Nebulous

Today, Nihlus thought as he went into free fall, was turning out to be a bad day.

He woke to the sound of someone screaming the name of his favorite drink. His first thought was that he'd take two, until he realized who it was. Tequila. Supernova was her name for him. He had next to no visibility, but Tequila's erratic flashlight winked in and out of focus above him.

He flexed his fingers and toes, then slowly worked his way up from the extremities. Nothing gave him trouble, everything seemed to work. He slowly eased himself to sitting and rolled his head in a circle, rubbing the back of his neck. His chest was where the majority of the pain came from, in addition to a headache he hoped wasn't a concussion.

"I'm fine!" He called loudly to calm her. Save for a possible bruised rib or five. His armor had taken the brunt of the fall, and he'd known better than to extend his arms and had avoided dislocating his shoulders. Flicking on his omnitool's flashlight, he used it to take stock of his surroundings.

It was a small, circular room. A few mangled skeletons shared the space with him, and the exit was a large steel door on the side opposite where he'd fallen in. The wall was lined in rectangular holes, large enough to lever guns on. An optimal shooting gallery for anyone who survived the fall. How morbid.

"I think I can get down!" Tequila informed him, and her omnitool's flashlight vanished.

"Did you find some rope?" He yelled back, pushing himself to standing. He rolled his shoulders back and took a deep breath, then immediately regretted it. She could have found rope long enough, he reasoned. It wasn't a long fall, which, by his and Saren's standards, meant it wasn't fatal.

An iridescent sapphire took the place of the wan orange, and he glanced up to see her managing a mass effect field that had her slowly floating down towards the floor. For a while. Nihlus barely had time to grimace when it faltered and failed, and she crashed into him at the full speed of gravity.

Yes. He definitively had at least three bruised ribs. Groaning, his vision spun before his human's face finally came into focus at an awkward angle. He was back on the floor again. Progress, Nihlus. It's what important.

"Are you okay?" It seemed ironic that she was the one to ask. She looked… awful, to put it lightly. Her face was covered in blood and soot, with one bandage tied around her head beneath her eyes, and another falling off her forehead. Her hair was dripping foam and more blood, her jacket was shredded, "I made it down," She added with a clumsy smile.

"I'm fine," He repeated, standing a second time. She offered a hand to help him up, and when he didn't take it, she hugged him instead. Nihlus hissed in pain and awkwardly rubbed her back, "… I'm fine."

"Yeah, okay," She mumbled, releasing him and spinning away to take in their surroundings. Her omnitool eventually focused on the door, at which she mumbled "I wish I had a grenade."

The door was old fashioned; there was no holographic lock for either of them to override, but that didn't particularly bother him. "We can melt the lock with an overheated thermal clip," He suggested.

She shook her head, "I think I can get it." Kneeling in front of the door, she pulled two pieces of metal from her pants pocket and started fiddling with the lock.

"What humans call 'secure' never ceases to depress me." Nihlus shook his head as the door swung effortlessly open.

"The more you know," Tequila shrugged with a smile, taking cover on the side of the door. She had no weapon…

"Where's your gun?" Nihlus demanded, scoping out the room the door opened into. Tables with restraints built in on one side, a stack of crates and a makeshift armory on the other. A torture chamber and storage room all in one. He took point and went for the only exit.

"Foam ruined it. I'll omnigel it later." She explained, glancing at the armory. He held out his sidearm to spare her the trouble. She raised both eyebrows, but took it without saying anything.

He kicked the next door in, assault rifle at ready, to reveal an empty hallway. He waved Tequila to take the left, and slowly advanced. Most of the doors along the hall were open, and most of their rooms were empty.

Mercenary quarters, cellblocks, rec rooms… The two last rooms looked as though they'd been hastily vacated, with knocked over chairs, cards, and red-sand lining the tables. That would explain why the western group had stood out in the open and let themselves be gunned down. Few people fought well sand-blasted.

"Think the upstairs is just for show?" Tequila whispered, voicing his thoughts. They seemed to have fallen right into their main base of operations. He nodded, when he picked up the muted sound of raised voices behind closed doors.

Tequila stopped with him, but it took her human ears longer to pick up on what he'd heard. She glanced at him when the sounds reached her and raised an eyebrow.

"Watch your fire," He whispered, "I want one alive."

She nodded, "Leader or lackey?"

Nihlus decided he liked her a great deal more. "Leader." He tilted his head and they continued, voices growing louder as they went.

