"Allright." Jane Shepard flopped back down next to her squad and chinned her suit's com on low-power mode. "The installation's just over that rise. One roving patrol of three, one bulk freighter type starship in cold shutdown, and looks like about four pressurized hab cylinders. That's gotta be them." The coordinates they'd browbeaten out of Gregarian back on the Citadel had lead them to Wormwood, an ice moon of the gas giant Treyarmus just big enough to have been shaped into a regular sphere. Garrus had to give the slavers credit- Treyarmus' strong magnetic field made it a favorite discharge point for tramp freighters, allowing ships to come and go from the area without attracting undue attention. Smart. Of course, not too smart, because they'd already done something terminally stupid.
Once Miranda's scout picked out the installation from orbit, it was simple to come in on the other side of the moon, drop down to low altitude, and land just over Wormwood's miniscule horizon. A few minutes' walk had them to their present position, hunkered down in an impact crater just short of the base. Now came the hard part.
"So how do we proceed?" Miranda tilted her helmet to the side as she asked the question everyone had been thinking. "I assume we want surprise."
"As much as possible." Shepard nodded. "Here's what I'm thinking. Garrus and I drop the patrol from long range. Then we go in with, hm, Jack through the front airlock. If they see three coming in it might take them off their guard long enough for us to clear the inner door." Which was the deadliest chokepoint in any vacuum-based assault, and they all knew it. "I spotted two one-man service locks a couple meters up on each side. Wrex and Miranda, once we have them all looking in that direction, cycle in and hit them from behind. With any luck, by the time they figure that one out they'll all be dead."
"I like it." Wrex spoke for all of them, and Garrus nodded as well. It was as good a plan as anyone could make with the limited intel they had, and he'd felt the tension disappearing in their little circle as Jane laid it out. This was the Shepard they'd follow into any battle, great or small. Garrus flopped down on his belly and crawled over the rise next to Jane, reaching for the back of his armor and unfolding the sniper rifle he kept there.
"Been a hell of a weekend, hasn't it Garrus?" Jane's voice was dryly amused as she unfolded her own weapon, the way she'd sounded before a hundred other battles. It made Garrus smile under his helmet.
"Little more exciting than usual," he allowed.
"Know what would relax me? Drinks at the Skylight Lounge on the Presidium. VIP section?"
Garrus laughed as he zoomed his scope in on the three figures walking across the moon's icy surface. "Why stop there? I'd go for a full steak dinner."
"Ooh. Someone's confident. Best of three?"
"Best of three." That was all the signal he needed. He heard the *thoom* of his rifle going off through the conductive plastic of his helmet, and the human in the lead staggered. A meter away in vacuum Jane's rifle was utterly silent, but Garrus saw the second man go down as a round from the Widow hit him with a speed usually reserved for orbiting spacecraft. Garrus pulled the trigger again, punching out the last of his target's barriers and sending him on a slow arc towards the surface, but when he swept the scope over the third man in line he was already ten meters back, splashed over Wormwood's surface. Garrus flared his nostrils in disgust.
"How do you reload that fast?"
"Girl's got to have some secrets, Vakarian." Jane's voice was pure honey. "Now come on. Clock's ticking."
Charlie Ellis grinned to himself and laid his cards down on the table. "Full house, suckers. Read 'em and weep." The last couple days had been nothing but roses for Charlie. Light duty, a nice fat bonus coming his way from the last haul of new fish, a chance to taunt some SOB with delusions of grandeur over the com, and now the biggest run of luck he'd ever had at cards. Of course, that meant he'd be in for a lot of trouble once the luck turned, but this job taught a man to enjoy the present without dwelling on past or future. It was especially easy to take that view while raking in credit vouchers worth a month's wages.
Behind him, the airlock hissed as it went through its cycle, and Ellis frowned as he checked the security monitor. Three figures right enough, but what were they doing back so early? As the inner door cycled, he turned around.
"Hey, Harkin, why back so early? Better not be screw arou-" Ellis stopped in midsentence.
"Sorry," Commander Jane Shepard said as she pushed up her helmet visor. "Harkin couldn't make it."
