[Illium, Nos Olmos] Withdrawal

"Roger"

Ali felt his heart thumb, his breathing slow down and just Shirin was about to make the two humans day very bad he ended the day of both asari and turian. His talon squeezed the trigger.

SHAAA BAM

The asari's eyes where wide as she suddenly noticed that she, well her head and parts of her body where moving towards different locations, at least she wasn't in the predicament alone as her turian friend found himself in the same situations, it is doubtful that the knowledge they were having the same problem would actually cheer them up.

Ali meanwhile switched to his M-98... not as explosive but as powerful, there was just a hint of satisfaction in his grunt.

Back in the hallway, there was a thunderous CRASH as a blue blur smashed into the wall next to the salarian. As the blaze of light faded, an asari stepped back from the crater, shaking her head, dazed. As her eyes focused on the salarian (who no doubt just lost five years on his life), she put a hand on his shoulder – half in condescending support, half to support herself.

“Good move.”

Then she shoved past, moving the salarian towards the drones. She rocketed past Kirok in a bright blue streak, crashing through the next door.

The room beyond was enormous, easily covering the entirety of the floor below. Deposit boxes lined the walls and shelves, ranging in size from “shoebox” to “prison cell,” and they were stacked wherever possible. A series of mechanical arms hung from the ceiling – ostensibly for accessing each box, but the dual raids in progress had put a halt to that.

“Right,” said Ana. “Looking for, looking for…EM-2253. Kid—uh, Kirok, you watch for surprises? I’ll find that—”

A burst of fire sent Ana dodging past a shelf.

“Oh second thought—HAVE FUN KID!”

A brief primer on melee tactics in the High Republic follows.

It was generally acknowledged that if you were going to succeed in the military you needed at least one martial art - more was preferable, but one was the bare minimum, which is why instruction in it was mandatory once you got to an academy. Non-batarian Orozvhadi being something of a minority, most of the styles taught were batarian, under the assumption that more promising graduates would later pick up another style specific to their species (preferably one developed post-spaceflight, since it would have been developed from the ground up to include tactics for other species). Shirin had chosen one of the most popular (kohr'shahak, a boxing-oriented style based heavily around blitz tactics and haymakers) due to its emphasis on strength training - which allowed her to work on overcoming a comparative shortcoming of her species- and had made up for its inherent weaknesses (lack of strike speed, emphasis on reach) by studying a complementary drell style (Sanguine Reign) during her tenure in the Red Room program.

I digress. In the time it took to process that paragraph, the drell was already halfway to the two humans and one of them had taken a full heatsink's worth of rounds from the Paladin. One shot had lodged nonlethally in his upper chest, one had burst through his ribcage since he'd been in the midst of turning around, and one lucky break, almost certainly fatal, had hit him right in the throat.

Anyway, despite having been originally developed by the Special Intervention Unit, kohr'shahak had spread and gained reasonable popularity among non-Hegemony batarians, and thanks to GalaxyTube society at large was at least passingly familiar with the concept of hatesurfing.

The second human was no exception, as a fan of the Cartagena Urban Combat Circuit, and so his final thought, as an armored drell materialized from thin air and bore down on him with a titanic midair roundhouse punch tipped with freshly-fabricated, red-hot blades, was "Is th--" If he'd had another two seconds to finish the thought, he would've ended it with "--at the hatesurf?", but Shirin's bladed fist erupted halfway through his head, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut as Shirin landed next to the row of teller VIs and took refuge under the counter.

That counter was part of the plan, since the turian guarding the entrance to the server room immediately opened fire with his rifle. With Shirin out of sight and difficult to aim at, he mostly just succeeded in killing a few fleeing hostages - as predicted, they had begun to stampede towards the front doors. Trusting Aliquam to deal with her attacker, the drell focused instead on crowd control and making sure they didn't get a sudden police presence. She raised her omnitool and fired a proximity mine between the main doors, beating the crowd by a good six meters and putting up a message that said, in blinking red lights, "if you move close to here, you're going to die."

