[Omega - The DeLuxury Hotel Suites] Showdown, 12 O'Clock High (Open For Bounty Hunters)

The fire and venom in the Cerberus operative's eyes was that of someone just a moment away from a violent breakdown. He turned to the Asari, ducked into cover, his hands clasped around the detonator to the explosive device affixed to his torso. "No negotiations. They're in our way. Kill them." He spoke with a rising bass to his voice. "I'm not going to be held responsible for what happens if you don't play ball with me, Asari. You will return fire and take out as many of those bastards as you can before we get moving."

He ducked against the hallway and slowly scooched to a seat. "Tell them that they're too late and that this bounty is yours. Do you want to live with the fame, the glory of what's about to happen, or do you want to cowtow and hand it over to them out of fear of death? The Blue Suns- W-" He shook his head with a raspy, hateful laugh. "Tell me. What makes you think they won't just shoot you all in the back and take me for themselves when they want a cut? What part of their reputation that you've heard of signifies ANYTHING about 'sharing' and 'playing on fair grounds'?" He tilted his head, directing all of his dialogue at the Asari.

"You know what you have to do. I'm prepared to run if you are."

"I can live with that. You got here first, after all, only fair you get a cut. Send him out the front door, slowly, and we'll take care of the rest."

Meanwhile, barely outside the jamming field, a signal went out for reinforcements. In the small base a level away a pair of Neeru gunships started prepping for takeoff.

"Of course. I will need to deliberate with my team."

Niala shuts off the omnitool "I'm trying to stall them you paranoid fuck. They have us outgunned, with jammed communications. That remote detonator doesn't even work with the jammer on so stop being stupid and see reason." She looks up at the shuttle.

"We need a delaying action for reinforcements to arrive. They're going to outrun us with that shuttle. We delay them here with smoke and suppressing fire and then push through the back door. We head through the alleys until we're out of jammer range and update our location for command. If we can't get a signal out we'll just lay low until we lose them."

She activates her omnitool again. "We agree to your terms. We will bring the prisoner out now."

She shuts it off again. "Okay, we're going to start moving on my signal."

Despite the apparent agreement, none of the batarians stepped out of cover. None of them even moved, until Collar motioned for one of them to head around and make sure there were no exterior exits not covered by the rest of the squad. That Sun hopped and dodged from cover to cover the entire way. There was no trust to be had, here, and with good reason.

Two minutes or so away, a pair of gunships lifted slowly off the pad, each loaded with another squad of Crimson Suns. Hovering in place just long enough to turn, with a roar the engines sent them blazing into the skylanes following almost exactly the same path as the shuttle had earlier. They were coming.

"Maybe if we're fast enough, we can secure a rear exit, but they've probably got us encircled. Failing that, we could use the explosives I have to knock a hole into the sewers. The Blue Suns will not be as lenient with me as you are. I need a moment to think." The man slowly placed the detonator into his pocket and scratched at his scalp, his eyes darting down the hallway.

"Air vents. The air vents.." He glanced up at the ceiling- The DeLuxury Hotel was a notoriously ill-maintained economy hotel- And the disgusting looking air vents in the center of the hallway ceilings certainly didn't help dissuade the notion. The man shook his head and turned to Niala. He seemed to be irritated. The man stepped back into his hotel room and picked up one of his discarded pistols. He returned with a frown on what was left of his face.

"Tell me what I have to do. I'm yours to command."

There was a pause, as Niala, deep in thought, came up with an idea. The light bulb visibly went on as she turned to the cerberus agent. "You might not have to do anything." She raced over to the front desk, vaulting the front and immediately going for the computer, looking for the item she needed.

"By the goddess, I got it!" A hard-line network cable. No wireless signals. Unaffected by the jammers. Quickly, she inserted it into her omnitool and typed out a message to both AEGIS and the man who had offered the bounty. If this worked they wouldn't even need to fire a shot. She sent it, making a deep sigh. It all hinged on the response now.

