Notice: Over the next few weeks I'll be posting the chapters from the sequel here to fold everything into a single story.
An apology in advance for all the email warnings you're going to get. Apparently there's no way to have this done quietly.
Nos Astra — Illium
Liara's left leg still ached, but urgency whispered that she could not wait for that to go away. I've let myself fall too far already, she reproached herself forcefully. There were still a few straps to tighten and clasps to lock… there. The armor still fit her as snugly as when she had first donned it as a member of the Compact. And it was lightweight to boot. A properly fitting overcoat, some decent glasses, and it would take a discerning eye to notice it.
Quickly she reviewed her inventory. The sidearm once wielded by her attacker was an illegal copy of an Alliance M-11 Suppressor pistol. That in itself posed an enigma. The procedures and standards of Alliance equipment differed enough from their Citadel equivalents as to be considered alien. Furthermore, the human-omnic Alliance, by its very nature, made heavy use of AI on everything ranging from astrogation to manufacturing processes — brute forcing a fabricator into ignoring FRM restrictions for Alliance gear was a tall order. Why would anyone go to such an extent when Alliance ballistics technology was widely recognized to be behind the Citadel's was lost on her.
She still had roughly a dozen shots' worth of tissue reconstituting nanites and about as much medi-gel from her emergency first aid kit. She did not fear Alliance medical tech; Anika Ziegler had saved her life twice using it. She was slightly concerned about port authorities finding that gear on her, though. While not illegal given her credentials and history, it would bring unwanted attention her way, something to avoid even more than usual right now.
She also had cash in the form of chits redeemable at any currency trader that accepted Citadel credits, but she feared it was a bit on the lean side if she was to leave Illium and make it to Alliance space. The simple solution would be just to go to the bank, but Nyxeris had had access to just about everything, up to and including the passcodes to use her bank accounts and a power of attorney enabling her to tend to her legal matters in her stead. She had immediately revoked those, fearing her former secretary would seize the opportunity to pilfer her assets, but Nyxeris had not. Why didn't she do it?
If she was an accessory to the attack then… what would I do in her stead?
Vanish. Go off the grid.
Emptying my accounts would only leave a trail for me to follow. No, she doesn't need my money, she already has what she needs to disappear.
Bitterness gripped her momentarily, but it did not last long. Getting payback would be nice and all, but what she really wanted was to know who had arranged for this attack, and why.
Sombra surely would know, or would know how to find out… if she hasn't contacted me yet, it's dangerous for her to do so…
In one of their conversations, the hacker had told Shepard her foremost competitor and rival was none other than the Shadow Broker, and if Sombra's network and information sources were so pervasive she surely knew of the attack against her. If she knew, then she was not contacting her because her rival was involved and the Broker's influence in Illium was greater than Sombra's.
She shook her head to herself. It was inviting to believe that, but she did not have a single bit of solid data. That needed fixing, but first she had to follow the example of her traitorous secretary and vanish.
She closed the door to her flat behind her and walked to the elevators. Both of them were in use and… would stop right at her floor. She continued walking and opened the door to the stairwell, and stopped for a moment to listen. There were people climbing up the stairs, some six or seven flights below. As silently as she could, she walked down two floors, left the stairwell, and called an elevator then. It arrived quickly, and to her relief, empty.
The elevator took her to the first floor. There, she went again into the stairwell. Empty again. She walked down the stairs to the entrance level, and carefully looked around. Nobody.
Expecting to be spotted any time now, she walked into the entrance lobby. Through the windows she saw two patrol cars. A single officer was next to them.
It could not be helped. The building had one other exit on the vehicle bay, where her own car was. Surely it was being watched as well. Thus, she simply walked out through the front door, knowing she would attract the attention of the police officer, but fortune smiled on her: the officer was apparently busy looking at something on her data pad and did not notice her.
The next step was easy enough. She tapped her omni-tool and called a rental car. It arrived quickly, and Liara could not help but groan inwardly: the vehicle was a bright cherry red in color. Not the most discrete there was.
