Book II - Chapter 3: Lies
Kasumi prowled through the zigzagging Omega back alleys like an oversized cat patrolling her hunting ground.
In one short month, the amount of resources the thief had gathered from pilfering goods out of various gangs' warehouses and hidey holes on Omega was enough to outfit an army. On top of that, there were also all the easy credits just lying around behind thinly firewalled gambling terminals, practically begging to be hacked. To be honest, all the ill-gotten wealth was starting to make her feel a little bloated.
For reasons other than the plentiful loot and trigger-happy targets to test her skills, it was actually kind of fun to explore this ancient space station. Omega had so many secret tunnels and hidden walkways. Some of the best payloads were recovered from sealed off sections that no one else had been to in decades.
Normally this kind of mundane smuggling operation bored her, but she wasn't doing it for herself anyway. Zaeed always looked so happy when she delivered him crates of supplies with the Blue Suns' own shuttles, and Shiala was extra impressed when she scored rare tech from the Eclipse's engineers. Kasumi tried not to play favourites, so she rotated amongst all the different merc gangs, just to be fair. Different gangs had their own niche, and Kasumi had the talent and experience of sniffing out where they stashed the best goodies. Eclipse had the best quality hardware, the Blue Suns had the most ships, the Blood Pack had the most raw materials, and the Talons had the most liquid assets.
She just made sure to stay far away from Aria's stuff.
When Liara, Jack, and "Alison Gunn" - whose identity was, by the way, one of her best works ever, even if it meant walking around in that heavy armour for weeks on end - were busy getting shot at by the Blue Suns under the Shadow Broker's orders, Kasumi was deep within the Suns' territory. Sneaking into a merc HQ was child's play, especially when she had over a full month to scope out the lay of the land.
It also helped when the target was too distracted to notice her.
The current leader of the Blue Suns on Omega was Tarak, a batarian with an awful temper and a mean streak. "You'll need to double the fee, Tazzik. It's getting expensive. You think I care what the Broker thinks? This is Omega. Aria can do much worse than the Broker can. You don't scare me." His prominent jugular vents puffed angrily as he shouted at a salarian dressed in a white and silver hardsuit with the Broker's red triangular emblem painted on his chestplate.
Tazzik, the Shadow Broker agent Tarak was yelling at, appeared to be completely unimpressed by his outburst. Tazzik was huge by salarian standards and Kasumi never thought she would ever use the word "rugged" to describe a salarian, but he looked as if he had more than a few drops of krogan blood in his veins. "Yes, I'm aware where we are. Aria might be Queen on the station, but the Broker's power spans across the entire galaxy. If I were you, I would show more respect."
"Baa! I've got enough problems to worry about right now. Chief amongst which is that I'm losing men doing the Broker a solid while not getting paid my fair share! Do you have any idea how many men I've lost from that one job with the Collectors? I was lucky I cut them loose before Aria closed her little blue hands around my neck! The Blood Pack are encroaching on my territory, the Eclipse are stealing my shipments, and the Talons are recruiting from my own company! So yes, I'm not doing the Broker any more favours unless I get paid!"
Tazzik sneered disdainfully at the merc leader. "Your petty woes are not my concern. The Broker has no use for you if you can't even keep such minor issues under control. Finish the job, Tarak, and you'll get paid - at the usual rate. How hard can it be to kidnap one helpless asari scientist?"
Mistake number one: they've severely underestimated Liara. Mistake number two: the good doctor has help. Kasumi thought gleefully to herself.
"This is not about the job, this is about taking on too much risk! It's not worth it anymore. Tell the Broker…" Tarak trailed off, glared at his buzzing Omni-tool, and answered the urgent call from his subordinate. "What is it, Cathka? I'm in the middle of something here."
"The Mission has failed. The mark is officially under Aria's protection. Unless you want to piss off the Queen, I suggest you abort."
Tarak turned to glare at Tazzik before he replied, "fine. Abort the mission. Tell them to pull out."
"On it. Sorry, boss. We've already lost half of the squad. Cathka out."
"Motherfucking…" Tarak turned off his Omni-tool and ran a hand tiredly over his eyes. "This is what I'm talking about. I just lost seven men over nothing! Go away, Tazzik. Tell the Broker to do his own dirty work next time."
Tazzik clicked his tongue and stormed off with a look of disgust clear on his face.
