Firuzeh looked at the group, weighing her options for a moment. She knew they all viewed her as an immature fool likely to die as soon as the bullets flew - or at least, that was her own impression. She looked ahead into the tunnel, closing one eye as her vision shifted into infrared. There was little she could make out in the tunnel immediately to their front, indistinct temperatures and shapes, but nothing that signified a life form lurking in wait. 

“I’ll take point.” She piped up after a moment’s silence, tapping her temple, “Cybernetic lets me see in infrared, if there’s anything hiding in the darkness I’ll pick out their body heat before it’d ever be possible to see them with the naked eye.” 

“I’ll head up front too,” piped up the crew’s most amiable (and charming, and handsome, and for sure the most humble!) component, easy-going grin already firmly painted across his face. He had been looking at the body expressionlessly, watching the poor fucker marinate in the darkness and sewage they were now intent on navigating, but the thought of leading the charge through such enticing dangers had breathed life back into his upbeat demeanor. 

“I ain’t no fucking good to anyone stuck back here. Might be that I’d be more good up there. And if anything jumps out or bumps into us, seems I’m the most expendable too. Fuck yeah.”

Firuzeh looked back at the man volunteering himself for point alongside her, and grinned. "You saying you feel like playing booby trap detection? That's the vibe I'm getting. More power to you, but I'll let this do the finding for me." With a mechanical finger she tapped the ring of her eye socket. "Nevertheless, good to be on the front with you. I'll try to save some for you if we run into anyone." 

Jackson sidled up from his original haunt, near the back of the unit, to stand near Firuzeh; the cowboy seemed unperturbed by his surroundings or by the tiptoeing and wriggling he had to do to skirt around the body. The Turian had the right of it, as far as movement was concerned; they were a large crew, and it’d be a real son of a bitch for a third of the crew to be shaved right off the top, even if it meant more room for the survivors to stretch their legs back on the ship. The hardass turian and the batarian were a good fit for holding up the rear, and he had no concerns about their ability to do so. But he felt like a weak link back there, and if it came to combat in these cramped spaces, nobody was going to be doing much fighting at the ranges they would need to fire at. If it came to hand and hand, Jace alone would be able to kill four times his number, and the techno-sadist beside him seemed to value her own capabilities in a fight.

He gave the Persian woman a look for the first time since dinner the previous evening. He’d seen a few like her during his years in the galaxy’s seedier combat circuits - men and women who had been so thoroughly damaged putting their bodies on the line for petty cash that they spent on third-class hatchet jobs and prosthetics. Occasionally, the idea proved successful, if sacrilegious to the body; in theory any cyborg was a pain in the ass to defend against, and the slap of a titanium arm or leg against flesh would render an average human’s leg insensate with pain. In Jackson’s experience, the jobs were shoddily done, and the visible buildup of scar tissue and poor grafting work done where sinew met steel were as obvious as tattooed bullseyes. 

The work done on this broad was similar to those back-alley surgeries at first glance. To him, it looked as though whoever had done Firuzeh’s work had a decidedly more utilitarian purpose in mind when welding her cybernetics on. The same tell-tale signs of grafting had been visible the night before, in more casual attire, but there was nothing so shoddy as the body modification that Jackson had seen done to poor, desperate fighters in his time. Firuzeh seemed far more capable of wreaking havoc with that arm, too. The limb seemed to be the extent of the work done on her, but there may just as easily have been shit done to her on the inside that had required a more subtle touch than the arm. After all, she’d said she had infrared, right? Not his problem.

He was happy he wouldn’t be on the receiving end of her - at least for a while. At least he’d gotten a look at her that hadn’t prioritized what her ass looked like. 

Jace stuck a hand up in a wave and winked at her, carefree and seemingly ignorant of his surroundings, in response. A callow gesture on its surface? Sure. But notably, he had taken care to steer away from the krogan who was pillaging the poor dead fucker’s omni-tool for information, and he was careful not to talk over the crew members discussing the state of the corpse or the meaning behind it.

Firuzeh nodded, returning the gesture with her free hand. She did not care to examine the body in detail like the rest of the team did - everything relevant to her had been plainly evident after a scant thirty seconds of investigation. Her focus now was on whoever had inflicted the killing, as as the party pulled what information they could from the body, she periodically scanned the darkness of the looming tunnel, though she did not expect to see anything. Whoever it was, whatever it was, it would have long ago moved on from the scene of the crime. 

She looked the man over, noting his build and stature. Clearly, he was accustomed to fighting, and from the look she could feel him giving her, he too was sizing up her own competency should things get hairy. “How do you want to handle this?” She murmured, gesturing to the tunnel ahead, “I reckon I take the lead and let you lot know if I see anything. Don’t want to give away our presence with a bunch of flashlight beams.”

“And I’ll shoot over your shoulder,” Jackson agreed genially, his grin leaving her and falling onto the body and those gathered around it. By now their crew had dissolved into squabbles over what would be done if the third party that had left this poor bastard had already reached their target - or worse, taken her off the chessboard entirely. Jace inhaled through his teeth and let out the breath imperceptibly, grin fading into a pair of pursed lips.

"Only if it was that easy. What if our target's dead or captured? What do we do then?" one of the scruffier humans in the party asked. Fucked if Jackson could remember his name right now.

[i]Ho-ly hell, this is gonna head sideways.[/i]

“Well, way we’re goin’ so far I think any first-rate crew could beat us to the punch,” the cage fighter jested. “If somethin’ more polished has already gotten to her and cleaned her clock, might be that we don’t need to be fuckin’ with ‘em.”