Pel followed the guard and Kahlee down the hall to the room on the far end, then opened the door so they could toss her in. The woman gasped when she saw the two figures lying motionless on the floor.
"Relax, sugar," Pel said with a wink. "They're just unconscious."
The guard shoved her into the room and the door slid shut before she could reply.
"Keep a close eye on the cameras," Pel warned the two guards charged with watching the monitors that showed the inside of each cell. "If either one of those biotics even rolls over in their sleep, you hit them with another dose of the night-night juice. We're not taking any chances with them."
They nodded in acknowledgment, and Pel left them there, heading for his bed on the ground floor. It was already past midnight, and he was ready for some shut-eye.
Of course, he first had to traverse the maddening labyrinth of the building's interior. As if mirroring the streets in the district outside, the warehouse had been constructed as a confusing maze of corridors and stairwells. It was actually necessary to take one flight of stairs down to the ground floor, weave through several alternating left and right turns of branching hallways, then climb up another flight of stairs to a small landing that overlooked the garage, before finally taking a third set of stairs down to the large common room they had converted into a barracks.
"Message came in from Golo awhile ago," Shela, the woman who was his unofficial second in command, told him once he finally reached his destination.
She was sitting on the edge of her cot, removing her boots as she got ready to bed down for the night. Apart from the two guards stationed to keep an eye on the prisoners and the one patrolling the garage, everyone else was already sleeping.
"He have an update on when the Collectors are supposed to show?"
She shook her head. "When I asked he just said they'll come to us when they're ready. He told me we have to be patient."
Sitting down with a weary sigh, he asked, "So why'dhecall?"
"He wanted to warn us. He says there's another quarian who's going to try to sneak into the building tomorrow night. He sent us all the details."
Pel raised an eyebrow in surprise. Golo might be a cowardly, backstabbing, double-dealing little quarian, but he was damned resourceful.
"Okay, we'll set something up to take care of him tomorrow."
"What about the other one down in the basement?" Shela wanted to know.
In all the excitement of Grayson's arrival, Pel had almost forgotten about the quarian pilot they had captured from the Cyniad. They had finally managed to make him give up the info they wanted, but he doubted they'd get much more out of him. Between the torture and the fever from whatever diseases he had contracted when Golo had broken his mask, their quarian prisoner had been reduced to a barely coherent babbling madman. Of course, now that they were breaking off all ties with Cerberus it had all been a waste of time. . though it had allowed Shela to show him some rather interesting new interrogation techniques.
"We've got no use for him now. Put him down in the morning," he said.
"He looked pretty bad last time I saw him," Shela remarked. "I don't think he'll make it until morning."
"Care to put your money where your mouth is?"
"Twenty credits says he doesn't see the sunrise."
"Done."
As Pel leaned over to shake on the wager the entire building was rocked by the sound of multiple shotgun blasts fired in quick succession. The noise came from the floor above them.
Lemm was young, but he wasn't stupid. He knew better than to trust Golo, so after the other quarian had fallen asleep Lemm had snuck out of his apartment and made his way back to the rooftops in the Talon district. He figured there was a fifty-fifty chance Golo was in deeper with the humans than he admitted, and he had no intention of walking into an ambush. The best way to avoid the possibility was to strike a day early. If Golo hadn't tipped off the humans, it made little difference. But if he had alerted them, Lemm would now have the upper hand, as they wouldn't be expecting him until tomorrow.
He moved quickly over the rooftops, blood pumping with adrenaline as he worked his way toward the small two-story building he'd been scouting earlier in the day. Space was precious on Omega, so traveling from one building to the next required little more than a leap of fifteen or twenty feet to cross the empty air between them. Even with his pack full of gear strapped to his back, the greatest danger wasn't that he would fall. Rather, it was the chance he would run into the inhabitants of one of the buildings out to enjoy the night air above the stink of street level. If that happened, the encounter would almost surely end with someone getting shot.
Fortunately, he made it there without running into anyone, rolling to absorb the impact and muffle the sound as he made the final jump from the three-story building beside the warehouse to the rooftop ten feet below.
He got to his feet and paused, listening for sounds that would indicate he'd been spotted. Hearing nothing unusual, he made his way to the edge of the roof, peering down at the large window beneath him.
