Shira'Va was unloading her shotgun as fast as she could, but the husks were still gaining ground.<span style="color: Indigo">You Bosh'tets!</span>She yelled, furiously firing, looking behind her just in time to see the other husks moving to flank them. She turned, firing off a quick few rounds at them knowing it would at best only slow them down. They were in the jaws of the beast now, and no matter how many rounds Shira fired at them, how many teeth she knocked out, the jaws were closing on them. Her shotgun's thermal clip was expended, but she didn't have the time to reload it. She slapped it on her hip, drawing her Predator, firing at them.<span style="color: Indigo">Come on!</span>She yelled at the husks, her rounds now doing barely registerable damage.<span style="color: Indigo">Come on!</span><br/><br/>When she caught a brief glimpse at Kala's idea, she had no time to consider it, no time to determine whether it was suicide or not. It was the only thing they had. The large canister punctured as Kala shot it, letting out a high pitched whistle as the pressurized high energy gas jetted out  the side. When Kala's ignite hit it, the Helium 3 and Hydrogen mixture ignited, the gas jet turning into a burning plasma torch of blinding white light. Shira fell back with Kala toward the husks at their back, her shotgun blasts having at least slowed them down.<br/><br/>Kala counted down the moments until the canister's integrity would be compromised by the heat generated by the white hot plasma blasting out the side while Shira counted her shots. When Kala went down and grabbed Shira, the Quarian kicked the crate containing the canister across the floor with all her strength into the group of encroaching husks, the errant plasma spear cutting off one of the husks's legs as it skidded into it. She then hit the shield overcharge on her suit, directing all excess energy to double her barrier strength, then grabbed Kala wrapping herself around the Human as best she could to shield her from the coming blast, while firing at the husks at their back that were now mere feet away.<br/><br/>They reached for them, Shira'Va getting a good look at their horrific visage, and seeing several husks on top of the cargo stack. The husks above leaped toward them, their arms reaching... ten arms all closing in. Shira closed her eyes and huddled around Kala.<br/><br/>The canister reached critical hull integrity, the plasma melting away the plating until the gasses expelled, expanded and ignitedl. Shira 's visor darkened automatically to prevent any retinal damage from the intensity of the light. Her shields sparked and flared madly as they were bombarded by thermal radiation. The husks that were standing were all but incinerated  above the ankles by the heat from the blast, the ones diving down on them becoming little more than smoking black debris. Shira kept herself around Kala, gripping her tightly and keeping her eyes squeezed shut as alarms began going off in her helmet, warnings flashing up all across her HUD. She could feel the heat, even through her rapidly depleting shields and complex insulation of her suit.<br/><br/>She waited for a few moments after she felt the heat subside before she opened her eyes, relaxing her grip on Kala. She slowly looked around, past the glaring red warnings on her visor, surveying the damage in a mild state of awe. Ash drifted down through the air like black snow, all that remained of the husks that had been trying to kill them only moments ago. On the ground were portions of cables with dying blue light flicking inside, only a faint fluttering of motion left within.<br/><br/>Where the canister had been was now a glowing, white hot crater, the heat from the blast having melted everything around it, from crates in the cargo stack and their contents to the floor and wall plating of the ship. All that remained were the flowing ripples of the molten metal radiating out from the epicenter.<br/><br/>Shira sat up, and looked down at the boots of her suit which had been closest to the blast. The side of her right boot was scorched black, and she could already tell that several servos had been damaged and would need to be replaced. Even so, she was just grateful for still having a foot. She glanced at the readouts on her HUD. Her kinetic barriers were completely burnt out, four of the modular seals had been damaged, and her visor's spectral imaging had been overloaded and fried.<br/><br/>But she was alive.<br/><br/>It took a few seconds for her to collect her senses enough to hear the screams again, the sound of more husks. She got to her feet and grabbed Kala, hauling her up.<span style="color: Indigo">"Let's go!"