Mass Effect: Ascension

by Drew Karpyshyn

  “What do the Collectors want with them?” she asked.

  Pel shrugged. “I figure it’s probably better if I don’t know all the grisly details. Might give me nightmares. You know what that’s like, right, Killer?”

  “You’re a traitor to the cause. A traitor to the entire human race.”

  “Cerberus really sunk their hooks into you,” Pel said with a laugh. “You know, if all their agents were this dedicated, the Man might actually accomplish something. But the fact is, it’s human nature to look out for number one. Too bad you never figured that out.”

  “What’s going to happen to the two of us?” Kahlee asked.

  “I figure the Collectors will pay us a little bonus for you, sweet-cheeks, seeing as you’re something of an expert on human biotics.

  “As for my old friend over there, we’ll throw him in for free. Should help buy us some time to disappear before Cerberus figures out what happened.”

  “The Illusive Man will hunt you down like dogs,” Grayson snarled.

  Pel stood up from his chair. “With the kind of rewards they’re offering, that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  He nodded toward Kahlee. “Throw her in with the other two. If we leave the two of them alone together she’ll probably scratch his eyes out.”

  One of the guards stepped forward and hauled Kahlee to her feet, dragging her from the cell.

  Pel, chair in hand, paused just before closing the door.

  “Nothing personal, Killer,” he said, getting the last word in as always.

  SIXTEEN

  Pel followed the guard and Kahlee down the hall to the room on the far end, then opened the door so they could toss her in. The woman gasped when she saw the two figures lying motionless on the floor.

  “Relax, sugar,” Pel said with a wink. “They’re just unconscious.”

  The guard shoved her into the room and the door slid shut before she could reply.

  “Keep a close eye on the cameras,” Pel warned the two guards charged with watching the monitors that showed the inside of each cell. “If either one of those biotics even rolls over in their sleep, you hit them with another dose of the night-night juice. We’re not taking any chances with them.”

  They nodded in acknowledgment, and Pel left them there, heading for his bed on the ground floor. It was already past midnight, and he was ready for some shut-eye.

  Of course, he first had to traverse the maddening labyrinth of the building’s interior. As if mirroring the streets in the district outside, the warehouse had been constructed as a confusing maze of corridors and stairwells. It was actually necessary to take one flight of stairs down to the ground floor, weave through several alternating left and right turns of branching hallways, then climb up another flight of stairs to a small landing that overlooked the garage, before finally taking a third set of stairs down to the large common room they had converted into a barracks.

  “Message came in from Golo awhile ago,” Shela, the woman who was his unofficial second in command, told him once he finally reached his destination.

  She was sitting on the edge of her cot, removing her boots as she got ready to bed down for the night. Apart from the two guards stationed to keep an eye on the prisoners and the one patrolling the garage, everyone else was already sleeping.

  “He have an update on when the Collectors are supposed to show?”

  She shook her head. “When I asked he just said they’ll come to us when they’re ready. He told me we have to be patient.”

  Sitting down with a weary sigh, he asked, “So why’d he call?”

  “He wanted to warn us. He says there’s another quarian who’s going to try to sneak into the building tomorrow night. He sent us all the details.”

  Pel raised an eyebrow in surprise. Golo might be a cowardly, backstabbing, double-dealing little quarian, but he was damned resourceful.

  “Okay, we’ll set something up to take care of him tomorrow.”

  “What about the other one down in the basement?” Shela wanted to know.

  In all the excitement of Grayson’s arrival, Pel had almost forgotten about the quarian pilot they had captured from the Cyniad. They had finally managed to make him give up the info they wanted, but he doubted they’d get much more out of him. Between the torture and the fever from whatever diseases he had contracted when Golo had broken his mask, their quarian prisoner had been reduced to a barely coherent babbling madman. Of course, now that they were breaking off all ties with Cerberus it had all been a waste of time…though it had allowed Shela to show him some rather interesting new interrogation techniques.

  “We’ve got no use for him now. Put him down in the morning,” he said.

  “He looked pretty bad last time I saw him,” Shela remarked. “I don’t think he’ll make it until morning.”

  “Care to put your money where your mouth is?”

  “Twenty credits says he doesn’t see the sunrise.”

  “Done.”

  As Pel leaned over to shake on the wager the entire building was rocked by the sound of multiple shotgun blasts fired in quick succession. The noise came from the floor above them.

  Lemm was young, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew better than to trust Golo, so after the other quarian had fallen asleep Lemm had snuck out of his apartment and made his way back to the rooftops in the Talon district. He figured there was a fifty-fifty chance Golo was in deeper with the humans than he admitted, and he had no intention of walking into an ambush. The best way to avoid the possibility was to strike a day early. If Golo hadn’t tipped off the humans, it made little difference. But if he had alerted them, Lemm would now have the upper hand, as they wouldn’t be expecting him until tomorrow.

  He moved quickly over the rooftops, blood pumping with adrenaline as he worked his way toward the small two-story building he’d been scouting earlier in the day. Space was precious on Omega, so traveling from one building to the next required little more than a leap of fifteen or twenty feet to cross the empty air between them. Even with his pack full of gear strapped to his back, the greatest danger wasn’t that he would fall. Rather, it was the chance he would run into the inhabitants of one of the buildings out to enjoy the night air above the stink of street level. If that happened, the encounter would almost surely end with someone getting shot.