It was impossible to see through the one-way glass. But he wasn't interested in what lay beyond the window — at least not yet. Instead, he pulled his omnitool from his belt and flipped on the flashlight. The thin beam of soft illumination allowed him to locate the tiny infrared emitters along the outside of the window frame. Adjusting a setting on the omnitool, he used it to tap into the wireless signal, overriding the alarm system.
There was no latch on the window, so Lemm would have to make his own opening. He slung his backpack from his shoulder and set it down on the roof, then rummaged around until he found the glass cutter. The tight-beamed laser sliced through the window with a barely audible, high-pitched whine. He carved off a tiny piece in the upper corner; just large enough for a small video camera on the end of a stiff wire to poke through and look around.
Images from the camera were transmitted back to the readout on his omnitool, allowing him to see what awaited him on the other side. The window was at one end of a corridor. Several doors that looked to be storage rooms lined either side. At the far end was a small table, where a pair of armed guards played cards and cast occasional glances at a bank of monitors resting on the table.
Using the camera magnification, he zoomed in to get a closer look at the images on the monitors. There were six in all: four showed only empty rooms, but one of the rooms had a lone figure huddled in a corner, and another showed three occupants, two lying on the floor and the third sitting between them.
Lemm withdrew the camera quickly; it was obvious the storage rooms had been converted to holding cells, and these guards were in charge of watching their prisoners. There were no police or law enforcement officials on Omega, so that left only one reasonable explanation.
Slavers. And he had a pretty good idea who the slaves were.
Enraged at seeing his fellow quarians caged like animals, Lemm stashed the camera, strapped his pack back over his shoulders, readied his shotgun, then lowered himself down from the rooftop until he was balanced precariously on the window's narrow bottom ledge. He didn't bother to use the glasscutter this time, but simply threw himself forward, relying on the tough fabric of his enviro-suit to protect him from the shards of glass.
His momentum carried him into the corridor, where he hit the floor, tucked into a forward role and came up firing. Neither guard was expecting the attack and he caught them completely unprepared. Most of the first two blasts from his shotgun were deflected by the kinetic shields in their combat suits, keeping them alive just long enough to jump to their feet. But the third and fourth blasts killed the men before they had a chance to draw their weapons, hurtling their bodies back with such force that they slammed into the table, sending the monitors crashing to the floor.
Knowing he had to work fast, Lemm turned his attention to the cells. Four of them stood empty, doors open. He slapped his hand against the access panel of the nearest closed door, hoping it wasn't protected by a security code. To his relief it slid open, revealing the room with the three figures inside. And that's when Lemm realized he'd made a horrible mistake.
They weren't quarians at all — the prisoners were human! A man and two women. No, his mind corrected: a man, a woman, and a girl. The woman sprang to her feet when she saw him, but the others didn't move. To his great surprise, Lemm thought he recognized her.
"Are you Kahlee Sanders?"
She nodded quickly. "Who are you?"
"Not now," he told her, his mind casting back to the achitectural plans he had memorized. "We only have a minute or so until reinforcements get here. Come on."
"I can't leave them," she said, nodding to the two on the ground.
The girl was small enough that she could be carried, but the other one was far bigger than either Lemm or Kahlee. He rushed over to the man's side and dropped to one knee, scanning him quickly with his omnitool.
"I think I can wake him up," he said. "Grab the guns from the guards outside and let your friend out of the other cell."
"Leave him behind," she said, her voice dripping with venom. "He's one of them."
Lemm pulled a booster shot from his pack and administered it to the unconscious man as Kahlee disappeared into the hall. By the time she returned with the guards' assault rifles, the man was moaning and trying to sit up.
"Help me get him to his feet."
Kahlee set the weapons down and came over. Together they managed to lift the big man off the ground. To Lemm's relief, he was actually able to stand on his own.
"What's his name?"
"Hendel."
"Hendel!" he shouted, hoping to penetrate the narcotics that were still clouding his mind. "My name is Lemm! We're going to get you out of here! Do you understand?"
The big man nodded, though the action caused him to sway on his feet. Lemm realized that even if he woke the girl, she probably wouldn't be strong enough to walk for a good twenty minutes.
"We'll move quicker if I just carry the little one," Lemm said.
