Kosso had always believed that a man could get used to anything, given enough time. Luek's "laughter" was challenging that belief. The strange, sinister sound came rumbling out of the Hanar again, echoing like the thrash of sea waves out of some, dark, salt-washed cave. It reached into Kosso, snaking through his ears and down into some deep, primal part of him, birthing a shiver that worked its way up his spine even as he tried to stifle it, tried to look unaffected. [i]That's what it's for[/i], he realized suddenly, [i]to make people unsettled. Well, it's working, you bastard. Now let's get on with the show.[/i] He took another sip of his every-dwindling drink, letting a bit of impatience flicker across his features. [i]Even my persona would be getting annoyed by now. We've been run around in circles for too long.[/i]

Luckily, it seemed Luek agreed. As his chuckling died down, he raised one tentacle and flicked lazily at the holographic image of Kahje, sending the planet spinning away somewhere into the corner of the room where it dissolved into nothingness. "Yes, Ms. Piers, it appears you are correct. This one has found himself in good company. Shall we discuss business?" Another tentacle pressed a hidden button, and soon the air shimmered with hundred of holographic images. Pages on pages of digital information bathed the study in the neon light of a million numbers and figures. It looked wholly incomprehensible, but Luek reached through the tangle and began retrieving the data he was looking for. "Let us discuss your initial investment, to begin. Then we may begin working on the logistics of future business, and how we shall divide the profits."

The data stream was almost as unfathomable and awe inspiring as the ocean itself; at a cursory glance it was easy to take in, but as soon as you tried to focus on any particular item it became somewhat daunting. Tanya decided she had a new found respect for information brokers; she had no idea how Luek knew where to look or how he managed to gather so much information or where all the sources were from. If Kosso knew what to do with all of that, it could potentially be a game changer. She allowed herself a brief moment of excitement, which she hoped Luek interpreted as her being relieved at entering a business arrangement. 

The communicator implanted in the earring dangling from her left ear made a slight vibration twice, letting her know that the security room was secured and Tzvi and Kygg somehow managed to pull off an impressive feat. Now it fell to Tanya and Kosso to neutralize the room and crack the safe. Tanya wasn't entirely sure of her chances; she was unarmed, other than her omni-tool and while she was a fairly proficient fighter in hand to hand combat, she was still unshielded, in a dress, she was still at a disadvantage to the bodyguard, who in all likelihood was a very tough son of a bitch. This was Kosso's specialty; watching Roland get his ass kicked while Tanya tried to keep the drell from throwing the team's medic and financial officer into her work station was a testament to his skill as a martial artist. She'd follow Kosso's lead; he likely had a better sense of timing for these lopsided encounters than she did. At least they had the element of surprise. 

The communicator hidden in Kosso's ear buzzed with a nearly silent whisper, carried from elsewhere in the ship. Kygg and Tzvi had neutralized the security room, at least for now. [i]Apparently this team isn't always a mess. Now it's time to do our part.[/i] There was a weight in his stomach, a tangible dread coiling there like a Kahjean sea-snake, leaking poison. It took nearly all of his will to keep his hands from shaking as he took another drink. This was the part that would make them or break them, he knew. The rest of the team had made sure they could get the safe open without triggering an alarm, but actually getting to the safe would be the truly difficult task. Two bodyguards stood in their way, each highly trained, armed and potentially biotic. Kosso was trained as well, and confident that no one could best him if he got close enough...but he had no gun, and all Tanya had was her omni-tool and her wits. [i]If she can incapacitate one for a second, or even just take care of his gun, I can take out the other one...but only if he's close enough. I'll never close the distance myself, he'd put a bullet in me before I took three steps. I have to bring him to me somehow.[/i] He finished his drink, stifling a scowl. Then he glanced into his empty champagne glass, and knew he had his solution. 