In the distance, the two gunships appeared, afterburners leaving a trail of smoke behind them which dissipated into the 'Omega haze' almost as soon as it was visible. There wasn't much time.

Reading the message from Niala on his omnitool, the head of the Terminus branch of Acta Non Verba couldn't hide his grin. The man lowered the front plating of his helmet and rendered his opaque visor clear- And turned to the handful of men at his command, each waiting for the word. "Men! They have the rat bastard and the Suns are moving in. It's time to move out and prepare to decline payment for a corpse!"

Private Bright cleared his throat. "Uh- Are.. uh. Aren't we paying for him alive? Are we really paying 500k? Shouldn't we do like they suggested and use the insurance capital to rebuild our outfit? I mean-" The man is cut silent by a sharp glare from his superior.

"What in the fuck do you think? With the offer and my argument, there's no way that guy isn't going to be cut down in the conflict between two or three rival groups. Omega is a bee's nest, and we shook the hive with the promise of a payout like few have ever seen." He gestured off, waving the credit chit in the air. "Alive only, right? What are the odds of him surviving a conflict between AEGIS and the Blue Suns? We don't get blood on our hands, we don't pay out for a dead man, and in the end, we come out looking like the good guys. Gear up and move out."

Within moments, a Hornet troop transport was on the move, with the escort of a single Mantis gunship.


Back at the DeLuxury, the staff was already on the way out, screaming and fleeing for their lives- The usual clientele of the hotel building either too incapacitated by various means to notice or on the move out with them. In the middle of the panicked lobby, the Specialist watched Niala with a growing grin pulling at his synthetic mask. "Good- That is excellent thinking. Get reinforcements and try to get the Blue Suns to stand down. Threaten my life and threaten the payout. Mercenaries think with their wallets, if I know anything about them."

He paused again. "No offense."

And then she read the reply and her eyes narrowed. This was dumb. This was unprofessional. This wasn't even worth it anymore. This was an insult to her professionalism. Without even taking her eyes off the bounty (Who was of course, now gloating and being generally irritating like a bad holovid villain), she activated her omnitool and fired a Submission Net at him, center of mass.

"Shut up, you brain dead, racist, insufferable, piece of varrenshit." She unplugged the cable from her tool and walked to where his frozen eyes would be able to see him. "I'm sick and tired of acting like I'm threatened by your pathetic attempts to string me along with the most amateur deadman's setup I have ever had the disservice of seeing in my service to the republics and my days as a hired gun. I mean really, you didn't even account for a wireless jammer and try to use a wired explosives setup. You know what, of course I shouldn't have thought any better, you're ex-cerberus."

She sighs and signals to one of the operatives to watch his rigorous body. She reactivates the loudspeaker function on her omnitool, walking to one of the windows. "Alright, apologies about the delay, I'm going to carry him out to you shortly. Twenty percent of the bounty and we go on our way, then?"

It was a good time for the batarian who'd called for reinforcements to come back, all in all.

"Captain, we have a problem."

It occurred to Collar that such statements were usually a waste of time better spent detailing the problem itself. He turned to the returned Sun and gave him the stare mastered by commanding officers everywhere. For his part, the officer held up his omnitool. It was presently in range of the jammers, of course, but the last extranet page visited was still open.

"Idiots," muttered Collar, shaking his head with what might have been sadness if not for the scorn in his voice. "Alright, soon as the gunships get here we're moving in, all entrances. Anybody who makes a gangbang joke gets shot. Non-lethal only, we'll sell whoever we don't get a bounty on."

And then, just on cue, the gunships roared in overhead. Collar raised his arm to order the attack, when-


It might have been a delaying tactic before, but this time was a bit different. He could see the person speaking at the window. You didn't put yourself in the line of fire, let alone the line of fire of a shuttle and a pair of gunships, unless you were serious. Whatever reinforcements AEGIS might have coming, the Suns could outscale them if it came down to it, though that'd mean diluting the bounty take across more units and at some point it wouldn't be worth it. If they were serious about dealing, which his instincts told them they were this time, it'd be the only way to make this profitable, and they seemed to know that too.