Kahlee nodded, and the quarian adjusted his backpack, bent down, and scooped the girl up with his left arm, carrying her over his shoulder like a sack of flour. She was heavier than she looked, and even with his right hand free and the weight of his pack offsetting the load, he knew it was going to be tough for him to carry her and still shoot effectively.
"Did the Alliance teach you how to handle one of those?" he asked Kahlee, tilting his head toward the assault rifles on the ground.
She nodded and bent to pick them up. "How did you know I was in the Alliance?"
"Later," he answered. "We need to move."
Kahlee handed one of the weapons to Hendel, but it slipped through his hands and clattered to the floor.
"Forget it," Lemm said. He couldn't bit the broadside of a building right now anyway. "Follow me!" he added, shouting in the hopes the drugged man would respond to his voice.
He led them through the twisting hallways, knowing their best chance was to get to one of the vehicles in the garage. Unfortunately, the enemy probably knew that, too.
When he reached the stairs leading down to the
ground floor, he cast a quick peek behind him. Hen-del was keeping up, thanks in part to Kahlee half pulling, half carrying him along. With the girl still draped over his shoulder, the four of them stumbled awkwardly down the stairs, across a small landing and into the garage. Various containers and shipping crates of all sizes were piled haphazardly about the room; perfect cover for any guards waiting to ambush them.
"Over there," Kahlee said, pointing to a pile of metal boxes stacked in the corner of the far wall. "You three make a run for it. I'll lay down some covering fire."
Lemm nodded and took off, moving as quickly as possible while carrying his awkward load. For a brief moment he was aware of Hendel lumbering after him, and then movement on the other side of the room drew his attention.
A woman popped up from behind one of the crates, taking a bead on him. He realized with horror that while his kinetic shields gave him some protection, the girl and Hendel were completely vulnerable. Before the woman managed to get off a shot, however, Kahlee let loose with a spray of bullets that forced her to duck back down again.
From the corner of his eye, Lemm saw a man half-hidden in the boxes off to the right. The human fired his pistol as they ran by less than a dozen feet away, concentrating his fire on Lemm rather than taking aim at Hendel or the girl. The quarian retaliated with a pair of wildly aimed shots that echoed like thunder in the cavernous warehouse.
At this close range accuracy barely mattered; the autotargeting systems of both weapons ensured direct hits. Lemm's kinetic barriers deflected all the rounds from the pistol except for one that embedded itself harmlessly in the padded shoulder of his combat suit and another that ripped through the corner of his backpack. His opponent wasn't so lucky. The concentrated scatter of the shotgun blasts overwhelmed his shields, and a handful of pellets penetrated the kinetic barriers. The impact tore great holes in the exposed flesh of his face and hands, and the man dropped lifeless to the floor.
And then they were sliding into the safety of the cover behind the containers. Lemm quickly shook the pack loose from his shoulder and lowered the girl to the floor, then popped up to provide cover for Kahlee. Seeing what he was doing, she sprinted across the warehouse toward them, keeping her head low.
A shotgun wasn't the best weapon for laying down a field of cover fire. Unlike an assault rifle, it didn't spray a nearly endless stream of bullets. But Lemm remembered where the woman who had popped up before was hiding. If she was foolish enough to peek out again without changing position, he'd have her right in his sights.
The woman did exactly that, and Lemm pulled the trigger the instant her head came into view. The echo of the shotgun rang out once more, and the crate she was using for cover actually shifted from the impact of his shot. Her kinetic barriers saved her life, absorbing the tightly packed cloud of incoming projectiles, and she ducked behind cover once again. Lemm doubted she'd make the mistake of showing herself in exactly the same place a third time.
Kahlee skidded to a stop beside him, breathing hard. At almost the same instant two more guards, a man and a woman, burst into the warehouse through the same entrance they had come through only a few seconds before. A coordinated barrage of shotgun and assault-rifle fire sent them scurrying back around the corner.
"They'll go around to the other side," Lemm warned, recalling that there were two entrances to the warehouse, along with the landing up above and the big vehicle doors on the far wall. "Try to flank us."
"You think you can get to those rovers?" Kahlee asked him, pointing at the two vehicles parked out in the open near the center of the garage.
"There's not much cover. I'll have to work my way around to the far side. Can you hold position here?"
"For a little while. Any idea how many we're up against?"
"They started with nine, as far as I know. Two dead upstairs, one more down here."
"Six against two," she muttered. "Without one of those rovers we don't stand much of a chance."
