A/N: I could make excuses, but I won't, other than to say that writing about fight scenes in zero gravity is difficult and time consuming, but ultimately quite enjoyable. I could say that now that I'm on holiday updates should be quicker, but I make no guarantee. I will say that once again the 'last chapter' of the scenario is also the penultimate chapter.
Devastation
Thanks to the virtual rout the invisible N7 had inflicted on his attackers, and their unwillingness to risk killing him, Ross had been able to hold his doorway against the enemy force in spite of their severe degree of numerical superiority. That is, for the amount of time required for the hijackers to manoeuvre another squad in the location that Ross' associate had earlier cleared, at which point, unable to take cover from both groups simultaneously, he fell back behind the door that the marine had rigged to irreversibly seal, breathing deeply and vainly trying to still his nervous, adrenaline fuelled shaking. These hijackers didn't have the military grade omnitool fabricators that the marine had, and so simply didn't have the hardware to sustainably control a small quantity of plasma, which had allowed the man to improvise a cutter to breach cabins without risking damage to their contents. As such, Simon was confident that for the time being, he was probably safe. Then that hateful, filtered voice could be heard again, only now it was quiet, conversational, and limited to the confines of his cabin.
"My, my, Mr Ross. Trapped in a cage of your own creation. Anyone would think by now that you are uninterested in self preservation. Perhaps this is not among your primary motivators after all. The renowned philanthropic investigator does indeed hold the wellbeing of the whole above his own; how refreshing, in a galaxy so filled with frauds. But who poses the greater threat, Mr Ross? Me and my small group of businessmen, with our portfolio of moderately questionable enterprises, or the invisible elite commando and his unscrupulous, corrupt commanders? The pressure your knowledge could bring to bear upon these men need not benefit only the likes of us, Mr Ross. You have stored in your omnitool the capacity to improve the lot of all of humanity.
In terms of risk versus reward, I should have thought that your course of action ought to have been obvious, but instead you allow the man who will kill you and destroy the work you have wrought, see that it is never used and in so doing not only end your existence but remove any legacy that you might have left behind to give it meaning, to lock you in a room and surround it with a vacuum, that he might return and deal with you in a more permanent manner at his leisure. Yes, Mr Ross, I know your murderer's plan. More, I am in a position to stop it, and shall endeavour to do so, with or without your assistance. I have made my case, now you must act in whatever way you feel you ought; I shall do the same."
The respite from physical conflict for the duration of the hacker's speech had done nothing to still the shuddering, almost painful thudding of Ross' heart within his chest, or the shaking that seemed to permeate every mental and biological aspect of him. He was as close to bisection as it was possible to be without developing a split personality disorder or having two halves of his body physically separated from one another. Because despite the success he'd had at burying his emotions around the marine, at encasing himself in stone, he was, now more than ever, terrified of the man, or rather what the man might be, and represent. Because for all the loathing that the journalist held for the hacker, his gang, and all men of their ilk, he was right; the worst case scenario didn't have anything to do with them. Because all that notwithstanding, he didn't know which side to back and which to betray, or even how he would begin to go about it. He needed more information. At least finding it was something he knew how to do-and finally something that he had been afforded the time and resources for...
The assassin's cloak module endured for the duration of his advance on the airlock that linked the transport to its attacker. Opting to allow it time to cool down and serve as a contingency, Shepard deactivated the device once he rounded the last corner and laid eyes on his objective. And, of course, the rather predictable blockade in front of it, this time composed of four legionaries that looked like they'd been wedged into the gap, with no crack or flaw in the sheer metal face they presented between each wall. What irritated Thaddaeus more about the situation was that they'd adapted the stratagem into a form which rendered the tactic he'd previously employed totally unsuitable for the situation. Above that first barricade, sloping upwards into the ceiling, yet more shields completed the formation for which these troops' namesakes were best known; the Roman testudo, or tortoise. And, ever so carefully, maintaining its cohesion, the tortoise was advancing.
Of course, the barricade strategy only really made sense if there was a force moving in behind him, to force him forwards against that sheer surface, with no cover or route through, and thence grind him into submission with a steady bombardment that would prohibit any movement. Shepard saw all this in a moment and turned, Karpov raised, primed and prepared for the onslaught.
It was at that moment that the doors around him opened and four men assaulted at the N7, armed in such a manner that there was no need to restrain themselves for fear of causing lethal injury. Rather than the consistently lethal ranged weapons that launched projectiles through scaled down use of the 'mass effect' associated with element zero, these thugs were armed with supposedly 'more primitive' traditional gas-expanding launchers of the variety consistently utilised by humanity before the discovery of the Mars archives, and still in use today as a method of deploying larger and more volatile ordnance as well as for the purpose of riot suppression.