</span>She began running, jumping over the cooling super hot metal at the blast site, and running for the exit. More husks emerged ahead, and she went right, between the breaks in the cargo stacks, trusting Kala to be right behind her.<br/><br/>They were out in the center of the cargo bay then, running for the exit. Shira saw the crew around them, most in the clutches of the husks. One woman was screaming, a husk having grabbed her from behind while she struggled in a blind panic to get free until the husk's grip around her head and neck jerked her head to an unnatural angle and she stopped flailing.<br/><br/>Shira wanted to stop and help, but this wasn't a fight. It was an ambush, and they were comically out numbered. She could see at least a dozen husks, and still more were emerging from seemingly nowhere. Ahead, standing at the lip of the bay was Taseer, firing her Avenger beside another crewman that had managed to get clear. She saw Kala and Shira and yelled,<span style="color: navy">"Come on! Get out of there!"</span><br/><br/>Shira flat out sprinted and, even with damaged servos in her right boot, she was quick. To Kala and Shira's left and right, husks were emerging, jumping down off cargo stacks, emerging from around corners, running to cut them off, to stop them. But the two kept just ahead of them, closing the gap to the exit. To Shira's right, another crewman was hit, the husk grabbing the rifle from his hands and throwing it across the bay, far out of his reach, then pushing him down to the ground. From the corner of her vision she caught a shadow dart across a gap in the cargo stacks toward the downed man, and suddenly the husk on top of him was in the air, flung sideways into a crate as the shadow hit it. She didn't take the time to see what it was. They had to get out.<br/><br/>As Kala followed behind Shira'Va, she suddenly found herself in the air, moving backwards, deeper into the bay before she hit the ground, nearly twenty five feet back the way she had come. Ahead, where she had just been, a husk stood, glaring at her, having reached her and thrown her back. It charged her, diving and hitting her in the chest, knocking her on her back, grabbing her wrists and screaming down at her. A quarter of its head was missing, the flesh about the side of its face and down across its shoulder, arm, and chest was blackened, burnt, mechanical components beneath exposed, some partially melted. The husk had been hit by the blast earlier, but was far enough away to not have been incinerated.<br/><br/>It grabbed her helmet between its hands, squeezing it. Alarms and warnings began sounding and Kala could feel the helmet being compressed, the visor cracking as the husk tried to either remove her helmet or crush her head in the process.<br/><br/>Then, the hateful look in the husks blue sensor eyes became one of imitated surprise as it was suddenly in the air, much as Kala had been moments ago, being lifted off the Human by a tall figure now standing over her. Falkris lifted the husk off Kala, one claw around the back of its neck, the other dug so strongly into the husk's lower back that his fingers were submerged in holes they had made, gripping the husks' spine. The Turian yelled in fury as he lifted the husk which flailed angrily in his grip, before he slammed the machine down on his knee, the solid plates of his armor impacting the spinal column, damaging the connection with a satisfying<i> crack</i>. The husk writhed as he tossed it aside, rolling as it futilely tried to stand back up, but its legs were jerking, receiving damaged data. He grabbed Kala by the arm, yanking her to her feet and half pushing her back toward the exit.<br/><br/><span style="color: red">Move!</span>He yelled at her, standing his ground, firing his pistol at the husk torso's head, the high impact yield round obliterating it, before he turned, firing at another of the husks, the round punching through its jaw, severing the top half of its head from its body. He fired again at another husk leaping off a cargo stack with its eyes on Kala. It tumbled to the ground, headless.<br/><br/>He fired again, his shot connecting, then again, paused to reload, then fired again and again. He took sparingly few steps back toward the exit, not compromising his aim for retreat. He was vulnerable, standing in the middle of the bay, firing at the unending army of husks, and the machines knew it. They broke from their pursuit of Kala, turning on him, surrounding him and closing in. A husk went down for every shot Falkris fired, but the Turian couldn't hope to kill them all. But, it bought Kala the time she needed to escape.