Chapter 50. In Over Your Head
6. January 2415 AD, Citadel, Lower Zakera Wards
Besides the likes of Thessia and the oldest asari colonies, the Presidium of the Citadel was generally considered to be the crown jewel of the galaxy. In addition to serving as the political and diplomatic junction of the galaxy, the central ring of the station was clean, secure, pristine and calm, its polished silvery image attracting rich and influential people from all over the galaxy.
In that and many other regards it was so very much unlike the five wards that were attached to it.
Even thought they were still better off when compared to some of the other places of the galaxy he had visited, the Lower Zakera Wards, which were called that because of their location on the levels deep below the 'surface' area of the Citadel's arms and far out of sight of the artificial sky hanging over each of them, were much more in line with what one would expect when thinking of a space station inhabited by millions of people. Additionally to being more tightly-packed, dirtier and far more crime ridden than the Presidum, these parts of the station had also been much more impacted by the presence of the Council races. Unlike on the toplayers were the enormous, well-maintained structures left behind by the station's builders, the protheans, offered more than enough room for every one of the people living in them, the Lower Wards were a strange blend of both ancient and new architecture with smaller, newer habitats having been squeezed in between the larger, older prothean ones that had already been on the station when the asari had first found it over two thousand years ago.
As he checked his omni-tool again to see if he was still on the way he had been pointed on after asking where one would have to go if they wanted to procure information from a reliable source, the specialist noted the look that one of the C-SEC officers patrolling this part of the market gave him. He knew that he wasn't fitting in. Humans weren't exactly a common sight on the Citadel and especially not in the heavily populated areas. Zakera had already been far beyond its capacity by the time humanity had made its first steps on Luna. Simply put, there hadn't been any more room for a bunch of humans to move into by the time the HSA had actually made first contact with anything other than alien ruins.
Since he wasn't exactly keen on drawing more attention to himself, Daniel Morneau simply pretended that he hadn't noticed the C-SEC officer and kept moving forward to where the market ended and a series of apartments, bars, clubs and what he was sure to be his mark began. At first glance the squeezed-in building on the ground floor of the right side of the alleyway he was now walking through looked like the kind of place you'd go to if you were in desperate need of some reasonably cheap company, the flashing advertisement holograms and the rather blunt pictograms on the mirrored windows leaving little to no room for speculation as to what you'd find in there. It was not exactly the kind of place one had in mind when they thought of a good information broker. But upon taking a closer look, for example at the subtly reinforced windows on the third floor of the habitat's facade, and after considering that a lot of people liked to talk about what rumors or secrets they might've heard of recently after they had taken part in the oldest business of history, it became obvious that this was exactly the kind of place you'd find exactly what he was looking for, namely a good information broker.
Passing through the halfway-opened door under the watchful eye of a turian bouncer, Morneau needed a short moment before his eyes adjusted to the pale red light flooding the inside of the brothel. When it had passed, the specialist found himself in a lounge which mostly occupied by asari barkeepers and waiting costumers of all kinds of species being kept busy with slow, electronic music and alcohol. Besides the specialist himself, the only ones who didn't seem to be feeling the mood the place was trying to set were the three bouncers he had counted up to now, their visible positioning in the corner of the lounge and their watchful demeanor certainly being intentional to keep some of the more intoxicated guests from getting any funny ideas.
"Hey, scumbag! There's a line, you know?" he heard a salarian complain as he brushed past him and the other costumers and began heading towards the stairway ahead. Instead of revealing what he was actually here for, the specialist ignored him. His obvious disinterest in the corridor filled with the rooms where most of this place's revenue was probably being made right now was sure to quiet those who'd assume he was trying to cut ahead of them. As he reached the end of the lounge and dismissed the drink he was being offered with a wave of his hand, Morneau came face-to-face with his next obstacle.
"You can't go up there," another turian, who seemed to be subject to the same all-black dress code of the bouncer, said as he placed his arm right between him and the stairway hidden behind the half-opened curtain. "The girls are that way," he added while pointing to the corridor the specialist had just passed with his other hand.
"I know but I'm not here for them," Morneau replied as he caught the faint imprint of something hidden beneath the turian's suit jacket. "I'm looking for a quarian."
At first he wasn't entirely sure what to make of the look the turian was now giving him.
"Well, sorry to disappoint you but we don't have any of those," the bouncer began after his mandibles had twitched a couple of times, "with their immune system, you'd need a clean room, all kinds of meds and a team of paramedics on stand-by to ever even think about fu-"
Well.
Alright.
Considering where he currently was, his had admittedly been a pretty bad choice of words.
"Not like that, man" Morneau cut the turian off before he continued down that particular road. "I'm looking for a quarian," the specialist tried again. "Business, not pleasure," he expanded on his inquiry. For a few moments, the turian seemed to consider his words, looking at him, then up the stairs and then back at him.
"That kind of business isn't exactly cheap," his voice flanged back, his facial expression having returned back to the way it had been before their little misunderstanding.
"Good information never is. It's why I came prepared," the specialist replied with a shrug before the turian lowered his arm, evidently having made up his mind.
"Third floor," considering the windows, he had already figured that much from the outside, "second room to the left."
"Appreciate it."
"Just make sure that you've got the money to pay for it before asking for anything," the turian called from behind him, briefly revealing the Carnifex hidden beneath his jacket when Morneau turned around. "Otherwise you may not appreciate it after all."
After pretending to be slightly intimidated by the gesture to keep up the impression that he hadn't seen the weapon during the first few seconds of their conversation, the specialist climbed up the stairs, trying his best to ignore the second floor and the weird noises coming from it as he passed it. As far as he was concerned, he really could've gone without ever hearing what a volus sounded like when it did whatever the hell it was that was going on beyond the dark purple curtains dividing the stairway from what he suspected to be the more exclusive and expensive part of this place. Thankful that the noises became inaudible once he reached the top of the stairs, he came to a half in front of a door that unlike the other ones in this place didn't look inviting at all. With the ones below, someone had at least made an effort to disguise the cold steel of the habitat. Whoever was behind this door, hadn't bothered to do so, instead opting to add a few more locks and another turian guard.
