[Tuchanka] Get Out (Alive) [Open]

"When we must? Certainly. Many expect matriarchs to fall into the 'wise counsellor' role, but no actual obligations are put upon us - indeed, there are rather a lot of matriarchs who stay in the military. I myself don't make a habit of going toward explosions and hails of gunfire, but I'm no novice and the circumstances qualify as rather unusual."

Suddenly, acceleration. A tweak of Mirala's biotics kept her comfortably in place, but a couple of her squad - who, admittedly, hadn't heard the driver - found themselves victims of their own inertia.
"Kiral, kindly get your giant ass off my face."
"Doin' ya a favour, Blorf. Can't have krogan cryin' when they look this way."
"Shove it."
Vorcha aren't the best at naming their asari daughters, it would seem.

As it turned out, portion of 80 attackers against just eight was very badly weighed at the odds of the extremists. Prot and his men discovered this the hard way.

"They're too strong, pull back!" he bellowed out the command and the police strike team slid down the ridge into cover.

"Report!"

"Still kickin'"

"I'm good."

"...gun jammed."

"Nothing a little regen can't cure."

"Let me back at them!"

"We need to change our location, they know where to expect fire from now."

"..."

"Where's Orag? Shit!" Prot questioned the missing seventh officer, when a blood-curling scream from their previous firing position rang out. Orag was bleeding bad and succumbing to blood rage, ready to charge the enemy into fist-fighting range.

"Aralakh-damned stupid son of...ALL OF YOU, GET BACK OVER THERE BEFORE HE GETS HIMSELF KILLED!" the commissioner waved to the others and ran over to the tomkah. The hatch was yanked open quickly and Prot's very angry head poked in. "Balk! Turn the truck around and back it up the road, we need heavy fire support down the ridge now!"

"Will do chief, hang on." The tomkah's heavy 16-cylinder engine revved up and began to turn the massive hulk around, rear gunner swiveling his turret around towards the defense tower and enemies around it. Prot tried to raise the gunship, to no avail. The radio was jammed.

Damn it, they've got some serious tech prepped out here. We can't extract those volunteers, but we can give them a chance to run.

Meanwhile, one very angry and wounded krogan barreled down into a group of vorcha, supported by gunfire again.

The volunteers in the control tower saw both the approach of the tomkah and the bloodraging krogan in the battleground below. Unfortunately, so did the mercenaries below. A portion of the attackers diverted their attention to the approaching vehicle, leaving the heat distributed among the various groups. A fourth on the Task Force tank, seeing no reason to bother surrendering; another fourth on the NKVPD, focusing most of their fire on the bloodrage krogan, and the rest, save for a mere ten percent that wanted to destroy the approaching tomkah, on the turret-defended tower.

By now, Reina was patching up Trask, after the female krogan had put him out. The latter had moved to stand by Calsus, who was carefully scanning the battlefield for the jammers, and Phobus, who tried to use their position to take potshots at the attackers below. "I think I might know where they're jamming our communications from, but at this range, we won't be able to put it out." The turian pointed out at a heavily fortified position, where the mercenary company had set their transport down at. While unluckily for the mercenaries, it was close to where the tank had rolled in, there was still a great deal of vorcha heavies in that area, and there was nothing stopping them from firing up the gunship.

"Do you think we could try and get our support to take it out? Maybe try and lead them somehow?"

The krogan chuckled and nodded. "How good are you with that rifle?" She asked the drell, who shrugged a little.

"Alright, I guess... But I'm almost out of shots..."

For her part, the civilian turned to look at Reina and Calsus. "Give the boy the rest of your clips. Kid, make a dead body road for them to follow."

"...WHAT?"

"I didn't stutter. If they're smart enough down there, they'll know what sort of message we're sending."

----

Well, the soldiers ignored her question, so Epsilon was responding to the threats by preparing to unleash hell. More than six threats, but she had gotten out of worse odds before. Her biotics glowed brighter and her lips curled into a snarl, getting ready to fight.