<br/><br/>He looked back, past the growing number of husks between him and the exit, saw that the husks were breaking off the tiny group of survivors. The first husk to close the gap reached him, swinging its arm down to try and strike the Turian, but it swung at nothing but air. It seemed almost surprised at the speed at which the Turian had side stepped then drove the barrel of his gun into the side of the husk's head like a spike, damaging the instruments inside, setting the husk off balance. He fired at another husk closing in, trying to maneuver his way past the husks between him and the exit, ducking a swing and diving and rolling past another attempt to subdue him, getting nearly clear of the group, but as he tried to get back to his feet he was knocked down onto his chest by a sudden weight, grey flesh arms latching to him. He fired over his shoulder blindly at what was on his back. He felt the arms jerk, tried to shrug them off, pushing himself to his knees, then one knee, but the arms gripped him, would not relent, holding to him, weighing him down. He tried to get to his feet, to run anyway, but another husk came from his left, the weight on his back forcing him off balance, making it too difficult to aim. He fired, missed, felt the husk hit him. He tried to force it off, to take a vain step forward, but couldn't. He stumbled and fell, more of the husks catching up to him.<br/><br/><br/>***<br/><br/><br/>The drone's matrix collapsed, the energy releasing in an airburst that sent a solid thud through the site. It didn't kill the husks that had attempted to pile on it, but it dazed them, set them reeling back. Sorv and Firas made it through the door on the far side of the mess hall, the Turian firing a burst into the chest of a husk waiting around the corner. Sorv grabbed the doorframe to stop himself, turning quickly around, and closing the door to the hall, if nothing else eliminating one passage that husks could use to pursue them, slowing them down.<br/><br/>They had a brief moment without husks jumping down on them, and they ran as hard as they could, taking turns and bends, back toward the airlock. Firas watched the red dots closing in on them on his radar, saw them running alongside their position, just beyond the nearby walls. He watched a red dot appear ahead of them, knew it would be coming around the doorway in their path as they went through it. He didn't stop, or slow down, rather the Turian lifted his rifle over his shoulder, running toward the door. As expected, the husk emerged, right in their way, but was shortly after smashed in the face by the butt of Firas' Revenant as he took a running strike at it. The husk had its arms open to grab him, but they closed on empty space, its fingers only grazing across the Turian's armor as it fell.<br/><br/>Sorv fired a burst into the husk on the ground as they ran past it. They stayed ahead of the husks, closing in on the main walkway that ran through most of the center of the site.  They rounded a turn into a long, open area littered with standing relics - tables, platforms, what remained of pillars from the lost civilization. Past it all, through another doorway on the far side flanked by windows, they saw it: the metal grate walkway that would take them straight to the airlock!<br/><br/>"Go go GO!" Firas yelled, the two sprinting side by side as hard as their legs would allow. Firas saw a husk climbing over the partition ahead on his right. He raised his Revenant as he ran, squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. There was a flash of confusion in his mind just before the husk propelled itself into him, knocking him sideways into a dilapidated pillar. If not for the pillar, he would have been on the ground, but as he was left standing, he took advantage the turn of luck, lifting the Revenant over his head and bringing it down on the back of the husk's neck. The husk lurched at the hit and raised an arm over its head, slashing at the air to grab the weapon that struck him, looking up as Firas raised the weapon again, and smashed it back down, this time right on the machines face, the impact dislodging one of its mechanical eyes,  and buckling in what remained of its nose.<br/><br/>Sorv skidded to a stop to help, but cursed loudly as the pause gave the husks in pursuit all the time they needed to close the gap. The only way he could help was to keep the rest of the husks off Firas until he could run, so he aimed and fired, firing burst after burst at the encroaching husk hoard pouring through the door they had come from, then aiming up along the walls as the husks began clambering over.<span style="color: DarkOrange">Shit, shit!</span>He yelled, reloading and firing, abandoning the bursts and holding the trigger down, the rapidly increasing number of husks becoming like a flood of machine flesh over the walls and through the door. Sorv didn't have to aim anymore to hit anything. He just had to fire.