New Thebes — Anhur

Oriana swung her fist at her asari opponent's lower chest. Her protruding thumb struck her target between her ribs. Had it been a real fight, she would have punched much harder —and so maybe caused a life-threatening injury—, but Monestria gasped nonetheless and held up an open hand before exploding in a coughing fit.

Lawson at once was concerned, fearing she had gone too far and applied too much force. "Mistress? Are you okay?"

The veteran Monestria nodded weakly before coughing again. She was rubbing a sore spot right below her left breast. "I'm—I'm fine… that was a fine blow."

"Actually…" Oriana fidgeted about uncomfortably. "I decided to try something new."

Her biotics teacher frowned. "That was the fourth of the Akban Five Elements. Much stronger than usual, but otherwise…"

"Well, yes, mistress, but, um… I've been, uh, practicing on a new idea."

Monestria arched an eyebrow. "Explain."

"I've, uh, been trying to… to enhance my attacks with focused biotic strength. That way I thought I could… well, I thought I could hit vital points harder."

The asari instructor blinked in surprise. That was extremely fine biotics control. "And you attempted that just now."

"Well, yes and no, mistress. If I had put all my weight behind it…"

Again a nod. "You've learned to compensate," she noted with a hint of sincere admiration in her voice.

Oriana bowed her understanding. Monestria had flatly told her that, while she had the potential to be a strong biotic, there were levels of power and mastery that she would never attain — if anything, because of her shorter lifespan.

But now, her asari instructor was thinking, this human apprentice had attempted a highly difficult feat, one that not everyone could master, and she had succeeded. Maybe she would never be a matriarch's equal in raw power, but in skill… "You're doing well," Monestria further commended her. "If you perfect this technique you will be a supremely dangerous hand-to-hand fighter."

"What should I do better, mistress?"

"To be honest, I don't know," she admitted. "I myself can't do what you just did, not with the same degree of control. You still have much to learn about biotics, but on this particular topic, I have nothing to teach you. Maybe it's time you started looking for another instructor."

Oriana was troubled by that. "But you've been great, mistress." She smiled at her. "A good teacher doesn't fear admitting they don't know something."

"To be fair, I said it was time to look for another teacher, not for a substitute," Monestria pointed out with a small grin, warmed by the compliment. "But I appreciate your words nonetheless."

Monestria's words were still echoing in Oriana's head as she got off her hovercar. She waved once at the driver and the guard on the front seat, and with long strides she walked into the campus of the New Thebes University.

As always, heads would turn to see her come and go, but no one approached her. It was a rare day when someone did. On top of being a successful student, Oriana was already a known name in the Anhur modeling scene, and the reasons were in plain view for the world to see — there always was a lot of spirit and vigor to her steps, her athletic and curvaceous frame moving with a unique combination of aplomb and grace.

And one of the consequences of that was that she had been stricken with something best described as attractiveness-induced isolation. Having an overzealous security detail arrayed 24-7 around her only helped scare even more people away — and her superhuman perception, a fact less well known to others, meant that it was next to impossible for a normal person to conceal their motivations when approaching her. Few men did, almost all of those being obnoxious and shameless players only interested in getting in her pants, no few women also approaching her with the same ideas. Which disgusted her.

The other kind of man that tried to talk to her was almost always quaking with fear and anxiety, guys lacking in confidence and desperate for a chance to get closer to her — with the same intent as the player. Those she hated even more.

The exceptions to this depressing routine were now entering view. "Good morning, Ettore."

"Hey, Oriana." Ettore Falcone was as Italian in ancestry as his name hinted — but he was anything like the typical Italian male: tall, gaunt and very slim. His brown bespectacled eyes —an anachronism in times of near-miraculous medicine—, now focused on the tablet computer on his hands, concealed a ferociously sharp mind driven by an equally determined spirit.

Lawson grinned. "I wonder if I'll ever arrive to see you doing something other than reading or writing."

"You wouldn't like him if he did." Mariana Abramowsky was her one close friend anywhere. A brunette like Oriana, but shorter and skinnier than her, she had known Lawson ever since the latter's arrival in Anhur almost ten years back. As time passed and Oriana's schedule had become increasingly busy, the time they could share had consequently diminished, and only grown ever more precious.

Oriana rolled her eyes. "You got a fixation with that idea."

Mariana smirked. "Oh, really? That blush tells me something else."

