25 - Pilgrimage: What the hell kind of a name is 'Fist?'

Chora's Den wasn't the shadiest-looking dump Tali'Zorah had ever seen, but the sight of the place was still a very bad omen. Maybe it was the badly glitched holographic dancing Asari on the Marquee, or maybe it was the dent on the front door that strongly resembled a relief of the side of a Turian's face. Maybe it was the fact that the exterior walls of the place had meta-panels instead of actual windows so that the otherwise solid (and possibly armor plated) metal walls of the building were completely transparent from inside. Maybe it was the heavily armed Krogan bouncer standing just outside the doorway in light armor with a shotgun in his hand. Or maybe it was the fact that the only way to access the place was a pair of narrow pedways that crossed a deep chasm through the middle of Tayseri Ward almost three hundred meters deep and that, as far as she could tell, there was no other way in or out of it.

Either way, Chora's Den didn't seem like the safest place for someone to hide out. Tali'Zorah would have turned around and sought out the relative comfort of Doran Gord's store room at Flux if not for the fact that Flux was the first place anyone would probably look for her. And Chora's Den did have one other thing going for it: It was very, very hard to find.

That was probably why most of its current patrons had come here in the first place, possibly even including the krogan at the door with the shotgun. She expected him to scan her with his omni-tool when she approached the door, but to her surprise the only thing he did was look her over for a moment and then clear his throat to almost-whisper, "If you start a fight, we'll hurt you. If you get attacked, it's okay to defend yourself."

That, Tali'Zorah knew, was a Batarian custom, although it was alot more popular in places like Omega and Ilium than it was in actual Batarian colonies. The Batarians mostly preferred the pretense of their more complicated caste-system rules and didn't lower themselves to the customary house rules of commoners even though most of them were, in fact, commoners. But the human and volus who seemed to make up the majority of club and bar managers preferred the simpler system, and so it was catching on in more and more places.

She nodded her assent to the bouncer and pushed her way through the creaking, hinged metal door that lead inside.

She was slightly surprised to discover that the entire Den had been built in a circle around the power conduit for one of the station's mass effect field generators. This field conduit and dozens of others like it was responsible for generating the forcefields that kept the Citadel's atmosphere from floating off into space when the ward arms were open. There was no sign of monitoring equipment or machinery here because, like everything else on the Citadel, the generators were maintained by the keepers, who accessed the hardware of the field coils from a completely different set of access conduits that no one else could even get to or even, usually, fit inside of. The circular center column was almost ten meters in diameter, and racks of shelves and refrigerators had been built against its side with a bar wrapped around its circumference. A circular stage was built directly above the bar with a half dozen variable-gravity platforms installed for dancers. Almost all of the dancers were asari. They weren't particularly good.

The remainder of the circular room was dominated by small tables or booths built into the walls. Some of the booths wrapped around stripper poles where more asari - the more talented dancers - served paying customers. Tali'Zorah could here the thumping base and drums of music, but she couldn't hear any sort of melody except for slight tickle in her outer ear, so most of the tune was probably on a frequency outside of her normal range of hearing. That meant it was probably human or batarian music. Again, typical for an Omega-style club; Krogan music was nothing but drum rythms anyway, and the turian auditory, while very large, had a huge gap in the middle range and so all of their music sounded like a combination of low growls and ear-splitting screams. Deep pounding base combined with ultrasonics was a compromise that made everyone happy except for quarians and vorcha (vorcha weren't allowed in clubs like this, and who the fuck cared what quarians wanted?)

Doctor Michel had told her what to do when she arrived, but the sights and sounds of it all were a lot to take in and she had trouble remembering. A turian at one table was chugging an amber-colored liquid that was either varenade or primarch's brandy, and judging by his slouching posture and downcast expression, probably varenade (wonderful animals, those varen; everything about them was delicious, even their piss). A few humans tucked into a corner, nursing glasses of ice brandy or evergreen or some of the new drinks the earthlings kept bringing from their crazy planet that, as far as anyone could tell, was populated entirely by alcoholics. She noted the conspicuous absence of batarians or salarians in the room as evidence that this place was too respectable for the former and too low-brow for the latter...

