Grissom struggled to his feet, his left arm still dangling uselessly, his right pressed against his heavily bleeding wound. A moan of pain escaped his lips.
“Your friend is hurt,” the krogan growled.
Anderson wasn’t distracted, even for an instant. “He’s tough. He’ll live.”
The krogan was bleeding from the shot to his knee. The armor on his chest was peppered with small holes, the padding beneath scorched and burned. Dark blood oozed from three of them. Anderson guessed at least one of the shots to the back had penetrated deep enough to do some damage as well. But he’d seen krogans take a hell of a lot more punishment than this and keep coming.
The alien on the ground was a wounded beast — angry, desperate, and unpredictable. He was panting, though whether from pain, exertion, or pure rage it was hard to say. His scarred, brutish face was a mask of intense concentration; his muscles were tensed as if he was gathering himself to make a move.
But if he tried anything Anderson would shoot him in the head from inside of three meters. Even a krogan couldn’t survive that.
He heard a door open and footsteps come running down the hall. “Oh, God! You’re hurt!” a woman screamed.
Anderson wasn’t stupid enough to turn his head. But for a split second his eyes glanced in the direction of her voice. That was all the time the krogan needed.
He lashed out with a fist, sending a shock wave of rolling energy rumbling across the room. Anderson had never been hit with a biotic attack before, and he hadn’t expected one from a krogan. In the split second it took him to realize what was happening, he’d been swept up in the vortex and thrown all the way into the living room, where he crashed to the ground. It felt like being in an artificial gravity chamber when somebody switched the polarity: an instantaneous, inescapable, and irresistible force.
He couldn’t recover in time to grab his pistol from where it had fallen, nor could he reach the shotgun laying only a few feet away. Somehow the krogan, despite his injuries, was already back on his feet and nearly on top of him, swinging his fist with enough power to cave in Anderson’s skull. He ducked and slipped to the side, avoiding the punch. The follow-through landed square on the living room table; it disintegrated into splinters at the impact.
Everything had descended into chaos. Grissom was shouting at Kahlee to run, she was screaming at Anderson to grab one of the guns. The krogan was roaring in anger, flailing about the room, flinging and tossing the furniture like it was made of balsa wood while Anderson dodged and scrambled for his life, only able to avoid the killing blows because his opponent was still hobbled by his wounded knee.
From the corner of his eye he saw Kahlee rush forward into the fray, lunging in a desperate bid to get the shotgun. The krogan saw her, too, and wheeled on the young woman. He would have killed her right
then if another bullet hadn’t ripped through a seam in his armor at his hip, making him stagger off balance and misdirecting his blow.
Anderson whipped his head around to see a turian standing in the door where he had been mere minutes before, firing a pistol at the krogan. The lieutenant had no idea who he was or why he was here… he was just glad they had somebody else on their side.
Most of the shots ricocheted off the krogan’s armor as the beast ducked down and tried to cover his head, the only exposed part of his body. He glanced back at the turian, then leaped through the living room window, smashing through the plate glass. The krogan landed on his shoulder on the grass outside and rolled to his feet in one smooth motion. He took off in a lumbering run, his gait awkward because of his injured leg, but moving far faster than Anderson would have believed possible for a creature of his size.
The turian stepped outside and fired a few shots into the darkness, then turned and came back into the house.
“Aren’t you going after him?” Grissom asked their unknown ally. He was still sitting on the floor, but he’d used the belt of his bathrobe to tie a tourniquet around his upper arm, stemming the flow of blood from his wounded bicep.
“Not armed only with this,” the turian responded, holding up his pistol. “Besides, only a fool faces a krogan biotic alone.”
“I think what Admiral Grissom actually meant to say,” Anderson said, coming over and extending his hand, “was thank you for saving us.”
The turian stared down at the offered hand, but made no effort to extend his own. Embarrassed, the lieutenant pulled his hand back.
“I know why he’s here,” Grissom said through teeth gritted against the pain, nodding his head in
Anderson’s direction. “What’s your story?”
“I’ve been tailing Skarr for two days,” the turian replied. “Waiting for him to make a move.” “Tailing him?” Kahlee asked as she came over to check on her father’s wound. “What for? Who are
you?”
“My name is Saren. I’m a Spectre. And I want some answers.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Anderson and the Spectre sat in the kitchen, staring across the table at each other without speaking. The living room would have been more comfortable, but none of the chairs in there had survived the krogan’s rampage.
Like all turians, Saren’s face was covered by a mask of hard cartilage. But Saren’s mask was the pale color of bone; it looked like a skull. He reminded Anderson of the old Earth paintings depicting the Grim Reaper, the embodiment of death itself.
Kahlee was in the back, tending to Grissom’s wounds. The admiral had tried to protest, but he was weak from loss of blood and she’d managed to get him to lie down. She found a military field kit in his medicine chest with enough medigel to stabilize his condition, and now she was dressing his wound.
She’d wanted to take him to a hospital, or at least call an ambulance, but the Spectre had adamantly refused. “After you answer my questions” was all he’d say.
Anderson knew right then that he didn’t like Saren. Anyone who would use the prolonged pain and suffering of a family member for leverage was a sadist and a bully.
“He’s resting now,” Kahlee said, emerging from the back. “I gave him a sedative.”
She entered the kitchen and took a seat beside Anderson, instinctively aligning herself with one of her own kind. “Hurry up and ask your questions,” she said tersely, “so I can get my father to a hospital.”
“Cooperate and this will be over soon,” Saren assured her, then added, “Tell me about the Sidon military base.”
“It was wiped out in a terrorist attack,” Anderson answered, jumping in before Kahlee could say anything incriminating.
The turian glared at him. “Don’t play me for a fool, human. That krogan who nearly killed you all is a bounty hunter named Skarr. I’ve been following him for the past two days.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Kahlee asked, her voice so innocent Anderson almost believed she really didn’t know what was going on.
“He was hired by the man who ordered the attack on Sidon,” Saren replied with a scowl. “They sent him to eliminate the only survivor from the base. You.”
“Sounds like you know more about this than we do,” Anderson countered.
The turian slammed his fist down on the table. “Why was the base attacked?! What were you working on there?”
“Prototype technology,” Kahlee offered before Anderson could speak. “Experimental weapons for the
Alliance military.”
Saren tilted his head to the side, puzzled. “Experimental weapons technology? That’s all?”
“What do you mean ‘that’s all’?” Anderson sputtered in disbelief, running with the lie Kahlee had so deftly handed him.
“That hardly seems like justification for attacking a heavily armed Alliance base,” the turian replied. “We’re on the edge of a war in the Verge,” Anderson insisted. “Everybody knows it’s got to be us or the