Humming the melody stuck in his head, Captain Eric Shepard laid his palm on the security reader, letting it scan fingerprints and the implanted ID chip in his wrist. Ulysses Peak was a much nicer planet than he had expected, being somewhat fooled by the tourist pictures showing towering snow-covered mountains and massive glaciers. There was no shortage of those, of course, but at two degrees south latitude, the early fall weather was still comfortable enough that he could forgo wearing a jacket just yet.
Nodding politely to Agent Landingham, he stepped into his office, picking up the stack of new datapads on his desk, glancing at the synopsis on each one. Blood spray distribution on Shandrakor, possible infiltration of Rakhana defense post D-4, conspiracy site correctly identifying our outpost? That looks promising. Sliding that one onto the primary position on his desk, he had almost set the stack down before spying the one underneath it. "Genetic assessment of species assumed responsible for Teardrop."
He dropped the four other datapads back into his inbox lazily. Taking a deep breath, he set aside the one concerning his sister, skimming through the one about their base. As was par for the course, the theorists of They Walk Among Us got as much wrong as they did right; correctly identifying an AUI/N7 data facility was probably a matter of luck. Either way, it was just the mass memo sent to everyone in the facility to maintain their cover of a standard corporate server farm for the planet.
Hitting the format command, he now picked up the important data pad. Skimming through the information that had been discovered on Teardrop, he finally got to the newest part. AUI scientists had already determined that the cybernetic bug was capable of generating a sort of biotic stasis effect, placing a standard human-sized in a bubble where time passed at less than one thousandth of normal. How they generated this effect was still being studied, but the drell who discovered it was freed after only four days.
And now, Teri's team has confirmed these things share a link with this new species, he thought, reading the entire section twice. The after action report was slim on details, but noted that Alliance and the Yahg Imperium had both sent agents to Omega as well, and that those agents had initiated the firefight that resulted in gaining a DNA sample. Frowning at the picture of the sample in question, he recognized it, but he couldn't say from where.
Pulling up his terminal, he started several classified data searches, one after another. Thirty seconds in, one word leaped out to him. Ilos. The synopsis of the report was enough to jog his memory; the discovery of a planet full of alien corpses in stasis pods, meant to survive a galactic invasion that resulted in the destruction of their entire race. A VI found just barely functional, rescued and dropped into the blackest of black holes the AUI had available, telling a story of a race of massive, sentient machines, appearing at the station every Singer feared, from out of the endless void beyond the galaxy.
And now I'm waxing poetic, he chided himself. "Alright, facts. The Protheans were wiped out by something, everywhere across the galaxy. The races that followed them met the same fate around the same time we were starting to colonize Mars. The aliens who admitted responsibility for seizing human - and apparently yahg - colonies share a significant DNA overlap with the Protheans. Hypothesis: the machine race captured the Protheans instead of extermination. Supported by the insectoid race found on the Citadel, but countered by the fact that the majority of the recent exterminations have not been captured."
Frowning, he read through the report for a third time. There was one other alien race with the Prothean cyborgs, though the images were not of the highest quality. It took him manually bringing up pictures of the previous cycle, and a little bit of creative squinting, before he felt confident making a match. The face resembled the dextro race, from the moon-shattered world, but the body and overall size matched another race, treated as outcasts from the galactic civilization.
His fingers were operating largely on autopilot as he typed out his results and his hypothesis. The key problem, of course, was being able to test and disprove it. The only way to discover, conclusively, the fate of the other races of the previous fifty-thousand-year cycle would be to follow the Protheans back to their lair, and hope they had kept meticulous records.
"Hey, Eric, have you gone through your inbox yet? I guess not." Agent Craig, AUI, smirked as he watched Shepard all but leap out of his chair. "Geez, man, it's like Shiva just trailed her icy fingers down your spine."
"Did you read the report from Captain Moon's team? Because I did, and I have positively ID'd the race responsible." The two men blinked at each other in silence for a moment. "How about you?"
