21 January 2185, T'Soni Analytics Offices, Nos Astra/Illium
I remembered the last time time I had encountered Nassana Dantius.
It happened almost two years before, only a few days after I joined Shepard's crew. At that time Nassana worked as a diplomat on the Citadel. She sent a message to Normandy, warning us about a nest of pirates and slavers operating from the planet Sharjila. According to Nassana, her sister Dahlia had been captured by these slavers and was being held for ransom. She offered a reward for a rescue.
I still remembered that mission with a great deal of warmth; it had created an initial foundation for the mutual respect and affection that later grew between Shepard and me. For the first time, he invited me to come along as part of his combat team. Together we attacked and destroyed the slaver gang, but we discovered that they held no captives.
Digging through their records afterward, we learned the truth. Nassana had lied to us. Her sister had not been a captive, but the leader of the pirates, an asari I had killed during the assault. Nassana had known this fact the entire time. Her sister had been an embarrassment, a threat to her career, so she had set out to manipulate Shepard into eliminating the problem for her.
When we returned to the Citadel, Shepard confronted Nassana. He all but blackmailed her into abandoning her diplomatic career and leaving the Citadel. She was furious, but she didn't consider it wise to oppose a Spectre, so in the end she obeyed. In fact, now that I thought about it, I had been the one to suggest that she return to Illium and pursue a corporate career instead.
No wonder she hates me. It's no surprise she would try to kill me. It's more surprising that she waited so long.
Since then Nassana had barely come to my notice. I remembered seeing her once or twice at a distance, at one gathering or another of Nos Astra's aristocracy, but we never had much reason to speak. She and I didn't work in the same line of business and moved in very different social circles. In truth, I had barely thought of her in almost two years.
When my meeting with Aspasia, Yevgeni, and Quintus ended, I ordered all three of them to say nothing to anyone of what we had discovered. I would personally investigate further and decide what course of action to take. Aspasia and Yevgeni understood at once and agreed. Quintus gave me a suspicious glance, but nodded and raised no argument.
Alone in my office, I dove into our files to learn all I could about Nassana Dantius. I found surprisingly little.
We had no informants and no network implants within Dantius Industries. Public records described the firm as a diverse holding, involved in resource extraction, high-technology manufactures, shipping, and finance. It took advantage of its location on Illium to do a great deal of business out in the Terminus Systems. Corporate revenues currently hovered in the neighborhood of five billion credits per year, representing considerable expansion over the two years since Nassana had taken direct control. The firm was in the process of building an ambitious new corporate headquarters in Nos Astra.
Two facts did attract my eye. Dantius Industries had a long-standing relationship with Eclipse, who provided most of the firm's security. Meanwhile, several individuals who had gotten in Nassana's way had suddenly turned up dead under suspicious circumstances. The allegations had not risen so far as to attract the attention of Illium law – Nassana had enough wealth to buy the law in any case – but rumor in high places considered it not wise to cross her.
I remembered my encounter with Nassana, two years before on the Citadel. Shepard had not bothered to introduce me to her, yet she had known at once who I was, and had even known enough to insult me by calling me a pureblood. Perhaps she had simply researched Shepard's crew, but it had still been an impressive feat. Clearly Nassana was a dangerous opponent.
A wisp of memory came to me, something else Nassana had said during that conversation. I performed another query and discovered that Nassana still had living relatives. I had killed her sister Dahlia on Sharjila, but she still had another sister. Moira Dantius had been cut out of any significant share in Dantius Industries. She lived on Cyone, with a not-very-generous allowance from lineage funds.
I leaned back in my chair and turned to look out the great windows behind my desk. I felt a plan beginning to form.
22 January 2185, Nos Astra/Illium
That night, alone in my apartment, I found myself unable to sleep. In the small hours of the morning I pulled on a white silk night-tunic and padded down the stairs to make a mug of hot chocolate. Then I sat in my living room with the untouched drink, staring at Shepard's chest plate without really seeing it.
I had to act. Yet I couldn't act alone, and I didn't have enough people that I knew I could trust. Only Yevgeni and Aspasia – but Aspasia would be no use in a fight or an infiltration mission, and Yevgeni alone didn't have all of the skills I thought we would need.