"I would toast our budding partnership, but I appear to have misplaced my drink." He called jokingly. Luek, embroiled in business as he was, took the hint, gesturing one of his bodyguards to refill his glass. [i]The arrogant bastard is using some of the deadliest fighters in the galaxy as his personal servants, pouring drinks and attending to his guests. It's appropriate, how useful his hubris is.[/i] As the other Drell crossed the floor towards him, Kosso didn't dare make eye contact with Tanya. He could only hope she'd gotten the message from the rest of the team, and was ready to jump into action. She'd have to be smart, she'd have to be accurate, and most of all, she'd have to be fast. One slip-up, and this whole venture would end only with their deaths. 

Well, if they were going to act, she might as well put herself at a more advantageous position. She rose from her seat with an apologetic smile. "Before we begin our negotiation, I am slightly embarrassed to have to admit I need to use the facilities." she shook her glass for emphasis. "I am certain you could use a few extra moments to get your affairs in order before we begin, and my partner will be able to start on the groundwork for our budding partnership. She smiled at the guard closest to her, "Could you be a gentleman and escort a lady to take care of her own personal matters?" she said, stepping closer.

Impassive as he was, Luek's annoyance was palpable as he answered Tanya. "If you must, but this one would ask that you make some haste. Though our business here is undoubtedly important, this one's guests may find it unseemly if this one is absent from the party for too long."

"I'm quite surprised, Luek." Kosso's voice was cool, perfectly masking his tension as the bodyguard poured him a new drink. "I didn't think 'Aurelion' concerned himself with the opinions of others." 

If Luek could have glared at him, he would have. "Aurelion did not care what others thought, but for all his ambition, Aurelion was a failure. This one recognizes the game that it is playing, and this one knows the importance of appearances. Oftentimes, a well-crafted charade serves better than honesty."

Kosso's face was perfectly still.. For a second, the study was silent except for the quiet fizz and pop of his nearly poured drink frothing at the brim of his glass, and the quiet sound of Tanya's footsteps as she approached the other guard. "Well said," he finally answered. Then he lashed out, throwing his drink in the face of the nearest guard.

Time seemed to slow down for Kosso. He saw everything: the splash of liquid against the Drell's pale face, the way the other guard immediately stiffened and began reaching for his gun, the gelatinous quiver of Luek's body as he began to shift in the other direction, startled. His drink glass was flying through the air, spiraling down out of his sight. Kosso was moving before it hit the floor. 

Even blinded, his opponent was fast, moving to counter him. Kosso was reaching for the guard's gun with one hand, but the other Drell predicted it easily, expertly grabbing his arm by the elbow and twisting it away. Kosso twisted with it, bringing one foot forward and slamming an open palm into the underside of his chin. The Drell's head jerked violently back, and Kosso heard a sharp [i]crack[/i] as the man's teeth smashed together. Even that wasn't enough to stop him, though. Already the guard's free hand was moving towards Kosso's side, aiming for the soft spot below his ribs. 

It was smart move. In fact, it's exactly what Kosso would have done in that situation. Their training was identical, or near enough to make no matter. All of the guard's moves, his predictions, his attacks and blocks, they were all engraved in Kosso's mind, and he saw them all clearly, as if he'd learned them yesterday. [i] He'll be expecting me to bring my elbow down to defend, which will leave my front unguarded,[/i] Kosso thought in a flash, the voice in his head sounding more like his old mentor, Cirn, than his own. Instead, he did something unpredictable. Pushing forward again, bulled into his opponent, sweeping one leg forward to trip him while he ducked and drove his shoulder into the other Drell's torso. The blow towards his side connected, but it was only a glancing blow; the guard was already being rolled smoothly over his shoulder, completely off the ground. Like Kosso, the man was all wiry muscle, with no real weight. Normally that would be an advantage, but Kosso knew what he was doing. Like he'd once told Roland, sometimes you just gotta "throw the fuck out of something." 