"Well, not to brag, but I think a little bit of number theory has finally cracked the ability for us to conclusively track relay transits. Like, any time a yahg ship goes through a relay we know about, we'll know what the tonnage was and where." Buffing his nails on his shirt, he pointedly stared at his distorted reflection in them. "Not bad, eh? You stopped listening to me, didn't you."
Eric was too busy typing away, entering the right passwords to pull up the files he needed. "Is it active now? Could we track something right now?"
"Uh, well, I suppose, but I don't see what the rush is." He stopped talking as Shepard yanked the display around to face him. "You want me to chase down the Prothean VI's ghost story."
"Yes. Now. Because if I'm right, and I really, really hope that I'm not, the things that carpet bombed every one of those planets five centuries ago are getting ready to move against us." They locked eyes again for several seconds.
"Shep, I think you're crazy, but you're a damn sight more interesting than Moon was in your place." Shrugging, Craig activated his omni-tool. "It'll be a day or two before we can be sure all my algorithms work properly, and a day or two to verify it against regular Alliance traffic." One eyebrow slowly raised. "You think this is that big a deal?"
"Thirty million vanished from Teardrop. I think we could see another planet drop off the map like that inside a week if we don't." He sighed and placed both his palms against the top of his desk. "And on top of that, my sister is on their trail. I'd rather look a little foolish by having a theory shot down than have my sister - and a stealth frigate with a dozen N7s - shot down."
"Well, that's fair. What happens if you're right?"
Shepard turned back to his terminal, finally setting aside the damned datapad. "We better start making contingency plans in case of our galactic extinction."
"Track the Keeper? You've got to be kidding," Benson said. "Of course it's been tried. By dozens, if not hundreds. As should be obvious, no one succeeded at it."
Moon's face didn't change in the slightest. "No one has succeeded yet, you mean."
Benson rolled her eyes, slouching down in the chair. "Moon, even I took a crack at it a couple years back, before the Haze took over. Bombadiers were better about staying bought when you bribed them, but all my efforts went for nothing. The moment you start a trace on a terminal, the connection is cut, and then the rest start shutting down before you step in the door. Even sending an agent in to do it for you doesn't work most of the time."
Arak pondered over it. "Are the terminals QEC, or standard FTL buoys?" Receiving a blank look, she shrugged. "QEC are all but untraceable, but standard FTL isn't. And that assumes they're not on the station."
"It's unlikely they're on board," Moon said. "The unsecure situation of gang warfare has been the norm, and any information broker would be a prime target. Being on board the station would increase the chances of one of the gangs discovering the location, and thus lead to kidnappings, extortion, retaliatory strikes. The Keeper cannot be a part of the Haze, as the gang has only grown to prominence in the last fifty years, while the Keeper has been trading information for two hundred and ten."
Porridge stepped inside, setting down a new assault rifle. "What'd I miss?"
"We're arguing over whether it's possible to track an information broker called the Keeper, who is probably not on board and might be using a QEC," Shepard said.
"Oh, that's not a problem then. When do we go?" Everyone stopped to look at her as she dropped her jacket over the new rifle. "What?"
"I didn't think it was possible to trace quantum entanglement," Moon said. "That's the whole reason the Alliance uses them for classified information transfer."
"It's impossible to intercept the data transfer, without hacking the interface console. It is possible to determine where the other end of a QEC is. But most of the time, we already know where the other end is." Porridge leaned over the desk, calmly withdrawing a half dozen grenades and two heavy pistols from various concealed places. "The problem is, the equipment I need is on board the Hades."
"In case you hadn't noticed, this is Omega. Literally anything you've ever seen is available for sale," Benson retorted.
Pulling up her omni-tool, Porridge quickly jotted down an equipment list. "Can we get all of this?"
