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Atypical Teammates for DrakeHavok by Draconicon

"You've got to be kidding me."

Bellena shook her head as her fingers slid over the holo-board, tapping in commands at a dizzying rate. The asari could hardly believe that this was needed, but she was grateful that she'd spent the money on as grand a security system as she had.

Still, whoever was attacking her lab was stronger than she expected, and the attack 'bots - formerly such an intimidating and powerful force - were being turned on her by one of the pair assaulting her base. Bellena knew she should have gone for living enforcers only, but the 'bots had been an amazing bargain.

The cameras followed the progress of the assault, and she gritted her teeth as she saw the outer labs become engulfed in flame.

"That's millions of credits of research up in smoke...who do they think they are?!"

She activated the inner security ring - bringing hundreds of turrets, 'bots, and an inner garrison online - before looking over her shoulder. An escape pod was right there, just waiting for her to take it and get out, but if there was the slightest chance of saving her research...well, she had to stay. There was too much that could be learned in the aftermath of the Reaper War, too many ways that their old tech could be used to help all the newly synthesized life in the galaxy.

No, she had to stay, if only to keep her research alive.

But in the time it took to turn back to the cameras, her defenses had been laid to waste. The small garrison of created Turians, Salarians, and a few Krogan had been utterly decimated, and she finally had a glimpse at the pair that had the audacity to try and take her down.

And it was just a pair, she was shocked to see. Judging by their silhouettes, one was Krogan, and the other was a Quarian.

An odd pair... She could only assume that the Krogan was the one in charge. Quarians never participated in something like this without being dragged along for the ride. They weren't that aggressive, weren't that stupid. Though she'd never seen a Krogan lumbering along like this one was, particularly carrying a sniper rifle rather than a shotgun or assault rifle.

Her camera exploded all of a sudden, and the view went dark. Bellena slammed her hands down on the console with a grunt of frustration.

"Damn it! I can't let them do this. I can't -"

BOOM!

Her door exploded, the metal sheets flying across the room and slamming into her escape pod. The asari fell back from the console, taking cover behind it, and just in time. Several shots rang out over her head, slamming into the wall and leaving deep dents. A synthesized voice called out over the shots.

"Bellena, come out with your hands where we can see them. And no biotic tricks; we're ready to blow you apart if you so much as twitch."

Sounds like a Quarian, but definitely doesn't talk like one...

She poked her head around the edge of her shelter -

Pshoom!

• and ducked right back behind it as a blast from a pistol nearly took her head off. She gasped for breath, pressing herself back against what little cover she had.

"What are you doing? Are you crazy?!"

"I said come out with your hands up. Follow my orders, or I'm going to bring you in dead instead of alive."

That can't be a Quarian. She's psycho!

Still, there wasn't much that the asari could do. She was pinned in place, she had no weapons, and anything she did besides follow orders exactly was apparently going to get her killed. Lacking any other options, she slowly stood up, hands out as she was ordered, and stepped into the open.

The Quarian almost seemed to grin beneath her face-mask and nodded to the Krogan beside her. To Bellena's surprise, the masked hunchback seemed to stumble rather than walk to her. Was there something wrong with him? Why was he taking orders from a Quarian? Why didn't he say anything?

All those questions and more went unanswered as the butt of the sniper rifle cracked against her skull.

Urdnot Sorchk snorted as the asari crumbled to the ground. She might as well have been a simple sack of meat for how much resistance she'd put up. Pretty pathetic, he thought, but then again, not everything could be -

"Stop staring at her and get to work. The Flotilla's got a deadline, and so do I."

"Yeah. Right."

Limping around the asari woman, Sorchk reached into the console and started pulling out bits and pieces from it. He remembered the first time that Ke'haul had made him loot a facility. It had taken him almost three hours to find everything that she wanted, and he'd had to endure a lot of yelling and a lot of 'tweaking' to his armor from her hacking tools as a result.

These days, he knew what he was looking for. Inside of three minutes, he had the hard drive removed from the rest of the machine, as well as the transmitter for stored information. He put them into a metal pan and looked around the room for anything else that was worth a damn.

Ke'haul followed him around the room, muttering little obscenities under her breath about the whole state of things here. Much as he was used to seeing crap like this, Sorchk had to agree. The whole damn place was a disgrace, almost like the labs that he'd raided - well, had been part of raids on - during the Reaper War. The biggest threat might have passed, but that didn't mean that the crazies weren't still around. With everyone dealing with their new 'synthesis' heritage now, it meant that there were all sorts of opportunities.

He slipped as he reached for a secondary console, falling almost on his face, and Ke'haul snorted behind him.

"Look at you. Can't even stay on your feet, can you?"

"Ain't my fault. I -"

"Yes, yes, all sorts of problems since you were born. I don't know how you even survived, considering how Krogan keep talking about strength being so important."

"I am strong."

"No, you're lucky. I am strong."

He gritted his teeth at the Quarian, but he didn't argue it. She was right, after all. He was ridiculously lucky to have gotten through childhood, considering the issues during his birth. His plates were prone to shattering due to a rare genetic defect, giving him much less protection compared to others of his species. Not to mention that some parts of his bones didn't quite line up properly, leading to his continuous limp.

Ke'haul, on the other hand, was as much an outlier of her people as he was of his. Rather than being a quiet mechanic, she took the legend of the Quarian commandos and took it to the extreme. Even before he reached Omega, she was a powerful figure, and just the mention of her name sent most of the mercs and pirates running for the other end of the space station.

Of course, he'd gotten his ass kicked by her a couple of times before she decided he could be useful to her. After all, not everyone knew about his...issues...so she could use him as an intimidation tactic.

Ever since, they'd been a team, though one of the weirder ones, he thought as he took apart the other console. He found several odd bits of tech in it, as well as some pieces that were most definitely not typical.

"Hey, Ke'haul, look at this."

The Krogan leaned to the side as his partner bent over. He pointed to the connection lines between the central CPU and some of the processors that were outside it. They weren't the standard conductive metal, but instead had a slight green glow and...dripped.

"Oh, kee'lah..."

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"She was experimenting with...with synthesis neurons..."

Sorchk snorted again. He shouldn't have been surprised, he guessed. The way that scientists did things without actually thinking about the ramifications was par for the course. The Salarians did it with the genophage, and he knew that they were hardly the first to go for something like that. This, though, this was wrong. They were taking brain pieces and using it to connect machines.

"I don't think your flotilla will want anything with this."

"Wrong. They'd want it too much."

Ke'haul pulled out her pistol and shot the machinery, the sudden blast of sparks and shrapnel forcing Sorchk to jump back from the open hole. He rubbed his cheek where a piece of metal had bounced off, and pulled his hand back to find a little bit of blood oozing out of the scratch.

"Hey, watch it."

"You can take it. Now get all that stuff together. We need to get through the labs before they burn down, and I know this bitch will have plenty of stuff I can take back to the flotilla back there."

"And what about the bitch herself?"

"Grab her. We can trade her in later for some extra money."

Just like usual, Sorchk thought. I'm the muscle, even with all these problems. At least the asari wasn't too heavy. He could pick her up with one hand, and he doubted that he'd need the other for anything more than looting and packing things up. They'd ruined whatever protection that the scientist had, and without her controlling anything, anything they'd missed would just be useless.

Still, he would have liked to have both arms free. Just because he was a Krogan didn't mean that he was a super-strong person, and the sniper rifle was pretty heavy for just one hand. But he didn't bother complaining, particularly with Ke'haul in such a hurry. He knew what would happen if he did, and being cracked in the face with a weapon was nothing compared to what that Quarian could do if she got pissed.

"Hurry up!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming."

The End