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

As Mekan rattled off his (probably appropriate) words of warning, Spiza quietly got up and walked behind the counter, quietly brushing his hand against the underside of its railing and grazing a biometric seal. The side panel adjacent to it slid down, and Spiza rapidly started removing various bits of equipment from it - including a small stack of grenades, an OSD filled with a variety of lethal executables, and last but not least, a battered-looking set of camo-laden armor. He immediately started fastening them onto his limbs; by the time Mekan had finished speaking, he’d donned a ugly green helmet and was busy testing the trigger mechanism for the close-range warrior’s favorite toy.

A single, white-hot sheet of metal shot free of it, arcing into a lethal swoop that blasted heat onto the salarian’s helmet. The Engineer turned to the side and swung his arm against the counter; it cleaved through nearly two feet of plascrete before rapid cooling and torque snapped it off his wrist.

Agreed, he said, eyeing Kirok. Let’s move.

I am going to die.

---

Hundreds upon hundreds of levels, a crouching behemoth of metal, glass, and stone hewn from the core of the planetoid up above, the arcology towered over it’s neighbors like a king among men. Thousands of windows lit with the patchwork glow of Omegan lights. Riddled with tunnels, docks, and passageways. All Hail Juni, Lord of the Slums.

It was a city within a city, with its own social stratas, it’s own political hierarchy. A self contained ecosystem of the corrupt and the civilian, the paramilitary and the gangster. They could sense outsiders here, they could smell them. Typically it got you nothing more than a second look, a curious glance.

But not today.

Oh no.

The locals could tell a storm was brewing, from the foundations up to the very tip of the blinking scarlet spike that topped the structure. The halls were still populated of course; life, after all, must go on. But eyes stayed were on doors. Hands in pockets, clasped around the hilts of knifes, the grips of guns.

Nobody strayed far from home. Nobody traveled alone. There was almost no noise, no shouting, no calls back and forth across the corridors.

And nobody looked at the band of Golden Fangs as they boarded the elevator, the arrow flashing down.

Mekan's hardsuit boots squished slightly as he tried to keep pace from the rear of the squad's formation. He grunted a little as he moved a small pile of refuse out of the way to move his leg over it. "I'm so glad I can't smell anything through this helmet."

The squad had opted for an approach through the Juni Arcology sewers. Adar's schematics were proving useful so far; they didn't seem to have gotten lost yet. Mekan brought up a small 'minimap' of sorts on his HUD that was tied into his OT as he tried to keep his breathing level and stop imagining the stench. The new Valkar military-issue helmet was proving useful for that fact, too. "I'm trying to tie into that sensor net, but the connection's a little fuzzy. Gimme a sec...Aha, finally! There we go." He grinned behind his faceplate. "Uploading sensor net data to everyone's HUDs and OTs. We can stop wandering around half-blind."

The air was almost oppressive with a foul stench, the result of the excrement of over a million aliens with questionable health and rotting bodies. When Mekan uploaded the results of his HUD to their suits, Spiza almost wished he hadn't - they could now see that the trench leading through the center of the tunnel was filled almost to Kirok's height with filth of every type. It fizzed, it surged; a filmy bubble swelled ten feet of them and threatened to burst, to leave them covered what could only be called "alien shit."

More, the sewers branched out into a broad network of tunnels and substrata, many of which narrowed down fast - the result of a sewer system on the highest-traffic space station in the Terminus. Many of them narrowed down to single-file, some down even to a quarter of a meter in diameter - they would need to choose their route well.

Worst of all were some of the bodies lying on the floor around them. THey were all, thankfully, deceased - it was difficult to fathom the idea of trying to get through here without some blessed filter to guide the way. They were all stripped bare, however - all armor, clothing, and weapons stripped from their owners...whose wounds festered and grew with bacterial filth.

Some of them looked chewed apart...though nothing living appeared on their sensors.

Yet.

"Hrrrrrm. Dat don't look like no gunfight t'me. Whitefang, go getcha a smell! Go'wan!"

As the varren lunged off to sniff at the bodies, Kirok picked up a floating... leg... and examined it thoroughly.

"Hrrrrrm. Vorcha, it looks like. Got the teeth shape and incisions right here. Though looks like someone's been doin' some scorchin here - third degree burns onna thighs an shit. Someone's got flamethrowers - or incindiaries, or some weird techno tricks, or some shit. Dey's got fire, though. Be careful. Could be trapt down here."

Kirok made a clicking noise under his throat and Whitefang bounced back, carrying a treat in her mouth. Carefully, he unholstered his claymore and fit a bayonet on the end of it. There was grin on his face; he'd see some action by the end of the night, oh yes siree.

Spiza quietly gagged behind his helmet. To brave this tunnel was bad enough. Doing it without a helmet or filters...

Spiza made a note not to pet the varren. Or breathe near it. Or really be anywhere near it ever again.

At the mention of flamethrowers, the cogs in Mekan's head turned quickly. "Scorched...flamethrowers...vorcha...Wait a second." Using his OT and his fuzzy wireless connection, he pulled up a recent report by none other than Job of Voice of Omega radio. "There's been Blood Pack activity down here in the sewers, hasn't there? Think they did this?"

"Charming."