Now she remembered. There was supposed to be a salarian here, tucked into the back corner near the door to the maintenance tunnels that had been converted to store rooms and offices. She made her way in a long circular path around the bar and the stage, squeezed past a pair of krogan talking about fish in the Presidium lake (they were talking louder than they needed to be, probably because the bass was a lot louder to them than it was to anyone else). A balding human in a C-Sec uniform leered at her as she walked past, and one of the asari dancers looked her over head-to-toe with a look of something like nostalgia. A wide doorway at the back of the room had a holographic sign in the threshhold that said "VIP and Staff Only" in four different languages; Tali'Zorah walked right through it and into a narrow hallway with a door on either side and another, automatic door guarded by a salarian in a fancy suit and two krogan in heavy combat armor. The two krogan immediately drew pistols from the hardpoints on their thighs, while the salarian lifted a datapad and asked "Are you Tali?"

"Tali'Zorah nar Raya ," she corrected, keeping her voice low. "I am here to see someone who calls himself 'The Fist.' I was told..." she trailed off at a sound through one of the side doors. Sounds of anger and exertion, grunts and moans and gasps and soft cries. Tali'Zorah got the sickening feeling that someone was being murdered just a few meters from where she was standing. What the hell kind of place have I come to? Why am I even...

Then someone inside that room screamed "Baby I'm yours!" and Tali'Zorah's cheeks started to burn.

"It's just 'Fist,'" said the salarian, tucking the datapad into his suit jacket and opening his omni-tool, "Are you armed or carrying any electronic recording equipment?"

She thought to tell him that her exo-suit was as much as scientific and defensive instrument as it was an environmental implement, that it recorded everything she saw and did and categorized it for her, that the scanner on her omni-tool was in a low-power passive mode that did the same, and that the small knife in her boot had a razor sharp nickel-titanium blade, that the utility drone sleeping on her left forearm could be used as a defense system, that after leaving Doctor Michel's clinic she'd downloaded a function from the extranet that let her omni-tool fire off a very painful electric pulse into the skins of would-be attackers, that the Aldrin Labs part she'd used to replace the right arm of her suit had a built in power assist and shock absorption that, with a little tweaking by her, would allow her to deliver a punch strung enough to crush a man's ribcage if she really needed it to...

"No," she said instead, and held her arms out to the side while the salarian continued to scan her and somehow failed to notice any of those things. Tali'Zorah had learned her lesson from the customs agent; it was a simple thing to rig her shield booster to block an active scan, especially one as primitive as this salarian was using.

"Alright," he said at last, and then waved her through, "Straight through the store room, first door on the left.

"Thank you," said Tali'Zorah, and walked past him without glancing back.

The store room was full of boxes and crates, mostly metal and ceramic. As soon as the door closed behind her, she opened her omni-tool and took active scans of each of them. The crates were shielded against external scanners, but her equipment had no problem reading through that. Most of them were full of small glass vials about the right size to be pre-filled hypodermics or test tubes; probably red sand, or something equally illegal and expensive. One crate was filled entirely with assault rifles, another contained pieces of krogan body armor. One very large container stacked against the wall contained a small cryo pod and a small humanoid body that Tali'Zorah's scanner couldn't tell if it was alive or not. How Fist managed to get any of these things onto the Citadel was anyone's guess.

The far door of the store room opened to another hallway that, in turn, opened into three more doors. She stopped at the door on the left, knocked three times, and took a step back and to the right just in case the person on the other side decided to greet her with gunfire (nothing would have surprised her at this point).

But the door slid open with a soft chime and a mechanical hiss and Tali'Zorah realized that it and all of the doors in this part of the building were, in fact, hermetically-sealed pressure doors. The door opened to a large room that was configured like an office but decorated like a playboy's penthouse: shag carpet in front of round mahogany desk flanked by a zebra-print sofa and a pair of neo-futuristic dome chairs. There was a large square safe bolted to the floor in one corner of the room and a refrigerator tucked into the other. One entire wall was dominated by a huge, high-definition floor-to-ceiling portrait of a naked human woman with body proportions that probably would have looked natural on a quarian but on a human frame just looked silly and cartoonish.

In the center of the room, staring at that portrait with his arms folded, was a man wearing a jet black heavy battle armor that had somehow been stylized to look even more bulky and imposing than it ordinarily would have. Extra panels of armor had been draped over the shoulders and hips and the scabbard for some kind of sword was mounted to a cheap leather belt that made an unconvincing pretense of being both genuine leather and genuinely old.