It can't be helped. She hopped in and—
"Miss?" a voice called out. Liara cursed to herself.
"Yes?" she turned around.
The police officer approached. "Are you Liara T'Soni?"
It can't be helped. "Yes. What is it?"
"An incident was reported in this building. A call specifically mentioned it happened in your flat." The officer frowned and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What can you tell me about it?"
A sequence of events sprang unbidden to Liara's mind. Her flat was almost completely soundproofed, so no one could have heard the grenade exploding. Especially since most of the neighboring flats were vacated at the time being, with the closest resident living two stories over her. Who would know of the attack then? Nyxeris, who else? And she had placed a call to make sure the police knew of the attack…
…and if they took her into custody, they would take her to the local precinct on a simple patrol car. Which, given how Illium was rowdier than most asari worlds, was armed and tougher than most.
But it would be an easy target for a gunship, of which there were plenty in mercenary employ.
Whoever had attacked was watching…?
She took off her glasses. "Officer, someone made an attempt on my life in my flat," she answered truthfully. "My own secretary was involved in the attack. I don't know where she went, but I know her. Nyxeris is thorough. She probably had a backup plan in case the first attempt failed."
The suspicion on the officer's face faded away slowly. An examining look. "You don't seem injured."
"You know who I am, and my past affiliations. I can defend myself. But I'm not safe here. If I had planned the attack, I would have left behind a watcher to spot where I go and try again when I'm most vulnerable."
"Then you should come with us." She tapped her omni-tool—
"Wait!" she interrupted her. "Officer, you will please excuse me for fearing that the police are infiltrated." In fright she realized as she spoke that this very policewoman could be an agent colluding with the party that had attacked her or with some other unsavory party, but the die had already been cast. "The less people know where I am, the better. If you fear for my safety or you suspect me, come with me and help me lay low. You can take me later into the precinct if you wish, but for now let's go on our own. Please."
Liara saw the face harden first. Then the officer rolled her eyes, bit her lips for an instant, then looked piercingly at her: "You don't stray out of sight."
"I need a friendly face now. Of course I won't."
A curt nod. "Okay then. Call me Dara."
T'Soni tried not to make her relief too evident. She still did not know whether she could trust this 'Dara'. "Thank you. We should get going."
"My patrol car is over here—"
Liara shook her head. "Not discrete enough." She walked instead towards the red car.
Dara snorted. "That's not much better."
"It's not a patrol car. Come on." She hopped into the driver's seat.
Dara sat next to her. "So what now?"
"We get to the closest transit hub, and change cars."
The officer's brow knotted briefly, then she understood. "Smart."
"Don't say it just yet. I'm sure we're being watched." The car took off and joined one of the busy skylanes. "Where's the closest transit hub?"
Dara tapped her omni-tool to bring up a map. "Tarsida station."
Part of the windshield to Liara's right lit up showing a partial map of Nos Astra. The Tarsida transit hub was three kilometers away. She bowed her agreement and focused on driving, her eyes jumping alternately between the rearview mirrors and the cameras looking over and below their car. She switched lanes three times and turned twice seemingly at random, all the time intently looking for tails—
"We're being followed."
Dara looked behind her shoulder. "Who?"
"The green car behind the one trailing us now."
The officer looked. Liara turned left at random—
"You're right." Dara fished a submachine gun from her satchel and snapped in a fresh thermal clip. Liara had never seen it, but still she recognized it as an Elanus M-9 Tempest. "I missed it. Sorry."
"Don't mention it," Liara answered without looking. Her mind was in overdrive. She was alternately watching for other cars backing up their tail, and assessing their route and goal against the likely objectives of the opposition. A tiny voice wondered where and when had she learned to think like that, but a much louder one told it to shut up and box its complaints until a better moment.
They proceeded unhindered for perhaps four hundred meters when Dara asked: "Turn right on the next intersection."
Liara did as told, then glanced at the officer. She was staring intently at the car: "There." She tapped her omni-tool and entered the alphanumeric code she had seen written on the side of the green car that was following them at a distance. "Another rental car," she said, half in frustration.
"Clever," was T'Soni's answer.
