by Colin Cook
"Either way we've found it and have secured a clear line of sight. Lets get the others here and corroborate on a strategy for capturing it," Criax stated before putting his
rifle on the ground and activating his omni-tool again. The sudden bright orange glow from the holographic device lit up most of the junction, revealing the seemingly
hibernating Xenomorph completely. After taking a second to make sure that this disturbance also wouldn't set the creature off, Criax typed the command code into his
communication system and reopened the channel between him and the other search teams.
What he didn't realize however was that while he was doing this Torrvk had also placed his rifle down, having stood up to his full height and was now moving away from
the toppled storage container until he was standing several feet behind Criax.
"…Lock in on my omni-tool and report to our location," Criax finished instructing before shutting down the tool after having briefly explained the situation to the other
squads.
Torrvk placed a hand behind his back, fumbling with something hidden underneath his utility belt.
"Communications have been working smoothly between us and the other teams. I assume that means we can also contact C-Sec Academy from down here?" Torrvk
asked, looking up at the Xenomorph before glancing down at Criax's backside with a cocked brow-ridge.
Criax himself now held a severe frown. Torrvk's voice had changed. The New Yorker accent was gone, replaced by one that was proud, articulate, and cold, almost to the
point of being arrogant sounding.
"Uh…no. We're too far below the Presidium for a clear transmission to reach the Academy from here," Criax answered hesitantly, warning bells going off in his head as he
kept his back to his partner while slowly dropping his hand to the compact Kessler pistol attached to the side of his waist.
There was a pause, a deathly quiet pause, before Torrvk answered with a single menacing word.
"Good."
Criax spun around, his hand now gripping and subconsciously drawing the compact pistol.
"Good? Torrvk what do you mean g…" he began demanding before his voice caught in his throat and his face fell as he saw what was truly behind him.
Torrvk had already drawn and activated a black Carniflex Hand-Cannon that he had somehow managed to hide from Criax during their entire trip down here, one to which
he was attaching a long black silencer that he had pulled out from the back of his belt!
Criax yelled as he swung up his arm holding the Kessler, trying desperately to activate it and get a shot off. But it was hopeless; Torrvk had already screwed the silencer
into place on his own pistol. All it took was a calm repositioning of his wrist and a gentle squeeze of the trigger.
Craix gave a brief cry as the thermal round sliced easily through the chest-plate of his armour and imbedded itself within the center of his heart.
As the slain Turian's weapon clattered to the floor and his body fell lazily to the side, Torrvk adjusted his arm slightly and fired two more silenced rounds into his former
partner's chest, just to be sure that his marksmanship had been as dead on as he had been trained for.
Satisfied after seeing Criax only jerk in response to the additional rounds, Torrvk deactivated his weapon and casually slid it under his belt. Then, reaching in to a small
pouch hanging on the side of that said belt, he pulled out a strange purple sphere barely half the size of his palm. Walking back over to the storage container that Criax's
lifeless body slumped against, Torrvk used his thumb to press a small hidden button located at the top of the sphere before placing it down on the surface of the container.
Immediately the sphere gave out a low pitched humming signal, one that jammed all communications and scrambled any navigational equipment within a half-mile radius.
Torrvk winced slightly as his C-Sec earpiece began giving out a blaring white noise, the jamming device affecting his equipment also. Pulling it out, the Turian traitor crushed
the tiny microphone within his palm and cast the pieces aside. Reaching into the same pouch that he had retrieved the sphere from, he pulled out another earpiece that
was made from the same black material as his silenced Carniflex. Slipping this into his ear section, Torrvk took one last look up at the hibernating Xenomorph.
"You will make an excellent addition to his army…Your Majesty," he stated softly with a small bow to the creature before activating the earpiece.
Almost as if it had heard him in its unconscious state, the Xenomorph's black lips retracted upward slightly, baring its teeth just a fraction more before letting out a small
guttural growl.
After activating his earpiece and connecting himself on a secure channel with the rest of his cohorts, Torrvk looked ahead and spoke.
"It is done, you may move in now." In return, a deep commanding voice answered him.
"Indeed."
"Having trouble?" Chellick asked down to Moira with an inquisitive look. It had been nearly ten minutes since she had delved back into the Alliance's Archives in search of
the file belonging to Captain Sydow, and yet it was proving to be the most elusive out of the bunch that they had been going through up to this point.
Moira didn't look at him; she merely tightened her face harder in concentration as she continued to search through the streaming databases.
"I know where the file is, it just doesn't want to come out of the Archives. It looks like its buried under a mountain of errors and computer blocks," Moira stated with
suspicion, her fingers moving fluidly across the holographic keyboard as she tried different codes and approaches to tackling the problem.
"Keep at it, if we're going to fully understand this caper we need to know who Sydow was and how his story fits in with Axel's," Bailey reaffirmed with a stiff nod.