Tali'Zorah stood in the doorway, wondering seriously if she had the right room. The man in the armor stared at the portrait thoughtfully for another moment, then shook his head and snapped his fingers. The portrait disappeared, and the image of a different woman - also nude, but this time far more stylized and riding on the back of some kind of fire-breathing reptile - replaced it. He looked at this new image for a moment or two, then nodded his approval and said almost as an afterthought, "Chloe told me you were coming. Tali is it?"

"Tali'Zorah nar Raya," she said, correcting him gently.

"What the hell kind of name is Tali'Zorah nar Raya?"

"What the hell kind of name is Fist?"

He half turned towards her, puzzled expression in his hard, penetrating stare. His ridiculously square jaw and military-style haircut gave him an almost cube-shaped head, and balanced on top of that heavy armor he was wearing, made him look like a comic book artists' ideal action hero. That, plus the sword at his waist and the hardness of his stare projected an air of competence and violence that was almost too perfect to be anything but a put-on.

"Yihequan Chu," he said, finally.

Tali'Zorah's translator splashed a series of question marks on her display. She shifted her weight, suddenly uncomfortable.

"That's my name," he went on, "My real name. My mother claims I was named after a rock band. But the rock band was named after a band of warriors who fought a conquering empire for control of their homeland two hundred years ago. The Yihequan believed they had magical powers, the ability to stop bullets with their minds, the ability to destroy buildings or fortifications with just a thought. Powers like that now exist in the world thanks to the mass effect, and the Yihequan - the Fists of Righteous Harmony - live again through me."

It was a relatively long answer to an extremely simple question, but at least it was a thorough one. Tali'Zorah responded in kind, "A tali'eth is an unpredictable shift in the solar winds, and a et'zorah is machine component that lasts longer than its specifications. So Tali'Zorah is a play on words that means roughly 'unpredictable blessing.' I've never asked for specifics, but it is probably an allusion to the circumstances of my birth. The rest of my name, nar Raya, is a reference to the ship where I was born."

"Well, Unpredictable Blessing of the starship Raya," Fist said the name as if he was announcing the arrival of royalty and gave a slight bow, "Welcome to rock bottom."

It took her translator a moment longer than usual to pick up on the meaning of that phrase. She frowned when she realized he didn't mean it literally. "I'm not looking for charity. Just a safe place to hide until I can arrange-"

"You have no money, no resources, no home, and no contacts. Don't bullshit me, kid. Charity is exactly what you're looking for. This is because you're desperate and you're in over your head and you don't have any place left to go. You're about as fucked as you can be in a place like the Citadel. If this was Omega, you'd be selling pussy to the vorcha by now."

Tali'Zorah tilted her head, "What would a vorcha want with a small four-legged mammal?"

Fist's mouth snapped shut and his features fluctuated, his train of thought momentarily lost.

"Anyway," Tali'Zorah went on, "I'm not a charity case. The information I have is valuable enough that I can definitely reimburse you when the trade is complete. The only way I'm down on my luck is that I can't give you payment up front because the information is only valuable in the right hands. In the mean time, I can offer you one thousand credits per day for up to ten days in exchange for protection."

Fist's eyebrows rose half an inch, "You really think you can arrange a trade in only ten days?"

"I've traded with the Shadow Broker before. I'm amazed it's taken as long as it already has. You have a direct connection yourself, so it should be even simpler."

"Should be," Fist said, foldhing his arms across his chest (no small feat in his bulky armor). "Thing is, I know the Doctor vouched for you and that gets you an introduction. But without knowing what kind of information you want to trade-"

Tali'Zorah raised her arm and her omni-tool flashed to life. A holographic window appeared in the air between them and a deliberately reduced-resolution image solidified into streaming video from the point of view of one well-hidden quarian drone.

"How did this happen, Commander?" asked a tall Asari woman in dark grey robes, "How did we lose to these humans?"

"Lose?" a turian with an unusually spikey (even for a turian) bone structure spun towards her with a wild look in his eyes, "We haven't lost, Benezia! This is a major victory! This beacon will bring one step closer to finding the Conduit!"

"And the return of the Reapers?" asked the Asari, sounding sheepish.

The Turian took a deep breath and said almost in a gasp, "And salvation!"

Tali'Zorah closed the playback and told her omni-tool to run checksums on her storage to make sure no one was trying to pull a copy out of her buffer.

