The Red Moon Collection - 2 - Three Phantoms

by TSarr

Five months after the events that drew them together the crew of the MSV Hyperion has found their place in the lawless underbelly of the galaxy. However, they soon find themselves in deeper than they had anticipated after accepting a deal offered by two powerful strangers. /Volume 2 of the Red Moon Collection\

12. Chapter 12

The Red Moon Collection - 2 - Three Phantoms

Chapter 12

Abandoned Weapons Manufactory, Neidus

"Left side! Three more!" Will shouted as he dove for cover.

The squad had only made it a few rooms into the facility when they were met by the first wave of security mechs. The LOKIs were quite standard in their design, as Corsin and Kallux noted, but they boasted far more impressive firepower than the standard bullet fodder used by gangs in the Terminus Systems.

"I see them," Corsin answered as he finished off one of the mechs from the first wave.

The Spectre raised his arm and omnitool toward the new group. The foremost LOKI sparked and jerked to the side as Corsin overloaded its high level systems. Corsin dove back down for cover under the combined fire of the two new mechs and the three others at the opposite end of the room. Will, Kallux and Tyrixis readied their weapons and looked over to Eleena and Corsin as they did the same in the cover of the set of columns they had jumped behind.

"Now!" Will ordered.

All five of them stepped out and picked a target. Eleena's SMG was the first weapon to snarl to life and spray bullets into the pack of slowly approaching robotic foes. Tyrixis and Corsin's rifles joined in a split second later, tearing into the weak shielding that surrounded the mechs. Will narrowed his eyes and quickly spotted the LOKI with the most threatening a armament: a rather nasty looking heavy shotgun. He took aim and squeezed the trigger to put a burst into its legs in an attempt to destabilize the mech's weak structure. Two of the five enemies had already fallen as Kallux's cannon finally jumped to life and barked harshly to send heavy slugs into the two who remained untouched. The mechs fired back feebly as they continued to march onward toward the squad, obviously not sophisticated enough in their programming to seek cover. After a few brief moments, the last of the robotic security buckled at the waist and twisted to the ground, sparking and popping from an electrical fire in its circuitry.

Eleena lowered her SMG. "Damn, talk about pushovers."

"Let's hope that doesn't change," Tyrixis countered. "There's no need to make this more complicated than it needs to be."

The group quickly spread out and began combing over the common area the small firefight had taken place in. The room was unsurprisingly barren and devoid of nearly everything but a few benches, tables and empty shelves. Will had crossed the room to inspect a dry and decrepit potted plant when a comm alert chimed in his ear. He opened the channel and nodded to himself.

"Go ahead."

"Just reporting in," Tul's voice began. "We found a server room, but it looks like everything was wiped."

Will sighed. "Figures. Any local data on the terminals?" He paused for a moment. "Are there any local terminals?"

"Yes, just one here." The quarian sounded as though he was concentrating on something else. "I'm trying to see if I can find anything useful. Agent Vayren is looking for any portable data storage that might have been left behind."

"Sounds good. Radio in if you find anything."

"Understood, Captain."

Will turned to the others to see that they had all given up on the search and were congregating around him.

"Team Sneak find anything useful?" Eleena inquired casually.

"Nothing of note," Will replied as he waved them on to the door and the next room.

The squad breached the door as they had the handful of others and lowered their weapons as they were led into a hallway. A few feet up to their left was another doorway that, given the proximity, could only lead into the enormous chamber that ran parallel to the rooms they had been moving through. Will glanced back over his shoulder as he turned toward the door.

"Wanna check out that big chamber?"

"Couldn't hurt," Kallux answered.