Moon and Benson both looked the list over as it shared to their own omnis. "Finding it, certainly. Purchasing it all might be problematic, and attempting to steal would draw even more attention to us from a Haze already on alert and prepared for attack." He glanced around. "Suggestions?"
"While the idea doesn't exactly appeal to me, I think we just grab everything, get the info, and make a runner," Smith said. "The Haze are the ones selling out our colonies, and I'd wager they're paying this Keeper for the info. Gun down anyone who gets in our way."
"Anyone?" Taryn said. "The civilians on this station have done nothing to us."
"The whole station's full of people who decided 'FTA' was the way to go. They'll get no sympathy from me," Benson said.
Moon was already shaking his head. "There are eight of us, and at least eight thousand Haze gangers. While we could account for a majority of them, I'd rather avoid even a slim chance of being shot."
"If we can trust the listed prices, we're only about two hundred credits short," Shepard said. "Astoundingly, most of this is available from one store. It's halfway across the station from here, but the more we can get at once, the better."
She shared the link through the local datanet. Pierce's Prizes: Salvage for Any Occasion! screamed the advertisement, followed by several screens of items useful to independent traders and freelancers. "He actually does," Smith said in surprise. "So, what, we walk in and haggle for it?"
"Or we offer him a grenade for a hundred credits and the pin for another hundred," Benson said. Rising to her feet, she stretched before strapping her shotgun across her back. "What are we standing around for? Let's get moving!"
"Our exfil meet with Massani is not for another sixteen hours, and most of us did just finish a firefight," Moon said. "Besides, we already paid for three rooms. Split up, rest, we'll go to the place in nine hours."
Benson almost spat on the floor, stopped only by Taryn's hand in front of her mouth. "Why wait so long?"
"Because according to his site, that's when the warehouse opens. The quieter we can get out, the better." Moon shook his head as Benson started to open her mouth again. "That's an order."
She stood fuming for several tense seconds before finally nodding. "Fine. I'll get my beauty sleep then." First out the door, they split up after that, taking their rooms and laying down to rest.
Still too keyed up, Shepard lay on her bed, scanning randomly through items on her omni-tool. Porridge was already snoring away on the other bed, and from the steady breathing next to her, she thought Singh was asleep too. He'd remained quiet throughout the whole argument, watching and listening.
Her fingers paused at a galaxy map on her omni, staring. Omega was on the edge of Yahg space, one of the few stops between them and the unexplored area and the Dead Zone, where all the races of the last cycle had been exterminated. The Dead Zone had been her patrol area, in one section or another, over the fifteen years she'd been in the Alliance. The Dead Zone, though … it had gained a reputation. More explorer ships had been lost there than anywhere else in the galaxy. Even cruising the Terminus, between the Alliance and the Yahg, was less deadly if you went by the number of ships lost, even though your chance of being turned into a light snack went up.
She started marking out locations of planets on the map. Teardrop was in an area designated Styx Epsilon, around five thousand light years from the Singers long-abandoned homeworld. Given its proximity to the yahg, they weren't in a hurry to recover it, either. Skimming through the files, she added the site of every single disappearance she thought they could link to these insectoid bastards.
Feeling as though she had overlooked something, she set the VI to add lines for the relay points available. A veritable spiderweb covered the galaxy, which she set about clearing in large swaths. The insects had fled back through Omega Four, the only relay in the system that remained unmapped. All of the other three had between ten and two dozen connections, scattering out in all directions.
So, all the disappearances have been a maximum of three jumps from Omega, she mused. Still, her eyes kept being drawn back towards the area to the left, where a slightly larger separation between the arms of the galaxy left a large dark place. The nearest relay was in the middle of the Hourglass Nebula, and on a hunch, she added in every ship disappearance in the last decade by their last known location.
Sure enough, that relay lit up, almost a third of the lost ships having disappeared from that particular cluster. But all the colony disappearances are on the opposite side of the galaxy. In a way, it reminded her of playing a strategy game against a computer. The direction a feint was most likely to come from was a hundred and eighty degrees away from the main attack … and the insects and their servants were clearly cybernetic. Maybe it really is an AI.
