Omega

"I am Omega." Jacob and I were waiting below Aria's lounge while she and Shepard talked. Most of what they said was lost in Afterlife's general din, but Aria's megalomaniacal proclamation was not. Just what we needed now - an insane asari. God, Shepard, you'd better be playing nice up there. A moment later, Omega's one rule could also be heard over the noise of the club. "Don't. Fuck. With Aria." Shepard, what are you getting into? If this became a firefight, we'd lose. Badly. There were no less than five mercs in the immediate space, and that was just the obvious ones. There were undoubtedly more, not to mention that Aria herself was an asari matriarch - a powerful biotic, and damned good in other forms of combat, if the stories were true.

My fears were for nothing, though, as a few minutes later Shepard came down the stairs from Aria's lounge. "I know where to find Archangel."

"But Solus -," I started, but Shepard held up a hand to cut me off.

"The salarian can wait. Archangel can't." Shepard made her way into the club proper, then headed towards the private rooms. "Apparently, he's got the merc groups here mad at him. Mad enough that they've formed a temporary alliance to take him out. We need to get to him before they do."

"And how do you propose we do that? Ask them to take us there?" I rolled my eyes. At this rate, it might be the better option to simply leave Archangel. Shepard just stopped by one of the rooms and smiled.

"Actually, yes." Shepard approached the room, and the man guarding it. I noted his blue and white armor - which told me he belonged to the Blue Suns. "I hear you're looking for help taking down Archangel."

The man gave Shepard a once over, noticed the N7 logo on the armor, and did a double take. "Maybe. What's it to you?"

"My crew and I would like to sign on."

A skycar had taken us - and several other would-be mercs - to what the Blue Suns merc we'd signed on with called the staging area. We'd been briefed along the way. The plan was a terrible one, hardly even a plan, really. The freelancers (which included us) were striking first, dashing across a bridge that was the only way to the apartment building where Archangel had taken refuge. It was a kill zone, but hopefully, some of us would make it across. Then the merc groups - Blue Suns, Eclipse, and the Blood Pack - would follow. Their intention seemed to be "force Archangel to run out of ammo then take down a defenseless turian." Like I said, hardly a plan. To their credit, the Eclipse had brought an YMIR mech with them - it seemed I'd never get away from them - and the Blue Suns had a gun ship. Of course, Shepard had taken the opportunity to cloak and sabotage both of them. Still, long odds that we could get to Archangel, convince him we were on his side, recruit him, and then survive.

Which was how I found myself dashing across a bridge, surrounded by the dying.

Archangel was accurate. Frighteningly so, really. Every time I heard his rifle fire, I saw another merc fall, and every time, it was a shot to the head or the throat. The only other person I knew who could make shots that accurately was running a few feet ahead of me. Of course, Archangel's rate of fire was a bit slower than Shepard's would have been, but all the same - it was damned impressive.

And very telling when a shot clipped Shepard's shoulder.

Everything about the shot suggested it had been aimed to do that. It hit Shepard's armor, and only her armor. It brought her shields down, but didn't injure her, didn't ricochet to me or Jacob. For some reason, Archangel had intended to only clip Shepard. Curious. Of course, I'd have to puzzle it out later. We'd reached the apartment building, and the three of us immediately took cover, and helped Archangel finish off the mercs on the bridge.

Shepard lead the way upstairs. Her movement was relaxed, almost casual. She carried her rifle at her side, as though she had no intention of using it anytime soon. I was tempted to keep my gun at the ready, just in case, but that was insubordination, and if I proved wrong, I'd hear it later. So I followed Shepard's lead. She seemed to have some confidence that there'd be no difficulty recruiting Archangel. It was a confidence I didn't share.

Shepard opened the door slowly. Archangel had his back to us, sighting something with his rifle. Apparently, we'd missed one. He held up his free hand, signalling us to wait, and Shepard did. There was a single round fired, then the turian turned. He moved slowly, with a tiredness that suggested he'd been awake for days. Then he pulled off his helmet, and stared us down.

"Shepard. Thought you were dead." Garrus Vakarian I recognized. It would have been hard not to. He'd achieved a level of celebrity almost on par with Shepard - the C-Sec officer who'd been right about Saren, but nobody listened. And then, about a year ago, he'd just disappeared. Reports of Archangel cropped up shortly after that. Looking at it now, it all seemed obvious.

"Garrus!" Shepard moved toward her old squadmate. There wasn't any surprise in her voice. Either she was a good actress or...she couldn't have known. "What are you doing here?"

"Just keeping my skills sharp. A little target practice." Vakarian even sounded tired. Shepard seemed to take notice.

"You okay?"

"Been better, but it sure is good to see a friendly face." Garrus turned toward the window, and his features dropped. "We'll have to catch up later, Shepard. Eclipse is moving in." We all took up positions at the windows. There was surprisingly little for Jacob or I to do - aside from the hacked YMIR mech taking out a lot of Eclipse's forces, and those that survived were primarily in sniper range. Sure, they were technically within the operation limits of my weapon, but aiming that range without a scope was damn near impossible, and even if I could have, Shepard and Vakarian had a pretty good handle on things. It was over quickly.

Unfortunately, the Blood Pack wasn't far behind. Worse, they seemed to be coming in through the basement. With a nod to Jacob, he and Shepard took off, leaving me and Vakarian to defend the apartment's upper level. It was doable, certainly, but only because the turian was a damned good sniper. I took to the lower level - Vakarian could take out everything except a krogan with one shot, and the Blood Pack had plenty of those. So he'd hit take down everything else, and tag the krogan, and I'd get them as they came into my range. I settled for pushing some of them off the bridge - even if they survived, it was a long way down, and they'd take ages to get back up. And that was ages fighting through Omega's lower reaches. They might never make it back.

A sudden roar caught my attention - Garm, a larger than normal Krogan and leader of the Blood Pack on Omega, had entered the battle. He charged across the bridge, roaring and knocking aside his own soldiers as he went. I saw Vakarian tag him once, twice, three times - and the krogan didn't even flinch. It seemed the second shot had merely lowered his shields.

This was exactly the sort of threat I wasn't prepared to face. Garm large, armored, and angry. And fast. I doubted I could even make the stairs before he got back. Time to get creative, and hope this worked.

I threw a warp field in front of Garm. He was going to fast to avoid it, and thus charged right through it. Good. I saw some of his armor get shaken there, but not enough. Still, there were plenty of cracks in it. I could use that. There was a couch next to the door. I dove behind it, and as soon as I saw the krogan, I pushed it with my biotics as hard as I could, slamming it into Garm. His armor shattered along the cracks, and he finally stopped. Then he turned towards me, hoisting his shotgun. And I'd just thrown my only readily available bit of cover at him.

Then a single shot rang out, and the krogan crumpled. I turned to see Shepard and Jacob emerging from a doorway. Shepard lowered her rifle and flashed a smile as she helped me to my feet. "Interesting tactic, Lawson - throwing your cover at the enemy." I flushed. Dammit. Shepard didn't seem mean-spirited about it, though. "Come on, let's get back to Garrus."

That's when we heard the gunship.

Apparently, whatever Shepard had done to sabotage it hadn't been enough. The three of us ran upstairs, and opened the door to the balcony Vakarian was using as a sniper's nest - just in time to watch a rocket take the turian full in the chest.