With Tali's cry of success, the lock disengaged on the sealed blast door, and the young woman grasped at a safety bar running down the side of the portal as it opened with a deafening roar.
The flames reaching out toward Garrus were quickly extinguished as the room vented its atmosphere into space, claxons screaming out a warning as the ship detected a hull breach. Zaeed was dragged backwards by the explosive decompression, managing to lock his fingers through the holes in the metal decking below him, the heavy iron table he had been cowering behind sliding toward slowly toward his prone form.
Thane reacted faster than most, and leaped straight up into the air, the lighter pews passing harmlessly beneath him as he locked his arms around a nest of piping up in the ceiling.
Garrus hurled himself aside as the pews tumbled through the air, slamming into the wall beside the open blast door and grasping the railing opposite Tali. He looked out into space, seeing the pews tumbling away through the void.
The Cerberus troopers were nowhere near as lucky, the pyro first to disappear out of open hatch – he never had a chance to react before the explosive decompression pulled him off his feet. Several men with riot shields were also sucked out, spinning away into the vacuum beyond.
The officer rolled along the deck, his face a mask of disbelief and rage, and he clawed desperately at the deck, failing to find a hand hold good enough to arrest his momentum. He slammed into the iron table with force enough to lift the thing up off the deck, and it spun away, missing Zaeed by a hairs breadth.
The officer was pulled down and underneath it as it tumbled away, the heavy metal desk smashing into the top of the hatch and coming so close to Garrus and Tali that they shared a wide eyed look of fear. The Cerberus man wasn't going down without a fight, and he grasped hold of Zaeed's leg, his fingers locking around the mercenary's knee pad.
Zaeed let out a cry of outrage, and tightened his grip on the deck plating, not daring to let go. The officer began to pull himself up Zaeed's body, using his armour as a hand hold. When he drew level with the mercenary's shoulder, Zaeed let go of the decking with one hand and hammered an elbow into the man's temple, but he stubbornly held his grip. With another two blows, the man's fingers slipped loose, and he tumbled away toward the door.
He impacted the door frame beside Tali, and grabbed hold of the quarian with both hands. She barely had time to let out a squeal of alarm before they both vanished out of the hatch.
XXXXXX
Mordin approached a damaged section of the ship's hull, a huge gouge torn into the side of the Styx from some sort of explosion. It looked like the Normandy had managed to hit some key location on the larger vessel, and a secondary explosion had peeled open the armoured hull like a ripe fruit.
He watched with no small measure of interest as a blast door opened, venting atmosphere out into space. He spied the orange glow of energy shields as several men and women in Cerberus uniforms were sucked out into space, their momentum carrying them toward a spur of shattered hull, and they hit the large shard of armour plating, bouncing off and spinning away into space.
Not a pleasant way to go.
As he drew closer, he realised that the breach was no accident when he spotted a human clad in the black and white armour of a Cerberus soldier tumbling through the vacuum, trying to tear the facemask from a clearly terrified Tali'Zorah vas Normandy.
Thinking quickly, the salarian calculated the trajectory of the pair, trying to factor in all likely variables for the moment they struck the shard of the hull. Too many possibilities – no time to think, must act.
Bracing himself against the ruined hull of the Styx, he coiled his legs up underneath him, faced what he hoped was the right direction, and leapt into the void.
XXXXXX
Emergency blast doors slammed shut back down the corridor, and the warning claxons quietened as the last of the oxygen was sucked out into space. Thane drifted down from the ceiling, drawing his sniper rifle from his shoulders. The drell hurriedly propelled himself through the void toward the open blast door and braced himself against its frame.
Readying the rifle, he aimed it after the tumbling pair, trying to get a shot on the officer that would not hit Tali as well, but they were tumbling too far and too fast for it to be possible. Zaeed heard him curse in his native tongue over their communications channel, his auto translator drawing a blank on the alien words.
