Vanguard of Vengeance: Chapter 6

The pronouncement of the Council may have stunned a lesser officer, but despair did not easily take hold of Evangeline Shepard. Instead her mind spun off along several tracks, each escaping her total grasp as she tried to follow each one.

"Commander, we've been dismissed," Anderson said gently. He laid a hand on her crisp dress uniform, a firm yet friendly grip that pulled her back to the real world.

"Sorry, I was…" Shepard shook her head. "Never mind, are we headed back to the Embassy?"

"I think that would be best," Ambassador Udina said. "The Alliance will want to talk about this recent… development." The grey-haired man led the way back through the Presidium until they stood once again before the squat Embassy building. He brushed aside a distraught looking man and walked briskly past the idle delegates of the Volus and Elcor. It wasn't until he passed through the doorway into his office that he dropped the pretense of civility.

"Damn that insufferable council. I half expected them to bar our entry into the SPECTREs, but to take this investigation right out of our hands?" the ambassador banged his fist on his desk in an uncharacteristic loss of control. "I suppose we shouldn't hope for better, it took the Turians calling their entire fleet down on our heads to rouse them to our defense last time, I'm certain that even if this super-dreadnaught popped up right outside the Citadel they'd still pause for a deliberation before declaring it a valid threat." He breathed out deeply.

"At least we managed to sidestep the issue of Javik," Shepard said. Her eyes flicked up to where the new alien still sat cross-legged, apparently deep in meditation.

"We'll count our small victories later, there's work to be done," Anderson said softly as he took a seat across from the ambassador. At that moment, the meeting was interrupted by a harried looking secretary.

"Excuse me, Ambassador, you have a visitor," the man blurted.

"I'm very busy, Andrew, they'll have to wait," Udina replied. He made a dismissive motion and turned back to Anderson.

"Um…" the secretary glanced back over his shoulder. "I'm afraid he can't wait, sir. It's a SPECTRE, say's his name is Nihlus." The room grew still. Udina gritted his teeth, but put on a diplomatic face.

"Send him in; let's see what he has to say." The door opened swiftly, revealing the Turian. Nihlus stepped through the doorway with a polite nod. His mandibles fluttered slightly as he met the hardened stares of the room's occupants.

"I've just had my official debriefing," he said without fanfare. After a second's pause, he continued. "I've been reassigned to the far rim of Citadel space."

"And you want, what, sympathy?" Shepard asked, "That's pretty rich from the guy who stood aside and let my application get shot down." Nihlus' mandibles fluttered again in discomfort.

"Look, Shepard, I was on your side!" he said angrily. He shook himself and regained some composure. "I've followed the Council's orders for almost a decade, and I've never had reason to question them, but everything about this situation feels wrong."

"What… do you mean, wrong?" Udina asked, leaning forward. From where Shepard stood she could almost see the wheels turning behind the ambassadors sharp eyes. Already his bureaucratic mind sought leverage, a loophole, a crack he could wedge open.

"The Council's dismissal of this attack, Saren's actions…"

"I think Saren's actions are just about on par. He has it in for the Human bid for SPECTRE status." Anderson noted.

"His anti-human sentiments are well known, trust me, I've been trying to get him to be more open-minded for a long time, but that is not what I was talking about. His presence at Eden Prime was unusual. He's sat in on other missions before, but he shouldn't even have known we were there. Shepard's assessment was not common knowledge."

"Wait, you know him?" Shepard stood straighter, alert.

"He was my mentor, and my friend. We have worked many cases. That's why I find his behavior so odd. He would have told me if he planned to observe. The only reason he'd be there is on separate business." Nihlus shook his head as if to clear it.

"Other business? What other business could he have had on Eden Prime, there was nothing…"

"Nothing but the Beacon." The flanged voice of the Prothean came from the back of the office. Javik stepped from a side office. "This Saren sought whatever my people left on that world."


The quiet flute music piped into the restaurant grated at Shepard's already raw nerves. The Earth International Diner boasted to be inspired by "genuine Earth culture." Shepard didn't know where on Earth the inspiration for the bright neons and artificial smokiness had come from, but she made a note never to find out.

"So, Nihlus, what is it that we're doing here again?" Shepard leaned back into the hard foam seats and scanned the diner again.

"We're meeting a contact of mine, a Turian. He's C-Sec, and he'll be the first to tell you that their offices are not a secure place to meet, especially to someone with the resources of Saren." Nihlus sipped at a drink while they waited.

"This guy another friend of yours?"

"Not as such, he sought me out when we arrived with some anomalous reports coming out of the SPECTREs office. I didn't think much of it until after the hearing. Ah, here he is." Nihlus sat up straighter and waved over another Turian, this one wearing the dull blue of Citadel Security. The agent, Garrus, walked over quickly and sat down at the table.

