Explosion
There were an alarming number of things the Reds and the Alliance had in common. Of those things, the most important was that they both knew how to make Shepard feel at home. Not so much through their cultists agendas, though she had adamantly believed in both while a part of them, but through combat.
With a gun in her hand and an omnitool on her wrist, Shepard never felt more comfortable, more at ease. Add a round of grenades to the mix, and she was a force to be reckoned with. As a small and heavy arms specialist, keeping up a constant stream of fire was her specialty, and the explosions came as a bonus. So it was more than a little disappointing when she reached for her third grenade, and Supernova's taloned hand clamped down on her wrist.
"No," was all he said with an adamant shake of his head.
"You're no fun." She pouted, but lowered her hand.
"We're in a construction zone," he explained, "We can't blast our way through without risking seriously destabilizing the base."
"So?" Personally, blasting rubble only made more rubble, so Shepard didn't see an issue.
"So," He growled, lining up a precise, slow, headshot on one of the mercs. The man in question ducked back into cover in time to save his neck, and Supernova switched targets. "If the base relies on the station for power, we could accidently fry their landlines and cut power to their mainframe. Or send the roof down on top of it. I doubt they have the data backed up elsewhere."
"Alright, I get it," Shepard flapped a hand in his face to silence him. She looked over the base again, no paint adorned the entrance to mark it as Red territory. On the contrary, nothing marked the entrance but a large, black hole… "They're not using the front entrance. Trap?"
"Likely." He agreed, taking a moment to follow her gaze. "We could make a run for the side entrance on the west,"
"Or we could use the front entrance." Finch had always said 'balls first' was her style, and her mission reports tended to agree. For once, Supernova did too.
"Alright, let's-" A sound still his words, a sound every soldier was trained to recognize and be on alert for. A easy tap of metal on metal, not set to any particular rhythm, growing closer before it lulled to a silent, fatal stop. He didn't yell a warning or curse, he just grabbed her and spun around their cover, likely hoping the vehicle and his kinetic barriers would spare them from the worst of the blast. A blast that never came. "Dud," He muttered, releasing her.
"They get grenades, why the hell don't I get-" A hail of fire from the mercenaries assault rifles reminded them they'd moved from optimal cover. The two of them rolled back around what Shepard assumed had once been a lift, but not quite fast enough. A blast of shrapnel grazed her face, slicing down her eye, another piece diagonally across her face.
"Keep your barrier up," Her turian reprimanded her, tossing her a pack of medigel, and there his concern ended.
Shepard caught it, ripped it open with her teeth, and smeared the gel across her face. Head injuries always looked worse than they really were. Blood ran into her eye, turned her vision red, and the diagonal wound had blood pooling over her nose and into her mouth. The gel should have sealed the wounds and had them mended within a day, being little more deep cuts. Instead, it didn't affix to her injuries at all.
"What the hell!" Shepard cursed, more than a little alarmed as the gel oozed uselessly down her face. Not so much out of concern for her superficial head wound, but the realization that medigel had suddenly stopped working for seemingly no reason. Her leg went cold, and she realized the gel on her thigh had fallen off as well.
Supernova took the situation in with a glance and snarled a word that made her translator glitch. Dropping to one knee beside her he ripped a sleeve off her jacket, and then took his talons to it, tearing it into makeshift bandages. "Why isn't it sealing?" He demanded, bringing her back to herself. Medi-gel was human-designed. She was a certified field medic. Calm down Shepard. It doesn't work on Threshermaw acid either.
Only shrapnel had no properties that would have interfered with the sealing agent, which only released when subjected to the proper ultrasound frequency… "It's not a grenade, ultrasound emitter." She muttered as Supernova tied the bandages around her head. "Interferes with medigel sealing, would have been confiscated at customs." She took one of the bandages and tied it around her leg. The make-shift tourniquet would have to do for now. "They do have a supplier in customs,"
"Later. Can you cover me to the front entrance?" Supernova squeezed her shoulder, more to get her attention than out of sympathy, she imagined.
"It's going to scar…" Shepard mumbled dejectedly, wiping the blood out of her eyes. Twisting, she looked over the oversized wheel she was using as cover. Half the eastern group were already on their way to outflanking them, though they'd heard nothing of the western group or snipers after she'd used her grenades on them. Which were damn useful.
The mercenaries were far too spread out for any suppressing fire to be helpful by now. The only thing they had on their side was the sheer size of their cover… and grenades. "Yeah," She allotted finally, rigging an overload on her omnitool. "I can cover you."