"Search Leader respond? Come on Criax answer me!" a Turian agent said into his earpiece after losing contact with the rest of the search party. Despite his many
attempts at finding out what had just happened his calls were still going unanswered, the constant white-noise coming through his radio channel blocking any
transmissions ingoing and outgoing.
"Dammit," he cursed in frustration as he brought his hand away from his ear section and gripped the frame of his assault rifle more firmly.
"Still nothing?" the Turian's Salarian partner asked over to him while he walked semi-backwards, keeping his black amphibian eyes on the far end of the corridor to make
sure nothing snuck up on them.
"No, something's jamming the frequency, I can't contact the other teams and we're too far down to get a warning to the Academy. Criax's last transmission came from
an area just ahead though so keep your guard up," the Turian responded back as the two came closer to another corridor that went across the one they were moving
down.
Signaling for the Salarian to hold position a few feet from the opening, the Turian went down on his haunches and stealthily crept up to the left corner leading into the new
corridor. After stopping, he peeked his head out into the open hallway just far enough so that his eye could get a good view of what was down it without exposing himself
too much.
From his position, the agent could see the large archway to the passage junction Criax had mentioned in his last message before contact had disappeared. It was a fair
ways down the corridor and on the opposite wall, but it wasn't far enough that the agent couldn't make out the unmistakable form of Torrvk standing within the
archway's opening. At the moment the Turian was carefully removing the pieces of blue C-Sec armour that covered his body, revealing an odd black body suit that he had
been wearing underneath. As Torrvk removed his armour and carefully set it down on the ground, the spyi
ng Turian had to force himself not to gasp when he noticed
Criax's dead body slumped on its side just a foot or so away from the growing pile of armour plates.
"You bastard…" the agent spat under his breath with an enraged scowl. Pulling away from the corner, the Turian was about to signal his partner to come and join him.
However, as he was doing so he noticed a very faint air distortion suddenly whip out of nowhere off to his left side.
Before he could react or shout a warning to the Salarian, the distortion lashed out with what appeared to be an elongated section of its body, striking him hard across the
side of his face with an odd energized SVHACKK!
"Kree'ta!" a very rough/deep alien voice bellowed out from the distortion the moment the object hit him, a voice that sounded like it was part man and part machine. The
hit killed the Turian on impact, its force smashing his head toward an odd angle and breaking the vertebrae in his spine.
The Salarian agent that had been left to watch the rest of the corridor spun around the moment he heard the commotion, his eyes widening as he caught a fleeting
glimpse of the Turian's body being dragged out of sight behind the corner he'd been crouching beside.
"Hey!" the agent barked in alarm as he tried running after him. He only managed to cross a few feet before he was suddenly yanked to a harsh stop, an invisible garrote
cord having just wrapped tightly around his neck!
The agent's eyes bulged, his hands dropping his rifle and grabbing frantically at the weapon that was cutting into his windpipe. Kicking and thrashing, the agent tried
shouting for help, hoping that some of the other search parties would be close enough to hear him. But his assailant only tightened the garrote and pulled harder, causing
the agent to painfully arch his back and go on the tips of his toes, further cutting off his flow of air and preventing him from making anything more then a faint gurgle.
While still struggling the Salarian tried reaching back and striking at his unknown attacker. As he desperately clawed in an attempt to free himself, he could feel an
armoured head, shoulder, and two large arms belonging to the one murdering him.
But from the few wild glances he was able to cast over his shoulders, he couldn't see anything. The assassin was wearing a cloaking device!
This was the last thought in the agent's mind as his strength quickly faded away, his eyes rolling back into his head, and his throat giving out a crackling death rattle. The
invisible assassin tightened the garrote cord as far as it would go and heaved the near dead Salarian a foot off the ground, swiftly finishing him off before casting his now
limp body back down to the floor.
Farther away in a different corridor, two Turians were jogging toward the area that Criax's omni-tool transmission had last been located. Both were a bit on edge from the
way the current situation was playing out and moved as fast as they could while still shining their rifle lights all around them, seeking any ambushers that may have been
laying in wait within the dark shadows.
While they were doing this neither of them noticed the nearly invisible thin steel-cord noose hanging down from the ceiling in the middle of corridor. As one of the Turians
moved ahead of the other, the one to fall behind was unfortunate enough to walk right into this masterfully laid trap. The cord noose easily fell under the Turian's chin and
past his head-fringes, pulling tight around his neck the moment he unknowingly ran through it.
The agent barely gave out a soft choke of pain as the rest of the cord went taught and then yanked him up off the ground. The weight of his own body and the speed
with which the cord had been pulled snapped his neck and killed him instantly as he was pulled up into the darkness of the ceiling.
Because he had been killed almost immediately however, his dead hands relaxed and allowed his rifle to drop back down to the floor.
