Cantenelli sat in one of the two co-pilot's chairs flanking Mickey's pilot seat in the Acheron. His arm was propped on the rest, while his knuckles were pressed against his forehead in a thoughtful, if somewhat restless, manner. Milenya's assessment  had him rolling thoughts through his mind, wondering at the Cerberus connection to the site. It wasn't hard to connect them as the funding, but why would they fund a dig like this if there was nothing for them to gain? Her mentioning of the site predating the Protheans gave him only a moment's thought. He wasn't schooled in archeo-tech and beyond weapons and ship design, Prothean technology didn't mean much to him.<br/><br/><span style="color: blue">Do what you can if its valuable, but stay focused.</span>He replied to Milenya's comment about returning with samples.<span style="color: blue">Our priority is the artifact.</span><br/><br/>A barrage of excited noise that Cantenelli identified as their overly enthusiastic engineer celebrating the bounty of equipment on the freighter blasted loudly in the cockpit, making him wince slightly at the sudden onslaught.<span style="color: blue">That's great. Keep it together. We're still in potentially hostile territory.</span>He told her, then muttered slightly, switching his receive off.<br/><br/><span style="color: blue">I swear, that woman abandons caution the moment she finds something she can sell.</span><br/><br/><span style="color: Cyan">Well it isn't all that bad.</span>Mickey added, looking at the Captain.<span style="color: Cyan">She does like to party without her clothes on.</span>He chuckled, and Cantenelli did have to raise an eyebrow slightly and half nod in reluctant agreement.<br/><br/>Mickey chuckled again,<span style="color: Cyan">Shit, who would have thought we'd be here, though, huh? <i>Privateer</i>. Up to it in Asari with low inhibitions. Wish you had told me that part.</span><br/><br/>The musing was cut short when an alarm sounded on the bridge. In a flash both men had their consoles open. Cantenelli paged to the alert status.<span style="color: blue">Proximity alert?</span>He said, confused. The alert was only supposed to sound if the ship detected unknown contacts within one mile.<br/><br/>Mickey's eyes widened as he looked at his readout.<span style="color: Cyan">Holy shit! The whole fucking site just lit up like a Christmas tree!</span><br/><br/>Cantenelli  jumped up out of his seat, running down the gangway as the bridge was suddenly full of screams and yells of surprise and fear from the people on the surface.<span style="color: blue">Falkris! Mass contact! It's a trap!</span>He yelled, entering the armory and suiting up.<br/><br/><br/>***<br/><br/><br/>Falkris had been patrolling the line, watching the crew as much as the approach to the ship. He stopped when they made contact, listening for only a moment through the screams and Cantenelli yelling the obvious. He heard the shouts, the screams, his mind cutting through the chaos to discern a single message from the noise. Whatever had attacked, appeared as though from the abyss, and was not an enemy combat unit.<br/><br/><span style="color: red">Hold the line!</span>He shouted, then broke rank, discarding the token Avenger he had been carrying and drawing the Tanathis heavy pistol at his hip while he sprinted down Acheron's bay door, out across the lava plane toward the looming shadow of the freighter.<br/><br/><br/>***<br/><br/><br/>The husk had a hold of her, its body pinning her against the wall while its hands groped across her body. Shira'Va shouted as much in fear as anger as she pushed against the husk, trying to shove it off of her, but it was too strong. She struggled in vain, her head jerking as she felt its fingers find the edge beneath her mask. She could see it in the thing's expressionless face, could feel it in those glowing blue receivers in place of its eyes, it knew it found a weakness. Then, it was a spray of blue fluid and flesh, a collection of limbs without a body, falling.<br/><br/>Shira dropped to a knee as the husk's body parted and fell from the blast, what remained of its arms still reaching and grabbing at the floor. The Quarian, shaken, forced herself back to her feet, taking her shotgun back from Kala. There was no time to say thank you, no time to even think. The husks in the vent had shoved their way past the remnants of the others Shira had gunned down. They sprang out, crawling, running, and Shira and Kala were on the wrong side of them. They were cut off from the cargo bay's gaping exit with husks in front and a tall row of cargo on the right.<br/><br/>Shira fired, back peddling, as the husks turned on them. Shira fingered the trigger again, but the clip was spent. She dropped to a knee, years of marine training having taught her the motion so well that it required no thought, no conscious effort. Her hand was down, lifting a new thermal clip, then up, the edge of her palm ejecting the spent clip,  and with a twist of her wrist the new clip was in. She jammed the slide, looking at the closest husk as it came within arm's reach, bearing down on her. Her thumb squeezed a catch on the grip, her finger pulling down the trigger. The overcharged shot kicked the gun back in her hand as the barrel's end flashed red in a blaze of red and white heat. The shot obliterated the husk, blowing it backwards as it exploded into viscera.