Collar's gravelly voice came over the loudspeaker again: "Fifteen seems more reasonable, since you were trying to pull one over on us when I was more generously inclined. You're lucky I liked Gorik."

"Sure, he's all yours." She Pulled the man's body towards her as she walked to the door, grabbing the floating object and beckoning everyone else to follow. She walked right up to the captain and placed him at his feet. "Keep the jammer on. He has this ridiculous deadman's setup. Apologies for earlier are due. No hard feelings?" She placed her boot on the small of the man's back, awaiting his reply and payment.

Watching the other mercenary approach, Collar gave his KB's a quick check (just in case) and stepped out of cover. The floating, netted figure drew a grin from the grizzled batarian as he casually lit up a smoke, offering one to the asari.

"Sure, whatever. It's business, right?" He gestured towards the soldier with the open omnitool nearby, clearly referring to the open extranet page, then grinned again, letting smoke waft through his needle-sharp teeth. "Stick around, we can take care of the payment here and now. No trust required."

The sound of turbines filled the air- And on the outskirts of the hotel's radius, the Hornet troop transport landed slowly, with the Mantis providing air support around it. The transport's radio systems broadcast and blared. "To anyone who can hear this! We are Acta Non Verba, and we are here to pay you for the bounty we have requested! Send a company of your men to our location!"

One of the men sprinted out of the transport and fired a flare into the air. "The bounty is for him alive!" The radio continued.
"We are going to personally bring that Cerberus agent to justice!" Wilson stepped away from the radio, marching past the few surviving rows of his men. "Any of you have any second thoughts on taking on the Blue Suns, say so right now. We've got to put a strong foot forward if we're ever going to have business in Omega-"

Half of his men fled, from Bright to Theokondros and a few others Wilson didn't recognize in armor. In a rage, the man shouldered his rifle, catching Bright through the spine with an armor piercing round. The others fled for their lives, discarding their weapons and helmets. "Fuck! Fuck you, then!" The commander screamed, firing potshots at them as they blurred into the distance. "Fuck you! You don't want to avenge the others?!" He turned to the remaining troops- Now numbering just past ten.

"Anyone else?"

The anger on the Specialist's face was a sight to behold as he stumbled forward towards the Blue Suns.

"Of course. We have nothing but time." she looked up at the landing hornet. "Payout's arriving it seems."

There was a sense of impending doom as the ANV representative with his tiny escort struggled down the street. Not the doom as when the world might be coming to an end - no, since the Reaper War they'd all felt that and it was familiar. Not even the more personal doom one might feel when worried that their life might be falling apart or about to come to a close. Nothing remotely like that.

No, this sense of impending doom was the sort of thing that anyone in retail feels every time an abrasively loud customer walks in through the door. The sense that this moment, like so many others, was about to be wasted, never to be reclaimed. The sense that contact with certain types of people could in fact destroy braincells, and that perhaps, just perhaps, this was to be another one of those 'little deaths' that came along with stifling the primal urge to throttle some moron.

Yep, as 'the Specialist' came closer, that was definitely the type of doom that was impending.

Collar and the other Suns took up position around the courtyard of the hotel, careful to keep an eye on both the impending doom and the AEGIS members in their midst. No point getting sloppy, after all. Granted, the unnecessarily loud broadcast had demanded that they take the initiative and approach the others' position, but that was before an apparent internal dispute had cut the AVN numbers in half and before 'the Specialist' had begun the long stumble towards them, his escort warily in tow.

Collar leaned over to mutter so only Niala could hear it. "This... This is why I get up in the morning. You just never know what kind of story you're gonna get out of a day."

