[Author's note: Special thanks to my beta Magpie Covidae for her help with this chapter.]
Chapter 21
Illium Entertainment News Update – Cipritine Productions Unlimited announced today it was releasing a special 20th Anniversary edition of the classic inter-species drama Fleet & Flotilla that will include more than 200 hours of deleted scenes. The additions include several unbroken eight-hour takes of the characters going about their daily jobs. "This finally restores my original vision, which allows viewers to see Shalei and Bellicus' romance unfold in real time," said director Arok Vonstoyum.
Solik Vass had known that the asari Eclipse mercenary who had forced him to mind-meld with her was still alive and likely in the city. That did not make turning a corner in a hospital and coming face to face with her any less jarring for the Special Tasks Group agent. Especially when that mercenary recognized him and flashed the same leering grin she had used when they last met and he had been helplessly shackled to a chair.
"This is gonna be fun!" the mercenary exclaimed as she sent a biotic shockwave across the hospital's floor, knocking Vass off his feet and a few meters backwards. The young agent hit the ground hard and lost the grip on his Carnifex pistol, which landed just to his right. Vass scrambled back to his feet and was reaching for his gun when the mercenary followed up by hitting him with a singularity.
Vass was again sent airborne only this time he was left dangling in mid-air. Just as in his last encounter with the mercenary, he was forced to helplessly watch as the smirking asari casually strolled over and prowled around him. This time, she kept her pistol in hand.
"I'd say, 'Tell Auntie Zevu, I said 'Hi,' but you're not gonna have an opportunity to do that," the asari chuckled, then laughed even more at Vass' shocked expression. "Well, she is your favorite, right? The one who took you to the beach all those times when you were growing up on Sur'Kesh and always had that home-made hard candy? You see, I spent a bit more time, shall we say, 'seeing the sights,' inside that head of yours than you may have realized."
The asari then snapped her fingers. "No, wait! Now, I remember. Auntie Zevu died last year. Sorry ... On the other hand, I guess you will be able to tell her I said, 'Hi!' after all!" The mercenary laughed and took aim at Vass' head.
"And yet you were fooled into thinking I wasn't a Special Tasks Group agent. You even swore to all of your buddies I wasn't one," Vass retorted, a bit of inspiration having just struck him. It wasn't a great plan, but it was at least a way to stall for time, he thought.
The smirk faded from Eclipse mercenary's face and she lowered her gun a bit. "How *did* you do that? 'Cause I looked everywhere in that head of yours and the Special Tasks Group wasn't in there."
Vass, still being held aloft by the asari's energy, studied her face and saw that beads of sweat were forming in the furrows of her brow. Maintaining the singularity was becoming a strain on her. 'Keep at it, Solik,' he thought. 'It's the only chance you have. You hadn't yet been recruited by the STG when she melded with you. But she won't know that.'
"It's not hard to block off those memories," Vass bluffed. "The STG trains all of us in it. You *really* didn't know this?" he added, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as he could while being held in the air by a biotic. "How many agents have you tried to meld with? But then, you wouldn't know, would you?"
"You're a bad liar," the asari remarked, starting to tremble slightly. Vass could see the beads of sweat on her face were turning into droplets. He felt the singularity wobble.
"Of course, it's true," he countered. "I'm clearly an agent but by your own admission you found nothing when we melded. How do explain that otherwise?" he craned his neck to look her in the eyes, hoping this would hide his other efforts to wiggle through the air and get closer to her.
The merc twitched and sneered but said nothing. Her breathing got heavier and louder.
"But ... Maybe the training only works when the asari isn't that good at melding," Vass continued. "Or if she just isn't very bright." The merc's face contorted into an angry scowl. "You did get all of your friends killed the last time we met," the young agent noted. "Then you had to run away…"
The merc gave out a loud growl and started swinging her pistol at Vass in a wide arc, intending to smash it into his face. The angry outburst shattered her remaining concentration on her biotics however. The singularity holding Vass aloft vanished just as the asari's gun hand neared his face. He grabbed at her arm and the pair tumbled into each other and down to the floor, whereupon they both frantically wrestled for control of her pistol.
"Get off me!" the mercenary shouted as she kicked at him.
Several of the hallway's outside windows suddenly and loudly shattered, spraying glass shards throughout the corridor. The loud whistling of Nos Astra's night winds were intermingled with the dull roar of a skycar. The vehicle hovered right next to the side of the building, piloted by a pair of human Eclipse mercenaries. "The police are storming the building!" one shouted to the asari, beckoning her towards the skycar. "Come on! We gotta go!"
The asari merc reared her head back then headbutted Vass as hard as she could. She succeeded in stunning him enough to make him loosen his hold but left herself nearly as dazed in the process. The merc staggered to her feet and wobbled toward one of the shattered windows.
