The group were assembled in the docking bay; Garrus, Aelia, Flavian, Terentius, Pen. Wate and Wen had been assigned as well as the new scouting recruit, Leta Manius; the gangly young turian female wasn't the least bit as cute as Terentius had said, definitely not my type, he thought. Captain Mikras and the XO had come down to brief them before they left.
"Now, I don't want to get too heavy handed with you, but if you lot do anything like you did on the last scouting mission – there's going to be more than citizenship tier dropping, is that understood?" The Captain said.
A collective "Aye" rang out from the group.
"The XO's going to brief you, I'm going to prep for our retrieval team" he then left the docking bay.
The XO handed Flavian a datapad, "Flavian, everything you need is there. I want a report back from you as soon as you get near the batarians' landing zone, hopefully that will be within the hour. We want to get in and get out as soon as we can so keep us posted on anything unusual or if they look like they're going to run."
Flavian nodded a response.
Camillus turned to leave but added "Oh- and if you come across any other munitions huts – keep those fucking two away from them." She pointed to Garrus and Aelia.
"Yes Ma'am," Flavian said.
As she walked out Camillius shouted back "don't call me that, Flavian."
"Yes M…" The team stifled a laugh.
Pen moved into the pilot's seat of the scout ship, the rest crammed in the back and they set off from the Nimines. It took a while longer to get down to the planet as the Nimines had removed itself to the far side of the planet's moon after the munitions hut incident, but they soon set themselves down on the planet's humid surface once more.
As they trudged through the harsh vegetation the mood of the group was much more sombre this time – not even the recruits were speaking amongst themselves. They finally reached the small clearing and Garrus could see debris scattered a fair distance across the landscape. Flavian motioned for the group to stop while urging Garrus to the front.
"Vakarian; is that a ship?"
Garrus looked through the scope of his sniper rifle, "Yep, looks like an Eclipse shuttle, and they're loading something into it – crates or something, and there's two unarmed batarians and an armed Eclipse , but I can't see…wait…." Garrus could see the outlines of what appeared to be turians, and he turned to Flavian, "Shit, it looks like some of our colonists are there too."
Flavian replied, "Hell, what are they doing, how many?"
Garrus continued to look through the scope, shaking his head as he reported, "I can't see how many there are, they're on the other side of the shuttle, all I can see is…maybe a child or a female." Garrus placed the rifle on the ground "I'm going to have to get in closer – or you're going to have to send someone closer to report back."
Flavian turned to Terentius, "You go around, get as close to that shuttle as you can without being seen." Terentius nodded and headed off.
Flavian turned to the newest scout, "Manius, head back to the scout ship – tell the Nimines what's going on and that they better get their ass down to the planet ASAP otherwise there may be fewer colonists to rescue. Tell them we need some instructions."
The group sat, again the conversation was minimal, and the recruits looked edgy. Garrus kept his eye on the shuttle, the batarians had sat themselves down and were smoking, the Eclipse merc he saw moving around with them had moved out of eye shot. It was a full 25 minutes until Terentius returned and he didn't look like he had good news.
"There's about 8 women and 5 children sitting down on the other side of that shuttle, Flavian, also 6 armed Eclipse sitting down with them and it looks like they're going to be heading out shortly."
Manius had also just returned. "Orders are straight forward Flavian, sit tight till they arrive – they'll be here within the hour."
"Shit," Flavian exclaimed, "It's going to be too late."
"We're going to have to stop them leaving, Flavian." Aelia said, "If they leave, then they're lost to us."
Garrus spoke looking at Aelia, "Goran's right, we can't let them leave, we have no idea where they're headed or why the Eclipse have them."
Flavian took a deep breath. "Yes, we have to do something but we're going to have to do this quietly – we can't alert the other batarians in the compound to our presence. There's at least another 25 turians unaccounted for and we can't put them at risk, but how the fuck are we going to do this…"
The group stood in contemplation before Aelia piped up.
"We let them leave," she said.
Flavian shook his head, "Huh?"
"What I mean is – we let the batarians think that it's the Eclipse shuttle leaving, but it will be one of us piloting – Pen can fly pretty much anything, he can take them safely back to the Nimines and the Batarians will be none the wiser."
Terentius spoke, "But what if they do get alerted, Goran, if they hear even a single shot from a rifle they'll know."
She shook her head. "I'm not sure, but we can't let them leave."
Garrus spoke, "There is a risk that we could alert them to our presence, but I think it's small, I think we can do it, and the retrieval team can come in and storm the compound – the Captain's big surprise won't be spoiled."
Flavian rubbed his hand along his mandible. "Okay, let's think about this for a moment… Garrus, how would you be sniping from here?"
"Distance is not an issue with this gun, Flavian." He ran his hands along the rifle's barrel, "It's just that I don't have a clear view, I'll have to move around and get a bit closer."
"Good, the rest of us – let's stick to pistols and hand-to-hand only; any of you that have silencers put them on, anything else is going to be too noisy," Flavian looked the rest of the team in the eye before turning to Garrus, "Okay, Garrus, you get yourself to the best possible position you can; Wate, Wen and Terentius, I want you to go around to the other side of the clearing and wait for my signal; Goran, Saies, Manius and I will go to where the turians are sitting and try and get them into the undergrowth before we start any fight."
"How are you going to do that?" Manius' voice had a panicky sound to it.
