Drew Karpyshyn - Retribution

One of the guards — probably the young man he’d been talking to over the radio — had come down to meet him. He was standing on the other side of the glass wall, just beyond the security scanner. Grayson could see the head and shoulders of a second guard, this one a young woman, watching from the security booth.

The Reapers made a quick evaluation of their closest opponent. He seemed fit, and possessed the confident stance of someone who had received some basic training. At his side was a pistol, but instead of a combat suit he was wearing a Grissom Academy staff uniform: dark pants and a blue shirt emblazoned with the school’s insignia.

Moving even more slowly than before, the Reapers approached the security scanner. They stopped a few steps before it, as if waiting for the guard’s instructions before passing through.

“Uh … you okay, Mr. Grayson?” the guard asked from the other side of the scanner, taken aback by their guest’s strange attire.

“Caught some kind of flu,” the Reapers replied from beneath the blanket. “Can’t stop shivering.”

Obviously satisfied with the explanation, the guard noted, “That’s an interesting shuttle you’re flying. It’s turian, right?”

Grayson’s cover while working for Cerberus had been that of a high-ranking employee for Cord-Hislop Aerospace, a shuttle manufacturer that served as one of the Illusive Man’s many front companies. Knowing this, the Reapers were able to come up with another plausible explanation.

“We’re considering a merger with one of our turian competitors,” they informed the guard. “Testing out their product before the deal becomes final.”

The guard nodded, once again buying the story — a little too conveniently, Grayson thought. He wondered if the Reapers were somehow manipulating the young man, exerting a subliminal influence on his thoughts and emotions that made him more predisposed to believe their lies.

“I don’t feel so good,” the Reapers said, causing Grayson to sway unsteadily on his feet.

He stumbled forward and braced himself against the wall. Concerned, the guard took a step halfway through the security scanner to see if he was okay. The Reapers slowly toppled backward. The guard leapt forward and caught Grayson, supporting his weight with a grunt.

“Hey,” he called out to his partner up in the security both. “I think he’s really sick. Bring me the med-kit.”

The young woman sprang into action, grabbing the med-kit and rushing down to help.

The Reapers kept the blanket clutched tightly around Grayson’s body as the young man carefully lowered him to the floor. The woman ran up and crouched on the other side of him, setting the med-kit down beside her.

She turned her head to open it, and the knife now in Grayson’s hand thrust up through the blanket, impaling the young man in the chest as he leaned forward to examine the patient more closely. He grunted in surprise, then let out a long, low gasp as the blade was withdrawn.

The young woman’s head snapped around in surprise, and her eyes flew open in horror as she realized what had happened. The Reapers shoved the dying man aside and sat up, slashing out with the knife in an attempt to disembowel the female guard.

But the supernatural speed the Reapers had possessed on Omega was lacking, and she managed to scamper back out of range. The blade left a long gash in the belly of her uniform, but failed to make contact with the flesh beneath.

Scrambling to her feet, she ran toward the emergency alarm built into the wall right beside the security scanner. The Reapers brought Grayson to his feet, then snapped his arm forward. The knife flew from his grasp, end over end, before burying itself between the guard’s shoulder blades.

She sagged to the floor, her hand desperately stretching out toward the alarm she would never reach before falling limp to the floor.

Ignoring the corpses of the two dead guards, the Reapers passed through the scanner and moved quickly up into the security booth. It took them less than two minutes to log in to the primary systems and disable the intercom and alarm systems across the entire station.

Next, they brought up a schematic of the Academy and committed it to memory. Returning to the security clearance area, they retrieved the knife sticking out of the dead girl’s back as well as each guard’s pistol.

Finally, they picked the blanket up from the floor and wrapped it around Grayson once more, reversing it to hide the bloodstains. On close inspection the large tear left by the knife was still visible, but Grayson suspected that anyone who got close enough to notice would already be as good as dead.

Moving with long, easy strides, the Reapers left the security clearance area behind, passing through the door into the main Academy as they headed for the wing of the Ascension Project.

“Grissom Academy, this is Admiral David Anderson of the Alliance. Do you copy?”

Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign. They were close enough to the Grissom Academy to attempt to make contact through direct radio transmission, bypassing whatever technical glitch had isolated the school from the comm network. The silence on the other end meant something had gone wrong on the station itself.

“Try it again,” Kahlee said, stubbornly refusing to accept the truth.

Knowing it was futile, Anderson closed the comm channel. They’d been trying to get a response for the past five minutes, ever since they had dropped out of FTL.

“There’s no point,” he said, hoping some hard truth might help to prepare Kahlee for whatever scene awaited them on the station. “We’ll be there in two minutes anyway,” he added to soften the blow.

“You won’t be able to stop Grayson alone,” Kai Leng warned them. “Untie me and let me help.”

Neither Anderson nor Kahlee bothered to respond.

The ship’s sensors projected an image of the exterior docking bay onto the vid screen. Three of the bays were empty; the fourth was occupied by a small passenger shuttle.

“Turian,” Anderson muttered, though everyone on board knew who the pilot had been.

He brought the shuttle in slowly. Without a signal coming in from the Academy, he had to land the shuttle freehand, relying on instrument readings and dozens of tiny manual adjustments to their course. A delicate operation at the best of times, it was made even more difficult by the fact that Kahlee was standing behind his chair, leaning over his shoulder and staring intently at the screen. She didn’t say anything, but he could sense her urgency, as well as her frustration at how long it was taking. Despite all his care, when he finally touched down, the shuttle landed with a heavy thump.

They waited a few seconds to see if the docking ramps would connect to the shuttle’s airlock, but sensors picked up no movement.

“Nobody manning the docks,” Anderson muttered. “Going to need an enviro-suit.”

“There’s one in the back,” Kai Leng offered. “A shotgun, too.”

Kahlee glanced down at him in surprise.

“I want to stop Grayson as much as you do,” he assured them. “Even if you leave me bound to this chair, I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“Keep an eye on him” was all Anderson said as he got up from his seat and headed to the rear of the shuttle.

The enviro-suit was right where Kai Leng had promised. The resilient, insulated fabric easily stretched to fit over Anderson’s clothes, and when he slipped the helmet over his head and flicked it on, it formed an airtight seal with the rest of the suit.

He touched the side of the helmet to activate the transmitter. “Kahlee, do you copy?”

“Copy,” she replied from up in the cockpit. “Maintain radio contact at all times.”