"Lay off, would you please?" She sat next to her friends, annoyed at having been thrown off balance, and let off a long-drawn, eyes-closed sigh.

The smile vanished off Abramowsky's face. "That's not like you. What's going on?"

"I'm a bit stressed," Lawson breathed. Monestria's words heralded yet another change in her complicated routine. Another person that would walk into her life and eat into her already severely depleted reserves of free time.

"If you shared something else maybe we could help you out," Ettore said in a slow voice, his eyes still focused on the contents of his tablet.

Oriana shook her head once. "I'm sorry, guys. Unless you can somehow make my day six hours longer, It's not something you can help me with." She eyed Falcone, her annoyance slightly intensifying over his obstinate focus on his studies, then leaned over to look at his tablet. "You're going again over those things professor Sanabria said yesterday?"

Only now Falcone lifted his eyes off the tablet. He had but the briefest moment to admire Oriana's cleavage, now very close to his face, before looking into her eyes and answering in stride: "Well… I just don't get it. I've looked all over this. I'm certain about one thing — it's not my figures that are wrong. I've made a mistake somewhere else in my analysis but I don't see where. Yet."

His passing ogle was just the right spark to set off a stressed woman, but oddly enough, it had the opposite effect on Oriana, and the weirdness of that actually stopped her train of thought cold.

Well, it's not like I gave him much of a choice, did I… Lawson was not one to actively flaunt her assets, but neither was she demure. Her tight black skirt and the neckline on her white blouse left little to the imagination.

"You will. It's going to be a rare day when you give up before finding an answer." And that was another thing she liked about him.

Mariana looked at them with an amused smile. "Have you considered that he's just the thing you need now?"

Another Lawson watched the scene unfold, only from an apartment half a kilometer away. There was a slight frown etched on Miranda's forehead. She had had mixed reactions the first time she had seen her sister socializing with her friend and her crush, and she was having mixed feelings again now.

She took a sip of water from a bottle and watched Oriana and her crew exchange jokes and comments before continuing her surveillance, if only to distract that nagging voice that told her this was going to be harder than she had expected. Not because of the security measures; tapping into the public security systems —avoiding both the government firewalls and the alarm software covertly installed by Oriana's security detail to detect such maneuvers— had allowed her to get positive locks on all the members of her detail, including the ones cloaked.

No, it was going to be her sister herself that complicated things. What if she refused to go because of Ettore and Mariana? It was plain as day that Oriana greatly liked the gaunt youth. Yesterday, as in every day where she had not seen her meeting with her friends, she had been inclined to think that the pressures of her highly controlled life would cause her to lash out; but today, as in every day when Oriana met Ettore and Mariana, her judgment told her otherwise.

That infuriating voice now was accusing her of falling anyway into the trap of measuring her sister with the same standards applied to her. Someone with no friends or paramours could hardly judge the importance of those things in the same way as someone who had those.

Whatever. Today all the speculation would come to a head. Thane Krios was proceeding with his infiltration of the campus and he would signal her—

"Checkpoint Romeo." —any time now.

"Roger." They had used the data built after weeks of surveillance to develop a series of routes to approach their target, each one with its particular set of checkpoints. Romeo was at the roof of the campus, the start of Route Five. She did not know how Thane would get there, but the drell had insisted on leaving the particulars to him. He had delivered.

The Citadel

The last time Garrus had been on the Citadel still burned brightly in his memory. His mind relived the scenes as he walked out of the customs checkpoint and entered the chaotic walkways leading to Silversun Strip, going through all the motions out of a habit grown from over a hundred visits while nostalgia and melancholia gripped him.

He had never seen the Citadel like on that day. Hierarch Paratus' last proposal before renouncing to his councillorship had been to honor the sacrifice of Shepard and Reyes, and as a result, every street and walkway on which the funeral procession had taken place had been alternatively decorated in black or white, owing to the two most commonly held customs among the many human ethnic groups.

The enormity of Shepard's figure once again now presented itself before him, as it had done that day, and once again had he found himself wishing he had known the feisty Aaliyah better, wishing he had been more than a reliable operative that competed with others like him for her attention and time.

The tiny woman had been the Compact. Sheer force of personality and an absolute commitment to her mission had made it work. Before her, humans had been the most reviled species in the galaxy after the batarians and the quarians. But she had gone the distance, and brought together two enemies before Saren's machinations had borne fruit and war had broken out between the Alliance and the Citadel.

