Oriana stared at her sister in horror, brain racing at the implications. What the fuck. No, seriously, what the fuck. She got so lost in trying to figure out what to do with the new information, that Shepard apparently got impatient and leaned forward.

“Okay, try that again. Why the fuck are the Yang involved? They are a pre-space civilization. By the Reapers’ own policies, they should have been left alone. That’s the whole reason everyone withdrew the monitoring sats and observation stations there.”

Miranda sighed and ran a hand through her hair in a harassed gesture.

“That’s what everyone believed, right up until converted Yang started showing up on the battlefield. At first, the Think-Tank thought it was seeing the introduction of the Brutes from Ori’s first go around. But when the Salarian’s dug into the genetic material, and discovered they were actually converted Yang. A stealthed survery team went to Parnack and discovered it’s been overrun by Reapers. Best guess currently is that, since the Yang were extremely close to achieving Space Flight on their own, even having sent up a few test rockets, that the Reapers decided that was ‘close enough’ when they were in need of a more dangerous infantry unit.”

Oriana flinched at that, then sighed and added her own thoughts, now that she’d had a minute to process.

“It might be our fault, twice over. Thrice over, even. We hurt the Reapers badly in the opening round, they’ve been having trouble on the ground from the start, and there’s been no sign at all of Banshee units. Brutes didn’t appear until some time into the conflict, my first time around. With the Reapers actually struggling and deprived of the easy elites of the Banshees, they went shopping elsewhere for a solution. The fact that they haven’t been able to take many Krogan due to the way they’ve gone underground on Tuchanka might also contribute.”

Shepard made a face at that. Tuchanka had been a problem they’d known about. Even with the partial cure to the Genophage given to Wrex, allowing him to rally his people to him…there hadn’t been enough time to do all that much with that cure. There were a lot of Krogan children around now. But even as comparatively fast as Krogan children grew up, none of them would be battlefield ready for several more years. Which means that the cure had, if anything, locked more of the Krogan population down in dealing with a sudden baby boom. A baby boom which was proving itself more than a little chaotic. The Krogan hadn’t exactly had a lot of experience with too many children being underfoot recently.

That didn’t mean they weren’t contributing to the war effort. Krogan males, at this point, were practically begging to be sent to the front lines instead of having to help care for a dozen kids. Several elite battalions of them were deployed all over, in various ground operations, and were proving just as effective as they always had been. But the Krogan’s need to expand their civilian infrastructure had limited what they could do for Tuchanka’s defenses. Not to mention what percentage of their population the Krogan could spare for action elsewhere. The solution for the planet itself had been simple enough. Tuchanka was already a radioactive wasteland with few above ground cities…and a metric ton of old underground fortifications, mostly left over from their pre-uplift civilization.

Rather than attempt to defend the planet surface, the entire population had gone underground, heavily reinforcing those already formidable bunkers into interconnected city-states. The Reapers space-superiority meant almost nothing when there was nothing to bombard from orbit. Worse for the Reapers, their ground forces were hilariously ineffective trying to fight close-quarters, underground and in relatively tight spaces, against thoroughly prepared Krogan. A small number of the same miniature relays given to Kar’shan were present for Tuchanka. Less of them, by far, but more than enough for what the Krogan actually needed in the way of supplies and people movement.

On the downside, it would be years before Tuchanka could really spare more fighters than they already were. On the plus side…the fighters that were available were all elites, the less experienced Krogan having been forced to stay home, where the tunnel fighting gave them an insurmountable edge against the invaders. Also on the plus side, this meant that the attrition rate for their Krogan veterans was actually pretty low, compared to virtually any of their other forces. And that low rate of attrition, as well as their inability to crack the defenses of those underground cities on the Krogan homeworld, meant that the Reapers had been almost completely denied Krogan bodies to work with. Since the original Brutes had been an amalgam of Krogan and Turian genetic material, it was entirely possible the Reapers would never manage to make them at all.

Pity they’d replaced them with the Yang.

Ugh.

“So…what can be do about it?”

Miranda looked uncomfortable at Shepard’s question, enough so that Oriana sighed and took the reins. It was pretty obvious to her what the Think-Tank and High Command would have decided on.

“The only options we really have are to either wipe the Yang out ourselves, or else use the harvesting stations there as a lodestone to force the Reapers into actually defending a location. One of their biggest advantages so far is that they usually don’t need to defend anything. It’s also one of their biggest weaknesses. Since, frankly, they suck at it. They aren’t used to thinking in any other direction than ‘attack.’”

Mirana nodded and added the official line.

“The Think-Tank debated both options and recommended the latter option to High Command. Who gave their stamp of approval as well. At least until such a time as the Reapers actually learn how to defend properly, repeatedly running strikes on the harvesting plants there will allow us to kill a few Reapers, slow down their deployment of the new Brutes, and possible even save a tithe of the Yang in the long run.”

Shepard looked like she desperately wanted to protest, but couldn’t. Oriana didn’t have the heart to tell her that, if the Reapers got stupid and concentrated enough of their fleet at Parnack, the powers that be would probably blow the relay to wipe out another chunk of Reapers. The Yang were so inherently, biologically violent that the Council had long been quietly interfering with their ability to achieve Space Flight. They wouldn’t commit genocide casually, there was always the hope of a species growing beyond blind violence. But if it was between trying to salvage a violently aggressive species that had long worried the Council and wiping out another 1% of the Reapers’ total numbers? Frankly, Oriana wouldn’t even protest the choice. She wouldn’t like looking herself in the mirror afterward, but she’d already done enough horrible things trying to save the galaxy, that she already might never be able to do that without pain again anyway. Shaking off that maudlin thought, she directed her next question at her sister.

“I assume since you’re bringing this to us, Command wants to assign us to a first strike?”

Mirana, visibly relieved to leave the uncomfortable portion of the conversation behind, nodded and tapped her omni-tool. Files transferred the War Room holotable and it lit up with an image of the Parnack system and everything they knew about it, past and present.

“Yes. We don’t think the Reapers have any idea we managed to probe the system, but that just means we want to plan the most effective first-strike we can. It’s exactly the sort of Special Op that you and Shepard are best used for. Maximum destruction, while using the minimum number of resources required. The primary target is their main harvesting facility here,” a city with an obvious heavy Reaper presence was highlighted on Parnack’s northern continent. “But any additional damage that can be done, either to the secondary Harvesting locations or the Reaper’s themselves, is obviously desirable. Command has included a list of assets for this task, and will consider any reasonable request for more seriously. So long as you don’t ask for much in the way of Fleet assets, they’ll probably grant almost anything.”

Oriana leaned forward, studying not the planet, but the few Reaper fleet assets in orbit or patrolling the system.

“I think I already have an idea…”