From a prompt by fourthage. Aria deals with a little matter that Shepard brought to her attention.
Being Omega had its drawbacks, not that Aria would admit that to anyone. Keeping charge required a certain appearance of ease, while at the same time keeping eyes and ears everywhere. For the most part, Omega could be left to do its own business. All those interests scurrying about, fighting among themselves; they did an acceptable job, all by themselves, of pulling down whoever threatened to climb to the top of the heap. Sometimes they needed a little help. Meanwhile, the real work of the station pulsed on: eezo mining, buying, selling. Aria didn't much care what was bought or sold, for the most part, so long as she got her cut. The little mercs could do what they liked, so long as they didn't interfere with that.
And yet, sometimes, still, something crawled out of the ductwork to surprise her, and it took not one of her own people, but a dead Spectre to show it to her. Human faces weren't hard to read, not really, and Shepard had been amused. Amused. That the petty, fly-by-night mercs thought they could aim themselves at her once they'd finished ganging up on Archangel.
Aria leveled her coldest glare at Anto. "Well? Do you have an explanation for how we missed this little scheme?"
The nerve of them, really. It had to have been Jaroth's idea. He thought he was clever, and he had ambitions, for his family if not himself. With Sederis out of the picture for the moment, he thought he could move himself up. Had Tarak and Garm realized how quickly the salarian would have turned on both of them, in the highly unlikely event that they'd managed to take her down? Maybe, maybe not; Tarak had had a healthy degree of paranoia, but was hardly an original thinker. Garm didn't give a flying fuck about anything but lording it over his vorcha, as if that was some kind of accomplishment.
Anto shifted his weight, blinking first the upper, then the lower pair of eyes. "We're still tracking that down, Aria. But it looks like they had an in with Ilora here." He jerked his head toward the young asari, held in Grizz's tight grip.
"Really," Aria said, turning toward her.
The girl flinched under her gaze. "I didn't do anything!"
Aria stalked toward her. Ilora hadn't worked in security, but she handled a lot of credits. She might have been a useful contact. "Anto?"
"She was fucking around with one of Jaroth's people."
"Were you now?" Aria looked the girl over, calculating.
A dull indigo flush rose in her cheeks. "It wasn't... I didn't..."
"I could find out, you know. For myself." Aria smiled.
"I—I never told her anything!"
Aria chuckled. Fool girl. She wasn't even a hundred years old, barely more than a child. "No? And you're sure she never got anything from you anyway? Never slipped anything out of the meld, never copied your omni-tool, never searched your drawers? Nothing?"
Ilora's cheeks were rapidly losing color, now. "I... she wouldn't..."
"I would have hoped you were smart enough not to fuck around with Eclipse, Ilora," Aria said, almost gently. Ilora's chin dropped, her shoulders drooping.
Aria gave Grizz a slight nod. He let go. With a flick of her fingers, Aria summoned a surge of dark energy that pushed the hapless asari off the catwalk and into the workings of the ore processor below. Her scream ended in a wet crunch. "Keep looking," she told the two men. "I want to know which watchers were asleep on the job."
As she strode away, the unwelcome thought intruded that Nyreen wouldn't have let this happen. Stupid, she chided herself. Overly sentimental. Spare her from turians with muddled priorities. Speaking of which, she blamed Archangel for this whole mess. The mercs would never have gotten their pathetic acts together and come up with the brilliant notion of cooperation if not for him. His antics had been entertaining for a time, but the cost might have been too high.
Then again, it looked as though he and Shepard had cleared out all three of Jaroth, Garm, and Tarak, so that was something. Even though Shepard had come sauntering back with that datapad and a turian in tow, as if Aria couldn't figure out who he was, and now it was plausible to say that Aria was in Shepard's debt.
She didn't like that feeling much.
At least Shepard had taken her own turian off-station. Good riddance to both of them, the mercs, and Ilora, too. And Nyreen, even, wherever she'd gotten her spiky self to.
Around her, the machinery of the processors died away, replaced by the clank and hum of the life support systems, Omega's heartbeat. Omega endured, and so did Aria.