[Rainfall] Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man, Thief

"Yeah, well, y'ain't a vorcha."

Kirok shook his head. Salarians. Catching Collar's eye, he nodded. There was a bit of respect there, if you looked close and wanted to use your imagination a smidgen.

"Me an' Whitefang got th' front. Blink, you keep an eye on m'ass an lemme know if something's comin up I need t'know about. Somebody needs t'watch th' rear, but th'frogs gotta be in th' middle. Protection. Let's run this game classic-style - big money onna outside, small change inner center."

Loading a new heatsink into his shotgun and hitting it home with a massive click, Kirok turned to the varren.

"An' you. SEEK."

Wordlessly, the varren took off down the hallway, suddenly slipping into the shadows like a thief in the night.

Mekan's accidentally-on-purpose explosion stirred the arcology, sending a seismic shudder throughout the floor and sending many paranoid citizens (who, after all, had a very good reason to be paranoid) into a panic. Several minor lines had cracked, and while no damage had reached anyone's washroom, there were bound to be a dozen stories about the poor batarian who sat down "at the wrong time" circulating the Net by the next day.

All in all, it would be a busy week for Cal Solex

---

The tunnels before the group streched onward, leading slwoly, inexorably, toward their current goal: a shifting, goldenrod glimmer that flashed slowly in the group's HUD It wasn't the exit, however - merely a point at which the Crimson Sun's map (and, consequently, Mekan's sensors) vanished into nonexistence. This wasn't merely a hole, however - the blinking lights of security systems flickered just beyond, as though a flare of activity was going on just beyond the batarian's range. There was also a flurry of activity going on just ten meters above them, according to the map - a series of pale white dots buzzed worryingly, indicating a crowd of people slowly swarming around their location. Their activities were indeed attracting attention - and not all of it smacked of chain-letter humor.

Once or twice, particularly near thinner walls, they could catch snippets of shouted conversation - "You cover that exit!," or "I think I found something!" being heard most often. Whoever was shouting it, it sounded strong - often with the deep basso of a krogan roar or the flange of a turian growl.

Spiza, now trapped in the Center Position of Shame, did not care to find out who they were.

Meanwhile, Nikolai and Canius (bringing up the rear of their little column for a myriad of reasons not the least of which concerned the penetration ratio of shrapnel and efficacy of tripwires) had halted and were busying themselves wordlessly going through their accumulated gear.

"You're the combat engineer correct? Gilgamesh? Apologies I don't believe we've spoken much." His voice was low, quiet, just barely audible over their comms

"I was wondering if you could assist me with something?"

"I, uh, more former insurgent and med student," says Gilgamesh, "The engineering's all....salvage, really. But, uh, sure, how can I help?"

The businessman held out a hand and the turian silently slid out a canister from a strap in his combat webbing, tossing it across the tunnel before returning his attention to the packs and pouches criss-crossed his armor and girdled his waist.

Nikolai deftly plucked it from the air and passed it over to the colonist.

"This is a Boze-Einstein condensate payload with an omnigel secondary mix as a primer. We've progressed as far as we can within the tunnels themselves but, as you're no doubt aware, we have the issue of our very personal and no doubt somewhat distressed welcoming party up above our very heads.

The condensate, applied by drones over a sufficiently large surface area will render the structure of the tunnel brittle enough for it to be breached by sonic oscillation or a concussive shock, with the added benefit of the first through the hole being autonomous and not

well

us.

Can you do it?"

"I, uh, think maybe sneaking through maintenance tunnels or something might be safer, if those maps include them," says Gilgamesh, "But I could do it."

You can't see through the polarized mask of the hazmat suit but you get the distinct impression that the businessman is looking at Kirok and Whitefang.

The hood then twists back to look at the way they came, full of shit, oily flames, and still flaming shit.

"Oh, but of course."

"Mm. I like this plan, but as a distraction. We can't fight through 28 floors. What we can do is plot a route through the maintenance shafts, and set this off as a diversion. Should keep them off us, and with any luck they might even blame the vorcha."

With that, Collar pulled up the schematic and examined it closely. "Alright, there's a maintenance shaft a bit farther down that should take us where we need to go. Plant your bomb here, we can detonate it when we're out of range."

"If we're gonna do a remote detonation, I can help." Mekan pulled up his OT interface and several diagnostic programs on his helmet's HUD, looking over to Gil and Nikolai, taking in the entire plan that Nikolai was proposing. "Getting a solid signal down here might be tricky, but I should be able to take care of it if we use the sensor-net's nodes to tie the detonator into the communications network here in the arcology. Shouldn't be difficult. It's all just maximizing the potential applications of comm-tech. A few minutes of rewiring and a few credits' worth of cheap electronics, and I'll have you ready to blow this thing from the Citadel if we need to."