Judging by the way these opponents neglected to aim low, Shepard felt certain that these weapons were loaded with ammunition of the latter variety. He was vindicated a moment later when his lightweight hardsuit was pummelled with a brutal volley of 'baton rounds' prohibited by law enforcement due to the severe harm they could inflict on soft tissue. Though hardly lethal when faced with a tough carapace of the variety Thaddaeus bore, these bullets still hurt;in the face of point blank fire, armour dented and buckled, bruising tissue and straining bone.
Thrown off balance by the force of the shots, the assassin's retaliatory fire skimmed off kinetic barriers and was embedded in a wall. With a disgusted snarl, he cast the pistol aside and went for the contingency plan he had set aside in the form of his cloak. He enjoyed the prospect of immediate vengeance for a moment as he disappeared, before one of the men let loose a blanket EMP that brought the stealth device's safety protocols online and made the increasingly irate psychopath visible again. Of course, the launchers carried by his opponents continued to function, something that was made painfully obvious as round after round continued to smash into him. Maintaining their rate of fire, his adversaries advanced, almost out of necessity due to the limitations of more archaic ammunition systems that actually allowed for the possibility of a gun that rapidly exhausted the large and thus limited number of projectiles it held. This seemed to be the only aspect of the situation that was weighted in Shepard's favour. He was well aware that there was only one option that remained open to him that exploited to its fullest, offered victory, yet even then it was far from a certain outcome. Regardless of that and the side-effects, Thaddaeus gritted his teeth against the pain that saturated his body, focussed...
And then increased his suffering by an order of magnitude in order to conjure about him a subtle yet highly significant blue aura. Gauntlet clad hands clenched at the effort of not ripping loose and winning a pyrrhic victory, or revealing his intentions too soon and giving them room to counter. Circumstance had forced him into a biotic display before he knew that Ross' life wasn't under threat from the boarders, yet there had been no hint of any countermeasures against a repeat performance, which might or might not work when deployed. The former was problematic for obvious reasons; the latter might force the hacker to shrug off his self restraint and make victory a more difficult prospect to attain in any case.
Holding rigidly to his own self imposed limitations, Shepard moved, in stumbling, faltering steps designed to look like he was just trying to retain his balance, in the one direction his assailants were even marginally willing to allow; backwards towards the mobile dead-end. The path would carry him past two of the thugs, or, accounting for their convergent paths, straight through them.
Wait...
Wait...
NOW.
Arms flashing, encased in cerulean radiance for all of a moment, Thaddaeus lashed out at the air with both limbs in an outwards diagonal slash. The low density, (relatively) low velocity rounds hurtling to meet him were diverted onto a course which, half a second later, had them career heedlessly past the kinetic barriers of the two men behind him and plough into the visors of their airtight breather helmets, sending their heads snapping back with the force of the impact.
Whirling on the staggered man standing behind him and to his right, Thaddaeus seized control of his riot gun, right hand on the barrel, left sharing the trigger mechanism with the launcher's original owner. Before the criminal could gather himself enough to struggle, the N7 shoved the weapon around to point at the man to his right who was still off balance but rapidly recovering. A sharp contraction of his left hand clipped off two rounds that further disrupted his target's aim, meanwhile he felt his grappling partner shift his weight in readiness to drive a knee into his side. Shepard blocked the blow with his opponent's own firearm, the impact jarring the foe's grip and leaving him in an unstable position that was exploited to pull him around into the path of the last two men's continued volleys. Muscles spasming under the pain of the bombardment, the thug involuntarily ceded his weapon to the assassin, who immediately laid him out by delivering a round to the vulnerable area adjoining the neck and the underside of the helmet's chin.
Of course, the two hijackers opposite him were still free to fire, and Shepard's previous source of cover was now unconscious on the floor. He tried to move left and close the couple of metres that separated the thug who wasn't currently shooting him, hunching his profile to protect vulnerable regions and make the target he presented smaller, but three rounds hit roughly the same area in quick succession. A guttural expression of anger was torn from Thaddaeus' lips as he felt a rib break, and he responded by angling the gun in his hands to intercept the projectiles, granting him a moment to examine the firearm up close, and note with a tight little smirk the tazer mounted on the underside-
Before he came to regret trying to use one of his dwindling supplies of weapons as a makeshift shield, several baton rounds cracking the internal mechanisms and rendering the implement a useless mass of broken plastic cradled in his arms. The marine flung the weapon from him, aiming at the man towards whom he had been running, for a moment as an instinctive gesture of pique before neurones fired and his mind was given an idea, hastily enacted to surround the object in blue light, increasing its mass mid flight, not altering its flight path, but massively increasing the force of the collision with the helmet clad recipient of the face, separating vertebrae in his neck with a visceral crack and sending the other available option of cover to the floor where reaching and using them would probably take too long. Lacking alternatives, and unwilling to use his biotics further and exacerbate the damage evidenced by the metallic tang in his mouth and the opaque tears that obscured his vision, the N7 continued his headlong rush.