Will approached the door only to find it locked. Corsin quickly stepped in and put his technical skills to work. After a short bout of hacking the door buzzed angrily, but parted reluctantly as Corsin retracted the shunt program he had applied. Dim light from the hallway cast a pathway of illumination across the chamber to the far wall a few dozen meters away. Will gripped his rifle and took a cautious step through the door, letting his eyes wander. Off to the left was the set of cargo doors that opened up to the landing pad. To the right, about fifty feet away, the floor seemed to stop in place of a shaft that stretched the width of the room. He was about to switch on his flashlight when a buzzing sound from the ceiling caught his attention. Lines of white light flickered to life and illuminated the room fully. He turned back to see Eleena retracting her hand from a panel on the wall.

"Glad those were the lights," she mentioned with a grin.

"You and me both." Will turned and scanned the room briefly. "Alright, let's spread out. Looks pretty barren, but it doesn't hurt to be thorough."

Kallux and Eleena nodded and set off to the left side while Corsin and Tyrixis turned for the right. After a short internal debate, Will turned to follow the turians. He stepped up beside them as they slowly followed the wall and looked over shelves and opened, empty crates. Corsin glanced to Will and then back to the debris they passed by.

"I expected you to join your friends," the Spectre said with slight surprise.

"I almost did." Will eyed a closed crate ahead of them. "But I was actually hoping to talk with you two for a bit."

Tyrixis looked to him suspiciously. "And why is that?"

"My father used to tell me stories about when he was in the military. He had a lot of them." Will smiled as he recalled the tales. "He told me that the one thing that he could always count on in combat was his comrades. Not his marksmanship, not his judgment, his brothers and sisters in arms." He shrugged lightly. "I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I wanna be able to trust you two as much as I trust the rest of my crew. And to me, knowing a bit about my comrades goes a long way."

Corsin chuckled as he kicked a box aside. "You say the same thing to every Spectre you hunt dangerous fugitives with?"

Tyrixis gave Corsin a disapproving glance. "There's no need for mockery, Corsin. Captain Hume makes a good point. One should always be able to count on the soldier next to them." The doctor hesitated for a moment as she seemingly searched for a topic. "Captain Hume, you mentioned... your father was in the military?"

Will nodded. "That's right. He served as a marine with the Alliance." He glanced to the turians. "He was on the ground during the First Contact War... fought at Shanxi."

The doctor looked to him and met his gaze. "I also served at Shanxi; though I was not deployed until the final days of combat."

He offered a small smile. "Dad said you guys were a hell of a fight."

Tyrixis raised her jaw and nodded approvingly. "And the Systems Alliance proved their strength as well."

The trio came to a stop at the edge of the square shaft that sank into the floor at the end of the room. It appeared to be around fifty feet deep with a massive set of bay doors at the bottom that resembled those at the opposite end of the room.

"Freight elevator," Corsin deduced. "I'd bet that the actual manufactory is down beyond those doors."

Will nodded in agreement. "We'll find a way down after we finish looking around here."

The group back away and turned to continue their scan of the area by heading back down the far wall that would eventually lead them back to Kallux and Eleena.

"So, your father was Alliance military?" Corsin inquired.

"That's right," Will answered with a nod. "He's the one who taught me how to handle a weapon."

"But you did not enlist?" Tyrixis asked with a hint of curiosity.

"Well, he wasn't a career soldier, but I did consider it. I already had employment in our colony though, so I eventually decided against it." He smirked lightly. "Also, I didn't think I would really mesh with military culture... I can be a bit of a smart ass."

Corsin chuckled. "I had that problem as well."

Tyrixis let out a small sigh. "Thankfully you didn't stick around long enough for that to become an issue."

The Spectre shrugged. "It was for the best."

Will raised a brow. "You can't just dangle that in front of me and not elaborate."

"If you insist." Corsin looked over to Will. "I was only in the turian military for a few years, but I clawed by way up the ranks pretty quickly."

"An incredible feat, given how terribly insubordinate your behavior was during your service," Tyrixis scolded.

"I got results and the brass took notice," Corsin countered. "Well, for a while, at least. And then Prysia happened. Probably would have been tried in military court had the Spectres not swooped in to claim me."

Will nodded for him to continue. "Prysia?"