And now, her legacy was in view. Ahead of him had disembarked a group of omnics. This still elicited curious glances and more than one fearful look, but nothing else. The whole galaxy knew that their support had helped contain Sovereign's onslaught and had prevented his assault from becoming a bloodbath with a body count in the millions.

In fact, the omnics themselves were the reason for his visit. At the Silversun Strip transit station, he called a cab that took him to the Wards, and then another to the Presidium. Once there he walked to the diplomatic district.

He could recall at will how it had been. The terrible and eternal minutes aboard their dropship, the desperate fighting at the gates of the Alliance embassy, the dread of traversing the corridors to the Rotunda…

…the relief after the defeat of Saren and Sovereign…

…and the grief that had come with the realization of the cost of their victory.

The monument in front of him only intensified that. Twin statues of Shepard and Reyes stood side to side. Aaliyah's likeness had been sculpted with an arm outstretched as if she was readying a biotic attack, whereas Gabriel's brandished a Locust submachine gun.

The assassin's sacrifice had earned him in death the redemption he had sought in life, but the homage was no consolation for Garrus. It only made the void inside of him deeper.

A familiar voice brought him out of his reverie: "Vakarian?"

Garrus turned around and blinked twice: "Executor Pallin?"

His former superior smiled and nodded. He was dressed and loaded for bear, like a dozen other turian troopers manning the main security checkpoint to the embassies. "I thought it was you. You look different from your C-Sec days."

That elicited the turian equivalent of a frown. "How so?"

"You were so naive and eager back then."

The frown changed into an annoyed scowl. He again looked at the statues. "Years and experience beat that out of you. As you know."

Pallin bowed his head in agreement. "Your exploits in the Compact are famous here. The guys here were proud of you. Still are," he emphasized. The guards overheard the comment and respectfully bowed their heads in agreement. "I'd like to know why you left, but I suppose you're here for your meeting."

Another surprised blink. "I'm not. I was actually coming to request an audience…"

"With whom?"

"Zenyatta, the Shambali leader. I understand he's visiting."

Another grin. "The Shambali are already expecting you. Come in," he said, gesturing at his men to let him through. "And after you're done, come over for a chat. We'll be waiting."

It was impossible to refuse him. "I will. Thanks."

He walked into the cul-de-sac that served as the main square for the embassies of those nations without a Council seat. The Alliance delegation was by far the largest there, owing to their significantly boosted political power. The Shambali, while members of the Alliance themselves, had their own separate compound, and it was always the object of curiosity for newcomers — after centuries of preaching against sentient AIs, finally one kind had earned some degree of acceptance there.

Omnics were diverse. The first models Garrus had seen at Pokhara had been almost comical in appearance, not too different from the manikins used by clothing stores to advertise their wares; Tekhartha Zenyatta himself, one of their most relevant figures and de facto leader of the Shambali, still looked like that. But modern omnics came in a dizzying gamut of shapes and sizes, some featuring faces as capable of expression as that of a human, some not even having an anthropoid shape. Most of the personnel and diplomats attached to the Shambali compound, however, roughly resembled Zenyatta.

It was one of these manikin-looking synthetics that first recognized him and walked towards him. It looked slightly feminine in shape, more curvaceous and slender than a human male would be. "Garrus Vakarian," the android greeted him warmly with a womanly voice. "You are being expected. Would you kindly follow after me?"

The turian veteran nodded his thanks. "Lead the way." He then gave this omnic a closer look. "Have we met before?"

"Probably you've seen me somewhere. My name is Ororo."

Garrus had to shake his head. "Sorry. My bad."

"No harm done. Actually, our paths have crossed, after a fashion. I was aboard the cruiser London back on the First Contact War."

Vakarian recognized the name: "That was Shepard's ship."

"She was a junior officer back then. I was under the command of a colleague of hers, lieutenant Minovsky."

A disagreeable feeling of guilt invaded him. Lieutenant Minovsky had been killed by turian boarders during a desperate battle on the mess hall of the ship. "That wasn't our brightest moment."

"It's in the past," Ororo replied serenely. "Besides, if I may add, the lessons learned were worth the price."

Garrus wanted to believe that, but he was not so sure. The fact that he was there not as the Compact agent he had been, but on his own instead, told him otherwise.