This kind of paranoia probably came with the job the person behind the door had chosen.
In most cases, being an information dealer on the Citadel meant one of two things. Either you worked for the Shadow Broker, in which case everybody looking to interfere with his business would come after you and either try to turn you, extort you or put a bullet in your head, or you worked for someone who wasn't the Broker, in which case he'd be the one who'd sent someone to do either of or all of those three things to you as well. If it wouldn't pay so good to sell secrets on a station filled with people keen on knowing everything there was to know about someone else, the dealers probably would've stopped doing this a long time ago.
"You here for Jeroth?" the turian asked after he had come to a stop roughly two meters in front of him. Unlike the one down at the entrance or the one guarding the stairway on the first floor, this one didn't even bother to hide the pistol loosely hanging in a holster strapped around his chest or cover up the kinetic barrier generator attached to his belt.
Jeroth.
Morneau didn't fancy himself a cultural expert, on the contrary actually, but he did recognize a batarian-sounding name when he heard one. While the Hegemony's leaders might've issued a call for all of their citizens to leave the Citadel when they cut their ties with the Council, not all batarians had answered that call. Besides most of the C-SEC officers, who's political indoctrination had been broken over the years they had spent working for the Council alongside other species, a bunch of the batarians who had been specifically selected by the Hegemony to represent their people on the Citadel had decided that they liked living in Council Space far more than they liked living on whatever wealthy colony they had originally hailed from. Having read the few reports that had managed to leave batarian space after the curtains had come down on that part of the galaxy in the wake of the Skyllian Blitz, the specialist couldn't blame them one bit.
Between the not-so-subtle infighting leading to political instability, the increasingly more frequent uprisings of the native slave castes, civil unrest, their wounded pride and at times contradicting decisions of leading government officials, things weren't exactly looking bright for the HSA's closest galactic neighbour. While there wasn't a doubt in his mind that Chairman Amon would hold onto his power with everything he still had, there also wasn't a doubt in his mind that it was only a matter of time before influential families and perhaps even entire castes would come looking for their share of the Hegemony before it collapsed under its own, increasing weight.
"That depends. Is he the guy who finds people?" he asked in return, scratching his chin to have an excuse for one of his hands being in a better position in case this turian would decide to try something. If he needed to cover the distance and get in his face, his hands would be no good dangling at his sides.
"For the right price," the guard replied, eyeing him somewhat suspicious. If he hadn't been certain that the small biotic implant in the back of his neck was impossible to see from where the bodyguard was standing, he might've worried about him seeing.
"Then I'm here for Jeroth."
"Good."
Without saying another word to him, the turian nodded and stepped aside, typing in a code and opening the door before gesturing for him to step in.
"This one here wants to see you, boss," the bodyguard declared as he walked into the room in front of Morneau, blocking the specialist's view of the small, dark office. "Says he wants to find someone?"
"Does he now?" a deep, distinctively batarian voice coming from the computer terminal sitting on the lone desk asked.
Alright.
Given the fortifications and the guards, he had expected the guy to actually be here. It had been a long time since someone had gotten him with the old terminal transmission trick.
Point for the batarian.
If he even was one. With a terminal, it wasn't exactly hard to alter your voice to hide your identity. Hell, in their line of work, it was common place to do just that whenever you didn't meet in person.
Whatever.
Live batarian information broker or transmission with a voice modifier, at the moment he couldn't care less if this entire thing was face to face or not. Jeroth wasn't his mission, he was just a means to an end.
"Yes I do," he answered before the turian could think about speaking for him again. "A quarian pilgrim," he added a moment later. "Word has it a couple of hired guns are looking to kill her for a guy named Fist," it was as close of a description as he had and with time running, he couldn't effort to hold any of it back.
"Quarians aren't exactly a common sight on the Citadel these days," the voice replied. "And Fist never had a talent for subtlety." They knew each other? Interesting. "Your information will come at a price. You may now pay it," with that, the turian stepped next to him, a credit transfer program already opened on his omni-tool.
"How do I know you're not scamming me?" he asked casually while typing in the desired sum from one of the sources HSAIS used for the kinds of bribes that it actually intended to pay. At the moment there was no reason for him to burn this source of information. It might come in useful again.
"You're looking for Tali'Zorah nar'Rayya. She arrived on the Citadel by an emergency transport from Eden Prime," so that's how she had gotten the intel that Arterius wanted to get rid off. She had actually been there during his attack. Intersting. "Shortly after boarding the station, she went to visit one of the Shadow Broker's proxies who then helped her hide from Fist's people." Up to this point, the story made sense, if rumors were true, the Broker had his own feud with the Spectre. If the turian wanted someone dead, it was in his interest to keep that person alive. At least until he figured out why the now rogue Spectre was trying to have them killed. If he was lucky, it meant that the quarian had more time than he had initially suspected. If he wasn't, it meant that another clock had just started its race against him. There was only one way to find out. "She's currently hiding in a small bar on Level 39 and staying with the Broker's contact in that area. Look for Ulteshks', that's where you'll find her," he better. Because otherwise, he would have a reason to burn this place after all and considering the paperwork he'd have to fill out to explain how fifty thousand credits had ended up in the hands of a bad con artist, he'd enjoy doing it. "And for the record, I do not scam. I run a legitimate business," he kept it to himself to say that that depended on one's perspective,"and as long as my costumers pay my prize, I always deliver legitimiate information."
They'd see about that.
When the terminal shut down, the light of its screen turning off and as such removing the only light-source in the room, Morneau didn't spent much longer in the brothel than needed, instead quickly making his way to the bar, only stopping to tell his partner where he it was that he was going and being somewhat frustrated when she in return told him the exact same thing he had just paid Jeroth to tell him.