"Small turian colony," Corsin explained. "My company was sent there to investigate after we received word of increased hostile activity in the system... mostly batarian pirates, but we speculated that they were being backed by the Hegemony. I was a lieutenant at the time and the commanding officer of my platoon, thanks to my captain. Good officer, really appreciated the fact that I could get things done. We arrived at the colony and everything seemed quiet enough, but we knew that there was no reason not to stay for a little while... just in case. So the three platoons split and found quarter in each of the three largest population centers."

"It was business as usual there for about two weeks. Then, out of nowhere, we started getting reports of unidentified ships exiting FTL just outside atmosphere and descending to the surface. They were batarian, five in total, and were headed straight to the area my platoon was stationed at. I reported to the captain and was told to meet the pirates with stiff resistance to show them that the colony was under guard." Corsin paused for a moment. "I... disagreed, but I didn't have time to offer an alternative. They'd already landed and were moving toward our position."

Will couldn't help but be entranced by the turian's fast, nonchalant manner in which he recounted the story.

"I quickly weighed my options and decided to disobey the orders. Instead of meeting with resistance I ordered my unit to stay low and not to engage. I led the platoon to a position near a choke-point in the city and set up for an ambush. About a half an hour later, after gathering up some prisoners, they passed through the ambush point. We annihilated them. Half of them were dead before they even realized they were under attack. Unfortunately, there were a few stray bullets." The turian paused and shook his head. "Two of the civilians were killed. Six more wounded."

"But you got the pirates, right?" Will could feel the anguish in Corsin's voice.

"Yeah. We got them. Twenty-eight in total." Corsin drew in a deep breath. "We didn't lose a single man, either."

Tyrixis shook her head. "You violated direct orders and got civilians killed." It was clear that the siblings had had this argument before.

"I know that, Tyrixis." Corsin grunted in irritation. "It was a hard call, but it had to be made. If we had repelled them as soon as they landed they would have gotten away. After hearing the details about Project Sommesh, I don't want to know what they were planning on doing with those prisoners. They could have abducted dozens more or ambushed another turian unit had they retreated."

"It wasn't your call, Corsin." Tyrixis halted and gave him a stern stare. "The chain of command exists for a reason. If you act like it doesn't mean anything, what's the point?"

The Spectre closed his eyes and came to a stop. "You know how this argument is going end, Ty. We've had it a million times now." Corsin turned to face her. "The reason the Spectres recruited me is because I could make the hard choices, chain of command or not. The past two decades I've had a lot more innocents than those two civilians die because of my actions. But every one of them died so hundred more would live." The turian narrowed his eyes. "You've known me for long enough to know that I sure as hell carry that burden on my conscience."

"Sorry to interrupt," Kallux interjected as he and Eleena approached them.

Corsin did not skip a beat. "Did you find anything?" He looked to the krogan and asari.

"Nothing," Eleena replied. "You?"

"That shaft at the end of the room looks like a freight elevator. If there's nothing else here, I think we should try to find a way down." Will looked around the squad for a response.

Before they could answer, the sound of an incoming comm signal chimed in his ear. He opened his omnitool and fed the incoming transmission to the entire squad.

"Captain Hume, we've got something."

Will nodded and looked to the others as they listened patiently. "What've you got, Vayren?"

"Tul'Sorrin and I were able to salvage from raw data from a wiped memory core. Unfortunately, it's old and consists mostly of employee ID numbers and their shifts. We did, however, find a schematic of the facility. Assuming it was built to spec, it should function well enough as a map."

"Good timing," Corsin commended. "We need to find a quick route down a few levels."

"Tul'Sorrin is finishing up a compatibility pass on the data to be sure it will display correctly on our HUDs. It should be ready momentarily." Vayren sounded outright impressed with the quarian's ingenuity.

"Perfect." Will smiled and nodded to the squad. "Let's get moving."

As the group crossed the barren chamber and into the door they had entered through, a familiar robotic voice sounded from the hallway.

