Chapter 50: Retaliation

Author's note: HUGE LONG CHAPTER AHEAD. You have been warned.

First, I'd like to thank Shinimegami7 for the awesome fanart she's got up on DeviantArt as a WIP. Check it out at duetmaoim. / art/ Rel-and-Dara-WIP-203521226. Just take out the spaces first. :) Bring cookies for her, because even in work-in-progress state, their faces are perfect, they have a great sense of young couple in love and intimacy, and, best of all, they're wearing real, honest-to-god clothing instead of nylon/latex/spandex/futuristic stuff. I especially like Rel's laced-up sweatshirt. Looks medieval and futuristic and comfy, all at the same time. In fact, I think Dara's going to wind up borrowing it, in-story. Soon, because he'll have outgrown it by the time he gets to wear it again. Ha!

Second, for those who've asked, "Why are all the characters in boot camp stopping being individuals and falling in line with the turian mindset?" the answer is that boot camp is a pressure cooker used to boil off individuality. Once they get out of it, they might get to be themselves again, but they probably won't do so in their last week in the crucible. In the last week, it is "OORAH!" and "Semper fi!"

For those who've asked about male human/female turian relationships (and people have been asking about this, on and off, for a month or so now, out of curiosity, I believe) . . . you might notice that in at the very beginning of Chapter 47, there was a reference to "One turian female and her hybrid kid got sick; human father damned near died. That was on Omega, I hear. . . . " We're about to change the scene to Omega right now. I wonder who might be there? ;-)

Overall, the arrangement would take a guy with a lot of self-confidence and understanding of turian culture, and/or a very accepting turian female. Perhaps one raised on a largely human world. Perhaps this is something that's been hinted at recently (say, midway through Chapter 47?), as a setup for the epilogue? No more hints now. Otherwise, you'll spoil your dinner. :-)

On a completely different note: Ellie's trying to get Lantar to agree to tal'mae rites. He's spent about 11 months now trying to talk her into a twenty or forty-year contract, so she can still walk if she gets tired of him. Which he persists in believing that she inevitably will. Silly Lantar.

If someone who's physically turian and goes through bootcamp and 4 years of service, wants to marry someone who couldn't complete the citizenship requirements and is also physically turian, then no, only manus would be permitted.

In the case of aliens it's probably only periodically come up before. Turians and asari have probably married. Garrus and Shepard got married under tal'mae rites long before I developed the rest of the rules and laws *cough*, which means, yeah, you can marry aliens under the tal'mae. Probably on the technicality that there is nothing that says that you can't. See? Lawyers, every one of them. Thus, Lantar and Ellie *could* marry under tal'mae rites. They're just still. . . negotiating.

Which means that Ellie is eventually going to get her way, and Lantar will be doomed to happiness in spite of himself. :-) Let me know if you want to see their actual ceremony before the story ends, okay?

Sam

September, as a whole, for Sam, was quite interesting. Frustrating, patient work. The investigative portion of his brain, put to use, instead of the mayhem he was equally adept at dealing.

He and Kasumi had been logging long hours over the comm channels, tracking down information. Chef Gardner had been very useful, in tracking down which vendors had supplied the tainted foods; they had that information very early on, in fact. The vendors weren't pleased to hear that their food had contributed to deaths and illnesses on a half-dozen worlds. That sort of thing, Sam pointed out to them, leads to lawsuits.

The vendors and the manufacturers were very cooperative at that point. They turned over reams of records. Far more so than they could wade through on their own, even with the help of several VI assistants. "Let's contact Argus," Kasumi suggested after a few days of painstaking looking for leads that they couldn't even begin to see the shape of, initially.

Argus—or Liara, as Sam was finally introduced to her properly as—was fairly irate over the attack. "Are we sure that the Spectres were the real target of the attack?" was her first question.

Kasumi shook her head. "Anything's possible at this point. Especially since the attack actually had a very wide dispersal. Bekenstein, Bastion, Mindoir, Omega, and even a couple honeymooning on Macedyn." Kasumi looked down at her stack of datapads. "At this point, every single one of the hybrid children and their turian parents are alive. The worst effect was on the human half of every pair."

Sam pushed back his chair. "Tell me about it," he muttered. He was trying pretty hard not to think about the effect the poisoning had had on Dara, and how very damned close he'd come to losing her, just a year after her mother had died. Any time he thought like that, he got angry, and anger made it hard to be analytical. "That all being said, whoever it was, wouldn't have put the toxin in the dextro food if they only wanted to kill humans. There's any number of poisons out there that will nicely end a human life without all this song and dance. I think we can safely assume that our perpetrator or perpetrators wanted to take out whole families with this, and just didn't have the knowledge to do so." He twiddled a stylus between his fingers, looking at a brilliantly colored Fauvist painting by Matisse on the wall of Kasumi's office, absently wondering if it was real (and really hoping that it wasn't). "That doesn't mean that this wasn't a test-case. I think we can expect a second attempt, pretty much at any point in time. Especially since, if the commanders of the Spectres and their family were the targets, the lack of any uproar is a pretty good sign that it failed."

"You have a depressing, but accurate way of summarizing the situation," Argus told him, not smiling.

"Ma'am, this is one situation where I'd really like to be wrong. I don't want my little girl getting sick like that again."

The asari looked at him. "I understand you completely, Spectre. I have a daughter myself." She paused, and her tone went steely, "So we will simply have to work to prevent it from recurring, won't we?"

"That's the plan."

Liara looked thoughtful. "It's one thing when you all go out in the field and fight. It's quite another," she said, her blue eyes dark and serious, "to assault family and children. And the pure randomness of the attack. . . completely innocent people were hurt and killed as well. Typical of terrorists. I assume you've checked into this possibility?"

"No one has claimed responsibility, which is certainly the hallmark of most terror groups," Kasumi said, thoughtfully. She was pleating a piece of paper, which Sam was almost certain would become an origami crane before the end of the meeting. She liked working with her hands while she thought. It was one of her more endearing traits, in fact. "The attack also doesn't follow any known terror group's patterns. So we have someone who wants to attack, but remain completely unseen."

"That's not how terror works," Sam said, dryly. "Terror only works if people know about it, and are afraid it could happen to them. This is quiet, low-key, and only affects maybe fifty people in the damn galaxy. So, yeah. Not terror." He thought about it for a moment. "Has all the hallmarks of murder, though." He snorted. "Makes me think of an old Agatha Christie novel. A bunch of random people killed for the simple fact that their names started with the letters of the alphabet, in sequence. . . all to disguise the fact that one of them was actually killed for his money."

"So, you're really set on it revolving around the Spectres?"

"Maybe not so much the whole program," Sam allowed, "as just Vakarian and Shepard. My girl, and Lantar's wife and kid, if they'd been unfortunate enough to eat the same damn food, would just be collateral damage in that case." He realized that he was bending the stylus now, almost to a U-shape, with just the fingers of one hand, and stopped before he snapped it.

Kasumi flipped the paper around. "I suppose we need to simplify our questions. Let's start over. Who, why, and how."

"How, I can help with," Argus told them. "Upload the information you've received so far. I'll correlate it against the information I've been receiving on my end, and see if we find any intriguing similarities." Her eyes narrowed. "Who and why. . . well, the Spectres—and Garrus and Shepard—have many enemies."

"Yes, that doesn't really narrow it down much," Kasumi agreed. "We're talking everyone from the Eclipse Sisterhood of Illium and the Survivors of Thessia Alliance to batarian raiders to, hell, mouthy reporters."

Sam shrugged. "Yeah, but everyone on your list just now—other than the reporter, darlin', and I'm thinkin' she's prol'ly in the clear—" and here his drawl got thick enough to cut with a knife, "—is a straight-up fighter. They'd set a trap, maybe, try to lure us in, or might attack the base, if they were really feeling their oats. . . but poison is the weapon of a coward. Someone who wants to stay unseen."

"I hesitate to ask this," Liara said, quietly. "But have you considered adding Aria T'loak to your list of potential suspects?" She smiled, briefly. "I received a certain amount of video footage relating to your last visit there. Spectre Sidonis is abrasive enough to make even Garrus look like a smooth-talker."

"That's why he was sent," Sam said. After a moment, he added, "She definitely did make some threats at the end there."

"She was already on the list," Kasumi said, calmly. "We're trying to avoid target fixation here."

Sam shrugged. "She definitely fits the profile of a poisoner. Doesn't like to be seen to do her dirty work. Doesn't like personal risk. Likes to sit back, start the dominoes falling, and laugh when everyone falls down at her whim."

"You hate her already, Spectre? Be careful that it doesn't blind you," Liara warned.

Sam gave her a direct look. "No, I don't hate her. Garrus and Lantar do, because of her effect on their lives. Me? She offends me." He looked at his own stack of datapads. "Look, I've got Lystheni data to go through today, too. So let's agree that the how is going to lead us to the who and the why, and we'll reconvene tomorrow?"

He got nods, and Liara signed off. "So, you're off to your office, then?" Kasumi asked him.

"Yeah. Lunch?"

"Love to." She flashed him a quick, teasing grin. "Besides, I have to sit you down sometime to discuss wedding plans. Not to mention our yuino."

Sam searched his memory banks rapidly. "That's the betrothal ceremony, right?"

"I always forget that you've been through this before."

"You forget nothing. You're a woman." He grinned, and she threatened him with a datapad. "To be honest, I didn't, ah, get around to that the first time. No family on my side there to exchange the gifts with." He looked up at the ceiling. "That may have been a contributing factor towards being considered a crass American," he admitted, after a moment.

Kasumi smiled openly. He looked back down at her. "I'm not trying to cheat you out of the love stuff, darlin', but neither of us has parents here for the whole gift-giving thing, and there's not a hell of a lot of dried abalone on Mindoir."