As quickly as he moved, he was stranded in a narrow region of barren, open ground, and his opponents were hardly incompetent marksmen, though their supply of ammunition was all but exhausted. Unlike the assassin, they had other options to resort to.
Modern tazer weapons, as a rule, no longer rely on a cable from the weapon to the target which carries charge, favouring miniaturised projectiles carrying within their own power source. With the discovery of biotics, however, human law enforcement were immediately conscious of the possibility of encountering individuals with telekinetic abilities in riot scenarios, a phenomenon that would later become a reality amidst the unrest surrounding the volatile L2 implantees. As such, a nonlethal weapon of greater potency was seen to be required in the event that law enforcement would be faced with such dangerous individuals.
Weapons that stimulated a suspect's nodes of element zero in an unsafe manner nicknamed 'detonation' were of course deemed inhumane, and led to the moderately ingenious idea of stabilising the resultant mass effect fields with a quantity of eezo also contained within any projectile. From there, it was no great conceptual leap to realise that one could also use said eezo to generate a 'lift' field, at which point the archaic cable system offered the opportunity to subdue a suspect, remove them from the company of any companions and swiftly detain them in one fell swoop, actually using the cables themselves to restrain targets once detached from the launcher, the lack of electrical current allowing the nanoweaves to attempt to reassert their original tightly coiled shape. Cautious of countermeasures, the so-called 'fishing lines' were classified by the Systems Alliance Parliament and reserved for situations of great civil upheaval due to their uncompromisingly offensive nature.
As Shepard found out, somehow this squad of boarders had gotten their hands on a set designed to be attached to the underside of the barrel of a riot gun. Two sets of cables slammed into him, points securely digging themselves into the surface of his armour and staying there, one in his right shoulder, one producing a crack in his visor that was somewhat unfortunate given the nature of the assassin's plans. For a moment, he didn't recognise the weapons; not recognising them as a threat he might encounter, it had been quite some time since he had read about them. The metaphorical penny dropped when the current began to heat his armour and shock him in spite of the resistance, and even as he exerted his own will in an attempt to keep himself from sharing the fate he had inflicted on the vanguard squad leader, he felt another larger field around him rendering his efforts redundant. This was a split second before the cables retracted, sharply yanking Thaddaeus from his feet and into the air, the thugs easily keeping their grasp on their weapons due to their adversary's decreased mass, rendering the reaction force on them an negligible concern.
The N7 crashed headfirst into a wall alongside his two opponents, who were far from foolish enough to offer him any degree of respite, giving him another second of shocks before freeing the lines to snap around and pin the marine's legs together and his arms to his sides, before emptying their clips into his prone form, and violently kicking any vulnerable areas, whilst reloading their projectile weaponry. The men might very reasonably claim that this was all just good cautious practise, but this entity had slaughtered their friends and colleagues by the dozen. They were going to do their utmost to see him suffer.
By a curious coincidence, Shepard had just come to a similar resolution with regards to the hacker who was coordinating the boarders' tactics. Sustained, although admittedly mild, electrocution and repeated exposure to blunt force trauma, even with the armour's protection (although it couldn't guard against strain on his joints) had loosened his grip on consciousness, his head pounding, ears roaring, black spots strobing in his vision and blood seeping out of eyes, mouth and nose, staining his sallow skin crimson from without and purple from within. He could remember very few times he'd been in a more unpleasant situation. Be that as it may, he was far from dazed enough to lose awareness of his situation or the weapon that caused it; and the latter offered obvious countermeasures that were the reason the specialised tazers had never been supplied to the military. And his omnitool ought to complete the reboot prompted by the earlier EMP at any moment.
Another boot came in, impacted with his head, snapping it back and causing a painful moment about his neck. He went limp, closing his eyes and surrendering full awareness of his surroundings. Numerous footsteps sounded, before a voice snarled at them to go back to their positions. Shepard's mouth creased; so much for the attempt to pull the testudo apart in a false sense of security. What's more, doubtless they'd be right on top of him, but there was nothing to be done on that score at the moment. Hands grasped at his ankles and his shoulders, pulling at him but not yet lifting him-
A pre-programmed gesture with his left hand, possible even when restrained, caused an electrical blast to be emitted from his microcomputer, whence it was directed into his armour. This coincided with Thaddaeus lashing out with both pairs of limbs, both to free them from the cable within the narrow window offered by the blast and to secure himself a moment's breathing space. His newly reopened eyes noted his erstwhile captors staggering backwards and going for their weapons, plane of vision lurching as the assassin sprang to his feet, hands reaching to rip the cable tips from their places in his armour and visor. Neither wound had penetrated fully; his hardsuit was still fully airtight.