"Hostile forces detected."

A pair of LOKI mechs hobbled around the corner ahead of them and drew their weapons. Will pressed himself to the wall on his left and fell to his knee, bringing his weapon to bear on the two targets. Corsin, Tyrixis, Will and Eleena fired a series of bursts in near perfect unison, sending mechanical components scattering across the floor as the mechs fell to the ground without even firing a shot.

"I'm starting to think these things are designed to mildly inconvenience you to death," Will grumbled as he pulled himself to his feet.

Eleena smirked and gave him a look. "Would you rather have the acid-spitting spiders?"

"Well when you say it like that..." Will grinned and set off for the first turn and headed left.

As they passed through the next door a file appeared for access on their HUDs. Will raised his omnitool and retrieved Tul's makeshift map. He looked down at the screen as they moved forward at a slower pace and found a nearby stairwell that seemed to lead to a large chamber about the same size as the one they had just searched. Will gave a quick look-over of the rest of the facility and determined that there was not much else in their direction. The path Tul and Vayren had taken, however, seemed to have at least a dozen rooms that could be anything from maintenance stations to dormitories. He shut off his omnitool and reequipped his rifle as they neared the door that opened into the stairwell. After a quick descent they reached the door that, according to Tul'Sorrin's map, opened to the largest room in the facility.

"Weapons ready," Will ordered as he stepped up to the control console.

The squad held their weapons on the door as it slid apart to reveal, as expected, an enormous dark chamber. Will slowly stepped in and looked to the wall beside the door. Just as Eleena had discovered in the first chamber, a panel beside the door functioned as a light switch. He activated the lights and made a quick scan of the room as the rest of the squad stepped up behind him. The manufactory seemed to be set up for assembly line production, but there were very clearly gaps and scattered equipment throughout the chamber. A few large shapes on the floor indicated where pieces of machinery had once shielded areas from dirt and debris.

"Let's spread out," Will suggested. "See what we can find."

Will watched as the group parted and dispersed in all directions. He waited for a moment, then hurried to catch up with Eleena as she looked over a piece of machinery at the center of the room that towered nearly a dozen feet tall and spanned a quarter the length of the chamber. She glanced over to him as he stepped up beside her.

"I thought we were spreading out," the asari said with amusement.

"I can leave if you'd like." Will met her gaze and raised his brows.

Eleena motioned to her side and turned to begin walking the length of the machinery. "Only four directions in the room, right? One of them is gonna have to double up."

"If that's how you wanna rationalize it." Will grinned and walked beside her, carefully scanning the workbenches and carts scattered about the room.

"I love this stuff," the asari mentioned offhandedly.

"What's that?"

She nodded to the industrial manufactory equipment. "Hardware like this. Reminds me of the shipyards my father worked at when I was growing up."

Will nodded. "Oh yeah... your father was a mechanic, right?"

"Yep." She smiled to herself. "I learned most of what I know from him."

"About being an engineer?"

"Most importantly, yeah. But I picked up a lot more than that." Eleena let out an almost bashful laugh, something Will had never heard from her. "Heh, his vocabulary, for instance."

Will grinned knowingly. "Sounds like an interesting guy."

The asari shifted her gaze to Will with a soft smile. "He was." Eleena nodded to him. "What about your parents? You've mentioned that your mother passed when you were young... but what about your father?"

Will looked up from a crate that he hand been inspecting. Eleena had asked about his father and Arvuna plenty of times before, but he always deflected and avoided the question. Then it finally hit him: the reason she would always pull away whenever they felt something between one another. Just ten minutes ago Corsin had been more open than he had been to Eleena. Will did his best to hide the irritation he held for his own social ineptitude.

"I guess you've asked me enough times for an answer," he replied to a smile from Eleena.

Will looked around the room quickly. The others were far out of earshot and focused on the hunt for intel. He felt bad for stopping his own search for a moment, but they would have all night to turn this place upside-down in their search.