"I should call for backup," Dara said hesitatingly.
Liara's first impulse was to say no. But if the opposition was smart, they would surely know she would try to get out of sight, and switching cars on a transit hub was a smart way to shake off pursuers — so they would have people watching there. She cursed to herself. Lazing despondently for months on end would have allowed whoever wanted her dead to lay down some groundwork in preparation for this strike. I should have listened to Anika, she thought bitterly. But if Nyxeris was involved…
"I have an idea," she said instead. She tapped her own omni-tool: "Call Zaeed Massani."
A small VI avatar appeared hovering over her left wrist. One moment, please. Calling…
"Massani? You know him?" Dara uttered in surprise.
"He was with us on the Citadel," she said offhandedly—
"TRUCK!" Dara screamed. Liara braked hard and dove sharply. The large cargo hover car that would have smashed them heads-on tried to follow but missed her narrowly. The car that had been behind them climbed in an instant reaction to try and dodge the truck — and an ill timed one, as they broke right into the lane over theirs and another car crashed onto them.
Then the rear windshield shattered as a hail of gunfire raked their car — but Liara's instant reaction was to deploy a barrier that shielded them.
"Goddess!" Dara uttered.
"Take the wheel!" Liara shouted.
"Wait a—!"
"DO IT!" She jumped into the back seat, drew her Suppressor pistol, and peeked behind them. The green car was right behind them now and closing in fast. A silhouette had popped from the left side and was aiming a rifle at them—
—but Liara got off her shot before the next barrage, and would later recall how incredible that shot had been: the pistol clacked twice in her hand, and a single bullet hole appeared on the windshield of the car chasing after them. She briefly caught sight of a head exploding in a shower of gore before the car banked left hard and crashed into the nearest building.
"How much further?" she asked Dara.
"Almost a kilometer!"
Too far! "Let's just hope there are no more surprises," she muttered roughly. Massani, where are you?!
"Going to attract a lot of attention with the car like this," Dara noted. She was right: a car with its rear windshield shot to bits and riddled with bullet holes would not be very discrete. Tarsida was no longer an option.
Liara cursed to herself. What to do, what to do? She glimpsed a construction site: "Go there! We'll call another car and hide there until it arrives!"
Dara did not like it but she could not offer any better. "I'm calling for backup."
T'Soni did not like it but could not suggest anything better either. "Right."
They parked their battered hover car next to a couple of trucks, but before they hopped off Dara realized something: "Just our luck. The Dantius towers."
Her companion stifled a sigh. "What is it?"
"The owner is a paranoid nutcase. There were complaints about the security mechs randomly shooting at passing cars."
"Then I won't have to explain myself if I crush them," Liara retorted. She was angry. If she had not been so lazy none of this would have happened. She gestured at Dara's omni-tool: "Are you calling in for backup or not?"
Before Dara could answer, the echo of a sound drew her attention — and her immediate reaction was to drag Liara by the wrist behind one of the trucks. The young T'Soni had learned better than to ask surprised 'what's going on?'s in such situations, so she stayed put and listened: gunshots. She exchanged a glance with the officer, who acknowledged her look with a finger to her lips before tapping commands on her omni-tool.
Dara spoke noiselessly: Backup called.
How long? Liara asked in the same fashion.
I don't know. Minutes.
Again the echoes of gunfire reached them, then somewhere out of sight someone threw open a door violently and raced towards the parking lot with ragged breaths —
— and they caught sight of the running Salarian just before a gun barked three times and tracer rounds punched straight through its chest. The lanky alien fell with a painful scream.
Then the shooter walked into view: a LOKI mech, two more of them in tow. One noticed their car at once: Unauthorized vehicle detected. Likelihood of unlawful entry: high. Beginning perimeter sweep.
Liara rolled her eyes again. This day was surprise piled on surprise, and so far none had been pleasant.