"You're taking all the fun out of this," she chided.

"I am not. You find me abalone on this rock, and I will happily give it to you. Same thing with the seaweed and whatever else is on the list." He grinned down at her. "Darlin', you've got to admit, we're not the traditional couple. We're not going to have a go-between couple at the wedding, right? No matchmakers. Between the two of us, we might scrape up a half a dozen relatives as witnesses, and one of them will be my turian son-in-law. Whom, I'm just saying, they're not going to be able to squeeze into any size of kimono commercially available, let alone the sandals, if you want the guests to dress traditionally, too."

Kasumi's shoulders started to shake, and he had to admit, the mental image was a dilly. Grinning still, he added, "And you can wear a little white hat all you want, darlin'," and here he was referring to the traditional white, hat-like veil a Japanese bride wore over her wig, called a tsuno kakushi; traditionally, it was there not to conceal the bride's face, but to hide her 'horns of jealousy' and to show how she was sublimating her ego and her pride and her identity by joining in union with another, "but seeing you even try to act submissive the day of, is going to be worth the price of admission right there." He looked down at her fondly, and brushed her face with the backs of his fingers. "You push me and test me and do shit I disagree with every damn day. It's kind of one of the reasons I love you. But submissive you ain't."

Her laughter finally spilled forth, a soft whisper of sound. "Oh, I admit it," she said, smiling up at him. "I admit to all of it. But there are elements I do want to preserve."

"You tell me about them over lunch then, and don't make me guess."

"But Sam, I thought you loved a mystery," she teased.

He held up his datapad, his smile fading a bit. "Got all the mysteries I need right here, Kasumi-chan."

She nodded, her own smile draining away. "I know. Nice to forget it for a moment, though."

"Yeah. See you at lunch."

And off he went, to study Lystheni data that didn't make a damn bit of sense to him. The biotic complex had definitely been partially evacuated before their arrival—Mordin had been right about that. There were comm logs of communications with other bases. . . but they were bounced off multiple relays and almost impossible to backtrack. Some even seemed to piggyback on other signals. Sam made a note of that. Maybe they could backtrack the original signals to a point of origin, even if the Lystheni ones were obscured.

Over lunch, they reconvened. She was eating sashimi and rice; he opted for meatball sub. Looking at each others' plates, they both laughed after a moment. Even living together now, they'd found many, many disparities. Kasumi liked to stay up late, and tended to work even at late hours; Sam liked to get up early and wake up by running. Everything required compromises, and the first had come when he'd turned off her terminal screen the night before, told her, "No more work tonight."

"Is there a reason for this declaration?" she'd asked, amused.

Sam had thought it over. "Do you want the romantic version or the caveman version?"

"Let's start with the romantic."

He nodded. "The bed's lonely without you."

Her lips had twitched. "And the caveman version?"

"Okay." Sam nodded, bent down, scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder, and proceeded to carry her up the stairs.

"Samuel Kennard Jaworski!"

"Oh, breakin' out the middle name," he told her, blandly. 'That's how I know I'm in trouble, right?'

As he'd hit the top of the stairs, Dara had closed the door of her room and turned off the light. As if he couldn't hear her laughing behind her door.

"All right, before we inevitably start talking shop again," Sam said now, "What about the wedding stuff did you actually want to deal with?"

She shrugged. "About the only ones of the traditional betrothal gifts I really feel like doing are the obi and the hakama."

"Excellent! I like knowing that I get to wear the pants in this relationship, after all." He grinned.

She'd just taken a sip of her tea, and coughed rapidly for a moment. Then she pointed a finger at him and said, "You, Sam Jaworski, are bad."

"It's been said before. So, I take it you're going to need some measurements from me, or something?"

She pursed her lips. "Unless you want to wind up wearing the short-short version, that would be helpful."

"God forbid. No one needs to see my hairy legs sticking out."

"Keep in mind, they're striped." Her tone was mock-vengeful. "Plus, shoe size, mister. You'll need the sandals that go with it."

"I'm sensing that I'm going to be giving you my suit measurements by the end of this conversation as well."

"Well, the kimono and the haori would probably fit better that way, too, all things considered, than if I held up my hands and told the tailor in Tokyo by FTL that 'his shoulders are about four of these long. Make it work.'"

"The haori's the . . . overjacket, right?" He'd had to dig through his memory for that term. "Makes it more formal, I think?"

"Yeah."

"Even better." He sighed. "Any hints on the obi?"

"White on white. It just needs to come from you."

"That, I think I can manage." He took her hand in his. "Nice and simple. Just keep 'em about that easy, nice and level, and I think I can hit 'em all." Sam squeezed her fingers gently. "So. . . work?"

Kasumi sighed. "Yeah. Work." And they got out their datapads again, and started comparing notes. Garrus and Lantar came over to join them at that point, setting their trays down, and listening to the two humans talk over their analyses.

After a few minutes, Sam looked at Kasumi's datapad. "Who's that?" he asked, pointing at an image.

"Him?" Kasumi sounded startled. "Notes I have here say Elaido Mendez. He's the human husband of a turian female on Omega. Both he and their kid got sick. Shep was having me look into their background checks, see if we can get them out of there and someplace safe, the way we did for Lycus Provian. Running into a blank wall. He's been working for Aria as an enforcer, and his wife. . . ." She grimaced a bit. "Well, she started off life on Omega as a turian prostitute. Seems to have settled down with Mendez, though. Hell, Sam, I didn't even know turians had prostitutes until I read this."

Sam blinked a little. "Yeah, that's. . . new information. I'd have thought, with the relative gender equality. . . "

Garrus and Lantar looked amused. "Seriously," Garrus asked. "Any time someone has a commodity that some else wants, it's a seller's market."

Lantar snorted in agreement. "Some of them even use hormones to produce the physical signs of estrus, but without the complications of pregnancy."

"And now, I know a whole lot more than I wanted to," Sam replied, taking Kasumi's datapad to study the picture more closely. "Seems a little odd that two folks like that would have the cash for a hybrid kid."

Both turians looked struck. "Yeah," Lantar said, after a moment. "It's not cheap."

There was a moment of thoughtful silence. "I'd swear it was Eduardo Ramos. But he's been on the run from Earth for . . . eight years now." Sam paused.

"What did he do?" Garrus asked.

"I don't remember all the details. He was a federale¸ though. That's Mexican national law enforcement." Sam snorted. "Since the three main countries on the continent became the North American Union, NABI has been trying to bring all the national-level law enforcement organizations under one roof. Mounties, FBI, and federales. It's working about as well as trying to integrate humans and turians on non-Normandy-class ships."

Garrus laughed now. "Yeah, we went through the same thing, historically, after the Unification War. It'll take a few decades. Maybe even a hundred years."

Sam tapped his fingers on the datapad. "I worked with him, briefly. Seemed like a good guy. Carried a machete. I personally thought he bought it at a hardware store, but legend had it he'd taken it off a drug lord after using it to decapitate the guy. I liked him."

"You would," Kasumi said.

"Yeah, but usually my people instincts are better than this. I seem to remember he left Earth in a hurry, charges of tampering with evidence and accepting bribes. Something like that." Sam looked thoughtful.

"So, a security risk, then." She was about to write a note on the file open under his fingertips.

"Give me a little time with NABI and the Rangers on him and his wife. God only knows if the charges were trumped up. Sometimes the federales can be corrupt, but Eduardo was a stand-up guy when I worked with him."

It took Argus a week to track down the relevant correlations in the data she'd provided them. "Kraft," Liara said, in tones of triumph over the vid screen, "and Dyrkmad, LLT, off of Demeter, share the same transport service."

Sam nodded, slowly. "So you're saying the teamsters did it?" It wasn't quite a joke. Organized crime off of Earth had made slow inroads into the galactic community in the past thirty-three years, and the Mafia and the remnants of the teamsters that they still had a loose affiliation with, were a major part of the criminal scene on many Terran colony worlds. They had, it was rumored, even tried to move onto the Citadel. Probably in affiliation with Elias Kelham, or so the rumor went.

Liara blinked. "Astute of you, Spectre."

"Aw, shit, no." Sam shook his head. "This conversation just went way downhill."

"They were directed by their superiors to take their shipments through a different set of warehouses than usual. My information source within the teamsters was reluctant to tell me this, but he has been . . . re-educated on the concept of loyalty within my organization." Liara's expression seemed both sad and determined at the same time. It probably grieved her deeply to have his damn knees broken. Sam shuddered, but on the whole, he'd much rather have her on his side than be working against him. "I'm investigating further to see if some similar deal was struck with the turian transit authorities involved with moving Agricola Capri and Temnus Fesae goods."

"So where does that leave us?" Kasumi asked, practically. "Can we follow the money trail back to the source?"

"I'm working on that, as well," Liara assured them.

"You got any names?" Sam asked her.

"Frank Bianchi and Ricky Ferilli were the gentlemen who signed for the change in warehouse venues. They are. . . remarkably hard to find, even for me." The Shadow Broker's resources and reach were vast, but even she had limits.

Sam snorted. "With names like those? They're either in Sicily or south Jersey at the moment." He opened his mail, and sent another memo to his contacts at NABI. "I'm surprised you don't have better intel on Earth, Argus."

Liara shrugged. "Your homeworld is somewhat . . . insular. . . Spectre. It's not hard to find compromisable humans on Bastion or your colony worlds, but it's been historically difficult to send non-humans to Earth for recruitment efforts. And my human agents are . . . relatively rare, at the moment. It hasn't seemed worth uprooting them from their positions to send them to Earth to gather new contacts and resources there. Perhaps I should reconsider this position."

Sam shook his head. "No, that's quite all right. I think NABI and Interpol and everyone else can stagger along jus' fine, thank you." He somehow felt that local law enforcement back home wouldn't thank him if the Shadow Broker—however well-intentioned she might be—started moving in Terran affairs.

