Gadon quickly scrabbled across the docking bay floor, followed direly by a concentrated spray of fire as he ducked behind the cover of a large crate. Addison had been content to use a biotic charge to shoot towards a large oxygen recycler for her own protection.
Gadon keyed up his Omni-tool and released a small orange Omni-drone which quickly buzzed out from behind the cover and drew their fire. As the shots tore through it Gadon popped up again and released a heavy overload which dropped the shields of a few mercenaries.
Sensing her moment via her helmet's sensors Addison jumped up and pulled them quickly into the ceiling and then let them drop heavily towards the hard deck plates. As they were in freefall Gadon sprayed at them with his Locust and leaving their flailing forms to drop like rag dolls to the floor.
The four remaining mercenaries opened fire, pinning them behind their cover and leaving deep divots in the deck plates around them.
Addison peeked out of cover for a moment and saw her chance. She flung them against back wall they were in front of hard enough to break bone though three of them were able to get up.
Before they could react a spray of gunfire from both them cut them down swiftly.
"Move up." Gadon commanded as he hopped over the hydraulic systems and sprinted his way up the door, popping his heat-sink on the way.
"We have intruders in the base!" Sutili exclaimed from her control room deep within the submerged complex. On the display screens IFF dots were going out rapidly, Kek, Notos, Ferrin and Bort were already dead. "Get me a camera lock on the enemy." She commanded to the lowly tech hand beneath her platform overlooking the other consoles.
An image of a man and a woman doing combat came up on the large display in front of them.
"Two people, those men are ex-STG." She exclaimed to the taller man next to her.
"Yes Dalatress, but that one" He explained as he pointed to the man in the stylish clothing. "Is a Spectre."
The entire command staff looked up at him with nervous eyes as he studied the screen calmly.
"Well then, get out there Joralan." Sutili commanded as she spun around on the balls of her dog like feet only to find he had already started walking away.
"That's why I came here." Joralan responded without breaking step. It was true, Tethena and Korian were otherwise occupied and his engineering and intelligence training made him an ideal choice in bypassing Hagrah's cybernetics.
There were another three guards in the corridor that attempted to open fire. A burst of rapidly produced plasma from Gadon's Omni-tool burnt away the armour of two of them as they flailed in agony at the searing flames which ablated armour, boiled suit fluids and scorched skin. The third was no more lucky, a powerful burst of biotic warp-energy created a twisting conflagration of rapidly shifting gravity fields which shredded a large part of the now deceased man's torso.
Their luck changed however when an overload burst caught Gadon by surprise. He fell over, his shields depleted and his cybernetic leg flailing wildly around.
Before Addison could clear the hatch it slammed shut, inches from taking her nose off. On the other side hatches sealed off the corridors, obviously a technique to help contain hull breaches by sectioning off flooded areas.
Un deterred Addison stepped back and slammed into it with a biotic charge, only to be rebuffed with barely a scratch.
"Don't bother human, that hatch can hold back an ocean." A snide salarian voice projected over the speakers.
Looming over him was a salarian clad in gear beyond even the resources of the mercenaries so far encountered. His armour was light and modern, in with the standard of salarian design. His deep grey, curved, nose-less face was obscured slightly by a holographic visor which obscured his deep black eyes. Over the black and white armour of his right pectoral muscle the logo of a spectre was apparent.
"You honestly think you're a real Spectre don't you?" Joralan asked bitterly as he walked over with his distinctive HMWP pistol in hand prepared to finish him off.
"You honestly think that badge makes you one of us, you pathetic little hojkar." Joralan spat the un-translated slur at him.
Rapidly rebooting his leg Gadon lunged at him, knocking the Spectre issue pistol from the smaller man's hands and pushing him into a wall and then onto the ground. Lithe though powerful legs, strengthened by a myriad of genetic modifications kicked Gadon clear off of him. The force of it knocked the gun from Gadon's hands. He drew his carnifex and prepared to fire only to find that it was ineffective.
