A new Frank Rekki story, If you didn't like the first one please stop.
Mass Effect and the Mass Effect universe are property of EA/Bioware.
On the run.
Not for the first time, Edwin suspected he was going to die.
The distant , rhythmic beat of the club above him suggested he was in one of Afterlife's many basement rooms , although the faint smell of death and the thin snowfall of dust that had already fallen on him in the short time he had been here indicated it wasn't one that had been used in a while. Between his blindfolds he could make out a dim, brown-orange light that flicked and wavered. Looking at the ground he saw vague, blurry objects that he guessed were his feet. He still felt a little queasy from whatever it was his captors had injected him with. Whatever it was, it wasn't pleasant. His ears were ringing, and his brain felt as though they were going to push its way out through his eyes any moment now.
Footsteps. He was already aware of the presence of at least two other people in the room, but now he suspected there was another, standing about two meters to his right. It was hard to tell, as his right seemed to be wobbling in different directions as his head continued to throb. He tried to move his hands only to find them tied firmly behind his back. The cold metal of a pair of manacles dug into the flesh and muscle around his wrists. He thought back to the bar on omega, and to how he had ended up in such a position. There he'd been, happily drinking the profits of another successful bounty, when some Asari comes over and asks him to join her at one of the private booths. Having been around the galaxy a few times, Edwin was experienced enough to know better than to follow strange women into unfamiliar areas.
So of course he followed her. She'd told him the booth access was outside, through some stairs at the end of a dark alleyway. At that moment alarm bells should have gone off in his head, but for some reason he remembered feeling completely at ease with the situation. Now that he came to think of it, his splitting headache may not entirely have been the result of his being tranquilized. The last thing he remembered was a dry, leathery hand clamping over his mouth and the sudden pain of a thick needle sinking through the soft flesh of his arm. It was still a little sore.
"you'd better call the boss," said a voice coming from what he took to be his right. In his disoriented state, Edwin was finding it difficult to make out what was being said. The words all seemed to melt into one another, blending with the sound of the far off bass. "I think the sedatives are wearing off."
Edwin began to wonder who it was had abducted him, working through the worryingly long list of people he'd upset over the years. The Blood pack? His captors didn't sound like Krogan or Vorcha, and he had seen firsthand that the Blood Pack didn't take prisoners. Using a girl as bait was exactly the sort of thing he'd expect from the Eclipse, but they'd never try anything like this in the middle of Aria's palace. Besides, he'd paid off his debts to them, and made damn sure they knew it too.
"He'll be down in minute," replied another voice, clearer now. It was definitely Turian. For a few moments, Edwin entertained the notion that it was The Blue Suns who'd grabbed him. Certainly they were the obvious choice; he had enough bad blood with them to fill a lake on the presidium, and he hadn't exactly made it hard for them to find him. He knew something like this would happen eventually. Naively, foolishly perhaps, he had assumed they would have the guts to try to take him out when he was at home, where he could hold them off for days, Like that Archangel guy a couple of weeks back. Clearly if it was The Suns that were holding him, they had wised up.
"You sure Aria's O.K. with all this? We are right under her club." Said the first voice, the familiar deep throated resonance informing Edwin he was a Batarian. So far, so Suns.
" Relax, the Boss said Aria doesn't know a thing. Besides, she knows better than to cross us." The Turian reassured his collegue. Behind him Edwin heard the whoosh of a door, followed by the sound of someone breathing heavily, almost gasping. The slow , loud intake and outtake of air was closely accompanied by cumbersome, waddling footfall that seemed almost to slap the laminated floor as it drew closer. Edwin felt uneasy. Something didn't fit the picture, the Blue Suns strict hierarchy and discipline didn't allow for troops to refer to their superiors as "boss". It was either "Commander" or it was a flogging. The breathing began to circle him. He felt the weight of its stare studying him from a safe distance.
" Remove the blind folds" it rasped. Edwin could felt the cold , dry talons of a Turian slide under cloth bound around his eyes. His head was shaken roughly back and forth as the Turian clumsily pried the knot apart. Though the room was not well lit his eyes still stung a little as the binding fell onto his lap. Slowly his surroundings came into focus. Before him stood a Volus, short even for his kind, glaring back at him with the menace of one who has absolute power over another person.