Agent Vass, though dizzy and unsteady, lunged after the mercenary, determined not to let her escape. He grabbed at the back of the asari's gang uniform and, once he had a firm grip on that, grabbed her right arm as well. The asari tried to spin around to face him, but lost her footing and careened towards the window, taking the salarian with her. Vass' grip remained tight and the two tumbled through the opening. They hit the hovering skycar, causing the asari to lose the grip on her pistol. Both then immediately slid off the skycar and down towards the alley 17 floors below.
The asari re-activated her biotics to slow their descent. Vass gripped her even tighter than before. Their combined weight meant that they would not be able to descend to the ground softly in the way a lone asari normally could, though their fall had nowhere near the force that a 17-story drop would ordinarily have.
The impact with the ground caused both to stagger. The asari recovered first and looked for the skycar she had meant to hop in to. The pilot began to lower the vehicle down to the street level but soon found that the gap between the two buildings became too narrow to maneuver in. He instead pulled forward and headed for the ground on the street outside the alley.
Vass spotted the pistol the asari had dropped lying nearby and scrambled towards it. He snatched up the weapon and spun around. The asari, realizing she was now unarmed and her biotics spent for the moment, darted to a nearby sidedoor for a street-level business. The young STG agent dashed after her, guessing that she intended to shortcut through the building to reach her friends and their skycar. After passing through the door, Vass found himself in a kitchen filled with puzzled turian cooks and vorcha busboys. He assumed a still-swinging door on the opposite side of the kitchen had been the asari's latest exit and dashed towards it, bursting through it to the restaurant's main dining area. Just as he did that, the two human mercs from the skycar entered from the restaurant's main door facing the street. Both had their guns drawn, prompting gasps from the mostly turian diners.
Vass tried to take aim at the human mercs, but a few now-startled customers briefly blocked his line of sight. One of the humans spotted Vass. He pointed his gun at the rookie agent and shouted, "Don't move a muscle, salarian." Vass found himself locked in a stand-off.
The other human mercenary turned and waived his gun at the diner's other customers. "That goes for all of you." He then swung his pistol at Vass.
The rookie agent now had two mercenaries drawing a bead on him. They hesitated to fire only because he drawn a bead on one of them. His mind raced as he tried to figure out what to do. 'There's got to be a way out of this,' he thought to himself. 'Come on, Solik, what is it?'
The asari popped up from behind a table and ran up to the human mercs. "Plug the agent and let's get out of here!" she exclaimed.
One human merc shook his head. "What agent? And the street's too risky! The police are shutting down the whole block!" the human told her. "What do we do?"
"They'll let us go if they have no choice," replied the asari, now somewhat out of breath. "We need hostages." The mercenary glanced around the restaurant until her gaze hit a nearby table. "This one's perfect," she replied, grabbing a female customer and yanking her to her feet. It was a quarian. "If she gets so much as nicked, she could die," the mercenary announced, then pulled the quarian close to her. "If you struggle at all, I'll use my biotics to rip your suit open," the asari told her now-trembling captive. "Might just do it anyway. Always wondered what you suit-rats looked like underneath," she snickered.
Agent Vass' heart sank when he saw that the hostage was wearing a brown and gold exo-suit. Of all of the people in the restaurant, the mercenary had picked Surza'Bonah vas Marketa, 6th Dimension Vids' makeup artist.
The asari winked at Vass. "We're walking out of here," she told the salarian. "Take one step outside this restaurant and she dies."
The brief silence that followed was broken by the unexpected sound of a toilet loudly flushing. In all the commotion, the STG agent and the mercenaries had overlooked the existence of a restroom along the nearest wall. Heads throughout the restaurant collectively turned towards the door as it slid open and the occupant exited.
"If you were waiting on me to finish, I'd give it a few more minutes before going in there," announced krogan actor Jorgal Dreed, who was looking down at his hands as he shook off some remaining drops of water. He glanced up and did a double-take when he saw the human mercenary and the young salarian he knew as a mere studio intern aiming guns at each other. "What's going on? What'd that kid do to you?" the gravel-voiced krogan asked the mercenary.
"This is none of your affair, krogan. Just back off," the human warned.
"Mr. Dreed, they're Eclipse mercenaries and they're trying to take Suzra'Bonah hostage!" Vass shouted.
"Shut up, STG!" the asari mercenary yelled.
The confused krogan glanced to his right and saw the terrified faces of the restaurant's customers. "STG...? Suzra...? What in the name of Kalros...?" he slowly muttered. He turned to his left and saw the other armed human mercenary and his asari colleague, now tightly holding the quarian makeup artist against her body as a living shield.
"Not your fight, krogan," the asari growled. "Just walk away."
