"Shepard..."
"Get the hell out of here!" Shepard screamed at her.
By now, Liara was ready. She enveloped Shepard in a biotic field that an aircar would have trouble escaping, and pushed her, step by step, to the last escape shuttle.
"How did it feel to mind-rape that woman, T'Soni?" Shepard asked. She laughed. "I don't think I can love an Ardat-Yakshi."
Liara shoved Shepard into the last open seat into the escape shuttle and pulled the safety harness down over her.
"Warning," the computer said. "This shuttle is over capacity. Please relocate one or more personnel to another shuttle."
Liara stepped off the shuttle, back onto the burning ship, and into a knot of jostling, frightened people.
"Liara," Chakwas said. "That's the last shuttle."
"For God's sake, let us in," said Joker.
"We'll die here, Liara," said Garrus. He was lying in a gurney, struggling to sit up. "Please."
From inside the shuttle, Kate shouted, "No!"
Liara slapped the hatch shut and keyed the eject. She was thrown to the deck as the shuttle shot away.
The ship came apart around her. She watched her friends as their skin crumpled and their blood boiled and -
"Liara." Garrus shook her again.
"Yes. I am awake." She hurled off the blanket and made herself sit up on the side of the bed. Her whole body felt slimy with sweat. She was amazed she'd slept at all. "Is Feron - " The door chimed.
Garrus unslung his rifle and gestured Liara and Gianna to get to cover. "Door: open," he said.
It was a Drell, flanked by four batarians. The Drell wore a tunic and trousers of silver, gray, and maroon. Despite having spent the last few days in one of Aria's cells, he was impeccably groomed.
"Feron," Garrus said. "If Aria thinks it takes four goons to keep you from escaping, you're even better than I remember."
"They're for my own safety," Feron said. "All the ladies on this lovely station are obsessed with me. Krogans and batarians in particular. This stint in jail will only make it worse, I fear."
"Here's your delivery." one of the batarians said. He shoved Feron into the room. "We're done with him." He and the others left.
Feron bowed. "Officer Vakarian. So good to see you again - and under even worse circumstances than last time."
"You'll like this," Garrus said. "You get to blow another Asari's head off."
"Garrus," Liara said. He is angry at his injury, he thought, and that this man is taking his place.
"If you mean your companion here," Feron nodded at Liara, "I shall have to refuse."
"Don't say that," Gianna said. Her voice shook. "You're not going to just kill her?"
Garrus said, "I'm sorry. But Adessa seems very determined. Taking her alive will be...problematic."
"As long as we get the data on Shepard's body, and she does not, she is free to walk away." Liara said.
Feron said, "I know of this Adessa - Matriarch Adessa. She will not walk away. And you cannot risk asking. You will need surprise, and even then your odds are poor."
"We've already run into her once," Garrus said. "But you weren't there. You could charm her into giving up."
"You would have to coach me, Vakarian, and there isn't time," Feron said. "You should have requested a platoon of Aria's thugs instead."
Liara said, "I had to put a gun to her head to get you."
Feron blinked both sets of eyelids at her as he realized she meant it. He said, "Then I guess I will do."
Garrus had put the previous evening to good use by adding the Blue Suns emblem to his armor, which luckily was already the right color. Hopefully, it would confuse the slavers long enough to let him and Gianna win over superior numbers.
For her part, she'd adopted a new disguise - she was now fair-skinned with with straight, jaw-length blond hair, and Liara had given her some of their Cerberus funds to buy a light hardsuit.
"Damn," he said. They were hidden behind some crates near one of the entrances, carefully looking over docking bay 17, though it was still empty. "There are too many entrances to watch them all, or we could take them before they get here."
"I want to see who's buying the slaves," Gianna said. "That'll give the Alliance a chance to find the ones who've been sold already, not that they'll likely do a damn thing."
He glanced at her. She was hardly a wide-eyed innocent when he first met her, but her ordeal had clearly left her bitter. In his time at C-Sec, he found the best treatment for pain and grief was to work through them. He said, "They won't be getting any more."
She patted the flash-bang grenades on her belt. "So, once more. You walk out there and talk to them until you have clear shots at all the bad guys, you give the signal, I throw a couple of flash-bangs, and you kill them."
He nodded. Dr. Chakwas would have a fit at the idea of him walking at all. He had a cane, which they hoped would further reduce suspicion of him. He expected at least two Blue Suns and two men in the buying party, which meant he would have to put shots into the heads of at least four people while they were blinded and stunned. He figured he could take two before the rest figured out what was going on. After that, he'd have to hope his shields and armor held out. He loaned Gianna his Mattock rifle, but she wasn't used to combat, so he ordered her to hold off unless she had a wide-open shot, or he needed a distraction.
The buyers got there first. Garrus cursed again. They came not on foot, but in a Stinger, a small, streamlined ship that knifed through the atmosphere-retention forcefield, then pulled up and settled gracefully to the deck just inside it.
"Is that the Suns?" Gianna whispered.
He shook his head. "I doubt they can afford a Stinger."
"How many crew?"
"Four, at the most. Hopefully they won't all come out. Once the show starts, go ahead and shoot anyone else who tries to come down the ramp. Just keep in cover. That suit isn't going to take much."
She nodded jerkily, feeling sweat gather under her arms. "The show, huh? White-collar crime was never this fun."
He rested his hand briefly on her back. "You'll do fine."
As the Stinger's thrusters died, the Blue Suns entered the docking bay through an entrance on the far side. And Garrus cursed yet again, silently this time. There were four in front, assault rifles ready. Behind them shuffled a dozen humans in double file, their hands and feet connected by a slaver's line. There were men, women, a couple of kids, various races. They had nothing in common that he could see, other than a numbed, broken look that he recognized too well.