"SPECTRE Nihlus, and…"

"Shepard, Commander Shepard. Nihlus says you have something on Saren."

Garrus made a "volume down" motion with his hand and looked over his shoulder. "I may have something, Nothing I can trace back to Saren, but something. There's been a lot of chatter from the lower wards, people are getting double crossed and the Shadow Broker's become involved."

"The Shadow Broker?" Shepard leaned forward.

"He's the big name in information brokerage. He has operatives everywhere, and the ones here on the Citadel are angry about something. Exactly what, I couldn't tell you, my commanding officer's put a stop to my investigation. He doesn't like to go anywhere near the Broker's operations."

"That… doesn't seem like much of a lead, especially if we can't link it back to Saren. A friend's hunch and some angry mercenaries won't make a satisfying case for the Council." Nihlus said.

"You'd be surprised," Garrus replied. "I've staged raids on less. You're in luck, though, I have something a little meatier. I was working a case the cycle before you arrived, a shooting involving a Quarian. The girl was obviously into to something way over her head, I ran into a couple of thugs trying to shake her down at the clinic she'd fled to. The thug's wouldn't say who they were walking for, but the gear they were packing would need a SPECTRE's authorization to get onto the station."

"You think that SPECTRE is Saren?" Shepard asked. "Do you know where this Quarian is now? If we could find out what she had that brought down Saren on her head, we could start building a case."

"Exactly." Garrus leaned back and started flipping through the menu.

"Well do you know where she is? Do you know her name, even?" Shepard asked.

"Tail, or something. And no, she ran off before I could follow up with her. I've worked with the doctor at the clinic before though. She might know something."

"Well what are we waiting for," Shepard shot up, "sounds like we have a lead."


Heavy boots clicked on metal flooring as three figures moved through on of the darker back alleys of the Wards. The dirty purple-grey walls seemed to blend with the shadows in places, the illusion only broken at times by the odd scrap of trash or old stain. Shepard lagged behind the two Turians as she tried to catch her breath. The wash of radiation on Eden Prime had been mostly healed since she had left the planet, but she still found her breath hitching in her chest at their fast pace. Her heart thumped behind a borrowed chest plate as her eyed flicked from place to place.

Garrus' C-Sec sensibilities had called for a light loadout, with both him and Nihlus carrying long barreled heavy pistols. Shepard's own weapon, a Devlon Stinger, felt familiar in her hands, like an old friend. Shepard knew that many among her crew would feel naked charging into a possible ambush with only the small handgun, but they didn't have Shepard's other abilities. Light flashed in her eyes as biotics lent speed to her stride and pulled weight from her feet.

"So Nihlus, you said you've been reassigned to the far rim, right?" she asked as they passed a particularly gaudy looking club.

"That is true, yes."

"But now you're investigating Saren, not that I'm complaining, of course." Shepard said between puffs.

"You have something more important I should be doing? Saren is my friend, and I need to know whether he had anything to do with the attack. I need to know if he's involved with your Prothean's 'Reapers.'" The SPECTRE's eyes remained fixed ahead.

"I understand that, but that's not what I meant. I mean, this isn't your mission, isn't the Council going to come down on you if you show up with someone else's case?" That merited a chuckle from Nihlus.

"You would have found out, had the Council accepted my assessment, that the life of the SPECTRE rarely follows the narrow path of his or her Council mandate. In fact, if I remember the statistics, on any given day, only one in ten SPECTREs are actively pursuing their official mission."

"The clinic's up here, we can discuss government waste later," Garrus said as he rounded a corner, pistol at a low ready position. The familiar red cross flickered in holo over the door to the ward clinic, casting a rosy light on the otherwise dim alley. Shepard noted for the first time the pitting in the metal walls, the pockmarks left by low-powered mass accelerators and the ragged holes made by something with a little more punch.

"Garrus…"

"I see it." Garrus brought his weapon up and tucked himself beside the closed doorway. Nihlus fell in behind him while Shepard took the opposite side. Garrus withdrew something from his belt and pantomimed a bright flash. Shepard understood and reached up to polarize her new helmet's half-length visor. The world darkened, the holo fading to a deep beryl.

"Doctor Michel, are you in there?" Garrus called. "Doctor, it's me, Garrus Vakarian." There was a muffled thump from within, loud enough to reach the small team past the doors. Garrus took a deep breath and shook his head. He depressed the activation button on the top of his flash bang and keyed the door. It rolled open stickily. There was the soft clink of metal on metal and a rolling sound before light and sound filled the alley.

The team rushed the room, hoping to catch whoever was in their unprepared. They walked into a flurry of snap shots as men with rifles opened fire from behind gurneys and tables. Shepard counted at least four before she was forced into cover.

"Must be packing aural/visual dampers. I could book them on half a dozen crimes for them!" Garrus shouted.

