Got to give it to the Turians; for a bunch of metal birds, they sure could question a guy. Hmm, "question". Twelve hours in a dark cell aboard some fucking ship, all for the crime of surviving... Whatever the hell went down on the surface.
"L.A.W.Y.E.R," I repeated, wiping my mouth on my bare shoulder to get the blood off. "I've been in a turian courtroom; I'm not going through that crap again."
The two turians, one male, one female, both wearing fucking black armour like they thought they were fucking cool, looked at each other in silence. I spat the blood in my mouth onto the metal floor, running my tongue around my teeth to see if any had been knocked loose. Turians were fucking rough. Not as bad as Krogan, but even I'd be dead for a few minutes if a fucking Krogan started to interrogate me.
The door to our cell opened, and a barefaced Turian stepped in. Male, about 7ft something. Ugly, even for a Turian. Had long ridge spikes, piercing blue eyes- I almost thought they were synthetic; they were so bright. He had an air of authority that was hard to fake, and clearly, his little flunkies were in no mode to even breathe with him in the room unless he allowed them. Unlike them, he wore Grey armour. Colourless, but expensive. You learn to spot the nanite-underweave and redundant shield generators in our line of business.
He ushered the other two turians out, the door closing behind them. Finally, he set his eyes on me.
"An entire colony dead. You're all that was left," He growled.
"You think I could kill an entire colony?" I asked, wetly laughing around the blood in my throat. "In my state, I couldn't fight off a squad of Turians. I was dead for 36 hours."
The Turian marched over, looming over me. I didn't flinch; He couldn't kill me. Worse he could do was throw me out into space, and I've survived that kind of thing before.
"Then what did? All we had was a human on the scene, covered in blood," The Turian growled.
"Yeah. Mostly mine. Some crab looking thing sliced me in half with a fucking laser beam or something. And not horizontally either. That would've been way less painful. You ever been cut in half? And it didn't exactly start from the head down either," I challenged, barely aware of what I had said about, you know, not talking without a lawyer present.
The Turian's blue eyes narrowed, and he crouched down to look at me.
"No. I'm not a human. When someone shoots me in the head, I stay down. But since I'm not a human, I have certain things you don't, like inalienable rights. There's no government out there for you—no binding treaty. As a spectre, I can do whatever I want to people like you. To the Council, you may as well not exist. And as long as you keep holding back on me, you practically won't. I can find a place to throw you in that will keep you there until protons start breaking down, so find the right answer to my questions," He warned, his long talons tapping against my bare legs.
I looked him in the eyes, the wry, pained smile fading from my face, only to be replaced by a frown.
"Spectre, huh? Oh boy, I'm quaking in my socks that you took off me. Right, of course, whatever warlord ruling Earth right now won't give a shit, but as you said, I've got eternity to get comfortable in whatever two-bit Batarian prison you throw me in. As I said, I've been through the turian justice system before. It's nasty, the rules don't make sense, and the points don't matter, but I can do 50 years. I've been alive for 167 years. I've been in a nuclear explosion. I've been shot at by a dreadnought. So, if you want the right answers to your questions, start asking the right fucking questions," I challenged. To punctuate my point, I spat out one of the teeth loose in my mouth. It'd grow back.
The Spectre stood up and paced around the room, his face unchanging. If he was annoyed, I couldn't tell. If he was curious, I couldn't tell. If he was constipated, I could probably guess, most Turians were.
"What happened on Illyricium?" He eventually asked. "Why were you there?"
I swallowed, feeling around inside my mouth as, sure enough, my tooth painfully started to grow back, the one on the floor disintegrating before our eyes. I could tell this Turian Spectre had fought or at least met a human before since he paid absolutely no mind to the tooth or the wounds on my face and body stitching themselves together right before his eyes. Blinking, I sighed and tilted my head. "Long version or short version? Neither are particularly long, but context is for kings, and you're probably the type that thinks..."
"Long version, then," He barked. "Though don't go back further than a decade, or I'll throw you out the airlock on a rope and wait till you're more cooperative."
I chuckled, then sighed.
"Since you're asking, I assume you're aware of the rumours? Colonies in the Terminus and at the edge of the Verge just disappearing? No bodies, no evidence, no ransoms? Well, a lot of the colonies are aware, and they've started beefing up security. Batarian ones are making deals with Exiles, pirates, slavers and the like to do patrols where the Batarian government can't send its fleets. Turians, well, the bigger colonies, are building ships like Kaiser Wilhelm. They're also hiring PMC's. Eclipse, Bloodpack, Shadow Legion, all the good edgy names with corporate headquarters on Illium and with their own monthly magazine?"
I half-waited for the Spectre to interrupt me, or maybe get me to hurry up, but he was simply listening. Never quite taking his eyes off my face, but never quite glaring or staring. It was almost hard to remember he was there. I looked down and smiled. He was a natural interrogator, alright—no reason to put him out of a job.
