Drew Karpyshyn - Ascension

"Sorry!" she shouted, slamming the door shut and throwing the rover into reverse.

She pinned the accelerator and they took off backward. A fast-moving projectile appeared on the nav screen: an incoming missile fired from the rocket launcher. Lemm thought they were all dead, but Kahlee wrenched the wheel to the right at the last possible second. Instead of blowing the rover apart, the missile struck the ground beside them. There was a deep boom as it detonated, and the vehicle bucked hard from the explosion, the wheels on the near side lifting high into the air before crashing back down to the ground.

Somehow Kahleekept control, using the nav screen to steer as they raced in reverse across the length of the garage, quickly building up speed. Lemm was horrified to see she was about to send them fulltilt into the garage's heavy metal loading door.

"Everyone holdon!" she warned them. "This is going to hurt!"

They hit the door with enough force to wrench one side partially off its rails, the metal twisting in its frame. The back end of the rover crumpled, absorbing thebrunt of the impact. Everyone inside was thrown against the rear of their seat as the sudden deceleration of the crash brought them to an immediate stop.

Lemm's leg slammed against the dashboard as he was bounced around, and he screamed again, struggling not to lose consciousness. He glanced over at Kahlee, who was lolling to the side in her seat, momentarily dazed from the crash.

"Kahlee!" he shouted. "You have to drive!"

His voice seemed to snap her back to full awareness. Sitting up with a shake of her head, she slammed her foot down on the accelerator once more. The vehicle lurched, still traveling in reverse, and slammed into the door again. Kahlee kept the engine revving as they tried to force their way through the twisted metal sheet blocking their escape.

"Come on, you son-of-a-bitch!" she swore. "Give me all you've got!"

The door bent and buckled under the relentless push of the rover's six churning tires, but it refused to give way completely, leaving them sitting ducks for the next inevitable assault from the rocket launcher.

This is NOT happening!

Pel had been thinking this one thought over and over, ever since he'd heard the first of the shotgun blasts down in the barracks.

Screaming at his team to get out of their bunks and over to the warehouse to cut off that avenue of escape, he and Shela, the only other member of his crew not already in bed, had grabbed their weapons and raced upstairs. They'd arrived to find the guards dead and their biotic prisoners gone.

Racing back down to the landing that overlooked the warehouse, they'd taken a high point above the battlefield, firing down at where the woman, Kahlee, had taken up a defensive position. There was a half-assembled rocket launcher on the landing; a new addition to the warehouse's defenses. He briefly debated slapping it together, then decided against it; he still wanted to try and recapture one of the biotics alive so they could sell them to the Collectors.

It wasn't long before he regretted that decision. From his vantage point above the action, Pel had a perfect view as the rest of his team was slaughtered by a mix of Kahlee's gunfire, Hendel's biotics, andone of their own rampaging rovers.

This is NOT happening, he thought once again. Out loud, he shouted to Shela, "Get that rocket launcher operational! Take out the vehicle!"

She scrambled to put it together even as he fired in vain at the prisoners piling into the rover, the position of the vehicle preventing him from getting a clear shot. There was only one way to stop them now, and it didn't involve taking any of them alive.

"Armed and ready!" Shela cried out as therover began to speed away from them in reverse.

"Fire, damn it!"

The rocket shot toward the vehicle, but the target swerved at the last second and the missile exploded harmlessly into the floor of the garage. The rover continued to accelerate, then crashed into the reinforced-steel loading door with a deafening crash. The door buckled, but held.

"Finish them!" Pel shouted, and Shela took aim with the rocket launcher for a second, and final, shot.

Grayson wound his way through the unfamiliar halls and stairwells for nearly ten minutes, hopelessly lost.

Maybe all that red sand over the years messed up your sense of direction.

The only thing that kept him going was the fact that the sound of gunfire was getting steadily closer, and the knowledge that whoever had broken the others out had taken Gillian as well.

He was on the verge of slamming his fist through another wall in frustration when he heard an incredibly loud explosion, like a grenade or rocket launcher, followed by a tremendous crash coming from beyond the corner just up ahead. Moving quickly but quietly, he rounded the bend to find himself standing on a small landing overlooking a large, two-story garage.

Crates and containers were strewn about on the floor beneath the landing, along with several bodies. At the far end a vehicle had obviously just slammed into the garage's door. And on the landing not ten feet away, their backs to him, stood Pel and a woman he didn't know. The woman had a rocket launcher braced on her shoulder.

The vehicle's engines began to rev as it tried to force its way through the door. Given the situation, Grayson was almost certain that Gillian and the others were inside.

"Finish them!" Pel shouted, and the woman aimed her weapon.

Grayson opened fire with the assault rifle; he had no hesitations about shooting a woman in the back. The stream of bullets ripped through her shields, shredded her body armor, and turned everything between her shoulder blades and belt into hamburger. The rocket launcher fell from her nerveless hands and she staggered forward against the landing's waist-high railing. Another burst from Grayson sent her flipping over the edge to the floor below.

Pel was already spinning around, trying to bring his own assault rifle to bear, when Grayson fired again. He concentrated on Pel's right arm, the spray of gunfire nearly severing it from his shoulder as it blew the rifle from his grasp and sent it hurtling over the railing.

His former partner fell to his knees, his eyes glazing over in shock as sprays of arterial blood spurted from his maimed limb. He opened his mouth to speak, but another burst from Grayson silenced him forever. It was the first time in almost twenty years Pel hadn't been able to get the last word in.

The horrible shriek of wrenching metal from the far side of the garage drew his attention. Glancing over, he saw the rover had managed to push itself against a corner of the loading door so that it bent up and out. Grayson watched, motionless, as the vehicle squeezed through the opening, the rover bursting forth to the other side as if the garage were somehow giving birth to it.

For the next sixty seconds he didn't move, listening carefully for sounds of other survivors. All he heard was the rover's engines growing ever fainter as it raced off into the night.

Inside the rover, Kahlee heard the metal door screeching across the armored roof as the vehicle forced its way past and out into the dark streets of Omega. Still driving in reverse, she went half a block before locking the brakes and turning the wheel, sending them into a 540-degree spin. It ended with them heading in the same direction, but they were no longer traveling backward.

They had escaped the warehouse, but their getaway wouldn't be complete until they'd left Omega well behind them.

"Do you have a ship?" she asked, directing her question to the quarian in the passenger seat.