Fist dropped his arms to his side and asked immediately, "Where did you get that recording?"

"Eden Prime. I recorded it myself."

"You do know who that turian is, don't you?"

"Doctor Michel says it might be Saren Atrurius, the turian spectre. If so, that gives you some idea of the value of the data, doesn't it?"

Fist thought about this for a moment, scratching his chin, "Well, a single audio track and low-res video isn't much to go on..."

"Which is why I'm saving the good stuff for the Shadow Broker. I've got detailed information on Saren's biometric data, on the Geth troopers and their capabilities, on his ship, his weapons, and his involvement in the murder of another spectre. It's enough to have Saren prosecuted for treason."

"What kind of price are you looking to get from the Broker?" Fist asked.

Now, at last, Tali'Zorah felt the pieces fall into place. She had either forgotten or had not fully expected that this was exactly the kind of question any legitimate data broker or his agents would be asking as soon as the data was confirmed. "Fifty five thousand for the data relating just to Saren, sixty for his ship. Two hundred for the whole cache and he can sort it out on his own. You can deduct my protection fees directly from the payout if you like, but only if you provide me with a safehouse and security until the trade has gone through."

Fist smiled, reading between the lines. He knew as well as she did that the Shadow Broker never bought parts of data if he had a choice. He demanded context, peripherals, and access to the raw data in case a stringer or seller missed something relevant. if Tali'Zorah was offering a mass dump of everything she'd recorded on Eden Prime, he would pay top dollar for that information before anything else.

And so Fist surprised her with the simple words "No deal."

Tali'Zorah didn't react, just stood still and waited for him to explain what, if anything, the hitch really was.

"The Shadow Broker's put Saren at the very top of his shitlist," he went on, "Never mind the reasons. The point is, something this important, he's not going to want to go through the usual channels."

"Okay. What does that mean, exactly?"

"It means," Fist's smile returned, "That you're going to have the rare privilege of doing business with the Shadow Broker in person."

Tali'Zorah took a small step back, "What are you talking about? The Broker never deals with anyone in person."

"Of course he doesn't. Not unless it's... well... personal. Saren's been turning some of the Broker's agents against him to try and stay ahead of his information network, and the Broker has definitely taken that personally. If you have information that could implicate Saren, the Broker won't want to trust that to any intermediaries who might be bought off."

It made a certain amount of sense, although Tali'Zorah couldn't help but wonder how much it would cost to buy Fist off. On the other hand, he seemed to be doing okay for himself, and pissing off the Shadow Broker would be an incredibly stupid move for someone who had anything at all to lose. "When can I expect to arrange a meeting?"

Fist smiled reassuringly, "One thousand a day, you said?"

Tali'Zorah folded her arms.

"Relax. Joking," he said, humorlessly enough that she knew he wasn't, "I'll make the call right away. It'll be a day or two before the meeting goes down. In the mean time, you're free to use the VIP room on the second level. I hardly ever use it anymore."

"Do I really want to know what you used to use it for?"

"Nothing perverse, if that's what you're wondering."

That came as little comfort to Tali'Zorah, but she nodded her thanks anyway, "If we have a deal, Fist, I'd like to get settled in now. I have certain environmental requirements that..."

"We do, and this aint my first time dealing with Quarians, so don't worry about that part either. I'll have an air shield put in by the door so you can keep the place sterilized, and my guards will keep you safe. There's only one way in or out of these utility rooms so you'll be safe here until the Shadow Broker comes to collect the data." Before he was even finished speaking, Fist was typing commands into a holographic screen on his omni-tool. A salarian voice trickled out of it and Fist told him, "Bring over an electric airlock for our guest. The good one, not the glitchy one." Then he closed the connection, switched modes, and pulsed a file towards Tali'Zorah's hardsuit. Her omni-tool picked it up and translated a plain text message on her heads up display. "That's my personal contact line and the door code. Good luck to you, Unpredictable Blessing."

"Same to you, Fist of Righteous Harmony." Tali'Zorah bowed slightly and left Fists' office, heading deeper into his labyrinth of store rooms and closets, offices and spare bedrooms.

Up a flight of stairs to another set of hallways and store rooms and she found the door, punched in the code, and stepped into a perfectly ordinary-looking dormitory-style apartment with a wire mesh cot on one side and an extranet terminal on the other.

"Well," she said to herself, closing the door behind her, "That went better that expected."