Ororo stopped in front of a simple, unmarked door, one of several in a corridor, where she took her leave. Garrus knocked discreetly and the door slid sideways. He had half-expected to see a room adorned in the fashion of a temple or something like that, but the sole notes of color on an otherwise ordinary chamber were a golden statuette of a human monk kneeling and gesturing with his hands —that was a… an image of Buddha, if he recalled correctly—, some handcrafted pillows, and a very old-looking hand woven carpet.

"Peace be upon you, Garrus Vakarian." Zenyatta regarded him warmly. "Please, be seated."

The turian veteran looked at the omnic monk. He was the exact same Zenyatta he had first seen on a screen prior to meeting him live on the old, clandestine asteroid base of Erinyes the Compact had operated before earning the recognition of the Council — down to the same simple brown pants and sandals, and the same nine metal spheres that orbited around him. He hovered some fifteen centimeters over the carpet, his legs folded in a kneeling position, not unlike that of the golden statuette.

Upon first meeting Zenyatta, Garrus' initial impression had only reinforced his negative stereotypes of omnics — only for those impressions and stereotypes to be proved abysmally wrong shortly afterward. Everyone had held their breaths upon his first encounter with the quarian members of the Compact, waiting to see how they would react to him, and the outcome had been nothing short of awe-inspiring. Zenyatta's wise use of parables and words had won him the respect of the now-cyborg Shilu'Vael, her mother Jaenna'Gisal, and Tali'Zorah nar Rayya.

"Thanks for receiving me," he replied almost reverentially. He reached for some pillows, then sat opposite him on the carpet. "How did you know I was coming?"

"Your name is legend," was the benign answer. "And given how recent events have unfolded, I surmised you had come to the Citadel to talk to me."

"Then you know why I'm here."

"I do. You come to me in search of insights on Shio'Leth vas Novarra." Garrus was at once apprehensive, but Zenyatta reassured him: "Fear not. Our mission here is secure. My fellow Shambali have endeavored to make it so."

Vakarian had no choice but to accept that. "You have knowledge of this?"

"The quarian sought us. He sent his last missive to us from Ferris Fields, a few days before the colonists vanished."

Fantastic luck. "So he's gone."

"I have motives to believe he is not. He wanted to converse with me, as do you. He claimed to have found an artifact in geth territory. When he learned of our visit to the Perseus Veil, he wanted me to request the geth granted him safe passage."

Questions blazed in his mind at once. A geth artifact? A quarian wanting to ask the geth to let him go there—where is 'there'? What kind of artifact—? He backpedaled mentally and organized his thoughts: "What kind of artifact did he find?"

"That, regrettably, I know not. Shio'Leth spoke in meandrous ways. He let on that a hostile party was hounding his steps."

Garrus curbed his unease. "I should tell you my side of the story. A Sagirus Eight operative told me this quarian saw a ship that looked like a badly damaged Reaper."

Zenyatta bowed his head. The metal spheres orbiting him spun quickly around him twice before he spoke. "The elusive Reaper from our old colony at Pokhara."

"I believe as much," Garrus concurred. "This operative told me of other incidents. Ships disappearing, or found adrift in space, their crews gone. And everything is happening around the Omega 4 relay."

The omnic sage still did not raise his head. "I can only hope no calamity has befallen our quarian acquaintance."

I agree, Vakarian thought gruffly, and to think I just arrived from there. If I had gotten out a message instead of coming all the way here… "If only we had learned sooner about what each other knows."

Zenyatta raised his eyes to gaze contemplatively at the spheres circling around his head. "Many distinct threads of fate are now being woven across the stars. We are but actors in only one. There is much happening beyond what our eyes can see, and many eyes are watching… Whatever it is that Shio'Leth has found, I believe it is in everyone's best interest that it remains known to few."

That did not suffice to put Garrus to ease. "Normally I believe in need-to-know," he replied, his cool words belying his restlessness, "but this is an occasion when my gut tells me that if we don't move fast, we won't get a chance later on."

The omnic sage bowed his agreement. "You speak truly." He raised an open palm, and glyphs glowed briefly on one of the spheres. At once Vakarian's omni-tool dinged. "Please read."

