Thane Krios was alone with the humming of machinery. Shepard had organised for the back space behind some of the life support equipment to be transformed into a cabin of sorts. He had a desk, a terminal, a gun rack and a cot in the corner. Shepard had apologised as she'd helped him with his gun case when he first came aboard, telling him that she would ask the crew to be polite, but space was at a premium on a warship and the engineering staff might need to access the equipment at times.
It was no matter. It was more privacy than sleeping in the crew quarters, and the air was comfortably warm and dry.
His sniper rifle was disassembled across the desk, each part to be cleaned and oiled and pieced back together. He had no need of holos or momentos. If he chose he could picture Irikah's face the last time he had seen her alive, barefoot in the garden and dirt smeared across the scales of her hands. Or he could see his son, eight years old, catching at his hand.
If he so chose.
Shepard had left datapads with what they knew of the Collectors and their goals. It was…a good cause, one worthy of his talents. Enough so he had refused Cerberus' offer of generous compensation. He wasn't quite sure what to think of the Commander yet - she walked as one with a sleeping soul did, as if her heart did not know the actions of her hands. She killed in the manner of a brute, battering through whoever was in her way, and yet he suspected she shared Operative Taylor's opinion of assassins, if a less overt manner.
It was the final piece of information that rested uneasily under his ribs. It felt too strange to be real, but there had been real fear in Shepard's eyes, fervor in her voice as she talked to the two of them, justiciar and assassin.
Sovereign wasn't just a ship. It was a Reaper, a sentient machine, bent on the cyclic destruction of civilisation. It was one of many - and they're coming back. I saw it. The Protheans showed me.
It was fantastical. But Shepard's voice didn't have the ring of a lie. He had seen the footage from the Battle of the Citadel, snippets at least, and no normal warship could have caused such widespread devastation. No normal ship could have cut through the Hierarchy's finest like sharp knife.
Life would abandon him soon, but perhaps-
The coughing fit came suddenly and without mercy, leaving him bent over and hacking. He could taste blood at the back of his throat, feel the rasp of each breath. He braced his forearms against the cool metal of his desk, the back of his hand brushing the barrel of his sniper rifle, as he gasped for breath.
"Thane?" Shepard's boots were a rapid staccato against the desk.
He waved her concern off. "It is alright."
"Is there anything I or Chakwas can do for you?" she asked as she leant against the door frame, arms crossed.
He shook his head, feeling the clawing deep in his throat and chest. "There is nothing to be done."
The hanar doctors had been clear on that. Apologetic, but clear.
"I'm sorry," Shepard said in that way people always had when they found out that he was dying. Regret - though it was not of Shepard's doing.
"Death comes for us all," he said simply.
"For those in our line of work, it comes quickly sometimes," Shepard settled in the seat across from him, arms crossed.
"Yes." Shepard had died. That was what they said. Perhaps the battle sleep was no surprise.
"You needed something?" Shepard asked.
"As I face the end of my body's time here, I find myself dwelling on my mistakes." The past was never very far away for a drell. "I had a family once. I still have a son. His name is Kolyat. I haven't seen him in a very long time."
"How long?" Shepard's expression crinkled.
"Ten years." For the first time in many years, he told someone of it. His slow abandonment of his wife and child. Attending to the issue of her murder. Leaving his son - small and young and frightened - in the care of his aunts and uncles. At the time it had seemed - logical. He was a weapon to be pointed. He could avenge Irikah, but raising their son? There were others more suited to such things.
"You left a traumatised eight year old and never went back?" Shepard asked, taken aback, "That's- fucked up, Thane."
"I told myself it was to spare him the knowledge of what my body had done," Thane said slowly, "Lately I have - reconsidered this."
Shepard shook her head, jaw hard. "I don't understand how you can pass off blame."
He tilted his head. It was always a trial, explaining drell and hanar morality to outsiders. But Shepard had been kind and he considered it might be worth the effort, with her. "If you order Garrus Vakarian to shoot someone, is that death not your will?"
Shepard leant back in her chair. "Of course it is. But Garrus is his own person and he's responsible for his own actions. He makes a choice every time he follows my orders. If I told him to shoot someone innocent and he did, we're both to blame."
"I have killed sentients of my own will, Shepard," Thane replied, "I will carry their deaths to the end. I have pledged myself to you because your mission is just. On this mission, I kill those you require me to."