<br/><br/>After Firas' second hit, the husk was dazed, or whatever constituted dazed to a machine. He kicked it off of him and looked down at his Revenant. He HUD uplink to the weapon read ::ERROR:: and he saw the thermal clip half sticking out of the port at an angle, the running hit to the husk earlier having dislodged it. He cursed, took half a glance around, saw the hoard closing in and ran for the door, smacking the side of the weapon as he ran, trying to break the jammed clip loose.<br/><br/>Sorv moved beside him, back peddling away from the mass of machine and grey flesh that poured over the walls at them. He couldn't see the other wall anymore, he couldn't see the relics. It was like they were consumed by an ocean of blue eyes. He couldn't count them all. He was afraid to.<br/><br/>He turned and ran, grabbing a hellfire grenade from his waist, priming it as he ran then dropping it. He couldn't see the husks as they closed in on the two, but he swore he could feel a dozen arms all reaching for him, mere inches away just before he and Firas made it through the door. The husk wall smashed into the partition, so many of them trying to get through the door at once they got stuck on one another, while the glass splintered and exploded as dozens of husks smashed into it, wailing on it to get through.<br/><br/>A moment later the grey flesh and blue lights became a sea of roaring red as the hellfire grenade went off, spewing flames that spread like wildfire, consuming the group. Sorv turned, looking back just long enough to see the husks break through the glass, leaping and falling out, like an ocean of fire spilling into the site's thoroughfare.  Then, just as quickly, he was moving again, running down the walkway toward the ramp up to the airlock.<br/><br/>Firas had abandoned his efforts to dislodge the Revenant's clip, deciding it was more important to secure the position first, sprinting with Sorv to the walkway. There were husks everywhere, he realized, watching them run past doorways and windows at their flanks in pursuit of the other teams, or in a few cases, them.<br/><br/>They reached the bottom of the ramp, and Sorv turned, quickly reloading and gunning down the husks that had broken off to follow them while Firas knelt and wrestled with the Revenant's clip. The approaching husks steadily grew in proximity and number, making Sorv glance down nervously at Firas, his own Tempest not having the stopping power necessary to stop the growing number of enemies.<br/><br/>Firas finally got the clip to budge, grabbed it and yanked it free, closing the breach, then inserting a new clip. He lifted his Revenant and fired, its thundering report like a beautiful serenade to his ears as it kicked into his shoulder. He leveled the Revenant, remaining crouched to stay under Sorv's line of fire, and cut down the husks coming at them with bursts of high powered rifle fire.<br/><br/>Sorv let out a breath of relief, set his tempest back on his hip and drew his Mantis. Now he could do what he good at. He quickly adjusted the Mantis' rail output, reducing the weapon's penetration, but also reducing its thermal discharge. it would give him two shots per clip instead of one. But against the husks, he knew he wouldn't need the weapon's full stopping power.<br/><br/>He backed up the ramp until he could see over the top of the partition walls, leaving Firas at the base of the ramp to keep the position clear with his heavy assault rifle, allowing him to sharp shoot. It didn't take a genius to figure out where the other two groups were. He watched husks bob up and over partition walls, run across portions of the facility that had roofs, all converging to a point on his right, and a point on his left. He judged Darion and Maethia's position to be much closer than Ashana and Milenya. He fired toward Darion and Maethia's position, thinking that Ashana would be in a better situation against an enemy that preferred to get up close and personal.<br/><br/><br/>***<br/><br/><br/>As Darion and Maethia ran down the corridor, their trackers indicated pings on either side, just beyond the labs. The passing windows revealed that the labs were roofed. The pings moving near them started closing in, likely now on top of the lab roofs, moving in to drop down on them. Behind them, husks ran down the hall after them. As long as they could maintain their pace they could stay ahead of the growing number of husks in pursuit.<br/><br/>Ahead, the two doors into the labs flanked the corridor. Darion and Maethia couldn't see the husk lying in wait, the many pings on their radar covering its own. As the two ran by, it leapt, its machine powered legs propelling it forward with great force. It hit Maethia hard, launching her off her feet and through the opposite lab door.