As much as Roman's show of bravado made Ashei want to throw up, she had to respect his ruthlessness. Hell, he might be as cutthroat as she was. As Roman's bullet pierced the merc's leg, blood splattered across Ashei's lower body. She adjusted slightly to give Roman a better shot, but besides that, she didn't even blink, instead maintaining the fierce glare into the merc's eyes.

As the others rattled off their questions, Ashei began to create a mental map of what was going on. First, this ragtag group of mercs was selected and summoned to meet here, in this wasting old bar on Omega. Not the ideal location for what looked like was supposed to be a meeting of some of the toughest guns for hire in the galaxy. There were countless better places to go on Omega, and yet their mysterious contact told them to meet at the Dive. Not good.

Then, there was the convenience of the location for the Black Stars, or whatever the hell they were called. They seemed to know exactly where and when they would arrive. The quarian was asking the right questions; why were these mercs interested in this meeting? And why were the mercs so untrained? They were fierce, but as Roman said, there was absolutely no sense of tactics or strategy to the firefight. It was a classic shootout, as if out of an old Western movie.

Ashei took a step back from the wounded merc, but stayed crouched nearby to keep up the intimidation factor. She processed everything they knew so far and came to three possibilities: this was a test, this was an ambush to stop their job prematurely, or someone just had a fetish for classic Western shootouts in bars. Honestly, Ashei hoped it was the last one. The first two did not bode well for the future.

Both the quarian and the salarian asked good questions; how and why did the Blackened Stars know this meeting was happening? But Ashei's original question did not elicit a satisfactory response. She moved back towards the merc and gripped the original shotgun wound hard, applying great pressure to the wound.

"I don't care what you're called. I want to know who hired you. And if you don't know, I want to know who does. Somebody paid you to kill us," Ashei emphasized her questions by squeezing just a little bit harder on the wound. [i]Fuck it, might as well go the extra mile,[/i] Ashei thought, drawing her Tempest and placing the barrel on the side of the merc's head with her free hand. [i]"Talk."[/i]