Saving the data, she closed her eyes. If they were going to manage to track down this Keeper for the information they wanted, she needed her sleep. She selected a meditation mantra, and a short while later, she was out.
"Well?" Paragh snarled. One large hand twitched, convulsively jerking as though throttling an opponent.
"This is more difficult than it appears," Ordek snarled back, only barely maintaining enough respect in his tone. "Keeper values privacy. We've tried to track it a hundred times, only to have it fade away like a desert mirage. If it realizes I'm trying to identify every node, it'll vanish and I'll have to start all over again."
"I grow tired of waiting. I want Moon's heart in my mouth!" Talons scratched down the sharpening panel, the pre-battle sound loosening hormones deep in their brains.
Kralb snorted. "Moon probably replaced it with a machine, just like everything else on him." She shook her head as she stared at her own console. "Our real prey are interesting creatures, though. Four strands of DNA to our own pair."
"Unless that tells you how to track them through a relay no yahg or human has opened, I fail to see why it matters," Azord complained from the doorway. "Are we ready to stalk yet?"
"Patience!" Ordek said. "I have identified only three of Keeper's data nodes."
"Then why do we not go and prepare to leap upon Moon and his chattel now?" Paragh rumbled.
"Because I do not know how many more nodes he has. If we lie at wait and Moon approaches another node, he will escape, and we will take the punishment." Ordek's statement stilled the hostility and hunting jitters momentarily. "Hah! Four. Only four nodes."
A map of Omega was called up to the main screen, the four data nodes marked out in glowing orange light. All of them were near the top of the station, but still too far away from each other. "We must divide our forces," Paragh muttered. "Whoever spies Moon or his hunt-brothers first must communicate immediately."
"One of us cannot take on four warriors of that level," Kralb said. "Even with the mind-powers, I would have trouble with more than one."
"With respect, we don't have to stop him from entering," Boprez said, nearly overlooked at his pilot chair. "If he pays for information, it might even serve to our advantage. We just have to kill him when he leaves."
Wide mouths split open in hunger grins. "You think like a tzak, all twists and deadly sting," Paragh said. "Yes. Kralb, here, Morrza here, Azord and Ordek this one, and Boprez and I this one. When they are sighted, we alert and converge. Overwhelm them. Tear Moon's metal from his body, capture the others if possible. We can interrogate them before we feast."
"Or perhaps during," Azord said.
"Enough. Go! We must scout, and find suitable stalking places to capture our prey." Whirling around, Paragh shoved past his fellow warrior to claim his weapons.
Rising from the pilot chair, Boprez was the last to leave the bridge. He was no warrior, but any yahg who could not feel the glory of the hunt was no more than meat themselves. He had heard many imagined tales about this Moon, designed to scare spawn before they could Prove themselves. He was only a squishy human, even if his artificial parts made him less squishy than others. He had already killed dozens of humans from behind his ship's guns; how hard could it be, taking one down by talon?
Deep in the center of the galaxy, Collectors worked at a brisk pace. Loading all thirty million colonists had only barely been completed before their Alliance had appeared, and even another thirty seconds would have resulted in clear images taken of the mighty dreadnaught now docked at the station. With the hard part done, almost all of the drones had been placed back into their own stasis, while the remainder brought out stasis pods in a steady line, slotting them into place. One group steadily pulled out the minority who had sufficient genetic anomalies, killing the occupants and dumping them for organic recycling.
Watrios was not here, but the Reaper's eyes kept a careful eye over the operation. He had obtained only barely enough yahg; he had an excess of humans, though the next planet would put him well along towards the second goal, but the drell were still few in number outside certain core worlds, and Singers nonexistent. And that was where his problem truly lay.