There was a smug smile on Joralan's face as he generated an advanced field of tech armour around his body.
Gadon activated his Omni-blades and went to dig them into the armour only to have the prefab blade snap away into shards and splinters.
Joralan threw him across the room with his bare hands and sent him thumping into the deck plates whilst the weapon scraped along the floor.
Laying on the deck plates Gadon unleashed another plasma bolt which caused the tech armour to fail catastrophically, releasing a pulse of energy that left faint dents in the wall next to him but left Joralan otherwise unharmed.
In response Joralan released a cryo-burst that Gadon dodged just in time to avoid having his face frozen to the deck plates. He rolled into a crouch and stood up quickly, directing his momentum into a strong punch which busted Joralan's lip. He followed it with a swift left cross.
A spinning kick from Joralan knocked Gadon side ways and cracked his visor. He went to follow with a short swift uppercut that Gadon blocked and countered with a hard knee to Joralan's waif like chest which cracked bone. Another punch was levied.
Seemingly unfazed Joralan grasped his wrist mid punch and gripped it hard enough to hurt through the layers of his of his tough skin and firm muscle. He held him there before slamming Gadon into the dented wall hard enough to dent it somewhat more, nearly cracking Gadon's skull and would have shattered it if not for the C-Sec bone strengthening modifications issued to him. Gadon flung Joralan's lighter body off of him with a grunt of exertion.
Landing almost gracefully on his small, digitrade feet Joralan retorted with a rapid flurry of jabs and crosses that Gadon blocked, deflected or dodged and attempted to counter though Joralan was similarly skilled. Too similarly in fact, his fighting style was exactly the same as C-Sec's unarmed combat advanced training.
Instead he would have to fight much more dirtily. He grabbed Joralan by the horn and smashed him into a wall repeatedly, damaging his holo-visor's projectors and causing it to flicker messily. His jaw was cracked and teeth dislodged though his consciousness remained.
On the third attempt to do so Joralan twisted and caught him in a throw, utilising Gadon's weight and momentum to throw him clear over his head and smack him harshly to the ground.
A boot came down and was held mere inches from crushing in Gadon's windpipe before he twisted the ankle and threw Joralan off of balance. Seizing the moment he scrabbled to his feet and delivered a high kick which caught him in the ribs.
Leaping backwards Joralan fired a burst of plasma which Gadon dodged as much through luck as through speed though it's passing heat still left a prickly agony across his body as it passed. It smashed into the bulkhead and melted away a significant depth of it to glowing slag.
Now with the room to think Gadon quickly keyed up a highly dangerous, highly questionable program on his Omni-tool, issued to people who might need to perform a non lethal take-down. Such as C-Sec. As Joralan charged at him a neural shock caused him to tumble limply like a rag doll to the floor. Howling in pain all the while.
"You are under arrest, under Council authority your Spectre status is revoked. Anything you say will be used in evidence against you." Gadon said as he held his, active Omni tool over the man with incinerate keyed up and ready to go.
"Still…ngh" Joralan grunted in pain as his synapses sizzled. "clinging to your policeman…ngh principles I see." There was grim realisation on his face as he realised what would become of him. Without his Spectre licence he was just another loose end to Damalik. More than that he was just another small, short-lived little man in a big uncaring galaxy.
"Finish it." Joralan asked as he rolled limply to look Gadon in his black eyes.
"No, you will face due process and due punishment, nothing more, nothing less." Gadon said as he retrieved a pair of restraint bands from his utility belt.
"The hell I will!" Joralan said as he leapt clumsily off the ground. It was done in a second. Gadon opened fire and caught Joralan in the mouth, leaving a large messy gap in the back of his head and shattering his lower jaw into a plasma cauterised mess.
Breathing deeply Gadon pulled off his helmet
Gadon bought up his Omni-tool again and opened a small sensor node in the middle of a corridor wall and quickly managed to disengage the deadbolts holding the hatches closed.