Dara looked at her and pointed her index finger at the ground once, hard, before walking into the open brandishing her Tempest submachine gun. "Illium police!" she called out. "I'm officer Dara! Where's—"
Intruder detected! Elimination in progress—
The asari officer had half-expected that, and thus she got off the first shot. The Tempest boasted a high rate of fire but was notoriously difficult to handle if not used in short bursts, and Dara was proficient in its use. The head of the first mech blew in pieces, and a moment later a second one collapsed face-first into the ground after a hail of tracers tore through its chest.
But there was still one more—
—plus three more walking into the parking lot from the same doors the Salarian had thrown open. Her shields could absorb fire from one gun, but four opened on her before she could reach sanctuary.
Liara intervened then. Hover cars, when at rest, usually floated some comfortable thirty-odd centimeters from whatever surface was below them, but the shot-up vehicle they had driven to that tower suddenly jumped two meters upwards—
—before blazing towards the mechs like a speeding rocket, turning three of them into chaff and knocking the fourth off the building outright.
Painstakingly she stood up. Tossing a whole hover car in that fashion had almost totally drained her stamina. She would not be able to perform that feat again any time soon, but anything less and Dara would be dead instead of lying on her back and clutching her stomach. Her shields simply were not meant to absorb that kind of punishment.
"Don't… worry," she said between gasps as she reached for her first aid kit, then with trembling hands she undid the clasps and unfastened the straps of Dara's armor. The officer's chest and belly were a mess of bullet wounds, no less than nine rounds having pierced through her. She grimaced in horror. Liara was not Anika Ziegler; she knew the Swiss doctor could somehow fix that, but she was not Anika, so she did what best she could: she plastered medi-gel liberally into the wounds, staunching the bleeding, then she stabbed two nanite syrettes into her chest.
Then the noises of more mechs coming from inside the building reached her.
She swore to herself. "Goddess…" Carefully she dragged the injured officer away and behind one of the trucks. "I'm going to… to hold them off," she told her. "Stay put… Mind if—if I grab your gun?"
Dara was predictably in shock, and only further surprised by how the scientist had dressed her wounds. She shook her head weakly and tried to gesture with her hand, but she did not have strength for even that little. "It's okay," Liara whispered. "Don't exert yourself."
Still panting, she raced for the door into the building. LOKI mechs were not omnics. Constrained by Citadel laws limiting AI development, they were run by much less capable VIs instead, but it is an universally accepted truth that imposing hard limits on engineers only stimulates their creativity — and almost infinite hours of work and effort trying to squeeze every bit of efficiency possible out of stringently regulated software meant that these security mechs were opponents about as crafty as recruits freshly off basic training.
As recruits not affected by morale or exhaustion, that was. If the mechs broke into the open they would use their numerical advantage to pin her down and flank her, whereas if she got to the door first she would have a strong defensive position and could corral her enemies into a more manageable environment…
She got to the door the moment one of the mechs walked into view from a sideway. Immediately she squeezed off a Tempest burst that only grazed her enemy but forced it to retreat behind a large crate. Another robotic head popped from around the sideway, then a sidearm followed — but another burst, this time murderously accurate, separated head, arm and weapon from their frame.
New mechanical footsteps rang next, ponderous and heavy. Liara recognized the noise at once and felt a shiver run down her spine. She could not fight an YMIR mech with the light weapons at her disposal—
The huge bulk of the robot stomped into view, and at once flooded the hallway with a lethal stream of tracers. Liara withdrew from the line of fire, yet still heard the heavy servos trudging slowly but steadily towards the door, and it was only a matter of time before the monster reached her position. Her only chance was to wait for it to swap thermal clips—
—and the moment that happened, she looked around the corner, trained her Suppressor on the robot's optics—
—and pulled the trigger as the missile launcher mounted on the other arm of the mech blazed with exhaust gases. She dove for dear life and rolled away as the guided rocket whizzed past her, sought cover behind a parked hover truck, and listened. The heavy steps were now approaching the door.
The YMIR mech came into view. The optics were irreparably damaged, but the monstrous robot still moved with unerring certainty. A few taps on her omni-tool and a very quick scan told her the mech was tapping into the building's security network to navigate the terrain and hunt her.