"He was a great man," he said earnestly. "He raised me to be who I am today. I like to think he did a pretty decent job."

"I'd agree with that," Eleena added sincerely.

Will smiled thankfully. "He moved us to Arvuna with Shansa's family during the colony boom... he's the reason I'm out here and not working in some factory like this one on Earth." He shook his head. "I wish I could have thanked him before he... they... died."

"They?"

Eleena looked to him, listening intently. Will was relieved to see that she was indeed interested. He glanced around the room once again, then motioned for Eleena to follow him as he stepped into the rows of machinery that populated the center of the room. He leaned back against part of the assembly line as she did the same across the small aisle.

Will looked up to see her waiting for him to continue. "It happened about seven years ago. Shansa and I were out on one of the maintenance skiffs... God, Arvuna was gorgeous at night. Even though she was only nineteen she was already a great helmswoman, so I'd asked her to teach me the basics. I didn't want to be a deckhand on the harvesters forever." He smiled lightly. "After we'd finished up what she'd wanted to teach me for the night we spent a few hours laying on the deck and talking. I was having some problems that my father had promised to talk to me through, but we were already late and I knew I had missed dinner."

"What kind of problems?" Eleena sounded genuinely concerned.

"Nothing important," Will answered with a half of a laugh. "I was twenty years old and didn't know where my life was going. I don't know what the equivalent age for asari might be..."

"Well, adult maturity is a little different between our species, by the sounds of it," Eleena replied. "We're technically, 'adults' in our sixties in terms of mental and physical growth, but that doesn't mean we don't continue to mature through our experiences."

Will shrugged lightly. "I don't know, I'd say the same is true for humans. We just don't have specific names for the stages of our lives like you do."

She nodded in agreement. "True enough. You were saying...?"

"Right, right... we were out on the skiff until around midnight when we decided to head back." Will's expression stiffened. "It was obvious there was something wrong as we approached... we could see fires and hear a lot of gunshots. Shansa brought us toward the docks and we could see a ship at the landing zone nearby that neither of us had seen before. It was big, too. Way bigger than the supply vessels we normally saw. I pulled up the security channel on the comms to see what was going on and... it was a mess. No one was listening to anyone else and a lot of them sounded delirious. Some said pirates, some said slavers, one even said it was the Turian Hierarchy, back to get their revenge." He shook his head in irritation. "A lot of humans still didn't trust turians at the time."

"A lot of them still don't," Eleena mentioned. "But a lot of turians feel the same way, so..."

Will let out a sigh and nodded in reluctant agreement. "Anyway, I wanted to help, but Shansa wouldn't bring the skiff near the island. And it's a good thing she didn't. I couldn't have done anything but get myself killed. So we waited... felt like hours, but I think they were gone about thirty minutes after we had arrived. The security channel was dead silent, so she brought us in and docked." He closed his eyes and smirked as he recalled the moment vividly. "She still went through the proper disembarkation procedure, too."

"Always the professional," Eleena mused with a small smile.

Will opened his eyes and took a calming breath. "We tried to stay out of sight... just in case they had landed another ship nearby. We passed by some fires. Lots of bullet holes. We saw a few bodies, too, people we knew. After that, we didn't bother with staying low and sneaking around... we just ran. I was getting sick to my stomach. Me and my father's prefab was closer so we headed there first." He averted his eyes. "The door was blown open and the common room was a fucking mess. We... we found him in the storage closet face down in his own blood... shot through the back four or five times. I don't remember the next five minutes... I could have been crying, mumbling and shaking my head... hell, I could have just been standing there staring like an idiot." Will cleared his throat gently. "He probably died before the motherfuckers had even left the house."

Eleena stepped up to him without saying a word and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. The gesture took Will by surprise and he looked up to see her eyes staring back, almost glowing with sympathy and concern. He took in a deep breath and reached up to grasp her gloved hand in his. Will gave her hand a small squeeze before pulling it down between them and smiling softly.