While it wasn't as bad or as embarrassing as falling for a conartist, it sure as hell would add a couple of pages to his report.
Just great.
2156 CE, Citadel, Lower Zakera Wards, Ulteshks'
The only thing she had wanted was to bring back something worthy of an admiral's daughter, something that would improve her people's lives, something that would serve the Migrant Fleet more than a used ship way out of its prime. As she looked around herself again, Tali cursed under her slightly ragged breath. It wasn't actual exhaustion that was getting to her, it were her nerves. Well, alright, maybe her nerves and her anger at herself. The geth's data core had been too tempting, she should've known this wouldn't end good for her. She just should've stayed on Eden Prime and kept working in the repair workshop until a safer opportunity presented itself, not rush out out into that field and put her knife to the barely functioning trooper.
Stupid.
If she could turn back time, she'd like to think that she would've been smart enough not to tinker with the damaged geth, smart enough not to get involved in whatever this was. The quarians might not have held many ties to the Citadel Council these days but given that she had spent nearly a year in Council Space, it had been impossible not to recognize the voice of Councilor Benezia T'Soni. She might not know what the geth and the turian on the tape had been trying to do to her but it was obvious that it was had been something horrible and something far bigger than her.
Even though she had lacked the foresight of knowing what she'd find on the drive, Tali had been more than smart enough to know that people would be coming for her after she had heard the recording and even though she, like every other pilgrim, had received some self-defense training before being sent out into the galaxy, Tali had also known that she wasn't going to stop the hitmen who were after her. It had been these realisations that had eventually caused her to end up in the rundown bar she was currently hiding in. Instead of making the smart decision and running to the first human patrol she could find back on Eden Prime, Tali had gone to the Citadel and tried to reach out the one person she had figured could protect her from a Spectre.
The Shadow Broker.
In retrospective, that had been her second terrible mistake.
Although she had managed to escape from her pursuers for the first time thanks to the volus, she knew that she was far from safe here. Whether it was the whispers of the turian and batarian near the counter, the suspicious glances two humans threw in the direction of her booth or the couple of salarians who seemed to be focused soley on her, she knew that every second she spent hiding in here could be her last one.
Sighing at the bleakness of this situation for which she was mostly the one responsible, Tali briefly considered running again only to realise that there weren't any alternatives even. If she left, she was dead and if she stayed, she was also very probably going to die eventually, either because the Broker's men decided that they didn't need her after all or because someone would come walking through the door her and put a bullet in her head. Then it'd all be over and seeing how sometimes pilgrims simply disappeared, no one, not even her father, would ever know what had really happened to her. She'd just be another name one the list of quarians who had died trying to prove their worth to the Migrant Fleet, just ano-
As the sound of the locks coming apart behind her sent a shiver through her entire body, the fears forming in her mind coming alive right as she had given thought to them, she tried to subtly lift her omni-tool and ready one of the tech programs stored on it all the while watching a shadow slowly closing in on her booth. Feeling her hands shake as her nerves failed her again, Tali tried to get a hold of herself by telling herself that her father had raised her better than this in an attempt to calm herself. If these were the hitmen from before, she'd at least go down fighting. She could do this. Hit the first one of them with the overload program and try and take his weapon. Then use that against the second one.
It was simple enou-
Before she could even prepare the self-defense overload program she had intended to use, a figure stopped by her booth, standing right next to her, blocking her escape path and terrifying her at the same time. It was a good thing her people were confined to their suits, otherwise her mask, which hid her utterly mortified face, wouldn't have saved her some dignity now that the end was here. She would've liked to say that she was ready to face this but truthfully, she wasn't.
Keelah, how could she?
She was just a pilgrim in way over her hea-
Wait.
Something was wrong here.
Why wasn't the hitman doing anything?
Why was he just standing there?
Why hadn't he tried to kill her yet?
"You're a hard quarian to find, Miss Zorah," a human offered as she watched him casually sit down opposite to her, resting his arms on the headrest of the booth behind him.
All in all, he didn't really look all that different from the humans she had worked with on Eden Prime, following the same general appearance most of his kind seemed to fall in line with. As with most human men who's vehicles she had helped fix in the workshop to earn some money for the rest of her pilgrimage, his hair was short and not quite as dark as that of most quarians and as with some of the humans she had encountered during her stay on the colony, he seemed to be no taller than the average quarian, certainly incapable of seeing eye-to-eye with tall people like the average salarian or turian. "You know that, Miss Zorah?" he added as he turned back around, allowing Tali to notice that unlike just about all of the humans she had met, he only seemed to have a small hint of brown in his otherwise hazel eyes. Other than his outward appearance, the only thing that really stood out to her was the grey fleece jacket he seemed to wear in spite of how uncomfortably warm these parts of the Citadel could get for anyone not wearing an environmental suit and the faintly blue glowing wrist watch he wore on his left hand.
"I am?" she asked, too stunned to even think about how he knew her name.
"Nope," he replied with a small chuckle before looking at watch and pressing a small button at its side a few seconds later, causing the glow to vanish. "You really, really aren't," as he looked around the bar again, Tali wondered who he was and what exactly it was that he wanted from her. By now she doubted that it was her life. If he wanted to kill her, he never would've sat down to begin with.
Was he after the recording?
Should she as-
"The way word on the street goes, you've got something that a lot of people would like to get their hands on," the human said as she looked the way his head was turned, noticing that he had apparently entered a staring contest with the two salarians that had been looking at her ever since she had first entered this place. "Matter of fact, I'm one of them."
That answered her question. If she told him that she had it with her, she knew that he'd attack her and take it. If he was after the recording, he probably knew that didn't need her. The pilgrim quickly considered her next move. The best thing she could do was try and pretend that he had the wrong quarian, no matter how unlikely the chances of that succeeding were.