Then, his opponents were raising for their guns, and retreating to give themselves room to use them effectively. The N7 had been shot quite enough today, he felt, baton rounds or no, and so responded with the only convenient weapons on his person. Another gesture with his left hand sustained the electrical current, enough flowing through the tough cables to keep them flexible, allowing him to send them whipping out at the launchers in his adversaries' hands, wrapping around their barrels before the assassin sent their impending shots awry with a violent symmetrical gesture. The move yanked their aims skywards, but the ends of his improvised lashes snaked back towards him and released the threats from his control, forcing him to strike again as he advanced into range for less clumsy melee tactics. This time, he focussed on the man on the left, securing a loose grip about his armoured throat and arm, and tugging him sideways with the intention of toppling him into his comrade. However, the cables lost traction before he could apply full force, causing the man simply to stagger and affording his companion to dodge backwards. Despite the ineffective nature of the assault, it afforded Shepard another few seconds' grace with which he was able to fully close the gap, casting aside one of the strategically feeble coils and gain a second grip on the other, controlling a manageable length of cord between his hands.
He flicked the doubled cable forwards, catching one of the thugs under the chin before looping it around his neck with a twist of his right hand and dropping to kick the hijacker's legs out from under him and send him sprawling headfirst. Thaddaeus rolled out from under the tumbling, armoured mass before it hit the ground, putting it between himself and the questing aim of the downed man's companion. Keeping his grip on the cord and the noose under tension, Shepard yanked his adversary in close, the struggling man's back to him, and pushed himself into a standing position, pre-empting an assault on his balance with a strike to the back of his foe's knees, quickly bringing the thug's hands out of reach of the firearm he had dropped in his fall.
Concealing himself behind the cover offered, however unwillingly, by his opponent, the assassin planted a boot in the small of his captive's back and launched him at his comrade with as much force as he could summon, using the window of opportunity to immediately duck and retrieve the riot gun from its position on the floor, and open up a carefully targeted salvo against the two remaining individuals of the team who had had the audacity to have ambushed him, and the misfortune to have failed. Shots impacted against elbows and knees, impeding the efforts of his targets to regain their feet, before the assassin had the requisite angle for blows that would remove their consciousness and their capacity to attack him for the remaining duration of the conflict. In all likelihood, they would come to floating in hard vacuum, their core body temperatures plummeting, oxygen supplies depleting and salvation invisible in the darkness between the distant stars. The N7 would be lying if he claimed that the notion in any way perturbed him.
Simon Ross was finally back within the general region of his comfort zone since 'Hex' had originally contacted him; alone in a darkened room, working feverishly with all the processing power that his omnitool and the static terminal it was linked to could offer him, doing some research; he'd tried to access the navigation computer and found it secured against all intrusion. Making use of the leisure his voluntary imprisonment offered him in terms of freedom from being attacked, he chiselled away at the virtual obstructions thrown up by the hacker, trying to find traces of him or the marine who claimed to be the journalist's ally in the passenger records, and cross-referencing anything he found with every last piece of restricted data he had gained access to, as well as with as much of the vast reaches of the extranet he could quickly manage. Thus far, he had found no trace of the N7, but a little on the former subject that seemed to corroborate his protestations that he was small-time in the grand scheme of things.
Digits flying across multiple holographic interfaces at once, the mastermind of the felony that was presently unfolding was gently leading Simon Ross by the hand, up the garden path, fabricating what seemingly useful information was seen a matter of moments before the viewing, though this would be easier spoken of that accomplished with regards to the unknown Alliance assassin, of whom he knew nothing that could be manipulated or embellished to any meaningful advantage.
"Sir, the N7 appears to be down. Confirming." A voice crackled from his earpiece, and though his face held firm to his unwillingness to commit to any premature celebration, his eyes brightened with gleeful elation. Selling this man would secure him greater wealth than the sum of all that he had held over the course of his life up to this point. This heavily contrasted with the next instant, in which he diverted his attention from the world of lies he was building to the surveillance displays, to watch that benighted marine getting up again, and register the weapons that his people had been stupid enough to deploy against him.
"No, no, you idiots!" Opening communications with the leader of the squads besieging Ross, he made the final effort possible even as he felt the situation slip inexorably away from him. "Get everyone with a breather issue helmet to the airlock and kill that man, get everyone else behind a sealed door."
Shepard turned to face the testudo, still in formation, holding position a couple of metres from him having advanced uncertainly and then stalled at the sight of his victory. They were supposed to be a failsafe, he realised, an insurmountable obstacle that took any risk out of the equation. Already he could hear the men massing behind him, having given up or left a token force to guard the journalist; he wasn't going anywhere, and now, in theory, neither was the marine.