"Thanks, Eleena."

"Are you okay?" She tilted her head slightly.

"I'm fine. Really. It's been almost eight years now and I came to terms with it a long time ago. My father wanted to give me a better life, and I'm not going to let some misfortune stop that from happening." Will pulled his hand back to his side.

The asari nodded gently. "What did you and Shansa do after that?"

"I grabbed the rifle from his footlocker and we searched for Shansa's family, but... they were gone. Her mother, father and sister." He shook his head. "Colonial security arrived after a few hours to pull us and the handful of other survivors out. They took us to the capital, Asa, and gave us some housing while they started the investigation. Never did let us go back. For a while after that it's kind of a blur; we just spent the next few months dealing with it all. Shansa and I had been close before, but after that... I don't think you can form that kind of bond under just any circumstance. I mean, she's the only family I've got." Will let out a sigh. "The rest isn't nearly as heart wrenching. We found a newly renovated ship that was looking for a crew and jumped on board."

"Hyperion," Eleena said knowingly.

Will nodded. "Yep. Captain Nieto brought us on without a second thought. After he found out what happened to us he kind of took us under his wing. He showed us how to run a ship."

"Glad he did," she added with a small grin. "But I can't believe he didn't tell you to always have an engineer on board."

"Aheh," he smiled and shook his head. "Damn, made me laugh." Will looked to her with a warm smile. "So where was the sweet Eleena when I came looking for a mechanic and met you for the first time?"

Eleena smirked and crossed her arms. "She's always been here. But at that moment she was behind the Eleena that kicked your ass for being a presumptuous asshole."

"Thanks for that, by the way," he said with an embarrassed laugh. "And thanks for accepting my apology."

"I'm pretty good at sensing when someone's putting on an act." Eleena grinned and nodded cockily. "I'm glad you started acting like yourself around new people."

"Well, I realized pretty quickly after I met you that I wasn't doing myself any favors by acting like a dickhead."

After a small laugh from Eleena they fell silent.

Will watched as she looked at the ground and shook her head before looking up to him and meeting his gaze.

"Thank you, Will." Her voice was soft, an inflection that Will was beginning to hear more and more during their private conversations. "I haven't had someone to be... open with... for a long time."

Will crossed his arms. "You know being open usually goes both ways."

"Yeah, it does," she shook her head and chuckled softly. "And to think, I almost got away without paying my share."

"I hope you're not implying that you need me to keep you in check," Will grinned.

Eleena narrowed her eyes slyly. "You wouldn't be able to if you tried... Captain."

Will raised his brows and opened his mouth to reply when something caught his eye. The grin on his lips sunk as he shifted his eyes over and beyond Eleena's shoulder. The asari's expression changed to that of slight confusion and turned to follow his gaze. Neither of them had noticed at first, but at the far end of the room, visible through a row of the machinery, was a fairly large set of doors. However, the door panel had just begun to glow orange and managed to attract Will's attention. He and Eleena exchanged a quick look and nodded in agreement as they both started off down the aisle of manufactory equipment and toward the far end of the room. As they stepped out at the end, Will looked to the side to see Kallux examining the contents of some crates in the nearby corner. The krogan looked up as they approached the door.

"Kallux, did anyone check this door?" Will pulled up his omnitool to find the map Tul'Sorrin had sent them.

"Not that I know if," the krogan replied as he set the box in his hands on the floor.

Will found the schematics and tapped through them to find the production chamber.

"It's an elevator," he muttered as he glanced back up to the door.

As if on cue, the doors pinged softly and slid apart. Will and Eleena's eyes widened as they turned to sprint back into the labyrinth of machinery. Behind them, stepping out of the elevator, was at least five LOKIs and a colossal YMIR heavy mech behind them.

"Hostiles!" Kallux shouted as he hurried to find cover. "Big ones!"

"On our way!" Corsin shouted over the comm from the opposite end of the room.