As the hostages resorted to scattering elsewhere, Shirin let herself feel a momentary sensation of relief - apparently the attempted robbers had taken their omnitools away, meaning no calls. Things were going surprisingly well.

The turian guard snarled as he moved towards the 'disturbance' shooting at the hostages more out frustration than anything else. Ali focused his sights, the guy was eratic which made it a bit more difficult, to get a clear shot but as the guard moved further and further away from his post he had to pass some desks, ideal choke points. Ali squeezes the trigger just before he passes

BAM

The guard, to his credit, did manage to make two more steps before he stopped in his steps, before collapsed through his knees due to the big hole in his chest. This gave Ali just enough time to look for his next target and check the periphery he didn't like what he saw.

"Boss, things are about to get complicated... there's a group heading towards the entrance of the bank."

As if it wasn't bad enough when things were threatening to go bad, now they were intentionally going bad.

Jil'Korah was quiet for a time as he and Ensemble concentrated on keeping as much attention away from the bank as possible. Isolating emergency services was difficult, as they were designed for just the opposite. Not only that, but a sudden cessation in calls received would alert 'the man' just as surely as an actual alarm, so rather than completely cut them off the quarian and the geth permitted some calls to go through - albeit only the ones from the opposite end of the city.

"Shirin, when you're done mincing the competition and assuming you have time, try to grab that drone of theirs. They weren't terrible at this and it might give me some ideas for later. Once it's out of the system we should be able to get in, as well, maybe get you some backup in the form of former asari military drones."

Meanwhile, in the vault

"STOP CALLIN' ME KI-"

The blast of energy hit Kirok right in the small of his back. Dozens of small drones - little more than eyespies, but all of them armed with some very potent MiniMasers - flew out of the wall as the asari dodged to the left. Kirok, being old, large, and mostly covered in ceramacite armor, didn't so much as dodge as fall when the drone's energy blast hit him, knocking him face-forward. Pride injured, the krogan scrambled back to his feet, shotgun out like the horns of an angry bull.

"ANA! LOOK FER TH' WHATSIT! I'MMA TAKE CARE OF BIDNESS!"

Roaring the ancient traditional krogan warcry of 'fuck you, go fucking die,' the krogan began firing shots at the nimble little drones. Drones dipped and dived as they tried to avoid the matter-shots - not many of them avoided the large spread of the shotgun blast, but some did. Unfortunately, the walls and various safes in the vault could and did not - promisary notes on e-paper, ancient paper documents, chips containing data, boxes of rare jewelery, even a few stacks of ancient Playboys were penetrated by the massive shotgun blasts, reducing them to white cinders and making paper and debris float in the air like a snowstorm.

Kirok was having the time of his life.

"Hang on, I'll go for the drone once the area's secure..."

This might take a few minutes, as the final pair of bank robbers emerged from the server room, alerted by the shots and the panicked shouting of hostages. A salarian and another asari - no surprise there, but the volus behind them was a bit unexpected. He must have been the one stealing the credits. In this day and age, it was no longer as simple as stuffing dollar bills into a bag with "$"; you needed to be able to remove and transport electronic currency, and presumably the volus was in charge of that. Either way, the other two waved him back into the server room before stepping out to take aim at the drell behind the counter.

