Deliverance-Chapter 7

It took longer than it should have for Garrus and Javik, now accompanied by Kasumi and the two drell, to rendezvous with Liara and Vega, though they all felt they had very little time to spare at the moment.

As it were, the latter group was the first to arrive, since the meeting point was practically right by the spot they had been taking cover in to begin with. Both of them raised their weapons at the dry, muffled sound of footprints in the sand nearby, rolling their eyes at each other, as well as the larger party that joined them a few moments later.

Feron smiled suavely to Liara, noticing her frowning at him. "You're going to tell me off for this one later on, aren't you?" he asked airily.

Liara snorted. "Yes. You're supposed to keep me in the loop, not go off gallivanting on your own like this," the asari replied smoothly, though there was more relief than ire in her voice.

"Well, chew him out later, if you want to," Garrus intervened coolly, having moved to examine the somewhat battered thick metal wall plating that seemed to run along the wall where they stood. "We've no time for it right now; is this the place?" he asked Kasumi mainly, who had been leaning against the wall comfortably already. "It looks like solid metal to me".

The thief smiled under her hood. "Looks, indeed, Garrus; it's not," she said coolly, running light fingers over the dents and bumps on the metal surface. "See these? The complex's venting tunnels come out here. There're heavy metal grills under the outside sheet of metal, but they don't leave the venting system open all day, because of the heat and sand," she proceeded to explain.

"We found it by chance, while looking for a way to get inside this building," Feron picked up smoothly. "They open the external wall a few times during the day, to purge the vents. Kasumi snuck in one time while they were open and had to break her way back out. That's how we figured it out: the vents have no alarms whatsoever".

"Which isn't to say we can all go in this way," Kasumi rolled her eyes-the argument had started on the way here, after all. "Alarms or not, the sound of seven different sets of feet blundering through the vents is bound to attract some attention and we still want to go in quietly".

Everyone nodded, albeit more than a little reluctantly. "Yeah, well, I'm going in," Vega huffed. "I don't much like waiting around, for one thing and for another, Lola might need the help".

"Lola?" Feron raised an eyebrow.

"Shepard," Garrus elaborated, almost casually. "Vega likes…making up nicknames, never mind," he added, shaking his head at the lieutenant.

Feron seemed amused enough. "What's yours, then?" he asked Liara smoothly.

"Feron, don't make me hurt you," she replied coolly.

"Enough with the inane chatter," Javik huffed, sounding more vexed than usual-if that was even possible.

"One small team through the vents, the thief hacks the main door to the compound, so the rest of us can follow down the tunnels," he continued sharply. "The next person who starts talking nonsense will be fed to the first thresher maw I see," the Prothean added, his tone making it more than apparent he was not being funny.

"That worried?" Garrus asked, though there was no mirth in his voice.

"Do you really need to ask? You're radiating worry in waves," the Prothean retorted, moving to examine the seemingly solid metal wall for himself.

"When do the vents open next?"Liara asked, addressing Feron, but it was Kasumi who answered.

"In about fifteen minutes; they don't stay open long, so we need to slip inside as they open, to be safe. Though there're no alarms, if something gets stuck in the grills, there is probably an emergency alert transmitted somewhere down there," the thief shrugged.

"You don't know for sure?" Vega raised an eyebrow.

"I haven't made a name for myself by getting stuck in venting grills and triggering alarms, you know," Kasumi replied amusedly, giving the man a quizzical look. "By the looks of it, that's your department".

Vega chuckled. "Not that clumsy," he said confidently.

"Except with that shuttle incident on Mars, as I recall hearing," Garrus remarked airily.

"That was extenuating circumstances; I meant to crash it," Vega protested at once, almost reflexively.

"That didn't sound too good," Kasumi chuckled.

Vega was about to answer before Javik shot him a particularly dark look. The lieutenant rolled his eyes, but said nothing.

"So, jokes aside, who goes in with Kasumi?" he asked instead a relatively long silence later.

"Me, I'd say," Garrus nodded coolly. "Having a sniper around is always handy…just in case we need to blow someone away without anyone noticing".

Kasumi nodded. "Indeed; and we will probably need to do precisely that," she said coolly, calling up a 3D model of the tunnels on her omni-tool for everyone to look at.

"There's a sort of security room, not too far from the main door; one of a few similar rooms, I expect, to control various levels and doorways. There's always a guard there, keeping an eye out. We will need to take him out in order to let the others in," she concluded, nodding towards the group as a whole.

"Manageable," Garrus shrugged. "Only the one guard?" he asked a moment later.

Feron nodded. "As said before, not a very large armed force to begin with. If I had to guess I'd say minimal force, more along the lines of a security detail than an actual merc group," he said coolly. "And none of the staff get out topside much. Can't blame them either; not exactly a hospitable planet on various levels," he continued with a shrug.

"Well, unless you're a drell, the environmental conditions here are ideal for our…ailment,"the agent added a few moments later, choosing his words with apparent care and giving a sideways glance to Kolyat. The younger drell frowned back, but said nothing.

Everyone fell silent after that, each lost in their own thoughts-and none of those cheerful, for that matter. They all stirred back to attention at the sudden whirring sound that emanated from the vent wall a few minutes later. It started subtly, increasing in volume and pitch gradually, till the metal panel started to vibrate.

"About time," Kasumi stretched, almost lazily, as the metal wall slid aside with a loud boom, revealing a thinly-spaced, if massive, lattice of grills beneath . A bout of scalding hot wind assaulted them, making everyone step aside to avoid it. The master thief nodded to Garrus, stepping forward as the gale receded a few short moments later.

