wrapped around the grip, and—
Damn.
The hammer fit. Not just in a physical sense, but like Wrex had already been wielding it for years. Like it had always belonged to him.
"The internal dampenin-" Zedd started, but Wrex had already lifted it, rolling the weight between his hands, testing the balance like it was second nature. Fitting, considering Wrex was probably old enough to be the Krogan who probably invented the concept of hitting things even harder.
"Feels right," Wrex muttered. A shift in grip. A tiny recalibration. His body adjusting the same way the hammer adjusted to him. His eyes flicked up, locking onto Zedd's. Ancient. Calculating. "You built this for me." Not a question. A statement. A fact. "Not just for any Krogan. For me."
Zedd exhaled. Sharp. Steady. "Studied your combat footage," he answered calmly, unable to help the wide smile growing across his face as he answered the non-question. "The way you move, the way you fight. Built it for your style, not just Krogan physics."
A long silence. Wrex's grip flexed around the handle.
Then he laughed, the sound deep, booming, like a war drum rolling over the pad. Martinez twitched. Chen outright flinched.
But Shen-Abraham? He just watched. Head tilted, reading something no one else could see.
"Finally," Wrex said, his fingers tightening over the grip. The moment stretched. Then, almost lazily— "Let's see what it can do."
The hammer came alive.
A deep, resonant hum, mass effect fields locking into perfect sync. The sound wasn't just mechanical. It was heavier than that. Bigger. Like hearing gravity shift in real-time. Zedd's omni-tool lit up with readings, numbers rolling in faster than his brain could process. Every metric hit exactly where it should.
"Power output's scalable," Zedd said, already tracking the changes as the Krogan warlord shifted his grip. "Field strength adjusts based on swing velocity, impact angle, user intent. You can tap something soft as a whisper or-"
Wrex moved.
It barely looked like a swing.
The air collapsed.
The sonic boom hit before the sound even registered, a deep concussive crack that rolled through Zedd's bones. The landing pad shook. A solid column of water erupted from the bay below, straight into the sky, thirty meters high, maybe more. Waves rolled outward in perfect circles, the impact zone still churning.
Zedd's omni-tool screamed with data—field harmonics stable, containment holding, every number landing exactly where it should, according to spec.
"Synchronization's locked in, holding," he said, voice even, but his pulse had kicked up despite himself anyway. Not from nerves. From this. Watching something he made work exactly how it was supposed to. "You could swing it all day without—"
Wrex's second strike came faster.
Three more columns of water followed. Perfect impact distribution resulting in clean, measured destruction. Wrex wasn't just hitting things. He was testing. Calculating.
No wasted effort. No wasted movement.
"Recovery time's negligible between strikes," Zedd muttered, barely keeping up with the readouts. "Tertiary core distributes heat, so no field bleedback, no matter how—"
The next swing cut him off. Not because it was louder.
It wasn't.
Wrex pulled the blow at the last second, letting the mass effect fields disperse. The water barely rippled.
Zedd blinked, then his eyes narrowed. A precision test.
"Smart whelp," Wrex rumbled, turning back toward him. There was something new in his expression now. Something heavier. A glint of approval. "But not smart enough."
Then, that scarred mouth pulled out in a grin. Slow. Sharp.
"I'd have paid twice as much."
Zedd felt the corner of his mouth twitch, just a little. "I know." Easy confidence, no hesitation, because it was true. He'd built this huge thing for the challenge as much as the credits. Maybe more. "But I like repeat customers."
Silence stretched, just for a beat. Wrex didn't move, didn't speak. Then, with a single, slow blink, his laugh exploded across the landing pad like a detonation. The sound rolled off the cliffside, bouncing back from the ocean in deep, thunderous echoes. Zedd's omni-tool vibrated once—then again, as his home defense grid threw out proximity alerts.
"I LIKE you, human!" Wrex's grin stretched wide, teeth bared. "Give me a call in twenty years. You'd make a good battle-brother."
The words hit different than they should have. Krogan weren't sentimental, at least not in ways that made sense to humans, but Wrex hadn't said that for show. It wasn't casual. It was a real offer, the kind that carried weight. The kind of thing Zedd had no idea what to do with.
His throat felt tight for half a second.
Before he could think too hard about that, his omni-tool chimed twice, back-to-back.
- 375,000 credits.
- 750,000 credits.
Zedd frowned at the numbers. The hell? The second amount hadn't been part of the deal. A third ping followed, this one a message.
"Good weapons deserve good payment. You'll go far, whelp. -Wrex"
He barely had time to glance up before Wrex, already halfway up the ramp, sent him one last nod. Then he was gone, disappearing into the shadows of his ship like he hadn't just dropped a boulder into Zedd's mental pond. The boarding ramp sealed behind him, the hydraulics locking with a solid clunk.
The ship lifted off with the same raw presence it had landed with—loud, unsubtle, completely unapologetic. The downwash sent dust whipping around Zedd's boots, but he didn't move, just watched as the bulk of it pulled away, engines tilting skyward. The shadow cut across the cliffside, shrinking as it climbed, until it was just another silhouette against the clouds.
Then nothing.
The silence left behind felt bigger than it should have.
Zedd flexed his fingers. That had been… a lot.
"Mr. Victors."
David's voice slid back into the moment like it had never left, controlled but laced with something new. Interest. Calculation. Maybe even approval.
"Perhaps we should discuss your… business ventures."
Zedd turned slowly, dragging his attention back to the present. His eyes skimmed the group—Martinez still looked like she wanted to shoot something, Chen was typing like he was drafting a new legal framework in real time, and David… David just watched him. Curious. Measuring. Probably already ten steps ahead of this conversation.
His hand brushed over his omni-tool, resisting the instinct to check the Mark III schematics again. Later.
For now…
"The weapon's user-locked," he said before anyone could start the lecture he knew was coming his way. "Remote deactivation built-in. Only works with Krogan physiology. Anyone else tries, they'd rip their own arms off before their brain could even process it. Arterial spray'd hit half a mile."
Martinez muttered something that definitely wasn't a prayer this time.
David's eyes stayed on him, that polite corporate expression unreadable. But the silence stretched long enough that Zedd caught something else behind it. Approval? Amusement?
Maybe both.
"Yes," the governor said finally, "I believe you do." His mouth twitched. "Though perhaps next time, a heads-up about the Krogan battleship?"
Zedd's grin felt real. "Where's the fun in that?"
Martinez exhaled hard through her nose. Chen kept writing. David just shook his head, the vague amusement sharpening at the edges.
"Dinner," he said, smooth as ever. "Friday. My place. Bring Ms. Herra." His gaze didn't waver. "I believe we should discuss expanding your consultant position and officially introducing Victory Innovations to the galaxy."
The wind had mostly settled, but the waves below still rippled from the hammer's impact. Zedd glanced back at the sky, then at his omni-tool, then at the vague future taking shape in front of him. His balance had been shifting for a while now, tilting toward something bigger.
More real.
He adjusted his cuffs. "Friday," he said, already running through the adjustments he'd make for the Mark III. Then, because he couldn't resist: "I'll bring wine."