[Omega] Lash Mob (Open)

...

fuck the galaxy sometimes.

Celeste had not allowed herself tunnel-vision while using the Incisor-drone to scan for D'Veyra. She'd seen the batarians drawing their weapons, scattered all around the flash sale, and moved. Crouched low, bringing up her barrier steadily so as not to create a big 'shoot me please' flash, she raced for cover. As she ran, she gave the Incisor drone free reign.

She remembered why she loved the Incisor so much. It barked again and again, its refire rate between bursts in acceptable parameters, but bursts of such blinding speed that the barrel didn't even have time to jump from recoil. Slavers had their heads simply explode left and right, their skulls shattered by three high-velocity sniper rounds striking the exact same spot microseconds apart. Celeste shrugged her bag off her shoulder as the krogan in particular got a pair of bursts right in its crest, practically ripping it open. Out came the Argus, the rifle expanding along frictionless rails to full size. Out came the grenades, bundles and bundles of them. Celeste did so love variety in her explosives.

In that moment, Celeste became a biotic-powered pitching machine. She threw caution to the wind and put every fucking canister in that bag into the air and across the plaza. Concussive blasts rocked the crowd, choking white clouds of tear gas sprouted from the ground, assailants and civvies alike yanked helplessly into the air by Lift grenades. And to top it all off, stinger grenades. Tiny rubber balls the side of frag shrapnel ricocheted crazily among the crowd, seeming to all those affected that they were being struck from everywhere at once. True to its name, the stingers didn't wound permanently, but boy oh boy did they smart.

Perhaps more than was necessary landed directly on, inside and beside Bintar's stall. As the muffins and lolipops were engulfed by a Lift field, rocked by flashbangs, floated into the air by Lift grenades and torn to pieces by stinger grenades, Celeste reassured herself that it was totally necessary because after all there had been those three Blue Suns beside the stall what a shame Bintar was going to get caught in the crossfire.

"GUN!" yelled Bintar as his prospective client turned into a prospective killer. The slaver did the first thing he could think off and just threw a muffin box at his assaillant's head, strangely mirroring Celeste's earlier assault. It threw his aim off long enough for an assault rifle shot to put him down. One of the Sun gripped Bintar by the shoulder without any gentleness, and threw him near the small slave pen.
"GET IN SIR, NOW!"
In the next second the three Suns were getting into position, one took point in the stall, the other two were using the kinetic barriers that made the slave pen behind it as protection. The Sun in the stall's eyes widened as Celeste showered them with presents.

"GRENADES!"

All the Suns took defensive positions, shielding their faces and crouching down behind their covers. Bintar just stupidly looked at what he was pointing through the kinetic shield, and got to enjoy the barely dimmed view of a flashbang detonation. Through white hot pain he suddenly envied the two-eyed species, for whom it must be only half as painful as it was for him.

The Sun in the stall got quite unlucky as he suddenly share a cramped space with three incapacitating grenades. Even if they were nonlethal they took out his shield instantly, leaving without any protection from the lift field that followed. A shieldless Sun was now dangling up.

"Cover Tarus!" yelled the senior Sun to his colleague. "Forget the bitch as long as she doesn't repeat, she must have a barrier, those idiots don't!"

With cold professionalism the two soldiers started picking off the batarians. The mercenaries had kinetic shields, assault rifles, hardsuits, cover if not concealment, and training. Their opponents had shirts and cheap SMGs. Even with their number it probably wouldn't be a fair fight.

Inside the pen Bintar was trying to calm down the panicked slaves despite his pain and tears. He was comforting them as best he could. In a cruel irony they had no idea they were being "protected" from people who were counting on liberating them.

"What if the crazy asari runs?", asked the younger Sun.
"She messed with the Suns tonight, so she'd better run fast." the other answered with a grin, shooting down a batarian attacker aiming at his floating colleague with one neat shot.

"Yes, please, add me to the list." She saw it at the edge of her peripheral vision. The batarian was drawing a gun. Thinking quickly she tears the holdout from her clothing, shoving the assistant away, wraps her other arm around the human slave, and pulled him close to her body.

The hostage shield bought her time to process what was happening. An amateur team of freedom fighters had ruined her opportunity to free a steady supply of slaves while keeping track of one of the more flawed methods of slave trafficking on the station.

