Look whose back. It's almost as though your response to Eden warranted this!

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Chapter One

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"This is off-duty officer Vetara Calarian, badge number 1685491. There's been a shooting at Galanian Ward 37 inside of the Astral Café. Suspect is a batarian male, on foot, about 1.8 meters tall dressed in a blue and red jumpsuit. Victims are a human female adult, human male adolescence, human female child, all dead on arrival. I am currently in pursuit of the suspect! Send back up, over!"

"Copy that, officer; we have units incomings to your location."

Her off-duty pistol drawn, Officer Vetara Calarian bolted through the wards, ignoring the gawkers and screaming civilians as she charged after the fleeing assassin. That was what the mass killing had been: a blatant assassination in broad daytime in a room full of café patrons.

She had witnessed the crime in action. She was on her way home after a fourteen hour shift and had stopped at the café for a pick-up. The victims had been sitting at a table a ways off. They were laughing and chatting animatedly as humans generally did. She paid it not real attention until the batarian walked into the café, raised his pistol and shot the three of them execution style. It was a horrifying display of violence which made even a season officer like her pause. The batarian proceeded to leave before she even had a chance to identify herself and took off when she did.

She pushed it to the back of her mind and carried on. This perpetrator had to be stopped before he did any more harm. He had done something far more dangerous then he realized – or perhaps he did it because of it – he killed humans in a primarily alien ward. The humans were still newcomers to the citadel, treated with suspicion and outright hatred. The humans in turn were particularly sensitive to crimes committed against their people. The rallying cry of 'hate crime' was a common call they resorted to.

In this case, however, it would be a completely justifiable use. Killing children was an act of pure evil in her eyes. Why this batarian did it, it just had to been motivated by recent events. Most notably of which was the growing System's Alliance expansion into the Skyllian Verge. The Hegemony was crying foul at every chance it could. It was only a matter of time before disgruntled batarians decided to take it out on common humans as though they had been to blame for their government's policies. Nothing the Alliance did could justify what this batarian had done.

Pushing through another gathering of volus and salarians, Vetara raised her pistol and entered through a side alley leading to maintenance juncture of the ward. The batarian was likely going to try and make a break for it through the Keeper tunnels. She would if she was in his position. It would have been the surest way to the docking bays for a quick evacuation from the station.

A sudden strike to the back of her head winded the turian. Her legs gave out and she fell hard to the floor. Vetara looked up found the batarian had hit her with a stun baton. As he brought the baton back down on her, she managed to roll to one side, the weapon smacking against the ground

Dazed, Vetara attempted to raise her gun, only to get the weapon kicked clean out of her hand. Snapping her leg out, she kicked the batarian, dropping him to a knee. With him down, she immediately launched herself on top of the suspect and attempted to subdue the criminal. She had left her restraints in her locker. Nothing short of excessive physical force was going to subdue him.

Rearing his head back, the batarian head butted her, dazing her long enough for the batarian to escape her clutches and turn the tables on her, pinning her down underneath him, his knee slamming into her neck in order to keep her in place. Vetara heaved, trying to breath, her fist punching the batarian in the side. The Batarian had to have been using some sort of narcotic. Red sand perhaps… Whatever it had been, he was shrugging off blows that would debilitate most normal people under similar circumstances.

As Vetara punched him over and over where a batarian kidney should have been located, the batarian reared his baton back up and crashed it against her faceplate, her vision suddenly blurred from the blood now blinding her. She could not help it but cry out in agony from the hit. Through the blood, the officer could see the batarian baring his teeth as though he was amused by the whole thing.

Through her dazed state, she watched the batarian draw a knife on her and brought it down at her. Vetara reached out and grabbed his wrist as he tried to plunge it into her. Her eyes wide as she struggled to breathe and struggled to resist against the wild eyed batarian.

Without warning, a large mass collided into the batarian above her, knocking the bastard off her, his knife sliding a good metre or so away from the suspect. Wiping the blood off her face, Vetara unsteadily brought herself back to her feet and watched in a mixture of shock and satisfaction as the batarian was being knocked around senseless by what appeared to have been an unarmoured human. His bare fist slamming into the batarian's face with a sickening crack over and over. He was ignoring the Batarian gurgling, drowning in his own blood as blow after blow broke tenderized his face.

Holding the batarian by his throat, the human reached into the back of his open jacket and produced a sidearm. He placed the weapon against the Batarian's forehead. The weapon kicked her senses back into high gear. She raised her weapon and aimed it at the human.

"C-Sec!" she identified herself to the human. "Drop your weapon and stand up. Back away from the suspect and place your hands over your head!"

The human froze in place, as if only now realizing she had been a member of C-Sec, his head bouncing slightly as though he had been frustrated. He did, however, obliged to her order. Pulling the weapon away from the gasping, brutalized batarian, the human threw the weapon back in her direction and stood up, his hands over his head as he stepped away and turned to face her.

Using her forearm to wipe the blood out of her vision, Vetara inspected the human carefully. Iris colours were green, he was taller than her, and said something when she herself was pushing two meters tall. He had short black hair that was buzzed on the sides and long on top; his face was covered in dark fuzz. He wore some sort of soft clothing. A suit she supposed. It was black with a matching black under shirt.

As much as his physical appearance had screamed he wasn't someone to take lightly, it was his expression that really sealed her hypothesis. It was hard… stone cold. It was like he found the position he was in to be a nuisance. He wasn't in the least bit intimidated by her and it was very likely that Vetara wasn't the first person who had pulled a weapon on him in order to keep him from inflicting bloody violence or murder.