"We'll head back to the main door; try not to take too long,"  Liara called over the noise, as Kasumi and Garrus slipped past the bars-the latter a lot more carefully than the former, frowning at the fact he could barely fit through.

Kasumi nodded hastily. "Five minutes, tops," she called back, before the metal panel slid back into place noisily, separating them.

The vents were actually very quiet, Garrus thought as he followed Kasumi as quietly as he could manage.  The thief moved like a shadow, as was expected, but he hoped any of his own noisier steps might be discounted as ambient sounds- the tunnels beneath them as well as the venting system itself were bound to have their share of those, he reasoned.

It didn't take long before Kasumi paused, motioning for him to step closer. Despite the near impenetrable darkness of the confined space, their visor filters and the minimal light from weapons and omni-tools provided enough visibility to keep an eye on one another.

Garrus stepped up and towards a small grill that broke the mundanity of the otherwise unbroken metal tunnel they stood in. A bit of light came in through it and the turian peered through carefully to see they were over what seemed like a small room carved into the very stone. He could see some metal sheeting here and there, probably placed in order to support the stone as best as possible, but it was still more a cave than anything else.

He had an unobstructed view of a relatively small computer console from their vantage point; a series of monitors, arranged in a rough semi-circle around what was presumably the main computer hub for the security room flashed at intervals with images he could not see very well from where he was-nor did it really matter, he thought.

Like Kasumi had said, there was one man, sitting in front of the computer screens; he  seemed either bored or tired-probably both, Garrus thought  impassively; he had a rifle, but it was propped up to the side of the console, just out of his reach.

The turian actually rolled his eyes; whoever was in charge here didn't seem to be doing too good a job, he thought grimly, though he knew better than to jump to conclusions.
Carefully, he drew his sniper rifle, sliding the muzzle carefully through the narrow grill. The pulse shot caught the soldier right at the nape of his neck; he slumped in his chair and slid on the floor without so much as a groan.

"Nice shot," Kasumi remarked in a whisper, kicking out a metal panel near the grill. Garrus actually winced at the noise.

"What happened to coming in quietly?" he asked, rolling his eyes, moving to the computer array, glancing at the screens.

"No one around to hear us and it was faster than prying it open," she answered suavely, tapping one of the screens herself to get his attention.

Garrus glanced to it at once; there was no mistaking the figure walking down some tunnel, in the company of some unknown men, though it was clear, even with the relatively low image quality that none of them were armed any more-armored, for the most part, but no visible weapons except on Shepard herself.

"No way to tell where that is," Kasumi huffed before he could ask her, scanning the system with her omni-tool, before it emitted a flash towards the hub.

"There, main door unlocked and cameras disabled; well, the cameras controlled by this hub, at least," she said airily.

"Anything else we can use?"Garrus asked, already headed for the room's exit, though.
"Nope; we need to get the others," Kasumi replied calmly.

As it turned out, the others had already come in when Garrus and Kasumi joined them at the main door. Vega paused to examine the neat, ordered weapon racks lining the narrow antechamber right by the door.

"Very disciplined," he remarked. "Though I don't suppose we'll be as lucky as to have all their weapons sitting snugly up here and out of their reach".

"Probably just a handy location to keep weapons before going outside, yes," Garrus nodded, spotting Shepard's own helmet in one of the racks.

"The Commander's weapons are not here," Javik stated the obvious, looking at the item over Garrus' shoulder.

"We saw Shepard; she is headed down into the tunnels, escorted by the same people who met her outside, probably," Garrus confirmed.

"Well, then, what are we standing out here for?" Feron asked, nodding towards the broad, descending tunnel that started right at the far edge of the weapons' racks.


"Well, this is just great," Liara huffed a short walk later; what they had assumed was the main tunnel branched out eventually, it seemed, and none of the two different forks were marked in any way. Aside from the fact the one on the left had a locked door cutting it off, there was no telling which one led where.

"The tunnel branches out into two main directions," Kasumi confirmed, the stolen blueprints of the complex shimmering in a 3D image again along her omni-tool. "One leads to the absolutely lowest levels," she pointed left. "The other…well, it also goes down, but it seems to lead to an extensive warren of caverns; can't tell if it's as deep as the other passage or not," she sighed.

"If this is a mining complex, then the deepest caves would be used for storage; volatile materials, mined goods and so on, back when it was functioning as such," Feron put in. "This one," he put a finger on the hologram, making a tiny red dot appear to mark the location, "was probably the mining tunnels proper; I'd put some credits on it being living quarters now".

"We need to split up," Garrus said coolly. "Check both ways".

Kasumi sighed. "Good idea, but we have a small problem; this place may not have much in the way of alarms, but we can still be spotted by cameras. I can cloak, but the rest of you?"

Liara nodded. "Kasumi is right; we don't know who these people are, what they want…and Shepard is somewhere in this complex, all on her own". A small tremor made a few loose pebbles tumble along the earthen walls.

"And there're thresher maws right underneath this place," the asari added with a huff. "We don't need to be located till there's a reason to be".

"We need to take out those cameras, somehow," Kolyat said thoughtfully.

"They'll still know there's something going on, but they'll probably send people to check on it before sounding any alarm; assuming they will, I don't think they're big on alarm sirens down here," Feron nodded amusedly. "I like the way you think, kid".

Kolyat scowled back, but Liara picked up the conversation before he could say anything.

"Me and Kolyat will go back to that security room, hack into their system from there," Liara volunteered. 'We can also provide directions and help, hopefully; and we can try to locate Shepard…Thane too, if they really do have him".

"Fine; me and Feron will take the left tunnel, then," Garrus nodded, not really wanting to waste another moment discussing options. "Javik, Kasumi and Vega take the one winding straight down; we all keep in touch; and rendezvous back up here as soon as we can".