Six weeks later...
Just a simple job. In and out, quick and easy. Break in through the roof, down into the restricted archive, download the data and out through the sewers. It looked like easy money, and the volus was paying in information. For six weeks Acheron and Vol to get the measure of each other, the volus providing information in exchange for simple jobs.
Only this time not so simple. Acheron ducked back into the doorway as rifle fire scored the doorframe, plastec and fibre-crete chips pattering against his armour like hailstones. Ascalaphus was up to its neck in yahg shit, and Acheron did not wish to bury any of his children this day.
Acheron dived out from the doorway, his silenced Model 12 Locust spraying rounds in the direction of their attackers as he ended his dive in a roll behind a blocky data access hub. He hissed out an insult questioning the lineage of their attackers, and popped the thermal clip from his sub machine gun before slamming another home. He felt a heavy impact vibrate the frame of the hub, and glanced over his shoulder to see Hyperion beside him, readying a demo charge.
"You really think that's a good idea, Hype'?" Acheron asked, a feral grin on his face showing his fellow that the question was rhetorical.
"I guess we'll find out." Hyperion said, his voice thick with an eastern-European accent. Red, close cropped hair was barely visible under the black woolen hat he was wearing, and a week s worth of stubble growth gracing a squared, heavy scarred jaw. Hyperion's silver eyes glowed blue from the sub-corneal implants which gifted him with a substantially increased dark vision, but Acheron could still make out the mischievous glimmer as his demolitions expert spoke.
Nodding to Hyperion, Acheron swung his body up and out of cover, spraying fire from his Locust wildly at the security response team - mercenaries by the looks of their gear - firing at them from across the primary archive hall. He hope the data stored here was backed up, or else the Citadel Council records would be suffering from some considerable data gaps come the morning.
The mercenaries ducked back down into cover as the rounds zipped past all around them. That was all the opportunity Hyperion needed, and he rolled out of cover and broke into a run, the now armed demolition charge beeping away in his armoured hand. He sprinted toward the mercenary position, and hurled the explosive high into the air, the heavy charge arching down and detonating just above the mercenaries. The flash was almost blinding, and Acheron had to turn his head away to protect himself from compromising his eyesight.
His gazed turned aside, he felt a gust of air on his face and a shadow crossed his field of vision so fast he barely registered it. Tartarus was charging.
The woman was a prodigiously powerful biotic vanguard, and was in amongst the mercenaries before the cloud of the explosion had dissipated, the smoke forming a spiral as she passed through it at incredible speed. Then came the loud thump of a biotic barrier slamming into an armoured body, and a painful - if short - cry of surprise. Gunfire lit the smoke cloud, and more screams came from the mercs, most of them silenced mere seconds later as Tartarus went about her fatal dance.
When the smoke cleared the woman stood amidst a crowd of corpses, a lone surviving mercenary attempting to crawl away. Tartarus was on him a moment later, using her armoured boots to roll the dying man onto his back. Acheron knew what was coming next, having seen it so many times before. Tartarus channeled her biotic abilities into her foot and stamped down on the man s face with the force of a speeding train. All that remained of the mercenary s cranium was a small crater filled with blood and grey matter.
It still awed him how intensely violent she was.
"Time to go." Another voice called out, and Acheron turned to follow after the speaker, a short, hairless man with vivid blue tattoos covering his ivory skin. Clad in a light, sleeveless tactical vest and baggy black fatigues, he shunned the armour of his colleagues for the speed and flexibility his choice in clothing granted him. The long, wicked asari blade sheathed on his forearm - a shamshir shikargar as it was known on the black market - was his only visible weapon.
"Then lead on, Erebos." Acheron said, the four man team moving as one through the darkened archive building.