"What is your name, Batarian?" the Volus asked. As he was about to give him a false name he stopped himself, spotting just in time the pistol in the Volus' hand. Having gone to all the trouble of dragging him down here, it was doubtful they would let him go simply because he was "the wrong guy". More likely they would put a bullet in his head and leave him to rot in the dusty basement. And that was if they believed him. If they didn't they would probably torture whatever information they thought he had out of him.
"Edwin...Patterson." He replied. He looked the Volus right in the glowing lenses of its environment suit, lowering his voice in an attempt to sound intimidating. The other Batarian in the room gave a small snort "what kind of name is that?" it asked, chortling.
"Human." Edwin simply replied.
The Volus shot a look at the other Batarian and he immediately stopped laughing. It pulled a data pad from behind its back. It stood there a while, nonchalantly reading off the pad in complete silence and completely ignoring the bound-up man in front of it. A sense of great tension permeated the room. The other two kidnappers were giving each other shifty looks, as though unsure how to proceed. Edwin began to suspect that they knew about as much as he did about what was going on. The Turian grasped his machine gun even more firmly. The tips of his talons made a hideous scraping sound as they scratched the paint off the weapons metal furniture, grating in Edwins adrenaline-swamped mind like a rake along a pavement . For the first time he realised how cold the basement was, they had to be near the bottom of the station. All this time , The Volus simply stood, looking over the little screen with quiet malice.
Finally, it spoke "Do you know why you are being held here?" it inquired, somehow looking him in all four eyes with the same ferocity.
"No." Edwin said bluntly. It seemed disappointed.
"Do you know who we work for?"
"If I had to guess I'd say the shadow broker," He tried to remain cool. Honestly, he had no idea who would bother kidnapping him, but he didn't need them to think that. It was risky trying to fish for his captors identity like this, but tied up as he was it was about all he could do. "And if that's the case, you're fresh out of luck because I don't know jack."
The Volus shook its head, looking up at the ceiling in such a way as to express just how unfazed it was. It gestured to the guards, and Edwin felt the hard, heavy butt of a gun wallop the back of his head. Surprisingly it didn't hurt anywhere near as much as he'd expected, though it didn't do his headache much good. "Guess again" it paused for breath "...mister Patterson". Edwin was about to answer, but it put up a hand to stop him. "That was a rhetorical...question. You work as one of Aria T'Loak's...bodyguards, correct?"
"Hardly," Edwin scoffed. "don't let the fancy armour fool you. I'm a bounty hunter. I work security up at the club sometimes, if they're a man short ,between jobs, but that's about it."
Edwin's armour was indeed very ornate-looking. It was tailor made, each plate thick enough to stop most pistol or shotgun rounds, and with enough shielding to stop virtually everything else. The paint was a custom job, done by an old friend of his. The undercoat was a dark scarlet gloss, bronze tendrils flowed from every joint into a remarkably detailed painting of a Thresher Maw , staring angrily out at the world from the chest panel. It had cost him every penny of the money he had earned with the blues suns, but it was worth it for the sheer intimidation value. The Volus however was neither intimidated nor particularly impressed, adding a note to the data pad in an almost business like fashion.
"Good...so Aria won't mind if we take a little...revenge." It said flatly, sending a shiver down Edwins spine. How could he have been so stupid, telling them no-one was going to miss him. now all he could do was play for time. "Wait," he blurted out as the Volus finished typing. "Revenge for what?" The Volus held up a holo of a young Turian, with unusual red markings on the mandibles. Thinking back, he remembered seeing those marking only a few days ago. The Turian in question had been mouthing off in the VIP area of afterlife, clearly off his face. The drunken "jokes" he was telling were driving the other customers away, and that would not do. The management asked him to leave, but he wouldn't have it. So Edwin had been asked to escort him off the premises, which he duly did. He remembered dragging the enraged Turian out by the ankles, having curses and death threats hurled at him all the way . He began to wish he'd paid more attention to the death threats.