Hendel mumbled something neither of them understood. He seemed to be more alert, but his words were still incomprehensible as the booster fought against the drugs still coursing through his system.
"You stay here with me and Gillian," Kahlee told him, patting him on the thigh. "And keep your head down."
Peering through a small gap between the wall of boxes shielding them from enemy fire, Lemm tried to plan a route from cover point to cover point that would eventually lead him to the vehicle. It was there, but he'd have to keep moving. And Kahlee would need to stay sharp.
Even as he was wondering if she was up to the task, another slaver appeared in the door they had used to enter the garage. Kahlee popped up from behind her cover and took him down with a short, well-aimed burst from her assault rifle.
Two against five now.
"Okay, I'm ready," he said, taking a deep breath.
"Good luck," she replied. She didn't turn to look at him, but kept her attention on the battlefield.
As he broke from the boxes, she started firing.
Grayson heard the shotgun blasts in the hall outside, but wasn't sure what to make of them. A few minutes later he heard gunfire coming from a distance, though he guessed it was still inside the building.
Somebody's assaulting the base. Now's your chance to get out of here.
He was trapped in a storage room, not a real jail cell, and the walls imprisoning him were nothing but the turian equivalent of drywall. Standing up, he went over to one of the side walls and began to slam the bottom of his foot hard against the surface.
If the guards were still out there they'd see what he was up to on the cameras. But Grayson was banking on them being otherwise distracted.
After a few hard kicks his foot broke through to the other side. He put his eye to the hole to see what lay beyond. It appeared to be another makeshift cell, much like his own. But this one was empty, and the steel door leading out to the hall was open.
He continued his assault on the wall, and five minutes later he had broken away enough of the material to crawl through. No one had come to check on him during his slow-developing escape, so he assumed none of the guards were around. Based on the continuing sound of gunfire from somewhere else in the building, he guessed they had gone to help fight off the attackers. As he stepped out into the hall and saw the two bodies, he realized he was wrong.
A quick look around told him just about everything he needed to know. All the other cells were empty; Gillian and the others were gone. Someone had obviously busted them out.. though he couldn't even begin to guess who it might have been.
Whoever it was, they were kind enough to leave me an assault rifle, he thought, picking up the discarded weapon from the floor of one of the cells.
Grayson didn't know where he was, but he knew where he wanted to go — he needed to find Gillian. The most logical way to do that seemed to be to follow the sound of the gunfire.
It didn't take him long to realize that this task was harder than it seemed, and he quickly became hopelessly lost in the building's nonsensical floor plan.
Lemm darted back and forth between the containers, constantly changing direction, stopping and starting without warning, and never staying in one place too long. His hands clutched his shotgun tightly, but he wasn't looking to fire at anyone — he was simply trying to make it to the vehicles.
Kahlee was doing her best to cover him, but she was badly overmatched. The one time he'd dared to stop long enough to look back, he saw two slavers firing at her from cover positions behind a pile of containers on the floor, and another two, newly arrived, shooting down at her from the small landing overlooking the garage from above.
The two teams coordinated their attacks, never giving her a clear opening to retaliate. But that didn't stop her from occasionally popping her head out and firing back.
Brave thing to do, considering she doesn't even have any shields.
With Kahlee occupying four of the remaining five slavers, that left only one more for him to deal with. Unfortunately, he had no idea where his enemy was. Every time he ran out into the open he could be stepping into a spray of lethal assault-rifle fire.
Don't think about it. Just stay focused on the vehicle. You're almost there.
Only a short stretch of bare floor still separated him from the rovers; a quick sprint and it was all over, one way or the other.
He broke from cover and dashed for the vehicle. The fifth slaver was waiting for him, popping up from behind a crate not twenty feet away as he ran past. She opened fire from close range on his flank; clouds of concrete flew up from the floor as she fired low, where his barrier shields were most vulnerable, trying to take his legs out from under him.
Head down, Lemm knew his best shot at survival was just to keep running. He was half a step away from safety when a hollow-point round entered his left calf. It mushroomed then split apart on impact, sending a spray of metal fragments through his lower leg, shredding the muscles and tendons. Screaming in agony, he pitched forward, his shotgun falling from his hand. His momentum allowed him to manage two more stumbling, off-balance steps that carried him far enough to put the metal-plated rover between him and his attacker before he collapsed to the ground.