As he released it a quartet of other mercenaries were stood behind the opposite blast door.
Before they could open fire he froze one stiff with a cryo blast. Captalising on his companion's shocked expressions he took a good run to build up momentum and then kicked him to shattered pieces.
A nearby mercenary went to attack him with the butt of his riffle and found he had an Omni-Blade where his heart should had been.
The latter two, obviously the more intelligent ones backed up.
A shotgun blast hit him square in the chest, very nearly dropping his shields and forcing him to back away behind the cover of a rib-like supporting wall brace at the sides of the corridor.
It was at that moment that a spray of submachine gun fire cut them to ribbons.
"Where would you be without me Gadon?" Addison said with a small grin.
"A grave quite likely." Gadon responded as he picked up his carnifex and Joralan's now unused pistol and slotted it into the appropriate mag-holster whilst he left his tempest out and ready to fire.
Inching their way around the corridor they came upon a locked door, with the faintest specks of green blood visible on the floor next to it.
"We're here I think." Gadon said as he hacked their way past the lock.
Behind a barrier and held entirely still off the ground in a complex series of pneumatic arms was a bare-chested batarian man who had obviously not been well cared for. Large blisters, burns, and bruises ran across his bare chest and one of his four eyes were swollen shut.
The room was dark and plain.
"Has Sutili finally started armouring my tormentor's, guess she's learning." He commented in a croaking and parched voice.
"We aren't working for…whoever Sutili is." Gadon said as he approached the console near to his shackles.
"Are you Hagrah?" Addison asked as Gadon typed away at the controls to have the restraints release him.
"Yes." He replied simply.
The barrier deactivated and the arms allowed him to drop.
Landing on his feet he stood, shakily for a moment.
"Take this we're getting you out of here." He said as he passed him Joralan's gun.
"I see you killed the Spectre. Impressive." He said as he checked the weapon and found that it was perfectly operational. Quite a sign of trust.
"Halt y-" A salarian mercenary went to say before Hagrah turned simply and shot him three times, rapidly.
"You have no idea how much I've wanted to do that." Hagrah expressed as he released a contented moan and made for the exit.
They ran out into the corridor and were greeted by five guards. Before they could open fire on the unshielded Hagrah a biotic barrier popped up between them courtesy of Addison.
"Fall back to the shuttle!" Gadon commanded as he sprayed phase jacketed-hypersonic metal at them. Two of them fell over dead almost instantly.
He released an AI drone and followed it up with an overload which dropped the shields of another one. His eyes went wide as Gadon, Addison and Hagrah fired on him, cutting him down instantly.
They backed away quickly with Gadon half twisting backwards to provide covering fire which dropped one man whilst three more joined them.
As they ran down the corridors and relied on their relative speed and the tight twists of the base to provide the number of people behind them grew and grew. Gadon realised that all it would take was a solid force between them and the exit to pin them down long enough to engage in combat and they would be swiftly routed. As they passed Gadon dropped small AI drones to serve as a distraction.
A single mercenary popped out of the corridor and before he could fire Addison merely flung him backwards with a swipe of biotic energy.
They ran down the long straights for the bulkhead leading to the shuttle bay and scrabbled behind it's thick doors in time to avoid a hail of bullets.
After fusing the locking circuits shut Gadon ran back to the waiting aero shuttle with Addison in one side and Hagrah wedged into the cramped middle seat.
They rapidly sped away and upwards for the surface whilst the bomb ticked away rapidly.
Within her command room Sutili flicked the camera over to the shuttle bay. It was completely empty, the intruders were gone. The tracking screen for Hagrah's locator implant showed him gradually moving away from them.
"I see you've lost a grip of him." Dalatress Asdrii said as her wrinkled and grey form appeared on the screen, she was sat like a crumpled doll her luxurious chair with her cane leaning against the arm of it.