Zenyatta had just forwarded him the extent of his correspondence with Shio'Leth. To call the quarian starry-eyed would probably not do him justice, at least by the tone of his first few messages. Oddly enough, he mentioned nothing to Zenyatta about a damaged Reaper; he gushed about something he had but merely glimpsed and he needed his help to corroborate, all the time waxing about how it could help bring peace between quarians and geth, as it had done between the Citadel and the Alliance.

Then his tone had abruptly changed. Something had scared him out of his wits. He should never have gone 'there', he should never have seen 'that', now 'they' knew and were onto him, dogging his steps… always ghost contacts on his ladar, his sensors occasionally weirding out or going haywire, strange things happening near whatever port he approached…

His correspondence had ceased a week hence.

"I hope whatever was shadowing him didn't get to him."

"So do I," the omnic concurred. "I have people looking into this on my behalf as we speak. You will probably want to join forces with them."

"Yes," Garrus said on the spot. "Where should I go?"

Again Zenyatta raised a hand and glowing glyphs appeared on his spheres. "You will come across them on the Sigurd's Cluster relays. They will approach you."

Omega Nebula

Zaeed Massani arched his burn-scarred eyebrows. "Let me get this straight. You want to infiltrate the Logasiri slaver rings? You, of all people?"

Neither Tela Vasir nor Shilyna T'Perro were impressed. "Sombra said you know the right people."

Sombra, of course, knew a lot more than just that. Rana Thanoptis was proving elusive, but nonetheless the hacker had provided T'Perro and Vasir with summaries of her correspondence. Heavily redacted summaries, but useful still: Thanoptis had gotten involved into the slave trade and was arranging the delivery of shipments to an unknown party via the infamous batarian slaver rings of Logasiri. That was abhorrent in and of itself, but the truly disturbing fact was that the shipments had consisted entirely of humans — not their synthetic flunkies, no other sapient race. Just humans.

And the first shipments had been delivered shortly before the beginning of the incidents around the Omega 4 relay — before Ferris Fields and Minamo.

The weathered mercenary knew better than to ask two of the most lethally dangerous people in the galaxy whether they were right in their heads. "You're damn right I know the right people," he replied roughly instead, "but I think you don't know what you're asking of me."

"Oh, I do," was T'Perro's equally sharp retort. "We want you to burn your bridges and ruin your rep with the underworld, so we can sniff the insides of a community we would rather burn to the ground." And we will, eventually, she thought but did not say. We have bigger fish to fry now.

Massani's eyes narrowed. "Thanks for putting it so clearly, blueskin," he sneered. "Now, how are you going to pay me?"

"You'd be doing us a favor. Everyone needs friends, and allies. You know who I'm working for, right?" Vasir asked rhetorically.

"You'd be owing me big fucking time. Maybe your boss can offer something worth this kind of 'favor', but getting her to pay up… And there's the small matter of working for a snake that backstabbed both the Council and the Shadow Broker. And you?" he glared at T'Perro, then snorted. "I don't think you can get the Council to meet my price."

Shilyna had to take that at face value. It was accurate, if uncouth. She was not going to get him to do what she wanted if she did not play hardball too. "Tell you what. You want the Blue Suns back, don't you?"

An evil grin. "I want Vido's head on a silver fucking platter. And I'll get it."

"Without help from the cops, you mean."

"I can't have my crew back if they think I went snitch on them, dontcha think?"

"Without direct help, that is," Vasir further clarified T'Perro's comment. "Just killing Vido won't get you 'your crew' back. You'll also have to remove those who enabled his coup. That's a tall order, even for you," she noted, her nonchalant tone turning a spot-on observation into an elegant insult. "That's the help we can offer. We help you rebuild strength within your old organization and set up the stage so that when the time comes you can remove them all at once."

That conversation had taken place three days hence. Now T'Perro and Vasir were being led straight into the lion's den by a contact Zaeed had set up for them — one 'Fabius Varro', a turian that occasionally had done business with these particular slavers.

"Are you out of your minds?!" 'Varro' had bellowed. "When they find out what you're doing there — you know what Silparon did?!"

"We'll manage it," T'Perro had replied dismissively. "They won't dare to make a living legend disappear."

The turian had twisted his face in disbelief. "You really are out of your minds. You don't know what those people are capable of."

The ancient Spectre had smirked dangerously. "Oh well. If I'm wrong, it will be a perfect opportunity to do some house cleaning."

Soon they would see whether their gambit paid off. In a few moments Varro's ship would dock on one of the space stations orbiting Logasiri. A Stingray corvette had escorted them on their final approach and was now keeping a watchful eye on their freighter from the port side.

