Calypso thumped over to the sleeping Geth Prime, squinting at it through her viewplate. "Zero, commander. But I don't like this. Being surrounded by these inactives gets my spine crawling like nothing else." She took a few steps back and lifted the arm with the launcher built in, firing a single flashing charge against the Prime's abdomen. "Nobody get within half a meter of that thing if you value being physically whole," she said dryly, and Cole scoffed.<br/><br/>The Infiltrator leaned over a glowing node that stuck out of the wall, displaying information in bits and bytes. The node looked relatively new compared to the rest of the room, the welds mounting it to the wall likely only hours old. Whoever had been here ahead of them had come prepared. "Arty, switch to EM visuals," he murmured, and his visor blinked as it reconfigured. In moments he could see the lines of energy in the walls themselves, glowing a dense variety of colors though the titanium compound. "Isolate datastreams pertaining specifically to station security, Arty, we need to find out who else is here and quick. Link up with AIDEN if you need to and boost your processing power." He switched to active comms and glanced at Reese. "Might have something here, Commander. This node here, it's new compared to everything else. Looks like it was designed to mine information. Not sure on the language it's using, never seen it before--"<br/><br/><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px"><i>Alert: Security alarms triggered. Platforms F-1110672 through 1120865 activating. Unable to countermand.</i></span></span><br/><br/>"--oh, fuck my eyes. Incoming." He looked up as a hub lit up like a Christmas tree, the six geth platforms jerking erratically as they came to life. Docking tubes and charging lines withdrew and the nearest one's eye whirled with light and its trunk-like neck twisted to look up and directly at Cole. He heard the thump of gunfire as Calypso unleashed her big gun on an entire node, shredding all six platforms as they turned on. Faustus stepped in next to him, unslinging a heavy shotgun, and Cole took a knee as he drew his SMG.<br/><br/>He'd gotten a lot of funny looks before for his loadout of choice. Sniper rifle, heavy pistol sidearm,<i>and</i>a submachine gun? Didn't it impede his movement? Sure it did, sometimes. The SMG in particular was a dense model, designed for lower rate of fire but higher punch per round, but his rebuttal had always been the same.<br/><br/>Ask the corpses I leave behind if it's 'too much'. They'll probably agree.<br/><br/>"Artemis, warp rounds."<br/><br/><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px"><i>Confirmed, warp rounds loaded.</i></span></span><br/><br/>The gun bucked in his hand as a spray of slugs, each one coated in a dense electric blue shell of his biotic energy. They were designed to shred armored targets, and the first geth he hit was torn apart before it could raise shields. The second and third did activate in time, but the fire rate of the weapon compensated for the energy barriers readily enough. The second fell before getting a round off, but the third scored Cole's own barriers with a spray from its pulse rifle. He ducked and rolled behind cover as the SMG's heat sinks ejected and hissed in the cold vacuum of the station, swearing under his breath as another node activated. He saw Talyet moving out of the corner of his eye, a flicker of shadow, but dismissed the drell mentally. He knew how to survive on his own terms, or else he wouldn't be here.<br/><br/>Cole stood again, barely poking himself over his cover to open fire on another pair of platforms as they stepped away from the wall. In the corner of his HUD Artemis's owl avatar appeared, wings flapping slightly. He glanced at it and activated exterior comms. "Commander, access secured! Downloading station records, we'll need--" Artemis displayed a timer above her head, six minutes and counting, "--six mikes." He looked her way. "Missed the smell of being in the shit a little. Good to be back," he quipped dryly. Before he could hear her response, if she even gave one, a violent explosion threw him onto his back, his barriers sputtering and flaring out as he landed.<br/><br/>He coughed and wheezed, blinking back the temporary blindness. His gun had slid clear, and he groped for it blindly as he tried to sit upright. A deep electronic humming sound cut through his comms, and a red light twelve feet off the floor focused down on him. The Geth Prime stepped clear of the blast cloud, its white armor scorched but otherwise unharmed from Calypso's blast charge. "Hi," he said to the towering machine.<br/><br/>"BRBRBRBRBRBRBRRRRBRBR," it replied.<br/><br/>"Good talk." He grabbed his pistol and fired until it ejected its own thermal clip, the rounds pinging off the heavy shielding. He holstered it and scrambled backward as the Prime advanced, gathering a fistful of biotic energy. "Smile for the camera, motherfucker!" Cole threw, lobbing the bolt of energy in a sharp arc that slammed into the Prime platform. It scattered across its shields and bright light flared, causing it to stagger to a halt; Cole's special move. It didn't last long, but he found more often than not a few instants of blinding stasis were just enough to save his own ass. It was enough time to get to his feet and grab the SMG again, leveling the weapon at his hip and spraying another full heat sink's worth of rounds into the shields. "Little help...!" he called as the Prime shifted, turning its angry red eye on him once more.