Shirin hit the floor again and slid a fresh clip into her pistol. She was about to shift further down the counter and pop up to take a shot at the asari, but then Aliquam's voice came through on the comm and her mind spent the next three seconds running the following rabbit trail:

1) The group of new people was approaching from the front door; therefore, they were probably not more criminals. At most there would have been a getaway driver and one or two other gunmen as backup.
2) No alarms had gone off and none of the hostages had left the front door; therefore, the group approaching was probably not the NOPD.
3) Statistically speaking, then, it was almost definitely some suits. Loan-seeking executives, investment bankers, whatever.
4) In roughly one and a half more seconds the suits in question would open the front door and the proxy mine she'd set to keep the hostages from escaping would go off.
........4a) The suits would die, which would not be a big deal.
........4b) The entire city block would be alerted, which would be a big deal.
........4c) This would probably officially qualify them for 'terrorist' status - they were mounting a cyberattack on state property alongside a simultaneous and very physical
........attack involving explosives and snipers.
........4d) As a result, full-fledged military would probably show up very quickly, as opposed to the special response units that typically responded to bank robberies.
5) If the mine was disabled, the situation would no longer be containable and it would just be a matter of time before the NOPD showed up.
........5a) A late arrival by special response units, however, was preferable to the nearly-immediate arrival of huntresses and commandos.

With a hiss of annoyance, Shirin deactivated the proximity mine; a second later, a group of Nos Astra venture capitalists half-entered the lobby and immediately fled back into the streets, screaming.

"All right, people, just a matter of time before we get cops. Ali, shoot at these two till they get their heads down, I'm going for the drone."

Leaving the volus et al. to fend for themselves might not be a bad idea. They and the authorities could keep each other occupied...

"Will do," was an unusual cheery reply from Ali.

Shots pinked off (and made holes in) the cover of the pair forcing them to consider how lucky they might be if they tried come out of cover.

"They are not going anywhere... Ana, Kirok... you two better do your job and fast. Jil, get ready to start moving as soon as I say so..."

His scalp itch had been right again.

Meanwhile, back in the vault…

“Workin’ on it! Section M, section M…fuck.”

Finding Aisle E, Section M was the easy part. Quite easy, in fact, thanks to the Vault’s helpful signs pointing the way to various areas. What wasn’t so simple was how the vault’s boxes were stacked from the ground up…and Box EM-2253 was at the top of the aisle.

Ana of course (being Ana) decided to solve this in the most asinine way possible.

Crouching into a runner’s start, Ana’s body flashed a fiery blue, impersonating the nerdiest-looking erotic night light. There was a roar as the eezo charge reached a threshold point, and she leapt upward, shooting at an angle towards the wall and slinging back her hand. At the same time as the discharge, her omni-tool blazed to life behind her, shining with crimson light as a spear of molten metal shout out of it.

Here, of course, was the point at which Aliquam chimed in, distracting her completely.

This meant two things: First, the next moment, pure reflex thrust her arm forward as planned, which meant that a combination of force, momentum and sheer hellish heat slammed into the deposit box’s transport socket, thoroughly melting any locking mechanisms it once had and sliding it out of place.

Second, she forgot to grab something to hold her in place when she got there.

Which meant that she was now falling back the way she came.

Oh, fuck— AAAAAAAAAA—”

"We've got alarms going off in nearby buildings. Local law enforcement doesn't know yet but private security might... Thankfully they're contracted per building so nobody responding from them will bother with the bank. Probably. Too many liability issues. That said, we need to get the fuck out of here soon."

There was a pause.

"Nearby buildings including this one. Reports of gunshots. Guess they heard us." With that, the quarian started disconnecting and packing up his gear, shifting the load to his omnitool which popped up half a dozen more screens. "I'm mobilizing, but using just my omnitool won't be as effective as the hardwired interface. This is our five-minute warning, people."

"'kay Jil, once the alarm happen..."

BAM

"... or if they start to enter the building, move up to the roof and start that car!"

BAM

"I'll follow."

BAM

Well, here they were, down to the wire. Hopefully Kirok and Ana had grabbed the package; Shirin trusted both of them to do their jobs without constant oversight, but there was certainly more security in the vault and they could have been delayed. Nothing to do but put faith in them, though, and so as the robbers ducked into cover, the drell rolled from counter to counter, cloaked, and popped out to grab the drone.