Kasumi grinned and slinked away as well, having accomplished her own mission. She had successfully hacked into Tazzik's Omni-tool and installed a spying program while he was distracted by an irate merc gang leader. The salarian was well known as one of the Shadow Broker's top agents. The next time Tazzik contacted his boss, Kasumi would be able to trace the transmission. The program probably wouldn't be sophisticated enough to track the Broker all the way to their hideout, but it was a start.
She wondered whether the Cerberus leg of the operation was going as well as it was on her end.
x-x-x
T'Soni managed to hold herself together long enough until she was safe within the privacy of the Kodiak, away from Lawson's prying eyes. As soon as the shuttle took off, the young widow sagged into her seat, and wept.
Boss Lady sat down next to Blue and gathered her in her arms. Jack watched in quiet astonishment as Grey hurriedly took off a gauntlet, and pressed her bare hand against T'Soni's tear-stained face. The effect was immediate. T'Soni's eye flashed the solid black of a meld, and they clung to each other in a desperate embrace.
"I am so sorry." Grey murmured in a gruff voice. Jack was absolutely certain the woman was crying underneath her helmet just as hard as Blue was since their minds were linked together as one. She wondered what the Boss Lady looked like in such an emotionally vulnerable state; maybe this was the reason she kept her face covered all the time.
It was an unequivocal demonstration of trust for a woman who refused to show even an inch of her skin to the outside world to freely allow another person inside her head. Who was T'Soni to the ex-Alliance Cat 6 washout?
Jack bit down on her lower lip to prevent herself from saying anything. This was none of her business. They had only known each other for how long? Jack was Grey's hired gun, and nothing more. They were not friends. She had no right sticking her nose in where it was not wanted. If Grey was polite enough to not ask questions, the least Jack could do was to return the same fucking courtesy. To be honest though, her curiosity was killing her, but she knew better than to disrespect their privacy.
"Goddess… It could have been… That would have been…" T'Soni sobbed into Grey's chestplate, delirious with grief.
"Shh…" Grey cooed while rubbing soothing circles on T'Soni's back. "I'm right here."
They stayed huddled together for a long while. Eventually, the two reluctantly pulled away from each other and settled back to their own seats. Grey put her gauntlet back on and reverted to her aloof self, if not brooding at a stronger intensity. As for T'Soni, Jack could easily recognize the look of cold, calculating detachment. This traumatizing experience must have galvanized the naive maiden's resolve and frozen her bleeding heart to ice.
When they were about halfway back to Omega, T'Soni's Omni-tool began to buzz. The muted noise broke the gloomy silence inside the shuttle.
"Dr. T'Soni." A garbled voice of indistinguishable origin spoke through the device.
Blue's expression hardened into marble in an instant. "The Shadow Broker." She hissed out the moniker like a curse.
Jack's brows lifted up in surprise.
The person on the line continued after the terse greeting. "I am most disappointed to learn that you have allied yourself with the wrong party. Cerberus is not your friend."
The look of absolute fury twisted Blue's face into something truly terrifying to behold. "In this case, Cerberus is the lesser of two evils, and that's saying something. You deal with monsters, Broker."
"You are only delaying the inevitable, Dr. T'Soni. You are a fearful child alone in the dark. Holding onto your security blanket won't make a difference when the monsters come."
T'Soni's body was trembling with rage. She jumped to her feet and began pacing in agitation. "The Collectors knew where to find the Normandy because you told them! You sold us out! Mark my words, you will pay dearly for your crime. When I'm done with you, there won't be enough left to fill a coffee cup."
The Shadow Broker sounded completely unfazed. "Empty threats from a whelping youngling. This is nothing more than a pointless temper tantrum. At the end of the day, Dr. T'Soni, I always get what I want. You will do well to remember that. Shadow Broker out."
After the transmission was cut off, Grey approached T'Soni from behind and put a gloved hand on her back. "Hey, forget about them. The Broker is just being a sore loser."
"I hate them. I just want to…Urgh!" T'Soni growled and made an angry gesture of choking someone to death. "I will find them, and I will destroy them."
"We will. Soon." Grey promised.