Shepard smiled wryly, "So if I fuck up, it's on me."
"I-"
She waved a hand to cut him off. "If I - I am not myself, Thane. If I tell you to do something that is…unjust, I want you to tell me you think so. The decision might be mine - and I own that - but I want input. Questioning. I'm not infallible."
He found the concept disquieting. His hanar master had never wanted - input. And after, he had followed his contracts.
"I will consider this."
"Sorry, we've gotten off track. Your son?"
"He is here, on the Citadel. He has become - disconnected. He does what his body wills. I don't know where exactly he is - only that he has traveled here, and has contacted the criminal element of the station. He has been hired to kill a man. I would like your help to stop it."
"Has he killed before?" Shepard asked bluntly, "You don't hire a rookie for a contract killing."
"He has not. I'm afraid someone may have seen we share a name, and assumed we share skills." Thane's throat rippled, but he suppressed the cough. "I do not why he would accept such a task."
"Same reason I joined the Marine Corps. His disappeared dad is an assassin."
Thane looked away. "That thought haunts me more than any other."
"I'll help you find him," Shepard said after a pause. "Seems to be a week for parental reunions."
Ten Years Previously
It rained on Kahje. It always rained on Kahje.
Warm water dripped from Thane's jaw, nose as he stared at the ocean the hanar had taken Irikah into, her body covered in smooth silks and twisted around with sea vines. Irikah hadn't been in the Compact and she had held the old gods in her heart, so he had ensured the correct prayers were said. He hoped the old gods would find her here, even as the waves took her.
Kolyat's tiny fists had ceased their pounding - instead he slumped into Thane's side limply. He picked him up, holding his son to his chest and feeling the brush of his crest against his chin. He followed Irikah's sister up the soft sand dunes to the domed city in silence. With every step he took he could feel it - the unraveling, the gradual detachment of Soul and Body.
He put Kolyat to bed, smoothed the sheets around his curled up form, and waited until he fell asleep.
When he left the guest bedroom with a single bag over his shoulder, Irikah's sister was there.
"This is your fault," she said. Her voice was tired, as if all the fire in her had burnt itself out.
"Yes."
"You should have been here."
"Yes."
She looked him over knowingly and her mouth twisted. "Your son deserves better."
He thought of the last time he'd seen Irikah, the touch of her hand on his face, the hidden grief in her sunset eyes. He thought she'd known before he had, the slow way they were drifting apart from each other on the currents of life.
"Yes."
Irikah's sister had never liked him, but she loved Kolyat and she had raised children of her own. He was a weapon and his hands were not accustomed to things that could break.
"Get out," she said, weary, and he went.
There were men he had to kill.
The interrogation room was dim and dark, the low light gleaming when it hit the handcuffs around Elias Kelham's wrists and the shiny buttons on his suit jacket. He was a man used to getting his own way, even with C-Sec, of throwing money and threats around until he was the most powerful man in the room.
Today, he was not.
"Who the hell are you two?"
Shepard circled Kelham like a shark, the man's eyes darting between the commander and Thane himself. He wasn't afraid even though he was handcuffed in a dark room with two dangerous strangers. Courage or ego? Thane wasn't certain yet. Shepard's eyes gleamed a burnt orange.
"My name is Emilia Shepard," she said, coming to loom over him with crossed arms, "I'm a Council Spectre."
Sweat popped up on Kelham's forehead. Most criminals on the Citadel had the sense to try and avoid the attention of the Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. "Prove it."
"You must live under a rock, Mr Kelham," Shepard said - almost friendly, "but I don't need to prove anything to you. I could kill you in here, and no one would do a thing to stop me. Bailey can't get you out of this. Are we clear?"
Kelham's jaw clenched. "Crystal."
"Good. Luckily for you, I'm not after you. You contracted a hitman. I want to know who the target is."
"Do you think I'm stupid?" he demanded.
"No," Shepard said, crouching to look him in the eye, "which is why you're going to tell me, and we'll go our separate ways."
Shepard was bluffing, Thane thought. She had her hard edges, but she was a woman too preoccupied with questions of ethics to be someone who would shoot a handcuffed man.
There was a pause. Kelham's bluster had disappeared, fizzled out into something closer to fear. "Joram Talid - a turian running for office. E lives in the 800 blocks."
"That wasn't so hard, now was it?" Shepard smiled a sharp smile and led Thane out of the interrogation room.