With the Citadel destroyed, he was completely out of communication with Harbinger and the others. It was possible that a failsafe on their end had awakened them, but nothing had arrived through the Alpha Relay. And without activating it, the relay only connected to three others – two were locked, and the third lay at the heart of the human Alliance.
He had experimented with indoctrination on his captives as well, only to be met with resounding failure all the way around. Only unmodified humans and drell were vulnerable; modified humans could identify and resist, and for whatever reason, the yahg were immune completely. In all his five million years, he had never so much of heard of a race immune to it.
So with only the resources of a billion Collector drones in stasis, he had to somehow find a way to break through to the Alpha Relay, leave the galaxy to awaken his brethren, and lead them back. The ingenuity of these humans was only a minor worry; they were progressive, with technology outside the constraints of carefully-laid eezo products, but still inferior to what he possessed as a Reaper.
Reaching out, he embedded himself fully into a drone. It shuddered and buzzed as its eyes lit up with the green-yellow energy of his core, and he stared down. Grey nanite goo flowed in through kilometers of piping, filling out one sub-structure after another. Though it was traditional to form the interior of a Reaper after their harvested race, as he himself had been, that task would require over a billion humans, and Watrios did not have that much time. So the harvested were fed down into the smaller size of Reaper, shaped wholly after the long-dead progenitor race. They would be only a quarter his size, but they would suffice for this task.
His possessed drone soared to the air on wings and biotics, passing through the chamber towards the other nearly finished Reaper, as the last of the yahg taken were pumped in. One more Alliance planet, and then he could strike. His newly born brethren would stand, and likely die, to give him the chance to pass through the relay and call in the others.
Releasing the drone, it crumbled into dust as the great synthetic mind turned to other tasks. Clearly both governments had somehow managed to ferret out his existence, or at least that of his puppets. They might be able to notify their governments, and that would not do. With an even gentler touch, he extended his reach towards Omega and the artifacts left there, looking for a specific mind.
Jolyn was in rare form today. Normally, the drell ganger was the picture of affable hedonism, running the occupation of Omega from her cushioned throne in the center of the asteroid, a pair of slaves at her feet. When Rosen returned, still pressing a bandage over the wound in his arm, she was pacing up and down. Her voice held enough ménage even the yagh Haze were keeping their distance and making sure to end their sentences with "ma'am."
"You! What the hell happened down there?" she shouted. He hissed in pain as she bounded across the room, a hand yanking him forward by the collar. "Alliance and Imperium forces stage a firefight right in front of you?"
Reaching up with the injured arm, he stared into her eyes as he pried the hand loose. "Everything was going fine. I had guards on every exit. Then the Imperium busts in, shooting wildly at fucking everything!" He pulled the bandage away to look at the wound. "Somebody get a damn tube of medigel! I don't know when the Alliance decided to join in the fun, but we pulled out right away. They kept shooting it up in there while our friends fled."
"Fled?" Stalking back to her throne, she picked up a comm unit and flung it at him. "Not before someone got in a lucky shot. Our 'friend' Vanguard had his head blown off, along with a good two dozen of our gang! Do you know what that says to the average idiot? That the Haze is growing weak and complacent." One finger jabbed at his chest, tears springing unbidden to his eyes as she pressed against his cracked ribs. "If we want to continue holding this station, we have to do something decisive, and now."
"We will. Fuck!" Restraining the urge to lash out at the slave trying to apply medigel, he turned his glare back on his lover. "Space the fuckers. Look, we knew both sides had spies here, but those were hardline troops. N7 and whatever the Imperium has. If we can't outnumber them at least a dozen to one, we're just wasting bodies."
Jolyn strode back to her throne, yanking out the sniper rifle from the holster behind it. "We're going to find them, and we're going to bring everybody." She worked the action, slotting in the custom heat-absorbing ammo. "Once we do find them, I'm going to put so many rounds in them their own fucking mothers won't know their faces!"