...Then one of the soldiers mentioned a name, her name, in a familiar voice. The soldier forced the others to lower their weapons, and approached her. Still, she did not drop her guard until the helmet came off, and she saw Everett's face. She twitched just a little at the contact, when he put her hand on her shoulder, but after about a second or two, she nevertheless relaxed, the blue glow around her hand disappearing and her pistol was lowered to her side. She looked up at Everett wearily and warily, but gave him just a tiny smile. "Ev...Father. It's good to see you."

She placed her hand on the Chief's hand, lightly squeezing it once as a reassurance, before pulling it off her shoulder and stepping back, so that she could address the group at large."Kirse Malizweski-T'Narf, of the Tuchanka Re-invigoration Project. glad the Alliance got our message. We have about twelve survivors, seven of which are non-combatants. Two of our number are wounded, and we're almost out of supplies. Did Captain Aarnes send you?" Her eyes flicked over to Everett then.

Not unexpectedly, the outside of the vehicle began to clang with the ballistic impacts.
"Barriers up, ladies."
Shaari needn't have bothered. Every asari in the tomkah had flared up as soon as the gunfire started coming their way - one or two intensifying as a loud BOOM came from somewhere entirely too close.

Mirala was, understandably, a little nervous.
"Out of curiosity, how protected are we in this contraption?"
"Finest krogan engineering," grunted a passenger as another explosion rocked the transport, "might get a little rough, but nothin' we can't handle."
Lirene was rather less than comforted.
"Everybody out."

And so it was that five armoured asari found themselves tumbling out of what was essentially a big metal box in motion for the second time. Righting themselves as quickly as they could, they scrambled for something to take cover behind, noting with some small surprise that they weren't actually that far from the tower.
"Doctor," Mirala called out, motioning toward the tomkah, "if you'd like to join us, they've some wounded in there!"
As a distant krogan fell, a round tearing through his forearm, Blorf was rather taken aback when a volley of rounds embedded themselves in the piece of debris near where her head had just been before she ducked back down. Coming from the tower.
"Shit. TURRETS!"
This could be a problem.

After a pause, which felt like days to the crew inside, the engine of the M-080 roared into action. The vorcha mercenaries were the most obvious threat, so the IFV moved to assault them. However, as the vehicle moved, a barrage of rocket fire went past the tank. Before the NPA troops could react, a rocket hit the tires. Luckily, krogan recover rather quickly from injury - the tank, however, was not so lucky.

"Shit, they've got an Armor-Killer team out there. Fuckin' vorcha, too. How we doin', men?"

The krogan responded with various grunts, ranging from mere displeasure to sheer anger. Gravunk spoke up, however, as he tried to move the tank, with no success. "Sir, tires are shot. We can't move."

"You're a mechanic, right? Get out and fix it." With that, the door opened wide, and Gravunk, supported by the 4 passenger krogan, popped out of the vehicle. The MG attached to the main gun fired, spraying towards the direction of the rocket blasts. Vorcha are stupid, but, with any luck, they'd be equally cowardly and keep their heads down. Gravunk went to work.

"See anything?" This krogan, armed with an LMG of dubious quality, looked towards the largest of the four, who was obviously the fireteam leader.

"Nah, nothin' so far - keep lookin'." The leader glanced around the area.

"Don't worry, boys - we'll be outta here in no time." After that rather bland remark, he returns to fixing the wheels.

Savara hesitated slightly at the sound and effect of weapons fire. She'd intended to get out eventually, but the reality of the situation brought her survival instincts to the fore. She only got back into motion when she heard her invitation. She glanced at the krogan driver she'd called a coward only a short time ago.

"Go. I'll give them something to shoot at."

He grinned ever so slightly, and she was out of the tomkah, seeking cover alongside the five blue interlopers. The Tomkah, with its passengers evacuated, went off road, making a decent mess of things as its driver attempted to divert attention away from them.

"How are we going to get past that gun?"

She asked, straining to make her voice heard over the gunfire.

Father. It felt good to hear her say that word again. Of course, he could feel his comrades' eyes boring into the back of his head, but he would deal with that a bit later. There was still a mission to be done.

"Indeed. Glad we were able to show up as soon as we did, too. This camp's been through hell. Now, our mission here was to extract any survivors by any means necessary. The krogan authorities would do the dirty work... but things have changed. Our comms are being jammed, so we can't call for extraction. We're stuck down here until that jammer's taken out, so that's our new target... do you have any idea where it could be?"