I just hope nobody who doesn't have it coming gets hurt from this. Mekan thought to himself bitterly. But, he wanted this mission to succeed and this seemed like an effective course of action. There wasn't much he could do to keep them from doing it, anyways; any attempt to hamper the detonation in an effort to save people would just damage their ability to finish the job.

Mekan tried to push those thoughts to the back of his head for the fourth or fifth time that day. They wouldn't serve any purpose here.

It was that moment that Whitefang came slinking back, quiet as a snake. She whined and garrumphed at Kirok, making tiny varreny noises at him the entire time. Kirok knelt down and looked at her intently, face screwed up in concentration. The varren suddenly ran to one of the sewer exits and started clawing at the door, then ran behind Kirok.

"Heh heh heh. We's 'bout t'have company," the krogan said as he pushed his varren back and leveled his bayonet-bedecked shotgun at the door. "Ennybody wanna help me break off somma dis, I won't say no."

Kirok suddenly tensed his muscles, ready to charge at a moment's notice. If shooting people wasn't going to help, there were other ways he could cause some damage.

Spiza shook his head and positioned himself inside the shaft. Everyone else was busy preparing what appeared to be a metric fuckton of distractions, and quite frankly the best thing he could do at this point was be ready to do his Wheel-damned job when they reached...

Shrell, where were they going?

"RIGHT! INNA MAINT'NANCE SHAFT! WHITEFANG, HEEL!"

Kirok backed into the maintenance shaft, shotgun still lowered at the other door, as he and the varren fled the scene.

"Sounds like a plan," says Gilgamesh as he burns the shit off of his metal box, unfolds it and starts to go to work. He calls Mekan over as he fabs several pounds of mining adhesives. "Mekan, I can give you some of the mining software I use if you need it. It'll interface better with my stuff." From there the work was trivial. Drones moved, strapping the concentrates or concussive charges to the roof with fabbed adhesives. They flew and crawled in perfect harmony, a symphony of...scavenged little metal things, with Gilgamesh as their young, rather grimy conductor. It was like the war again, or robo-mining, with slightly higher stakes. And better explosives.

And, after a minute or two, they were done.

"All right," said Gilgamesh, "Unless something has gone horrifyingly wrong, the icebomb should be good to detonate whenever."

Collar motioned at the turian accompanying Aleksanders. "You. Canius, was it? Take point, lead the others into the shaft. I'll make sure nobody follows you and we'll detonate the bomb behind us. Let's get this done!"

Nikolai swept by the salarian, pulling him along in his wake as he made his way to the aforementioned maintenance shaft.

Well that and Canius was literally two steps behind his principle, already moving to interpose himself in the lead after a quick tilt of the helment in the scarred man's direction, and wasn't exactly making any effort to move or get out of the way for Spiza's sake.

Israa made her way to the shaft, Hub following closely behind. "It's about to get loud."

Mekan slung his shotgun around his shoulders by its strap, and ran for the maintenance shaft as soon as Gil confirmed the ice-bomb was ready to go. He quietly prepared the sound-dampeners built into his helmet (intended to prevent deafness from close proximity to explosions), silently thanking whatever gods ran this twisted galaxy for Valkar Technocratic foresight, and fell in behind the rest of the team. "Gil, I sincerely hope this means we're cool regarding the Bar Incident. Because shit's about to get real loud and I might not get another chance to make up for that bullshit. So, I gotta ask. You got a gun?"

The ice bomb exploded with brutal efficiency, blasting apart the apartment unlucky enough to sit above it. Every component in the building froze solid within a fraction of a second, only for the secondary concussive force of Gilgamesh's drones to shatter them like a million shards of sugar glass. The ground caved in, and a million flechette-like icicles dove into the side apartments, tearing flesh, steel and bone apart with brutal, uncaring efficiency, turning one hardened group of thugs on Omega into paste in a split second.

There was bedlam in the streets, shrieks of fear, a blast of sirens, klaxons that went off throughout the entire floor of the arcology. Gangs poured out of their hideouts, families poured into the streets...

...and over two hundred meters away, Spiza's eyes went the size of dinner plates as he shot up the ladder.

(Run.)

"RIGHT, DAT'S OUR 'STRACTION! LET'S MOOOOOOOOOOVE, MOOOOOOOOVE, MOOOOOOOOVE! Whitefang, put dat arm down, y'dunno where it's been!"

Kirok disappeared into the maintenance shaft, chuckling like the grim reaper.