Jack wasn't nearly as optimistic, but she wasn't going to burst their bubbles. She of all people understood how cathartic it was to fantasize about righteous vengeance; there was no need to spoil their fun by telling them how impossible it was to bring down one of the largest criminal organizations in the galaxy. Jack herself had no illusion of her chance against Cerberus, no matter how much she hated them. God, she hated them, but she hated the fact that she always had to run from them even more. With the Hellhound nipping at her heels, she could never stop running.
When they finally disembarked at Omega's main dock, the thief was there waiting for them. "Dr. T'Soni, your transport is ready. Follow me." Kasumi said succinctly and led Blue towards a different shuttle.
Jack caught Grey giving T'Soni one last squeeze around her wrist. For some reason, seeing this small gesture of comfort really bothered her. Dealing with Cerberus must have been messing with her head, Jack thought grumpily. She couldn't wait to get shit-faced to block out the memory of this long day.
The job might not pay much, but at least the Boss Lady covered her tab.
x-x-x
After the emotionally draining mission, the ex-Alliance secluded herself inside the security of her own quarters, locked the door, and took off her helmet.
The very much alive Jane Shepard went inside the ensuite and grabbed a towel to clean up her face. Watching Liara surrender the fake body to Cerberus was difficult enough, but to be inside her mind and experience the soul-rending grief first hand… Shepard fully comprehended why Liara was so bitter and distant towards her on Illium when she first came back. It was a coping mechanism. While Shepard's body was broken, Liara's heart was equally devastated. During the two years it took for Miranda to rebuild her, Liara had to pick up the shattered pieces of her heart and stitch them together by herself. It left scars that would never heal.
This time, even though Liara was fully aware that the mutilated corpse was only a very convincing fake, she was still severely traumatized by the experience. To be fair, it was probably a million times easier on Liara than having to hand over Shepard's actual corpse like last time. But still, it was awful enough.
It broke her heart to watch her bondmate's own vivid imagination invent all sorts of horrors to torment herself with. Inside Liara's mind, Shepard saw her corpse transform into a grotesque husk like Saren had. She saw herself alive, but twisted by Cerberus ideals - a xenophobic pro-human evil twin, a pathetic mockery to her very legacy. She saw Liara trying to save her from going down with the burning ship, but fail to pull her into the escape pod no matter how hard she tried. Shepard had to admit, the last scenario was the most painful one to watch. It reminded her too much of her own failure.
There was cruel and unusual, and then there was this. Shepard thought she deserved a special place in Hell for what she had done. If she were smart enough to think of a better plan, maybe she didn't have to make sweet, innocent Liara see the mutilated doppelganger and experience this kind of agony.
Shepard sat down on the floor with her knees pulled up, and held her pounding head with both hands.
Who was she kidding? Her name was on the list to be harvested. She couldn't possibly keep running from the Reapers. Well, she might have been able to run for a little while, but only if she devoted all her attention to dodging Reaper agents. Last time around, Harbinger sent a Collector ship to shoot down the Normandy just to kill her, and twenty innocent crew members died when the frigate went down. If she had lived through the destruction of the Normandy, Harbinger would simply try again. And who knew what kind of collateral damage that would have resulted in?
There was so much preparation to be made for the Reapers' arrival, Shepard had no time to waste. Being laid out on a cold slab in a Cerberus lab as a corpse for two years was out of the question. She couldn't do this to Liara, not to mention being spaced really sucked, and there was no guarantee Miranda could resurrect her for the second time. The only option Shepard could see out of this death trap was to let her enemies think they had succeeded.
At her request, the brilliant cloning specialist Dr. Tartakovsky had assembled a non-viable clone of Shepard in four day's time. After she picked up the brain-dead blank from Eden Prime, Dr. Chakwas went to work to replicate the various implants on the doppelganger to make it a perfect match to her Alliance medical record.
For what she was putting Liara and Dr. Chakwas through, Shepard completely agreed that she deserved the slaps.
But the only reason why she could cheat death was because Engineer Adams and Tali installed several one-man escape pods near the cockpit. Thanks to her foreknowledge, she had managed to buy more time for the Normandy's kinetic barrier to kick in at the last moment to withstand one more shot from the Collector ship. As another precaution, Shepard herself had upgraded her old N7 armor to be fully environmentally sealed with an internal air supply system for use in space and other extreme conditions. No more cut air tubes, no ma'am. Even if she had been spaced this time around, she could have float in the black for days before running out of air, assuming Kasumi couldn't read the signals from the extremely robust location tracker embedded in her hardsuit.