<br/><br/>The force of their subsequent impact on the lab's floor sent both tumbling, the husk losing its grip on her and scrambling to right itself, while the asari's rifle skidded across the floor, bouncing off an examination table and coming to a rest well out of reach.<br/><br/>In the corridor, it would have taken Darion a moment to stop his momentum and double back to help. But that amount of time was all the husks would need to close the gap. Scrambling across the roofs, before Darion would have a chance to help Maethia, the husk would be on him, diving down, its weight pushing him away from the door, making the husks quickly closing in on them the greater threat.<br/><br/>As the husk that had tackled Maethia righted itself, it gave her a regarding look, following her gaze to the rifle, understanding that it was between her and her weapon. The machine, devoid of anything but the mockery of emotion, the imitation of feelings drawn from the neural pathways that it had invaded, still seemed to register a look of satisfaction.<br/><br/>It charged at her, swiping at her in wide arcs. While its attacks were not precise, the husk was far stronger than Maethia, its attacks aimed at doing damage as much as they were at trying to grab her and subdue the asari.<br/><br/>Outside the lab, the husks were closing in and, as if consciously aware of Darion and Maethia's separation, were focused on driving Darion away from the lab door. To make matters worse, they were coming for both ends of the corridor and diving down from above. Even as a skilled marksmen as Darion could be, the husk's numbers were still swelling, still closing in.  Every time Darion had to fire at a husk above him to keep it from dropping down on top of him, the others in the corridor closed the gap a little more, stepping over their fallen.  One husk behind him closed in, nearly in arms reach, though Darion caught it just in time - but as he turned to stop it, another husk leapt from above and behind him, off the lab roof, arms outstretched. Darion would have had just enough time to turn and see it, not to fire. Then, suddenly the husk's head was spray of blue liquid and shattered metal, a contrail cutting through the machine gore from the direction of the airlock. The husk's body somersaulted down, landing in a twitching heap on top of another charging husk.<br/><br/>Another husk appeared over the lip of the lab to jump down, but like the husk that had tried to leap down, a contrail replaced its face as Sorv fired from his vantage point, cutting down the husks trying to leap down on Darion from above, covering him and allowing him to deal with the husks charging down the corridor that were nearly upon him.<br/><br/><br/>***<br/><br/><br/>Ashana felt a surge of excitement as the biotic detonation went off so close to her, feeling the blast through the EVA suit like someone had slapped her chest. She had never really performed a biotic detonation before, not so close. Aria had been explicit in her warning to never use a detonation close to her, as it was liable to rip off her own arm as it was her enemy's. But damn if it wasn't fun.<br/><br/>She looked back, checking on Milenya, and was surprised to see the husks behind them that her companion was dealing with. She waited, then nodded to Milenya. "Nice work. Let's move."<br/><br/>She started forward again, stepping over the husk that had been felled by the projectile corpse that had hit it. She passed through a doorway, saw a husk emerge ahead, and sent a throw into it, flinging it backwards onto the ground where it skidded to a stop against a wall. Another husk emerged and she threw it as well.<br/><br/><i>What the hell is so hard about this</i>? She wondered to herself, almost falling into a jog rather than a run. A husk leaped down toward her, likewise being flung away by another throw. She was barely even breaking a sweat.<br/><br/>They crossed into an open zone with the remnants of the ancient structure carefully excavated from the obsidian and volcanic rock. To their right was a tiered wall of decayed machinery, no more now than pitted dilapidated metal with a semblance of complex geometry left to it, while spread out around the rest of the area were short broken cylinders rising about a foot aove the cavern floor, some still attached to fragments of the metal flooring that had once been there.<br/><br/>As they crossed the room toward the far exit door that was flanked by windows looking out into a perpendicular corridor that ran out toward the site's central thoroughfare, two husks jumped the partition to their left, one being caught mid jump and hurtled out of the room, while the other was slammed into the wall mid flight, falling in a heap that struggled to get back to its feet.