  Fortunately, he made it there without running into anyone, rolling to absorb the impact and muffle the sound as he made the final jump from the three-story building beside the warehouse to the rooftop ten feet below.

  He got to his feet and paused, listening for sounds that would indicate he’d been spotted. Hearing nothing unusual, he made his way to the edge of the roof, peering down at the large window beneath him.

  It was impossible to see through the one-way glass. But he wasn’t interested in what lay beyond the window—at least not yet. Instead, he pulled his omnitool from his belt and flipped on the flashlight. The thin beam of soft illumination allowed him to locate the tiny infrared emitters along the outside of the window frame. Adjusting a setting on the omnitool, he used it to tap into the wireless signal, overriding the alarm system.

  There was no latch on the window, so Lemm would have to make his own opening. He slung his backpack from his shoulder and set it down on the roof, then rummaged around until he found the glass cutter. The tight-beamed laser sliced through the window with a barely audible, high-pitched whine. He carved off a tiny piece in the upper corner; just large enough for a small video camera on the end of a stiff wire to poke through and look around.

  Images from the camera were transmitted back to the readout on his omnitool, allowing him to see what awaited him on the other side. The window was at one end of a corridor. Several doors that looked to be storage rooms lined either side. At the far end was a small table, where a pair of armed guards played cards and cast occasional glances at a bank of monitors resting on the table.

  Using the camera magnification, he zoomed in to get a closer look at the images
on the monitors. There were six in all: four showed only empty rooms, but one of the rooms had a lone figure huddled in a corner, and another showed three occupants, two lying on the floor and the third sitting between them.

  Lemm withdrew the camera quickly; it was obvious the storage rooms had been converted to holding cells, and these guards were in charge of watching their prisoners. There were no police or law enforcement officials on Omega, so that left only one reasonable explanation.

  Slavers. And he had a pretty good idea who the slaves were.

  Enraged at seeing his fellow quarians caged like animals, Lemm stashed the camera, strapped his pack back over his shoulders, readied his shotgun, then lowered himself down from the rooftop until he was balanced precariously on the window’s narrow bottom ledge. He didn’t bother to use the glasscutter this time, but simply threw himself forward, relying on the tough fabric of his enviro-suit to protect him from the shards of glass.

  His momentum carried him into the corridor, where he hit the floor, tucked into a forward role and came up firing. Neither guard was expecting the attack and he caught them completely unprepared. Most of the first two blasts from his shotgun were deflected by the kinetic shields in their combat suits, keeping them alive just long enough to jump to their feet. But the third and fourth blasts killed the men before they had a chance to draw their weapons, hurtling their bodies back with such force that they slammed into the table, sending the monitors crashing to the floor.

  Knowing he had to work fast, Lemm turned his attention to the cells. Four of them stood empty, doors open. He slapped his hand against the access panel of the nearest closed door, hoping it wasn’t protected by a security code. To his relief it slid open, revealing the room with the three figures inside. And that’s when Lemm realized he’d made a horrible mistake.

  They weren’t quarians at all—the prisoners were human! A man and two women. No, his mind corrected: a man, a woman, and a girl. The woman sprang to her feet when she saw him, but the others didn’t move. To his great surprise, Lemm thought he recognized her.

  “Are you Kahlee Sanders?”

  She nodded quickly. “Who are you?”

  “Not now,” he told her, his mind casting back to the achitectural plans he had memorized. “We only have a minute or so until reinforcements get here. Come on.”

  “I can’t leave them,” she said, nodding to the two on the ground.

  The girl was small enough that she could be carried, but the other one was far bigger than either Lemm or Kahlee. He rushed over to the man’s side and dropped to one knee, scanning him quickly with his omnitool.

  “I think I can wake him up,” he said. “Grab the guns from the guards outside and let your friend out of the other cell.”

  “Leave him behind,” she said, her voice dripping with venom. “He’s one of them.”

  Lemm pulled a booster shot from his pack and administered it to the unconscious man as Kahlee disappeared into the hall. By the time she returned with the guards’ assault rifles, the man was moaning and trying to sit up.

  “Help me get him to his feet.”

  Kahlee set the weapons down and came over. Together they managed to lift the big man off the ground. To Lemm’s relief, he was actually able to stand on his own.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Hendel.”

  “Hendel!” he shouted, hoping to penetrate the narcotics that were still clouding his mind. “My name is Lemm! We’re going to get you out of here! Do you understand?”

  The big man nodded, though the action caused him to sway on his feet. Lemm realized that even if he woke the girl, she probably wouldn’t be strong enough to walk for a good twenty minutes.

  “We’ll move quicker if I just carry the little one,” Lemm said.

  Kahlee nodded, and the quarian adjusted his backpack, bent down, and scooped the girl up with his left arm, carrying her over his shoulder like a sack of flour. She was heavier than she looked, and even with his right hand free and the weight of his pack offsetting the load, he knew it was going to be tough for him to carry her and still shoot effectively.