"Was Joralan at least able to get the information out of him?" Damalik asked as he took up the call and appeared on screen. The combined cost of transmitting a live video call from both Sur'Kesh and Kar'Shan was probably already in the hundreds of credits, a pointlessly small amount to such wealthy beings. Over the endeavour that had become apparent, Each of the four-now two mercenary Spectres was due a ten million credit payment for undertaking the task, not including funding their expenses of housing, transport and equipment. There was another forty men on the base, each promised between a hundred thousand and a million credits for their time and then the base itself had to be bought out for very nearly a billion, whatever else they hadn't told her about she could only guess but it was running quite high.
"No." She gulped deeply and bowed her head. "He's dead." She looked up and watched as both of them narrowed their eyes in annoyance, Damalik more so.
"Then you and your men are an unaffordable compromise of security." Asdrii commented as she pressed a few small switches in the arms of the chair which cut the connection and set of warning alarms.
"Self destruct imminent. Self destruct imminent" An emotionless VI's voice reported as klaxons flared. Sutili realised now that keeping the self-piloting shuttle on the surface was not a security precaution but a method of containment.
"Sergeant Kobold, get your men to engineering we have a reactor meltdown." Sutili commanded to the nearest squad as she began the process of sealing off the command centre and dropping the various bulkheads between them and the control centres, sealing the remaining personnel wherever they were.
Heedlessly they began attempting to unlock the hatch blocking access to the main reactor. They started calmly and professionally at first though quickly it grew to frantic attempts to open the near impervious hatch.
"Sutili, we can't unseal the shuttle hatch, please unlock the doors." The sergeant begged. His eyes were wide and his sharp voice trembled with fear.
"No." Sutili said simply as she cut the audio channel. She still watched the video feeds, awaiting the explosion. She also watched the sergent and his men. Kobold and Engineer Smeet continued trying to open the hatch whilst many of his men lay about the floor, resigned to their fate. A scarce few smashed their hands against the opposing bulkhead, bending back their nails and beating their hands to blood green pulps.
There was a flash of light and the entire room was gone, replaced instead by the swirling sea and small floating chunks of what had been thinking feeling beings, reduced now to small shreds of inanimate flesh. In that one blast near the lower left end of the half of the base had been consumed and it's perch over the cliff destabilised.
Weakened by the heat and the force of the explosion bulkhead after bulkhead crushed and crumpled in. Those caught in the imploded sections were crushed by the crumpling metal or died near instantly from the shocking cold and fatal pressure. The icy water seeped through seems of the other compartments flooding them and their inhabitants who banged futilely against the cold walls. The command room held though.
"Sub-Dalatress, the room is secure but we've lost nearly all of our personnel." A batarian tech hand reported from his perch over the console.
"Sub-Dalatress!" A salarian man exclaimed as he looked at a number of flashing warnings filled his screen. "The struts are weakening and we're tilting." He responded as slowly the room seemed to tip to one side. Mugs of tea and coffee slid over and stray data pads fell everywhere as they attempted to hold onto their consoles.
The last of the support struts gave out, and the craft slipped off the edge of the shallow shelf. It's shredded form began to sink deeper into the dark ocean.
"Ma'am, atmospheric pressure is increasing!" the salarian reported as the sonar screens displayed their rapidly sinking position.
"Do something!" Sutili half ordered half begged as she clung into the side of her chair as the floor tilted sharply.
"We-we can't." The Batarian said in a startled voice, too shocked to fully accept his imminent mortality. There was a thumping on the door, evidently a few surviving base technicians. They pleaded desperately across a number of languages, batarian, salarian even a single turian voice joined the crescendo of fear. In time the pressure crumpled in the bulkheads around the resilient command centre. Their thumping ceased with a primal screen and the slam of water against the bulkhead.
All of the remaining walls creaked and groaned ominously as the pressure mounted on them. The three technicians looked at the slowly creasing ceiling grew more and more denatured.
"Oh." Was all Sutili could utter before the ceiling finally gave in and the crushing water rushed inwards and smothered away the fearful sparks of their lives.