Then something clicked. "... Hold on," He said, raising a quizzical brow, "How the hell do you know about the Captain? That's classified!"

"My kind of problem."
Kiral grinned, levelling her omnitool. A few button presses and she let rip - ionising the turret's insides until its barrel dropped, out of action.
Or at least that's what should have happened. It came as a surprise to the tech specialist that the machine was still merrily trying to perforate the beings in its vicinity
"Uh. Shit."
"Performance issues, K?"
"Shove it, Blorf. Where's your tech?"
"I'm cloaking."
Lirene sighed. "We could shut up and synchronise attacks?"
"That leaves us all open to the krogan at once," interjected Shaari, ever observant, "unless we could get some matriarch magic over here?"
In response, a bubble of dark energy spread from Mirala's hands to encapsulate all six of the group.
"Something along these lines?"
Shaari nodded. "That'll do - you'll need to drop the barrier so we can do our thing, though. Wait until we're ready."

The asari were silent for a few seconds, most fiddling with their omnitools - Lirene cursing as a rocket impacted on the barrier and threw off her concentration - until all confirmed they were ready.
"Now!"
Twin overloads arced toward the turret, swiftly followed by a tiny grain of metal accelerated to a reasonable fraction of lightspeed. Finally, Shaari's warp impacted on the turret's casing; the ensuing explosion knocked the gun clean off its mount, where it continued to angrily shoot holes in the wall it had fallen behind.
"Everyone inside!"

Three vorcha fell thanks to five of Phobus' shots, but their corpses were spread out, not quite enough to resemble a path. "You suck at aiming, kid."

"I'm not a soldier!" The drell protested, trying to line up another shot. "And no one is even paying attention anyways! Those tank guys are pinned down, and-" There was an explosion below and Calsus took a look.

"One of our turrets is down; a group's trying to enter." He reported, looking through the scope of his own weapon. "They're not krogan though, they're...asari?"

---

Epsilon looked at Everett carefully for a few moments, before shaking her head. "Nevermind. It's classified. I don't know where this jammer is, but it might be at their landing zone on the other side of the camp. Or anywhere else they have fortified." She stopped talking when she heard the faint explosion, tinged with electronics, and she scowled, taking out her pistol again. "Maliszweski, go find that jammer. I'll deal with whoever this is."

It's classified, she said. There was no way Everett would accept that. If he could share such details with his family, he would, but this was sensitive information. He'd let it go for now, but he'd work to get a proper answer out of her once they returned to the Damascus. One of the intel officers onboard would probably get to her first, though. Besides, his men were right there with him, and they wouldn't let this go, either.

Of course, that would have to wait. The N7s had a job to do, and that explosion sounded uncomfortably close. The tower would be seeing new company very soon. "We'll find the jammer, but your safety, along with the other survivors, is top priority. We'll help secure the tower's immediate perimeter with you, and then we'll take care of the jammer. Alright, Goliath, let's lock it up and get moving!"

The squad complied, though Everett could tell that this whole situation made them feel quite uncomfortable, and perhaps even a bit distrustful of him. His suspicion was confirmed when Scotch stopped him as they proceeded to move.

"Chief," He started with a low, yet firm tone, "I'm glad your daughter's alive and well... I just hope you remember why we're here."

Everett's eyes left Scotch briefly. He was concerned that Kirse's presence would compromise his squad leader's judgment.
"I do, Scotch... we have a mission to complete, people to save. I won't lose sight of that," He stated. Scotch nodded, but Everett knew that he wasn't completely satisfied with that answer. It would be his actions that would either secure or break his team's trust in him. The Operations Chief said nothing more, putting on his breather helmet and heading down towards the tower's entrance.

Shots were traded between vorcha soldiers and the NPA troops. The krogan, being the resilient beasts that they are, were able to dispatch the vorcha with relative ease. However, the tire was still proving to be an issue for Gravunk. "This fuckin' axle - some dumbfuck back at camp was overloading the fucking thing, I knew the axle would be trouble, I fuckin' knew it..." he trails off, continuing to complain about various krogan messing with his beloved M-080.