They emerged, blinking, into the white light of the CSec office. Thane looked over at her, "That may go down in history as the shortest interrogation ever."
Shepard smiled, "Well, if you've got a scary reputation, might as well use it. That way, no one gets hurt."
Bailey waved them over, and Shepard's expression hardened as it did whenever she saw the CSec captain. His methods - beating suspects and taking bribes - sat uneasily with the commander, Thane surmised.
"The target is Joram Talid," Thane told him.
"What do you know about him?" Shepard asked. She might dislike Bailey's methods, but she was not above using him for her ends. A thoroughly practical approach.
They were close. Thane could feel it. Kolyat was here, on this ward.
Ten Years Previously
In the darkness, Thane Krios found his prey.
Omega, the end of all things. A station of opportunity for those with the means to seize it, a station of death for those who didn't. His target was not a stupid man. He had climbed to his current affluence on the bodies of opponents, friends and slaves alike, by being smarter and more savage than his competitors. When his men had started to die, Tama Khambelor had tripled the guards around his Omegan tower and cdonje his best to hunt down the person causing him such difficulties.
It may have even worked for most enemies. But Thane was not most enemies.
Every defence had its weaknesses, and Khambelor's home was no different. One of the pair of guards on a balcony wandered a few steps away from his buddy, stariung down at the orange gleam of lights. The other kept up a stream of consciousness blabber - about the asari he'd recently slept with, the annoying calls he got from his mother, the HV show he'd recently watched.
The guard looked resigned, his helmet left on a nearby bench, clearly having given up on shutting his partner up.
The shadows moved. Impacts in darkness. Thane's hands moved quickly, without thought, the batarian's skull fracturing beneath them. He collapsed to the ground in a lump of ceramic with a soft gurgle in the moment before he died.
"…Cerek?" the other paused in his rambling, turning. For a moment he froze, staring at the body of his friend, and then he reached for his gun. He never reached it. Thane's fist found his jaw, glowing in flickers of blue, at just the right angle. His head twisted and his spine broke. He dropped too.
The lights inside were brighter, a warm yellow bathing expensive furniture and holos of Khambelor and his family. He had been an exile, thrown out of the Hegemony for crimes against his own caste. The Hegemony still had uses for its exiles, of course, and Khambelor had grown rich off the slave trade. Ironic, that the job Thane had taken, the one that had put their fates on a collision course, had been one of vengeance. A woman who'd lost her brother to one of Khambelor's lieutenants.
This was no one else's will but Thane's.
Khambelor turned when Thane entered his office like a flitting shadow. "What the-"
Thane's hand lashed out and the slaver howled as his wrist snapped. The second blow drove the breath from his lungs, forcing him to his knees. The third broke the second arm. Khambelor screamed, but there was no one left to hear him.
"My men will kill you for this!" he demanded, bowed over by pain. Shaking with it.
"Not this time," Thane said placidly, staring down at him.
"I have money," Khambelor pleaded, "I can pay you twice whatever they've offered you."
Thane knelt in front of him, grabbed his jaw with a hard hand, "You murdered my wife. She was killed in front of our son. Do you have enough credits to bring the dead back to life?"
Needle like teeth were bared at him. "I didn't kill her."
"I have killed those who pulled the trigger," Thane acquiesced, "but they were tools, weapons. It was your will, your guilt."
"Please-"
"You will know fear and pain," Thane told him almost gently, "and then you will die."
When they reached Talid's apartment, Kolyat already had a gun pressed to the back of the turian's head, forcing the other man to kneel in his living room. And yet - he hadn't pulled the trigger. He had wounded the krogan bodyguard outside but not killed him, and he had yet to pull the trigger on Talid. There was still time.
Thane looked at his son and hoped. There was still time for Kolyat to step away from the life of a killer. He didn't wish to see Kolyat's hands stained with sentient blood. He had told Shepard there was honour in the Compact, but - he had cause to reconsider many things in the months since they'd told him he was dying.
"Kolyat."
Kolyat's hand trembled on the pistol. He had grown to a man in Thane's absence, and his entire body seemed to vibrate with resentment, with anger. "This - this is a joke. Now? Now you show up?"
"Help me," Talid mewled on the floor, "I'll give you whatever you want-"
The room flooded with CSec agents, led by Captain Bailey, who held a pistol aimed at Kolyat's chest. But when he spoke, the captain's voice was - gentle, "Put the gun down, son."