There were a few suspects. Oh of course the Van'Tarh, but others as well. Freelancers with hearts of gold hired by liberal interventionists, or just your average busybody anti-slave paramilitary group. Regardless of their affiliations, they died just the same.

Israa swung her pistol to the batarian, counting on the moment of hesitation the slave would get her. A shot to the knee as she swung upward to throw off his aim, then the arm holding the weapon, then the head to confirm the kill. Practiced and perfected motions. As his life leaked out on the station floor, Calypso yanked her newly acquired forced labor backwards with her, facing the maelstrom of grenades. She brought up the collar of her hood to cover her nose as tear gas swept through the air of the room. She saw other buyer's heads exploding, meaning that there was someone, perhaps far more professional, taking advantage of this mess. And they wouldn't be picky.

Israa jerked the human one way, walking backwards towards the exit. "Stay close if you want to keep alive." She hisses into his ear.

The auction devolved into anarchy. The crowd was split between unarmed, panicking civilians and the very well-armed typical Omega dwellers. Ferrous metal flew indiscriminately as people choked on teargas, impaled themselves on Van'tarh spikes and generally freaked the fuck out.

Pandemonium.

---

Huddling in and amongst the slaves was probably Bintar's best move - even in all the confusion, nobody wanted to shoot a poor, oppressed innocent being / reasonably valuable commodity. Between that, the pen's reinforced construction and what I guess you could call the calming effect of his hired help, Bintar's stall was one of the safer places to be.

---

"Please don't hurt me, Master," Calypso's slave gasped, barely audible above the chaos.

With her assailant deader than disco, a few options were open to the pirate: she could retreat, trusting in her human shield to keep her safe, or, given the artful way the slavemaster's brains were splattered across half his former charges, she might be able to save some more people.

Whether her shield's tears were from panic, mental breakdown or Celeste's gas was entirely up for debate.

---

Speaking of Celeste, Omega threw another spanner in the works of her plan - namely, Dim Bool's krogan bodyguard hopping down from the podium and charging towards her: shotgun up, bayonet gleaming, looking for all the world like an organic freight train.

---

D'Veyra, meanwhile, was ducking through the crowd, moving closer and closer to that podium and her principal.

Got to protect the volus. Fuck. Never send a krogan to do an asari's job.

To encapsulate a primarily nonverbal discussion in several lines of dialogue based abstraction.

Squad Second: ...What

Squad Leader: ...

Squad Second: No seriously what, do...do we inform Command? Do we keep on? Do we do anything?

Squad Leader: ...

Squad Second: Because frankly I'm perfectly fine just sitting here till it unfucks itself.

Squad Leader: Command?

Command: ...I

Squad Leader: Sigh

Command: Press on?

Squad Leader: Press on.

The first issue, the first real hurdle to surmount was the establishment of control. There were too many factors, too many unknown quantities at play. Chaos versus skill. Time versus efficiency. A dozen different windows of opportunity closing too fast to be of any use. A chance, a single solitary chance slipping away like grains of sand.

Mind the solution they had in mind didn't exactly have the same, shall we say, panache when employed twice in a row but for the same of argument: what do you do when a game is unfair?

Why you change the game of course.

The canisters bounced into the melee; rolled across the ground. Between the stage and the rioters. Between the rioters and each other. Underfoot, the metal pings and dings of their casings against the plaza lost amidst the clamor and general calamity.

But only for a second.

It was rather hard to miss what happened next.

They bloomed in cadence, exploding upwards into twisting columns of cold, clammy fog. Trees of mist rising above the heads of slavers and liberators alike, spreading branches the dully, sickly color of gangrene and pus and dead, ashen earth. Arching. Interlinking. Thickening.

Collapsing.

Felling and condensing into a thick, monolithic bank of opaque vapor that coiled about and clung to the combatants. It wasn't toxic, oh no, it wasn't stifling or suffocating or lethal or any of that. It's purpose was rather differently oriented: sound scattered within it's cool embrace. Light distorted. Heat was masked and electromangetic wavelengths dampened for minutes still.

The Umbra's visors were already building composite images, data from half a different feeds, half a different sources taken and chained together into coherent data. Plus, well they had forewarning.