The guard was forced over Kosso's hunched body, his feet hitting the ground on the other side without much confidence. Kosso didn't give him a chance to regain his balance. He was already twisting around, forcing the guard further. Kosso's arm was still caught at the elbow, and the sudden reversal of position caused it to wrench painfully in the socket. He did his best to ignore the pain, driving the guard roughly onto the ground even as he swiped the pistol from his holster with one smooth motion as the guard's weight fell from his back. 

The guard hit the ground heavily, but Kosso knew he'd be back up within only a few seconds. That was something he'd have to deal with later, however. Instead he turned to bring the gun to bear on the other guard. Hopefully Tanya had taken care of his gun, or Kosso could expect a bullet crashing through his forehead any second now.

While not a trained assassin, there was something to be said about the System Alliance Marine Corps unarmed combat training regimen. As the commotion started across the room as Kosso engaged his guard, Tanya's fingers were flicking into motion, completing the sequence for an Incineration attack. Her omni-tool sprang to life at hip level, launching the scorching projectile into the gut of the drell who was instinctively focused on the immediate threat - namely, the guy kicking the shit out of his companion.The searing, scorching heat of the projectile ate its way quickly through the man's suit and scorched the drell's scaly hide, no doubt causing excruciating pain to the bodyguard as the flames splashed across his abdomen, no doubt torching the softer inner layer of skin. Tanya considered herself lucky that she wasn't another step closer, or the flames would have licked her, as well, and she was in no hurry to find out how flame retardant her dress was. She prepared to elbow the drell across the head, but instead was surprised by a well-placed punch to her own head, the surprise hit causing her vision to blacken and a sharp pain to fill her head. Somehow, her 'friend' had recovered quickly and retaliated. As she staggered and recovered, the drell's hand was already going for the pistol at his hip, and he was attempting to move back to give himself space. 

Knowing that there were but a second to react, Tanya hurled her full glass at the drell's head, causing the bodyguard to duck to the side with impressive reflexes. It was conventional wisdom to try to go for the gun, but Tanya knew that most people remained too focused on it, as it was clearly the key to winning a fight. Instead, she charged into him, throwing her braced arm into the drell's neck as her momentum carried them both into the wall, rattling a picture. Not offering a chance for him to recover or bring his weapon to bear, Tanya grabbed the drell's forearm and smashed it into the wall as she brought her knee up hard into the drell's burnt abdomen, again and again. It didn't matter how tough you were; you felt that. The drell doubled cover, and Tanya uppercut him in the throat, choking him as the vicious blow collapsed his windpipe. She tried to react when he retaliated with punch to her kidney, the impact rattling her spine. Tanya cried out, and as she started to recover, arms were around her, running back into her chair. The two collapsed upon one another, the drell went to bring his weapon to point to be rewarded with a headbutt and a knee to the groin, the combined effect moving his gun off target. Tanya was quick to activate her omni-blade, driving it into the drell's side. With a final shove, Tanya forced the drell off of her, and she hurried to secure the drell's weapon. He groaned, blood dripping between clinched, webbed fingers, and Tanya had her weapon trained at his head, the indicator for Cryo-rounds appearing off to the side of the weapon in the holographic indicator. She didn't look to her partner as she called out to him. "And how are we doing over there?"

"Oh, I'm just dandy," her partner growled, doing his best to mask his immense relief upon seeing Tanya alive and with gun in hand. "Be better if I could use both my arms, but I take what I can get." Kosso's right arm hung uselessly at his side, his shoulder grossly misshapen. He knew at a glance that it was dislocated. Dislocated limbs were a common problem among the limber, ever-twisting Drell, and he'd dealt with this several times before. [i]The first time it happened was on Metgos,[/i] he recalled suddenly, [i]the second mission we ever shared. I yelled when she locked the joint back into place, and she just smiled and told me I was being overly-dramatic...[/i] He felt the memory welling up from within, threatening to engulf him. A good memory, despite all the phantom pain that would come with it, but he would do best to leave it resting for now. He swung, his good arm outstretched with pistol in hand. When he pulled the trigger, the soft, professional [i]thrum[/i] was enough to jolt him out of the rising dream.

