Chapter One

Frema'Zeeg nar Tonbay sat comfortably in the specially-made Quarian armchair the owners of the Dolzoi Hotel provided her. Her legs were crossed and her chest rose and fell with each breath as she casually scrolled through a list of cargo manifest receipts on holopad. The hotel room she was in was especially outfitted for Quarian guests as it was a sterilized and immaculately filtered "clean room." Frema'Zeeg scrolled through to the last receipt and shifted when her pale eyes glanced over its contents.

The orange glow of the holopad couldn't hide the sneer of anger on her unmasked face as she read the payout for her most recent salvage operation. The four-digit readout lay there, still and emotionless but she could swear it was mocking her. Or, the man who authorized the payment was mocking her.

"That bosh'tet," she hissed.

She felt around on the table next to her chair for some more of the purified Turian cuisine she couldn't afford but ate anyway. She hated the disgusting paste her people ate on the Migrant Fleet and she was happy to be rid of it. After grabbing some and downing it, she scrolled back up towards the top of the page to read the manifest titles. The name of the shipping executive made her narrow her eyes in increased anger.

"Dolin Hon," she said through semi-clenched teeth. "All right, Volus. We'll play."

She got up and moved to the bed where her mask, pistol, and other gear sat. She set the pistol gently into her hidden waist holster underneath one of her bags, then hefted the nearly-opaque violet mask and clicked it into place on her helmet. Her envirosuit pressurized with a tiny hiss and she felt the cooling sensation of 100% sterile air flood over her face and neck. It was calming, and for a second she almost forgot she had been ripped off. She sniffled slightly; even in a clean room she would probably get a minor infection from having her mask off.

She pulled the silver cloth hood up over her helmet and made a quick walk towards the door. When it whirred open, she found herself in the clean room's sterilization airlock. She waited rather impatiently for it to scan her and when the doors opened she practically skipped out into the hallway. A quick jog to the lobby led her outside to the open air garage and into the glorious Illium skyline. From here, she spotted her parked skiff. She hopped in and jetted off at top speed for the hangar that Hon Shipping and Transportation moved her salvage for half the usual rate.

The hangar and the dockyards outside of it bustled with activity. Turian, Human, and Krogan workers operated cranes and lifts to move boxes from ships into and out of the warehouses next to the hangar. Frema'Zeeg parked her skiff close to the hangar and set out to find Dolin. He was easy to spot as he was clearly the shortest and the only one not doing any work.

Frema'Zeeg rolled her shoulders forward and her face tilted down in anger and she trudged over to him. One of his assistants pointed her out and he looked over her way.

"Ah! Frema'Zeeg nar Tonbay, was it? It's good to see you, though I believe our business is concluded..."

"Where is the rest of my money, Dolin?" she demanded.

"I beg your pardon? Were the receipts not with the extra copies of the manifest I gave you?"

She stopped next to him in a huff. Even though she was short for most other races, to a Volus like Dolin, she was towering. She tried the best she could to appear intimidating.

"4,420, Dolin? Those credits are less than half what they should be. That's six tons of scrap I gave you plus the drive core," she explained hotly. "That makes ten point oh five."

Dolin looked around himself quickly and waved his arms for her to be quiet. "I am a legitimate businessman, remember? Keep your voice down! I already told you I took my ten percent and tacked on a little extra for insurance purposes."

"I thought 'tacked on' meant a few hundred credits, not another forty percent. Just who do you take me for?" Frema'Zeeg said angrily in hushed whispers. Her voice modulator made her voice hum in a slightly sinister way when she whispered.

"I took you for a smart trader, but clearly I was mistaken. The cut is taken and the deal completed. You don't like it, take it up with the authorities. We're done here." The Volus pulled up his holopad and stalked off.

Frema'Zeeg huffed in frustration before looking around the hangar. She spotted Dolin's personal ship and she got a wicked idea. She crept toward it, careful not to be spotted by Dolin or his crew.

"I think I've overstayed my welcome here anyhow," she smirked as she made her way closer to the ship. It was a small one. Its drive core could handle Mass Relay jumps, but for the most part it was a ten-person, point A to point B ship. Best of all, it only required one pilot.

The one person she didn't need was the hardcase Asari pilot that was still somehow on board when Frema'Zeeg got there.

"What are you doing here, Quarian? You shouldn't be here," she said angrily as Frema'Zeeg tried to approach the outer door.