While he was dangerous on outward appearance, Vetara decided that the man whom had saved her wasn't an immediate threat. Deciding to trust his intent, Vetara lowered her gun and placed her foot on the chest of the squirming batarian, who was attempting to breath. As the batarian struggled to get up, she gave the bastard a solid kick in the side, knocking him back down.

"You're under arrest for triple first degree murder, assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest and fleeing the scene of the crime." She read him the charges, her voice rasping as she struggled to ignore the pain shooting through her and the eyes of the intense human staring at her. "You have a right to an advocate and your silence will not be infringed upon… even if you're a murdering pile of shit."

Ignoring the growl of the batarian as she 'accidentally' increased the pressure on his chest, Vetara looked up and directed her focus to the human still standing in front of her with his hands in front of him. Her weapon remained directed at him, but was lowered. The implication of the deadly force remained.

Silently she stared at the human, his hands still up. On the day of her graduation of C-Sec academy, her father had instilled in her lesson and that was not to place her pride above her life. She was grateful for the help with the batarian, even if it came in the form of a human. But while she had felt a certain amount of gratitude for the human for intervening when she had, he had still had to answer for the weapon he pulled. His actions warranted some reprieve from her part. She would at the very least hear him out.

"You have training," she observed, finally addressing the man. "Do you have any sort of identification? I'll need a permit for that weapon as well."

The human lowered his hands slowly, with Vetara keeping a close eye on the man as he activated his omni-tool to transfer his credentials to her. She activated her own omni-tool and scanned the information he had sent her.

"Jack Hansen, with First Wave Security Services," he introduced himself as she read the information and the concealed carry permit he had been licenced for. "We've been contracted for the Alliance embassy security..."

Vetara looked up and narrowed her eyes at the man. The man standing in front of her did not look the part of being a soldier of fortune.

"You're a mercenary?" she inquired, her voice hardened as she examined him.

Jack Hansen narrowed his eyes, his lip curling to reveal white, blunted teeth. The very suggestion that he was a mercenary was clearly offensive to his sensibilities.

"I'm not some lunatic gun-for-hire any more then you are a glorified security officer, officer," he growled back at her, not in the least bit impressed by her implication, nor by her jurisdictional authority. "I'm a private military contractor, and you have a bigger problem than my occupation. That woman killed by that Blink was Karin Novichkov, the children Alexi and Cassandra. They were Diplomat Pyotr Novichkov's immediate family. We told her on repeated occassions she was not to leave the safety of embassy without an escort… We should have expected this. Citadel Security has no respect for human safety..."

The suggestion the human named Jack Hansen had made about preferential law enforcement protection shook Vetara with a fury she rarely felt. How dare this bastard ape stand there and make the suggestion that C-Sec would skimp on protection to a species simply because they were human. It was sheer delusion on his part.

"If that was the case, then why did I pursue him for murdering humans?" she demanded to know, the anger in her voice on full display. "Acting like a victim is not going to get you anywhere!"

Before Hansen could reply and turn the squabble into a full blown war of words, the sound of a gasp caught their attention. They looked and found the restrained batarian turning pale and clammy. His body convulsing as he gripped his threat. Vetara flew into a panic and released her grip on the batarian and dropped down to his side to run a diagnosis on him.

As the batarian went limp and stopped breathing, Vetara wrapped her Talons together and began compressions. She was stopped, however, when the human grabbed her by the back of her armour and pulled her off him. She tried to fight back, but the human had the advantage in positioning and he was physically unharmed unlike she had been. With relative ease, Jack Hansen shoved Vetara hard into the ground and took her place at the batarian's side.

Vetara rounded back on Hansen; she was ready to rip into the human for interfering with the life-saving procedure of her detainee when she found the human reaching out, his hands prying open the dying batarian's mouth to reveal the murky bile he was drowning in. Hansen grabbed the knife the batarian had dropped and used it as a prodding instrument.

"See that? That's a broken enamel capsule," Hansen remarked, tapping a missing tooth. "He ingested a toxin of some sort. This is all going well beyond a simple hit, officer."

Vetara remained silent, she was not about to let the human know she was thankful for him potentially saving her life yet again by keeping her out of contact with the poison the batarian had ingested. The human did not look as though it had even registered that he held that belief as she did. If he did, he wasn't showing it. It was for the best, she would deal out gratitude later if it called for it… and if this miserable human took his words back about C-Sec.

Together, the two of them watched as the batarian died, his eyes wide in fear in his last moment, staring up at the human looking down at him. Vetara looked away and Hansen dropped the knife and stood back up, straightening his suit jacket out. His expression contorted into one of anger. Understandable, when the assassin was dead, taking with him the only clear lead to the plotters - if that was the case – leaving them both in the dark when it came to a motive.

Shaking his head, Jack Hansen turned away, reaching into his jacket and producing a pack of cigarettes. His omni-tool was activated as he seemed to be dreading to make a call to his superiors. Silently, Vetara tried to bury that uncomfortable feeling that her life had just gotten exponentially more complicated.

Looking back on this day, Vetara would be proven right, for better or for worse.

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I got a really solid response from Eden, and it did wonders to get the creative juices flowing again. I'd been doing quarian and human writing for so long it grew formulaic. So after I completed the last Eden Chapter I went for a run and this plan came to mind. It's going to end up longer then Eden, but it will be the same length per chapter and unlike much of my work it will be told from a single point of view - that of Officer Vetara Calarian.

For my sake, I think I'm going to try to slow down the release updates to a chapter every couple of days. The speed Eden came out left me with headaches. I mean I liked it, but I was writing at a furious speed.

I wanted to thank DapperT for his support and would highly recommend you take a look at his story. 'The Means To Survival'. It's shaping up to be fine read!

Anyways, thank you for reading, and I hope to release more soon.