The mechs drew their weapons in sync and immediately found a firing angle on the human and asari as they sprinted back to cover. Bullets from the rifles and shotguns wielded by the LOKIs as well as the hellfire from the heavy mass accelerator cannons on the YMIR sent their shields flaring and sparks igniting around them. Will slowed just slightly to allow Eleena to edge in front of him and into the gap between machinery first. They turned at their first chance and put thick tons of metal equipment between them and the mechs. Will tripped as he followed Eleena into cover and felt a sharp pain near his ankle. He grunted and rolled onto the ground as bullets whizzed past them.

"Where are you hit?" Eleena shouted as she drew her SMG.

Will looked down to see blood dripping onto the floor. "My ankle, I think."

He pressed his back to the side of a large piece of manufactory equipment and pushed himself up into a sitting position. Eleena had already prepped a dose of medi-gel and was kneeling down at his side to apply the salve. The sound of Kallux's cannon erupting over that of the mech's rifles as well as the warmth and relief of pain from the medi-gel gave him the strength to jump up to his feet. He pulled up his rifle and looked out into the open end of the room where the mechs had entered from the elevator.

"I'll find another firing position," Eleena stated as she turned in the opposite direction to find another gap in the assembly lines.

"Uh, Will! Can you hear me?"

He had just caught a glimpse of the mechs as Shansa's voice sounded in his ear. Their robotic foes had quickly abandoned following Will and Eleena and were now slowly marching toward wherever Kallux had taken cover. Heavy slugs from the krogan's weapon tore into the smaller LOKIs and sent one to the floor a crumpled mess.

"Can it wait?" Will finally replied to the pilot. "We've got a little bit of a situation down here!"

"It's about to get worse," Shansa insisted nervously. "A ship just came out of FTL and began descent toward the surface. Unless there's something else nearby that factory, I'm pretty sure they're headed for you."

He raised his rifle and put a quick burst into one of the LOKIs, sending it to the floor just as a storm of SMG rounds from wherever Eleena had positioned herself impacted another.

"Did you get anything on it?" Will asked quickly, trying to split his concentration evenly.

"Only a rough silhouette. It's a little bigger than us but not as wide... probably a corvette."

The YMIR planted itself and, after a quick charge, blasted off a rocket from its arm. The explosive rocketed out of Will's field of view and exploded off near Kallux's position. A few seconds later, the heavy cannon resumed firing. Will drew a shot on one of the two remaining mechs as assault rifle fire from somewhere off to his left gunned it down before he could pull the trigger. The turians had arrived.

Will shook his head. "Is it military?"

"I don't know, Will, it's in atmosphere now!" Shansa let out an exasperated sigh. "It'll be at your location in less than five minutes."

"Understood," he answered grimly and cut the channel.

With a grunt from the pain in his ankle, Will stepped across the aisle in the assembly line and toward the end of the room where Tyrixis and Corsin were firing from. He darted through a small gap in the machinery and looked to the right where the turians stood in firing position at the corner of a workbench near the end of the assembly line. Will limped slightly as he hurried over to them. Corsin glanced over his shoulder as the human arrived.

"Kallux has its attention," Corsin reported as Will stepped behind the workbench and drew his rifle on the heavy mech.

All five of the LOKIs had fallen to the floor, destroyed. The YMIR was still very much active, however, and slowly stomping toward Kallux as he quickly poked in and out from behind a support column on the opposite end of the room. Corsin raised his fist and struck the YMIR with an overload, causing it to pause for a moment before regaining functionality. Then, without warning, the mech stepped to the side and made a quick rotation to bring its weapons to bear back on Will, Corsin and Tyrixis.

"Damn it, Corsin," Tyrixis muttered.