"I don't know what you're talkin-"
"Whatever it is that you got on Arterius," wait, Arterius? As in Saren Arterius? The Spectre? "If you give it to me now, chances are we can walk out of here before those guys make their move," the human said before nudging his head towards the salarians, who by now had been joined by four other guests of the bar. As the batarian of the group noticed her looking at them and narrowed his two sets of eyes, Tali quickly turned her attention back to the human, who unlike her, hadn't backed down from the unspoken challenge just yet."Time's running, it's your call" he added with a shrug a moment later before turning away from the batarian and looking at her directly.
Again Tali began to think as fast as she could.
Given what had happened these last couple of days, she really, really wanted to just get out of here. Every instinct she had was telling her that staying here would get her killed. But given what she seemed to have stumbled into, she just couldn't shake the thought that the human was only putting up a facade to get the recording. If she agreed to his offer, if she gave him what he wanted, he'd have no reason to uphold his end of the bargain. Now that she thought about it, he might even hand her over to the hitmen to get a cut of the pa-
"Yo, you!" she heard a voice call from the other end of the small bar. "What do you think you're doin' with her?" one of the other humans demanded to know, inevitably drawing the attention of the one sitting across from her. Compared to the stranger, he looked noticeably younger. Unlike the short-cut hair of the one's who's deal she had yet to take, his light-brown hair was long and messy and while he might've been taller, he wasn't nearly as sturdy as most other members of his species. "You got no business bein' here. Piss off!" his stature and apparent age aside, he didn't seem to have much of a problem with leading the charge. As he marched over to their booth, the group that had gathered around him followed.
"Really?" the human opposite to her asked as Tali, now sitting up straight and folding his hands in front of his chest. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're the one who's not old enough to be in a bar."
Keelah.
He'd get them killed, wouldn't he?
This day was getting worse with every minute.
She should've just picked a turian colony. That way she could've eaten their food, gotten to know some members of the sole other dextro-species in the galaxy and avoided this situation all together.
"You just gonna let him call you out like that, man?" the other human of the group, who's skin was noticeably darker than that of the other two, asked angrily.
"Hell no," the other replied as he looked back at his group, receiving a nod from its turian member. Reassured by the gesture, he turned back around and walked all the way up to the booth. "Listen here," he began, leaning onto the desk and pointing his finger at her, "the Broker wants her here. What the Broker wants, he gets. If you know what's good for you, you're gonna say that you're sorry and you're gonna piss off and hope I don't come after you."
"That so?"
"That so."
"Alright," seemingly unimpressed, the stranger turned away from the younger human, making no indication to comply. "So? Do we have a deal?" he asked her as he rolled his head, producing a rather unpleasant popping noise in the process. Without as much of a second of thought, she nodded her reply.
"Great. Let's get out of this dump then," he said as a smile appeared on his face. Rising to his feet and ever so briefly rubbing his neck before staring down the taller, younger human, the dark-haired man seemed to turn into a different person altogether. "You're in my way," he pointed out. Before he had sounded far too casual for her liking but right now, it was his calmness that unnerved her.
"I didn't hear you say sorry yet," the younger human snarled, causing his group to move in closer on them. By now the other five were only a few steps away from them and Tali could practically feel how they became angrier with every word out of the stranger's mouth.
"Fine. Sorry," the human, hers not the tall one, offered with a shrug. "You coming?" he asked, offering her a hand.
When she considered rising to her feet to take it and join him, the younger man shoved the dark-haired one away from the booth and into the direction of the bar counter. As he caught himself on the wooden surface, the barkeeper seemed to take a step back.
"The quarian is staying," the younger one insisted as he got right into the stranger's face, grabbing a hold of his jacket and raising his fist up to his face. "Now piss off before I change my mind," he threatened furiously, looking about ready to kill him then and there.
"Say that again?" the stranger muttered in return.
"I said the quarian sta-"
"No.I caught that. The other part, please."
"I said piss o-"
At first she wasn't entirely sure what had happened which in retrospective was probably owned to the fact that no one in the room had seen it coming before it was too late. In the one moment, the younger human had been standing on his feet, his hand firmly gripping onto the grey jacket of the other man. Then, in the next one, his grip had slipped and he had fallen backwards, hitting the ground like a rock without even attempting to break his own fall. As the other human of the group jumped to the side of his friend, the rest of the Broker's men looked at the stranger in in a mixture of disbelief and anger. They probably had pictured this entire thing to go far different than it currently was.
"Well? Changed your mind yet?" the still standing human asked into the room before the batarian took a step towards him.
"You're fucking dead," the sole four-eyed member of the group called as he clenched his fists.
"Didn't think so," had she grossly misinterpreted human behaviour all this time or did he sound happy?
When the words had left his mouth, everything else happened almost impossibly fast.
In what couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds, at least judging by the time it took one of the salarians to rush towards her and try and pull her form her booth, the batarian charged forward and took a swing at the human only to be sent flying across the room, a wave of purple accompanying the kick that sent him straight into the opposite, the pictures hung from it shattering just as the barkeeper took cover behind his counter in an effort to avoid being hit himself. Then, not a moment after his friend had been sent flying, the turian tried to attack the human, a half-filled bottle being cracked over his plated head and an elbow directed at his left mandible stopping him dead in his tracks. When he went down, the salarian who hadn't been standing next to her found himself at the bad end of the human's assault, dropping somewhat more controlled than the first member of the group but still hitting a nearby table after a punch, this one not carrying a purple biotic glow with it, connected with his jaw. Then, before the acid-green blood had even began pouring from the new injury, the stranger turned his attention to the dark-skinned member of his kind, sending a knee straight into his face just as he tried to leave his companion's side.
Unwilling to just sit by and wait for him to save her from the salarian, Tali decided to try and activate the self-defense overload program in an attempt to fight of her own attacker all the while the injured men of the Broker once more tried to throw themselves at the stranger.