I would have given anything to have Garrus and Tali close by . . . but Garrus was gone, Goddess alone knew where, and Tali was too bound up in her work for the Migrant Fleet. I had Quintus and Arin, but cold logic told me I couldn't trust either of them yet. If I deployed them for a mission against Nassana Dantius, either of them might lead me into a death-trap.
A mole had to be someone I would want to trust, someone who didn't look like a mole, otherwise he would be ineffective.
Of course, by that reasoning I couldn't trust anyone. Not even Aspasia. After all, I hadn't decided to trust her based on any rational argument or proof, only on my instinct that she would never betray me. My instincts had been wrong before.
For the first time in months, I felt very much alone and afraid.
Well, there was one place I could go for help.
I almost did it. I went so far as to cross the room and sit down in my office, bringing up my computer terminal.
After all, Cerberus already knew I had a security leak. Calling on them to help me close it would reveal nothing new to them. It would be a simple exchange of favors, perhaps a partial repayment for my cooperation after Shepard's death. Mutual interests in action, as the Illusive Man would say. There wouldn't be any need to trust them.
I touched the console.
Stop. Wait just a moment.
I only knew that there might be a mole in my organization because of something the Illusive Man had told me.
Because of something the Illusive Man had told me.
Why had he phrased his warning in just that way? He was certainly intelligent and resourceful enough to have anticipated Quintus's reasoning. He might already have known when I spoke to him that Nassana Dantius stood behind Mumbai. If so, he could have simply given me the information I needed. Instead he had been ambiguous, revealing only what it suited him to reveal.
Could it be that I was reacting just as he expected me to react? Just as he wanted me to react?
Suddenly not trusting my own people. Cut off, alienated, unable to use my own resources for fear they would turn against me. Ready to turn to Cerberus itself for help . . . and the moment I did that for the first time, that would be the end of my independence. Cerberus would own me.
"No," I said to myself, leaning back away from the console.
From where I was sitting, I could just see the case containing Shepard's chest plate.
What would you have done?
Shepard had not been able to uncritically trust all of his crew. Kaidan Alenko may have been the only member of his inner circle whom he never had reason to doubt. There had been a soldier with a martyr complex who had lost her entire unit. A turian who openly admitted to being a renegade. An inexperienced and untested quarian. A krogan mercenary.
Matriarch Benezia's daughter.
Yet he had given all of us his trust – not uncritical, not absolute, but real trust – from the very beginning. He had given all of us opportunities to demonstrate that we deserved his trust. He had inspired us to trust him, to follow him, to give of our best for him.
My face fell forward into my hands, and my eyes burned.
Goddess, help me. I've been at this too long. I'm starting to forget what I set out to do.
I didn't quite lose control. A few minutes later I was able to look up again, my eyes dry, and consider the armor in its case once more.
You wouldn't have been stupid about it, but you would have trusted your people as far as possible. You never permitted fear or doubt to paralyze you. You always found a way to push forward with the team you had.
Most likely Yevgeni, Quintus, and Arin were all loyal. I trusted Aspasia, and she knew her lover to the bottom of his soul. I had no such absolute token for Quintus or Arin, but I thought I knew each of them well enough. I had never had a moment's reason to believe either of them was anything but completely honest. Besides, neither of them were asari, and it seemed unlikely that they would have any reason to betray me to an asari enemy.
My Shepard-memories gave me, of all things, a poker metaphor. It felt as if I had an ace and a king in the hole, while another ace and two kings showed on the table. My enemy might have two aces in the hole, and she had raised the stakes once already. But it was still worth pushing hard with the hand I had. Time to raise the stakes once more, and see if she had the courage to stay in the game.
22 January 2185, Dantius Industries Facility, Pyrenian Desert, Illium
Night in the high desert.
Visitors to Illium tend to forget that the planet is actually not that hospitable. They spend all their time in Nos Astra or one of the lesser cities, located in polar coastal regions, where the climate is no more than warm and a moist breeze comes in from the sea. Venture away from the planet's poles, journey into the interiors of the continents, and one will find something entirely different. Vast plains and table-lands stretch for thousands of kilometers, stony and barren, where the day's shimmering heat will kill an exposed asari in hours and water is vanishingly rare. The colors of the landscape are gray and an occasional dull red, the hues of rock and dust that have never felt the touch of life.