With the whine of an engine, the Mantis gunship dropped into a hover above the troop transport. A spotlight ran across the escort- Before the gunship broke away, much to the frustration of the now screaming ANV commander. After a moment, the man seemed to calm, his rifle trained on the group. "Send him forward! Your money is with Bright- He should be the paralyzed man trying to crawl away." He pointed off at Bright, who slid his weapons across the floor and covered his head. "I ... I -.. .You.." He paced for a moment, his disposition nervous and as far from professional as it could be - All the while, rambling like a lunatic.

"Kill him." The commander turned to the remainder- Only to get a rifle butt to the face and an ass on the street. The Hornet began to spin up her turbines- And in a few moments, fled the scene. "I can't fucking believe this!" Wilson screamed, firing rounds at the fleeing transport. "I can't fucking believe any of this!" He continued to howl and yell, turning his gun towards the Specialist- Putting a round between his eyes.

"Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you all! I've had my life ruined because of that son of a bitch! You assholes shouldn't have fucked around with this! This was not my original plan, you alien sons of bitches!" He leveled his gun at the escort..

Niala watched as the bounty took a bullet... by the paying party. So they were trying to screw them out of the money on top of it all. That just fucking figured.

She turned her head to the captain. "Hey, you see that guy over there? He was posing with the chit wasn't he? We could beat the shit out of him until he talks and then go raid their headquarters and their accounts for... compensation." She grinned wildly

"If I get my boys involved, we could split the money between parties, go on our separate ways. They have to have at least double what they were offering on the bounty lying around in assets."

With an exasperated sigh, the batarian raised his arm and made an almost lazy circular motion, concluding with a flick of his wrist towards the ANV agent. Almost as one, the Crimson Suns turned and a flurry of non-lethal munitions tore through the air into the offending presence. Concussive rounds and submission nets sent the human's paralyzed frame skidding a few feet down the street before it came to a stop and a trio of Suns ran out to collect 'the prize'. Collar turned to Niala.

"Sounds like a plan to me," he acknowledged, before deactivating his jammer and signaling for his men to do the same. "We'll skin him alive and sell the parts to the vorcha if we have to."

He turned to issue orders to his men: "Everybody make sure to sync your helmet cams with the database. We want every angle on those ships. Send a message to all our Omega barracks, let them know what we're watching for and see if any of them picked up those ships on their screens. The Mantis couldn't leave the station under its own power, contact our dock rats and tell them to keep an eye on anything big enough to carry it and note the registration. We're going to follow these kra'tashi home and show them why you don't fuck with the Chains."

The proclamation was met with a menacing laugh from the men, and after taking a drag on his cigarette Collar motioned for Niala to join him on the shuttle. "Or AEGIS, I guess."

Wilson, the Commander, hit the ground before he could scream, stunned to submission by nonlethal rounds and submission nets. The man just flopped on the ground for a moment before falling unconscious and still. As the smoke cleared, Private Bright rolled onto his back with a loud yell of pain. "Shot me in the back! I can't feel my fucking legs!" He howled, slapping at his knee. "God damn it! I - I-" He turned to the best of his ability, catching glimpse of the Crimson Sun squad. "Please- Don't kill me! I hate that fucker as much as you do! Please - Five hundred - I have the chit here! I had the money! I was the CFO!" He unclipped a device from his belt and threw it over.

"Five hundred thousand. Please get me out of here. I know you people don't owe me anything- I - I have access to funds. Ten thousand bonus if you can get me to a doctor. If you're gonna kill him or render him legally in a bad spot, I guess this is a takeover. I'm now CEO of ANV, and that guy can kiss my ass. I'm not gonna cheat the Suns or anyone!"

Niala watched the Chit trail a lazy arc and land on the street, sliding towards her. She bent down to pick it up. Guy wasn't bullshitting. Five hundred thousand credits.

Just

Sitting around

It should be noted that Niala has been in the business of mercenary work for over a century. And yet, this was a new low. This felt almost too easy somehow. She turned and boarded the shuttle, holding up the chit for the batarian to see, her operatives following behind her.

"Do whatever you want with him, really. We got what we came for." She gives a half glance back. "I mean, don't enslave him or anything. That looks bad on our record since we're involved."