The guard had been tenacious, that was for sure. Even after the beating he'd taken, the Drell had already been working his way back onto sure footing, his eyes focused on Kosso. The bullet caught him between the eyes; at this range, it would have been impossible for Kosso to miss. The guard's body jerked once, violent and spastic, before it collapsed into one immobile, bloody heap. The crack of the gunshot echoed once through the study before fading. Kosso wasn't worried. This study was privvy to too many secrets to be anything less than completely soundproof, and even if anyone outside did hear, they'd just chalk it up to another muffled bout of lightning, a product of the storm still raging outside the ship.

"Put a bullet in yours too." He called to his partner. "Even wounded, he's faster than he looks. Don't give him the chance." His eye caught movement on the other side of the room as Luek stirred, his great luminous body sliding subtly across the floor where he had fallen and cowered during the fighting. He was reaching for the underside of one of his many ornately carved desks. A hidden alarm, no doubt. Kosso strode over and stomped down on the offending tentacle, his good arm bringing his gun to rest over Luek's body. "Close, but not fast enough. You just sit tight until we figure out what to do with you." He kicked the Hanar into a corner, allowing himself a small grin at the wet, squishy sound the crime lord's body made when his foot made contact. He called out again to Tanya, not daring to move his eyes from his new prisoner. "When you're finished up over there, you mind helping me with this arm? It helps to have at least two hands."

Tanya's eyes didn't leave the wounded drell. He was a dangerous adversary, to be sure, and was waiting for her to slip up. She had to hand it to Luek; he hired some dedicated, tough bastards. She flinched at the gunshot, semi-expecting it but given how quiet and serene things had been up until a few moments ago, and the fact she had not anticipated a fight unless things went terribly wrong was somewhat jarring. It wasn't to say she wasn't prepared, as evidenced by the fact it was the bodyguard and not her bleeding on the floor, but she had rather hoped to have gotten and out without complication. 

Kosso instructed her to kill her adversary, who looked up back at her with surprisingly cool eyes. He obviously heard Kosso order Tanya to shoot him, and wasn't content to wait for death passively. The drell began to lurch forward, his hand beginning to shoot out. He was quick, like a viper. But Tanya was quicker, her finger already tense of the trigger. The handgun barked in her hands, the positive grip keeping the recoil managed as the weapon discharged, the round freezing tissue immediately upon penetrating the drell's eye and back through his skull. Tanya trained her weapon on Luek, ignoring the sound of shattering brain matter when the body struck the floor. She wasn't about to lose any sleep over killing an "innocent" bodyguard, both drell were employed by a nasty bastard and it was really no different than the Blue Suns back on Omega. Mercenaries didn't get very far by being soft in this galaxy, after all.

She approached the desk, and only now took a moment to spare a glance at Kosso's arm. "Fuck. I haven't seen an arm do that since Private Lewis took a nasty spill down a cliff." she approached her partner, sparing a look at the hanar, not trusting it. "Keep on eye on that bastard, will you? I'd rather not get throttled while I do this." she said, placing her pistol down on the desk and grabbing Kosso's elbow in one hand and his shoulder in the other. "Try not to cry like a bitch, okay? On three. One-"

With a sudden twist of the arm and a forceful shove of the shoulder, Tanya wrenched the unsightly bulge back into its proper socket with a wet cracking sound. She kept supporting him until she felt him begin to move the arm on his own. That was a bloody relief. "You'll want to get Roland to look at that later, but let's deal with the immediate matter." she scooped up the pistol once more off the table and trained it on the hanar. "The way I see it, we can't just leave him behind. The moment we turn our backs, he's going to have his entire security team on us. Even if we got off the ship, he'd doubtless be looking to find us. I'd rather not find my neck broken from some hit man I run into at the liquor store." she said, darting a quick look at Kosso. "Besides, it seems to me you waited a long time for this moment. Don't let it go to waste."