While she brought up the familiar orange overlay, she heard the other salarian scream a few moments after he had tried and failed to grab a hold of the human, the wet crunching sound and the odd angle at which his arm was now bent suggesting that the light armor he had been wearing hadn't helped his bones stand up against whatever lever had been used against them. Just as she managed to select the program in spite of the uninjured salarian rapidly getting a better hold of her, Tali saw that the turian was trying to dig his talons, which were more than sharp enough to hurt a human wearing nothing but plain regular clothes, in the stranger's throat. But instead of drawing blood, he only found air and pain after his intended target dodged at the last moment, leading to him slashing one of the metal grids separating the booths from each other instead. Stunned by his hand meeting far more resistant than expected, the turian barely had time to recover before the human grabbed a hold of the side of his face and smashed it into the wall, the visible dent left in the central bar of the grid revealing how much force had been behind the quick move.
Then, after waving the set of hand motions required to set off the overload program a mere moment before the salarian would've grabbed her other hand, a brief impulse of electricity surged from her omni-tool, the shock it carried causing her attacker's muscles to lock up, the suddenness of his full weight collapsing on her throwing her off balance as well and causing her to stumble backwards into the booth, the sight of whatever was going to happen to the dark-skinned human now that he had decided to throw another punch being lost to her forgetting what happened to muscles, or a person as a matter of fact, when they were hit with an intense pulse of electricity.
Maybe she should invest in a drone for the next time this happened?
It'd help her save face and put her in less danger at the same time.
She'd get on that as soon as she got out of here.
"You good over there, Tali?" the stranger called through the bar as she pried the salarian's hands off of her wrist before trying to shove the tall and to her dismay, heavier unconscious amphibian off of her. Grunting her reply as she awkwardly managed to move the salarian just enough for her to squeeze out, hitting his head against the table in the process, Tali, or rather the strange feeling in her head, decided that getting up could wait another minute or so. "I know what you're thinking about doing right now, man" she heard him say, unsure what exactly he was talking about, "but don't. You and I both know you'll be in just as much trouble as we if you call C-SEC right now. They'll want to know why the Broker chose your place and they're probably gonna go the mile to figure it out. So why don't you put down that omni-tool and we go our separate ways?"
Right.
He was talking to the barkeeper.
"Alright. Fine. Just leave. I don't want to see you or the quarian anywhere near this place ever again," a high-pitched voice replied in a pace only a salarian could manage while remaining understandable. "She's way too much trouble anyway."
As Tali looked at him and then at the bar and the six unconscious figures scattered around the destroyed room, she offered an apologetic smile that he'd never see thanks to the mirrored mask separating her face from the rest of the world. The place was damaged, badly. He'd be lucky if he could fix any of this without drowning himself in debt or ending up on the bad side of the Shadow Broker, a scenario that had become likely from the moment that he had been spared from the beat down.
"You won't," the human said as the hand that had been reaching for something behind his back relaxed, once more becoming visible as he dropped it to his side. "Come on. Let's go," he added before walking past her and pulling her with him.
Throwing a final glance at the remnants of a fight that had at best lasted half a minute, Tali 'followed' the stranger out of the bar and into Zakera's Lower Wards, the question of who exactly he was still unanswered. As they walked in silence for a few minutes, the young pilgrim began to wonder where exactly they were going and had been about to ask just that right before the human slowed down and pulled her into a narrow alleyway off of the central path of the market.
"Alright. Looks like we're in the clear," he said as he eyed the crowd they had just left. "You can give me the data now. Just put it on there and we're square," he explained while handing her a small black hard drive.
Right.
That had been why he had helped her in the first place.
He had been here for the recording she had on her.
"It's not data, it's an audio recording," she found herself stuttering ever so slightly, not exactly willing to admit to herself that she was afraid of the uncertainty of what would happen next. Quickly pulling the data off her omni-tool and onto the storage device, she was all too eager to hand it off to him. She could've made a copy but honestly, she didn't want anything else to do with it now that she had gotten a taste of what it meant to hold onto it. A Spectre and the geth holding a councilor hostage? She now knew better than to be part of that equation. The trouble it'd bring her and the fleet in case she brought it back simply wasn't worth it, not by a long shot. "And it will get you in a lot of trouble," she decided to add the warning in spite of being certain that he wouldn't care.
"I'm counting on it," he replied just as she finished the upload.
If he wanted to leap into this mess so readily, it wasn't up to her to stop him.
Not that she actually thought that she could stop him given what she had just seen.
"Here. Take it. It's all there, every word they said," she muttered as she handed the drive back. As he grabbed it and stuffed it into the pocket he had originally taken it from, Tali was about to ask him what they'd do now when the human turned on his feet and started to walk away.
"Where are we going now?" she asked after following him back to the market and catching up to him.
"We?" he asked while keeping his eyes up ahead, adding to her confusion.
"You said if I gave you the recording, we'd walk out of here," she clarified, "so where are we going now?"
"Our seperate ways?" the human offered as she looked at him, her disbelief hidden by a layer of reinforced purple glass. This definitely hadn't been their arrangement, at least not as far as she was concerned.
"You sai-"
"We walked out of the bar, didn't we? And you gave me the recording, didn't you?" he interrupted her.
"Yes but-"
"Sorry but no buts," she was slowly getting tired of being cut off. "We're done here, our deal is over. We both held up our ends and now we split."
"I thought.-"
"Alright, listen," the bosh'tet might've saved her less than five minutes ago but if he did that again, she'd seriously consider using the overload program on him. Even at the risk of it backfiring again and her having to shove him off her like the salarian, it'd be worth it. She didn't need to be chastised, corrected or let alone cut off. She wasn't a child, not anymore. "You can't come with me and I can't go wherever you go from here. I've got a job to do and you need to get the hell out of dodge and hide from Arterius' thugs. They don't know that you no longer have the recording and they sure as well won't care when they find out. The best thing you can do," he said while coming to a hold, putting his hand in front of her so she'd do the same before pointing at one of the close-by rapid transit stations, "is to get out of here while you still can," as he briefly looked at her, his greenish-brown eyes seemingly seeing through her mask and somehow making eye contact with her own solely based on their faint glow, "I know this isn't what you though would happen but that's the way it has to go. My mission comes first and right now you're not it," he seemed to linger for a moment before again picking up his step. "I've got to get going and so do you," she heard him mutter. "Take care."