The mercenary watched as Garrus dove after her without hesitation, and seeing the turian drifting away into the void it was his own turn to curse. His rifle was gone, sucked out into the black, leaving him with only his sidearm to face off against the half dozen surviving Cerberus troopers, each of them still wielding their glowing riot shields.
XXXXXX
Tali's glowing eyes were wide with fear as she fell through space, the human soldier grasping onto her with a vice like grip. She felt panic rising as he reached for her mask; he was trying to pull it off!
She lashed out at him, slamming her fists into his armoured form, but to no avail – the hard suit deflecting the power of her blows. Her visor was misting up, and it took her a moment to realise that it was the air venting from his suit. She couldn't know that Garrus had punctured his armour with a volley of fire from his assault rifle, but she knew what it meant – the man was already dead, and she could see in his hate filled eyes that he knew it too. That meant that self preservation was not even entering his mind, and all he wanted to do was take her with him to the grave.
That was not going to happen.
Drawing up her knee into the man's groin, she noted the momentary relaxation of his grip, and she reached down to her ankle, and the knife sheathed there.
So fuelled by rage was he that the Cerberus officer never even saw it coming, and his rage turned into surprise as she stabbed the blade through the seal of his helmet and up into his jugular. Blood fountained as she twisted the knife before tearing it free, the crimson orbs floating away through the vacuum. His grip on Tali relaxed as he bled out, his transparent faceplate slowly turning red as his helmet filled with blood, the liquid pumping from the wound faster than it could escape from the rent in his throat seal. Within seconds his struggling ceased, and he offered no further resistance.
The immediate danger past, Tali looked around her, trying to get a sense of perspective and looking for anything she could use to arrest her fall through the void. Before she had a chance to react, she slammed into a massive shard of armour plating that had peeled away from the hull, her momentum propelling her away from the ship. She scrabbled at the wreckage, desperate to find a hand hold, frantically grasping at the smooth metal before it slid away from her, and her hands closed around empty space.
XXXXXX
Garrus saw the wreckage of the ship before Tali did, and he knew he would never reach her in time. He watched in horror as she hit it, knocking her away from ship and into space. As he flew toward the shard himself, he braced himself for the impact, firing his pulse rifle to slow his momentum as best he could. As he drew closer he returned the weapon to its magnetic lock on the back of his armour and readied himself for the impact.
He hit the shard slow enough to allow himself a grip on the damaged edge with his claws, and he held on as best he could, securing himself on the hull of the ship. He looked up into the void, a sense of peerless vertigo washing over him, and he spotted Tali's flailing form as she drifted away.
Garrus felt a knot in his stomach as she faded into the black. Closing his eyes he whispered his regret before turning back the way he had come, seeing Zaeed and Thane engaging the Cerberus survivors. He had to focus on the situations he could control – help those he had a chance of helping.
Tali was on her own now.
XXXXXX
Zaeed was in amongst the Cerberus troopers before they could fully recover, putting a round through the face of the nearest one who back flipped in the zero gravity, spinning away from the force of the impact.
Thane was by his side in an instant, the mercenary and the assassin experts in zero gravity combat. The drell flew through the void and landed on the riot shield of another trooper, knocking the woman backward off her feet, and together they drifted toward the far wall. She tried to get her pistol around the edge of her shield to take a shot at the drell, but Thane was faster, and he pulled himself up and over the top of the shield, grasping the woman's helmet in both hands and twisting savagely as he flew past.
Thane kicked off the wall the second his feet touched it, the corpse slamming into the spot he had just vacated. Another trooper fired a burst from his machine pistol, but succeeded only in hitting his dead colleague. The trooper tried to turn and face Thane, but the recoil from the full auto burst pushed him backwards in the zero-g, and he over compensated, turning to where he expected the drell to be, and not where Thane actually was.
He never had time to correct his mistake, as Thane put a round from his Phalanx past the arc of the shield and through his face, his kinetic barrier no match for the powerful hand cannon.