  “Did the Alliance teach you how to handle one of those?” he asked Kahlee, tilting his head toward the assault rifles on the ground.

  She nodded and bent to pick them up. “How did you know I was in the Alliance?”

  “Later,” he answered. “We need to move.”

  Kahlee handed one of the weapons to Hendel, but it slipped through his hands and clattered to the floor.

  “Forget it,” Lemm said. He couldn’t hit the broadside of a building right now anyway. “Follow me!” he added, shouting in the hopes the drugged man would respond to his voice.

  He led them through the twisting hallways, knowing their best chance was to get to one of the vehicles in the garage. Unfortunately, the enemy probably knew that, too.

  When he reached the stairs leading down to the ground floor, he cast a quick peek behind him. Hendel was keeping up, thanks in part to Kahlee half pulling, half carrying him along. With the girl still draped over his shoulder, the four of them stumbled awkwardly down the stairs, across a small landing and into the garage. Various containers and shipping crates of all sizes were piled haphazardly about the room; perfect cover for any guards waiting to ambush them.

  “Over there,” Kahlee said, pointing to a pile of metal boxes stacked in the corner of the far wall. “You three make a run for it. I’ll lay down some covering fire.”

  Lemm nodded and took off, moving as quickly as possible while carrying his awkward load. For a brief moment he was aware of Hendel lumbering after him, and then movement on the other side of the room drew his attention.

  A woman popped up from behind one of the crates, taking a bead on him. He realized with horror that while his kinetic shields gave him some protection, the girl and Hendel were completely vulnerable. Before the woman managed to get off a shot, however, Kahlee let loose with a spray of bullets that forced her to duck back down again.

  From the corner of his eye, Lemm saw a man half-hidden in the boxes off to the right. The human fired his pistol as they ran by less than a dozen feet away, concentrating his fire on Lemm rather than taking aim at Hendel or the girl. The quarian retaliated with a pair of wildly aimed shots that echoed like thunder in the cavernous warehouse.

  At this close range accuracy barely mattered; the autotargeting systems of both weapons ensured direct hits. Lemm’s kinetic barriers deflected all the rounds from the pistol except for one that embedded itself harmlessly in the padded shoulder of his combat suit and another that ripped through the corner of his backpack. His opponent wasn’t so lucky. The concentrated scatter of the shotgun blasts overwhelmed his shields, and a handful of pellets penetrated the kinetic barriers. The impact tore great holes in the exposed flesh of his face and hands, and the man dropped lifeless to the floor.

  And then they were sliding into the safety of the cover behind the containers. Lemm quickly shook the pack loose from his shoulder and lowered the girl to the floor, then popped up to provide cover for Kahlee. Seeing what he was doing, she sprinted across the warehouse toward them, keeping her head low.

  A shotgun wasn’t the best weapon for laying down a field of cover fire. Unlike an assault rifle, it didn’t spray a nearly endless stream of bullets. But Lemm remembered where the woman who had popped up before was hiding. If she was foolish enough to peek out again without changing position, he’d have her right in his sights.

  The woman did exactly that, and Lemm pulled the trigger the instant her head came into view. The echo of the shotgun rang out once more, and the crate she was using for cover actually shifted from the impact of his shot. Her kinetic barriers saved her life, absorbing the tightly packed cloud of incoming projectiles, and she ducked behind cover once again. Lemm doubted she’d make the mistake of showing herself in exactly the same place a third time.

  Kahlee skidded to a stop beside him, breathing hard. At almost the same instant two more guards, a man and a
woman, burst into the warehouse through the same entrance they had come through only a few seconds before. A coordinated barrage of shotgun and assault-rifle fire sent them scurrying back around the corner.

  “They’ll go around to the other side,” Lemm warned, recalling that there were two entrances to the warehouse, along with the landing up above and the big vehicle doors on the far wall. “Try to flank us.”

  “You think you can get to those rovers?” Kahlee asked him, pointing at the two vehicles parked out in the open near the center of the garage.

  “There’s not much cover. I’ll have to work my way around to the far side. Can you hold position here?”

  “For a little while. Any idea how many we’re up against?”

  “They started with nine, as far as I know. Two dead upstairs, one more down here.”

  “Six against two,” she muttered. “Without one of those rovers we don’t stand much of a chance.”

  Hendel mumbled something neither of them understood. He seemed to be more alert, but his words were still incomprehensible as the booster fought against the drugs still coursing through his system.

  “You stay here with me and Gillian,” Kahlee told him, patting him on the thigh. “And keep your head down.”

  Peering through a small gap between the wall of boxes shielding them from enemy fire, Lemm tried to plan a route from cover point to cover point that would eventually lead him to the vehicle. It was there, but he’d have to keep moving. And Kahlee would need to stay sharp.

  Even as he was wondering if she was up to the task, another slaver appeared in the door they had used to enter the garage. Kahlee popped up from behind her cover and took him down with a short, well-aimed burst from her assault rifle.

  Two against five now.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” he said, taking a deep breath.

  “Good luck,” she replied. She didn’t turn to look at him, but kept her attention on the battlefield.

  As he broke from the boxes, she started firing.