With that the human, who had saved her and who's name she had never asked for, left her behind, effectively putting her in the same spot she had been in before he had shown up, the sole exception being that she didn't even have the recording left to possibly bargain with her assailants if, no, not if, when they caught up with her.
If her mind hadn't been split between deciding whether or not to make a run for the closest transport or try and talk to C-SEC, who had a rather bad history of helping quarian pilgrims in need, she might've laughed at the irony of the human for turning from the one who had just saved her to the one who had now doomed her in less than a minute or cursed herself for believing he'd actually try and help her for longer than it'd benefit him.
But since it was split, Tali did the one thing she had been doing ever since Eden Prime.
She ran.
6. January 2415 AD, Citadel, Lower Zakera Wards
Counter-terrorism operations, urban and asymmetrical warfare, prolonged reconnaissance and sabotage missions deep behind enemy lines. Marksmanship, demolitions, combat diving, airborne and spaceborne assault and zero-g combat. Physical and mental endurance, a natural talent for leadership and unwavering resolve. All of these were skills or traits that a soldier had to become proficient in to successfully complete ICT and join the scarce ranks of the Naval Special Operations Command by becoming an N7 operative like herself.
All of these were things that Shepard knew she was good at, things she knew she could do anytime and anywhere.
Interrogations, covert operations and other covert activities however were another story.
While every N7 received a basic rundown of those fields in Rio as part of the asymmetrical warfare course they all had to complete in order to advance to the sixth step of the program, it was hardly their expertise. By their very nature, the navy's special forces were meant to fight at the fronts of every conflict and assit the corps and selected army formations with pushing on the attack, fighting the hardest battles or getting the most difficult jobs done as fast and clean as possible.
Needlessly to say, operating far away from any actual conflict to achieve a target that had nothing to do with leveraging some kind of strategic or tactical advantage over an enemy force was uncharted territory for the commander in spite of this being one of the bigger parts of the position she was still being assessed for as far as Ambassador Udina was concerned. While Captain Anderson had at least had an experienced Spectre with him from whom he could learn during his assessment, who incidentally happened to be the same Spectre who's trail she had now been ordered to follow, the only company she had with her were two marines who were just as unfamiliar with this kind of assignment as Emily herself. While she trusted them to have her back in a fight, Shepard knew that they wouldn't be able to make up for the problem she was about to face.
Additionally, as if being put way outside of her area of expertise wasn't enough, there were also a number of other things that she had to worried about right now. Namely the fact that there were still the unanswered questions as to what the hell the beacon had done to her, what the hell was going on with Captain Anderson and what the hell the until recently unknown black-ops division of the HSA, Cerberus, had to do with all of it. Even though she felt like her life was currently moving on the fast-lane with new shocking events having happened every few hours since she had woken up, she hadn't forgotten about her conversation with the leader of the group, Director Harper nor the 'message' he seemed to think the beacon had given to her. How could she? The prospect of a long-gone people trying to tell her something of likely incredible importance was probably the biggest responsibility she'd ever carry.
If she'd spent more time thinking about it, it'd probably also be sufficiently terrifying.
Hence, she didn't, instead trying finding some kind of comfort in the N7s' motto.
No matter the obstacles, no matter the opposition.
She'd get the job done.
Considering the stakes she simply had to.
The people looking for answers as to why Arterius had attacked Eden Prime, the Council, Udina and Anderson, they were all counting on her to do was no way that she was going to let fear jeopardize the trust they were putting into her. Although it was far from what she was used to doing, Udina's orders to track down Arterius' proxy and figure out what he knew about the attack were still a mission.
And being an N7, Emily always finished her missions. Come hell or high water.
"You gotta wonder though, how did the guy manage to turn one of the Broker's agents?" she heard Williams ask Alenko who had been less than vocal ever since they had gotten to the Zakera Wards. "Turning your back on the Shadow Broker is about the quickest you can die on the Citadel."
"From what the ambassador told me, Fist's loyalty goes to whoever's currently putting a gun to his head," she replied herself when the biotic lieutenant offered only a shrug.
"Spineless coward then," the gunnery sergeant shrugged. "Should be easy enough to get someone like him to talk."
"Don't underestimate this," Alenko finally spoke up. "We'll have to get to him first.
"Spineless cowards usually don't fight all that well," Williams replied.
"Fist isn't the one we'll have to fight though," the lieutenant countered correctly. People like Fist didn't get their hands dirty themselves. They hired people to do that for them. "It's his thugs we have to worry about. They might not have a legal license but they'll definitely be packing some heat."
Although the Cítadel might have been seen as one of the safest places in the galaxy, it, like every other place with a working spaceport and some importance, wasn't immune to the crime of smuggling. While patrols, raids and long-term Spectre operations like the one Arterius had become known for might've kept large illegal weapons shipments off the station, the couldn't stop the smaller, legal ones delivering to the shops that could sell guns and armor on the Citadel from losing a few dozen boxes every now and again. From there on out, it only took a few hidden compartments, the right kind of driver and one bad C-SEC officer until those boxes ended up in the hands of people like Fist.
"Speaking off packing some heat," she muttered as she turned the corner of the broad pathway they had been following to 'Chora's Den', the club Fist apparently called his home, and spotted a tall krogan covered in armor just as red as his cracked, scarred head plate standing opposite to a squad of heavily armored C-SEC officers, who looked both parts concerned and annoyed.
"You know how this goes Wrex. Bounty hunter or not, you can't bring any of your guns past the docks, let alone all the way down here. Do all of us a favour and come quietly."
"Heh," she heard the krogan chuckle as he folded his arms. "Do yourself a favour and ask your Executor if he things that you detaining me is a good idea. Knowing him, he kept the scar I gave to him the last time he tried."
