Mass Effect: The Complete Novels 4-Book Bundle (23 page)

TWENTY-ONE

Like Anderson before him, Saren entered the refinery through an emergency door in one of the refinery’s small, two-story annexes. But while the lieutenant had gone through the maintenance building on the westernmost side of the refinery, Saren entered through the shipping warehouse on the east. And unlike his human counterpart, he didn’t bother with a disguise.

A pair of dockworkers saw him come in, their faces registering surprise and then fear at the sight of an armored turian carrying a heavy assault rifle. A quick burst from Saren’s weapon ended their lives before they had a chance to cry out for help.

The Spectre moved quickly through the warehouse and into the main building. Again, unlike Anderson, he knew exactly where he was going. He made his way down to the lowest levels of the refinery, where deposits of rock and ore rich in element zero were melted down and the bulk impurities skimmed off the boiling surface. The molten liquid was then piped to an enormous centrifuge to separate out the precious eezo. He killed three more employees along the way.

He knew he was getting close to his destination when he passed signs on the wall reading “Restricted Access.” He rounded a corner and yanked open a door with “Authorized Personnel Only” painted across it. A wall of hot, hazy air rolled out, stinging his eyes and lungs. Inside, half a dozen engineers were scattered on walkways built around and above the colossal melting vats and the massive generator core used to heat them. They were monitoring the refining process, keeping an eye on the equipment to ensure it operated at peak efficiency and didn’t experience a potentially deadly malfunction.

The employees were wearing headsets to protect their ears from the constant rumble of the turbines feeding the generator. One of them saw Saren and tried to shout out a warning. His words were swallowed up by the thunder of the turbines, as were the sounds of gunfire as the turian mowed them all down.

The slaughter lasted less than a minute; the Spectre was nothing if not brutally efficient. As soon as the last engineer died, tumbling from the catwalk into the vat of molten ore twenty meters below, Saren began the next phase of his plan.

There were too many hiding places here inside the refinery. Too many places Edan could bunker down behind a wall of armed mercs. Saren needed something to flush him out. A few strategically placed explosive charges would trigger a catastrophic series of explosions in the refinery core, setting off a general evacuation alarm for the entire facility.

Saren finished rigging the last of the munitions, then headed for the upper levels. He wanted to be well out of the blast radius when the charges detonated.

Kahlee was hungry, thirsty, and tired. But above all else she was scared. The krogan had told her Qian would be coming to see her in a few days, but that was all he’d said. Then he’d dragged her into a storage room and locked her inside the small, dark closet at the back. She hadn’t seen or spoken to anybody since.

She was smart enough to understand what they were doing. She didn’t know what Qian wanted, but it was obvious they were trying to break her will before the meeting. They’d left her for almost a full day in the cramped closet, in complete darkness with no food or water. There wasn’t even a bucket so she could go to the bathroom; she’d had to relieve herself in the corner.

After two or three days of this Qian would come to her with his offer. If she accepted, they’d feed her and give her something to drink. If she refused, they’d throw her back into the makeshift cell and come for her again in another three days.

If she refused them a second time, things would most likely get really nasty. Instead of starvation and mental abuse, they’d move on to actual physical torture. Kahlee had no intention of helping Dr. Qian in any way, but she was terrified of what was to come. Worst of all was the knowledge that in the end they’d win anyway. It might take days, maybe even weeks, but eventually the endless torture and abuse would break her and they’d get whatever they wanted.

During the first few hours of her imprisonment she’d sought some way to free herself, only to realize it was hopeless. She had fumbled in the darkness with the door of the closet, but it was locked from the outside and the interior handle had been removed. Plus, even if she did get out of the closet there were almost certainly guards waiting on the other side.

She couldn’t even escape by killing herself. Not that she was at that point yet, but the room she was in was completely empty: no pipes to hang herself from, nothing to use to cut or wound herself. She briefly considered the option of slamming her head over and over into the wall, but she would only succeed in knocking herself out and inflicting a lot of unnecessary pain—something she suspected there was already more than enough of in her future.

The situation was hopeless, but Kahlee hadn’t given in to total despair quite yet. And then she heard a noise; a sound sweeter than the singing of angels. The sound of salvation: automatic gunfire on the other side of the door.

Anderson kicked open the door that the two mercs had been guarding. Beyond it was a large storage room. All the equipment inside had been dragged out; it was empty except for a small table and several chairs. Four more batarian Blue Suns were sitting around the table playing some type of card game. And standing off alone in the corner was Skarr. Like the men outside, none of them were wearing body armor.

The krogan was his first target—a stream of bullets hit the krogan square in the chest. Skarr’s arms flew up and out as he was blown backwards, sending his gun sailing across the room. He struck the wall behind him, spun off it, and fell facedown on the floor, bleeding from too many wounds to count.

The mercs reacted to the sudden attack by flipping the table and scattering. Seeing Kahlee wasn’t in the room, Anderson simply sprayed the entire place with bullets. He took the whole lot of them out before they ever had a chance to fire back. It wasn’t a fair or honorable fight; it was a massacre. Considering the victims, Anderson didn’t even feel bad.

After the shooting stopped, he noticed a small door in the back wall. It probably just led into a closet, but it was reinforced with metal plating and sealed with a heavy lock.

“Kahlee?” he shouted, running over to bang on the door. “Kahlee, are you in there? Can you hear me?”

From the other side he heard her muffled voice calling back to him. “David? David! Please, get me out of here!”

He tried the lock, but it wouldn’t budge. He briefly considered blowing it off, like he had with the maintenance building door earlier, but he was worried the blast might injure Kahlee.