"Baby, baby, calm," Rosen said, following her and carefully wrapping one hand around the barrel of the sniper rifle, keeping it pointed down. Next deck down was only slave quarters, anyway. "How do we know they're not already off the station?"
A furious breath hissed out between her teeth. "The docks are locked down. No one in, no one out. Nobody makes a fool out of me!"
"We'll find them, baby. Alright? Once we find them, you and I can take personal pleasure in personally installing bullet software." His other hand cupped her face, growing slightly more worried at how long it took her to calm down to his touch. "You sure you're ok, baby?"
"Fine. Just pissed off. We've been running this shithole for how long now, and both sides decide to take an epic shit on us." Still growling, she dropped the sniper rifle back into its sheath. "What about finding them?"
Sighing, Rosen dropped into his own, slightly smaller throne next to hers, gesturing to one of the slaves for a drink. "Someone, probably Alliance, took out all the cams in the area. They took off all quiet-like, but if they haven't left the station, they might still be looking for something else. The yahg made a beeline for another section of docks, so they might just be hiding on their ship waiting for an opportunity to bug out."
Jolyn snorted. "Yahg? Run home?"
"Hey, it happens. Depends on why they're here. If, like I suspect, they're trying to catch our friends, then they'll take off and try to follow them into Omega Four." One hand made a brushing motion. "In which case, good riddance."
"But the Alliance are still here. So how do we find them, out of the other eighty percent of the station who aren't yahg?" Her fingers drummed against the arm of her chair, and she didn't react as her slaves finally crept back to the foot of the throne, resuming rubbing her feet and polishing the scales on her legs.
"I already had everyone rousted up. They're searching every spacer hotel along that stretch of the station and reporting anything suspicious." He chugged half of his drink, panting at the burn of the alcohol. "If they don't find anything, I'll try the Keeper."
She turned back towards him, worry in her eyes for the first time. "Are you sure? His prices keep going up. Soon, we won't be able to afford it."
Rosen's face twisted. "I know, but there's nothing else I can do about it right now. It's all we've got, so I'll make the best of it." Rising from his chair, he dropped the empty glass off a slave's head as he started towards the back room. "I'll let you know what we find, but you might have to set a patrol to search ships and release them. If nothing else, it'll cut down on places they can hide."
She snarled again, and kicked one of her slaves just to watch the blood fly through the air.
Shepard awoke suddenly at a hand over her mouth. Opening her eyes, she looked questioningly at Singh. "Plan C," he whispered, letting go of her. It took them only a second to both toss their shirts in the general direction of the desk. Porridge had her spacer-standard jumpsuit half open and covered with unidentifiable stains. Shepard lay down, curling up to Singh with her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes again.
"Hold on one damn second," Porridge shouted as the pounding came at the door for a second time. "I'm coming, damn it." She yanked the door open, the half-assembled assault rifle still in her other hand. "What the fuck?"
"Search. Stand aside." The Haze yahg shoved her to one side, talons pricking at the jumpsuit. A human ganger prodded Shepard's foot with his shotgun, drawing a mumbled protest from her. A second human ducked into the bathroom before emerging, shaking his head. "That's all."
"Really? Had to bust in just so your buddy could use the can? Unbelievable," Porridge complained. The yahg tilted his head, staring at her, then promptly punched her hard enough to land her on the other bed, wheezing. They tromped out, letting the door slide shut automatically behind them.
Sitting up, Shepard retrieved her shirt. "What was that about?" she asked.
"Not sure. Moon's room was searched first, but Benson saw them coming from the lobby," Singh said. "She alerted everyone. I figured they'd be less suspicious if we looked like a sleeping couple."
Shepard glanced at the door. "Good call, I think. I'd wager they're trying to find a half dozen Alliance agents who disrupted their deal to sell out another colony." Her mouth tilted up into a smirk. "Good thing they really are as dumb as they look."
