Chapter 55
"We were not supposed to run into this amount of resistance!" Salarian number one yelled as the fight died down. Died down together with salarian number two, Holt thought to himself.
"Missions like this never goes how you plan them." Holt sighed as he walked over to the salarian who was kneeling next to his dead comrade. They had barely been able to enter the facility proper before they were sandwiched between two very aggressive groups of geth. Salarian number two never stood a chance.
"It's like they're being drawn towards us..." The salarian muttered while looking up at Holt who threw his hands up in protest. At least Holt didn't have to call him number one anymore.
"Don't look at me. They desire my death just as much as yours."
"Then how come you're still standing?" The salarian challenged him as he raised himself to his full height.
"A lot of people and things have been trying to shoot me lately. I've had a lot of practice when it comes dodging death."
"You're treating this as a joke." The salarian said while shaking his head. Holt felt really conflicted as he kept watch while the salarian made the bomb switch owner for the second time. On one hand, his plan was gonna be a lot easier to go through with now. On the other hand, two salarians that had not tried to actively kill him which sort of made them allies.
"It might be the bomb attracting the geth." Holt said once the salarian had finished strapping it to his back.
"Impossible. The thing is deactivated right now and doesn't have any way of communicating with anything unless we manually start it." The salarian quickly responded as he started walking away.
"But there's no way to hide the chemicals inside the thing. That might be what they've managed to pick up on their scanners." Holt argued. He honestly was wondering how the geth could locate them this quickly. He knew that he wasn't giving away their position and he highly doubted that the salarian was working for Saren.
"Impossible. The material surrounding the bomb makes it impossible for anything other than direct contact to-"
"Yes, yes, yes. But..." Holt interrupted. "What if they've developed a new way of being able to pick up on the stuff over a distance?"
"And how would that work?" The salarian sighed as he kept walking ahead of Holt. Probably wanting to avoid any further fighting.
"I don't know, I'm no scientist." The salarian looked back at Holt with a tired look. "Magic would be my guess."
"How did someone like Commander Shepard end up bringing you on board her ship?"
"Sometimes I ask myself that very question."
"If you have to ask yourself that question then how can you with good conscience stay on the ship?" The salarian argued. His mood was starting to go very sour very fast. Holt guessed that having your colleagues die around you would do that.
"It was just a simple joke. You know, to brighten up the grim situation we're in."
"And that's the problem!" he salarian snapped as he turned around to face Holt. "Ever since the start of this mission you've done nothing but treat it like a joke!" Holt kept his eyes locked with the salarian but kept his ears open. With how loud this salarian was being there was a big chance that more geth would come rushing in at any second. "Two of my subordinates have died to see this facility shutting down... Two of my friends..." The salarian trailed off and Holt felt a pang of guilt even though he was in no way responsible for their deaths.
"I can understand that seeing your friends die is difficult but you all knew the risks of this mission. There will be plenty of time to mourn them later." That last part was a lie. "But now, the best thing you can do is to honor their memories and finish the mission." The salarian chuckled to this.
"You've never had a friend die in your arms, have you?" The salarian asked to which Holt remained silenced, which was enough of an answer. "Pray that you never will, human." He finished just as a familiar sound was heard. The two of them quickly dived for cover as bullets started flying above them. Holt let out a frustrated groan as he brought out his rifle.
"I'm beginning to think that we're the front-line force." He said as scanned the area with his omni-tool. Several geth units showed up on the screen. Glancing towards the salarian, Holt saw that he was being glared at. "Oh come on, you're not gonna blame this attack on me as well?"
"You have a cloaking feature, use it." The salarian demanded as he ignored Holt's comments.
"No one ever says 'please'..." Holt grumbled as he activated it and crawled out of cover to avoid the hail of bullets. It seemed that the only tactic that geth had programmed was spray and pray. To who or what they were praying to was something that Holt had to convince himself of figuring out some other time. Right now he should focus on other things.
"I'll return fire once you've disrupted them." The salarian told him as Holt crawled away. He figured the same old tactic would work again. Get up behind them and let off a small EMP charge and then finish them off. Good thing about this facility though was that there were plenty of places to use as cover when sneaking around.
"Stand aside, weaklings!" A voice suddenly shouted that was heard over the sound of gun-fire. Holt knew that only one race could achieve such a thing. Peeking over the box he was currently behind he was a krogan standing in the middle of all the geth. Normally, that would be a problematic sight in itself. What really made Holt sweat was the fact that the krogan was carrying around a rocket launcher. Quite a nice one as well but it wasn't really up for admiration at the moment. "It's a lot easier to exterminate vermin if you go for power over precision!"
"Get the fuck away from there!" Holt shouted into the comm, ignoring the order of radio silence. That rocket launcher might set of the bomb the salarian was carrying around. That would mess up Holts' plans royally. Not to mention that it would be quite painful. Glancing back, Holt saw the salarian making a run for it but not without the krogan seeing it as well. Holt starting firing at the krogan, ignoring all the geth between them. It did little more other than weakening his shield while the krogan pulled the trigger. Holt could swear the rocket flew in slow motion towards the retreating salarian. He was forced back into cover before he could see exactly bad the salarian got hit by the explosion that followed. But at least he had not been blasted into small fragments which should mean that the bomb was still one piece.
"Deal with the other rat." The krogan ordered and Holt didn't wait to activate cloak again and make a run back towards the salarian. Staying low as he ran, Holt managed to avoid getting shot. The geth didn't really know where to shoot and the krogan seemed to be more cocky than your average krogan and was walking towards the smoke left behind from the explosion. As Holt got through the smoke he struggled to find... anything at all since this looked nothing like the area they had walked through only moments earlier. Making a quick scan of the area he found no sign of life in front of him. Trying his hardest to find anything organic among the rubble, he soon managed to spot his target underneath some rubble quite a bit away from the point of explosion. Grimacing as he saw the crack in the wall right above the unmoving body, Holt quickly made his way over as he could feel the enemy closing in behind him.
"I'm sorry." Was all Holt whispered as he quickly folded away his rifle and began working on removing the, hopefully, still stable bomb from the back of the mangled body of the salarian. Not having any time to waste as he could now hear the giant footsteps belonging to a krogan approaching him from behind, Holt threw the bomb up on one of his shoulders and made a run for it. Once in a safe spot, he would properly strap the bomb on his back and then begin abusing his cloak feature as much as possible to get to the target location for the bomb.