Liara smiled serenely. "It is a conundrum, isn't it, Spectre? Information, or the lack of it, is what we deal in. But the price we pay for it, is sometimes very high indeed."

As it was, local law enforcement found Frank Bianchi in fairly short order; he'd been checked into a hotel in south Jersey under a known alias. "Jimmy 'the Spoon' Napolitano? Really?" Liara actually laughed. "Such. . . colorful names they have."

"He got it by sharpening the handle of a spoon in prison and shanking a prison informant," Sam told her, bluntly.

Liara's smile faded. "Ah. Unfortunate." She sat up. "And did our friends in the NABI get anything from Mr. The Spoon?"

Kasumi grinned. "They did. A name. Tony 'the Chin' Grecco."

Liara stared at them for a moment. "And he got that name because he. . . killed a man with his chin?"

Sam smothered his amusement. "No. He just has a big ol' lantern jaw of a chin. He is, by the way, the capo di capi of the current New Jersey Mob affiliates. That's the captain of the captains, if your VI doesn't like the phrase. The big boss. Now, he's lawyered up. "

"And how do you intend to get . . . 'the Chin'. . . to talk?"

Kasumi's grin was absolutely wicked. "Oh we've already done that. We sent Livanus to talk with him."

"One of the turian Spectres? Why?"

"Because turian cops are absolute death on organized crime, and everyone in the galaxy knows it. I'd have asked Lantar or Garrus, but they need the downtime, badly. . .and we kind of need Grecco alive at the end of his questioning. My compadres back at NABI wouldn't thank me if my esteemed turian colleagues started a mob war. Livanus put the boot in, but he didn't actually kill anyone." Sam grinned. "And Grecco did talk, after a little persuasion. He'd been asked to provide a favor as a courtesy to a. . . sister organization. An alien one, sure, but it was something of an exchange of favors. If he arranged this, he got a piece of the azure dust trade on Earth."

Liara looked impatient. "And the sister organization?"

Kasumi's smile was very tight as she answered, "A little asari-owned venture based off of Omega."

Liara's answering smile was cold and a little frightening. "Good. Evidence at last."

That afternoon, they settled into the meeting room with Garrus, Lantar, Gris, Cohort, Mordin, and Sky, and presented their findings. "Kind of always figured it was Aria," Gris growled.

"Yeah, but we needed proof," Garrus said. "I'd like more corroboration, but this is enough to take up the chain."

"Why is it necessary to move this information to a higher organizational level, Vakarian-Commander?" Cohort asked. "We understood that Spectres had operational authority to respond to dangers posed to themselves."

Garrus nodded. "Yes, that's true. However, for what I have in mind as chastisement, we'll need at least Alliance and Hierarchy support. Maybe even the full weight of the Council."

"What do you have in mind?" Sam asked, feeling slightly wary.

"When I sent Lantar in to speak in my place, I told him certain things to say. Certain threats to make." Lantar shifted beside Garrus, and Garrus lifted a finger at him. "Now is not the time to go throw yourself on your sword, Nemesis. If she thought we didn't have to teeth to do what we'd threatened, it's not your fault. It's mine and Shepard's for not having been firm enough with her before."

"Still not crazy about the thought that words I spoke have contributed to deaths," Lantar muttered, looking down at the table.

"You were speaking my words. Knock off the guilt."

"Yes, squad leader," Lantar replied with a hint of a smile.

Garrus looked around the rest of the table. "Work through this with me. What happens if we do take the Omega relay and move it? Or, better yet, destroy it?"

They all looked at him in shock. Sam's mouth opened, and closed, and then opened again. "How would you go about destroying a mass relay?"

Garrus touched a button, and a galaxy map appeared, zooming in to the Omega Nebula. "I'm reluctant to do this with the Omega system's own primary star. I'm not actually sure what dropping a mass relay into a sun would actually do, so I'd thought about towing the relay from Sahrabarik to Anilarkan, setting it on a collision course with the system's primary, and ducking through the relay and hauling ass across the galaxy from inside the star's corona, actually. That would get us out of the way fast enough that any explosions or radiation from the massive amounts of element zero in the relay wouldn't affect us."

There was a moment of absolute, stunned silence. "Risky," Mordin assessed.

Lantar nodded, and said, slowly. "A little dramatic, but shows clearly what happens when someone doesn't take us seriously. And then all the subsequent things that I predicted for Aria would happen. Rioting. Uprising. Upheaval. And a crowd baying for her blood. . . not to mention our blood, but she'll be the one right there for them to focus on. And there's no way her bodyguards can protect her against a million screaming people." He frowned. "On the other hand, a lot of those people are going to get hurt. They'll be, effectively, trapped."

Garrus nodded. "That's why I wanted to hear what everyone had to say today, and to discuss options. What are the likely consequences of doing something like this?"

Cohort replied, "If the relay is only moved, and not destroyed, disruptions to shipping and travel will be significant, depending on how far the relay is moved. Economic disruption possible. Chance of war with local batarian populations, such as those colonizing Kairavamori's first planet, Sehtor, somewhat likely. Chances of conflict with pirates operating off of Kairavamori's second planet, Vatar, also likely."

Mordin chimed in, "Medical supply shipments to many worlds disrupted. Uwan Oche is a primary producer of medigel."

Garrus shook his head. "Uwan Oche only really supplies batarians and a handful of planets that do business with the batarians. I don't see it being a major issue for Council space. But continue, folks."

Sam chimed in, "Not that I have a degree in physics or anything, but as much refined element zero as goes into a mass relay. . . isn't there a chance, of Arinlarkin going nova because of it?"

Mordin shook his head. "Not probable. Very likely to be an intense coronal mass ejection, maybe large solar flares. Could, theoretically, be large enough to burn off atmosphere from a close-orbiting planet. Element zero distributed in a wide radius. Danger to organic life certainly a risk, either way."

Garrus nodded soberly. "That's why I suggested Arinlarkin. Only one planet, which is, sure, a garden planet, but gets so much radiation already, that it's uninhabitable, even by krogan and vorcha standards."

Sam thought about it. "If Aria calls for reinforcements while we're towing this thing, are ships going to be able to pop out of it and attack us?"

Mordin and Cohort both shook their heads at the same time. "Unlikely," Cohort explained. "Mass relays are fixed points in space; while they admittedly drift, over millennia, along with the star systems in which they are based, it is a slow process, relatively speaking. If they are in swift motion, it seems as if the relay sending a ship in their direction would either malfunction, or send the ship to a set of false coordinates."

"They definitely malfunction," Garrus said, and that got everyone's attention. "The first of the new dark energy relays were set up between Earth, Palaven, and Sur'Kesh. Earth's original relay is still in place. The Palaven one was towed to an empty region of space some time ago, more or less for storage until we can all figure out where they'll wind up going. When a ship near Sur'Kesh tried to trigger their own relay for transit to the old Palaven relay, absolutely nothing happened. They went through the Sur'Kesh relay. . . and then just continued at their regular cruising speed." Garrus tapped his claws on the desk. "We want to get people using the new relays. Sooner or later, all the old ones are going to be settled in either out of the way systems, maybe sold to the batarians, if they want them, or destroyed anyway. One gate being decommissioned early, isn't really the problem, I think."

"Good to know," Sam said, nodding.

Mordin raised a finger. "However, towing to Arinlarkin probably unnecessary. More dramatic, certainly. Easier solution: tow relay to Imorkan, methane-ammonia gas giant in Sahrabarik system. Crushing pressure, heat in planetary depths. Unlikely to disperse element zero in wide radius. Any that remains can be skimmed from upper atmosphere in years to come. Less costly in terms of fuel, less danger to ships doing towing, less danger to people, overall." He blinked. "More conservative, less dramatic."

Garrus chuckled. "I do have a flair for the dramatic, sometimes."

"Dramatic not necessarily wrong choice," Mordin counseled. "Dramatic gets people's attention. Psychological value. Important factor. Dropping into a star? Very noticeable, very final. Dropping into a planet. . . less so. Seems more like cold storage to most people, probably."

Sam rubbed his face. "Okay, let's back up a few steps here. Say we do this. We're going to have several million people panicking and rioting on Omega, because the only thing that keeps most of them living and, arguably, sane, is the fact that one day, they hope to get off of Omega. Even if and when they rise up against Aria, they'll still be trapped there." He frowned. "Hell, let's back up a step further. As soon as we drop into the system and start messing with the gate, every merc band with a warship is going to scramble and come after us."

Garrus nodded, soberly. "Yeah. You're not saying anything I haven't thought of, Sam. I just don't have solutions yet."

"Start with a blockade," Lantar suggested, dryly. "We drop an infiltration team that sabotages all the ports of the station but one or two, creating a bottleneck. Refugees, we allow off. Mercs and Aria's people, we don't let off." He snorted. "Though how we'll be able to tell one from the other, I don't know."

"I might be able to help with that," Sam volunteered. "Got word back from NABI about my old friend Eduardo and his turian wife."

Heads turned around the table. Sam shook his head. "Apparently, all those charges against him eight years ago? Completely fabricated. He and a turian female were deep-cover agents. She's turian military intelligence, he's NABI, and they both went in, working with salarian STG. He's been slowly working his way deeper into Aria's organization. The whole husband and wife thing seems to be genuine, though." It had better be, with a kid involved, he thought. "That being said, if Ramos is half the guy I remember, he'll be able to identify almost every one of Aria's thugs for us. I just need to get in touch with him, and get his family out, first."

"Best damn piece of news all day," Garrus growled. "And a hell of a lucky break."

Sam nodded, fervently. "Someone up there likes us."

Lantar leaned forward, clasping his hands on the table. "There are a few other problems, however, that we still need to address. We'll need lots of ships to transport the civilians, though. And a place to put them all. Most planets aren't going to welcome refugees, especially the dregs of Omega, with open arms."