"Alpha team come in," A human male demanded, "Alpha team! …Bravo team come in! Delta Team, come in." A pause as his mean finally responded. "Goddamnit where is everyone? There are two of them for christ's sake!" Another pause, "What do you mean there'll all gone?"

The man's voice grew more frantic as the report continued. He was yelling himself hoarse by the time they reached the door his voice came from. Tequila took the left, Nihlus took the right. She nodded, and he spun and kicked in the door.

The merc was pacing with one hand to his ear, armored in what looked to be standard Onyx gear for the Systems Alliance. He looked up mid-sentence, mouth gaping in shock, and dove for his assault rifle resting on the table. Nihlus reached him first, smashing the butt of his gun into the man's chin, and kneeing him in the chest before dragging him by the shoulder to slam against the wall.

"Call you back Delta team," He whimpered and cut off communications.

"Where's your database?" Nihlus demanded.

The mercenary leader seemed to regain control of his faculties, and tried to do the same with the situation. He squared his shoulders, "Who the fuck-"

Nihlus punched in the gut, the blow doubling him over despite his light armor, and quickly pulled him back upright. "Your database."

Before he could think about answering, a barrage of footsteps came stampeding down the hall, giving Nihlus enough warning to spin and place the leader between him and the doorway. Three more mercs burst into the room, who looked as though they'd been in the midst of playing Skyllian Five.

Only two were armed; the third was still holding his hand of cards, and could hope to do little more than give the intruders a paper cut. None of them had armor.

"Drop your weapons," Nihlus demanded. He didn't want to worry about holding the leader hostage in the midst of a firefight, and Tequila had as little armor as the mercenaries. It would have been messy, complicated.

"Sir?" The human holding the cards dropped them, and Nihlus might have laughed if one of the other mercenaries wasn't levering a shotgun at his human.

Nihlus nudged the leader's head with his assault rifle and the merc swore in surrender, "Fuck, do it."

No sooner had they disarmed themselves when three shots rang out, and each merc fell with a precise hole to the head. Executioner style, clean and simple, Tequila had gotten rid of them. She shrugged when the two men left in the room stared at her. "I like your gun," she grinned at him, tapping his sidearm on her thigh.

"They surrendered," The leader screamed when his shock wore off, smacking the System's Alliance star on his chest, "You can't just shoot us all! We're with the Alliance!"

"You're dishonorably discharged." She glared at him. The odd one-liner reminded Nihlus of Saren and made him feel more at ease. Saren had despised traitors as well.

"Your database," Nihlus growled a third time.

"Fuck, alright," He yielded, though he seemed more afraid of Tequila than Nihlus. Rightly so, he reasoned. She looked a mess. "We have some terminals in the back, but we wipe them every month, they only have the recent shit. Shit not done in person. We're clean as a baby's bottom; you got no evidence to take us down."

"Let's go," Nihlus pushed him; the merc staggered forward, glanced at his gun and got another kick for it. He walked without delay after that, but kept talking, a defensive mechanism that would come in handy. Tequila occasionally glanced at the gun he'd loaned her and smiled when the merc went silent, and he abruptly began babbling again.

"Come on, what do you guys want? This is some shit raid. You want creds? We divvy 'em up after every job, you won't find anything. You're wasting your time, you may as well let me go."

"This looks like it," Tequila noted, doing a quick sweep of the room in case the merc had led them into a trap. The Terra Libera leader was right, it was hardly impressive. A few personal terminals and a mainframe crawling up the back wall like ivy, likely for little more than calls and credit transfers. Still, the group might broker information in addition to assassinations, something they'd never know unless they checked. "I'll check it out," His human offered, seating herself in front of a terminal and opening her omnitool, effectively leaving him to his interrogation.

"Come on, man, you got the intel, you don't need me," The leader started panicking again when Nihlus grabbed him by his collar and dragged him into the next room. When he realized betraying his gang wouldn't get him off scot-free, he got desperate.

As Nihlus picked him and bodily heaved him into what seemed to be the mainframe's maintenance room, he spun and pulled a knife from some hidden pocket in his armor. He went for Nihlus' face, the only unarmored part of his body. Nihlus fell back, bringing his assault rifle up as a shield. The blade skimmed across the metal with an ear-piercing screech, and Nihlus leaned in to smash the butt of his gun into the merc's throat.

He almost lost a finger to the knife for his efforts, but the merc fell back gasping and choking, dropping the blade. Nihlus kicked it aside, and locked his assault rifle onto his back. The merc fell to his knees, struggling to breathe, and Nihlus knelt next to him.