Their ship settled on the landing pad with a series of hisses and creaks. Varro sighed, then looked stonily at his guests. "Alright, we're here. You're my bodyguards here, you understand? Let me do the asking." Both asari accepted that with nods.

The cargo bay doors were already open when they walked down the boarding ramp. A batarian loadmaster was supervising the unloading of the cargo pallets with a profusion of curses and swears at the dock workers.

"Got yourself better guards this time, Varro?" the batarian asked roughly in the way of greeting. "There's a change to your storage fee. 1,200 credits."

"What?" the turian glared angrily at the loadmaster. "Why?"

A vague gesture at the pallets. "You have a lot of food here. There won't be any new mouths to feed for the next week at least. You don't want all of that tossed out into space until you can sell it, right?"

"But the shipments due tomorrow and—"

"They won't be coming. Tarak's and Vorhess' ships were found adrift and empty. Ghorek is throwing a fit about it right now." A shrug. "You can pay or not?"

T'Perro and Vasir kept their faces inexpressive as the hired muscle they were supposed to be, and so did not glance at each other. But the same thought went through their heads: more kidnapped crews.

In the meantime, Varro resigned himself. He took the datapad off the loadmaster's hands and stabbed his thumb on it. "Here. Where's Ghorek?"

A dour nod. "At the auction house. I'd steer clear if I were you."

Varro started walking away, his 'bodyguards' in tow. "I have to save my business. I can't wait for Ghorek to be in the mood for a talk."

Another shrug. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

The auction house was a noisy, dirty and chaotic place, and it doubled as the main forum where people got up to speed with the latest news — now more so than usual. There were few stocks up for auction today, the hall crowded instead with 'businessmen' and their guards. Some were visibly angry, others as obviously worried, and the token few with available merchandise were actually thrilled with the current state of affairs.

T'Perro and Vasir committed every face they saw to memory, and kept their ears open for rumors, picking up some further details as Varro navigated the crowd. Tarak and Vorhess had contacts in the Blue Suns, and they had started using some of their ships to move their abhorrent stocks around. Apparently this had come back to bite them in the rear big time — their ships had been found adrift in space on a little traveled trade lane in Sahrabarik, both slavers gone along with their crews and their merchandise.

The batarian called Ghorek was in a VIP area of sorts, his lounge raised and separate from the common area. He had an irritated look to his face as he conferred with a salarian holding a datapad, clearly a bookkeeper of sorts. He did not turn around to greet the turian as he climbed the stairs to his lounge. "Come back in two days, Varro," he said dourly. "I don't have time or money for you now."

The turian received that with a grunt. "You'd better. I've already added the extra storage fees to your bill."

"I'll pay you what we agreed last week, plus a late fee as per our contract — and not another credit," was the seething answer. "Unless you want to become part of the stock."

Varro was certainly despicable for trading with slavers, but he was neither a coward, nor a dullard. "Then when I go back to Omega I'll say that Ghorek is a scammer who dumps his losses on his suppliers. That's going to do wonders for your cred."

The batarian was trapped, and he knew it. "Half the storage fee. You don't want me to go broke if you hope to continue doing business here."

It was not ideal, but it was fair. "I can live with that," Varro agreed.

"Good," Ghorek breathed. "Now tell me what's the news from Aria."

"She's pissed," Varro said simply. "Lots of ships going missing. Colonies, too."

"Heard about Minamo."

"Ferris Fields, too."

A grunt. "This is bad for the business." He turned around, and noticed Varro's guards. He frowned and took a step closer: "Hold on a minute here—"

Vasir did not give him a chance. A striking viper would not have been anywhere near as fast as she darted forward and stabbed for his windpipe with two outstretched fingers. The impact paralyzed the batarian, who gulped for air and struggled to make his voice work to raise the alarm. Henchmen sitting and standing all around them reached for their guns, but T'Perro simply raised a clenched fist wreathed in blue flames and everyone froze in their tracks.

"So, Ghorek Chazzak, we meet again. How long has it been? Ten years, eleven years?" Shilyna smiled sneeringly. "You know who I am. You know what's gonna happen if anyone pulls out a gun."

The slaver was no fool. After a few further seconds he composed himself and raised an open hand slowly. His guards around understood and stood in place. Vasir released him then.