"Get out of my way," Kolyat snapped, "I'm walking out-"
"They will have snipers outside," Thane told him. He couldn't - he wouldn't watch CSec gun his son down in the streets of the Citadel. He wouldn't.
"I don't need your help-"
Beside Thane Shepard suddenly flared a brilliant blue, light spilling across the greyscale apartment. A biotic field lashed out and dashed a nearby lamp into Kolyat's side. He stumbled - the pistol falling away from Talid's head. And then Shepard was beside him, drawing her arm back to strike him. Her armoured fist hit Kolyat's jaw with a meaty thud.
He staggered away, clutching at his face, as Shepard pulled Talid away from him and thrust him in the direction of the CSec officers.
"You son of a bitch!"
Perhaps, Thane considered, part of the reason he hadn't returned was because he was afraid - to see the anger and the hate in Kolyat's eyes.
"Once you pull that trigger, you can never take it back," Shepard told him, crossing her arms. In the flickering light cast by the CSec shuttle's lights through the window she resembled a statue of dark ceramic. "Your father has come a long way to talk to you. I'm sure CSec will give you two five minutes, right Bailey?"
"Yeah," the captain nodded, "Easy. Not the sort of conversation you should have in front of strangers."
They handcuffed Kolyat, all the fight gone out of him.
"Go on," Shepard encouraged, "I'll meet you back at the ship."
"Thank you," he said sincerely. It had been a very long time since Thane Krios had made a friend.
Codex Entry
Transcript Excerpt from 2184 inquest into the loss of the SSV Normandy:
VI: transcribed audio from interview with Normandy crew member Gema Wulandri, filed 2184 SSV Normandy SR1 Loss Inquest
Interviewer: Can you please state your name and rank for the record?
Gema Wulandri: Lieutenant Gema Wulandri.
Interviewer: What was your billet aboard the SSV Normandy SR1?
Wulandri: I was the Combat Systems Officer.
Interviewer: During the war with the geth, you also acted as the Tactical Action Officer, correct?
Wulandri: Yes. From when Commander Shepard took command to when Nilsson came aboard.
Interviewer: Lieutenant Commander Gustaf Nilsson?
Wulandri: That's right. At the time of the…attack he was the TAO, and I was back in Main Gunnery.
Interviewer: So there was a pretty heavy workload on the Normandy, then?
Wulandri: Well, I mean, we were a brand new frigate at war and we were missing a few people. Of course we were busy all the time.
Interviewer: So it was a higher workload for you personally then you'd had before?
Wulandri: We were at war, so yeah, obviously. Did you bring me in here just to answer questions common sense can answer?
Interviewer: I understand talking about this is difficult, but we're trying to account for everything that could've contributed to the loss of your ship and crewmates.
Wulandri: Sure.
Interviewer: Are you familiar with the IES system?
Wulandri: Not really. I'm not an engineer. The person to ask about that stuff would be Joker or Adams.
Interviewer: what was the command climate on the Normandy like?
Wulandri: I mean, there's always some disagreements. Pressly could be…grumpy. But he knew his shit. And Shepard was a good captain. She knew when to listen and when to come down hard.
Interviewer: She was a bit inexperienced as a SWO, wasn't she?
Wulandri: I am…not the one to ask about Shepard's qualifications, but like I said, she was a good captain. I never felt like she was putting us in danger or that she didn't know what she was doing.
Interviewer: But she relied quite heavily on Pressly. She left him in command fairly regularly.
Wulandri: She knew when to delegate and when to ask questions, alright? And she had Spectre stuff to do and you can't do that from the CIC sometimes.
Interviewer: Shepard was reportedly somewhat unorthodox in her command methods. Did you ever feel her getting so close and friendly with her subordinates impacted the ship or the mission?
Wulandri: What? No. You stick a N in a naval billet, they don't stop being a N. If the Navy had an issue with any of this they shouldn't have put Shepard in that position. We all did the best we could under the circumstances.
Interviewer: There have been some allegations of fraternisation.
Wulandri: Yeah, this is all fucking bullshit. You're not interested in the truth - you just want someone to blame and Shepard isn't around to defend herself.
Interviewer: Now, Lieutenant-
Wulandri: If you want to know who is to blame for the Normandy you better go up to NavComm. That ship knew our patrol patterns to catch us like that. It knew. And someone on this station knows how. I'm done.
/end transcript.