Zaeed pushed off from the deck, powering himself toward the last pair of Cerberus troopers and shoulder barging the riot shield of the first, arresting his own momentum but knocking his opponent backwards. Twisting around, he grabbed the front of the second man's riot shield and pulled it toward him with all his strength. The trooper and the mercenary stared at each other through the orange glow of the energy shield, Zaeed using his body to block any fire from the first man.
Thane had disappeared into the shadows up in a cluster of pipes on the ceiling, and was waiting for the right time to strike.
XXXXXX
Garrus pushed off the shard and back toward Zaeed and Thane, his rifle back in his hands once more. As he drew nearer the turian signalled to the mercenary over their closed communications feed.
"Massani, get out of the way; you're blocking my shot – and if you can get that shield facing away from the door I'd really appreciate it." Garrus said, sarcasm dripping from his words. He blocked any thought of Tali from his mind and focussed everything on the enemy beyond his iron sights, the star field reflecting from the mirrored surface of the geth weapon.
He watched as Zaeed tightened his grip on the energy shield before snapping his pistol out to the side and firing a full clip into the far wall, the recoil spinning the two men around until the Cerberus trooper had his back to the open hatch.
Garrus didn't hesitate, and fired his rifle, stitching the man from buttocks to neck before putting the last three rounds from the weapon through the back of the man's helmet. The impact pushed Zaeed and the corpse further back into the darkness, and Garrus lost sight of them as the riot shield flickered and died, a stray round deflecting from the concave surface of the shield and destroying the emitter built into the man's vambrace.
Garrus saluted the mercenary as he drifted back toward the interior of the ship, his momentum slowed by the weapon's recoil.
XXXXXX
With only one Cerberus trooper remaining, the fight was over – before the man had a chance to fire at Zaeed's now exposed back, Thane came at him from above, breaking his neck before he'd even realised the drell was there.
Garrus slowly drifted in through the hatch, Zaeed and Thane catching him and pulling him back to the deck, their magnetic seals anchoring them back to the floor.
"Where's the quarian?" Zaeed said - his frown visible through his faceplate.
"I... couldn't get to her in time." Garrus said, hanging his head in shame.
"Then may Arashu watch over her." Thane said as he reloaded his pistol before stowing it back in its holster.
"Let's just hope we can get through the door on the other side of this mess." Zaeed replied, bringing the focus of the two men back to the mission at hand.
"I think I can manage it, so long as her hacking algorithms are still active in the open door." Garrus replied, prepping his omni tool.
"Then get to it." Zaeed said, checking the armour seal where he had been shot earlier in the fight. Thankfully his battle plate was prepared for extended fighting in a vacuum, and the moment the room had vented it had applied a ceramic polymer to the bullet hole, sealing it shut. The downside was that the stuff was mildly toxic, and the wound burned from the presence of the irritant.
Better that than dead.
XXXXXX
Tali drifted in the black, her eyes rapidly scanning her internal suit diagnostics. She had air reserves enough for three more hours out here, and the built in temperature regulator was keeping her warm. At least she wouldn't freeze to death.
As she contemplated the situation, and her approaching death, Tali could think of nothing but those she had lost on Haestrom. Perhaps this was her just reward. The thought came with an odd sense of peace – resignation that she had done her best, and it had not been enough.
As the Styx grew slowly smaller before her eyes, she wondered if Shepard had survived. She hoped so.
Her thoughts were interrupted as something impacted with her and she began to spin, the heavy weight of the object latching onto her and pushing her through somersaults in the void. Dizzy, Tali barely noticed as the spinning began to slow, arresting the motion.
She looked down in confusion, and did not initially comprehend the three fingered hands clasped around her chest. Black gloves with white armour plating.
"Tali'Zorah, still with me?" A clipped, hurried voice called out over her suit frequency.
Mordin smiled at the young quarian's affirmation, and used the thrusters on his EVA suit to slowly guide their course back toward the Normandy.