“The bombs will detonate in fifteen minutes,” Skarr reminded them.
The infiltration teams scattered, heading off down the various branching corridors leading to all the different areas of the facility. Their objective was to plant a number of strategically placed explosives; enough to reduce the entire building to ash and rubble. Along the way they’d take out the security patrols and mow down any employees they ran across. Anyone who fled the building would be shot by the mercs waiting outside. And any survivors who managed to hide inside the building would be killed by the explosions or burned alive when the incendiary charges were detonated.
With the snipers posted outside and the infiltration teams making their way toward the heart of the complex, Skarr was left alone to complete a very specific task. Edan had given him the name, description, and office location of his contact inside Dah’tan. It was unlikely the young woman knew
whom she was working for, but the batarian didn’t want to leave any loose ends.
The krogan made his way quickly through the halls toward the admin offices near the front of the building. From somewhere far away he heard the sound of gunfire and batarian voices screaming — the massacre had begun.
Moments later sirens started ringing. Skarr rounded a corner and nearly ran into a pair of Dah’tan security guards rushing to respond to the alarm. The two batarians hesitated for a mere instant, caught off guard by the sight of a heavily armored krogan crashing through the halls. Skarr seized the opportunity and smashed the butt of his assault rifle into one guard’s face, sending him reeling backwards. At the same time he threw his body into the second guard, his mass bowling the much smaller man over and sending them both tumbling to the floor. As they rolled together on the ground
Skarr leveraged the barrel of his gun under his adversary’s chin and pulled the trigger, removing most of everything above the neck.
The first guard was just getting to his feet, still dazed and bleeding from his mouth. He fired his own weapon, but his aim was erratic and he only managed to rip a line of holes in the wall above where Skarr and the corpse of his friend were sprawled across the floor. Skarr responded by firing down the corridor, shredding his enemy’s ankles and calves.
The batarian screamed and fell forward, dropping his gun as he threw his arms out to break his fall. Another burst from Skarr finished him off an instant after he hit the ground.
Leaping to his feet, the bounty hunter lumbered down the hall toward the office of Edan’s contact. The door was closed but he simply kicked it in, sending it flying off its hinges. A young batarian woman was crouching on the floor, only half-hidden behind her desk. She screamed when she saw the gore-covered krogan standing in the doorway.
“Good-bye, Jella,” Skarr said. “No! Please! I’m not — ”
The rest of her words were cut off as he squeezed the trigger, drowned out by the hail of bullets that riddled her body and blew it across the floor to the back wall of the room.
Skarr glanced quickly at his watch. Seven more minutes until the explosives detonated. Part of him wanted to spend the time searching the halls for more victims, but he knew that wasn’t an option. It was too easy to lose himself in the bloodlust of his ancient ancestors. Swept up in battle fury, he could easily lose track of time in a slaughter like this, and he had no intention of being inside the building when it blew.
He made his way quickly back to the exit, ignoring the sweet screams of pain and terror beckoning to
Jella did her best to block out the staccato bursts of gunfire and the horrific screams of her coworkers.
She was hiding inside the bathroom air vent — a tight fit but she had managed to wedge herself in. In her mind she could picture the scene outside, and she had no intention of leaving her hiding place.
Time passed with agonizing slowness; the sounds of the attack seemed to go on for hours, though in reality it was only a few minutes. She heard voices outside the bathroom door and she tried to scooch herself back even farther into the air shaft.
The door flew open and a pair of batarians leaped in, their automatic weapons already firing. They sprayed the entire room with bullets, reducing the thin sheet metal of the stall doors to ribbons, shattering the ceramic toilets and sinks and bursting several of the water pipes in the walls.
Fortunately Jella’s hiding place was high up on the wall above one of the stalls — she’d mounted one of the toilets and clambered up onto the dividers between the stalls to remove the air vent’s cover. Then she’d slid in feet first and carefully pulled the cover back into place once she was safely hidden inside.
From her vantage point she had a perfect view of the carnage, though she closed her eyes and covered her ears with her palms to try and block out the deafening retorts of their weapons. Only when the gunfire finally ended did she dare to open her eyes again.
The men were taking a last look around the bathroom, splashing noisily through the water gushing from the broken pipes, spreading out across the floor like a miniature lake.
“Nobody here,” one of them said with a shrug.
“Too bad,” the other replied. “I was hoping we could catch one of the women and drag her off with us for a little fun.”
“Forget it,” the other said with a shake of his head. “That krogan would never go for it.”
“Edan’s the one paying us, not him,” his partner spat back. Jella instantly knew who he was talking about: Edan Had’dah was one of the most wealthy, powerful, and infamous individuals on Camala.
“I dare you to say that to his face,” the first man said with a laugh, even as he crouched down and attached something to the wall. A moment later he stood up. “Let’s move. We need to be out of here in two minutes.”
The men ran off down the hallway, their footsteps echoing in the distance. Jella crawled slowly forward from her hiding place, trying to see what they had placed on the wall. It was about the size of a lunch box, with wires running into it from all sides. Even though she had no military training or experience, it was obvious the device was some kind of bomb.
She paused for a moment, listening for more gunfire. Everything was silent except for a faint beep-beep- beep as the timer on the explosive counted down. Jella knocked the cover off the ventilation shaft and dropped down to the floor. She ran out of the bathroom, sprinting down the corridor toward the same security exit she had unlocked earlier, unwittingly allowing the slaughter to happen.
But she couldn’t think about that now. Refusing to even glance at the bodies of her coworkers in the hallway, she reached the door and yanked it open. Two men from the warehouse lay just outside, each shot between the eyes.
Jella hesitated, expecting a similar fate. But whoever had killed the men was gone, clearing the surrounding area before the building detonated. As soon as her shell-shocked mind grasped the fact that she was still alive, the young woman put her head down and ran. She managed half a dozen steps before the explosion turned her world to fire, agony, and then darkness.
By the time Saren arrived at the Dah’tan Manufacturing facility, the place was in ruins. Emergency response crews had put out the fires, but the building was little more than a burned-out shell. The top two floors had collapsed and one of the walls had caved inwards, reducing the interior to a pile of scorched rubble. Rescue workers were busy picking through the debris. Looking at the scene it was obvious they weren’t looking for survivors; they were collecting remains.
Several news crews were filming the wreckage from a respectful distance away, careful not to interfere with the emergency crews but anxious to get some dramatic footage for the vids.