In the back of their little group, standing in between the man with the schematics and codes and the man with the security feeds, Nikolai stood. Calf deep in filth and quietly, devoutly, thankful that he'd had the biohazard suit and the breathing apparatus waiting in the car. Both for the somewhat...obvious reasons (the aforementioned calf deep stream of filth with the greater gulf of sewage beyond) and the measure of privacy it afforded him.

Privacy he was currently taking advantage of to roll his eyes at their de facto pointman and Whitefang.

Behind him Canius loomed, silent, inscrutable, and utterly heedless of the current conditions he found himself in.

Or maybe he was rolling his eyes too, it was somewhat hard to tell expressions through the utterly faceless helm.

Figures. They finally get on-mission and he can't even light up a smoke. Instead, to distract himself, Collar accessed the sensor network and tied in his targeting VI. It wouldn't make a huge difference, but it never hurt to have a bit more accuracy*.

As the krogan examined the corpses, Collar carefully stepped past him, taking point. "Good job, Doctor. We now know there are vorcha down here, just as we suspected," he deadpanned, switching his omnitool scanners to active. "Sweeping for traps. Standby."

There was a brief pause as a pale white beam emitted from the omnitool, scanning ahead. The mercenary growled softly at the base of his throat as the results came up. "Oh, nasty. Shitmines. Watch for the mounds of shit - literally - they're rigged to blow. That'd be a sad way to go."

Kirok snarled as the batarian moved up. Okay, so that made two batarians on this mission that would likely get shot.

Kirok was really, really starting to hate batarians.

Only vorcha could have come up with such a dehumanizing way to die.

Shitmines.

Shitmines.

"...Are you fucking serious?" Mekan's question was a rhetorical one, but no less baffled than would be expected of anyone who just heard the word 'shitmine' on a black op.

"As much as the prospect of being torn to pieces by a mound of detonating feces appeals to me I do think we still have a job to complete." You can't see behind the saurian mask but you know, you just know he's smiling that same grin. The saying about cats and canaries applies here.

Also canaries and coal mines funnily enough.

Speaking of which:

"Mr. Spiza, if you'd kindly direct us forward?"

Right.

Spiza was the leader.

It was time for him to lead.

And die in the most ignoble death ever.

Spiza took a deep, mercifully clean breath, and nudged his way past the krogan and his pet varren to take a step forward.

The ground here was slick; far slicker than it had any right to be. A flood of hanar waste had coagulated and formed a scummy, oily surface, and the grips of his combat boots slipped on the even smoother plascrete tile lining the sewer trench. It was going to be a long, arduous walk for the next twenty meters or so, with him thinking all the while that if he died, he would rather his death never to be publicized - vanishing off the face of the galaxy would be a much, much more palatable legacy than being known for snuffing it in a varrenshit geyser.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Squelch.

Spiza's boot clamped down on a particularly filthy, unidentifiable object, and he slipped wildly, his legs skidding to the side as he slid down a shallow, yet practically frictionless incline. Shouting with fear and surprise, he slid straight toward one of the laced mines, and scrambled hard to the side, jamming his omnitool's controls to throw up his barriers before he even came close to it.

He slowed, inching further and further towards the mine.

Closer...


...Closer...

He halted.

...

Nothing happened.

He sighed.

Then the mine exploded.

Spiza's shield flared with a bright azure light, sparing him one of the worst deaths known to sentient-kind, but even as his eyes stopped widening in fear, a choir of inhuman hisses roared from down the tunnel. Ahead of them, a series of bright red gleams flared to life in Mekan's makeshft HUD, and six- no, seven feral-looking vorcha came hounding down the tunnels toward them!

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

The STG at work, ladies and gentlemen.

Collar raised his assault rifle and dropped to one knee. "Form up behind me, let them come to us!"

((Oh, shit.))

Scrolls dammit, Dickissel.

"Hub" She commanded her warbeast. It turned it's head slightly to her voice. "Kill." She points at the vorcha. It digs it's claws into the trash and tears through the mess in it's pursuit of the target. Vibroblades whipped from it's tail towards the feral creatures. It leaps towards the mob, fangs flashing out.

The vibroblades flew out, whirlind death through the air and skidding past Spiza's helmit as they hurtled towards the vorcha. Several of them hit their target, slamming into their armor, and--

Wait.

Not armor.

Armored skin.

These particular vorcha had adaped distressingly well for swimming through the sewers, it was obvious. Horrifying, fetid teeth, disease dripping from their eyeballs, a rash of green infective sewage glistening off their tongue...and a set of insanely thick scale plates across their torso, strong enough to withstand any waste disposal turbine. The blades thwacked uselessly against their skin - and fell uselessly to the ground.

The rounds whizzed over the group's shoulders, cold, glacial blue. The metal pings of the handgun deep and rhythmic. Ahead of them the leading elements of the vorcha horde fell; their legs, their arms, their chests encased in ice. Spreading. Crystal seeds branching out to draw their slimy scabrous flesh closer into it's crushing embrace.

The groan and crackle of rime was audible, even over the hissing and strangled roars.

A pause, a fraction of a second, and then the air was split by a flurry of spikes. Red hot, flash forged, sparks blooming in their wake.

Fire met frost and steam screamed into existence.