Suzra'Bonah initially said nothing and made no sound aside from a few sharp gasps for air as the asari held her. The quarian's body trembled, however, and, even through her suit's semi-opaque visor, the pleading in her eyes was unmistakable. She eventually managed a single half-whispered, half-gasped word. "Please..."
Until the quarian spoke, Dreed's expression was one of honest bafflement at the bizarre scene he had walked into. After she spoke, his eyes narrowed and his lips curled into a sneer. "You let her go," he told the mercenaries.
One of the humans swung his pistol away from Vass and took aim at the krogan actor. "What do you care about this suit-rat? Just back off," he sneered, extending his arm out and clicking on his pistol's laser pointer. The beam danced across Dreed's face.
Dreed looked at the gun, then up at the mercenary. "Her name's Suzra'Bonah and I told you fools to let her go," he rasped, then told the human, "You're gonna regret pointing that thing at me."
The entire restaurant became completely silent as all eyes watched the stand-off between the human merc and the krogan. Vass stood only a few meters away from both, still facing down the other mercenary. His eyes darted from one mercenary to another as he tried to guess how Dreed's appearance would change the situation.
The human aiming at Dreed scoffed at his opponent. "Give it up. You're a krogan, yeah, but you're unarmed..." the mercenary began.
The Eclipse member never finished the sentence. With a speed and nimbleness that Vass would have never guessed that Dreed was capable of, the krogan leapt forward, opened his maw and clamped down on the mercenary's forearm, taking the human's pistol and right hand completely inside his mouth. The mercenary shrieked in agony and struggled to free his arm but his strength was no match for Dreed's. Blood gushed from the human's forearm as Dreed let out a muffled roar and bit down even harder.
Time appeared to stand still in the restaurant as everyone, even the other mercenaries, were transfixed by the unfolding drama. The human grimaced and a dull popping sound emanated from inside Dreed's mouth, followed immediately by a single gunshot piercing the krogan's right cheek from the inside before hitting a restaurant wall. This appeared to do nothing more than further inflame the krogan's rage. His roaring grew loader still and his eyes blazed with fury as a grotesque crunching sound was heard. The mercenary frantically pounded Dreed's head with his free hand, but to no avail. Dreed reared his right arm back and then threw a pulverizing punch at the mercenary's chest. The human was flung backwards, his forearm tearing off below the elbow in the process. The mercenary landed on his back and wailed in agony as he stared at the bloody stump where his right hand had been. He turned white and began to go into shock.
Dreed turn to Vass and spat, making a loud "puh!" sound. The human's hand, still clutching the pistol, sailed through the air and flopped to the ground at the salarian's feet. "If you're really Special Tasks Group, then you know how to use that," the krogan rasped. The rookie agent nodded and reached down with his free hand, keeping the pistol in his other hand trained on the sole remaining armed mercenary. Vass pulled the gun out of the severed hand, then pointed both at the human.
The krogan swung around to face the remaining Eclipse members, both now in a state of stunned disbelief. A stream of blood trickled from the wound in the krogan's face, which was already naturally healing. Considerably more blood, human blood, dripped from the krogan's maw. "I'm not warning you again," he growled. "Let the quarian go or regret it for the remaining 30 excruciatingly painful seconds of your miserable lives."
The asari's face contorted into a mask of fury. "Take her!" she shouted, then used her biotics to fling Suzra'Bonah at Dreed with all of the force she could manage. The quarian hurtled into the krogan, hitting him hard enough to stagger him. Dreed grabbed the quarian as she began to fall backwards and pulled her towards himself. He then spun around, turning his back to the mercenaries and using his body to shield the makeup artist. The human merc, perhaps deciding this was his best chance to take out the krogan, fired at Dreed, hitting him in the back. The krogan grunted in pain and his body sharply jerked but he remained standing.
The mercenary tried to swing his pistol back towards Vass, but before he could take aim, the STG agent fired a pair of shots from both of his guns. Though ambidextrous like all salarians, what little training Major Kirrahe had given Vass only involved using one pistol. The salarian aimed for the mercenary's chest but fired at his right hip instead. The first round missed entirely, the next two burned through the human's shield, while the fourth passed in and out of the mercenary's thigh.
The human cried out and clutched at his leg before crashing to the floor. Dreed let go of Suzra'Bonah, spinning around to face the mercenaries while keeping the quarian behind him. Seeing that the second human merc was now wounded, Dreed bolted forward and brought his foot down hard on the mercenary's thigh. As the Eclipse member writhed in pain, Dreed snatched his pistol away and began looking around for the asari mercenary.
The asari, unarmed and having used up her biotics to throw the quarian at Dreed, raced on foot for the restaurant's front door. She had evidently decided that capture by the Nos Astra police was now the best outcome she could hope for. She had almost made it to the door when Dreed fired a single shot that hit her in the upper back, causing her to drop dead.