Grim nods from around the room. "There's a reason why the Council has never much bothered itself about Omega," Garrus agreed. "It's a large problem. And that's why I need a firm, well-thought out plan before I even go to Odacaen and Anderson, let alone the rest of the Council."

Sky hadn't contributed much so far, but now he asked, Is destruction-song needed for this place? A change in queen sometimes makes the hive more harmonious.

Garrus looked at the rachni. "You mean, leave the station as is, and just replace the person at the top?"

Sky rustled his agreement.

Sam grimaced. "It's not a horrible idea. There are two problems with that, though, Sky, my friend. First, who do we put in charge? Who do trust that much, who's strong enough to be top dog there? And second, without massive changes to the infrastructure there. . . conditions are just going to stay the same. It's like replacing a dictator with another dictator. Life for the people under them stays just as miserable, but they're happier, because they have hope again. . . for a little while." He looked down at his hands, then added, "No. If we do this, let's do it right, and wipe the damn slate clean."

"Do I have enough to take to Anderson and Odacaen?" Garrus asked. "I'm sure they'll refine on this and see other ramifications that we didn't, ourselves."

Nods went around the table.

Sam wasn't there for Garrus' FTL conversation with the human and turian representatives to the Council, but he knew it took two hours of talking, largely because no one could get into Garrus' office. "They're putting it to a closed-door Council vote this afternoon," Garrus reported over lunch. "If it comes back a yea vote, we're going to have to hit the ground running." He looked over at Sam. "How are you going to contact your federale friend?"

"Figured I'd walk up to him and say howdy. Long time, no see. You know. How most guys say hello when they haven't spoken in eight years."

That got him looks from around the table. "Seriously? I'm going to have to go by public transit, and once I get there, Spectre Sam and his mild-mannered alter ego, Jaworski the Texas Ranger, are both going to go into hiding. Both stick out too goddamn much on Omega." Sam scratched at his chin; he hadn't shaved this morning, deliberately. "A couple more days of scruff here, and even all the people who saw the vid feed from Shanxi who keep damned well recognizing me here and there, aren't going to be able to do so anymore. Especially since, when I get there, I'll change clothes and look and smell like a homeless bum. No one looks at bums. Other than to move away from 'em, anyway. I find Eduardo, make contact, try and keep him from gutting me out of reflex, and we move from there." He paused. "I'll have to bounce my flights around a few times. False names."

"I can handle that," Kasumi said. "No problem at all. Go pick out your costume, Sam."

He grinned. "Already mostly have. It's going to be a pleasure hiding in plain sight again. Sort of an urban ghillie net. I need to get it good and sweated in, though, so if you'll excuse me? A couple of hours at the gym await me."

He prepped the clothing carefully, tearing off buttons, wearing through it in places with a file, and did, indeed, work out in all of its layers. Then he left some of it under a running groundcar, so that the chemical emissions would permeate the fabric. By the time he was done, and took it by Lantar for a quick sniff-check, the turian's face distorted a little at the residual odors on the cloth. "Yeah, that's. . . almost authentic human street bum there. It's still missing the smell of cheap liquor, though. And there's a hint too much soap and deodorant about you. Remember not to shower for a couple of days yourself, though, Jaworski."

"Yeah, going to hold off on that till I leave. Don't want Kasumi and Dara gagging when I hug 'em good-bye."

Lantar looked at him. "I have to admit, the beard growing in does make your face look different. Almost like you're wearing the wrong clan-paint."

Sam just grinned back at him.

Then they received word, at last. The Council had agreed that Omega was now too much of a liability to be permitted to continue as it had gone on. The Hierarchy was going to send warships, in addition to Normandy-class ships, to enforce the blockade; the Alliance was sending troop transports and hospital ships, to remove refugees.

"Are we still planning to blow most of the docking bay doors?" Sam asked, during his final mission brief.

Garrus nodded. "Yeah. You're going to be doing that, as well as handling contact with Eduardo."

Sam stopped and looked at him. "I am? And how am I going to do that? With my fingernails?"

That earned him a needle-pointed smile. "You're going to have help." Garrus tabbed the comm. "Send my nephew in, please."

Sam turned, blinking. Rellus isn't even done with bootcamp, what the hell. . . ? The male who entered the room wasn't Rel, however. Almost as tall, but not as thin as the boy had been, when he saw him last. And he wore the working uniform and insignia of a turian NCO, in addition to his yellow clan-paint. After a moment, Sam came up with the name. "Rinus? Rel's older brother?"

"Nice to see you again, padu'fradu." Rinus looked over at Garrus. "Believe it or not, with the Estallus re-supplying at Bastion, I was actually supposed to be on leave right now." He looked back at Jaworski, and grinned. "But I got volunteered for hazardous duty, instead. Apparently, I get to blow stuff up, which is refreshing, actually. Seventy-five percent of my job is usually keeping stuff from blowing up."

"Sounds like my job description," Garrus said, grinning. "Slightly larger scale, though."

Sam looked between them. "I hope he's not going there in uniform."

Garrus shook his head. "No. He's been detached for a special assignment. Kasumi's put together a very nice cover for him as a former go-between for a couple of arms-dealers who's trying to strike out on his own. About the right age for it, too. Small timer. Nothing big or important, just someone trying to hustle a deal on Omega. Just one more face in the crowd."

Rinus grimaced. "Let's hope flair for the dramatic is genetic."

"You'll be fine. Just stick absolutely to the parameters we gave you, and there's very little you can do wrong."

"I can do that."

Sam worried, more than a little, that the young man's inexperience would betray them. "Okay, so what have we got for explosives?"

Rinus nodded soberly. "That's the fun part. I'll be bringing about ninety Mark M Malleolus—you'd say Sledghammer—shoulder-mounted rockets for sale. They're Haliat-produced, and rare outside of turian space. They're medium-range, with a kinetic force dispersal roughly equivalent to a Mark S Harpoon torpedo—one of the predecessors to the Javelin system currently in use on the Normandy. Nice system, really. Best thing about them is, I can disassemble them in my sleep. While you're out doing what you need to do, I'll be sitting in the docking bay, removing the propulsion systems. Whichever docking bay I'm in, I'd take it as a courtesy if you didn't blow the hatch on." He'd gone from lightly humorous to serious and professional in a flash, and Sam quickly re-evaluated the young male. He knew what he was talking about. The play-acting would be real so long as he got to talk about weapons and ordnance. Rinus looked at him now. "Once I get past the initial questions at the gate and secure a landing facility, I won't have to talk to anyone. If anyone asks, I'm waiting for my buyer to show up."

"And if someone wants to make you a better offer while you're waiting?"

"I'll say I really don't want to piss off my buyer, but that I'm willing to sell half of my stock now, if they can make me a better offer. The cost to Palaven tax-payers on each one of these is about five thousand credits. If they offer double that, I sell." Rinus shrugged. "I'm just a baby dachae here. I don't know that they actually go for up to three times that on the black market."

Garrus grinned at him. "You're going to do just fine in the family business."

Rinus grimaced. "At least it keeps me off the Estallus for a while." He looked around. "Let me go get into those civvies you said you had for me."

Sam gave Garrus a look as Rinus left the room. "You're putting him in a lot of danger."

Garrus shook his head. "He'll be fine, Sam. Besides, you'll be there to watch his back. If push comes to shove, see if you can get your contact to pose as his prospective buyer."

"Good notion."

And then they were off. The Normandy took Sam to Bastion, where he boarded a commercial flight under a false name, heading for Illium. From Illium, he bounced, under a different name, to a planet in the Krogan DMZ. There, in the squalor of a very bad hotel, he changed into his street bum persona, and found a cheap, crowded, smelly shuttle that would take him to Omega, under yet another name. His beard still looked scraggly, and he had a flask of 100 proof, really vile whiskey in his pocket, a stained hat on his head, crushing down his hair, and he hefted a battered sack over his shoulder, gripping it with fingerless gloves. He even wore a shapeless old overcoat in pea green. . . which served to hide the fact that he still carried a pistol and his bowie knife, both well-concealed.

Omega didn't really have customs, per se. He didn't have to declare anything, except his name and his reason for being here. "Tom Harrison. I hear this is the land of oppor. . . oppor. . . opportunity." He exhaled cheap whiskey fumes at the batarian taking his information, and all four eyes blinked in distaste.

"Right. Move along."

Curled in on himself to simulate hopelessness, and shambling along like a drunk, Sam knew he presented a very different picture than his usual self. Body language was an important way that humans identified each other at a distance. He ducked his head and shied away when various other bums crawled out of the corners as he passed by, shouting, "Go away! This is my patch. Get on, move it!" Jealous of even their tiny little corner of space. Territorial, protective, ready to fight, even for an eggshell.

It didn't take him long to find his way into the residential district, where apartment residents looked at him warily, and ducked back inside. A couple yelled at him to get lost, that this was a nice area. Finally, Sam found the place he was looking for, and curled up outside the door, waiting.

He'd timed it about right. Eduardo walked up soon, obviously having just gotten off work, and, seeing a strange man—a bum, at best—curled up outside his front door, immediately went wary, face darkening. "Hey, what you doing here?" Eduardo demanded, walking up. His hand had already dropped to his belt, and Jaworski could see that yes, indeed, Eduardo still carried the machete.

"Hey, como estas, amigo," Jaworski said, spreading his fingers out. And shifted languages into Spanish, which he knew very damned well, after working in the Rangers for ten years. "I'm not here to make trouble, Eduardo."

"Do I know you?"

"Was a long time ago, man. Name's Sam. We worked the Azteca case, down in Corpus. Glad to see you still carry the machete, though I still think you bought it at a hardware store."