"No one's talking about detaining you, Urdnot," the blonde human C-SEC officer, who had yet to actually spot the marines and Shepard because his back was turned to them, offered "We'll just escort you back to the docks and blame customs for screwing things up. That way we won't have to fill out all the paper work and you won't get charged with assault of a C-SEC officer," there was a short break in the human's sentence as the krogan let out another amused grunt. "Again."
"Tell you what, Bailey. I might take you up on that offer when I'm done with my contract," the scarred, red-plated krogan replied with a shrug. "In the meantime, you could take care of those guys," he said while pointing his hand right at her. "They look like you might just be able to stop them."
"Wrex if you think I'll fall for tha-" the officer had been about to say before the turian officer, who had actually turned around, poked him in the shoulder. "Oh you gotta be kidding me," he sighed after spotting them himself. "Where the hell do you think you're going with those, army? Didn't your CO tell you that you have to leave them on your ship?"
"It's navy actually," the commander corrected dryly before mirroring the krogan and folding her arms. "And I think that we're going exactly where I was ordered to go by Ambassador Udina," she added, drawing a visible reaction from the man. "Any more questions?"
"Jesus fucking christ," the blonde man muttered. "This day just keeps getting better," he added before turning to the turian next to him. "Well? Care to check if any of that's actually true?"
"Of course. Right away, Sir."
"God damn shinie," considering the reaction, Emily simply assumed that the turian was somewhat new to the job.
It definitely would explain the nickname.
"If there is any conformation of her statement being true, it didn't reach our precinct yet, Sir," the turian replied a moment after closing his omni-tool.
"That's a no to your story then," the older officer frowned before putting his hand on the butt of his pistol, now evidently suspicious of them. "Wanna explain that again differently?"
"Considering my assignment," she replied while raising her hands in a deescalating manour. Although she didn't actually think that either the C-SEC officers, her own companions or the amused looking krogan would open fire, she'd rather be more cautious. "That's to be expected," the blonde man raised an eyebrow at that. "My mission is related to a Spectre. I'm supposed to question the owner of Chora's Den, " that's all she was going to say to that for now.
"Do you think I'm buying any of thi-"
"You're here to kill Fist as well?" the large krogan, 'Wrex' if she wasn't mistaken, suddenly asked, his raspy chuckle causing both C-SEC officers to turn around again. She couldn't exactly blame them for being a bit jumpy around someone as big as him. Even by krogan standards, the red-plated alien looked intimidating, the dozens of scars visible on his face alone suggesting that a lot of people had tried and failed to kill him. "Get in line. I was here first," he added not a moment later, his large black and red eyes locking with her own, small green ones.
A bounty hunter.
That explained a lot.
Especially the guns.
"No one's killing anyone," the frustrated human C-SEC officer sighed. "Especially not you," he added while pointing at Shepard herself. "The last thing we need right now is for HSA personal to shoot up the Citadel during shoreleave."
"I'm not on shoreleave and I'm not here to kill Fist or anyone el-" the commander was about to continue when she noticed three figures, two turian, the other either a human, batarian or asari, slip out of the building in front of them, the boxy objects in their hands and the fact that they were actively taking cover giving her just enough time to react. "Get down!" she called the moment she connected th dots.
Luckily for them, the C-SEC officers listened to her warning just as much as Alenko and Williams, all four of them diving behind the nearest pieces of cover just in time to avoid the hail of sand-grain sized rounds now pouring down right where they had just been standing. The only one of them who hadn't been fast enough to get behind one of the roughly chest-high information boards decorating this particular part of the walkway leading to Chora's Den had been the krogan, Wrex. But judging by the fact that he was casually walking towards a nearby wall, firing a pistol the size of a small shotgun at their attackers all the while their projectiles harmlessly bounced of a purple field surrounding the krogan, the few seconds more it had taken him to get clear hadn't made all that much of a difference to him.
"Call for back-up!" the more experienced officer called as Shepard gestured for Alenko and Williams to prepare himself. Their enemy might've had the better position but between the krogan and their own biotic, they wouldn't be able to maintain their superior position for much longer. Eventually their weapons would overheat after the biotic had drawn their fire and then the NCO and the commander would be able to move on them.
"When we start moving, cover us," she called to the C-SEC officers and into the general direction of the krogan.
In a weird way, she was glad that her mission was turning out like this.
This was what she was good at.
Fighting.
"You ready, Lieutenant?" she asked the man next to her as a bullet found their way through the board, the small hole it managed to punch through the metal right between her and the biotic not really bothering either of them.
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Alright. Go."
As a purple field embraced him, Alenko rose without hesitation, being ready to draw their fire in spite of the risk of their enemy using a phasic mod capable of ripping right through his barriers. Instilled into him or not, that was the kind of courage that never seized to amaze Emily. Briefly holding her breath as the first rounds bounced off of the reinforced mass effect field, she was more than relieved to see her plan not only work but also transmit to the krogan who decided to join Alenko in exhausting their enemy's ammunition. With two biotics drawing their fire, it didn't take long for her plan to work, the first, second and third treacherously visible streams of heat shooting from the guns of their attackers being the only signal she and Williams needed to begin moving. As they cleared the mostly empty portion between them and the small bridge their three enemies were hiding on under the accurate fire of Alenko's assault rifle, the two C-SEC officers sidearm's and the krogan's 'pistol, Shepard didn't need more than a glance of her first target before she dropped it, a streak of blue shooting out from the small portion of the turian's neck she had spotted and subsequently hit with her SR-9. After displaying the lethal accuracy she had learned as an N7 for all to see, the next enemy fell by the hands of the marine next to her. Knowing that they'd flank his position soon, the other turian tried to rise and stop them only to be cut down by the gunnery sergeant, a burst to his chest, which only seemed to be covered in light armor hidden beneath his normal clothes, ending his life.
That left just one.