"But I think I know you." The one-eyed turian next to her slid his helmet off, pinning Ellis with an amused stare. "We spoke on the com a while ago."
And in line next to them, Jack tossed her helmet to one side and surveyed the room. She smiled as her hands began to glow.
"Hello, dead people."
Garrus dropped to one side as the room unfroze, the assault rifle in his hands already blazing. Of the eight or so slavers in the room when they entered, three of them made the right choice and sprinted for the nearest door. The others reached for weapons that were inches from their hands, and died. Garrus' first shot sent the bastard he'd been talking to toppling back onto the floor, and another few seconds of autofire shredded the rest of his poker foursome. Next to him Jane gunned down another tableful, while the last two simply flew through the air in a shimmering mist until they hit one of the runners, smashing them all into a bulkhead with a sickening crunch of snapping bone. One of the other two runners crumpled next as Jane stitched a line of bullets up his spine. The last one made it around the corner, and Garrus could hear him babbling into the com about backup.
Garrus moved forward for cover, then turned his head. The slaver he shot first was, improbably, still alive. His mouth moved soundlessly as he stared up at the ceiling, his life oozing out onto the floor. Garrus smiled grimly as he bent down.
"Know what makes me mad, Shepard?"
"What?" Jane sounded abstracted, trying to pull some scattered containers together into cover.
"People who don't listen." Garrus leaned forward, speaking for the dying man's ears alone. "I tell them in advance that if they do certain things, I'll hunt them down and kill them. And a distressing number of them just. Don't. Listen." He pulled out his pistol, bringing it down to bear on the man. "They think I'm kidding. Or that I can't back it up. Or I'm too scared of their friends, or I've gone soft out on Horizon. And then-" he aimed the pistol- "just to keep from making myself a liar, I have to do shit like this."
George Octavian flattened himself against the wall and took a breath, signaling to his squad as they fanned out. This was going to get hairy and somebody was probably going to buy it, but he had no real worries about the outcome. The front room made a good killing ground, and unlike the people there his troops were fully armed and armored. The intruders were good, no question, but as long as he kept his men behind the barricades they'd either be worn down, or shot to pieces when they tried to assault.
There was a soft *ding* behind him, and a rush of air. Octavian frowned as he craned his neck back. The only thing causing that much airflow would be the emergency airlock cycle, and-
-And there was an eight-foot tall dinosaur right behind him, grinning as it pointed an enormous shotgun at his squad. From behind their carefully constructed barriers.
"Oh, fuck."
Urdnot Wrex didn't aim. He didn't have to. He just held down the trigger on his Scimitar and swept it over the barricade with a smile resembling a thresher maw's. A few seconds later his clip popped out, and the last gutted body dropped to the floor.
"Left is clear, Shepard." Wrex moved to cover the hallway, mentally mapping out doors. After a pause, he looked backward and added. "No opposition."
On the right, things weren't going as well. Miranda was a capable soldier, but she lacked the pure punch of an armored krogan. She'd taken out the first two troopers she'd seen with cool efficiency, but the rest had her pinned down behind a crate which was starting to splinter at an alarming rate. A few yards away, Garrus gritted his teeth and tried to flatten himself against the curving wall of the hab module. It sounded like there were reinforcements coming down the corridor, which could trap Miranda against the survivors of the first barricade. Bad.
"Getting hot over here!" Miranda's voice definitely had an edge to it now. "I could use some help." Beside Garrus, Jane keyed her com.
"We're working on it, Miranda. Can you give us some cover fire on the barricade?"
There was a dry laugh over the channel. "Funny, I was about to ask for the same thing. But I'll see what I can do." A second later, Garrus heard a renewed flurry of shots, and felt the fire coming at him slack off. A pause. Then more firing, and a sharp scream over the com.
"Miri!" Jack was off the ground an an instant, so fast that Garrus started at her for an instant before he got moving. The barricade came apart as Jack's entire body flared with power, the fortifications and the men behind them pulped from the inside out. Jack barely seemed to notice as she vaulted over the remains and headed for Miranda's position. Reinforcements came around the next corner, and Jack gestured with one hand without taking her eyes off her goal. The slavers vanished in a flare of lightning.