Thaddaeus hoped the hacker didn't know that the riot squad had attached the lift tazers to their weapons. It would be disappointing if he did; all that apparent peril would make such a blunder an anticlimactic way to win. Judiciously stepping over the splayed limbs of the unconscious men, he retrieved a second of the launchers, and turned on the mobile, supposedly indomitable barrier that resisted him, cradling a secondary trigger mechanism in each hand, aiming casually from the hip. He fancied he saw an ever so slight tremor as the penny dropped, but it might just have been his eyes catching the lightning motion as he fired. Even head-on, the piton-like electrodes failed to penetrate the rigid, nearly frictionless surface, but that was hardly essential. The cable heads fell to the deck, 'earthing' them and drawing the current into the eezo, which promptly delivered the mass effect field Thaddaeus required in all of its glory.
The assassin dropped the launchers the moment he fired and pushed himself into a breakneck sprint at the obstacle, at the last moment dropping to collide feet first with one of the shields, applying a moment about the pivot of the legionary's firm grip that overcame the object's vastly reduced inertia and tilted back, opening a gap into which an armoured leg was thrust before lashing out and flipping the defence up out of his path, coercing the hijacker into releasing his grip entirely. The slightly curved slab of metal flew higher and faster than anything of that size and density had any right to, and caught its owner square in the visor, causing him to flinch back and lose his balance, and making it easy for Thaddaeus to trip him, simultaneously snatching the shield out of the air as it plummeted on a course for what would doubtless have been a painful collision with his abdomen. The thug in front of him fell backwards into the man behind, and around him the other legionaries allowed gravity to take hold of their shields too, and free their hands – only sensible, given the situation. Then they were snatching pistols away from their electromagnetic resting places, and Shepard realised he had worn through his opponents' tolerance. They'd caught him lying down, too, if only in the physical sense...
The N7 lowered the heavy armour plate fully into their line of fire, feeling it buck against his grip with the force of the numerous impacts. Quickly, the legionaries grasped the futility of firing until their weapons overheated, one of them stamping down on the protective surface, forcing one edge down in spite of Thaddaeus' tensed, straining limbs, and conversely lifting the opposite up and exposing the marine to hijackers who waited, poised for his appearance with sidearms in confident, stable grips. Shepard was quickly forced to concede that resistance was useless, instead reversing his efforts and going with the motion, before launching himself upwards after a dazzling payload of plasma, forcing the nearest thug's weapon aside in spite of his opposition and twisting around behind him, allowing the meat-shield to absorb several shots before slamming an artificially massive palm into the back of the man's head, snapping it forwards with sufficient force to shatter his upper spine.
Perhaps unwisely, considering the ever-increasing throbbing within his skull that was gradually coming to impair his ability to think clearly, Shepard reduced the mass of the corpse and physically launched it before him to clear a path, diving through the ranks of his tightly packed opponents to finally lay an unhindered gaze upon his objective, now only separated from him by a scant few metres, albeit a scant few metres that would leave him exposed to the full weight of his adversaries' unrestrained fury. Hardly keen to be on the receiving end of said fury, as he scrambled to his feet he strained to lift another of the fallen barriers into a position interposed between him and the immanent volley. The effort of swiftly levering the barrier into an upright position, followed by the staggering force of the close-quarters onslaught, had Thaddaeus' arms trembling just holding up his cover, and his steps, intended to be measured and certain, heavy, off balance and fighting to keep up with the backwards motion of his centre of gravity.
Behind the body of legionaries through which he had come, the reinforcements arrived, equipped to a man with full hardsuits and respirators, and doubtless more armed to the teeth than an average pirate group had any right to be. To the fore, the legionaries, some still maintaining their fire upon the unyielding protection his arms strained to control, were inadvertently doing a far better job of blocking the more dangerous newcomers' advance than Shepard could have done in the present circumstances if he'd been in a position to try. Some were still trying to regain their feet, others straining to lift their riot shields, a few trying to advance and those who considered the reinforcements better equipped trying to get back out of the way. Obviously, they knew just what the assassin's strategy was to be, but there response, inappropriate as it was, bought Thaddaeus the time to edge those last few metres and come to the twin doors and the panel of the airlock, both open to reveal a long, boxlike tube leading to another door that, unlike the others, was firmly secured against his coming, with no controls on his side.
As far as the N7 was concerned, that was no real blow. As entertaining as hijacking the hijacker's ship would have been, once he'd regained control of the transport's systems he'd be able to jump to FTL quickly enough that the other vessel's weapons would be no threat – and judging by the hacker's actions, there was no way they'd consent to the ship they were on being fired upon.
Taking cover within the airlock itself, the assassin quickly wedged the rigid shield between the two doors that would attempt to close automatically if sensors detected decompression so that they would not block passage through the airlock, brought up the incineration subroutine on his fabricator, and steeled himself for an instant, throwing a quick glance back over his shoulder at his foes, who had finally regained cohesion and were attempting a last ditch charge, weapons blazing freely and inaccurately. Then, the N7 crouched, and quickly burned his way through the deck plating to sabotage the power supply to the electromagnets that kept the seal between the two ships.
