Diana flew around the volus freighter, looking for a place to dock.

"What the hell is a Turian Interceptor doing here?"

She piloted her shuttle closer. The Inerceptor was docked port side. It was too pristine to belong to a merc or pirate group, but it definitely did not look like a typical military ship. She noted several upgrades that were visible from the exterior.

"Modified plating… thrusters" Diana let out a low whistle. "Those guns look like they had been modeled after thanax cannons."

"Bastard took my parking spot" she muttered, "Guess we are using the back door"

Diana docked the shuttle at the aft airlock. She brought up the ship's schematics and studied the layout of the ship. She would need to get the bridge to access the logs and security feeds. Down a long corridor, take a right and up through a maintenance shaft. She committed the route to memory, released Bitz from his seat, and disembarked. As soon as they cleared the air lock Dina knew something was up. She could hear gun fire coming from somewhere deeper in the ship.

"So much for easy in and out."

Diana touched the controls on the omni tool activating Bitz's armor as well as her own. She removed the Paladin from her hip; it unfolded with a satisfying click.

"Bitz, take point"

At her command Bitz stalked forward, nose to the ground, eyes sharp, lips curled, with a low growl he began to move forward into the ship. The corridor leading off the air lock was claustrophobic at best. Diana had to hunch to keep from hitting her head on the metal beams and pipes that ran the length of the walkway. They paused momentarily when they heard gun fire again. It was coming from somewhere lower and more left than their current position.

They picked up the pace moving silently down the corridor. Turning right they passed through another long walkway leading to a maintenance shaft.

"Guard Bitz"

The verran crossed behind her to watch the hallway. Diana holstered her gun and removed the wall panel blocking the ladder. She mounted the ladder and climbed three rungs.

"Bitz come, stay." Bitz moved to the base of the ladder, and sat.

The ladder rose 40 feet up to the bridge deck. Diana reached the top and after checking for threats peered back down the dark tunnel.

"Ready Bitz?" Diana called. The varren looked up and whimpered as the biotic field incased him, and lifted him up through the shaft.

"Oh quit crying it's not that bad" Diana fussed at Bitz as she sat him down on the deck.

The scene on the bridge was gruesome. Much of the volus crew lay scattered in various states of blown up or shot. Several pirate corpsus could be seen as well. Diana surmised that while most of victims had been dead several hours, a few of the batatrians lay in puddles of glossy, fresh, blood. The main console was splattered with volus bits, but appeared un-damaged and functional.

"Take guard" Bitz began to patrol the room as Diana set to work hacking the ship's logs.

The information in the logs pointed to an inside job gone wrong. Most likely the volus were working with the very pirates that had attacked the ship. It seemed that they had willingly docked with the pirate freighter and allowed the batarians onto the bridge. That would explain the deaths of the crew, no sign of attempted escape. The volus where caught by surprise, gunned down without much of a fight. This however, didn't explain the fresh kills or the gun fire she had heard earlier.

"Shit!"

Diana punched the console.

"Well Bitz, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is I can't hack the security feeds from here; we have to go down the server room in the cargo bay. The good news is you don't have travel by biotic field." Bitz whined in reply

The cargo hold was directly below the bridge, two decks down, easily accessed by the elevator behind her. She waited for the download to complete and deleted the local copy.

"Bitz heel" He moved to Diana's right side, sharp eyes fixed on the elevator in front of them.

"Let's move" She ordered and they walked into the lift. As they rode down Diana hacked the controls so that she would be able to override the automatic door.

The elevator stopped and she listened. She couldn't hear anything coming from the cargo bay, and Bitz hadn't alerted. Diana un-holstered the M-82, flattened herself against the elevator wall, and hit the door mechanism.

With a swoosh the doors opened. Diana took a cautious look out. The expansive room seemed empty, except for several dead pirates and some empty cargo containers. The air smelled of fresh blood, smoke, and the distinct metallic tinge of spent heat sinks.

She slid into cover behind a stack of empty overturned crates. Bitz followed tense and growling. Some of the containers were splattered with gore form the bodies that lay slumped or prone around the room.

"Another blood bath" Diana whispered "Who the hell did all of this?"

Diana wasn't a fool; she knew that somewhere on the ship were the survivors of this slaughter. The longer she stayed aboard the chances of her meeting them increased.

She spotted the server room a few yards away and quickly closed the distance, ducking behind cover and checking her back along the way. Bitz followed behind, alert and poised to attack on command. The room was small and housed several servers and computer cores. She located the main server and immediately set to work hacking the feeds. She easily hacked her way through the two quarian firewalls and bypassed the password protections. The feeds began to download and she released the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Her omni tool beeped, indicating the download was complete. Diana wiped the local data and smiled. Easy, now we just sneak off this boat and…

Bitz heard it before she could register the distant sound of the loading of a heat sink. He reacted before Diana felt the strange heat of a bullet whizzing precariously close to her head.

"Attack!" She shouted as she leapt behind the safety of an adjacent sever tower. Bitz tore off snarling, and barking viciously. A bullet glanced off his armor causing it to spark and sizzle. A glint of silver and blue armor is all Diana saw as the assailant ducked behind his own cover at the opposite end of the cargo bay.

Grasping both her pistols at once, and took the opportunity to move out of the server room and into cover behind a nearby stack of crates. The attacker was focused on the ravenous varren closing in on him, she heard him curse as she unleashed a barrage of bullets in his general direction. She leapt over the crates and sprinted a few yards to the next cover, firing a few rounds before ducking down. He was still focused on Bitz who was now only 10 yards or so from his target. The attacker stood up to take a shot, and Diana got a good look at him. He was turian, in heavy armor, in his hands a sniper rife with the distinct glow of disrupter ammo.

"Shit! Bitz, return!" Diana yelled but it was too late, the turian fired at the varren and Bitz's orange armor fizzled out. With a guttural scream Diana ran forward throwing a biotic barrier toward Bitz. The barrier hit him a millisecond before the second disruptor round. The impact was still powerful enough that the varren was thrown hard, into the wall. His unconscious body hit the ground with a limp thud.

"You killed my varren you son of a bitch!"