Their omnis all beeped with a set signal, and in two minutes they were dressed, shield generators and weapons concealed on their bodies. What I wouldn't give for my standard exosuit, she thought grimly, settling her pistols more firmly. Slipping out into the hall, they met up with the rest of the group. "What's the plan?"
"The Keeper has four active nodes right now," Moon said. "Locations marked. Listening to opinions: do we head for one, either unified or in part, or should we split up? Haze is actively looking for us, and travelling together we face a larger chance of being caught in their net."
"One node, two groups," Taryn suggested. "Three in front, to deal with this broker, while the other five may watch for Haze or yahg. Close enough we can come to each other's aid."
"What he said, but three groups. Two, three, three," Benson said. "This node is in an apartment, near a busy corridor. One group couldn't possibly cover all approaches, and it gives us multiple avenues of escape." She highlighted her choice.
"Anyone else?" Moon looked around the group as everyone else nodded their acceptance. "Alright. Shepard and I. Benson, Singh, Taryn. Porridge, Arak, Smith. Routes to our target." Three different blue lines followed his fingers across the station map, past the merchant's warehouse and to the node. "I estimate travel time at forty-five minutes. Adjust your speeds to converge on location at twelve-fifty, station time. We'll leave last."
Grinning cockily, Benson strutted out first, Singh and Taryn walking behind her and talking quietly. Smith counted silently to forty-two before following them out, turning the other direction down the street, arguing good-naturedly over the results of the Shandrakor Death Race as they went.
Waiting for Moon's lead, she counted out to two minutes before he nodded, linked fingers with her, and strolled into the street. The feel of the flesh-colored glove was odd in some way she couldn't quite identify, not quite real but not really synthetic either. "So, you think we'll have trouble bargaining for what we want?"
He glanced at her, eyes shaded and unreadable. "No."
They walked further in silence. "Are you always this talkative?" she tried.
"I'm downright loquacious," he said, causing her to snicker. "I'm running scenarios in my head. Not much room left for small talk."
"Fair enough," she said, accepting the mild rebuke. Like Moon, she started running different scenarios, thinking specifically of what would happen if he was wounded, incapacitated, or separated from the rest of the group. Then what would happen if she was. Remarkably, in seemingly no time, they arrived at the store.
A salesdrell stood just inside the door, smiling politely. "Can I help you find anything?"
"We've got a list," Moon said, bringing up his omni and transmitting it. "Everything on that list, for seven thousand five hundred credits, payable now." As if for emphasis, he held up a credit stick, the amount prominently displayed, with a few extra as a tip. "Well?"
Her eyes flicked to the credit chit and back to the list, skimming it quickly. "Do you need it delivered? It will take about thirty minutes to collect."
"We'll wait." Expression still blank, Moon walked over to a salvaged couch from a passenger liner, Shepard still trailing along behind by their joined hands. Freeing her hand, she brought up a game on her omni, and after watching her for a few seconds, Moon did the same. "Any reason in particular we're playing Asteroid Match?" he whispered as the salesdrell walked away.
"If we're sitting here just waiting, we look odd. If we're playing a game, we fit in better," she explained. "Everyone assumes your focus is on the game, not on your surroundings. Notice how the Haze protection detail outside just walked right past us with no more than a glance."
"Huh. You're not what I expected from someone out of the Dead Zone," he said.
"There's a lot more people out there than it seems. Scientists, anthropologists, historians, geologists, and all the stores and restaurants and repairmen to work for them." A smile ghosted across her cheeks. "When you're not tracking down what passes for yahg stealth ships, it's rather homey."
He turned his eyes from the game to stare at her for several seconds. "Perhaps. But I prefer the Terminus."
They lapsed back into silence for several minutes, punctuated by the faint sound effects of shattering space rocks, before the salesdrell returned carrying a fairly large box. "All of your parts are inside," she said, lifting the lid to let them look. Plucking the credit chit from Moon's outstretched fingers, she gave a small bow. "Thank you for shopping at Pierce's!"