Yet asari have come to the desert, looking for the mineral wealth so abundant on Illium. Fifteen thousand kilometers from Nos Astra, in a nameless mountain valley deep in the interior of the Pyrenian continent, Dantius Industries maintained one of its most important sites. An enormous deposit of metals lay close to the surface: platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium, all of immense value in high-technology manufacturing. Nassana Dantius had taken the site from its original claimants, at least one of whom had met the kind of unexpected death that seemed common among her adversaries. By the time I visited the place, the mine was worth well over a hundred million credits a year to her.
Themis landed a few kilometers away, keeping low to the horizon, with all stealth systems engaged on the final approach. I checked the passive sensors carefully before we left the ship, looking for any sign that we had been detected. Then we stepped out onto the blasted land.
I had chosen a part of four: Yevgeni, Quintus, Arin, and me, all of us in sealed armor to protect us from the local climate. Even in the middle of the night the temperature hovered well over thirty degrees, the air bitterly dry and full of fine dust. Better to be breathing cooled and filtered air, if we were going to be exerting ourselves.
"Let's move out," I ordered once all of us were ready. Quintus took point, Yevgeni took the rear-guard position, and we set out across the stony desert.
Quiet and darkness. Our footprints made rough scraping sounds on the stone and sand. The stars overhead twinkled and shimmered madly, as heat continued to radiate through the atmosphere. Our flashlights skated across the broken ground as we watched our paths. We spoke very little, only enough for Quintus to warn us of obstacles and dangers in the way. After an hour or so, we approached the last low rise that concealed the mining site from us.
"Hold up," said Quintus as he examined the terrain ahead. "Blasting caps buried under the surface."
"Arin, can you shut them down?" I asked.
"Not from here. Not quickly," said the quarian.
"It's okay," said Quintus, fiddling with his omni-tool for a moment. Suddenly my HUD came to life, an array of circles of light appearing to spread out across the ground before us. "Just keep your distance from each mine and you should be safe."
I nodded. "All right. Single file through the mine-field. Quintus, take the lead."
"Roger that."
Five very careful minutes took us through the mines. We formed up once more in the lee of a great rock spire, the facility's outer fence visible just ahead. Arin opened his omni-tool and ran a series of careful scans. "Hmm. I can see the communications tower, about two hundred meters from here. If we can get that far, I can cut into the outbound channel and keep any warning from reaching Nos Astra. The defenses seem pretty tight, though. Kinetic shields. Security cameras. Another field of blasting caps just inside. And I think I detect security mechs, patrolling the area."
"Nassana is pretty paranoid about anyone playing with her toys, isn't she?" observed Quintus.
Yevgeni chuckled. "Considering how she acquired them, I'd say she has the right. So how do we get through all that without raising the alarm?"
"I can hack the security cameras, at least long enough for us to get inside," said Arin. "That leaves the shields, the blasting caps, and the mechs."
"How high do the shields go?" asked Quintus.
"Five meters," said Arin. "Too high for any of us to jump, even with a biotic assist."
"Sure," said the turian. "But if I can climb this spire, I might be able to get line-of-sight on one of the shield generators. A few shots would take it out."
"That might also set off the alarms," said Arin.
"Not necessarily. I'd bet this climate is hell on the equipment. The shields must fail once in a while. If they don't see anything on the security cameras, they'll just send a crew out to do repairs."
I stared at Quintus, the visor of my helmet concealing the expression on my face.
That sounds plausible. Is it the truth?
"Yevgeni, what do you think?"
The human nodded at once. "It's a good bet."
"All right," I said decisively. "Arin, Quintus, both of you scan the blasting caps inside the shield line. I want the best possible map to my HUD."
They obeyed, and another array of light-circles appeared to spread out across the open ground inside the facility.
Yevgeni turned to stare at me. "Doctor, what are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that it's about two hundred meters from here to that comm tower, and even in this light armor I could probably cover that distance in about thirty seconds."
"Through a mine field?"
"So it's broken-field running. I can see the mines, after all."
Assuming that I trust Arin and Quintus together to have mapped them properly.
Yevgeni hesitated, and I knew he thought the same thing.
"No argument, Yevgeni. Quintus has to get up on the spire. Arin has to keep the security cameras quiet, and he has to be ready to hack the comm tower as soon as I can get a remote shunt in place. You are wearing heavy armor. Besides, you didn't win second place in the hundred-meter dash in the University of Serrice's yearly agon."