Ghorek glared angrily at T'Perro. "You must be mad to come here."

"Few things would make me happier than killing you and wiping the floor with your associates here," Shilyna admitted readily, "but we're all making concessions today."

"We're looking into the disappearing ships issue," Vasir added quietly.

The batarian smirked a hate-filled grin. "It pleases me to say I can't help you."

"You aren't interested in hearing what we know? Fine then." The ancient Spectre shrugged. "I guess we'll have to figure it out from your pieces."

"You can't hope to win against all of us." His voice was steady, but Ghorek was not so sure. He had personally experienced a crushing defeat at the hands of T'Perro years back, and knew how deadly the Spectre was.

"No, maybe not. But I'm old and cranky. And, Goddess spare me, I'm so tired of this chase. You're only alive because I can save a few hours cooperating with you."

Ghorek glanced briefly at the pale Varro and realized the turian had been duped into bringing the Spectres along. "Alright, I'll bite," he accepted.

"Does the name 'Rana Thanoptis' ring any bells?" Vasir asked.

Recognition flashed in the batarian's eyes. "She had a contract going with Tarak," he recalled. "He had gotten an order for humans. A big one, and only humans. Strange."

Neither T'Perro nor Vasir exteriorized any reactions. "And Nyxeris?" the former Spectre inquired.

This time the batarian shook his head. "No, that one's new to me."

"We heard you found his ship."

"His goons found it. We only got word here six hours ago. It's an empty wreck now."

"What can you tell us about Thanoptis' contract with him?" T'Perro asked next.

"She placed an order, offered to pay twenty percent more than market value for every healthy human delivered to her. Tarak was supposed to deliver the shipments to some coordinates near Omega. He had already made three deliveries, with two more to go." He reached carefully for his omni-tool and tapped a few commands, sending this data over to her. "This is all we know about it. Now, your part of the deal. What do you know?"

T'Perro briefly entertained the idea of lying to her enemy, but decided against it. "Someone's put out contract hits on key personnel of the Compact," she answered truthfully. "This Nyxeris she mentioned arranged for one hit. We traced it back to Rana Thanoptis. And now you just told us she's buying humans when two entire human colonies vanish without a trace."

Ghorek hated the Spectre, but not to the point that it clouded his judgment. He had a moment to feel ice in his marrow when he realized he had been brushed by something vastly more dangerous than his usual line of business. "You say she's involved in the ship hijackings too? She made Tarak disappear too?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't be here," was the dry answer.

The batarian tilted his head slightly and stared quizzically for a moment, then understood. "You got bigger problems." Bigger than our business, that is.

"Don't go thinking you'll get more freebies."

New Thebes — Anhur

"You plan on staying here much longer?" Abramowsky asked Oriana.

"I want to talk to Professor Welz," Lawson replied. "I've asked him to text me when he's available. He should be coming any time now."

Falcone stood and stretched. "I need to get some fresh air… how long's it going to take?"

"It shouldn't be more than 15 minutes. You guys go on, I'll catch up with you later."

Mariana and Ettore exchanged glances, then the girl shrugged. "Alright. We'll go to the Green Damsels and wait for you there. I want some pastry."

Lawson grinned. "Someone who eats so many sweets shouldn't be so thin."

"Some of us are born lucky," her best friend smirked smugly. "And you're not one to complain either."

"I work out and train nine days a week, fourteen months a year. I have every right to bitch and complain. Now go. Ettore, can I trust you to make sure there'll be any apple pie left for me?"

"I can make no promises," the Italian excused himself. "But I will try."

"Thanks a bunch," Oriana said morosely. Her friends laughed and walked away.

For a few minutes she focused on collating the latest data for her research, information she had collected from small colonies now flourishing on the Attican Traverse. When she had begun work on her thesis she had not really expected to break any new ground, but environmental engineering was still a relatively new field of study, and the sheer variety of worlds now accessible to humanity meant that, more often than not, the hallmark of a good colonist was her creativity to come up with answers to problems no other human being had yet faced.

Some things were simply a matter of proper gene editing. To paraphrase one fictitious Prokhor Zakharov, genomes were not blueprints for features, there was no gene for an elephant's trunk that they could simply splice into a bird to get birds with trunks. Genes codified proteins, and in this fashion wheat could be made to prosper on hostile soil, or to produce certain nutrients and enzymes.