It was plugged into the node pretty thoroughly, and she didn't want to risk losing the data, so she powered it off first - this, plus disconnecting the docking point, took long enough that her cloak dropped before it was completely finished. Taking the old adage about the best defense into mind, Shirin opened fire on the thugs. She was in a flanking position, thanks to Aliquam's covering fire, and this kept them scrambling away fast enough to prevent any return fire. In fact, while the asari shot back at Aliquam and shouted for the volus, the salarian broke off and took cover inside the elevator. Probably panicking.

"He's over by the elevator," Shirin announced, stashing the drone carefully. "Gonna get a nasty surprise if he heads down to the basement with it. All right, got the drone, I'll cloak and hit the rendezvous point. You guys have the package down there?"

Meanwhile, back in the vault

Kirok shook his head as he came to. Last thing he remembered was shooting at some drones, and then a giant blue something headed straight for him...

The asari moaned. Kirok winced. Damned fool must've fallen on him.

"Hol' on, Shirin," Kirok said as he rubbed his crest. "We've gotta bit of a... teknical difficulty here. Dumbass asari of yorn done fell on my head. I swear, I'm beginnin' to wonder why we brought her in at all. Hey. HEY. YOU. WAKE UP."

Kirok started slapping the asari around a pit, prodding at the blue lump of flesh on the floor in an attempt to get her conscious again.

Oh, for the small blessings of shock absorbers, for without them, Ana would probably have snapped her neck in three places. As it was, when she came to, she had splitting back- and headaches from the fall, and there was definitely a crumple zone in her armor from where she hit Kirok’s crest.

Those things weren’t just for show, after all.

As her eyes slowly opened and she realized that there was a massive krogan jabbing her in the side, they snapped wide and she tried to roll onto her feet, swinging her ‘tooled arm up and banging the deposit box (which was still attached by the blade) into his shoulder.

“Shit, shit, sorry, shit--”

The box, which had taken a lot of stress recently, simply split open along the melted edge, spilling its contents – a trio of thankfully-durable datapads – to the floor. There was a moment’s pause, during which she looked from them to Kirok and back, after which she broke off the metal, scooped them up, and started running.

“Sorryaboutthatwelltime’s’a’wastin’let’sgo!”

"YER TH' WORST BURGLAR I EVER DONE MET," Kirok roared as he chased after her.

"I GOT THE GOODS, DIDN'T I?!"

Hardware collapsed into portable containers, Jil'Korah made a break for the door to the rooftop. "Okay, working mobile, this won't hold for long. Get out of there!"

Almost as he spoke, an alarm went off within the bank, making its way towards local law enforcement, redirecting to more distant stations when it found the route blocked. A VI within the local station noticed heightened traffic at other nodes and a chokepoint at its own, and compensated by opening new paths, only to be bombarded with calls from the same block as the bank. Shit was very quickly hitting the fan, and as the quarian primed the engines on the car distant authorities were suiting up to deal with the situation.

"People get moving..." Ali said packing up his equipment he followed Jil up to the roof and placed it in the car. Then he moved to the ledge and grabbed an old punisher sniper rifle from his back.

"Still providing cover... but I won't stay long so you ladies better start moving, you too Kirok."

The competition was quickly left with nothing to shoot at except rebelling hostages, as Shirin popped her tac cloak and hurried down the stairs. She glanced towards the back door - still open, no Kirok, no Ana. They must still be in the vault. A quick look out the back revealed that no one had come to investigate quite yet, but she could clearly hear sirens approaching.

"Swing around the back, it's clear at the moment. Just waiting on the retrieval team..."

You had to have faith in the people you worked with. You were already placing your life in their hands - distrusting them during the operation didn't do anybody any favors.

"They'll be here any second now."

"Okay deploying distraction now..."

It was simple really, people look where the fire is, and with one shot there was a fire in a parked aircar, right in front of the bank... well it wasn't there for long, seconds later it became a fireball, not that Ali had seen his handiwork he was in the car urging Jil - the driver - to "Go! Go! Go!"