<br/><br/>Then Shira was back on her feet, back peddling, firing again. The husks pushed them further back, further away from the escape, each that fell being replaced by another emerging from the vent, or around the cargo stack. Two more husks emerged from further down the cargo row, surrounding them, running to close the gap while Shira'Va was occupied trying to kill the husks pushing them back. From above, a pair of blue eyes looked over the edge of the row of cargo, another husk ready to drop down on them from above.<br/><br/><br/>***<br/><br/><br/>Sorv moved with Firas, firing madly into the husks as they appeared in wave that never ended. They moved back to back, through a doorway, cut down two husks that charged from the left, another that ran from behind. Sorv lifted his Tempest in time to remove the head of a husk clambering over the wall, then another that charged from a doorway to the right. Only in instants and moments did he release his finger from the trigger, to re-target, to reload.<br/><br/>The thundering report of the Revenant at his back was unending. Sorv fired again, shooting low to gun the legs out from a husk in a doorway, the next husk behind stumbling clumsily on the fallen torso clawing its way toward them, giving Sorv the time to reload again.<br/><br/><i>Too fast</i>. He smacked the clip in and fired. They were going through clips too fast. Fighting wasn't an option, they had to get out before they were all empty and the only things keeping the flesh-machine monstrosities from ripping them apart were rendered little better than clubs. He followed Firas, keeping their backs clear as they moved, trusting the Turian as he led them back through the partitions, into a mess hall. There were too many doors in the mess hall, and the open ceilings meant that if the damn things ever figured out that they didn't need to use the doors to flood in on them, it would be over.<br/><br/>The husks pushed through the doors faster than the two could fire, and through more doors than they could cover. They charged between the tables, scrambled across them, knocking the plates of unattended food across the floor.<span style="color: DarkOrange">Break for the exit!</span>Sorv yelled, hitting his omni-tool, a drone materializing in front of him. He set to engage with extreme prejudice, and detonate upon destruction.<br/><br/>He broke from the husks, running with Firas across the mess hall for the door that would lead them closer to the all important airlock to the now comparably safe hellish volcano planet outside. They shot down the husks coming from the door as they ran, the drone display on Sorv's visor indicating that it was firing its discharge gun on cool down, upsetting the husks with electric shocks more than harming them, but drawing them off, buying them time.<br/><br/><span style="color: blue">Confirmed, back to the airlock! Cover the exit ramp!</span>Firas yelled into the comms in response to Darion and the chatter of confusion.<br/><br/><br/>***<br/><br/><br/>The husks chased Darion and Maethia as they went out the window, clambering across the beds and scrambling to throw themselves out among the shattered glass, only to jerk and fall back as the two fired on them. More husks emerged from the doors, over the walls, diving and clawing at them in a mad fight to reach them before they were gunned down. But, as accurate as their aim may have been, the husks had no end.<br/><br/>The husks paid no mind to the grenade as Darion threw it through the shattered window. And then, in a blast of heat that made the air ripple around it, the whole of living quarter was consumed in hellfire. The sheets erupted, burning to ash as the flames clung to the walls, the ceiling, the floor. It had consumed everything inside, burning pictures and lockers even as the desecrated bodies of their owners flailed like living, walking torches.<br/><br/>The husks clambered out of the window, staggering and shrieking as the flesh was burned from the electrical components, stripping them of the last vestige of humanity that the machines huddled inside. But even as a half dozen husks burned, a half dozen more emerged, charging them.<br/><br/>Gunning their way through the doorways and walkways, hounded at every step from ever changing angles - to the right, left, above, behind - Darion and Maethia had two ways further through the facility, leading back toward the airlock. One, a narrow corridor in a direct route toward the central walkway, flanked on either side by windows looking in on labs, the other leading to a series of standing relic patricians, honeycombed together that would take them off a direct route.