The Azteca case had been not very much fun at all. The drug-lords had taken to cutting the hearts out of people who displeased them, staging mock-sacrifices for maximum fear effect. Tracking them all down had taken the better part of a year. The first one had been tracked down in Guadalejara before the case had hopped the border north, and had, supposedly, been the source of Eduardo's machete.

"I did. The real one had to go into evidence." Quick, hard grin. "Good for the legend, though."

Louder, now, and back in galactic, Sam added, "I jus' need enough creds for a meal, man." He held up one hand, cupped, as if asking for money. He wasn't carrying his Spectre insignia or even a badge. He hadn't wanted to take that chance.

Eduardo glanced around. "Look, pal," he said in galactic. "I don't have any money. But I can spot you a hot meal, okay? Least I can do for someone who actually speaks a civilized language."

Sam slowly got to his feet, and Eduardo opened the front door of his home. "Just one meal, amigo, you got that? I'm not running a half-way house for drunks and bums here."

"Don't have to play to the cheap seats, Eduardo," Sam muttered, in English.

"You'd be surprised. Everything here is fucking monitored, man."

They stepped inside, and Sam blinked, coming face-to-shotgun with a turian female inside. He didn't recognize the orange vertical bars across her face from any other face-paint he'd seen before, but didn't really have a chance to examine it closely. There was, after all, a shotgun barrel pointed at his face. "It's all right, Charis," Eduardo told her, closing the door.

"He's been out there for hours." Her voice was very tense.

"Sorry about that, ma'am." Sam pulled himself up to his full height, letting his body language change back to its normal relaxed confidence. "Can we talk in here, Eduardo?"

"Yeah, but make it quick." Eduardo looked at him. "Sam Jaworski?" He grinned. "You still got that big fuckin' knife?"

Sam pulled his coat back from his side, letting Ramos see the bowie knife strapped there. "Look who's talking."

Again, a quick, hard flash of a grin. "All right. You're a little out of your jurisdiction for a Ranger, mano. You're going to ruin eight damn years of work if you stick around."

"I'm a Spectre now, Ramos." That got both of their attentions, in a hurry. "You and your wife and your kid were recently sick, right? 'Food poisoning'?"

Ramos nodded, dark eyes intent. "It's just a good thing we're close to the free clinic, is all I'm saying," he agreed.

"Aria set that up. Not to catch you. You and the others who were sick or who died were collateral damage. She was going after Shepard and that whole family. We're here to do something about that." Sam's voice was grim, and his voice was clipped. Almost no drawl at all. "We need to get your family off the damn station. And we need your help to do what we're going to do."

"S'kak." Charis, the wife, set her shotgun down on the table, and found a chair. "What are you going to do?"

"Shut Omega down. I can't say more than that." Sam looked around. "Where's your kid?"

"Estevan's napping in the next room."

Sam nodded. "Book transport for yourself and the kid to Palaven, ma'am. Don't do it immediately. Give it a day or two. Talk up some marital strife, whatever people will buy. We'll have people there to redirect you when you get there. "

"Talas'kak. I can help here."

Sam looked at Eduardo. Being the product of a fairly machismo-oriented culture, he was actually fairly surprised that lightning had struck between the human and the turian female, but he figured that after eight years of undercover work, with only each other to rely on, anything was really possible. "No," Eduardo told his wife, firmly. "One of us has to go with Estevan. I'm staying here. That means, you go."

Sam nodded, and looked at Eduardo as his wife left the room, muttering something about packing. "I'm going to need you to find a pretext to go look at an arms shipment over in Docking Area C23," he said, very quietly. He didn't want the wife to know anything, just in case she didn't make it to the Palaven flight. "You'll be looking to buy shoulder-mounted rockets from a small-time dealer named Selenus Harrian. When everything goes down, we'll need you to come to the same docking bay his ship is in, and help us id Aria's people."

"Could you be a little more vague? Shit, man." Eduardo frowned, and grabbed a can of beans out of cabinet in the kitchen. "Plus, you know, I don't know all of Aria's people. There's layers man, like an onion. Eight years, and I've gotten three, maybe four layers in. You basically have to have a lifespan like an asari to get even close."

"We know. It's enough to get most of them. One more thing. Does Aria have any small docking bays that she uses for herself?"

Eduardo shrugged. "I don't know. There are some restricted, areas, though, which lead down deep into the asteroid that this shithole is built on. If she's got an escape route, it would be down through the bottom of the damn station, I think."

"Good enough." Sam's omnitool was hidden under layers of ragged, stinking sleeves, and he keyed in the information he'd been given. Once he left, he'd send it all in an encrypted burst. "So, what's my lunch?"

Eduardo handed him the can of beans, and a hand can-opener. "Now get out," he said, and Sam shrank down into himself again, letting the shorter man shove him out the door. "If you're so damn hungry, eat that," the man told him, loud enough to be heard from the middle of the street."

"Gracias," Sam said, and shambled off.

It took time. Sam found his way to the docking bays, and started looking for likely corners to 'sleep off his whiskey,' while, in reality, checking for good locations to plant bombs. He'd swing by Docking Area C and find a ship to 'doze' under. Every time he did, he altered his look a little. Hat on, hat off, coat on, coat off. He'd picked up half a dozen cameras with his omnitool, and it took a little creativity to be able to get the bombs Rinus was producing without being seen by the security cameras or by any of the passers-by. At least once, he heard Rinus getting hassled by another turian arms-dealer and his gang of enforcers. Sam crouched down behind a crate, listening and watching carefully. His VI kept up a quiet translation for him, just in his earpiece.

"Look, I have an arrangement already. I'm just waiting for the buyer," Rinus told the other turian patiently. "But, you know what? He's late, and the docking fees here are eating a hole in my credit account."

"Now you're being reasonable," the other turian said. "Let's have a look at them."

Rinus pried open a crate, and removed one of the shoulder-mounted rockets. He went through a little product demo, but didn't allow the other turian to pick it up. "I can sell you half my stock," Rinus offered. "Let's talk price."

Sam wanted to grin as the young male managed to talk the price up to 13,250 credits a piece for the units. "Where do you want them delivered to?"

"I kind of figured we'd just take them now. Straight out of your hold."

Rinus shook his head. "Nope. I open that cargo door, and you'll take all of 'em. I deliver them to your ship. I get your credits, you get my weapons, everyone's happy."

"And what happens if we just decide to take the cargo door code off your corpse?" That was one of the krogan mercenaries surrounding the turian arms-dealer. There were four of them, though only the leader seemed to be carrying a weapon.

Rinus lifted the rocket-launcher to his shoulder, one of his fingers touching a button at the side. The whole unit hummed suddenly, and the various turians in front of him all took a step back, suddenly apprehensive. "Oh, so you were looking for a full product demonstration? I can arrange that."

Sam winced. That thing would make a hell of a mess in here, and would probably damage a couple of ships and a bulkhead or two. Not to mention, every unshielded and unarmored person within about twenty feet of its detonation point. He measured the distance in his mind between him and the closest mercenary.

The arms-dealer spread his fingers. "I apologize for the help. Hard to find a house-broken krogan, you know? I think we can do business together, Selenus. Deliver 'em to Docking Bay E17 by tomorrow. And you'll get your credits."

They left, and Sam saw Rinus look up at the ceiling briefly. Yeah. If you keep that appointment, you'll be dead. Fortunately, this docking bay has cameras and is heavily trafficked. Not that that means much on Omega, but at least it plays into the psychology of most species. Most people don't like being seen doing their dirty work.

The rest was slow, patient work. Bays C and T were used for passenger and small cargo ships, and would remain untouched. The various mercenary companies used A, B, and D-H. A variety of shipping concerns used I-M. Batarians used N-S.

So, grab a bomb, hide it in his sack, slung over his shoulder. Move to a new position, invisible in his squalor and his smell. Pretend to drink from the flask, letting a little dribble down his chin. Doze there for a while. Probably get kicked in the ribs by someone who didn't think he should be there. Move away, find a new location. Wait for traffic to die down. Find the cameras. Find a place away from the cameras that looked structurally weak, but that also wouldn't necessarily cause damage to people. Just the construction. It wasn't going to be pretty any way they did this, but the point was to reduce the civilian casualties as much as possible. Plant the bomb and set up its radio transponder. Leave. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

It would have gone faster, if Rinus had been able to help, but the young male didn't have the training for inconspicuous that Sam did, and even so, Sam felt as if he were always one step from being caught. One thing, and one thing only, was on their side: Omega was land of the lawless. While there were cameras in plenty, and suspicion in plenty, the only central authority was Aria. There was no one central repository for the camera feeds, to their knowledge. No one central authority was watching all the bays. Still, he was cautious. Constantly changing the layers of clothes around. A few times, he did flick on his stealth generator, out of range of the cameras, just to be able to move faster. He had to move faster. Rinus was not going to be keeping that appointment tomorrow in Docking Bay E17, and he'd rather it was because the entire station was in uproar, all things considered.

At last, everything was ready, and he stealthed aboard Rinus' little ship and, just before he was about to announce himself, he saw the young male inhale, stiffen, and whirl, leg coming up. . . and Sam just about got a spur in the guts for his troubles. "Shit, boy. Settle down," he told Rinus, deflecting the blow and stepping out of the way.

"Sorry. Little jumpy after the arms-dealer this morning. I didn't actually hear you come up behind me." Rinus grimaced. "Smelled you, though."

"You and your brother both have the same goddamn reflex speed."

Rinus grinned. "Thanks."

Sam looked around at the parts, neatly stacked, at the end of the workbench, the tools in perfect order. "Okay. You can stop disassembling and reassembling now. Assuming everything goes off without a hitch, we've planted as many of them as we can plant." He started stripped off the layers of clothing he'd worn for week now. The undershirt felt like it might possibly be glued to him with his own sweat.

"You can burn those, if you like," Rinus offered. "The ship has an incinerator."

