Avatar and Cactus --- The last of those who were close to the door had fled, but over half of the diplomats were either dead or cut off from the exit, and the allied soldiers had fared no better. One of the Turians, who Avatar identified as a cabalist based on his use of biotic barriers, was attempting to interface with the door controls, presumably to lock down the exit. Avatar considered this to be inadvisable, considering that he was entirely exposed to enemy fire, especially from the second level. However, organics were prone to making rash decisions when placed in stressful situations. As expected, now that there were few targets returning fire, the hostile team lead by the Asari shifted their focus to the cabalist. His barriers were depleted quickly by automatic fire from an assault rifle, followed by two shots to his back from a designated marksman rifle. His armor provided some protection, but the rifle was sufficiently high-powered to allow both shots penetrated into his body. Since Avatar was in cover on the opposite side of the same wall, it was in a position to attempt to render aid. Leaning out of cover, Avatar launched an incineration orb, but programmed it to detonate prematurely in mid-air to provide a momentary visual obstruction. At the same time, it reached through the open doorway and grabbed onto the cabalist's arm in an attempt to pull him to safety. He had fallen to the ground after being shot, and presently, Avatar did not possess enough data to determine if he had survived. Tacticus hugging the doorway continued to fire out at the locals. There were so many bodies on the floor that he could see in the edges of his vision. It was just them and the ones that wanted to kill them now. He picked out a Human that was running at them with a shotgun and quickly began unloading into the charging attacker. He noticed he had adjusted all shielding to be forward facing as was evident from the massive blob of holographic orange that was in front of his body. The assailant now entered range and started firing and cocking back as fast as he could. Tacticus managed to fire six rounds all impacting in the chest before he was forced back into cover when his biotic barrier dropped. He quickly managed to get another barrier up and continue firing. When he turned back out several machine pistol rounds were impacting into his chest which Tacticus then quickly added his own pistol too. The combined fire quickly dropped his barriers and he took several rounds before tripping into the pile of bodies. More rounds narrowly missed Tacticus and a few even hit the small of his forearm once again dropping his barrier. As he squeezed back into his crouching against the wall he looked over to his right where a Geth was now occupying the other cover. But there was something else, Sul on the ground next to him face down behind cover. Cactus quickly fumbled for his comms and called out. "Sul is down, Poria pull him out! We need a new exit plan, there is no way we're closing this door from here!" Just then Sul started sliding back as blue tendril of energy grabbed onto him and began sliding him across the floor further into the corridor. Slightly panicked he looked over at the Geth. "Wouldn't happen to have any ideas would you?" There was no audible response from Avatar. Instead, it went about immediately implementing a potential solution to the problem. There were still allies present in the room, but based on available data, the probability of successfully extracting them was negligible. However, locking the door now would improve the probability of survival for those who had already escaped. Avatar shifted its shotgun to its left hand, then leaned around the corner and fired two shots into the door's control panel inside the room before quickly ducking back into cover. It was only exposed for 3.28 seconds, so its shields protected it from the few assault rifle rounds it had recieved. With the enemy's ability to interface with the door controls temporarily removed, Avatar simply pressed the button on their side of the door to close it normally. It was not locked down entirely, so it would not be difficult for the enemy to bypass the control console in order to open it, but that option would be more time consuming than taking an alternate path around the door, through a different hallway. Those who had managed to escape to room had the potential to escape the station, but were still in considerable danger, Now that the door was closed, they needed to act quickly to develop an escape plan, something which Avatar had already dedicated some processes to determining. Firstly, it needed to determine the current state of allied forces, as the presence of wounded would alter how they could move through the station. "It he alive?" Avatar asked simply to the cabal knelt over the Turian, Sul. Sul coughed out "I'm go.." Before he started spitting out blood in a coughing spurt. "Shut up before you hurt yourself more." Sura said as her omni-tool lit up and began applying medi-gel to Sul who had taken a few rounds in the back. While her Omni-tool delivered life saving aid to Sul she looked up at the Geth quickly and Tacticus. "Yeah he'll live, suprised we only took one casualty." Sul groaned as the omni-gel began to seep into his body."Keep your head down till we get out of here, that's an order." After helping Sul against a wall she quickly returned to the Turian and Geth."My name is Sura leader of the cabal on the station. Right now I'm sure as hell hoping there are more of you geth somewhere on the ship. Those locals are much better equiped than us and I assume you know no one can get contact to the outside. Right now though we need to figure out how to get word to the cruiser or we're all dead." Pausing for a second she looked back at all the terrified diplomats and security who had made it through."If you got any better ideas right now...uh geth I'm all ears. But for now I'm going to go and try to convince the humans to help us raid the stations communications room. Surely they wouldn't cut themselves off from the outside atleast completly anyways." "I am the only Geth program assigned to these negotiations." Avatar answered. "I recommend we gather all surviving officers to develop a plan of escape. There is a 62% chance of hostile forces reaching us withing five minutes, increasing with time. We should act quickly." With that Sura turned on to her heels and began her search for the Humans commander. Tacticus turned to the Geth. "Thanks for saving Sul back there. I don't know if he would have made it without you dragging his ass in. Oh and I'm Tacticus by the way, do... you have a name?" "Acknowledged, I am Avatar." It answered as it started to scan the crowd for faces or uniforms that matched the files it had on record for officers. Nodding to the less than talkative machine he saw the Human that was now attached to his cabal. After shaking off the severe feeling of deja vu he again turned back to the Geth. "We should probably go see what their planning." He said as he gestured with his arm towards Sura and the Human he had seen giving orders earlier, who were now talking. Avatar joined the growing group of officers and other security personelle who were frantically attempting to create a plan of action. The Cabal, Sura, was suggesting that they search for a communications center, though Avatar did not find this to be the best option. The unarmed diplomats they would be escorting would drastically increase the difficulty of combat, so it calculated that going directly for an escape route would lead to the lowest probability of casualties. However, given how quickly hostiles were likely to arrive, Avatar concluded that it would be advantageous to select agree on a plan quickly, even if it was suboptimal, rather than deliberate for an extended time. It still intended to give its own suggestion, but would not attempt to defend it if there was strong enough opposition. Activating its omni-tool, Avatar projected the scematics of the stock-variant of this station which it had downloaded earlier into an empty space between the group. "It is improbable that these schematics are entirely accurate since this station has been modified, but they can serve as an approximation for its layout. The presence of noncombatants among us will increase the difficulty of combat, so I recommend finding a mode of escape quickly, instead of pursuing other objectives. Leaving the station will allow us to contact our allies." It suggested.