The dead Turian's partner spun around with his weapon ready when he heard the loud clatter of the other's rifle hitting the ground. With widened eyes at seeing his
partner's unused weapon lying carelessly on the metal flooring, he began sweeping his rifle light all around the area where the other had once been. The Turian tried calling
his partner's name a few times, but was suddenly silenced by a massive air distortion dropping down from the shadowy ceiling right in front of him.
A millisecond before he could fire his weapon, a loud sharpening sound of metal on metal came out of the distortion right before two long serrated blades thrust forward,
piercing through his abdomen and exiting out through his lower back!
The agent bucked forward and gave a gargled shout, dropping his gun while weakly grabbing at the cloaked but blood smeared blades sticking into him.
The pain was excruciating and it only rose another notch as the mammoth distortion raised the arm that the two blades were seemingly attached to, simultaneously lifting
him up three feet off the ground with it. The agent gasped as the blades slid a little deeper through his body, blue blood trickling out of his mouth from the fatal injury. With
a fading vision, the Turian used all that was left of his will power to lift his head and look into what appeared to be the face of the attacker.
From what he could make out of the outline of the distortion, the assassin had a large head with long thick dreadlock like hair hanging down past it's powerful shoulders.
The figure was at least eight feet tall and appeared to be wearing a mask with two large menacing eyes positioned under it's wide forehead.
As the darkness of oblivion took the Turian and his life-blood flowed from his wounds in streams, his final sight was of the two eyes briefly flashing a deep grainy red.
In another corridor not far from the last one, a Human and Turian agent were also moving toward Criax's last known position.
Suddenly however a series of loud discharges erupted from the darkness surrounding them, all of which were simultaneously followed by a bright blast of red energy.
Caught in a deadly crossfire one of the blasts struck the Human square in the back, making him drop to his knees with a cry before another impacted into his chest. As
the dead agent toppled backwards onto the floor with a smoking hole in his armoured torso, the Turian took a hit to the back of his right thigh, making him tumble down
to just one knee before another exploded into his left shoulder. The crippling hit blew off most of his shoulder's armour and made him jerk sideways with a scream of pain,
forcing him to drop his left hand away from his rifle.
But he was still able to use his remaining hand to bring the rifle up and unleash a blind spray of thermal rounds across the area in front of him, shouting out in desperation
as he tried scoring a hit on at least one of their attackers.
However his rounds only ricocheted off the corridor walls, hitting nothing but air for half a second before another red blast discharged from behind and struck him in the
upper back. The Turian died with a quick grunt as his body fell forward in a heap, sending him face first into the floor with his smoking weapon landing next to him.
After everything had become quiet once again, the pair's ambushers revealed themselves. Four white armoured Imperial Stormtroopers materialized out of thin air
surrounding the dead agents in a perfect Kill-Box formation, each of them deactivating their cloaking devices and holding E-11 repeating Blaster Rifles in their gloved hands.
After nudging the dead Turian's shoulder with the tip of his boot, the squad's commander raised a hand and pressed two fingers against the side of his iconic helmet.
"Team 4 has been neutralized," he reported through his headset in his radio-tinged voice.
"We're being ambushed, someone else is down here looking for that creature! First communications go out
and now we're hearing weapons' fire in the tunnels, we have
to leave before there's no one left to warn the rest of the Citadel!" a Salarian agent belonging to the last remaining search team stated back to his Asari partner, both of
whom were standing back to back in the next corridor over from the Stormtrooper attack. Both agents were cautiously stepping around in a circle, keeping their rifles at
the ready and their eyes peeled for the unknown enemies they now knew were stalking them.
"We can't just leave, we'll never get back in time with enough reinforcements to save the others," the Asari stated urgently, her eyes and rifle flitting about from one
section to another.
"If they aren't already dead they're probably doing the exact same thing we should be doing. If we leave now our odds of coming away from this alive significantly
improve," the Salarian reaffirmed logically. After a few seconds of tense silence where the two rookies continued to circle around, the Asari finally nodded and pointed her
rifle in a specific direction down one length of the corridor.
"Alright, we'll need to move fast then. There's an access hatch seventy meters down that way that can take us back to the surface, just keep up with me and make sure
nothing sneaks up behind us." The Salarian nodded back, lifting his rifle up a bit higher across his chest in readiness.
"I'm right behind you," he stated confidently. With that the Asari took off at a brisk sprint with her partner following close at her heels.
However they only managed to run a few dozen feet before the Salarian suddenly shouted to her.
"Look out!"
This was followed by a cry of agony from the agent and a wet slicing sound like that of a blade cutting through raw flesh. Spinning around, the Asari froze and her face
became stricken with horror as she saw the Salarian facing away from her, his rifle dropped to the floor and he painfully bracing himself against a faint air distortion that
had materialized behind them.
This however was not the main focus of her attention; it was the cloaked saber sword blade sticking out of the center of his back, made visible to her only because it was
soaked in her partner's green blood!