The result was nearly instantaneous. A crack, ever so small in diameter, appeared, opening the way to the vacuum outside, the pressure difference quickly drawing the air within through said crack and out into the void at such a rate that its passage forced the division open wider, allowing more air through and causing the process to accelerate exponentially. Then, explosive decompression. A huge volume of air that had once occupied the corridor network of the lowermost deck (which seemed to have favoured the cheap approach of only making the adjutant rooms airtight) screamed out into the blackness, sweeping the hijackers along with it through the airlock in which Shepard was trapped.
Except Thaddaeus wasn't in the airlock, anymore. Wasn't on the ship, anymore, either. The vast, cold, empty expanse of space filled his vision behind the transparent visor, bringing bitter mirth as he was reminded once again how small and insignificant and transient sentient life was, mocking its own egocentricity. One gauntleted hand gripped a blade that had gouged its way into a plate join just to the left of the opening in such a vice that Shepard was less confident that the blade would stay where it was than that he would lose hold of it. In fact, it might be prudent to procure some climbing pitons in case of similar situations in the future.
Amidst the thugs, who could be heard screaming faintly through the thin remaining atmosphere that would soon diffuse to the point that it may as well not be there, and who were clearly in no position to fire on him in revenge, the N7 spotted his Karpov being drawn out of the vessel, and snatched it from the current before restoring it to its place upon his armour.
He was all too aware that he couldn't hang there for long. The hardsuit might have been airtight, but there was simply no way it could maintain his core body temperature and prevent the onset of hypothermia against such a steep temperature gradient; such thermal insulators simply didn't exist. Already his extremities were numbing, muscles trembling against his conscious will to prevent the oscillating shivers that might set him adrift to share the fate of his victims. However, the flow of debris had ceased, and the depressurised air pulling at him was also subsiding, such that it was now weak enough that he ought to be able to keep his footing back within the transport, certainly well enough to bring this task to its conclusion.
His breathing and his footsteps the only things his hearing registered, he first braced himself with a hand inside the airlock before retrieving the knife as a potential piece of evidence, then clambered back into the warmer realm within which artificial gravity reigned, his feet making contact with the floor-
Only to drift back upwards as he found that the stabilising, orienting force been brought offline, presumably by the hacker, as yet another plot to slow or stop him. Unfortunately for him and his subordinates, Shepard had spent much of what little 'down-time' he had training in zero-gravity movement and combat, and was now fully competent, as could be verified by the handful of missions he'd completed successfully under such circumstances. At best, the hijackers would find themselves on an equal playing field, as they found when a pair of them appeared soundlessly around the corner ahead. Then Thaddaeus noted that their boots remained firmly planted against the metal deck.
Electromagnetic boots... where do they get their equipment? He wondered, privately rueing the fact that he had neglected such equipment himself as it was easy for sensors to detect and likely to provoke questions when found, before having his attention forced onto the concern of staying alive as twin muzzles flashed and shards of hyper-accelerated metal silently hurled towards him. His drift had continued, carrying him forwards and 'upwards' into arms reach of the ceiling, which he shoved against as the two men opened fire, the opposing force pushing him out of harm's way for a brief moment and into the contact with the deck, whereupon he bounded forwards and sideways, aiming for one of the doorways that lined the corridor and wedging himself in so as not to drift back out into the line of fire.
His momentum spent, he relaxed one of his arms and drew his sidearm, snatching a glance around the edge of his scanty cover, the split second image telling him that his two opponents were advancing, maintaining a gap of several metres between them, before he was forced to hide from the suppressive fire they sent at him in response. He was pinned, and the lack of gravity deprived him of the fluid controlled motion that his foes enjoyed, the motions he could depend on to carry him out of most disadvantageous positions. Equally, staying where he was would be as dangerous as trying to leave, as was demonstrated when a grenade drifted serenely into his line of sight. Thaddaeus managed to swat it back down the corridor, sending the hijackers ducking from the blast that happened a split second later, however the assassin was unable to take advantage of the window, as leaving cover would put him within the explosive's blast radius.
Another explosion produced a muffled crump and a flash just outside of the danger zone. One of the thugs must have tossed a second device, hoping to have it detonate the moment the N7 became exposed to it, but misjudging the force he put behind the throw, leaving the grenade moving too slowly. Next time, of course, Shepard couldn't rely on another misjudgement from the opposition. His cloak wouldn't protect him from grenades, or the discouraging projectiles they were currently employing, but two men weren't enough to blanket the whole space with flying metal shards, and whatever experience they had in zero gravity combat hadn't shaken them from the habit of thinking of the floor as the fundamental plane on which battle was fought. Activating his cloak, Shepard launched himself 'upwards', before kicking the door within the alcove to send him floating across the corridor above the criminals' fire. He could have shot in return, but the recoil, with no way to brace himself, would have sent him backwards, away from his destination. Entering a prolonged firefight with two rifle wielding foes whilst armed with one pistol would not be a sound strategy.