He rolled over onto his back, clutching at the bloody pulp below his knee that used to be his leg. He heard footsteps coming toward him, and he realized his shotgun had been left behind, skittering across the floor when he'd dropped it after being hit.
A second later the woman materialized from around the front of the vehicle. She smiled and aimed the weapon at him.
Then suddenly she was flying across the room.
Lemm followed the path of her body as it arced high through the air before slamming into one of the walls and crashing down to the floor. She lay there motionless, her neck twisted at a gruesome angle. It was only when he heard Hendel screaming at him that he realized what had happened: the man was bi-otic!
"The rover! Hurry!"
The quarian knew it would take thirty or forty seconds before Hendel recovered enough to use his bi-otics again. . time they didn't have. Gritting his teeth and hoping he wouldn't pass out from the pain, he used the rover's front bumper to haul himself up. Standing on his one good leg, he pulled the driver's side door open and crawled inside. Blocking out the pain as best he could, it took him half a minute to override the operator codes and get the engine fired up.
There was no windscreen on the vehicle; it was more like an armored transport carrier, with a navigation screen on the inside to give him the layout of his surroundings. Organic creatures picked up by the vehicle's infrared and ultraviolet sensors showed as small dots on the nav screen, revealing the locations of everyone in the warehouse, both friend and foe.
The rover wasn't equipped with weapons, but it was four tons of bulletproof metal. He threw the vehicle into gear, the tires leaving patches of smoking black rubber on the garage floor as he peeled out and spun in a crazy circle, fighting with the steering in his haste.
He careened into a pile of crates, sending the heavy metal boxes flying. He spun the wheel and stomped on the accelerator. Ignoring the agonizing jolt of pain as his wounded left leg bumped against the side door, he headed straight for Kahlee and the others.
Along the way he plowed through the containers providing cover for the remaining two slavers on the ground, mowing them down under his wheels before bringing the rover to a skidding halt, only inches short of running over Hendel.
Lemm threw open the door and the biotic clambered up into the backseat of the vehicle, the still unconscious girl gripped tightly in his arms while Kahlee lay down another stream of cover fire at the last two surviving slavers atop the landing. They returned fire, the sound of their bullets ricocheting off the armored roof and hull in a metallic, staccato symphony.
"They're loading up a rocket launcher!" Kahlee shouted, tossing Lemm's bag into the back with Hendel as she leaped into the front of the vehicle. "Get us the hell out of here!"
"You better drive," Lemm panted through clenched teeth as he tried to slide awkwardly over to the passenger seat.
She glanced down at his mangled leg, then shoved him out of the way as she slid behind the wheel, causing him to scream in pain.
"Sorry!" she shouted, slamming the door shut and throwing the rover into reverse.
She pinned the accelerator and they took off backward. A fast-moving projectile appeared on the nav screen: an incoming missile fired from the rocket launcher. Lemm thought they were all dead, but Kahlee wrenched the wheel to the right at the last possible second. Instead of blowing the rover apart, the missile struck the ground beside them. There was a deep boom as it detonated, and the vehicle bucked hard from the explosion, the wheels on the near side lifting high into the air before crashing back down to the ground.
Somehow Kahlee kept control, using the nav screen to steer as they raced in reverse across the length of the garage, quickly building up speed. Lemm was horrified to see she was about to send them full tilt into the garage's heavy metal loading door.
"Everyone hold on!" she warned them. "This is going to hurt!"
They hit the door with enough force to wrench one side partially off its rails, the metal twisting in its frame. The back end of the rover crumpled, absorbing the brunt of the impact. Everyone inside was thrown against the rear of their seat as the sudden deceleration of the crash brought them to an immediate stop.
Lemm's leg slammed against the dashboard as he was bounced around, and he screamed again, struggling not to lose consciousness. He glanced over at Kahlee, who was lolling to the side in her seat, momentarily dazed from the crash.
"Kahlee!" he shouted. "You have to drive!"
His voice seemed to snap her back to full awareness. Sitting up with a shake of her head, she slammed her foot down on the accelerator once more. The vehicle lurched, still traveling in reverse, and slammed into the door again. Kahlee kept the engine revving as they tried to force their way through the twisted metal sheet blocking their escape.