"I can't say I didn't expect you to try something stupid. You took a job to kill a Spectre, so you're obviously not the brightest person."

"Didn't-" the merc hacked, coughing up blood, "didn't say you were a Spectre."

"You know what I'm talking about then," Nihlus noted conversationally, "Good, that will save time. Who hired you?"

"I don't know," He rasped, inhaling deeply to get air back into his lungs. Nihlus grabbed his wrist and broke one of his fingers, turning the gasp into a scream. "I don't know!" The merc roared, diving forward in an attempt to wrestle his captor. Nihlus elbowed him in the face and he fell back with a bloodied and broken nose. "I don't know," He repeated, coughing and spraying blood on Nihlus armor. "Don't ask questions, bad for business. We take credits, not names." He took a moment to gather himself before he continued. "Look, I knew it was a bad job, but you don't turn down that kind of money."

"You knew?" Nihlus tilted his head at him. The human flinched, realizing he'd used the wrong turn of phrase. When he didn't continue, Nihlus reached for another finger. The human panicked, throwing himself into the wall behind him.

"Yes! Look, okay, guy who got the offer… he got it on a call, no names, no nothing, just the job and the creds. We couldn't even trace it, but… it didn't matter to him, and hell, with the creds it didn't matter to us, but this was different. He was obsessed, talked about how important it was, like it was our damn destiny or something. But he wouldn't help us trace you down, he'd just sit there and play the call over and over…"

"Do you still have the recording?" Nihlus asked. The human lowered one eyebrow, likely trying to think if he could use it as leverage. Nihlus tugged on one of his talons in a seemingly idle motion. The merc got the hint.

"I-No. We deleted it, we already had the intel. Just your ship ID. Hell man, until we looked it up, I didn't even know your name."

"Few people do," Nihlus chuckled. The mercenary didn't seem to know whether that was a good or bad sign.

"But look, when we deleted it, our guy went nuts. It was just a damn machine voice over or recording or something, but he lost it. Turned on his friends over a fucking voicemail. We were already on the job or we would have dropped it, but then we got another call, double the pay if we took out the woman you were with."
"And that call?" The merc turning on his gang didn't concern him in the slightest. Mercenaries were always out for themselves. Odd the Terra Libera leader didn't realize that.

"Wiped it as soon as it came in, I swear." He swallowed, cradling his hand with the broken finger nervously. "No signal trace, nothing."

Nihlus trapped his talons along his knee. None of the information was helpful. A lot of Terminus groups would be able to block a signal trace and find out his ship's ID. What struck him as odd was their willingness to double the offer to take out both him and his human. Perhaps they feared he'd been meeting with an Alliance representative to change the beacon pick-up. Good tech, bad intel. Typical Terminus. "How much were you offered?"

"Not enough." The merc snorted, then gave a nervous chuckle. "That's all I know. Come on, man, lemme go. It was nothing personal," He'd started begging. It was the clearest sign a subject had no more useful intel. Saren liked to 'make sure.' Nihlus didn't. "A job's a job."

Nihlus stood up and took a few steps back. The merc breathed a sigh of relief, assuming he was letting him go, when he drew his assault rifle. "This is my job." Nihlus said simply before he killed him.

A rap on the door came just a few seconds later. "Supernova?" His human called through the nearly-sound proof material. Evidently it hadn't blocked out the gunfire.

"Tequila," He yelled back. She went silent, and he guessed she went back to the terminal. Nihlus glanced back at the body. They hadn't taken out all of Terra Libera. From the leader's earlier call, a third squad was searching for them outside, something they'd have to take care of before they left.

Nihlus keyed in his comm to station security's frequency, and got a response moments later. "Earth L5 station security, what is your emergency?" A pleasant female voice greeted him, thankfully not automated.

"This is Nihlus Kyrik with Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. A security threat in Sector 47h has been dealt with. You'll want to send a team to do a sweep, though the area should be all clear by the time they get here. I'll send a mission report within the next solar day through proper channels."

"Copy that, Spectre. Officer Mikel informed us of your mission," Tequila. He should have barred the bathroom door. "And we thank you for your assistance," The voice chimed, sounding genuinely thankful. "We have an investigation in progress on your hotel for the security breach, and we can have you moved anywhere on the station whenever you'd like."

Nihlus had been pacing throughout the call, a habit born more of boredom than nerves, but stopped to consider the offer. "Belay that," He decided finally, "I think I know a place where I can stay."