One by one they disappeared into the wall of gas, the different components and ingredients twining around each other. Purples and greens like day old bruises. Browns and golds like dusty, shredded wastes. A hint of crimson here. A dash of orange there. The rearguard paused, still half cloaked, a pen to her left. A batarian man within, unshackled, cooing and consoling the sapient chattel within.

Without a word, without a sound she plucked a knife from a sheathe on her hip. A wicked, serrated thing; made for cleaving flesh like warm butter. She slid it through the bars, into the hands of the nearest slave. And then she was gone too, leaving the captives alone with their captor.

All alone.

One belligerent was spared the effect of the canisters : the one who wasn't on the floor when they exploded. The lift field had spared the floating blue sun from the initial spread. Ever since Celeste's grenades had sent him flying he'd been gripping at the ceiling after activating his distress beacon, pulling himself near the slaves pen. The ruckus from the Titan assault covered his fall to the ground well enough, and he managed to drag one of his incapacitated comrades inside the pen with Bintar before the hostiles could shoot them. The other one was just too far and would have to do on his own...

With a keystroke of his omni-tool the Sun closed down the entrance to the pen from the inside, a blue shimmering barrier protecting them from the hostiles outside.

"Will that hold them?" asked Bintar, crouched down with the slaves.

"Yes sir, those barriers can hold anything short of anti-buildings weapons, and those would kill everyone around anyway in such an enclosed space. Maybe you should try to negotiate with them? I'll contact HQ, see if they got my distress call."

His omni-tool appeared again and he grinned when HQ answered his hail.

"Report.", only said the operator there.

"This is Tarus from team 9997. Escorting Slaves4Us VIP and cargo through route 445Y. We are at destination and have been attacked by several unidentified factions. Faron and I are secure in the slave pen with VIP and cargo, Balsaf is incapacitated outside. Need reinforcement, dozens of hostiles present."

"Received. I see your route. Fire team should secure the entrance tunnels in ten minutes, and join you five minutes after that. Until then give us a visual of what's going on."

Tarus shifted his omni-tool setting and started transmitting what little he was seeing through the smoke to the other blue suns. Hopefully they could identify those new attackers from their equipment and suits.

"Hello?", asked Bintar, his hands on the barrier. "Can we talk to someone? I can't help but feel like we got off the wrong foot here..."

A blessing and a curse, really. On the one hand, the sudden burst of cloying smoke gave the Incisor drone pause as it struggled to re-acquire its targets through the solid wall of fog. It did manage a few bursts through the thinner patches in the smoke, but Celeste knew she couldn't count on the drone much more until it cleared.

On the other, Celeste practically vanished the moment the smoke washed between her and the charging krogan with the shotgun and bayonet (a bayonet in this day and age, fucking really?). Celeste dropped to one knee within the cloud, slamming both palms to the ground as her aura blazed around her. A wide, wedge-shaped Shockwave burst from her hands, catching the charging krogan and hurling him airborne as if a tsunami had briefly popped over for a visit.

The guy still had his kinetic barriers, still had armour integrity, and was an absolute motherfucker to kill to boot. So even as Celeste sighted down the familiar old rifle and put three bursts into the dangling reptile, she knew it'd take more than that. Without even pausing to confirm a kill (haha, fat chance) she faded back into the smoke, ducking low and half-running half-sneaking in a wide arc around the krogan. She didn't like her chances with his shotgun, or anything in a stand-up fight, so she stayed low and waited the krogan out in the smoke.

Things had been pretty bad, even for Omega.

But the Titan smoke cloud made it worse.

---

The Umbras met with little resistance - panicking auction patrons and general Omega street trash, for the most part. That's not to say that they weren't dangerous, but they simply didn't have the same level of training.

One was caught off guard by a vorcha blundering into her legs, all teeth and claws and was that an Executioner? Yes. Yes it was.

---

Dim Bool, volus slave auctioneer to the stars, was in Dilemma Town.

Most chemical weapons couldn't hurt volus - after all, different biologies and sealed envirosuits, etc. But anything acidic would eat through said suit, popping the chubby little volus like a balloon. The smartest option, then, would be to run away.

...except for the hail of shield-dropping, suit-popping fire coming from the cloud's depths. If he left the protection of the CORK (don't ask me, it's something about acronyms in Palaven Standard), he'd be dead in a flash.