"Smaller colonies, usually those not in a system with a relay, they've not got the budget for that kind of thing. Ships are expensive. PMCs are very expensive, and nobody likes having a large, well-armed group of people around your government when the only thing keeping them loyal is a paycheck. So, they get smaller units. The little guys, the kind of gangs you'd see on Omega. Half of them just exist to be logistics for the local militia. And some, well, they hire humans. Unkillable psychopaths that we are, we're usually good deterrence for pirates and slavers."
"Not many slaver groups have humans in them," The Spectre stated.
I nodded.
"Right. As a Spectre, I'm sure you're aware, nobody likes to tangle with a human without one of their own. People like to make sure when you put a human down that they stay down," I explained. "Course, cutting a human in half tends to work nearly as well."
The Spectre placed his hands behind his back.
"So. You're saying the colonial government of Illyricium hired you as security?" He asked.
I nodded.
"If the records still exist, you could probably find my name on an expense report. Group I used to run with, the... Uh... Taetrus Legion, they passed on the job but recommended my name. They got hired by some bigger colony, and Illriacium weren't offering nearly enough. Us humans are expensive but still cheaper than a legion," I explained. "I was there for about three weeks before... Well, you saw the aftermath."
I commended the Spectre so far, but the Turian couldn't help but lean forwards in anticipation for his next question. This was why he was listening to my babbling. "What. Happened."
I wryly smiled.
"Well, I suppose I mentioned I got cut in half?" I asked. With only a slight twitch of his bony metallic lip in annoyance, the turian nodded. "All I know is what I saw. Some big ship landed at the colony. I'm talking skyscrapers, dreadnought in atmosphere sized thing. The next thing I know, a swarm of insects practically blocked out the sky. People were getting stung by them; only it wasn't some venom or parasites or whatever they were injecting. If you got stung by one of them, you got put into a stasis field, locked in a moment of time. Only reason I and a few others were still standing is we worked that out and managed to put out a biotic field that fucked with there stings. So, it was just me and about six turians still standing, out of a colony of 12,000. Once they worked out the bugs weren't working, that's when the bipedal ones stepped off. Thought, they were still, admittedly, pretty buglike."
"Bug?" The Spectre asked.
I chuckled.
"Insect. Uh, small flying animal, usually with a hard carapace, though not a Turian toddler with a hoverboard. Go look it up on the extranet, I'm sure they've got what a bug is on there," I dismissively replied.
The Spectre gestured for me to continue. I cleared my throat.
"These guys, the bipedal ones, they were armed. Not with stolen Batarian or Turian stuff either. I mentioned the laser beam thing, but I'm pretty certain one of the bipedal ones I fought had an honest to One... Honest to god particle beam. Watched it slice through a two-story house trying to kill one turian. They were careful about collecting the stunned Turians, but they took no chances with the live ones. So long as they left most of their corpse intact, they dragged them all onto their ship," I explained.
The Turian's eyes widened in shock.
"Dragged them onto the ship? All of them?" He asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
"I saw some of them doing that while I was fighting them off, but I'm just assuming they did it to the rest, since I was dead at the time," I admitted.
"Right. So, why exactly did they leave your corpse behind?" He asked.
Squinting for a moment, I let out a noise.
"I got shot a bunch but, obviously, that only put me down for a minute or two. I was carving through them with my sword like a hot knife through butter, at least while my shields and armour worked. Eventually, they must've decided that they needed to put me down for a bit longer. So, some metal crab looking thing flew over, landed in front of me, roared and..."
I paused, swallowing, then looking up into the Spectre's eyes. "Weirdest drone I've ever seen. Its mouth was a nest of turian skulls, their eyes glowing an unearthly blue. Uh, no offence."
"So, it killed you?" He asked.
"Oh yeah. Like I said, slice me from balls to skull. Didn't wake up for another 12 hours after that, and by then, you guys arrived and threw me in here," I explained. "I think they must've carted off all the colonists, scrubbed down any evidence they were there and left. Why they left my corpse behind, I don't know. Maybe they knew about how our, uh, "resurrection" worked and knew I'd wake up somewhere relatively safe if they did."
Saren nodded.
"It's strange they didn't have a human with them for just such an outcome as this. Even just one to cut your head off," Saren pointed out.
I nodded.
"They weren't any alien I've ever seen before. Well, sort of. I think they were all one species and didn't work with outsiders," I suggested.
The Spectre nodded, about to ask something, when his eyes widened.
"What do you mean, sort of?" He asked pointedly.
Wincing, I realised I really shouldn't have said that.
"Right. Well, hey, I'll tell you what I think, but I want a promise from you. In writing would be preferable," I said.
The Spectre looked around my little dark metal prison cell.
"Making demands is a bold play right now," He warned.
"This is the sort of request you spectres make all the time. Won't trouble you any," I said.
"Say your piece now; then we'll talk a deal," He warned.
"Deal? I've been more than helpful, considering the greeting I got!" I shouted.
"And I'm sure, once you're in front of a tribunal and able to point to the injuries you sustained, you're be well compensated," The Turian Spectre said drolly.
I looked down at my healing body, at the closed wounds and barely quickly disappearing scars, and couldn't help but laugh. "Dick."