<br/><br/><br/>***<br/><br/><br/>Ashana grabbed her helmet, putting it back on as quickly as she could without injuring herself, turning to see the husk already back up and moving toward her. She readied herself when the glowing blue ring in the husks gut sparked as a bullet punched a hole in it. The husk jerked, falling, its limbs spasming and jerking while it, slack jawed, looked at Ashana with those baleful blue eyes, in a half horrified half enraged shout. It tried to move, but its bodies communication had been interrupted by the shot, each individual component now struggling against every other trying to urge the attack on.<br/><br/>Ashana stood quickly, looking down at the husk for a moment. She cocked her head slightly as Milenya asked a question, her attention locked on the husk, quietly looking at it, considering its form. She lifted her arm, curling her hand into a fist, focusing biotic energy. She dropped to a knee and drove her fist down in a single, fluid motion, hammering it into the top of the husks head, the contortion of gravity and induced mass of her fist channeled into it rippling through the grey flesh and warping the machine beneath, cracking and splattering it across the floor in a blue-black spray. The bodies volatile spasms reduced to an occasionally flopping, both nervous centers of the husk now destroyed.<br/><br/><span style="color: DarkOrchid">Good...</span>she breathed, standing, the feeling of the husk's head giving way lingering in her skin. They could be killed by biotics.<br/><br/>The sound of cracking glass snapped her attention back to the world around her. A husk's arm was flailing about in the room, through a hole it had managed to put in the window. It bashed its shoulder against the opening, trying to widen it, then grabbed the broken glass edges and began prying them off, snapping off pieces and chunks, widening the opening, while the other two husks at the window also managed to gain enough of an edge to begin dismantling the reinforced glass by hand.<br/><br/><span style="color: DarkOrchid">Let's go!</span>Ashana yelled at Milenya making for the door, Firas and Darion both coming to the conclusion to fall back directly to the airlock over the comms. She left the office, and looked up, once again able to see the cavern walls around them. The husks were everywhere, like spiders, emerging from every crack and crevice, crawling down the cavern walls, skeletons of blue lights scrambling down to kill the intruders in the nest.<br/><br/><span style="color: DarkOrchid">Shit... </span>She breathed, looking back around at the grey walls around them.<span style="color: DarkOrchid">Stay close!</span>She yelled and started back toward the airlock.<br/><br/>At any protest or demand from Milenya to try and salvage anything from the site, Ashana promptly replied,<span style="color: DarkOrchid">To hell with the research, doc!</span><br/><br/>Two husks emerged in their path, and Ashana gave them no second thought, firing off a biotic throw field into the husk behind the other, sending it skidding across the rough floor of the cavern, past several standing artifacts. The second she ran to meet, ducking under its grab, spinning around behind it, making it turn as it grasped madly after her. She charged a strike, driving her palm into its back, the husks structure unable to handle the stress broke and tore, separating except for a few cables still loosely attaching upper and lower body.<br/><br/>The semi severed torso hit the ground then grabbed her leg, dragging itself toward her, no longer having the leverage to drag her down.<span style="color: DarkOrchid"><i>Damn,</i></span>she thought,<span style="color: DarkOrchid"><i>its all or nothing with these things.</i></span>She heard the other husk back on its feet, stomping back toward her, and quickly reached down to grab the torso clinging to her, enveloping it in a biotic shift, reducing its effective mass. It floated easily as she lifted it, its hand slipping from her ankle. She gave it a toss in the direction of the charging husk, and sent a throw after it, bracing herself.<br/><br/>In her mind she recited one of Aria's biotic principles that had been taught to her. Two opposing biotic fields will destabilize one another. Then explode. The throw hit the lift field and, in the split second the two collided, the fields rippled together, the gravitational forces in opposition, the induced masses in conflict, shuttering, fighting one another in a escalating atomic disagreement until the energy became too much. Being so close to the resulting blast nearly knocked Ashana off her feet, sending the eviscerated remains of the husk torso rocketing into the other husk, the metal components hitting it like grapeshot, the cables wrapping around it, knocking it back.<br/><br/>While Ashana tangled with the lead two, another husk emerged behind them, deciding that Milenya was the more apt target, and charging her. As it ran down the corridor, a husk pulled itself up on top of the partition wall above her, then flung itself down at her to try and grab her.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>