"When I said, 'Let her go,' I didn't mean fling her at me hard enough to crack her suit open!" Dreed shouted to the now-deceased asari. "That kinda stuff is implied!" He looked down at the human who had been hit in the thigh and saw he had passed out from the pain of a krogan stomping on his wound. Dreed quickly glanced around the restaurant. "Is that all of them?" he asked aloud.
"Yes, umm, I think so," Vass replied, looking around and deciding they were safe for the moment.
The rookie agent glanced over at the asari's body and realized he felt no elation or satisfaction at her death. That was probably a good thing, he decided. Even though they had melded and she had poked through his memories, nothing had been exchanged. Ultimately, they remained strangers. He didn't even know her name, he realized. Better to focus on helping friends and allies, he thought. "Mr. Dreed, you were shot in the back. And in the face. From inside your mouth. Are, are you... okay?" Vass asked the krogan.
Dreed felt his right cheek, then reached over his shoulder to feel his back wound. "Not saying it doesn't hurt, kid, but it takes a lot more than that to kill a krogan," he grunted. "What about you, Suzra?"
The quarian, still trembling, stood up and stepped out from behind the krogan. "I'm ... not hurt. A suit seal ruptured when I crashed into Mr. Dreed, but the other seals automatically clamped down and the suit gave me an antibiotic injection," she said in-between gasps for air. "Keelah, thank you, both of you."
The krogan actor shrugged. "Yeah, well, couldn't let'em carry you off, could I? We still better get you to a - what's it called? Clean room? - pretty soon," Dreed remarked, his more low-key self re-emerging now that the fighting had passed. He turned to Vass. "So, you're really a STG agent, huh, kid? Don't tell me you're not, 'cause you took this guy down like a real pro, hitting him in one of the main human arteries," he said, pointing to the human who had been shot in the thigh. The mercenary was now lying limp inside a growing pool of blood. "No way this stupid pyjak is gonna make it," the krogan noted, casually poking the human with his foot. Dreed looked over at the merc whose hand he had bitten off, who was in a similar state, having bled out profusely. "Or the other one..."
Vass grimaced. While things could have been much, much worse - he and his friends were still alive. None of the civilians in the restaurant had apparently gotten hurt either - he had hoped that at least one of the Eclipse mercs would have survived long enough to divulge the identity of their confederate at 6th Dimension Vids. Getting involved in a shoot-out in a public restaurant in all likelihood meant his cover as a mere studio intern was blown as well. 'You need a plan, Solik. What's the best way to handle this?' he thought. He then made up his mind. 'If Tyruss Aklaysius thinks this krogan is worth trusting, then I can do that too.'
"Yes, I am with the Special Tasks Group. I'm on a secret mission that involves stopping these Eclipse mercs," he whispered to the krogan and the quarian. "I can't tell you anything further. But I could use your help to stay undercover, Mr. Dreed. Just let the Nos Astra police think you took out all three mercs on your own and don't let on that I was here."
The krogan grinned. "If it means screwing over the rest of this gang, yeah, I can do that," he replied. "Trying to steal this krogan's makeup artist has long-term consequences."
Suzra'Bonah managed a slight laugh at that. Dreed chuckled in response.
"Thanks again. I don't approve of this new look though," the makeup artist declared, noting the blood on Dreed's face and grabbing a table napkin and a glass of water. "Better get you cleaned up before the news crews arrive." The quarian began mopping the human blood off Dreed's face. The krogan stood still and let her work. "I won't tell anyone you're an agent either," the quarian told Vass as she began scrubbing Dreed's jaw. "But, keelah, what about all of the others here?" she asked, noting the restaurant's other customers. They were all staring at the trio. Many were still in a state of terror.
"Ehh, all they really saw was the kid helping me out," Dreed replied. "I'd be surprised if even three or four of them recall that one merc called him STG." The krogan actor motioned to Suzra'Bonah to pause, then turned around and began to address the other diners. "Alright, the excitement's over, folks. I'm certainly not gonna hurt any of you. I was just another person here having dinner like the rest of you, who then decided to do something about the, uhh, interruption. The city police will probably be here soon. Just wait for 'em and tell 'em the truth," he announced. While he spoke, he made a point of dropping the pistol he previously taken off the merc to the floor and kicking it away. Dreed then took a seat at a table and Suzra'Bonah resumed cleaning his face. The other diners let out a collective sigh of relief. Quiet murmuring began to fill the restaurant.
Through the restaurant's front windows Vass saw several police skycars land. He checked his omni-tool and saw that his cloaking device had sufficiently recharged. "I have to go," he told Dreed and Suzra'Bonah, then activated it and headed for the kitchen, exiting the building from the same alleyway entrance he had earlier used to get in.