So the volus stood stock still and waited, hoping that the smoke wasn't white phosphorus or acid or heavy alkaline or anything else he'd heard of on the news.

---

The Slaves4Us bunker was possibly the best protected place on the docks at the moment - sealed down, completely cut off from the rest of the chaos.

The trade-off for that, of course, was that those inside had lost any ability to influence their environs until that evac arrived.

Whatever one Nikolai Aleksanders was paying his R&D team, it wasn't enough - the security fog blanket was good. Tarus' scan revealed nothing but sickly-coloured patches of roiling fog. Bintar's voice, meanwhile, petered out in the muffling air, barely audible from a few scant feet away.

All things considered, it was lucky the Blue Suns had invested in extra redundancies in their communicators after the Occupation. Otherwise that transmission would never have got out.

---

Indeed, a bayonet in this day and age. Nobody could accuse the average krogan on the street of subtlety, and, after all, the spike had come in handy against the husks.

That said, this particular krogan had been blinded by the smoke, flipped into the air as gravity went haywire and shot in a dozen places to boot. Sure, none of the shots had penetrated armour, but they still felt like he'd been smashed with a battlemaster's totem club.

When the gravity field cut out (dropping him on top of one of the few surviving Van'tarh and sending a white-hot spike straight through his shoulder), the krogan got to his feet with surprising stealth, aided by the sound dampening effects of the fog.

Sniffing the air for any trace of asari, he took two steps back and circled around, heavy-gauge shotgun at the ready and all senses listening out for Celeste.

His footfalls were distorted by the fog, the sound flattened and stretched. He could've been anywhere, really.

An avulsion, a flap of skin hanging from his face, itched like crazy where one of the Argus bursts had pulverised flesh and bone.

It sounded like he was going the other way, towards the line of Umbra. It might be best for Celeste to get on with her mission, rather than go looking for that elusive notch on her songblade.

---

There wasn't much that could make Nassa "The Ogre" D'Veyra panic, but the Umbras had managed it.

Sure, she'd fought Adjutants, husks, hanar and even a Reaper, but D'Veyra was fucking terrified of chem weapons. And without a hardsuit or a medical plan, the thought of dying as her skin lit on fire (Again) wasn't a happy one, to put it lightly.

So when she found that the smoke didn't burn, or even affect her breathing (Thank you LCI/BHO genemods), D'Veyra smiled like a shark. The silence and the blindness didn't unfaze her - a literal century of training and decades more of experience saw to that.

No, D'Veyra moved through the fog slowly, right arm extended and packing heat, while her left stayed up and by her chest, holding one of those hold-out pistols mass-produced by the Hegemony a few years back. She slowed her pace, slowed her breathing, and reached outward with her mind, heading for the podium-

-when someone grabbed at her outstretched arm.

Training took over.

Pull back, left arm to their face, right elbow to his throat, straighten arm, pull down, knee to stomach, step back, three rounds to the head.

It would take forever to scrub the batarian brains out of her pants, but at least she was at the podium. She took a moment to reload and check for traps or ambushes before making her next move.

Technically only nine places but hey, who's counting?

... well, Celeste. Have to keep things like remaining capacity in mind. Four more bursts left in the Argus, plus the nine rounds in her Suppressor, plus pockets full of heatsinks. Speaking of the Suppressor... Celeste folded the Argus back up, slinging it over her back. The mag-strip on the ballistic vest beneath her civvies reached through the fabric and synth-leather, snatching it and locking it in place. Perhaps, in all the mayhem and sound-muting fog, the subtle approach would be best.

And then, just because she was a sadistic bitch, she let her aura coalesce in her hands just that little extra bit. The gun responded, a little purple 'Warp' modification holo-panel flickering by the trigger guard.

As far as the krogan was concerned, she didn't care about any notches on the proverbial songblade. He wasn't in her way any more, seemingly off blundering towards Hostile Faction Number Seven, and as long as he stayed out of the way he'd probably live. Maybe. Good luck to him.