Thaddaeus collided gently with the wall opposite, quickly latching onto it before his momentum was reversed, before making his way towards his targets, one improvised handhold at a time. As the two pirates approached their quarry, however, they made a tactical move that hinted that they might not be quite so inexperienced and easy to subdue as the assassin might have hoped. Somewhat awkwardly at first, each of them lifted their feet and allowed the electromagnets in their boots to latch onto the walls; one stationing himself on the wall opposite to the alcove in which they expected to find the N7, the other on what usually functioned as the ceiling. This did, however, leave Shepard prone, still cloaked, at the feet of one of the men as he still advanced.
One hand carefully held his Karpov up, the muzzle angled perfectly to point at the weak point represented by the transparent visor, as he allowed his intended victim closer and closer, within the protective cloud a kinetic barrier could generate, until the armoured tip of one boot made contact with an invisible hand, the hijacker looked down, and Shepard fired. Two rounds carved a passage through transparent visor and opaque skull to destroy the man's delicate brain, and the force of the rounds, whilst not enough to pull the electromagnetic boots away from the steel panelling on the wall, had the corpse's body lolling backwards in a macabre imitation of a ridiculous Caribbean limbo. The dead man's companion heard the shots, the vibrations communicated through the wall and ceiling, twisted, and immediately opened fire on Shepard's general vicinity. Aware that his cloak was now of little use but might be required again later, Thaddaeus hooked his left arm around the armoured cadaver's ankles, yanking it off of the wall and allowing it to swing 'up' to interpose itself between its killer and its colleague's fire, before he allowed himself to reappear.
The kinetic barriers of his meat-shield, still active and deflecting the rounds with mass effect fields, meant that no force was applied on the limp body they were supposed to protect, and it stayed in position. Until, that is, the N7 hiding behind it grabbed it by the waist and launched both himself and his protection straight towards the surviving attacker. Moving as fast as they were, it took Thaddaeus a moment to register that his opponent had leapt clear of the wall as well, putting himself on a course to crash into the assassin, albeit at an angle that should keep them from becoming entangled for a prolonged period.
The collision took place as expected, two bodies with opposing momentum colliding to produce a force which in turn produced a moment about the pivot that was their collective centre of mass – the dead man behind whim he was hiding. This left Shepard and his opponent twisting slightly around the marine's cover, giving the pirate an angle of fire that he promptly attempted to exploit, the recoil of the rifle accelerating him out of the range in which Shepard could respond. Thaddaeus quickly responded by releasing his Karpov and shoving his inert cover past and behind him, giving himself the velocity to swiftly close on his adversary and seize the rifle before it could do any damage, being rewarded with a sharp kick to the abdomen. The opposing forces produced nearly separated the two men, but the N7 gamely clung on to the firearm that linked them, pulling on it to bring them back into closer proximity whereupon a savage punch to his helmet sent the thug's head snapping backwards. Shepard exploited the opening by releasing the assault rifle in favour of initiating a proper grapple on the other man's person.
Attempting a throw without gravity would be idiocy; Thaddaeus intended to proceed to 'ground work' as quickly as possible, and with this in mind he focussed his attentions on immobilising the hijacker's right arm, the one which controlled the assault rifle's trigger mechanism, trapping it in between their two struggling bodies, the muzzle pointing out at an angle that threatened neither of them. Despite this, as he worked to free himself the thug's fingers spasmed in sympathy with his exertions elsewhere, producing a stream of fire that altered the angle at which the two combatants drifted. Shepard, in turn, was using the limited freedom of his own hands to deliver short but deceptively effective blows to his foe's limbs, encouraging him to relinquish his hold on the weapon. In an attempt to deflect his attentions onto other areas the criminal delivered repeated knees to joints and other areas within reach that were sensitive through armour. Admittedly his actions were beginning to hurt, but the N7 had never been one to be deterred from a necessary action by the mere application of pain. As a result, the pirate yielded first, and the rifle was released to drift alongside them before a swipe from its owner removed it from his opponent's reach.