"Gladly. You got a shower in here, too?"

"Yes. Please feel free to use it."

Sam snickered. "I know I'm ripe. You know it's bad when you can't stomach your own smell." He grinned at the young male. "Must be hell having a nose that good."

"In some cases, definitely. At the moment, I can taste it as well as smell it. Incinerator's that way. Shower and the head are the other way. Your armor and weapons are all in one of the lockers."

Having showed and shaved and feeling much more like a human being again, as opposed to something that had spontaneously generated out of used chewing gum and gutter trash, Sam came back to the work area, armed and armored. "Okay. Let's call our friend and see if he's ready to start the show now."

Eduardo answered Rinus' call. "Yes, I can come and have a look at your wares. A few of the people in my organization have been looking for just this sort of thing to deal with a few minor concerns. Todo es verde. See you in an hour?"

Sam nodded at Rinus, off-camera. Todo es verde meant 'everything's green.' It was the pre-arranged signal to indicate that he had not been, as far as he could tell, compromised by Aria's people.

Rinus closed the comm channel. The young male had been living in his armor the past week, and now reached for his helmet. "I suppose there's always a chance he's been made and flipped. Getting his wife and kid off the station probably stood out."

"I know. Couldn't have him risking his family, though." Sam's face felt tight. "So, since we've got an hour to kill. . . how about you explain why you're so eager to be off the Estallus? Would have thought that was a prime assignment for a young centurion."

"It was. I was damned proud to get it." Rinus shrugged, and half-laughed. "This is all going to sound crazy."

"I'm a Spectre. I have crazy for breakfast with a side of toast."

Rinus shook his head. "All right. First, the AI tells me that she wants to use my brain as a partial template to make new baby AIs for new Normandy-class ships."

Sam guffawed, then paused. "No, okay, wait. You're serious."

"As my heart beats and I take breath, yes."

"What else?'

"She also wants to put a chip in my head."

Sam shook his head. "It's saved our bacon more than once that Joker has that chip in place, but you couldn't pay me to do that."

"No kidding." Rinus' voice was tart. "Once she upgraded my security clearance to tell me all this, she drops a nice project in my lap. The biotic weapons system the Lystheni were using. Which, to be fair, I enjoyed. Nice challenge."

"You're the one who figured it out? That was nice work, son."

Rinus rolled his helmet around in his hands. "Thanks." His smile was brief. "That got me on my captain's 'to be watched' list, though. Which is better than being on the s'kak-list, but only by this much." He held up two fingers, very slightly apart, and Sam laughed, outright. Military was military was military, no matter where you were or what species you happened to be.

"To top it all off, I've been spending time with a female on my ship—whom I actually kind of like—and I have the feeling that the damned AI is trying to play matchmaker. If something's going to happen there, I'd kind of like it to happen on its own."

"Little invasive?"

"If by that, feeling like someone's got a camera shoved up your cloaca to see what color your s'kak is, then yes. Being here, even with arms-dealers trying to con me or kill me? Breath of fresh damn air."

Sam laughed out loud. Rinus flicked his fingers at him, with emphasis. After a moment, Sam settled down. "Okay, I can see why you'd prefer to be out of that situation. It is kind of an honor though, to be considered for the whole AI templating thing, though."

"And I'd probably do it, if it weren't for everything else that keeps getting piled on with it." Rinus shrugged. "Eventually, I'll be ordered to comply, that'll be that. Then I'll rotate off the Estallus, work through the next three years, and probably not re-enlist." Rinus sounded grim. "I'd wanted to get a full twenty years in, so I'd be retiring instead of not re-enlisting, but . . . I didn't ask for any of this. I've always kept my head down, done my job, and done the best I can do at it. I'm not out here to be a hero or a Spectre or anything else."

"Sometimes, you pick the job, and sometimes the job picks you," Sam told him, leaning back in the chair. It was like talking to a slightly older version of Rellus, one with some fairly heavy service behind him, and without the borderline discomfort of knowing that he was his daughter's love interest. It was giving him a chance to gain a new perspective on his son-in-law, in a way. "Don't toss your career because of this, son."

"Might not have much of a choice."

"There's always a choice. Let me ask you this. You like the AI?"

Rinus shrugged. "Mostly. Other than the aggressive interest in my brain."

"Could be worse. Could be an aggressive interest in your body."

"See, that I wouldn't actually mind."

Sam snorted. "You want some advice from someone who's been in various services for a while?"

"Sure. Can't be worse than anything else I've heard."

"First, think of this as an opportunity, not an obstacle."

"So help me, if you bring out the human expression about lemons and lemonade . . . "

"Heard that one before, eh? Doesn't make it any less true." Sam chuckled. "Or think of it this way: Decide where you want to be in ten, twenty years. Figure out if any of this shit will help you, or if it will hinder you. If it helps or at least doesn't actively hurt you, can't be too bad to give it a try."

Rinus grimaced. "I'd kind of like to get there on my own."

"'Course you would. Trouble is, no one ever does get all the way there on their own. You make friends, you each help each other out. Sounds like the AI is trying to do that. She's just incredibly bad at it. Then again, she's what? Five years old? Give her a break."

That got a snort of laughter. "All right. It's something think about, anyway." Rinus pulled on his helmet, and after a moment, Jaworski did the same.

Eduardo Ramos made it aboard with fifteen minutes to spare. "All right," he said. "I got word from my wife. She made it to Palaven yesterday, and your people picked her up. She gave the right signs, too, so it's all good." He looked around. "You ready?"

Sam tabbed a button on his omnitool. "Chicken in the breadpan, pickin' out dough," he said into his radio, grinning. He'd pulled the line at random from a list of ancient song lyrics. He had no idea what it came from, but liked it because no one on Omega would to be likely to have any idea what it meant, and the chances of the words being replicated were slim, at best.

Rinus fired up the little ship's engines. "We've got docking clearance to leave."

And then they lifted off, back out into the void of space.

And then, all around them, in response to the signal, ships began appearing, curving in from where they'd been hiding, behind asteroids, in the shadow of planets. White, curving shapes, like the bodies of great white sharks. Kharkov. Normandy. Zeeland. Narvik. Lille. Calais. Bastogne. St. Vith. Metz. Arnhem. Crimea. Moscow. Kiev. Leyte. Wake. Iwo Jima. Okinawa. Midway. Eighteen of the twenty-five human-flagged Normandy-class ships were here. Then the turian ships arrived. Estallus. Armidus. Teredius. Malinus. Khorae. Cusorae. Pellinae. Dellanus. Beregarus. Patenia. Salgorus. Urius. Nellashi. Terrentia. Fourteen of the twenty-five Normandy-class ships in the Hierarchy. But neither side was done yet.

The Mercy arrived, an Alliance-flagged hospital ship. Three full-sized troop transports, usually reserved for moving 10,000 Marines at a time, arrived. And then the turian warships arrived. These were carrier ships, usually used with a frigate screen; with the Normandy-class ships there to act as a buffer, the carriers could sit back at a distance from Omega, and launch fighters as needed to help enforce the blockade.

As Rinus urged their ship—which was now broadcasting a 'friendly' identification code to the other ships in the area—towards the Normandy, Sam watched at the Kharkov banked and swooped to the bottom of the station, setting up to watch for any escapes from any hidden bays below.

"Omega is broadcasting a challenge," Rinus said. "I'll put it on the screen."

Aria's face appeared, looking cold and defiant. "What is the meaning of this intrusion? Or rather, should I say, invasion? This is not Council space. You have no authority here. The Terminus systems will regard this as an act of war, and will unify to protect Omega. I suggest that you leave at once."

Garrus sent them a signal from the Normandy. One word. Now.

"You want to do the honors, Rinus?" Sam offered. "I know you've been looking forward to blowing something up."

"Yes, I would. Thank you." The young turian grinned, and swiped a finger along the aerogel screen. "Five. . . four. . . three. . . two. . . one."

Fire bloomed along all of Omega's sides. Sam leaned forward, counting quietly. "Eighteen. . . nineteen. . . twenty. Yeah. That leaves bays C and T open." He was surprised. He'd genuinely thought that some of the bombs would be detected and removed, an alert would be triggered, people would be searching for more such devices. . . but no. They'd effectively sealed Omega off from incoming and outgoing traffic, other than through the small passenger and small cargo bays.

On the screen, Aria's head had snapped to the side. "You dare attack me?" she said.

Garrus came onto the screen now, transmitting the Council and Spectre response. Sam suddenly grinned. "He's in his Archangel armor."

Rinus shook his head. "I've never seen that set before. S'kak. That's a lot of damage."

Garrus began. "You attacked us, first. We are simply responding, and in such a manner that no one can possibly misunderstand our intentions." He paused, and, calmly, levelly said, "Aria T'loak, you are charged with the attempted murder of some fifty people. You are charged with the murder of Fiona Provian and the murder of Alyssa Innarae. You are charged with conspiracy to commit murder. The list of charges goes on and on, and we'll be releasing it to the public once we lift the news blackout for this sector." Garrus smiled suddenly, and Sam winced. Garrus' eyes were as dead as Lantar's sometimes went. Yeah, Aria. There are some buttons you just do not want to push.

"These were actions all conducted in Council space. Since there is no extradition treaty with Omega, we're rather forced to take actions we'd prefer not to." Garrus' tone hardened. "Effective immediately, Omega is under an interdiction, until the moment you come into our custody. No ship traffic in. Civilians who wish to leave, may do so, but must have their ships inspected before leaving, and must be able to prove their identity. We are willing to transport refugees away from Omega for the next three days." Garrus paused. "Additionally, as a part of the Council initiative to replace mass relays, we will be removing the mass relay from this system. Very shortly, the only way to come here, will be by burning your FTL drive." His eyes were cold. "Give up, Aria."

