far end a vehicle had obviously just slammed into the garage's door. And on the landing not ten feet away, their backs to him, stood Pel and a woman he didn't know. The woman had a rocket launcher braced on her shoulder.
The vehicle's engines began to rev as it tried to force its way through the door. Given the situation, Grayson was almost certain that Gillian and the others were inside.
'Finish them!' Pel shouted, and the woman aimed her weapon.
Grayson opened fire with the assault rifle; he had no hesitations about shooting a woman in the back. The stream of bullets ripped through her shields, shredded her body armor, and turned everything between her shoulder blades and belt into hamburger. The rocket launcher fell from her nerveless hands and she staggered forward against the landing's waist-high railing. Another burst from Grayson sent her flipping over the edge to the floor below.
Pel was already spinning around, trying to bring his own assault rifle to bear, when Grayson fired again. He concentrated on Pel's right arm, the spray of gunfire nearly severing it from his shoulder as it blew the rifle from his grasp and sent it hurtling over the railing.
His former partner fell to his knees, his eyes glazing over in shock as sprays of arterial blood spurted from his maimed limb. He opened his mouth to speak, but another burst from Grayson silenced him forever. It was the first time in almost twenty years Pel hadn't been able to get the last word in.
The horrible shriek of wrenching metal from the far side of the garage drew his attention. Glancing over, he saw the rover had managed to push itself against a corner of the loading door so that it bent up and out. Grayson watched, motionless, as the vehicle squeezed through the opening, the rover bursting forth to the other side as if the garage were somehow giving birth to it.
For the next sixty seconds he didn't move, listening carefully for sounds of other survivors. All he heard was the rover's engines growing ever fainter as it raced off into the night.
Seventeen
Inside the rover, Kahlee heard the metal door screeching across the armored roof as the vehicle forced its way past and out into the dark streets of Omega. Still driving in reverse, she went half a block before locking the brakes and turning the wheel, sending them into a 540-degree spin. It ended with them heading in the same direction, but they were no longer traveling backward.
They had escaped the warehouse, but their getaway wouldn't be complete until they'd left Omega well behind them.
'Do you have a ship?' she asked, directing her question to the quarian in the passenger seat.
'Head to the spaceports,' he answered. 'Right at the end of the block. Take the third left, then the next right.' His voice sounded strained and thin from behind his mask.
Kahlee pulled her attention away from the nav screen to sneak a quick glance at his injured leg. The wound looked bad, but not life threatening.
'Hendel,' she called out to the backseat. 'See if you can find a med-kit back there.'
'There's medigel. . in. . my backpack,' the quarian managed to pant out, struggling against the pain.
Kahlee didn't dare stop while they treated the injury. Fortunately, Hendel had basic medical field training; fixing up a bad leg while bouncing along in the rover would be easy enough.
Following the quarian's directions, they quickly cleared the close-packed buildings and emerged on the outskirts of the district's docking bays. Racing along the open ground, the nav screen picked up three small starships clustered together at the far end of the spaceport.
'Lemm, which shuttle is yours?' Kahlee asked.
'Whichever one you want.' His voice sounded stronger now. She noticed Hendel had splinted his leg and wrapped it in sterile bandages to minimize germ exposure, and the medigel would have dulled the pain even as it began to heal and disinfect his wounds.
She brought the rover to a halt a few dozen feet away from the closest vessel's airlock and hopped out, then turned back to help the injured quarian. He slid gingerly across the seat to the door, then leaned on Kahlee for support as he stepped out of the vehicle with his good leg. Hendel emerged a few seconds later, carrying the still unconscious Gillian in the crook of one arm and clutching Lemm's bag in his other hand.
'I'll be damned,' he muttered, staring through the station's viewport at the shuttle docked just outside. Kahlee couldn't help but smile when she realized what he was looking at: they were about to steal Grayson's ship.
The quarian set to work on overriding the vessel's security system. It took just over a minute before the airlock opened with a faint click and the landing ramp descended with a soft whoosh of hydraulics.
Inside the ship, Hendel set Gillian down in one of the passenger seats. He reclined the seat and buckled her in as Kahlee helped Lemm hobble his way up to the cockpit.
'Can you fly this thing?' she asked him.
He studied the controls for a few seconds, then nodded. 'I think so. Everything looks pretty standard.'
The quarian settled into the pilot's seat and reached out toward the console with a gloved, three-fingered hand. Kahlee was suddenly reminded that, though quarians might look vaguely human, under their enviro-suits and filtration masks they were definitely aliens. And this alien had risked his life to save them.
'Thank you,' she said. 'We owe you our lives.'
Lemm didn't acknowledge her gratitude, but instead asked, 'Why were they holding you prisoner?'
'They were going to sell us to the Collectors.'
He shuddered, but didn't say anything else. A second later the display screens came online.
'No sign of any immediate pursuit,' he muttered.
'Cerberus won't give up on us that easy,' Hendel warned him as he entered the cockpit.
'They aren't working for Cerberus,' Kahlee explained, remembering that Hendel hadn't been part of the conversation in Grayson's cell. 'Not anymore. I guess they figured they could make more by going freelance.'
It was only then she realized Hendel hadn't yet bothered to ask why Grayson had been left behind.
'You were right about Grayson,' she told him. 'He was a Cerberus agent. He must have been working with Jiro the whole time.'
The ship trembled slightly and there was a low rumble as Lemm fired up the engines.
The news of Grayson's true identity didn't seem to surprise Hendel at all. To his credit, the security chief didn't take the opportunity to say 'I told you so.' Instead, he only asked, 'Did you kill him?'
'He's still alive, as far as I know,' Kahlee admitted. 'They were holding him prisoner, just like us. I left him in his cell.'
'If they turn him over to the Collectors, he'll wish you had killed him,' Lemm chimed in.
Kahlee hadn't thought about that, but the idea brought the hint of a grim smile to Hendel's lips.
The quarian made a few final adjustments and the thrusters engaged, lifting the shuttle slowly into the air.
'What course should I set?' he asked.
'Nothing's changed,' Hendel said, giving voice to her own concerns. 'Cerberus will still want to get their hands on Gillian, and we still can't risk going to the Alliance. Grayson and his former friends may be out of the picture, but Cerberus has plenty of other agents.
'No matter where we go, they're going to find us sooner or later.'
'Then we have to keep moving,' Kahlee said. 'Stay one step ahead of them.'
'It'll be hard on Gillian,' Hendel warned her.
'We don't have much choice. For all we know, they could have someone stationed on every human accessible world, colony, and space station in the galaxy.'
