pistol as they ran by less than a dozen feet away, concentrating his fire on Lemm rather than taking aim at Hendel or the girl. The quarian retaliated with a pair of wildly aimed shots that echoed like thunder in the cavernous warehouse.
At this close range accuracy barely mattered; the autotargeting systems of both weapons ensured direct hits. Lemm's kinetic barriers deflected all the rounds from the pistol except for one that embedded itself harmlessly in the padded shoulder of his combat suit and another that ripped through the corner of his backpack. His opponent wasn't so lucky. The concentrated scatter of the shotgun blasts overwhelmed his shields, and a handful of pellets penetrated the kinetic barriers. The impact tore great holes in the exposed flesh of his face and hands, and the man dropped lifeless to the floor.
And then they were sliding into the safety of the cover behind the containers. Lemm quickly shook the pack loose from his shoulder and lowered the girl to the floor, then popped up to provide cover for Kahlee. Seeing what he was doing, she sprinted across the warehouse toward them, keeping her head low.
A shotgun wasn't the best weapon for laying down a field of cover fire. Unlike an assault rifle, it didn't spray a nearly endless stream of bullets. But Lemm remembered where the woman who had popped up before was hiding. If she was foolish enough to peek out again without changing position, he'd have her right in his sights.
The woman did exactly that, and Lemm pulled the trigger the instant her head came into view. The echo of the shotgun rang out once more, and the crate she was using for cover actually shifted from the impact of his shot. Her kinetic barriers saved her life, absorbing the tightly packed cloud of incoming projectiles, and she ducked behind cover once again. Lemm doubted she'd make the mistake of showing herself in exactly the same place a third time.
Kahlee skidded to a stop beside him, breathing hard. At almost the same instant two more guards, a man and a woman, burst into the warehouse through the same entrance they had come through only a few seconds before. A coordinated barrage of shotgun and assault-rifle fire sent them scurrying back around the corner.
'They'll go around to the other side,' Lemm warned, recalling that there were two entrances to the warehouse, along with the landing up above and the big vehicle doors on the far wall. 'Try to flank us.'
'You think you can get to those rovers?' Kahlee asked him, pointing at the two vehicles parked out in the open near the center of the garage.
'There's not much cover. I'll have to work my way around to the far side. Can you hold position here?'
'For a little while. Any idea how many we're up against?'
'They started with nine, as far as I know. Two dead upstairs, one more down here.'
'Six against two,' she muttered. 'Without one of those rovers we don't stand much of a chance.'
Hendel mumbled something neither of them understood. He seemed to be more alert, but his words were still incomprehensible as the booster fought against the drugs still coursing through his system.
'You stay here with me and Gillian,' Kahlee told him, patting him on the thigh. 'And keep your head down.'
Peering through a small gap between the wall of boxes shielding them from enemy fire, Lemm tried to plan a route from cover point to cover point that would eventually lead him to the vehicle. It was there, but he'd have to keep moving. And Kahlee would need to stay sharp.
Even as he was wondering if she was up to the task, another slaver appeared in the door they had used to enter the garage. Kahlee popped up from behind her cover and took him down with a short, well-aimed burst from her assault rifle.
'Okay, I'm ready,' he said, taking a deep breath.
'Good luck,' she replied. She didn't turn to look at him, but kept her attention on the battlefield.
As he broke from the boxes, she started firing.
Grayson heard the shotgun blasts in the hall outside, but wasn't sure what to make of them. A few minutes later he heard gunfire coming from a distance, though he guessed it was still inside the building.
He was trapped in a storage room, not a real jail cell, and the walls imprisoning him were nothing but the turian equivalent of drywall. Standing up, he went over to one of the side walls and began to slam the bottom of his foot hard against the surface.
If the guards were still out there they'd see what he was up to on the cameras. But Grayson was banking on them being otherwise distracted.
After a few hard kicks his foot broke through to the other side. He put his eye to the hole to see what lay beyond. It appeared to be another makeshift cell, much like his own. But this one was empty, and the steel door leading out to the hall was open.
He continued his assault on the wall, and five minutes later he had broken away enough of the material to crawl through. No one had come to check on him during his slow-developing escape, so he assumed none of the guards were around. Based on the continuing sound of gunfire from somewhere else in the building, he guessed they had gone to help fight off the attackers. As he stepped out into the hall and saw the two bodies, he realized he was wrong.
A quick look around told him just about everything he needed to know. All the other cells were empty; Gillian and the others were gone. Someone had obviously busted them out.. though he couldn't even begin to guess who it might have been.
Grayson didn't know where he was, but he knew where he wanted to go — he needed to find Gillian. The most logical way to do that seemed to be to follow the sound of the gunfire.
It didn't take him long to realize that this task was harder than it seemed, and he quickly became hopelessly lost in the building's nonsensical floor plan.
Lemm darted back and forth between the containers, constantly changing direction, stopping and starting without warning, and never staying in one place too long. His hands clutched his shotgun tightly, but he wasn't looking to fire at anyone — he was simply trying to make it to the vehicles.
Kahlee was doing her best to cover him, but she was badly overmatched. The one time he'd dared to stop long enough to look back, he saw two slavers firing at her from cover positions behind a pile of containers on the floor, and another two, newly arrived, shooting down at her from the small landing overlooking the garage from above.
The two teams coordinated their attacks, never giving her a clear opening to retaliate. But that didn't stop her from occasionally popping her head out and firing back.
With Kahlee occupying four of the remaining five slavers, that left only one more for him to deal with. Unfortunately, he had no idea where his enemy was. Every time he ran out into the open he could be stepping into a spray of lethal assault-rifle fire.
Only a short stretch of bare floor still separated him from the rovers; a quick sprint and it was all over, one way or the other.
He broke from cover and dashed for the vehicle. The fifth slaver was waiting for him, popping up from behind a crate not twenty feet away as he ran past. She opened fire from close range on his flank; clouds of concrete flew up from the floor as she fired low, where his barrier shields were most vulnerable, trying to take his legs out from under him.
Head down, Lemm knew his best shot at survival was just to keep running. He was half a step away from safety when a hollow-point round entered his left calf. It mushroomed then split apart on impact, sending a spray of metal fragments through his lower leg, shredding the muscles and tendons. Screaming in agony, he pitched forward, his shotgun falling from his hand. His momentum allowed him to manage two more stumbling, off- balance steps that carried him far enough to put the metal-plated rover between him and his attacker before he collapsed to the ground.
He rolled over onto his back, clutching at the bloody pulp below his knee that used to be his leg. He heard footsteps coming toward him, and he realized his shotgun had been left behind, skittering across the floor when