A Blue Sun, turian by the looks of his helmet, blazing away desperately at the fog as it robbed him of his senses. Celeste darted close, flexing her left hand, then curling it into a fist and tensing the muscles of her forearm. Her omni-tool flared to life, micro-fabricators whirring, and a white-hot ceramic blade emerged with a soft 'whick-whick'. Probably the last thing the Sun ever heard. She was on him in a flash, wrapping her gun-arm around his neck, hauling him off-balance, then jamming the omni-blade deep into the meat of his throat. She heard ceramics and flesh sizzle, smelt it to boot, and the blade snapped off at the base just as it was designed to.

She looked up and saw one of the Van'tarh, sub machine gun raised with a confused look in his eyes. Perhaps because of her fleshy shield, perhaps out of curiosity as to her allegiance, perhaps due to a bit of both. Celeste brought a finger to her lips and eased the dead Sun to the ground. Then, crouched low, pistol cradled in both hands, she prowled through the fog towards the stage.

The options presented to Israa were short and simple before the Umbra intervened. With one extremely unprofessional mob of batarians trying to play freedom fighter and one extremely prepared.... someone trying to kill anyone involved in the auction, she was somewhat of a high value target in the whole mess.

When the fog drifted to eye level, she waited for the slave's reaction before breathing herself. The quiet rung in her ears as she parsed the scenario.

Whoever had reinforced an already confused and bloody brawl was just as, if not more prepared to quickly and efficiently kill everyone in this area. That said, her priority was still the slaves. She was likely a Kill on Sight for two out of three of the other parties present, that was certain, but maybe not the product. She loosened her grip on the man and oriented towards where she estimated the exit was, judging on memory from before the fog fell.

"Start walking to the exit, don't pick up a gun, don't make a lot of noise, and you might make it to the arcology." She gave him a push in that direction and then about-faced, heading deeper into the fog. She nearly tripped over one of the slowly cooling corpses of the freedom fighters. She picked up his sub-machine gun, grateful for the extra firepower. She keeps crouched near the corpse, slowly advancing in what she thinks is the direction of the rest of the slaves.

The human was large, even by the standards of others, muscles swollen with geneaugments and synthetic cables, thick slabs of meat that, coupled with a height that would have put him head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, pushed from the category of "giant" to "small mountain". Fine clothes rendered coarse by a distinct lack of class and self restraint in the area of jewelry. Entire sleeves of tattoos: kill counts and achievements, proclamations and warnings. Thug. Criminal. The title of Omegan gangster stamped upon him as surely as if it had been inked into his skin.

A step back, a half turn, and he entered Israa's narrow bubble of visibility. The mist coiling about his waist, curling and rising and falling like the waters of some milky, alien sea. He caught her movement from the corner of his eye and spun, an ugly behemoth of a rifle in his arms. Snapping up.

Halting.

Dangling and dropping to the floor with a soft, distant clatter. He wasn't exactly built for speed and agility and the Corsair had the upper hand, in all likelihood a fraction of a second later and she would have blown his internal organs halfway across the plaza anyway or disappeared back into the fog of her own accord.

But, sadly,

it was not to be.

In the same instant that he recognized the batarian woman as a threat the fog behind him distorted and heaved

and a thicket of blades sprouted from his torso, his stomach, his neck. Long, slender, the metal of their being striated into identical, collapsible sections. Half a dozen lightweight, mono-edged swords, launched biotically at point blank range to overwhelm his kinetic barriers and personal armor. A low, gasping, moan and he collapsed; nerves firing their last messages; the cartridge-hilts still protruding from the back.

A turian stood in his place, head half cocked as if in curiosity at the pirate captain, no weapons in his hands.

All throughout the square a similar scene was repeated, over and over again. Gloved hands out of the obscuring gas. Flashes of suppressed pistols and tinny, distorted chatter of silenced rifles. Gleaming garrote and chained lightning. Always specific targets, one man or woman out of a group. Take the one, leave the others. If any interfered incapacitate or eliminate, whichever was appropriate for the given threat level.

The vorcha, for example, lost little monster that it was got a kick to the wrist by a more nimble Umbra and a shockbaton to the face by an irked agent. They weren't there to pick a prolonged fight, they weren't particularly interested in a general massacre. If the alien found some courage to leap at their backs they'd put it down, otherwise it

well

wasn't really their problem.

The krogan on the other hand, merited a more...involved response. They held the information advantage, they saw him first. And rather than wait they elected to make the opening move.

