Drew Karpyshyn - Ascension

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'dhecall?"

"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.