At the rear were four more Suns, one of whom had only a holstered pistol, but was watching both the humans and his omni-tool, which no doubt directed the slaver's line. At the touch of a control, he could inflict pain, paralysis, or death on every person attached to the line. Garrus would kill him first. As soon as he figured out how he and Gianna were going to kill eight Blue Suns, along with the slave buyers, and not the slaves.
They're worried about the buyers, he thought. He was wondering if he could bluff them into thinking the sale had been canceled, or that the buyers meant to double-cross them, when the Stinger's ramp lowered.
There were two of them. Each was like an upright insect, with a grayish-brown carapace over snaking red muscles. It was tall, with its head seeming to fuse into its torso, and its torso into its legs. It had two arms that ended in three sharp opposing claws, and below the arms were four smaller, twitching limbs. The head was dominated by a crest that jutted out over four horizontally-spaced yellow eyes. Each carried a rifle similar to those of the Suns.
"Collectors," Garrus whispered. "I've never seen one in the flesh."
"I've never heard of them using alien ships or weaponry," Gianna whispered back.
"They trade technology for specimens for their experiments. They might be worried about it falling into alien hands."
Gianna shivered. "I wonder what's special about these humans. I'll bet they wish they didn't have it now."
One of the humans, a young woman, began shrieking hysterically at the sight of them. Her screams actually rose in pitch, from terror to agony, as the Sun slavemaster jabbed repeatedly at his omni-tool. Her knees gave out. The middle-aged man behind her tried to catch her, only to have one of the guards jab him in the kidney with the muzzle of his rifle. The man howled in pain, twisting as he tried to put his hands over his lower back, but they were locked in front of him.
Gianna took advantage of the noise to set down the Mattock and begin stripping off her armor.
"What the hell are you doing?" Garrus whispered.
She told him.
He shook his head, furious. "That's insane. We don't have time to argue about this."
"Then don't." She pulled the arms off and set them carefully on the floor, then opened the chestplate. "I let Adessa dupe me. This should never have happened, and I'm going to stop it."
"Not by committing suicide."
"If you start shooting, the slaves are dead. If the Collectors take them, they're worse than dead."
"And if you do this, they're still dead, and so are you."
"My job is infiltration, remember? I have a better chance at taking two Collectors than you do at taking all of them." She sat down and slid out of the leggings. Under the armor, she wore a maroon-and-white tech's suit.
"What if there are more on the ship?"
"It's still a better chance than this." She stood up. "Let's go."
He looked at her. There was fear there, and anger, but also a calm determination. He knew that, just as with Feron, he was letting someone else make the hard choice. He hated that he couldn't do it for her. But she was right. What better chance would they have?
So he waited until no one seemed to be looking in their direction, then marched her out. "Hey! I got one more." Gianna looked at the floor and walked with a slight limp. Her hair was unkempt, her suit was torn, and a trickle of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. Her hands were cuffed in front of her.
The Suns and the Collectors both turned to look at them, and Garrus braced himself for the hail of bullets. At least it would be quick.
The Sun slavemaster stepped forward. He was a batarian with a slight potbelly and horrific breath. "Harga didn't say anything about any more."
"Harga doesn't know about it," Garrus said. "He put out the bounty, I found one. She's type 1. You want her or not?" When the Suns had tried slaving on the Citadel, they'd simply paid bounties for whatever useful victims their members brought in. He hoped Omega was the same way.
The batarian stared at him. "Type 1, eh? I haven't seen you around here before."
Garrus stepped forward. "Likewise. When I tell Harga I didn't get paid, who should I say kept him from getting his cut?" He hadn't brought his cane, and the stabs of pain from his injured tarsus made it easy to sound irritable.
One of the Collectors made a chittering noise, a ripple passing through the small feelers that seemed to stick out of it in all directions. Gianna shuddered.
One of the Suns looked at the slavemaster. "He says the female appears suitable. He will pay an additional five thousand credits. He, uh, says, to get on with it." The Collector punctuated this by jabbing its rifle toward the ship. Another Sun stepped over to Gianna and quickly checked her handcuffs. He nodded: they were secure.
The slavemaster folded his arms. "They'll go on the ship when I get paid."
That needed no translation. The Collector handed a data pad to the nearest Sun, who passed it to the slavemaster. He shoved it at the man next to him. "Check it, Koth."
Koth tapped at the data pad, his eyes moving as he glanced over the contents. After a minute, he said, "Looks right."
"Fine," the slavemaster said. "Up the ramp," he barked at the humans. It took several more jolts of pain, including one to the woman who had broken down earlier, to get them moving. He nodded at Garrus and Gianna. "Her too. Say goodbye to your girlfriend there."
Garrus forced a raucous laugh. "We did have a little going-away party earlier." Gianna bowed her head and tears welled in her eyes. He shoved her toward one of the Collectors, who gestured her to the end of the line of humans.
He didn't let himself watch Gianna disappear from sight. He wondered if he'd ever see her again, and how he'd live with himself if he didn't. He distracted himself with memorizing the faces of the Blue Suns. He couldn't take them all, even with the Collectors gone, but he promised himself he'd see them again.
The slavemaster looked him over again. "You'll get paid when Harga vouches for you."
"And after you collect a little something extra for this service," Garrus said.
The slavemaster dropped his hand to the butt of his pistol.
Garrus looked at him for a few moments, then looked at the other Suns, and finally at the departing Stinger. Finally he shook his head once, turned, and stalked out of the docking bay as best he could. As soon as he was out of sight he sped up, ignoring the hot knives of pain inside his leg, hoping to reach Liara in time.