“Hold on,” he shouted to her. “I need to find the key.”

He took a quick glance around the room, his eyes coming to rest on the krogan’s body lying crumpled in the corner. A thick pool of blood crawled out from beneath him, spreading rapidly across the floor. If anyone in this room had a key, Anderson knew, it would be Skarr.

He ran over to the body, set his gun on the floor, and grabbed the krogan’s far shoulder with both hands, grunting at the effort necessary to roll him over onto his back. The krogan’s chest was a bubbling mess of blood and gore; at least a dozen bullets had ripped through his torso. His clothing was soaked and sticky with the warm, dark fluid.

Grimacing slightly, Anderson reached out to dig through his pockets. Skarr’s eyes snapped open and the krogan’s hand shot out and grabbed him around the throat. With a roar the beast stood up, lifting the lieutenant off the ground with one arm. The other dangled bloody and useless at his side.

Impossible!
Anderson thought, struggling like a helpless child as the krogan’s grip slowly crushed the life from him.
Nobody can survive those kinds of injuries. Not even a krogan!

Skarr must have seen the shock in his eyes. “You humans have a lot to learn about my people,” he growled, bits of bloody froth bubbling up from his lips as he spoke. “A pity you won’t live to tell them.”

Anderson kicked and flailed, but the krogan held him at arm’s length and his limbs were too short to reach his opponents body. Instead, he pounded down with his fists on Skarr’s massive forearm. His efforts did nothing but elicit a gurgling laugh from the krogan.

“You should be glad,” the bounty hunter told him. “You will have an easy death. Not like the female.”

Suddenly the room was rocked by a massive explosion from somewhere deep inside the refinery. Huge cracks appeared in the finish of the walls and several ceiling tiles fell to the floor. The ground beneath their feet buckled and heaved, throwing Skarr off balance. Anderson thrashed his body in that instant and managed to break free of the krogan’s grip, falling to the floor and gasping for breath.

Skarr staggered and stumbled, trying to stay upright. But his balance was hampered by his dead and useless arm, and he was weakened by the loss of blood. He fell heavily to the ground, only a few meters away from where Anderson had dropped his assault rifle.

Now free of the krogan’s grip, Anderson whipped out his pistol and fired. But he didn’t aim at the krogan. If a burst from an assault rifle hadn’t stopped Skarr, a single shot from a pistol would barely slow him down. Instead, Anderson aimed at the weapon laying beside the krogan, hitting it square and sending it skittering across the floor and just out of the bounty hunter’s reach.

Alarms started going off throughout the building; no doubt a response to the explosion. But Anderson had more immediate concerns. Armed only with the pistol, he knew he’d need a direct shot to the head to finish Skarr off. But the krogan leaped up and lunged toward him before he had a chance to take proper aim.

The bullet caught the krogan in his already paralyzed shoulder, but he just kept coming. Anderson dove to the side and rolled out of the way as his enemy howled in rage, narrowly avoiding being trampled to death.

But now Skarr was between him and the door, blocking any chance of escape. Anderson backed into the corner and raised his weapon again. But he was a fraction of a second too slow, and the krogan hit him with a quick biotic push that knocked the pistol from his hand and nearly broke his wrist.

Knowing the human was no match for him unarmed, the krogan slowly advanced. Anderson tried to feint and dodge, hoping he’d have a chance to make a grab for one of the weapons on the ground. But the krogan was cunning, and even with the injuries and blood loss he was quick enough to cut off the room, slowly working the lieutenant into a corner from which there was no escape.

The impact of the explosion sent Kahlee reeling through the darkness to slam face first into an unseen wall, knocking out one of her teeth and breaking her nose. She dropped to the floor and brought her hands up to her mangled face, tasting the blood flowing down her chin.

And then she noticed a small sliver of light coming from the edge of the door. The explosion must have jarred it off its hinges. Ignoring the pain of her injuries, she jumped up and backed away until she felt the wall behind her. Then she took three hard steps and threw herself shoulder first into the door.

The damage to the frame must have been extensive, because the door gave way on her first attempt, sending her sprawling into the room beyond. She hit the ground hard, landing on the same shoulder she’d used to knock open the door. A jolt of pain shot through her arm as the shoulder popped out of the socket. She sat up, shielding her eyes from the sudden brightness of the room after all the hours she’d spent in absolute darkness.

“Kahlee!” she heard Anderson scream. “Grab the gun! Shoot him!”

Squinting in the light, half blind, she fumbled around on the ground and wrapped her hands around the barrel of an assault rifle. She pulled it in and grabbed the handle as an enormous shadow suddenly loomed above her.

Acting on instinct, she pointed and pulled the trigger. She was rewarded with the unmistakable sound of a krogan roaring in pain, and the immense shadow fell away.

Blinking desperately to restore her vision, she was just able to make out the form of Skarr stumbling away from her, clutching at his stomach and looking at her in rage and disbelief.

And then Anderson stepped into view right beside him. He jammed the nose of his pistol against the side of the krogan’s skull and fired. Kahlee turned away an instant too late—the sight of Skarr’s brains being blown out through the far side of his head and splattering across the wall was one that would probably haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life.

And then David was there, crouching on the ground beside her.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Can you walk?”

She nodded. “I think I dislocated my shoulder.”

He thought for a second, then said, “I’m sorry for this, Kahlee.” She was about to ask him
for what
when he grabbed her by the wrist and collarbone, yanking hard on her arm. She screamed in agony, nearly passing out as the shoulder popped back into place.

David was there to catch her so she didn’t fall over.

“You bastard,” she mumbled, flexing her fingers to try and work the numbness out of them. “Thank you,” she added a second later.