"Oh, hello, miss. Dolin told me to fix a broken circuit board in the life support compartment. I couldn't find it so I decided to have a look inside to find an internal panel." Frema put on her most innocent, high-pitched voice.

The Asari crossed her arms. "Dolin doesn't handle hiring mechanics himself. He asks me to do that. And I sure didn't ask you. Now get lost, ship thief, before I call security."

Frema'Zeeg just backed off and returned to her skiff. She furrowed her brow in frustration but couldn't think of a good plan. She kept thinking even as she got in and took off towards, wherever direction she was heading.

"Think, Frema," she cursed herself, "Need a distraction to get that pilot gone. Think."

As she flew low to the ground she passed by some districts that were farther away from the Nos Astra downtown and more reminded her of Omega. She finally got the inspiration she needed when she saw a pair of Krogan thugs roughing up a Turian. She landed close by and regarded them in a friendly way.

"Hey, boys," she hollered until they got the message. "Want to make some credits?"

One of the thugs walked over to her while the other was still manhandling the Turian. "A Quarian? Hmm, what are you doing in this part of town little'un?" He put his scaled head a little too close to Frema's.

Frema eased back and cleared her throat. "I've got a thousand credits for you if you can pilot that skiff over there to a friend of mine in the Hon dockyards."

"Why can't you do it?" he asked suspiciously. The Turian let out a yelp as he got punched in the stomach.

"Well, he isn't exactly a friend of mine. I owe him money and he'll kill me if he sees me first," she said while idly stroking the side of his massive neck, trying her best to be sultry.

"Hmph," he gruffed. "Two thousand credits. And I want half now."

"Completely fair!" she agreed. She booted up her omni tool and used local sharing to transfer the thousand credits to his account. She made sure to barely touch his arm and left a tiny metal disc, about the size of a bead, on his armor.

"Hey, Gurnk! I'll be back in a minute I just got a payday!" he yelled back to his friend.

They both climbed into the skiff, quite uncomfortably, and flew off towards the dockyards. The Krogan was driving and Frema'Zeeg did her best to not touch him from the side seat.

"So what's your name, darlin'?" he leered at her.

"Oh, well, you wouldn't care," she said, acting nervous.

"Oh, but I would care. My name is Donk," he said, smiling at her.

"Donk, huh?" she said, looking out the window, "I don't care. Look, there he is!" Frema pointed out the window. "The Volus with the holopad. Can you set me off over there so I can be out of sight?"

The Krogan set her down and reminded her of their agreement. "Don't forget that other thousand, Quarian. You saw what me and my friend do to people who don't pay," he said menacingly as he lifted off.

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it!" Frema waved at him.

Frema hid by Dolin's ship, far enough away to avoid the pilot and watched from across the lanes as the Krogan set the skiff down next to Dolin. She waited until he got out and started talking to the Volus, then activated her omni tool and remotely hacked into the Krogan's omni tool. His confused face appeared on her screen and she regarded him warmly.

"Yeah, that was all a ruse. I went ahead and relieved you of my thousand credits and everything else in your account. Oh and Dolin? I know you can hear me. Bad move on your part. Greetings from Hell. Sincerely, Frema'Zeeg nar Tonbay."

She shut the screen off and hit a button on her readout which heralded a near-sudden explosion that shook the ground. A column of blue fire and smoke swallowed her skiff and Dolin in flames. The device she planted in the stolen skiff went off perfectly and detonated the engine with the touch of a button. And, on cue, the Asari pilot rushed out of the ship to investigate the noise and immediately darted off to check on her boss.

Frema'Zeeg casually strolled into the ship and made her way to the cockpit. She fiddled with the controls and made an easy going getaway before the security and fire teams even managed to get there. As she left the atmosphere of Illium she couldn't help feeling delighted. She checked the credits she took from the Krogan, a mere twenty-three hundred plus her thousand. It was enough to soften the loss of the exchange with Dolin, but the explosion and shocked look on the Krogan's face was worth the hassle.

Frema set a course for the Mass Relay in this system and plotted a course of jumps and feuling stations to get her to Omega. She wistfully remembered her previous jobs as she reclined in the captain's chair. Pirates, waylay ships, take salvage, betray pirates, sell salvage, find pirates again... Time to do it all over. Why stop if she'll never get caught?