"Doctor, that was sixty years ago."
"Hush. Arin, hack. Quintus, climb. Yevgeni, get ready to shoot mechs if they show up."
Arin finished first, signaling that he had blinded the mining facility in our direction. I stepped out from our place of concealment, moved cautiously over to stand next to the kinetic barriers, and scanned the open ground I would have to cross. The golden-white circles of light on my HUD marked the blasting caps. At least I hoped they did.
I leaned forward, putting my weight on my right foot.
A single shot rang out. Quintus wasn't as expert with a sniper rifle as Garrus had been, but he took plenty of time to line up the shot. Sparks flew as a shield generator went down. The kinetic barriers in front of me vanished.
I took off in a dead sprint, dust flying up in the air behind me.
I had selected a path that wouldn't require much turning. Fortunately the mines were arranged in a neat, regular tessellation across the field. I could dodge slightly to the left, to the right, to the left again and stay well clear of their marked positions.
Movement ahead of me, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye as I watched the circles of light on the ground . . .
"Excuse me," came a polite mechanical voice.
Yevgeni and Quintus both opened fire, hammering the LOKI mech that had just come around the corner of the comm tower.
It distracted me for just a moment. Just long enough to feel one foot slide on the dusty ground, my center of gravity suddenly completely out of control.
I didn't have time to think about it. A moment's horrible vision flashed through my mind: me sliding helplessly into a mine. I shouted and clenched my right fist, called up my biotics, and then slammed my fist into the ground as I fell. The reaction pushed me into the air, flailing my arms and legs to keep from tumbling out of control. Then I felt a tearing pain in my skull and a hollow sensation in the pit of my stomach, as I flipped my biotic aura into reducing my effective mass.
I flew. Not far, and not at all gracefully, but far enough to send me tumbling through the air and over the last of the blasting caps. I saw at least one circle of light pass directly beneath me as I went. I came down badly and felt my left wrist snap on impact, but I suppressed the shock and rolled to my feet with my Shuriken out.
I saw no mechs for the moment. My friends had dealt with a whole fireteam of three while I hung helpless in the air. I turned and stumbled for the comm tower, cradling my wrist against my belly and trying not to whine from the pain.
Once there, I gritted my teeth and used my left hand to tap at my omni-tool, setting up a remote shunt on the comm tower. Only after the task was complete and I saw that Arin had blocked any outbound alarm did I punch for some medi-gel and an anesthetic.
The rest of our progress into the mining facility seemed almost anticlimactic. We found no live crew on the site, only LOKI mechs, and those presented an easy problem to solve. They came at us with no sense of tactics, and we could smash them two or three at a time as we moved around the installation.
Time presented our only concern. Arin had tried to jam the communications of the first few mechs to spot us, but he couldn't be sure he had succeeded. We could therefore expect some response to be coming from Nos Astra. Fortunately we were almost on the other side of the planet from there. Unless Nassana had a spaceship with suborbital capability on hand, and she could put it in the air almost immediately, we could expect two or three hours of grace.
As it happened, we only needed one.
The control center had heavy defenses – a pair of turrets and a large squad of LOKI mechs – but Nassana's people had been foolish enough to leave plenty of cover behind crates and heavy equipment. Quintus and Arin focused their fire on one turret, then the other, while Yevgeni and I smashed the mechs with our biotics. Quintus had his shields flare out once, but he ducked back under cover before anything penetrated his armor. The rest of us went entirely unscathed.
Once inside, it took Arin less than ten minutes to work his way through the firewalls and into the Dantius Industries secure network. He immediately began an aggressive data-mine. Meanwhile, Yevgeni and Quintus went over the facility's engineering diagrams.
"Just as I thought," said Yevgeni at last. "Look here, Doctor."
I leaned over the console. "What do you have?"
"I have a Vestis Combine class-five mass effect core providing power to the whole installation."
"Hmm. Quite powerful."
"Oh yes. They also advertise it as being very safe, but that's only if you don't look at the fine print in their liability contract. Typical Illium sales strategy. Turns out there's a persistent flaw in the cooling system. A few small charges in the right places, and about ten minutes later . . . foom!"
"Foom?"
"It's a technical term we terrorists use. Means the thing goes sky-high. In this case, about ten kilotons yield."