Bracing her rifle as she got close to the bridge, she was ready to squeeze the trigger of her rifle right until she saw the woman drop her gun.
"Please! I surre-" she tried to call while getting up, an action that proved lethal when her head exploded in a messy fashion not a second later. Turning to the source of the shot to see who had just shot the unarmed man, she wasn't exactly surprised to stare at the still smoking gun in the hand of the krogan.
"What?" he asked as his eyes narrowed. "She tried to kill us. She had it coming."
"She tried to surrender."
"Should've thought about that before then," Wrex snorted before holstering his gun. "Still kicking, Bailey?" the krogan called back.
"Yeah," 'Bailey' replied as he, the apparently injured turian leaning on him and Alenko joined them. "Shinie got hit though."
"It's fine. I can still fi-"
"Bullshit. You're out of here the moment back-up shows up," the C-SEC officer grumbled, shutting him down. "Those were Fist's guys. The bastard tried to have us killed." She could agree with that assessment. As the blonde human turned to Wrex, who didn't seem to be the least bit concerned with killing an unarmed woman, Shepard didn't exactly like the expression on his face. "You still planning to go after him?" he asked the krogan.
"A bounty's a bounty," Wrex shrugged as Alenko reached them, looking somewhat more exhausted than before. It was probably the strain of using his biotics that had gotten to him. Trained or not, humans weren't meant to use that power and it showed whenever they did.
"Good. Hurry up and make him pay for this," he said before adjusting his grip of the increasingly weaker growing turian and walking into the direction from which the blaring sirens of patrol cars were quickly growing on them.
"Heh. With pleasure."
Codex: Quarian Pilgrimage
First instated out of the necessity of the young and able-bodied going out to search for crucial supplies in the early days of the Migrant Fleet, the Pilgrimage is one of the few pieces of relatively new quarian culture. Originally considered to be an act of blind desperation by the military government of the fleet, the tradition slowly turned into more of a cultural practice after the last remnants of quarian society managed to claw their way back from the brink of extinction they had been balancing on in the early decades following the Geth War. Although the fleet still somewhat relies on their young adults to bring back things like scavenged ships, weapons or at times even mining rights, the times when each pilgrim knew that the failure of their quest could potentially doom hundreds of their own to a cold death in the vacuum of space are long gone.
Ever since being instated, the Pilgrimage slowly shifted from simply being about the survival of their kin to a right of passage amongst young quarians. Instead of bringing something back that could be used to replace a damaged ship or at least finding something to slow down its inevitable doom, the modern Pilgrimage consists of the pilgrims leaving their birth ship and trying to find a new crew to become part of by finding something the captain of their desired ship could consider useful. Should they succeed, they may join the ship and are granted the privilege of exchanging the 'nar', child of, in their name with a 'vas', crew of, and the rights and responsibilities, for examlpe the right to have a child and the duty to permanently fulfill a role on their new vessel and die for it if need be, this change of social status brings with it.
Although seen as a significant part of modern quarian culture due to giving young quarians the opportunity to see the galaxy they'll only travel through as part of the fleet upon completing their pilgrimage, criticism of the practice has been raised by the Conclave, the civilian part of the quarian emergency government that has been in power ever since their exodus from Rannoch. Arguing that a not-ignorable number of pilgrims never return from this socially enforced right of passage due to either inexperience, accidents or organized crime specifically targeting them, the Pilgrimage has at times been described as a twisted form of population culling by the elements most opposed to the admiralty that first ordered pilgrims to leave the fleet in search of much needed resources. Whether it be pirates, slavers, drug-runners, traffickers or, rarely, the prospect of a better life outside of the fleet, somewhere between three to seven percent of young quarian adults embarking on the Pilgrimage never return home.
Although technically having cut ties with the Citadel Council over two hundred years ago, it should be noted that quarian pilgrims are allowed to travel freely among council space, a privilege usually reserved to members Council species or associates.
A/N: And with that, the first part of the Citadel stuff begins.
Obviously next up will be Fist and Tali running into Shepard.
Also less obviously, Haugen and Redford will very probably make it into the next chapter, really setting off their respective arks (which as you might have guessed won't be as 'connected' as Morneau's and Shepard's are going to be right now. Wait. Did I say that out loud? Ups.)
Now to the chapter.
First off, in case anyone doesn't like Tali's portrayal. Welp. This is how its gonna start out. In ME 1 she's literally barely an adult. No way the person you talk to in the cutscenes fights like the one you see in the game. That just doesn't happen.
Of course she is going to grow into being that person, eventually. But for now, this is Semper Vigilo's Tali.
Now.
I actually wrote this down way earler because I feel like SOMEONE is bound to bring it up if I don't get ahead of it.
Don't read too much into the interaction she had with Morneau.
This isn't meant to be some kind of weird shiptease or rescue romance.
On the contraty actually.
If that shit happened to you, you'd kind of start disliking that person a whole lot.
Moving on. I decided to write this scene like that not only because he's still the Paragade background and had no reason to actually pledge his life to protect Tali, but also because it adressed what usually happens to the people we saw interact with Section 13 earlier in the story. A lot of them are just left to their own devices after our heroes, be they Shepard's dad or Redford or another specialist, got what they needed from them. So this is kind of a little role reversal there. Instead of the whole 'mission accomplished, moving on', we get to see what it's like to just be a 'means to an end' so to speak.
I found that interesting, at least while I wrote it.
Also.. we had a bit of action this time.
Also.. I kind of couldn't help myself with leaning Tali's scene onto 'Manners Maketh Man' in Kingsman. Originally, I didn't even plan for it to go down like that but when I decided to set it in a bar and set it from the perspective of a normal person... it just kind of worked.
Consider it... an inspiration!
Yay!
For the record we're at 426 reviews, 655 favorites and 753 follows.
Nice.
I wonder when we're gonna hit 700 and 800 respectivly.
Considering my pace between chapters slowed down somewhat, it's probably gonna take some time.
Anyway.
Let me know what you think.
See you around next time.