" guy."
"quiet...Batarian, " Roared the Volus, suddenly exploding with rage. "The Drechar demand ...to be shown... respect!"
"The Drechar- oh shit."
"oh yes." The diminutive gangster continued. " you thought you could... humiliate the boss's son... and get away with it?"
"Look, I'm sorry- I didn't know!" Edwin yelled. He was beginning to really panic now. He tried desperately to break his manacles, to no effect. The Drechar were a powerful Turian gang, and if what he'd heard about them was true, he needed to get the hell out of there. He felt the rifle butt smash into his head again, and blood running down his neck. The force of the blow threw his body forward, pulling the chair over with him. He closed his eyes, bracing himself even as his face whacked the floor for the vicious beating he was surely about to receive.
Instead, he heard the door whoosh open, followed by a sickening scream, followed by a dull, heavy thud as the Turian collapsed dead right in front of him. He found himself looking the corpse of his former captor right in its fixed, pebble eyes. An inch wide hole had been punched in the centre of its' forehead, the exit wound of a shot to the back of the head, through which much of the poor bastards brains had evacuated . The Volus managed to get off a few shots at the unseen attacker before being thrown violently across the room by the pressurized gas blasting out of his environment suit, bouncing comically off the wall before crashing into and being buried by some crates. He couldn't see the other Batarian behind him, but a groan of pain and another thudding noise suggested he too was dead.
The next thing he knew, a human had appeared, checked his captors were dead, and opened the restraints on his hands and legs using an omni-tool. A gloved hand reached down and helped him to his feet. The human was a little shorter than he was, and was dressed from head to toe in light ocean-blue and black armour, the alliance and citadel emblems embossed and painted silver-white on the right shoulder. He was wearing no helmet but instead a tattered woollen hat, his sharp features and short, reddish hair clearly visable. In his hand he held a suppressed Carnifex pistol, and a large shotgun, the kind he'd only ever seen krogan carry, was strapped across his waist.
"You alright?" asked the human, and Edwin nodded. He was a little shaky on his feet, and his head was killing him, but other than that he was basically ok. " Are you sure? You took a quite a hit back there..."
"Really, I'm ok. Believe me I've had worse. Thanks for coming when you did, I thought I was varren-meat back then."
"You're welcome " answered the human, who was now fishing through the pile of crates where the Volus had crashed, presumably searching for the data pad. The room was quiet for a couple of awkward minutes, neither Edwin nor his rescuer saying so much as a word. Eventually Edwin felt he should say something, even if it was just a simple thanks and good bye.
" Err, thanks again. I'll uh, just be going then, shall I." He said, turning for the door. The human briefly pulled his arm out from the pile and stopped him.
"I wouldn't go out there if I were you. I passed at least six guys on my way down here, and I came in through a vent. If you go through there you'll get torn to shreds before you can say " ouch". I guarantee it."
"what do you suggest?"
The human resumed fishing. " The way I planned to get out is though a shaft directly above this room," he gestured to the ceiling. Edwin could see one of the panels was hinged, held in place largely by black-and-yellow hazard tape. " it's an old inspection tunnel, been there about two hundred years. Comes out right under the Afterlife Hanar toilets and well, you can imagine how few Hanar visit Afterlife so it should be deserted." He finally found what he was looking for, and pocketed the data pad before continuing. " I'd have come in that way but I couldn't get my guns past the bouncers, you know what those guys are like."
Edwin chuckled. He sure did. "Sounds like a plan," he said, stifling a smile. "but uh, what do I call you?"
Now it was the human's turn to grin. He heaved the dead bodies out the way and placed one of the crates underneath the panel. Standing on the improvised platform, he forcefully peeled away the tape and gave the panel a sturdy punch, causing it to fall away revealing a ladder leading up to a long, dark tunnel. He gave Edwin a theatrical bow and indicated with his hands that he should go up first.
"The name's Frank Rekki,Spectre."
...