Minutes pass. "I think I got it." He bangs on the hull of the tank. "Try movin' it - we should be able to go, now." The engine revs, and, after a few test movements, it appears that Gravunk is successful. The krogan team moves back into the tank, Gravunk gets behind the wheel, and they start rolling towards the action again.

"Nice work, soldier. Maybe if you hadn't got us hit in the first place, there wouldn't be an issue."

Gravunk grumbles, but he keeps on driving.

Those 20 punks with lousy attitude had managed to shrink down into just 14 vorcha and krogan, at expense of junior officer Orag who now laid dead at their feet. There was nothing to be done for him anymore at this moment.

"May Aralakh burn your bones black, you shat-out sons of bitches! Squad, pull back!" Prot yelled out abuse at the besiegers before telling his subordinates to move back down the ridge. They had accumulated more injuries, but it was nothing a patch of gel and good old krogan regeneration couldn't take care of.

The NKVP's scouting gunship had touched down at their regrouping spot, pilot standing outside already and waiting for new orders from the commissioner.

"Chief. I saw the base camp the attackers made. It looks like they've got a jammer there. There was also another shuttle that dropped off a team of people near the tower. Looked like the human Alliance."

"Well shit, they really picked the wrong aliens to harass today. Tell me about the camp."

"Way too heavily defended for us to take. They've got some anti-air missiles, I can't fly over them without risking the 'ship."

They had way too little mass to do a proper strike now, harassing at best. But Prot had an idea.

"Borgas. I want you to take back to the skies and fly over to the Northern Plains fighters and tell them we're coming over. Team up and punch through the defenders to the tower."

"Will do chief."

Borgas the pilot nodded and climbed back into his heavy-duty helicopter gunship. The turbines winded up, and soon the flier was off towards NPA's tank and soldiers.

"Everyone into the truck! We're changing plans!" Prot's order bellowed over the noise of engines and gunfire.

Savara hadn't survived centuries on Tuchanka without knowing when to keep her head down mad when to bolt. Thus, she followed behind the asari commandos, careful to keep her precious med kit out of the line of fire.

Finally, the approached the previously turret guarded door. The Urdnot medic glared at the steel impediment, and proceeded to thwack it several times with her meaty krogan fist.

Bong.

Bong.

Bong.

There was a decently sized dent now, but it still wasn't opening. Savara snarled.

"Open the bloody door!"

"No worries, watch this!"
Once again, sparks flew from Kiral's omnitool, entirely failing to fry the door's circuits.
"...OK, someone's been screwing with my omnitool."
Lirene rolled her eyes. "Honestly. Shift up, let me have a crack at it."
A precisely-aimed shockwave, powerful enough to fell a medium-sized rhino, impacted on Savara's newly created dent, deepening it slightly but otherwise doing nothing.
"...huh."
Another go. No joy.
"All right, ladies. Keep the krogan off me."
Lining herself up, Shaari raced forward, biotically accelerating her charge to smash into the door and achieve little beyond a more pronounced indentation - and a headache.
"The hell is this thing made of?!"

Kirse heard the heavy thumping on the door to the other entrance. It was certainly louder than the constant gunfire outside, and she saw the door dent in. She glanced towards the human soldiers and jerked her head. "No. I'll take care of these whelps. I'm not surprised they finally showed up. Find the jammer and get us out of here, Everett. Take the other entrance out" She raised her arms, using biotics to lift up the crates that she had previously flung at the N7 soldiers, and waited for the people on the other side to try and finish breeching.

The N7s turned to the door once they heard the loud, heavy thump. Someone was trying to breach the entrance, and since they had no eyes on the tower's exterior, it was impossible to tell if the intruders were friendly or hostile.

"Oh shit, company," Tilt muttered. Everett looked back at his daughter, surprised, when she told him to head out to the jammer and leave her to deal with the unknowns.

"What? Are you serious?" Everett asked, his eyes narrowing, "No way. The jammer's important, yes, but your safety, along with the other survivors is top priority. You're the reason why we came here in the first place, and we're not about to abandon our primary objective to the enemy!"