The shotgun burst erupted from the mists before the wounded bodyguard, the razored shot close enough to send even the towering man stumbling back a step.

D'Veyra, now fully reloaded and reasonably confident there wasn't anyone (or anything) hostile or dangerous nearby, climbed up onto the podium like a greased snake, staying low to avoid the sporadic fire still coming from within the cloud.

"Psst!" No response. "Oi, Dim Bool, where are you?" There was no way on Earth or any other planet you'd care to name that D'Veyra was going to call the volus 'boss'.

"Nassa? Where are you?"

"Close," the asari replied, having rolled a good five feet away from where she'd been when she last spoke to him. "We're moving out now." Another roll, culminating in a hand-spring to her feet, putting the volus's CORK between where she was crouching and the crowd. "You ready?"

Both guns were up and out, each arm slightly bent and forming a rough 90-degree arc in front of D'Veyra's body, to ensure that a pistol was covering each side of the CORK's barrier.

"Step back slowly and come to the sound of my voice," she whispered.

The volus was still covered by the shield, but it didn't look like he'd be there much longer.

---

Celeste was close enough to the stage to hear somebody talking up there, but not to hear what it was about (damn that fog).

It was a safe bet that either

• the auctioneer was making a run for it, or
• someone was gunning for the auctioneer.

If she ran, right now, she might be able to get there before the volus escaped/had his head blown off. But she'd have to full-on sprint, with no time to set a trap. Or she might be able to set up something, but there was no guarantee it'd catch the volus/his assailant.

Decisions, decisions...

---

Israa's new slave former slave nodded once and followed his orders. He'd probably make it out alive, unless Bintar's evac team was some all-batarian unit with a penchant for killing humans or whatever. So that was something.

The Van'tarh's submachine gun had a strange little icon hovering over it's holographic display - it was unusual, but someone of her experience could probably guess that the gun was packing a snowblind ammo mod.

Which would probably come in handy, given how close she was to Dim Bool's slave pen.

The slavemaster was dead, given that his brains were decorating half of his former charges, but the pen itself was surrounded by a mass of panicky buyers looking for a five-finger discount.

If she wanted to save any slaves, she'd either have to do it fast or prioritise.

---

The krogan bellowed as the shotgun blast caught him in the torso, roaring his displeasure as he stumbled for secure footing (like most tall people, krogan find it very hard to backpedal).

The towering figure shook his head, orange blood mingling with conductive nerve fluid as it dripped from his chest plate.

"I"

The shotgun fired into the mist, his fingers working frantically to reload.

"AM"

Another heatsink injected and fired again, the big Claymore aimed squarely at a half-seen Umbra in the mist.

"KROGAN!"

With his battlecry ringing dully in the fog-laden air, the bodyguard went into a full-blown bloodrage, charging forward as the mist coiled around him like a cape, Claymore held over his head with the bayonet pointing down and forward.

Well, on the one hand, she didn't feel particularly rushed. If someone was talking to the volus auctioneer, she doubted that same someone was just stalling before blowing his head off. On top of that, no fucking way was she going to charge off into the mist and run directly into a shotgun barrel. No, she utterly refused to increase her pace, instead flicking up her wrist and looking at the feed from the Incisor drone. She overlaid a wireframe of the plaza from before the smoke dropped, directing the Incisor to cover the area specifically around the stage, then told it to switch to concussive rounds.

She did realize, with a pang of regret, that slaves were probably dying in droves around her due to collateral damage. Part of her ached to turn around right there, race to the nearest pen and get as many out as she could. That same part hated herself for continuing on towards the stage, after the volus auctioneer and his little stock of slaves. She was alone, outgunned, and nearly blind. If she tried, she was unlikely to do more than her new batarian friends.

No. Better to go after the auctioneer. Find him, lock him in a Stasis, drag him off to a nice quiet corner for questioning. Find out his suppliers, trace the flow back to the source. You'll find more people that way, Celeste. You'll save more people. Just remember that.

That blue sun really didn't have a chance. He was deep in the fog, his back on the kinetic shield of the slave pen. Unfortunately he was on the wrong side, shooting in the direction of anyone coming too close, waiting for the storm to pass.
He really never saw Celeste coming.
Bintar did, but his cries to warn the Sun were drowned out in the chaos. Even the two mercenaries in the pen couldn't see what he was pointing at.
Realizing he didn't have time to wait for his two-eyed bodyguards to catch up to batarian eyesight, he grabbed the surveillance drone and forced it to film in Celeste's direction.