If only I could use biotics again, she thought bitterly as her brains raced. The scan had pinpointed a few signal sources she could try and disable with gunfire, but there was no guarantee that would work. She had to damage the comm gear on the mech. Three separate antennae and sensors, all on difficult places for her to hit without running suicidal risks—
—but that was the best she could do with the limited means at her disposal. She climbed silently atop a truck, programmed the omni-tool to directly feed targeting data to her retinas via lasers, and peeked from the relative safety of the cargo compartment. Her enemy was now in the open, the machine gun pointed in her general direction but not having yet acquired her. The mech had to turn right to walk towards her, and in doing so would very briefly expose one of the weak points to her…
Slowly she brought up the Suppressor again. It has to be an absolutely perfect shot… there is no second chance…
A bright orange alert flashed on her retinas. Liara squeezed the trigger. The pistol clacked once — and immediately the huge machine gun acquired her. Again she had less than a heartbeat to dive to safety. She heard the stream of bullets bouncing off the thick sheet metal of the cargo compartment—for just a second—
—then her instincts screamed at the impending danger and she had another heartbeat's worth of time to jump out of the cargo compartment before a missile blew the truck apart. The explosion almost knocked her prone, but she still managed to hide behind the other truck before the machine gun again opened up on her.
That cover would not last for long, she told herself in panic. How many missiles does that thing have?! The bullets bounced off the truck's thick metal plate endlessly—
It's not walking!
Her shot had been even better than she had thought. She had taken careful aim at the neck armor joints, aiming to punch through the less resistant ablative mail that protected the servos to hit a critical sensor linking located there, but the pistol round had caromed within the armored frame of the mech and inflicted severe damage to its hydraulics system.
Against her better judgment, she waited several seconds for the gunfire to stop — and it did not. The mech was damaged, but not disabled, and it would now pin her down there with suppressing fire to allow for the smaller LOKIs to finish the job.
If she let them do it, that was. She was not going to make it any simpler to them. She went around the side of the truck — and dropped a LOKI mech caught in the open approaching her position with a short burst. Machine gun fire from the YMIR raked her position an instant later, her biotic barrier flashing angrily as some of the rounds punched through the metal plating of the truck. She pulled back, went back around the truck—
—but the mechs had already gained that position, and half a dozen guns opened up on a barrage on her. "GODDESS!"
She withdrew from the line of fire, aware of the YMIR raining an uninterrupted torrent of slugs merely a couple of steps behind her back. The adrenaline flooding her bloodstream boosted her stamina momentarily, and that alone kept her fighting — and while it did not do much to restore her biotic strength, it did give her a last reserve to tap into. She blazed with blue fire one final time, and a coruscating singularity appeared amidst her attackers. A last lancing strike and the pulsing orb exploded violently, sending the helpless mechs flying in small pieces—
—then more gunfire rained on her from above. Her barrier absorbed part of it, but a burst still transfixed her on the left arm and shoulder. She gasped as the software suite on her armor triggered all manner of alerts on her ears, then turned around and unleashed a long barrage at the LOKI mechs that had fired at her from atop the truck—
—but more shots now lanced through her legs. She screamed in pain and anger, but now she was hamstrung and could only look helplessly on as the LOKI mechs advanced on her, weapons trained on the prone intruder—
—then two loud booms rang in short succession, and the closest LOKI was blown to bits. Another explosion, and another of her assailants collapsed limply with a huge hole on the chest. The remaining mechs turned around, seeking their attackers, but before they could react bright blue ribbons scythed through them in a dizzying dance of lights.
Then a silhouette uncloaked. "Dr. T'Soni, apologies for the delay. Massani told us you were in danger." The stranger opened her visor. She recognized the face: that was the sloe-eyed Tomoe, one of the Cerberus operatives that had crossed her path twice during her stint on the Compact. The slim Phantom crouched next to her and unpacked her first aid kit. "I'm here to help, ma'am. We can get you to safety."
Author's note: Credit, as usual, goes to my proofreaders, brokenLifeCycle and kyro2001, for their comments, suggestions and patience. Thank you, guys!