Shepard then moved to the second phase of his assault; he swept the monomolecular edge of his knife from its sheath with his free hand and reversed the backhanded grip in order to angle it upward to pierce the vulnerable area where ceramic plating ended at the armpit, in order to allow flexibility for the user. The criminal in turn exploited this feature's intended consequence, seizing hold of Thaddaeus' wrist and straining to halt its progress towards the more weakly defended region of flesh. Stalemate. If Shepard used his other arm he would be allowing the pirate the same advantage; equally both men's legs would be blocked from any significant action by those of their counterpart. The deadlock was broken on the point of their inevitable collision with the sheer face of the wall; Shepard could see it coming and prepared to exploit the momentary break in concentration the sudden sensation would produce in his adversary. However, the hijacker reacted faster than the marine would have credited, doubtless having realised what was coming, and used the solid at his back to brace himself in a manner the N7 could not, kicking out and driving his foe's legs back and providing himself the opening to-
Anchor himself to the metallic surface with the electromagnetic soles of his boots, easily twisting aside and allowing the assassin's stab to continue and embed the knife into the wall, before releasing his foe to easily return to a fully upright position, leaving Shepard prone before him to swiftly relinquish his hold on the blade that was firmly embedded in the panel, just in time to greet a ferocious kick to the abdomen that drove him out of reach of the plane that would have allowed him a relative freedom of movement and rendering him, for however brief a period, helpless. The criminal used the opening in a way that once again demonstrated that he was no fool. He didn't run for his rifle, and try once again a strategy that had failed when implemented by two men instead of just one. He had beaten the marine in close quarters by staying anchored and stable in an environment where the other man could not.
All this Shepard saw and understood, reading it in his enemy as the man purposefully strode along after him, and beneath his breather helmet his mouth creased into a slight smile as he perceived exactly where the hijacker's error lay; there was one stable object within the confines of the corridor to which he could cling and thus kill with greater ease than he could be killed. The seconds crawled by, and he came within arm's reach of the wall panelling, close enough to pull himself in and hold himself still as he watched his adversary approach. The assassin struck first, swinging his legs up as the thug came into range, then lashing out in a series of kicks that wasn't entirely a feint. The two blows connected solidly, the first with the criminal's abdomen, the second changing course at the last second to arc up and intercept his helmet on its downward course as he doubled up.
From there onwards, however, it became fortunate that the attack had not been wholly genuine nor even required to be particularly successful. It was soon clear that the pirate's forward motion had also been part of what was to become a successful attempt to seize control of the offending limbs, control which was then used to wrench Shepard from his anchor and slam him down into unforgiving plating. The marine pulled back against the grip as best he could, the manoeuvre made awkward by his inability to brace himself, whilst his adversary refused to lose his both physical and metaphorical grip on his opponent. As a consequence, Thaddaeus was brought up into closer proximity with his adversary whilst the hijacker's hands were occupied. And now, he was in position. A quick sit-up brought the other man's helmet into arms reach, and the assassin slammed a gauntleted palm into his visor, holding it there to blind him whilst he secured a grip on the thug's neck, giving him his required anchor. Then, he went for the mechanical seals at the man's throat, there in the event of VI failure and an urgent need to remove his helmet, a dangerous but necessary vulnerability that had been made as difficult as possible to exploit in combat.
Immediately realising his peril, the criminal panicked, ramming Shepard's back into the wall and blindly thrashing head around to free himself, but the assassin's grip was secure and whilst the hijacker's pathetic struggles slowed the process, Shepard's methodical hand was never shaken loose. The pirate let go of the marine's legs and attempted to shove him away, but Thaddaeus immediately used his freedom to lock his thighs around the man's abdomen and so the defensive strike failed. Succumbing to the most basic, instinctual level of fight or flight programming, the soon to be corpse tried to flee from the threat of a terrible death but neglected to compensate for the resistance provided by the electromagnets in his boots and, off balance, fell backwards, even as that cold flicker of triumph stretched Thaddaeus' lips beneath his helmet and both men knew who had won.
The seal in his helmet gave, and Shepard ripped it free, exposing his opponent's face for the last time, before just as callously throwing the helmet across the corridor and releasing the dying man to turn away, not once having really looked at him. He knew the process well; delicate blood vessels in the eyes explode and stain them red, flesh swells but does not explode as it is contained by skin and reinforced by bone. Air is forced from the lungs by the pressure difference with the surroundings, and if the process is resisted all that is achieved is severe internal rupture. Blood and tissue is rapidly deoxygenated within about ten seconds before circulatory failure and paralysis set in alongside rapid cooling and ice formation from large quantities of released water vapour. Loss of consciousness will occur in approximately fifteen seconds, death becoming inevitable after ninety.
Shepard located and retrieved his pistol and turned to continue further into the ship, now confident that the end was in sight-
Sudden movement in his peripheral vision caused him to twist awkwardly as his floated, to see the man he had killed somehow finding the wherewithal to get up and run for the helmet, which had bounced off a wall and now was moving back towards its owner, and the man had nearly reached it-
Then Shepard shot him. Without a helmet, his kinetic barriers could not withstand several rapid shots to the head, and a violent, torturous death was suddenly accelerated. Shepard continued on his way.