"You have a gift for causing pain, my dear." Kosso muttered, flexing his newly aligned arm and wincing a bit as the tendons stretched. It ached, and the shoulder was still stiff and difficult to move, but at least he could use his arm. At this point, he'd have to take what he could get. He was still somewhat shocked; he'd half expected their plan to fall apart in this room, fearing the two bodyguards would prove too quick and too deadly for them to overcome. The fact that they'd made it through the ordeal with only a fucked-up arm and a few bruises to show for it was a testament to their skill. [i]Or our luck. Gods willing, we still have some left.[/i] Somewhere high above the glass ceiling, lightning flashed, as if the gods deigned to disagree. 

Tanya apparently had no qualms about killing their unarmed host, much to Kosso's surprise. Given their past history, he'd expected an argument, more angry words to drown them both in wasted time and squandered energy. But the young, idealistic ex-marine he was familiar with seemed different here, in the belly of the beast. In the thick of the mission, with danger at every side, she was hardened, a stone-cold marine despite the party dress and perfume. Despite their disagreements, he'd always known she was both smart and pragmatic, and she was proving it here. She knew what had to be done. 

Luek, on the other hand, did not agree. "This one must applaud your cleverness. This one was caught quite unaware by your charming act." He stated simply, his words carefully expressionless. It was if the last few minutes hadn't even happened, and they were still discussing business over drinks. "But you do not want to kill this one."

Kosso's finger tightened slightly on the trigger. "On the contrary, there is nothing I'd like more."

"Of that, this one is sure. But it does not change the facts. You need this one if you are to access its riches."

Kosso's face was cold and still as he gestured Tanya towards one of the study's walls. "I wouldn't be so sure. 'Ms. Piers,' you'll find the safe behind that coral panel there, the third from the left. There's probably a hidden button around the frame."

Luek was undeterred. "You may know where the safe is, yes...but you cannot hope to open it. Not in time. This one has other guards, waiting belowdecks should they be needed. Once those two there-" he gestured towards the two dead bodies with one insolent flick of a tentacle, apparently uninterested, "-fail to check in at the routine time, the others will come. And they will not be swayed by honeyed words and cheap tricks. This one can get the safe open for you...but only while it is alive, of course."

Though his face was impassive as ever, Kosso seethed inside. He didn't know what he'd expected to happen once they'd gotten to this point, with Luek at their mercy, but it wasn't this. Instead of begging for his life or reeling in shock as his closest guards were killed, the arrogant Hanar was still trying to manipulate events in his favor, as calm as he had ever been. The worst part was, his words were not so far-fetched. Time was of the essence, and now wasn't the time for rash, potentially damning actions, as much as Kosso's finger itched on the trigger. "Alright then. Talk." 

"The safe has three doors, three levels of security. Perhaps it might be possible for one to force their way through all three, yes, perhaps...but why do so when you have the keys. The keycode to the first door is 17392. Consider it a gift to prove this one's cooperation."

Kosso nodded at Tanya, albeit reluctantly. "Might as well go ahead. If it sets off an alarm, Luek knows we'll kill him within seconds." As Tanya went about her part of the job, Kosso activated his communicator, careful not to let his gun leave its place above Luek. He opened a communication channel with the rest of the team. "I'm really hoping you guys weren't lying about taking care of the security room, or me and the socialite will be soon be entertaining a host of very angry mercenaries. We've taken care of Luek and located the safe, now we're going to need someone looking after us while we get it open. There should be a hell of a lot of camera feeds in that security center; one of you should commandeer them. We need an eye on the rest of the ship, someone to let us know if we or anyone else on the team is about to get any unexpected company. Can you guys do that?"