<br/><br/>Behind them two husks came through the doorway, while three scrambled over the partition wall. Ashana sent one flying away, then quickly threw the other, but even as she did, two more pairs of grey hands clambered onto the wall's edge. At the far exit, two pairs of husks ran past the windows and through the doorway, while behind them another husk emerged from the doorway, then another.<br/><br/>Ashana looked between them, throwing as quickly as she could but she couldn't keep up - one throw, two, three, but four husks were left, then three more came over the wall, another two from the doors. Shit! She thought, lifting one, then throwing it, setting off a detonation that killed the husk, and displaced those around it. She fell back toward the ancient machine wall on their right.<br/><br/>She pulled one from the group running from the partition wall, then threw, blasting a portion of the group, but not large enough of one. She felt the strain in her muscles from having to shift between pull and throw fields, inducing two opposite fields one after the other. She pulled, then threw, another bunch went down, but five more were over the wall, then two more, four more from the doors, six.<br/><br/>Ashana's eyes darted between the husks, and she yelled,<span style="color: DarkOrchid">Pull them!</span>at Milenya, then began throwing at the pulled targets, able to trigger the nerve impulses faster for the single biotic field rather than switching between the two. The blasts became more frequent, slowing the husks, but not stopping them. There were too many.<br/><br/>They were still closing and as hard as either of the asari tried, they couldn't stop them all. They needed to be faster, they needed to knock out a swathe, not a group. Ashana's mind raced, she could her heart beating madly in her chest.<i>Had to do more, to kill more...! Too many for one, or two, needed many, needed to hit them all at once, not one blast, many blasts, many at once!</i><span style="color: DarkOrchid">A chain reaction!</span>She yelled.<br/><br/>Ashana stopped throwing, and started pulling, one husk here, another a short distance away, and another. She felt her muscles scream at her to stop, felt the strain as she pushed herself to induce more fields in a shorter time then she ever had in her life. But she couldn't stop. If she stopped she died.<br/><br/>She could only count them at a cursory glance, could only hope they were close enough, that the fields would last long enough. The husks were getting closer and closer, she could see their eyes, see the rings in them, could count them. She was out of breath, could feel the pain in the over taxed clusters, she had to fight just to get her arm up, to do one...<i>last... throw...</i>! The field moved down her arm, into her hand, away, toward the floating husk furthest on the right.<br/><br/>She could feel them, the husks were within four paces, three, two, within arm's length. Ashana shouted as the throw connected. And then, she was moving backwards, the world around her a blur. Her helmet suddenly became quiet as the audio dampeners completely shut off the sound as they were hit by the blast waves to prevent the asari from being deafened. The first bomb disrupted the pull field of the second, which set off the third, and down the line, the energy of each blast resonating, making the impact stronger as the area was consumed in undulating blue, purple and white.<br/><br/>Ashana hit the ancient wall of decayed machine behind her, thrown by the blast. The force of the detonations would have been enough to cause serious harm, were it not for the layers of husk padding between she and it.<br/><br/>When she regained enough of her senses to right herself and look around, she had to blink at the carnage that had been caused. The far partition wall had buckled and fallen backwards, propped half up by whatever was on the other side. The windows at the far exit were completely gone. Pieces are parts of husks were strewn about, all flopping and still vainly trying to move. Only the husks that had been closest to them had survived, but like the asari, were so disoriented that they couldn't do anything but attempt to recalibrate.<br/><br/>Ashana took a sharp breath in, feeling the pain in her limbs hit her, furious at her for demanding so much. she struggled to her feet, and look at Milenya.<span style="color: DarkOrchid">Gun... you...</span>Was all she could mumble out as she forced her feet to get her moving back towards the exit, back towards the airlock. Her mind was in a haze of fatigue. She needed a few moments to regain herself, to cooldown, before she could even think about attempting something biotic again. It would be up to Milenya to shoot any immediate husk threats for the moment, though the blast had managed to give them a window of opportunity to get clear.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>