Author's Note: My love of Mass Effect kind of melted with my love of film noir.
Chapter 1: Prologue
I joined C-Sec for the challenge; I guess that shows how little I actually knew of the job. Half the time it consisted of appeasing the politicians in the presidium, while the other half was keeping the poor in the wards in line. Diplomacy is not my strong point, so playing diplomat for the wealthy was never my idea of a good time. Then again, good times were hard to find on the Citadel nowadays.
The reaper war had ended, and unfortunately for me, so did whatever resemblance of peace on the Citadel. The Citadel repairs were slow coming, and with the destruction of most V.I.'s, all done manually. Refugees from every corner of the galaxy crowded the wards, and with them, every kind of exploiter in the galaxy. I guess where there's shit, there's gonna be flies.
My name was Calistiasa; the kind of handle you get stuck with when you have a turian father with an asari wife quadruple his age and just about as arty. Unlike most asari my age, I wasn't making fast cash showing skin in some dingy hole in the wall halfway across the galaxy. Instead, I was stuck in the middle of the galaxy making the same wage as a Presidium Tower janitor and I didn't even get to see it.
I've been chasing a fly for quite some time: The Black Maw, as he was known in certain circles - a batarian arms dealer. Even with most the batarians blown to hell by the reapers, their penchant for crime never left. This particular batarian was bringing in creds by the ship load and somehow managed to do it all under the radar. There was two types of crimes on the Citadel, the underground kind where the criminals gathered in dark corners whispering dark secrets, and the in-your-face kind, with the smiling politician who everyone was too afraid to touch.
I guessed that this batarian was the underground kind, but with the amount of weapons he was bringing it, I was almost certain he had some kind of help from the in-your-face kind. Not that I could prove it.
"Bullshit." My partner assured me once I told him my idea.
My partner, Narsus, some turian hotshot with delusions of both grandeur and class. Like me, he was just another low level C-Sec officer trying to make it by on dirt low wages and routine alcohol.
"I'm not saying it's fact, I'm just saying that to get the amount of weapons he brings in onto the Citadel, he has to have some kind of help from on high." I blew a cloud of smoke out of my lungs.
I never did like smoking. I started it for the aesthetics and by now it was just a habit. I wanted to be the mysterious detective working the lurid cases with the sultry women and their poisonous husbands. Instead, I was just a deadbeat detective working the cases no one wants, smoking a pack a day in some storage closet of an office. I wasn't even with C-Sec that long, so to image what the older guys must be like made my head ache.
Narsus slammed the folder shut and threw it down on the table, "Our shifts up, C, let's get a drink."
Great, drinks with Narsus. I doubt even I could think of a better way to spend my night. I thought, "I'll pass."
"Well, you know where to find me." For all the limited facial expressions of a turian, I had imagined him with some smug look spread across his face. I doubt I was wrong about it. Smugness was sort of his speciality.
The walk back to my apartment was about as bland as the rest of my day. The ward was filled with a thousand faces I didn't know, and about a dozen I wish I didn't. When most people think of the Citadel, they think of the Presidium and all its glamour; they never see the ugly underbelly of apathy and growing tension left over from the reaper war. Down here in the wards, the best thing to do was to keep your head down and your business to yourself, and that's exactly what I did.
My apartment was some low rent shithole down the closest thing to an alleyway on the Citadel. It consisted of a bed with more springs than cushions, a table and chair, and a small bathroom with barely enough space for both feet let alone a toilet and shower. The only window in the entire apartment didn't even give me a good view of anything aside from the adjacent wall.
I poured myself a drink of the cheapest scotch money could buy and I kicked back. I turned on the television to see more of the same shit that's been everyday all day: the cleanup efforts, the refugee problems, and the grinning politicians getting rich off both. I sparked up a cigarette and relaxed as much as I could.
After enough shots of scotch, it's pretty easy to forget how uncomfortable that chair was. That night, that was exactly where I was headed.