"Smoke bomb – Saies, I want you to guide the colonists into the undergrowth until we have the all clear to move back into the shuttle, then you can fly them the hell out of here."
"I won't be able to see shoot anything with all the smoke…" Garrus said.
Flavian said," Well, hopefully we'd have handled anything major, you'll just have to wait till it clears – anything with a blue head should be easy enough to aim for." Garrus nodded.
"Okay, we move now, I'll throw the smoke bomb as soon as the Batarians have returned to the compound."
Garrus moved around to a position he was comfortable with, thoughts on what had happened in the days leading up to this moment were playing at the back of his mind. He wanted everything to go right this time. Even though he knew they were going against orders – he knew it to be the right thing to do. His heart was beating wildly in his chest.
He still couldn't see all the mercs – but he had four in his sight, Most of the turians were sitting on the ground, some of the children were standing, they all looked scared. The batarians were talking to the merc closest to the ship but then they started moving back to the compound. He kept his sight trained on the departing batarians, after about five minutes he was sure they'd be back at the compound now. He trained his sight on the merc standing closest to him, the one closest to the shuttle doors, just outside the smoke bomb zone; she had red markings on her face, a perfect target he thought.
The smoke bomb went off.
He let his sniper rifle off; it went hurtling towards the merc, hitting her right in the forehead. A puzzled look arose on her face before she collapsed dead on the ground.
He heard a few cries, mostly turian voices, and saw the flash of blue biotics through the smoky haze. Minutes passed. "C'mon clear dammit!" he could hear the dull thuds of missed fire hitting the shuttle, but he still couldn't see anything.
Then it cleared and it was Aelia's tattooed face he could see fighting hand-to-hand. She had that angry look on her face that he remembered from their fight in the ring; he smiled, because now he knew that it was directed elsewhere. He tried to get a clear shot of the merc and when the back of her head finally came into view, he lined up a shot, and fired. Aelia's pretty face had a stunned look to it, that and it was now covered in what was left of the asari's brains; she turned and disappeared into the smoke again. He lined up another shot. He could see Wate, then Wen, then one more blue head, bang, dead. A few more minutes passed, but it seemed longer and his heart was still racing.
When the smoke finally cleared he could make out five figures on the ground. He saw that one of the mercs was being held by Terentius and Wate, four figures on the ground were the other asari, and the fifth was turian. It was Aelia. Garrus' heart leapt from his chest into his throat, "No!" he yelled. This little turian female who had caused so much angst to him over the last few months was now lying on the ground, possibly dead, and he didn't want that. He grabbed his rifle and sprinted towards the shuttle across the clearing.
He'd never run so fast in his life, and he was breathing hard when he reached them. Flavian and Terentius were hovering over Aelia, he couldn't see her.
"What…what's happened?" his voice was full of dread. "Is she dead?"
Flavian and Terentius turned to face Garrus. A small voice making spitting noises piped up from behind them.
"Not likely, Vakarian, just took a little tumble, must have been that delicate tidbit of brains I just swallowed," she continued to spit bits of asari flesh from her mouth. "Thank you kindly for the gift but I prefer Tupo berry slice," She gave him a wide smile.
The relief washed over Garrus' face and Terentius and Flavian helped Aelia to her feet.
Aelia reached over putting her hand on Garrus's arm. She nodded. He did the same.
Flavian turned his attention to the Eclipse merc being held by Terentius and Wate.
"Why were you moving these people? Mercs aren't known for being slavers."
The asari said nothing, a smirk rising to her face. Flavian ended it with a rifle butt. Her head and body slumped down.
The colonists slowly came out of the undergrowth, a few still coughing, some of the children were crying. Flavian asked if anyone of them knew why they were being moved. An elderly woman moved forward.
"All we know is that they were taking us somewhere for sale, they took blood samples from us, all 38 of us, later they separated us out and said based on those samples we were being sold to this group or person called the collector."
"The collector?"
One young turian woman grabbed Flavian's arm as he answered, wailing "My children are still in there!" and she pointed to the compound and began weeping, "Please help me get them back, please!"
Aelia moved to the woman, taking her by the arm "Its okay, the military are coming; your children will be safe."
Garrus noticed the calmness and the compassion in Aelia's voice.
Flavian spoke, "Saies and Wen, get these people on board and off this damn planet, we'll sort this 'collector' business later. The rest of you: first move these bodies into the undergrowth; I don't want them spotted, then head back to our original spot at the edge of the clearing. We'll sit there till the retrieval team arrives."
The turian colonists were loaded onto the shuttle and Pen departed for the Nimines.
They didn't have to wait long for the rest to arrive, it was 15 minutes and the retrieval team ship landed in the same clearing, comm channel silence now broken. The batarians knew they were here now, but it was a hell of a surprise. The scout group maintained their position and Garrus was left looking through his sniper rifle occasionally taking pot shots at any batarians he saw walking along the compound's western wall.
Wen and Wate were both grizzling, "Why can't we join them?" Wen asked.
Flavian rolled his eyes, "Just shut the fuck up, you two, our teams have disobeyed enough orders in the last two days. Let the retrieval team do its job."
Aelia chimed in. "If you want to be good little turians, then listen to Flavian, he's in charge." She was looking at Garrus when she spoke and she winked, "You should always listen to who's in charge."
Garrus and the rest of the group started laughing.