She slammed a hand down, and the transmission cut off. "Normandy's opening her shuttle bay doors," Rinus said.

"In we go, then."

As they moved up into the ship, Rinus said, simply, "She's not going to give in, is she?"

Ramos snorted. "You ever see a dictator who did?"

Sam shook his head. "Nope. She's running through escape plans, trying to call in favors. A little part of her knows she's probably going to die. When that little part becomes a big part, it'll shift towards making it the best way for her to go out." His tone was grim. "That'll probably involve taking as many people with her as possible."

The doors sealed, and they were able to clamber out of the ship. Garrus greeted them at the hatch. "So, how'd my nephew do in the field, Sam?"

"Not too bad. Needs to work on his tough-and-gritty mercenary act, but that largely comes with time and learning not to give a shit. Usually happens right around when it stops being fun, though."

Rinus grinned. "Padu'fradu, you're too kind."

Ramos stopped, mid-stride. "Jaworski?"

"Si, amigo?"

"That young man just called you the father of his brother, yeah?"

"Hey, look at that. We've got a language that their VIs aren't keyed to. Yeah. His younger brother is the husband of my daughter."

"No jodas?"

"Nah, I'm not fuckin' with you." Sam switched back to English. "Now do you understand why I find all the nattering in tal'mae really annoying?"

Ramos frowned. "Shit, mano, even I follow along in tal'mae. More or less."

I can't win, Sam thought, and gave up.

The next three days were a little nerve-wracking. The Spectres and the Alliance and Hierarchy Marines went in, in force, to secure the two docking bays, and began processing people through. A couple of ships tried to run the blockade to leave the station. Warning shots were fired. When they continued moving, engines were disabled, and the ships were towed back to the docking bay, and their crews removed. Several of the ships turned out to be filled with illegal cargo; no surprise, there. One turned out to be filled with batarians, who'd not wanted to take a chance on an Alliance refugee ship.

Ramos was set up with a camera feed to both docking bays, and methodically looked at every face, turning away those whom he knew to be Aria's people, from the girls who worked the dance floors all the way up through her chief enforcers and bodyguards. It was inevitable that someone would, eventually, slip the net. But the goal was as few as possible.

Sam had the unenviable position of keeping people calm in the long lines reaching into Docking Bay C. He had Sky keeping a constant stream of soothing song going, which was a help, but there was so much anxiety and fear in the air, that he frequently sent the rachni back to the Normandy for stress-relief purposes. "Don't want you to burn out," he told Sky.

Sings-to-the-Past always sings harmonies in blues and greens for friends, the rachni told him; there were overtones of gray exhaustion to Sky's internal melody.

"Off you go, boy. Gris just got here to relieve you."

He and the krogan had to break up fights along the long line, and Gris lifted whole groups off the ground when the pushing and the shoving might have led to injury. In the meantime, Sam kept one ear glued to his comm channel. "Here we go," he told Gris, at noon on the second day.

"They've detected incoming traffic?"

"Yep. Batarians. Aria's rescue force."

"Let 'em come."

Garrus

The mass relay flared to life, presaging the incoming ships. "I still think we should have started moving it earlier," Lantar muttered beside him.

Garrus shook his head. "The Council was right. This way, we're giving everyone, even Aria, a chance to do the right thing. To give in peacefully."

"Argus is sure she's still on the station?"

"Yep. That spider's not going to try to scuttle away until the web's actually on fire."

"Here they come," Joker said, not turning to face them. The human's five-fingered hands splayed on his console. "This is a perfect chance for her to try to run the blockade, you realize."

Garrus nodded. "Yeah. Which is why only half of the fleet is turning back towards the batarians. Of course, I think half will be enough."

The batarians had been told that there were thirty or so ships present at Omega. They'd intercepted and decrypted Aria's transmission, threatening them with consequences in the future, if they didn't come to her aid now.

They had not, as far as the Spectres had been able to determine, been informed as to which ships they'd be facing.

The batarians came through the relay in a burst of blue-shifted particles, one at a time, as mass relays tended to work. And the first immediately started scrambling and scraping and trying to bank off speed, trying not to careen directly into the half-globe of ships that surrounded the mouth of the relay at about a 1,500 km distance. "Joker, fire a warning shot across their bow with the Thanix cannon," Garrus said. His voice was calmer than he actually felt. For most of the past year, his family had been in one form of jeopardy or another. The AEC kidnapping. The attack on their base and home by Lina Vasir. The poisoning attempt by Aria T'loak. These batarians weren't a part of that, but they were here and they were in his way. He couldn't deny the fact that he was actually rather hoping they'd give him a fight.

One by one, the batarians came through that relay. One by one, they skittered to a halt. They had to clear the entry zone, but they were blocked by white, curving ships, ready to fire on them if they moved. Five ships, ten ships. All hunkered down by the relay. "Another ship coming through," Joker replied. "They're going to hit the wall." The human winced in anticipation, and turned his face away.

Sure enough, the next batarian ship through the relay slammed right into one of its compatriots; their kinetic shields both flared to life, and the incoming ship caromed off the one that was simply drifting in space. Both showed damage to their hulls. "This could turn into a real hazard to navigation," Joker warned. "They'll have to update Reefs and Shoals." The old nautical hazard book from Earth's maritime naval era really did still have that title in the spaceflight era; it simply pertained to gravitational hazards and space junk and asteroid positions now.

Garrus leaned over and tabbed the radio. "Batarian ships, this is the Council fleet. Send a message back to your base not to send any further ships through. You're endangering your own lives at this point."

"They seem to see the merit of your point, commander," EDI said, flaring into blue eyeball form on the panel beside Joker. "They're sending exactly that message now."

Garrus nodded. All right. They've had time to see the teeth. They powered down weapons after the warning shots. They've been waiting for reinforcements to come through, and now realize that their very reinforcements can be more of a hindrance than a help. "Batarian ships, I recommend that you turn around and head home. In twenty-one galactic hours, we are going to be moving this mass relay out of this system. You wouldn't want to be stranded here without a way home, now would you?" Calm. Polite. Almost humorous.

"Engines are powering up," Joker replied. "They're getting some sort of a message through the relay from their command post on the other side."

"Can we decrypt?"

"Don't think we need to. Weapons are online."

"Wait for them to fire first," Garrus said, tiredly. "If they want to throw their lives away, we can certainly oblige them."

The batarians opened with a salvo of torpedoes. Garrus could feel them impacting on the kinetic shielding, which held firm. Yeah. Didn't think these ships had the Lystheni shield-breakers on board.

Behind them, the huge form of the turian carrier, the Catasta, moved into position. Garrus could see it on the scope, a leviathan compared to the little frigates that shielded it from direct fire. "Catasta asks if they can come and play, too," Joker reported. "They're launching fighters."

"Pull back another thousand kilometers. Give the fighters room to move," Garrus said. "Return fire at will."

The fighters danced in, tiny, slim, acrobatic needles in the darkness of space. The Normandy-class ships had time for one or two Thanix salvos until the fighters were in place, and then it was Javelins only; the torpedoes had homing devices, and could track their prey and move around obstacles. A cannon blast could destroy one of the tiny fighters, melt it to slag, if a pilot so much as shifted in the wrong direction at the wrong moment.

The fight was short. Ugly. Almost anticlimactic. "You got any joy on where they sent their signal to?" Garrus asked, as they were mopping up the last of the ships.

"No, but there's a signal coming through now, asking for a status report."

"Let's see how they are with silence as an answer, then."

After a couple of repetitions, the signal went dead. "Waste of life," Lantar said, his voice dark.

"Yeah," Garrus said, quietly. "We'll stay here, see if they try to sneak through again." He tabbed his radio. "Kharkov, did anyone try to run the blockade while we were occupied over here?"

"A couple of ships. We also had door open on bottom of asteroid, but we fired Thanix burst into vicinity. This seemed to discourage them." Captain Orlova's voice was crisp and precise.

Garrus thanked her for the update, and tabbed a different channel. "Orpheus, talk to me. What's the situation looking like on the station?"

Sam's voice crackled back through the radio. "Deteriorating. People are getting very edgy. We've being as reassuring as we can, but there's a lot of fear at the moment. They're not quite ready to stampede, but I don't want to be in the way when they do." His voice sounded grim.

Garrus nodded. Nice dry tinder. Now all we need is a spark, and a puff of wind blowing the right damn direction. "Can you set up your omnitool as a repeater? I want to broadcast right into Omega."

"Sure. Give me a minute." There were a couple of blips on the end of the line, and Sam said, "All right, I think I'm patched into the station's intercom system. Either that, or the garbage compactors. We'll find out which in a moment, right?"

Garrus' mandibles flexed a bit. Sam's ever-present sense of humor helped lighten otherwise grim situations. "This is Garrus Vakarian," he said. "Operational commander of the Spectres. The Council fleet has turned back the batarian ships that were attempting to lift our blockade of the station, which were summoned here by Aria T'loak. Aria is the one who started all of this, by murdering innocent people. . . including some right there on Omega. Her own people. She could surrender, right now, and the blockade would be lifted. No one else would need to be evacuated." The status quo, however bad, almost always looks better than an uncertain future. You want the status quo, don't you? You don't want to have to change, right? "It is her arrogance and pride that has inflicted this on all of you. You shouldn't have to suffer for her, and we regret that. Thank you for your patience."

Joker turned his chair around. "Nice touch at the end there. You couldn't have sounded more like a soulless comm system hold message if you'd tried." He paused. "Well, if you'd said that they are valued customers and to please stay on the line, maybe."

Garrus grimaced. "I'm trying to redirect them. I want them facing Aria's direction, not ours. If we have to go in after her, I don't want to have to fight our way through all the civilians as well as the mercs."

"And if they do all turn on her. . ." Lantar said quietly, "so much the better."

