Howlers
As the mercenaries each moved to their best personal vantage points Sacre took the lead slithering forward toward the grouped thugs. She made it quite close before the paranoid thug on alert spotted her elder slithering form growing nearer to him and his crew. As the others laughed and went on in general camaraderie the point man turned his head and barked out a warning, "Yo, take a look at this! Some reptile bitch is coming over here. I wonder how this filthy xeno got here."
It seemed the the mention of an alien awoke something in the group as they each turned and took up their weapons and slowly gathered to meet Sacre. "I say we swiss cheese it," said one man. "Nah, just beat her head in old school," replied another. "Guys seriously, we should fuck her up and then take her to Maxim. Heck he might even let us have a ride before we gut her," another said with a sneer. The jabs and jibes were enough to really stress that the Malaise system was not a welcome one, especially to non-Nepleslians.
One man stepped forward however, his dark beard was long and unkempt. It was hard to make out his muttered words above the wind but the sobering visages of the collected thugs told the story, that and all of them taking a small step back. "Die you filth," The bearded older man said before he raised an HHG and squeezed the trigger aimed right for the Separa'Shan.
Inside
It was apparent to Duncan that this floor as well as the next few were very likely going to be dead ends for what they sought. He watched Salem get a pretty decent feel for the floors and saw the way Kira did her thing checking for vantage points in which to use her rifle. It seemed to him that the team were pacing themselves out exactly as he had hoped. Kira was a noted support specialist according to Desmond's notes and it was rare for the stoic former leader to give such praise. Salem, as Duncan knew, was a tactical man, all action. Phage, was a bit of a wild card but already the diminutive Freespacer was providing out of the box foresight.
He reached up and turned the multi lens on the left eye of his mask. It was the first time he had used this feature and knew it was a bit out there but he thought back to his preliminary training with it and tried to suss out the information. Even his personal armorer was skeptical about adding such a strange feature but it had it's uses, an acoustic spectogram. That's right, Duncan's current vision in his left eye was actually seeing sound. The weird pulses and waves flowed strong from the center courtyard but quickly leveled out when he swept over the rest of the tenth floor.
Satisfied he rotated his left lens back to normal and spoke up, "From what I can tell this floor and the next few seem empty, at least I presume due to the darkness and that their is really no sound coming from them," he held his hand to his covered ear. There was no real purpose but it was habit from when he used a separate mic, "Shasta, why don't you send a drone down this central shaft to give us a better visual, it is also a great standby in case we engage, they would not expect it. Speaking of, when we determine the exact floor we need to begin an actual sweep, I say Kira stays one floor up. You can use your rifle on angles to add with the drones.
"Salem, you and I will push from the stairwell with Phage staying back a bit in case we come across any obstacles we can't punch our way through," he knew that splitting up would not be a favorite choice but he felt that the teams abilities dictated they would pull this off with the right amount of surprise and overlapping fire.