"So let me get this straight," said Frank, swirling his glass of Batarian ale in his hand as he spoke. In the year or so since he became a spectre, he had developed Quite a taste for it. "you were adopted by human parents after Torfan and raised on earth, that's how you got the name. "
They were in one of Afterlifes smaller Sub-bars, waiting out the frantic Drechar manhunt that had seized the lower levels. Confidant that even the Drechar would avoid attacking the club directly, they had decided to relax a little before going their separate ways .The only table they could find an Asari dancer working on it, and while Edwin wasn't going to object, Frank was doing his best to look away. Soralya would kill him if she found out. "Pretty much," Said Edwin. "I joined up with the Alliance military as soon as I was old enough, thought I was paying back a debt. Sure, a lot of people weren't happy having a Batarian in the ranks at first, but they soon came round to it. At least the grunts did." He took a long gulp of his drink.
"What made you want to leave?" asked Frank.
"About five years in I start noticing other people getting promotions, and I keep getting left behind. So I put in for a commission. A couple of months later I get a letter back saying that " for reasons of security, non-humans are prohibited from obtaining rank within the Alliance military that would give them access to protected channels, or some bullshit like that. That's when I decided enough was enogh. That's when I decided to join the Blue Suns."
"That's a rough deal."
"You're telling me. After a while though, I started to miss that feeling you get when you know the guys wearing the same uniform aren't the ones you have to be most worried about. Trust, I suppose you'd call it. I tried to get out, but the best I could manage was to jump ship to the Eclipse.I don't... I don't want to talk about what I did when I was with them."
Frank gave the Batarian an understanding nod.
"Needless to say I now have both companies out to get me, but Omega, Omega has been good to me. I'm a bounty hunter, and on Omega, there's always a bounty needs hunting."
Franks frowned, his expression changed from one of understanding to a more questioning gaze. He was for the first time beginning to distrust his companion. He could just about see why Edwin had left the Blue suns, and he had enough experience with Alliance higher ups to sympathize with him on that front, but he had also met a lot of "bounty hunters" who had turned out to be little more than hired thugs. The table dancer, already worried by his refusal to even acknowledge her presence, stealthily slid off the table and disappeared into one of the side rooms. If the was going to be a fight, she didn't want to be in the middle of it.
"Isn't a bounty hunter just a glorified hitman?" He asked sternly. Edwin shrugged and gave a sort of half nod before replying:
"Yes, a lot of them are. I'm not going to deny it. Most of them don't even differentiate between targets, all they see is the pile of credits waiting for them at the end, won't let anything get between them and it. But, and I don't care if you don't believe me, but I try to do things differently. If I can bring someone in alive, I do, if I can't, I give them a chance to fight back. I'm proud to say this, even though you won't believe me, but I never kill cold blood. Never."
He never broke eye contact, and though he was no expert in reading body language, something in his head told Frank he was sincere. " Edwin," He said. "I believe you."
There was a silence between them, but not the same awkward silence of the dingy basement, but silence of an altogether different kind. It was a silence born of all things that need to be said having been said, when one conversation ends and a new one begins. Both men finished their drinks.
"So how'd you end up a spectre?" asked Edwin. He sounded genuinely curious. "last I heard, Shepard was the only human spectre, and he's dead. How come I never heard about you? I mean the news is normally all over that sort of thing."
Frank looked awkwardly at the table, scratching the back of his head. "Yeah, it's a long story, and most of its classified. The council likes to keep quiet about me, I think they're embarrassed or something. I got sworn in complete secrecy, in a back room under the council chambers would you believe. Usually the send me on minor odd-jobs where they think I won't cause too much trouble, but then I found out this stolen weapon shipment and well, they couldn't stop me from looking into it."
"You think the Drechar had something to do with it?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you. I sorry, but I can't risk them finding anything out. They're already after you, and if they grab you again I won't be there to stop them torturing you for information"
"I suppose so. But Frank, If they're still after me I can't go home, They'll be waiting for me. We both know what they're capable off. I know it's probably too much to ask but, I don't suppose you could help me get off this station.?"
Frank looked around and quickly came to a decision. "Fine, let's go."
"You serious?"
"Hell yeah. Come on, I have a ship waiting."
next time: we meet the Remora crew, and someone has a message for Clianala T'Sooris.