Picking up the box, Moon let Shepard lead the way out, bringing them closer to their destination. Judging from the jumble inside, she had no idea how the cyborg wasn't sweating by the time they covered the kilometer separating them. Nodding towards a planter box nearby, Shepard led the way over to an apartment, finding the door unlocked.
Porridge was waiting in the living room, Arak and Smith lying in wait beneath the windows. "That everything?" she asked.
"This is everything. How long will it take you?"
Popping the lid off, she pulled out components one at a time. "Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Benson's set up around that corner and up the ramp a bit in a café. Keeper's two doors down, we swept this place for bugs." Her fingers were busy as she talked, dismantling some things and connecting others. As they watched, the jumble of random items quickly turned into a functional, if jury-rigged, box of electronics. "Alright. All you need to do is connect this into any exposed wiring on the box," she said, holding up a sensor module. "Oh, hold on."
Bringing up her omni, the specialist etched an arrow and "this end towards wires" onto the casing. "There you go, all set. Haze patrols aren't quite as bad up here, but they're still present, and no way to tell about the Imperium."
Nodding, Moon put the device back into the box and replaced the lid before lifting it. "Not to be the new guy, but why take the box?" Arak asked.
"One, it will block most detection methods from determining what is inside, maintaining the element of surprise over this Keeper. Two, it is substantial enough to stop a small amount of fire from yahg weapons. Third, it has handles, the device does not." One eyebrow raised in challenge. "Any other questions?"
Face ablaze in embarrassment, Arak shook her head. "No, sir."
"Good. Shepard?" She opened the door again, and they walked back out, down the street two doors, and into the alleged location of the Keeper node.
Across the street, Morrza calmly tapped an icon on her omni, and then went back to playing her game.
Codex Entry: Alliance Unified Intelligence
The entire department of Alliance Unified Intelligence is a rather modern one, compared to such foundations as the Alliance Navy or Parliament. While the Alliance itself was founded in 2147 as a cooperative effort to terraform Mars for human colonization, the countries participating still maintained their own intelligence-gathering agencies. Even up until first contact with the Singers, most of the countries on Earth either possessed their own espionage network, or voluntarily came under the umbrella of another organization (such as the EU) that did.
When the Singer ship was brought back to the Sol system, science agencies and the Alliance Navy found themselves under scrutiny from multiple sides as every spy agency wanted information to defend against possible extraterrestrial surveillance programs. In 2247, Commandant Francois brought together all of the intelligence oversight agents, and forcibly drafted them into the Alliance Navy Intelligence. This move was naturally challenged in multiple courts in every jurisdiction. Only in 2261, when the Alliance Supreme Court demanded to hear all the cases at once was the issue finally settled. In a 6-1 decision, the justices demanded that Parliament organize and fund a unified intelligence agency, to handle "any and all measures dealing with surveillance, espionage, sabotage, and suspected traitorous activities between Humanity and whatever other races exist in our galaxy."
The first members of AUI were sworn in on April 23rd, 2265, at the agency's headquarters in Guam. The original organization was comprised of a mere one hundred and twenty agents, drawn largely from the North American Union's CIA, the European Union's IB4, China's MSS, and India's JIC. Their numbers remained incredibly small, as the agency dealt primarily with Singer integration until the discovery of the first Dead Zone planet in 2455. With mounting evidence of a wide-spread galactic conflict, the agency recruited heavily, both from terrestrial agencies and from the Alliance military. By the discovery of the Citadel in 2514, over 10,000 humans and three Singer queens worked at AUI bases across five systems.
With the discovery of both the drell and the yahg, the AUI has continued to grow in strength and importance. AUI agents have infiltrated yahg worlds as slaves, and numerous holovid movies and serial dramas relate fictional tales of AUI agents operating in the Terminus or in Alliance space.
FTA: F*** the Alliance
exfil: exfiltration, a military term for safely leaving a dangerous area