They traded nods, and she opened fire towards the half of the group that would give him the most trouble reaching the door. He ducked his head, then sprinted towards his next point of cover, which was a piece of the floor paneling that had been dislodged and bent vertically. He had two more runs before he could reach the door, but she was already pressed up against the lift trying to avoid fire from the flanking group. He glanced back at her position, then ran for his next cover.
Shepard shrugged off her grenade belt and flung it as high and as far as she could between both groups, then launched her overload tech-mine. The resulting blast did more than provide cover, it made cover. Metal and shrapnel flew out in all directions, careening into the mercenaries, into the lift, and into the base. A blinding white light lit up the entire section, seeping through the cracks in the floor and the walls and burning Shepard's eyes.
The heat-wave that washed over her smelled of ash and burnt flesh, which she smugly noted she'd at least gotten one merc. Rolling out of cover, she ran for the closest cover to the main entrance. Said cover happened to be the sniper loft her older grenade had toppled. She staggered once or twice over the unsteady flooring and from the occasional tremor from a secondary explosion.
More importantly, she took no fire as she ran. The explosion had completely disorganized and destabilized the mercenaries. Perhaps she'd gotten their squad leader.
She was in the midst of giving herself a well-deserved pat on the back when sharp claws dug into her shoulders and spun her around, slamming her back into the cover behind her. "I said no explosives," A fanged mouth lined in flared mandibles snarled at her.
"Change of plans," Shepard glared at him. Right knee to the waist to destabilize, block return blow on the left, uppercut and low spinning sweep to finish…
There were mercenaries dying, explosions going off, perhaps the suppressing fire had resumed, but neither of them heard anything. They were glaring at each other, likely both thinking along the same track, when simultaneously they broke off.
"No means no," He forced a joke and Shepard forced a laugh. Humans. She was fighting the humans, not the turian. There was something she never thought would happen.
They took a step back from each other, and Shepard glanced out from cover. Small fires had lit throughout the base's garden of scrap metal, only to snuff out when they realized their tinder was limited. No one fired in their direction, and what screams there had been died out. "I think we got 'em all." or most of them.
"There'll be more in the base," He nodded his head towards the darkened entrance, then, after a pause, put an unnecessary guiding hand on the arm whose sleeve he'd ripped off. She covered it with her opposite hand and squeezed, which was likely as close to an apology as either of them could come.
The moment was ruined when, after a fatal delay for the mercenaries, the section's fire control system kicked in. Foam sprayed down across the entire sector, coating the roof of the base, the renovated perimeter, and both of them. No alarms blared furiously, so they must have cut their security feed from the rest of the station.
Supernova glared at the ceiling, then maturely resolved to ignore it, and moved to the entrance. He turned on his omnitool's flashlight and she followed suit, shining it into the abyss. The orange glow lit up sterile gray walls on either side of the hall, and revealed the entrance gave way to a large, open room that likely would have served as a food court, had the renovations ever been completed.
"Cuttlebone bastard!" A scream interrupted their inspection, and gunfire followed shortly after. A shotgun blast from a semi-automatic took her turian straight in the back, flaring his kinetic barriers but not piercing them. It was a completely ineffectual attack, save that it knocked her turian forward and revealed why the entrance had been a trap. It had no floor. He toppled head over heels into the black.
Shepard spun and opened fire, but her gun clicked uselessly at her, jammed by the foam pouring down on them. The mercenary laughed, a piercing, wild cry of a man with nothing left to lose. He tried to fire on her as well, but his gun gave the same protesting click, the last shot its magnum opus before it kicked the bucket.
Shepard rushed him, sprinting the distance between them, where he'd been hidden behind a toppled crate. He brought up his shotgun to strike her with and she caught it with both hands. They pushed and shoved against one another, caught up in an inglorious battle, when he used his size and desperation to his advantage to shove her to the floor. He raised the shotgun above his head, intent to beat her with it and foolishly leaving his midsection prone. Shepard dove, shoulder hitting him square in the chest and knocking him to the floor. It also knocked the wind out of his lung, and the gun from his hands.
Gripping her otherwise useless pistol, she smacked him across the temple from one side, and then the other. Her hand was a bloody mess and she was panting violently when she was sure he was dead. Shepard shoved herself off the corpse and glared down at the man's face. He'd died with a ghastly grin of white and red, "You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Shepard growled, then shook herself.
Just a merc. Kills for creds. Don't think about his mother. Think about your turian. Shepard turned and sprinted back to the entrance, empty, black, and silent. Better yet, don't think about anything.