I looked through the large windows on all sides of the control center, taking in the entire facility. "Goddess. That would be enough to destroy the whole place. It would take Nassana months to rebuild."
"The neat thing is, there wouldn't be much evidence left to say how it happened. It would take a lot of work for anyone to even determine that it was sabotage. Shall Quintus and I go ahead?"
"Wait a moment. Arin?"
"Still working, Doctor."
"Here, let me help." I sat down beside Arin, opened my own omni-tool, and the two of us divided the work of mining the Dantius networks. Secure messages, financial records, contracts . . . I could barely absorb it all as it flew by. We would have to take the bulk of the data back to the central office for analysis. I found no sign of any reference to me or to Kalliste Renai.
"Here's something," said Arin. "Another set of firewalls, very tight. Not sure what's behind them."
I glanced at a schematic of the Dantius networks, and saw what Arin was talking about: a knot of very high-level security, high up in the corporation's financial domain. "Try to get through them."
"Doctor, the charges?" asked Yevgeni.
I made a flash decision. "Go set them up. If by some chance we don't find any evidence that Nassana was involved in Mumbai, we can rethink."
The human and the turian stood and left the control center, not running but not wasting any time.
Minutes ticked past. I wanted to help Arin, but I could see he had far exceeded my own level of competence. The last thing he needed was for me to distract him. At least I could follow well enough to see he was making an honest effort.
Finally I couldn't take any more of the tension. I activated my helmet radio. "Yevgeni, progress report."
"Almost done," said the human.
"Any difficulty?" I asked, knowing that he would understand the hidden question.
"None at all," he replied at once.
So Quintus hasn't taken any opportunity to sabotage the mission. Arin is here doing his honest best. I don't think Nassana has a pair of aces in the hole after all.
"Hah!" crowed Arin, tapping furiously at his omni-tool.
"What is it?"
"I got in . . . and I found what was hidden behind those firewalls."
I leaned close, eagerly scanning the files as they flew by on Arin's omni-tool display. Names, dates, places, money transfers . . . it took a moment for me to put it all together. "It's a record of Nassana's dealings with Eclipse."
"Yes. It goes back years, before she came back to Nos Astra even." The quarian shook his head. "She has a direct partnership with Jona Sederis. Terapso, the pirate attacks, a dozen raids and assassinations, it's all here."
"What about Mumbai?"
Arin punched in a search term, and almost immediately nodded. "Here it is. About three months ago, Nassana contacted Colonel Sederis and . . . keelah. She told the Colonel that you are Kalliste Renai. She suggested that Eclipse try to kill you while you were on Earth."
I turned to watch Arin closely, my hand not far from my weapon. "Arin, does the message say how Nassana knew that I am Renai?"
The quarian didn't react to the question, didn't even glance at me. He simply worked with his omni-tool for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity.
"Yes," he said at last, his voice suddenly quiet with surprise. "She paid the Shadow Broker for the information."
For a moment I was shocked speechless in turn.
The Shadow Broker?
Suddenly the game I played seemed much larger, with more people at the table than I had expected.
I forced myself to move. "Arin, grab as much of that as you can. Don't even try to be quiet about it. If it sets off alarms all over Nassana's networks, I'm fine with that."
"Right away, Doctor."
"Yevgeni, I'm calling Themis in. Plant those charges and get back here. I want us out of here in ten minutes."
"Understood," said the human over the radio link.
I think some of my urgency communicated itself to the others. Only eight minutes later Themis soared into the sky, striking out for deep space so that we could approach Nos Astra from another direction entirely. I watched the mining site with ship's sensors. If Nassana sent any reinforcements, they didn't reach the place in time. Five minutes after our departure, a small pearl of nuclear fire bloomed on the night side of Illium.
As soon as I saw it, I opened a comm panel one-handed and sent a text message into the extranet. I used a hacker's technique to hide the originator's identity, but I also used a low-level encryption scheme that I was sure would be easily broken.
FROM: (DIGITAL SIGNATURE REDACTED)
TO: Moira Dantius
Mission accomplished. Expect payment on time and in full.
Then I sat back and watched Yevgeni pilot the ship. I knew Moira Dantius would be puzzled by the message . . . but if I was reading Nassana right, she would have ways to monitor her sister's communications. I could only imagine her reaction to that message, given its timing.
All right, Nassana, what will it be? Fold, call, or raise?