The OpChief raised a hand to signal his men. "Goliath, take up positions around the entrance." The squadmates complied, finding whatever cover they could and aiming their weapons at the dented door. "We'll help you secure the immediate perimeter, then worry about the jammer." Everett left it at that, moving to join his men near the door. He raised his Harrier at it like the rest of them.

"Goliath, hold fire until we identify the unknowns. We still have friendlies in the area... Kirse, open the door. We've got you covered."

"Might I be of assistance?"
Shaari and Lirene took one look at their matriarch - or, rather, the cerulean spheres pulsating in her hands - and scattered, heading for cover to try and hold off the krogan still taking potshots in their direction.
"Thank you."

It was a simple trick - one of the first she'd learned as a girl, in fact - but then, she'd grown up with a father determined to make sure she knew how to defend herself before he died.
In Mirala's right hand, dark energy was coalescing into a single point, which grew denser by the second; were she not intuitively shielding herself, she might well be losing fingers right about now.
Her left palm played host to a rapidly fluctuating blue ball, designed to introduce atomic-level disorder to more or less anything.
She launched the projectile on the right first, delaying the release of the other to allow the singularity a few seconds to weaken the door before the warp collided with it, causing a rather... violent reaction.

A loud boom and screech of tearing metal later, and there wasn't all that much door left.
"I'd say that's that. Shall we?"
"Let the dust settle first. Better to be able to see, yeah?"
"Good point."

The timing couldn't have been better. As soon as Everett finished his sentence, the door was ripped off of the entrance. It collapsed in on itself inside the biotic singularity, reduced to a dense ball of steel. The N7s looked upon it with horror as a figure behind it readied a biotic warp.

"Oh crap," Everett breathed. He, along with the rest of his team, ducked behind cover as the ball exploded, sending shrapnel everywhere. It bounced off and imbedded itself into the walls and furniture. A few pieces struck some of the N7s, but their kinetic shields and armor protected them. Once the shrapnel stopped flying through the air, the operatives stepped out of cover, their weapons trained on the lone asari in the doorway. The fact that they didn't open fire right off the bat was a testament to the self-control they gained through the brutal N7 training program. However, they were damn close to pulling the trigger.

"Hold it right there," Everett shouted, failing to recognize the matriarch through the dust and smoke. He could tell that this asari was a very powerful biotic, though, and he wasn't about to take a chance with a potential threat as serious as her. Under the right circumstances, an elite asari biotic could destroy an entire squad on her own. "Identify yourself immediately. Not one step closer, or you're dead." Mirala, on the other hand, would definitely recognize the voice, even behind the breather helmet's comm filter.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
Everett. Here of all places. Since when did Alliance special forces drop onto homeworlds?
Aware of movement behind her, Mirala signalled to Shaari's squad and they turned to focus on the krogan once again.
"I'm unarmed," she called into the clearing dust, waving her empty hands, "though I doubt that's a comfort... hmm. I can certainly say I'm no threat to you."
Gun barrels were becoming visible, not to mention the hardened soldiers behind them all pointing at her - and, rather unusually for someone still in command of her faculties, the matriarch smiled.
"Not unless you forget my birthday again, at least."

That voice. There was no way in hell that was...

"...Uh," Everett responded ever so eloquently, slowly lowering his weapon. He stared at the matriarch in shock. What the hell was she doing here?

"Stand down," He said a bit shakily, signaling his men to lower their weapons.

"What," Alpine blurted out, "Chief, are you sh-"

"Alpine. Just don't," Everett cut her off sharply. She just stared at him for a few moments before scoffing and following his order. The rest of the team followed along, though they were clearly unhappy about it. Everett stepped up to Mirala, remaining silent for several seconds as he stood in front of her. He then removed his helmet, revealing his utterly dumbstruck expression.

"...Well," He started, desperately trying to figure out just what the hell to say in this bizarre situation, "This is awkward... I, uh. I mean, I know that you like to take a hands-on approach to things, but this..." No, no, no, what the fuck are you even saying. There's a full scale war going on out here, and here I am, reduced to a blubbering idiot in front of my men!

The Operations Chief winced. "Ah, hell. Okay, Mirala, just... why are you here?!"