Rolling my shoulders, my hands still bound behind the chair, I sighed.
"Alright. Couple of years ago, back in the '70s, I was working on O—Bloodpack pointman. One time, I was on point for a high price trade they were making. Selling people is nothing out of the ordinary for the Bloodpack, or for Omega, but this was unlike any protection job for them I had ever gone on. They called in Krogan battlemasters, a legion of Vorcha around the perimeter of the pirate base on some gas giant moon, had a fucking cruiser in orbit. All this, to hand over 12 turians to some anonymous buyer. The buyer never even showed up; we were told to just leave the Turians there on the base, leave the system, and come back in half a day," I explained.
The Spectre's eyes narrowed.
"Must've been a buyer from Citadel space. What was special about the Turians? Ex-military? Biotics? Any cybernetic enhancements?" He asked.
I shook my head.
"All twelve were albinos. Far as I could tell, that was the only thing they shared in common. One was almost 80, and another was about six or so. Anyway, to our shock, we actually left the system as they asked. If you know anything about the Bloodpack, you know they demand payment upfront, and you fucking pay them. Not this time, though. Anyway, I was part of the team there to pick up the payment from the base."
Saren tapped a talon against his thigh.
"What was it?" He asked.
"...Whatever it was, it was small. Fit inside a crate two Krogans could carry. And whatever it was, the guy in charge of the operation clearly thought it was valueble. He even paid off some pirate group to stay out of the area for the week, and another to go after the first if they didn't," I explained.
Furrowing my brow for a moment, I looked into the Turian's eyes.
"So, tell me, Spectre. What conclusion do you draw? A strange buyer of sapients pays out of the nose for a bizarre collection of slaves, handing something so valuable the Bloodpack would look the other way and put in so much effort to collect? Who do you think was on everyone's lips once we dared speak?" I asked.
The Turian's fist clenched.
"The Collectors."
I nodded.
"Got it in one. And I'll tell you one thing about the package I picked up. These eyes, they ain't my original set. Augmented them the same time I got the eezo nodes put in. So I looked inside the crate. And no word of a lie, I saw a particle beam weapon. And no word of a lie, I'll be damned if it didn't look just like that one I saw slice through a house."
The Spectre fell silent, no longer pacing around the room or tapping his thigh incessantly with his talon. It was nearly a minute before he spoke up again.
"I see why you wanted to bargain. Taking part in the slave trade..."
"Don't. I never sold anyone. I'm not scum. But I've worked for some bad people. You don't live to 176 out here, outside the comfort of Citadel Space, without doing so," I spat out.
The Spectre, to my surprise, nodded.
"If any of what you're saying is true... I'll need to find out," The Spectre said. He turned to face me. "Did a background check on you before I entered this room, John Shepard. Got most of your history, whatever isn't left in some blown-out basement on Earth. I could put you away in a nice, comfortable Citadel prison for... Oh, about 34 years? A blink, for your kind."
I rolled my eyes.
"Well, y'know, Citadel prison food isn't half bad," I said.
"Of course, that's if I send you to a Citadel Prison. A lot of your rap sheet from your, hmm, Taetrus Legion days? A lot of dirty work for the Turian Hierarchy. I'm sure the Batarian government would love to get their hands on the Terrorist responsible for the destruction of the Elysium Shipyards," The Spectre warned.
Chuckling, I shrugged.
"Batarian prison's not so bad. If I get shanked in halls, I'll get back up. Lack of a shower to get shanked in will be rather unpleasant, but I'll get used to it," I replied.
"Indeed. And you'll have plenty of time. When Batarians say "A Life Sentence", they try their best to accommodate. There are at least 3 Asari Matriarchs still rotting there, long after the Batarians can even remember what crime they committed. And they seem eager to try imprisoning humans. Something to give back to the galactic community, for once," The Turian threatened, leaning in close, his fangs bared.
I smirked.
"Or..." I challenged.
The Turian smiled.
"Smart man. Or... I could do with a human. And you've got some crimes to atone for, Mr Shepard. A Council Spectre can pardon almost anyone, for almost anything."
"And all I'll have to do is help you stop an unknown, technologically advanced race of Alien slavers who took out an entire colony without even breaking a sweat?" I asked.
"Well, they can't kill you," He oh so helpfully pointed out.
I shook my head.
"I suppose not," I mumbled.
Without even waiting for my response, The Spectre turn on the Omni-Tool on his wrist. The cuffs around my wrists and ankles fell off, and he helped me to my feet. Then, he held out his claw.
"I do so hope you'll help the Council, Mr Shepard."
I shook my head but still clasped his claw and shook it.
"I do so hope to be of help, Mr..."
"Saren. Saren Arterius."
_
A/N: Yep, another Mass Effect AU thing. Goal with this one however was to immediately jump into the plot and refuse to have any timeline bollocks or boring infodump, so if you want to work out what's different you're going to have to read and pick it up from dialogue and clues. Far more fun that way, plus you're at least got a better chance of the story actually, y'know, reaching the plot.