The mech lowered its left arm to prime another rocket. The trio instinctively leapt toward the safety of the assembly line as the rocket fired and soared into the side of the workbench, tearing it apart and sending the debris hurtling into the wall. Will rolled and shouted in pain as his wounded ankle caught the brunt of his weight. Bullets from the YMIR's mass accelerator cannon sprayed into the wall and floor where they had stood just a second earlier. The mech's heavy footsteps followed as it lumbered toward the corner of the machinery they had taken refuge behind. Corsin, Will and Tyrixis jumped to their feet as the mech stepped around the corner and brought its weapons up on them. As the mass accelerator cannon buzzed, just about to ignite, a pair of thumps rang out from out of sight. The "head" of the YMIR that housed the sensor modules exploded into pieces from two perfectly placed shots from Kallux's cannon. Unable to locate a target, the mech's arms raised higher into the air and discharged into the ceiling. The Spectre, captain and doctor all took aim with their rifles and laid down a sheet of indiscriminate fire. Under the combined force of all three weapons, as well as the continuous fire from Kallux and a few bursts from Eleena, the armor plating finally gave out and tore away. Bullets streamed through the YMIR's construction, sending chunks of robotic innards spraying across the room in every direction until a loud buzz rang out from somewhere inside the mech. It seized up and fell to the ground with a heavy crash.

"You're wounded," Tyrixis stated almost instantaneously.

Will looked over to the turian to see her looking down at his still bloodied ankle. "We'll deal with it later."

Eleena and Kallux came running around the corner and stepped around the YMIR's corpse.

"We have to go, now," Will ordered as he turned to lead them to the exit.

The squad exchanged a few quick glances and hurried to catch up with him.

"What are you talking about?" Corsin challenged. "We've still got-"

"There's a ship coming," Will interrupted as he quickened his pace. "Shansa said it's headed right for us." Without waiting for the others to respond he opened a new comm link. "Vayren, do you read me?"

The response came barely more than a second later."Affirmative, Captain."

"Drop whatever you're doing and get to the exit, now."

The squad passed through the door they had entered from and into the stairwell that would take them up to the surface level.

"We still have quite a bit of-"

"Just do it!" Corsin's voice had suddenly joined in the conversation. "We have possible hostiles on their way to our location."

"Understood," the salarian answered.

The comm channel fell silent. Will jumped up the stairs with the others on his heel, his heart still pounding from the fight. As they reached the top he sprinted through the doorway and into the hall that led straight to the personnel airlock. The squad passed through the four smaller rooms they had cleared earlier before coming to the entrance hall where they had first split from Vayren and Tul'Sorrin. Will nearly jumped out of his boots as the perpendicular doors parted and the salarian and quarian passed through, the two groups nearly colliding. They fell into position as Will ran for the airlock and waved everyone inside. Tul'Sorrin tapped a few select keys on the door panel and forced the outer door open before the inner had even closed. The fog had cleared slightly since their arrival, allowing them to see almost to the other end of the landing platform. Rather, they might have been able to see it had a ship not blocked their view. As Shansa had surmised, the starship was a tad longer than the Hyperion, but looked much more sleek and flashy. It had more than a small bit of turian influence in its appearance, but Will was certain that it was not a ship produced by the turian military. More unsettling than the ship, however, was the trio of turians standing on the landing pad a few meters in front of them.

"Come on out," the turian at the center said reassuringly.

Unlike the two heavily armored turians that stood at his side, the one in the middle wore what looked like a hybrid of turian casual wear and battle armor. Over his mouth was a small breather to substitute for the lower oxygen in the atmosphere, but his clan paint was clearly visible: black stripes that ran from the tip of his mandibles back to the base of his neck. The squad gripped their weapons in their hands and followed Will as he took a cautious step out through the airlock. He stopped just outside the doorway, his rifle slung across his chest.

"Who are you?" Will asked flatly as Corsin and Vayren stepped up to his side.

The turian's eyes widened slightly in amusement. "Oh, forgive my manners and the lack of an introduction... I expected you to recognize me." He took a step forward and gave his head a small bow. "Narenthus Antarian. I believe you're looking for me?"