But seeding plant life was but one aspect of environmental engineering. It was not just plants that had to be implanted on alien worlds if they were to be terraformed. The microorganisms that coexisted symbiotically with a plant had to be introduced too, and so had to be the insects and animals that contributed to pollination and spread.

As she systematized the problems and challenges of terraforming, a novel idea had started taking shape. Settling a new kind of planet meant careful tuning of the supporting ecosystem that needed to be introduced if humanity was ever going to walk freely on said planet — without the need for environmental suits or shielded domes, that was. Such initiative was an expensive and time-consuming ordeal, an approach only available to wealthy enterprises. Instead, she wanted to come up with a self-adjusting solution, and so she had focused her attention on the most resilient forms of life humans had come across ever since founding their first colony outside Earth, looking for underlying patterns. Lichens had turned out to be a kind of life form that flourished pretty much anywhere, and a prime target for her research. What if, she had wondered, she could come up with an implantable ecosystem, a combination of microbial and animal life, whose foundation was a lichen that needed no external adjustment to thrive?

To say that it was a monstrously complex challenge did not do it justice, and her professors had not been skeptical as much as they had been astounded by the scope of the task she had set herself to. She had been cautioned not to dream too big, but it was too late to stop now, even more so now that her research was starting to bear fruit.

She had thus compiled and collated data from two colonies when she realized that half an hour had passed since Mariana and Ettore had left. In annoyance, she lifted her eyes off her tablet computer, tapped her omni-tool and—

Mariana forgot her tablet? Why didn't she message me about it?

As she reached to pick it up from the desk, the tablet computer lit up. Simultaneously, the screen depicting the graphs and data she had been working on vanished.

She was less annoyed or concerned than perplexed by this development, but she was well and truly surprised when the following message appeared on her own screen:

Hello, Oriana. Your friend did not forget her tablet. It was stolen and subtly modified so this message would reach you.

This might sound suspicious to you, and it's understandable. If you do not want to hear the rest of this message, put the tablet down now. Nobody will hear about this, neither your guards nor Mariana.

It was, indeed, mightily suspicious, but Oriana picked up a few hints. It was not their friends, unless it was an elaborate prank on their part — but neither Mariana nor Ettore spoke using these words, much less typed like that. And it was not anyone involved with her retinue of guards either.

Curiosity got the better of her, but she was careful not to appear shocked. Clearly someone was watching her, someone other than Selina's guards. She did not fear for her safety, for they always were around her or near her. If anything, she did not want them forcibly extracting her from college grounds.

I've been watching you for a time now. I know you've been leading a secluded life and that you chafe under all the restrictions placed upon you. I also know that occasionally you think of escaping your current life.

I can make that happen.

You need not answer now. But before going on further, knowing if you at least are interested in entertaining the idea is necessary. Run one of your hands through your hair if you do.

Miranda's eyes were glued on the screen.

Her sister was staring at her tablet, rereading the message again and again.

…

…

Finally, after what amounted to an eternity, she…

…ran her right hand through her hair.

Thanks for your understanding. I please ask that you are patient and discrete. If Selina catches a whiff of this you will be taken away.

I promise to explain more later.

Love, your sister.

Oriana stared at the screen for another ten seconds.

If this was indeed a prank, it was a creative one. Or a cheap cliché. Or both.

Then her omni-tool rang: "Ori? My tablet should be around there but I can't raise it, maybe I forgot to recharge it? Would you care to look around?"

She tapped her omni-tool to answer: "Yeah, I have it here." She looked back at her own: the message had vanished. She did not allow the surprise to disrupt her and continued smoothly: "I'll give it to you when I get there."

"Oh, thank you! I'll save another slice of apple pie for you. What's taking so long?"

"I don't know. Professor Welz still hasn't texted me—" her omni-tool rang again as she spoke "—oh, there he is. I suppose I'll be there in twenty minutes or so."

Author's note: again, a huge kudos for brokenLifeCycle for setting aside some time to proofread my text.

Now, I guess I ought to acknowledge this chapter's shout-outs:
- Academician Prokhor Zakharov is the leader of the University of Planet on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. If you haven't yet played it, DO IT.
- The 'Green Damsels' are based on a monumentally good pastry shop I had the immense fortune of visiting in München, Fräulein Grüneis. If by, per chance, you live around, go to the English Gardens and buy yourself a slice of apple pie. And say hi.