An hour crept by. Two. Sam's voice came through on the comm channel now. "We've got gunfire in the distance. We're trying to get the civilians to stay low behind a sort of barricade we've been building. Crates and stuff, mostly to keep them in a line and from crowding each other."

"We're coming in," Garrus told him, and he and Lantar headed for a shuttle. "Joker, get Argus on the line. Have her patch into our comms. Her eyes in the sky are going to tell us a lot more than what we can see for ourselves."

When they landed, for the first time, Garrus didn't think Back on fucking Omega. He and Lantar were fully outfitted as Archangel and Nemesis, however. "Okay, Orpheus, talk to me," he said as they hopped out of their shuttle, moving past the huddling, terrified people.

Sam hustled over. "Yeah, continued exchanges of gunfire, coming from the center ring. Scope shows quite a lot of movement up there."

Liara's voice came in over the channel now. "I have eyes on Aria at this point. She's pinned down in Afterlife, surrounded by her most loyal mercenaries. They're exchanging gunfire through the VIP area door, the back door, and the front door, with Blood Pack and Eclipse mercenaries."

Two of the groups with the most to lose if Aria doesn't give in, Garrus thought, coolly. "Right, we're moving up to assess and intervene if necessary. Let's not get involved unless we have to."

He, Lantar, and Sam moved up, followed by Gris, Cohort, and Sky and two squads of human and turian marines from the joint fleet. They were taking the back route, which seemed to have less in the way of bodies to get in their way, and, as they reached the back, door, one of the Blood Pack mercenaries—a krogan, at that—turned, saw them, and lifted his hands, pointing his weapon in the air. Signaling a desire to talk¸ apparently. The krogan moved backwards from the door, warily looking out for anyone that might shoot at him, and crouched down near Garrus. "Ulluthyr Harak," he said, after a moment.

"Thought I recognized the armor," Garrus said. "I gave your message to your brother. He's petitioning to join Urdnot, and his son will take the Rite with them next year."

Harak nodded, heavily, and popped his head around the corner briefly to take a look at how his men were doing. "All right, Vakarian," he said, after a moment. "I have to say, for a turian, you know how to set up a fun fight." He chuckled, a low, rough sound. "Patriarch contacted me three hours ago. Told me if I could get in and protect him, he'd take out Aria."

Under his visor, Garrus' mandible twitched. This was a solution none of them had thought of. Sky's song shimmered faintly in his thoughts. Would this male sing a better song for this hive?

Yes, Garrus thought, knowing Sky could hear him. He ran this long before Aria came here. It was a bad place then, but not as bad. And even krogan can learn from their mistakes. He is old, however. His time might be short.

Then make sure that he sings a succession-song.

Garrus blinked. The ideas were. . . novel. "All right, Harak. We'll help. Let's get in there, folks."

They stormed the rear door, with Blood Pack mercenaries at their backs. "This feels wrong," Lantar called into the radio, lobbing a grenade into the open back door.

"I know what you mean," Garrus called back. "But you've got to admit, it's going to be a fun fight!"

They made it in, and started taking out Aria's loyalists in the downstairs area. "Cut right," Garrus called. "Patriarch has a private room down here. Let's get to him."

Ducking behind a half wall, waiting for the incoming fire to cease. Ducking back out again, firing, seeing someone's bullet clip one of the ceiling lights. Watching it fall, as if in slow motion, then ducking back, hearing the crash and the splinter of glass. Ducking back out again, taking out a turian, then a batarian, with his sniper rifle. Both head-shots. Seeing Sam and Sky moving right, Sam covering the rachni, while Sky blew a line of enemies out of their way with a shockwave. Seeing Cohort leap over the round edge of the bar, and then leap up onto the center island, climbing its slanted surface with uncanny grace, finding himself a perch from which to attack the far side of the room.

"We've got Patriarch," Sam reported on the radio. "Secure the rest of the room, and we can move."

Garrus' boot crunched on broken glass as he strode through the room, checking for survivors. "Okay. Up the back passage," he said, after a quick assessment.

The aging krogan came out of his private room, looking around at the carnage. "Harak," he said, slowly, wheezing a bit. "You found some friends, I see."

"Spectres," Harak said. "Enemies of our enemy are friends. For a while, anyway."

Patriach's red eyes gleamed. "For perhaps longer than that, if we find the friendship. . . mutually beneficial."

Garrus nodded. "It'll be an interesting conversation. Let's get moving. We still have to take out Aria. Orpheus, Gris. . . you're on Patriarch at all times. Nothing gets through to him. Sky, you're with me. Cohort, you're with Nemesis. Let's go."

Up the long corridor now. Just the clean perfection of lining up the shot and letting it go. Nothing here with him in the empty place he went when it was time for death and he to work together once again. "Argus," he said, as they were about to enter the chamber at the end. "Any movement in the upstairs area?"

"Aria's moved to the center of the room. Her people are taking heavy fire from the front door, so they're concentrating their attention there, for the most part. You might even be able to surprise them." Liara's soft voice whispered in his ear. Let the spirits grant it be so.

Into the little antechamber. No one there. Left turn. The door was closed. Locked. "Cohort, get it unlocked. I don't want to blow it."

He could hear Lantar's faint grin in the other turian's voice. "Don't want to ruin the surprise, eh?"

"It's far more fun this way."

Cohort unsealed the door, and stepped back. "We are ready, Vakarian-Commander," he said.

"All right. Patriarch, stay back," Garrus warned. "Sam, Gris, as before. Keep him alive. Everyone else. . . on three. One. Two. Three."

Garrus kicked the door open, and the squads moved in, killing at will. There were any number of bodyguards and thugs and mercenaries in the room, and Aria, a powerful biotic in her own right, started flinging any enemy she saw straight up into the air. "Sky, get her in the air!" Garrus said, flying himself at the moment. Then he landed, heavily, and struggled back to his feet. Where is she, where is she? "Get a line of fire on her. Don't let her recover!"

All around him, bullets everywhere. Marines firing at the bodyguards. Gris lifting another batch of Aria's henchmen, around the left side of the room now, up into the air. Perfect targets. But not his target, not right now, anyway.

Sky's singularity dropped Aria relatively close to Garrus, and he could see that her armor was starting to show signs of wear. . . Gris and Sam had been firing at her steadily from their doorway while she'd been flying. Garrus grinned at her through the blackness of his visor. Now it's my turn.

He took three steps forward and slammed his rifle butt into her face, and she staggered back, bleeding blue at the lips. She tried to level another biotic attack at him, but as she tried to concentrate, Lantar rolled out of the shadows and slammed his wedding-knife into her side, where there was a weak point in her armor. She turned on Lantar, managing to concentrate enough to shove him away with a shockwave, but then Garrus was back on her. This time, with his own wedding-knife. He slammed it up under her chin, driving the point deep into the brain. At least this time, I didn't break my damn knife, he thought as she collapsed, spasming to the ground. He set one heavy boot on her chest and pulled the knife back out.

Lantar staggered back to his feet, and made his way over. He stared down at the corpse, and then reached down and took his own knife out of her side. Gunfire continued from outside, but inside, any number of mercenaries had seen what had just happened, and were starting to lay down their weapons.

About twenty minutes later, when Harak had managed to contact the Blood Pack and Eclipse outside the front entrance, and tell them to cease fire, Garrus allowed Patriarch into the room. The aging krogan looked down at Aria's body. "You know, I would have liked to have killed her myself," the krogan said, quietly.

"Didn't you?" Garrus said, with a little force. "Oh, certainly, people you contacted did the actual work. But it was all your idea, wasn't it?"

Patriarch's yellow stumps of teeth gleamed in the low light. "I've heard something similar before, it seems."

So have I, Garrus thought, grinning behind his visor. "Let's have that talk, Patriarch. Or is there some other name that you would prefer to be called now?"

Patriarch laughed, wheezing. "I no longer even remember . . . my own name." He took Garrus up behind the bar, to the old lounge where Aria had held court so often. "What are your terms, Spectre?"

"I have no objections to you controlling Omega. That being said, there will be changes." Garrus' mind was working very fast now. "No more drugs. Keep the mercs in check. If we don't see progress inside of five years, we will take that relay and destroy it, and Omega will wither and die. When we've seen enough changes to indicate that Omega can become a part of the damn galactic community, we'll help you build a new relay, connected to the new grid. You need to designate someone as a successor, so we're not going back to the same old damn thing in thirty or forty years. Sound fair?"

"An interesting proposal," Patriarch said, after a moment. "Whom would you consider a successor worthy of the name?"

Garrus chuckled. "You already have him picked, I think. Otherwise, you wouldn't have called on Ulluthyr Harak today, now would you?"

Patriarch grinned. "You see very clearly through that mask, turian." He sighed. "As to the rest of it. . . it will be difficult to generate revenue without the existing smuggling and other such . . . industries."

"You're a smart krogan. You'll figure something out. I'd personally suggest contacting the Council and petitioning for admission. That would send a clear signal that Omega's ready to stop being a lawless state, and would get some corporations interested in coming out here. Maybe for your low, low taxes."

"What taxes?" Patriarch chuckled. "Ah, but I see what you mean. It will be interesting, turian, to build here. Where so much has been destroyed."

Spirits, hear his words.

He exchanged a wrist-clasp with the krogan, and walked back out into the wreckage of Afterlife. He and Lantar nodded to one another; nothing really needed to be said. They'd exorcized ten ghosts today. The blood of their brothers in arms had been redeemed with the blood of the one who'd been their foe, their scourge.

They all started to walk out together. "You know what?" Sam said after about ten minutes had passed. "Last time you were here, Garrus, you promised that the next time Archangel came to Omega, it would have a new queen."

"King," Lantar said, after a moment.

"Close enough for government work," Sam replied.

And after a moment, they all began to laugh. Spirits free.