"How about we skip straight to attempted murder, that aughta stick," Shepard yelled back. She looked left and right from the column she had thrown herself behind and found that she had ducked behind the only cover within a survivable distance. She swore softly and brought up her biotics. She sent her biotic tendrils right, plucking a tray of medical instruments from a table and whipping them at the shooters. Following up on the distraction, she rose to a knee and fired three aimed shots around the column. Her rounds skittered off of reinforced barriers, but the tossed tray managed to slip just below the kinetic barrier's activation thresholds. The metal caught the bareheaded man in the jaw. The man roared a challenge and turned his weapon on Shepard. The Commander dodged back as heavy rounds ripped through air and column. Only the sparking of shields saved her from the torrent.

"These guy's barriers are too strong! Our weapons are useless!" Shepard fired another burst, to similar results.

"Not all of our weapons," Nihlus stepped out and with a flash of orange light and a grasping motion; he sent a grenade flying towards the enemy. It flashed amongst the enemy and unleashed a flood of electromagnetic radiation. Kinetic barriers crumbled as their generators were overloaded. Now naked, they were vulnerable to attack. Shepard didn't wait to push the advantage. She lunged outwards and brought up her biotics again, this time shooting a lance of force into the nearest thug. The lance barreled him over and smashed him against the wall.

The shooter's defenses were overrun in a similarly short and brutal gunfight. Even the team's weaker pistols wreaked havoc in the absence of kinetic barriers. Four flashes lit the room. Shepard rose to standing and moved slowly, carefully towards the enemy position. When nothing moved, she lowered her weapon. "Clear."

Behind her, the Turians moved up.

"How many?"

"Looks like five, no markings, no uniform." Garrus stepped over one of the dying thugs. "But where's the Doctor?" There was a gurgling sound from across the room. Shepard looked over. One of the thugs leant against a wall, clutching at his stomach. Shepard stalked over. She kicked aside the rifle he still held weakly in his other hand and squatted to meet his eye level.

"Gut shot, looks painful," she said calmly. She hoped the thug didn't hear the strain in her breathing.

"Screw you, lady," the man spat out. A little blood dribbled from behind his split lips. He shivered as another wave of pain coursed through him.

"I just thought I'd point it out. I have medigel here. It's yours if you tell me what you've done with the one who runs this clinic. And don't tell me lies, or I'll call in an asari to rip it out of your head." She smiled cruelly. The man's eyes flicked to the open door then back to Shepard. He swallowed audibly.

"You wouldn't! They can't do that, can they?" the man spluttered. His eyes moved frantically back to the door.

"You want to find out?" Shepard replied. "Because I've been having a really bad day. Don't make me call her in. Tell me what I need to know."

"Okay, I'll tell you." The man seemed to deflate before her eyes. "After the Turian you're with took out the first team, our boss told us to lay an ambush, just in case he came back. We figured he would, our boss saw him talking to that guy." He pointed to Nihlus.

"And Doctor Michel?" Garrus asked coldly.

"We took her back to home base, a warehouse further down the Wards. The boss said she had information, something about a Quarian." His voice was growing steadily weaker until he almost wheezed out the last few words.

"Who is 'the boss?' Who set this ambush up?" Shepard grabbed a hold of the man and gave him a low dose of the anesthetic medigel, just enough to keep him talking.

"Don't… know. Never saw…"

"Shepard, this guy's fading fast," Garrus interrupted. "I don't think he knows anything more useful. We can confirm his intel by ripping his Omni-tool."

"Alright," Shepard gave the man a full dose. His features slackened as the powerful drugs did their jobs. She stood and hefted the rifle the thug had been carrying. It had been clumsily painted, red and black, but wear near the ejector ports revealed blue-grey metal beneath. It was heavy, short, and snub-nosed, almost a carbine really. "I think I'll keep this one." It clicked softly against the magnetic catches on her back. "You want to cuff these guys?"

"We'll bag the breathing ones, unless you want your imaginary Asari to do it," Garrus said with a chuckle.

The wounded thug burbled. "She's…. she's not… she's not even real?" He spat again. "I'll, I'll kill you!" he lunged, and there was the sound of metal drawn against leather. The thug was fast, especially with his wounds. But Shepard was leagues faster. She had drawn before the knife had left its sheath. Her blue plated boot crunched down on fingers half clasped around the handle, and her Devlon Stinger followed soon after. Another flash lit the clinic for the last time.


Author's Note:

So this chapter and the next should wrap up the Citadel portion of this story and carry us into the main plot. Much of the first game plot is going to run similar to its canon counterpart to give time for the butterflies to do their work, although I'm going to try to slip in a few key differences. It's going to usually be a case of "same events, new venues" in an attempt to keep things semi-fresh. As always, I hope you stick around, and hope you write lots of reviews.

-Liddle Out