As she stabbed his colleague in the neck, Tarus and Faron cried in rage.

"You can't get her now!" yelled Bintar, "So get her picture so others can!"

To his credit Tarus immediately got back on his omni-tool and keyed in the commands.

As Celeste let the body of the Sun slunk on the ground, the military grade surveillance drone on the other side of the barrier filmed her in regular and thermal vision and emitted several flashes. It kept following until she went back too deep in the gaz cloud to see anything.

"HQ, this is Tarus again. Balsaf has been killed by an asari hostile, we're transmitting the images we could take of her right now. Please don't let that bitch make it out alive. It's not just extraction anymore, that maniac killed one of our own!"

"The image isn't great", answered the voice in his omni-tool, "we're transmitting that to the guys in tech to get a clear picture. Our team's still en route. Stay in the pen and keep filming. We'll clear out this mess."

The two suns, Bintar and the slaves fell in awkward silence, just watching the carnage from inside the pen as if they were in first row at the theater.

The retaliatory broadside connected. The Umbra in question was twisting, feet leaving the ground from the sheer, irresistible force; from the weight of the impact. Shields shattered; a crunching of kinetic glass. The turian woman fell back into the mist, bouncing, rolling, a hoarse, muffled cry. Muted by her mask and the clammy bank of chemical fog that drowned the market. Her shoulder hung loose, wrenched from it's socket but her fine suit was relatively bereft of cobalt blood. Beneath the well stitched fabric there were cracked plates, clotted blue and indigo bruises, oh yes. But none of the messy, spectacular display that typically follows a near point blank fusillade from a krogan sized shotgun.

Fashion informs function and function follows fashion and the Umbra uniforms were not devoid of their own safeguards. Paneled vests and armored bindings. Tensile carbon weaves in their clothes and whatever augments each happened to sport. Not enough to totally insulate them from their own mortality but more than adequate to stave off annihilation for this mission at least.

The superheated bayonet tip slashed through empty air and slammed into the clammy stone, throwing up a spray of quickly doused sparks.

There was no one before him. Nobody occupying the space he bowled through, intent on trampling, crushing, and reaving.

Just him.

The next was an incandescent burst from behind, a cluster of writhing, resonant ribbons that shed skeins of royal purple and cyan into the air. Molecular locks broken and split under their touch. The reave pulsing as it ripped. As it rended.

Rifle rounds from the right, hissing through the sickly mire.

Crackling, eye searing lashes of lighting underfoot.

Around and around we go.

Around and around we go.

She looked at the unarmed Umbra, gun still ready to put him down if he so much as twitched.

"You a slaver?"

Think; Given the way he's operating, he's either the loner gunning for the slavers or the professional team that's sweeping through the mob for.... some reason. And given how he's trying not kill her, he's most likely a part of the latter. She lowered her weapon to a 45 degree angle.

"Probably not." answering her own question. She looks at the pens, with the slavers massing around it. Pigs and rats, scurrying around the trough, taking what they can. She looked back at the turian. "Help me with these." She commanded. She turned back to the pens, walking forward, gun held level in one hand.

She fired in approximations of "safe" targets. Empty containers, a few corpses on the ground, one or to leg-shots on the buyers too close to the pen doors. In her other hand, she opened up her omnitool. "Everyone clear a fucking hole on the pens or you will be shot." She stated clearly through the loudspeaker the tool had created.

She walked closer to the slaves, keeping an eye on the turian behind her, hoping he was following her lead.

Celeste was rewarded by the muffled report of concussive gunfire, followed by a cut-off scream and the thump of a body hitting the floor.

A second passed (during which time the Incisor drone's VI cheerfully informed her that it was running low on thermal clips).

"Nassa? *hssk* Nassa?"

There was no reply, other than the almost-imperceptible sound of a mounted kinetic barrier pinging as it reconfigured to resist humanoid targets as well as weapons.

---

It was unclear just how, well, clear Bintar's picture was.*

But at least the team was en-route - the gunship briefly stopped to hammer a Black Mountain enclave with a pod's worth of AP rockets, but they were back on track and hitting the burners.