"Come on, you son-of-a-bitch!" she swore. "Give me all you've got!"
The door bent and buckled under the relentless push of the rover's six churning tires, but it refused to give way completely, leaving them sitting ducks for the next inevitable assault from the rocket launcher.
This is NOT happening!
Pel had been thinking this one thought over and over, ever since he'd heard the first of the shotgun blasts down in the barracks.
Screaming at his team to get out of their bunks and over to the warehouse to cut off that avenue of escape, he and Shela, the only other member of his crew not already in bed, had grabbed their weapons and raced upstairs. They'd arrived to find the guards dead and their biotic prisoners gone.
Racing back down to the landing that overlooked the warehouse, they'd taken a high point above the battlefield, firing down at where the woman, Kahlee, had taken up a defensive position. There was a half-assembled rocket launcher on the landing; a new addition to the warehouse's defenses. He briefly debated slapping it together, then decided against it; he still wanted to try and recapture one of the biotics alive so they could sell them to the Collectors.
It wasn't long before he regretted that decision. From his vantage point above the action, Pel had a perfect view as the rest of his team was slaughtered by a mix of Kahlee's gunfire, Hendel's biotics, and one of their own rampaging rovers.
This is NOT happening, he thought once again. Out loud, he shouted to Shela, "Get that rocket launcher operational! Take out the vehicle!"
She scrambled to put it together even as he fired in vain at the prisoners piling into the rover, the position of the vehicle preventing him from getting a clear shot. There was only one way to stop them now, and it didn't involve taking any of them alive.
"Armed and ready!" Shela cried out as the rover began to speed away from them in reverse.
"Fire, damn it!"
The rocket shot toward the vehicle, but the target swerved at the last second and the missile exploded harmlessly into the floor of the garage. The rover continued to accelerate, then crashed into the reinforced-steel loading door with a deafening crash. The door buckled, but held.
"Finish them!" Pel shouted, and Shela took aim with the rocket launcher for a second, and final, shot.
Grayson wound his way through the unfamiliar halls and stairwells for nearly ten minutes, hopelessly lost.
Maybe all that red sand over the years messed up your sense of direction.
The only thing that kept him going was the fact that the sound of gunfire was getting steadily closer, and the knowledge that whoever had broken the others out had taken Gillian as well.
He was on the verge of slamming his fist through another wall in frustration when he heard an incredibly loud explosion, like a grenade or rocket launcher, followed by a tremendous crash coming from beyond the corner just up ahead. Moving quickly but quietly, he rounded the bend to find himself standing on a small landing overlooking a large, two-story garage.
Crates and containers were strewn about on the floor beneath the landing, along with several bodies. At the far end a vehicle had obviously just slammed into the garage's door. And on the landing not ten feet away, their backs to him, stood Pel and a woman he didn't know. The woman had a rocket launcher braced on her shoulder.
The vehicle's engines began to rev as it tried to force its way through the door. Given the situation, Grayson was almost certain that Gillian and the others were inside.
"Finish them!" Pel shouted, and the woman aimed her weapon.
Grayson opened fire with the assault rifle; he had no hesitations about shooting a woman in the back. The stream of bullets ripped through her shields, shredded her body armor, and turned everything between her shoulder blades and belt into hamburger. The rocket launcher fell from her nerveless hands and she staggered forward against the landing's waist-high railing. Another burst from Grayson sent her flipping over the edge to the floor below.
Pel was already spinning around, trying to bring his own assault rifle to bear, when Grayson fired again. He concentrated on Pel's right arm, the spray of gunfire nearly severing it from his shoulder as it blew the rifle from his grasp and sent it hurtling over the railing.
His former partner fell to his knees, his eyes glazing over in shock as sprays of arterial blood spurted from his maimed limb. He opened his mouth to speak, but another burst from Grayson silenced him forever. It was the first time in almost twenty years Pel hadn't been able to get the last word in.
The horrible shriek of wrenching metal from the far side of the garage drew his attention. Glancing over, he saw the rover had managed to push itself against a corner of the loading door so that it bent up and out. Grayson watched, motionless, as the vehicle squeezed through the opening, the rover bursting forth to the other side as if the garage were somehow giving birth to it.
For the next sixty seconds he didn't move, listening carefully for sounds of other survivors. All he heard was the rover's engines growing ever fainter as it raced off into the night.