Miranda was lying on her back, eyes shut and with blood smearing over the front of her suit as she struggled to breathe. By the time he'd gotten the medigel out Jack was already bent over her, pushing down to try to staunch the bleeding. She snapped her head around, and Garrus almost flinched back at the look in her eyes.
"Come on, Vakarian. Get your ass over here and, no, Miri, stay with me, you've gotta stay with me, just keep breathing and we'll get you out of here." Garrus knelt down next to Miranda, brushing Jack's hands aside and applying medigel to the wound. Nasty, but it looked like the bullet had missed any big arteries and there was no sign of sepsis. He packed the wound with a thick coat of gel just to be sure, then pulled out a patch of synth-skin to cover it up.
Jack looked over at him, her expression a mix of pain, fear, and nearly berserk anger at the same time. She looked like a lost little eight year old girl, if that eight year old girl was about to go on a shooting spree. "She going to be OK?"
"Fine." Garrus forced confidence into his voice as he reached a hand out. Jane had come up behind him, silently, and pushed two syringes into it- one broad-spectrum anti-infection jab, and a dose of the Spectre's Unity combat drug to get Miranda back on her feet. "Your concern is touching, though."
"Whatever." Jack's expression started to return to normal as she rolled her eyes. "Not what it looks like, G."
"Mmm, Jack." Miranda's voice was woozy as she started to come around. "Harder next time, I've been a very bad girl." Jack buried her face in one palm.
"Allright. So it's exactly what it looks like."
"Commander Shepard." Garrus started as a voice started to come from the overhead speakers. "So glad to see you at last. My name is Marcus Allen, and I'd like to talk to you. Channel Nine, if you're interested." Garrus' hand went to his headset, automatically switching over in time to catch Jane's reply.
"And why would I do that?"
"I think you know. But just in case." Allen's voice cut off. The next one he heard over the com made Garrus' heart stop.
"Mom? Mom, he's got me here, me and a bunch of other girls. He's got some men with guns and they-" Ashley cut off abruptly, and Allen came back.
"Yes, yes, my dear, just prove my bona fides without giving away any information, thank you. Do I have your attention, Commander?"
"Okay." Jane's voice was a harsh whisper, choked with tears, but it only reached Garrus' ears. By the time she keyed the com, it was level again. "Okay. Let's cut to the chase, Allen. You're talking to me, it's because you want something. What?"
"A swap." Garrus' blood froze. "I've gotten all I want out of the Shepard daughter, so I'd like to trade up. You for the girl. I'll even throw in the rest of her lot once my men and I are off this iceball. Now I know you have a squad of ruthless killers out there figuring out ways to make me dead, so I'm keeping this very simple. I'm going to count to ten, and if you haven't agreed, I'm going to shoot the lovely Miss Ashley in the head. One." Jane's head snapped around, her eyes wide. "Two." She silently begged Garrus for something, anything, as he sifted through his omnitool trying to lock down the transmission's source. "Three. Four. Five." Garrus' fingers worked faster, trying to find something that would let him save his wife and daughter. "Six. Seven. Eight." Looked up. Shook his head. Despaired at what he saw in Jane's eyes. "Nine."
"Allright!" Jane yelled the word out, took a breath, then repeated it. "Allright. I agree."
"Wonderful." The satisfaction in Allen's voice made Garrus want to strangle the bastard with his own guts. "We'll bring Ashley down to the main axial corridor. Just keep moving and follow the signs. You can't miss it. If you're not there in sixty seconds, well, I can hardly threaten my only bargaining chip. But I can shoot another one of the young ladies here, and another one every ten seconds until you do show up. Clear?"
"Crystal." Jane spat the word out and got to her feet, Garrus behind her. Jack made to rise, but Shepard waved her down with one hand. "One more won't make a difference for this one. Get her stable and ready to move. You won't have much time." Jack's eyes were dark rings as she looked up at Jane, momentarily speechless. Before she could say anything Jane grinned a bit, astonishingly. "See you later." And then she was off.