---

The krogan roared his displeasure as his armour disintegrated under the Reave field. His reaction was very, very krogan - probably because he'd been hired by a volus looking for a big fucking krogan.

He turned, lightning flashing from his legs, and bounded towards the rifle fire.

If nothing else, he'd crush them beneath his own corpse.

---

Calypso's approach was smart, but could have been smarter.

After all, this was Omega - most people thought a warning shot just meant you couldn't aim straight.

Aside from the two buyers dropped from leg shots (one of them with their calf blown clean away, the other standing up slowly, testing how his armour's knee joint held against the impact), the slavers reacted exactly as the rest of the night had progressed - with extreme panic.

Two opened fire on each other.

Three - no, wait, armour guy was back up again, make that four - opened fire on Calypso and her general vicinity.**

One, the canniest of the lot, wrenched a slave half out of the pen and jammed the gun against his head.

"One more step and you've got blood on your hands!"

Celeste grinned. Not the auctioneer, but clearly one of his toughs. Good enough for her. She leaped up onto the stage in a single bound, stepping out of the smoke and into Dim Bool's field of vision. At first she simply ignored him, instead going over to Nassa's prone and unconscious body. Same one she'd seen in the crowd, burn and paint and all. A half-second's pause. Celeste frisked her then jacked the heat sinks from her guns, leaving the other asari of reduced threat if not entirely disarmed. Then she straightened and turned to face the volus.

"Evening," she said, holding her Suppressor away from her side with the 'click' of safety being disengaged (she'd re-engaged it just do disengage it, impractical but these things really helped the psychological part). "Believe it or not, I'm not here to kill you. Co-operate and you can still get out of this alive."

The picture that the Suns drone got, meanwhile, was so unhelpful as to be a complete waste of time. The only way to follow her into the cloud was to stay behind her, and while she had a very nice back, it didn't have much in the way of identifying marks. Plus the aforementioned smoke masked thermals, so all the thermographic filming got was a messy blur. Quite where the surveillance drone had sprung from was another confusing situation entirely.

Decidedly bemused yet acquiescing after a second cock of the head and a whisper from the comm the turian followed; ostensibly unarmed, just a well dressed shadow trailing in the footsteps of a would be liberator (language, syntax, her security, his intuition).

Right up until the point that the air filled with accelerator fire, bluish purple bolts screaming through the mist.

The flicker of the grid emanating from the module on his back, the muting and reformation of the cracking panes as the storm passed. He stood to her right now, equidistant between the pirate and the slavers. Half cloaked, a charcoal black brown blur with just a smear of color across his face and chest. Orange and silver bands. Good taste, they brought out his eyes. Almost indistinguishable from the bank of fog that mantled him.

Gunmetal grey flashed into gloved palms. Stacks of slender shapes expertly spread between talons. A practiced flick of the wrists and they flew straight and true. Silent. Deadly.

Blue fire pulsed, whipping up eddies in the gas, and cartridge-hilts slammed into formation. Neat lattice work clusters that birthed thickets of blade mid flight. A hail of keenedged knives, collapsible flechettes, already airborne and speeding towards the quartet of gunmen before the hostage taker finished issuing his ultimatum.

Weight. Mass. Force. Power.

Applied en masse.

See this was largely the essence of how the Umbra fought. That is to say: unfairly. An abject lesson that a certain krogan had oh so graciously volunteered to learn by disregarding another, rather fundamental, tenet of combat.

Don't turn your back on an enemy.

Capacitors surged, crackled, burnt out, as arm thick chains of electricity oh so tenderly wrapped themselves around the charging krogan. Sinking through the armor. Through flesh. Through muscle. Burrowing their way into his core along the ionized path of least resistance, bounding back and forth between conductors; crisscrossing his viscera in chains of light.

Biotics flared as gravity sheared; a wave of elemental power that slammed into the charging alien with all the irresistible, ordained will of a hurricane. The heavy mist blasted back from the guard's lightning haloed body with it's presence.

The Umbra with the silenced rifle stood scant meters away, hazy and indistinct, her injured arm still at an awkward angle despite being rather recently (and forcibly) reintroduced to their mutual friend socket.

But her aim was steady enough as she emptied the clip into the krogan's half ruined skull.