Shepard had had no wish to die so she had made sure all her bases were covered. There were safety nets upon safety nets she could fall back on. She did not travel back in time just to be killed by the Collectors again. She had planned this out in great details precisely because her life depended on it.
Operation Coventry was named after the famous Coventry conspiracy in human history. Many sceptics believed that during WWII, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had intentionally allowed the city of Coventry to be attached by the Nazi to hide the fact that the Allied force had cracked the German Enigma code. It was a conspiracy theory that refused to die, even though it had been debunked by many historians. Shepard thought the name "Coventry" was an apt one for her situation.
Let the Illusive Man think he had the upper hand. Let him waste his vast resources on resurrecting a dead hunk of meat that had never lived. Let him weave his little fantasy of manipulating humanity's most famous hero to ride into the abyss and bring back the dragon's hoard in Cerberus' name.
Shepard was no hero. She was a simple woman who was thrust into a position where she must do a hero's job, or watch all her loved ones die. She was human.
And right now, she was a ghost.
Massaging her forehead to ease off a steadily pulsing headache, Shepard picked herself up from the floor and checked over her appearance in the mirror. The stress and the separation from her bondmate had put a smudge of dark circles under her eyes, but overall she seemed well enough to carry on her work.
"Vigil, initiate Torchlight protocol. Raise Admiral Hackett."
The Prothean VI stored within the customized FENRIS mech responded, "acknowledged. Admiral Hackett is available."
"Patch me through."
"Aye, Warden." Vigil scanned Shepard's body once and projected out a miniature holographic image of Hackett in front of its stubby mechanical head.
"Hello, Shepard." Hackett greeted her warmly. "I assume everything went well?"
"Yes, sir. Cerberus took the bait." Shepard gave the Admiral a thin smile. "They are planning to resurrect Commander Shepard with every resource available. They'll have their best scientists on the job, and they'll spare no expense. We're talking about years of research and billions of credits."
Hackett chuckled. "I wish them good luck on that."
"What about things from your end, sir?"
"I've managed to convince the defense board to keep better intel in the Terminus systems. I'm sending people out to set up a network of probes. This is a relatively small commitment on the Alliance's part, so the board agreed without any fuss. Now if I had asked for installation of comm towers and AA guns, which I do think we need, they would've dragged their heels for months."
"Early detection is about all we could've hoped for. The Alliance has no authority in the Terminus systems. Colonies out there don't obey our laws and don't pay our taxes. They might be human, but they can't shun us and still expect us to be their protectors. When the Reapers come in strength, we'll have to pull in our fleets. This is a war where we will lose everything if we try to save everyone."
Hackett let out a sigh. "You're preaching to the choir, Shepard. I completely agree, we are stretched too thin. One good news is that Parliament has tripled this year's defense budgets, now that we are expected to help keep the peace within Citadel space. But they won't commit to the level of preparation we both know we need. Even if they had thrown in their full support, it still wouldn't have been enough. Humanity can't do this alone. The rest of the Council has made it perfectly clear that the Reapers are a theoretical enemy you've made up as a thought exercise. They are blaming everything on the geth."
"I would like to see the look in their eyes when this theoretical enemy sets their actual asses on fire." Shepard muttered darkly. "Fine, there are ways around that. They can't stop us from updating our training programs to include fighting this theoretical enemy. Our ground troops need to learn how to fight a defensive war with limited supplies while being greatly outnumbered. Our ships need to know how to evacuate whole colonies at a drop of a hat while being fired at."
Hackett rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You're right, that is something we can do. I don't need to go to the board to implement training drills. Send me a list of recommendations. With the Prothean Beacon inside your head, you're the foremost expert on Reapers and their tactics. The Council might not want to heed your doomsday warnings, but I want every gruesome detail. I need every edge to get us through this."
Shepard inwardly congratulated herself for having the foresight to keep Hackett in the loop. This man was going to save so many lives. "Yes, sir. I'll get them to you ASAP. Speaking of the Council, how are they taking my supposed demise? All I've heard is their official statement on public news broadcast."
Hackett looked amused by her question. "Your untimely death has been a huge inconvenience to the Council, according to Councillor Anderson. I know you took great pains to capture the footage of the Normandy's destruction, but at the same time, this evidence became a great pain in the Council's backside. The Collector ship looks nothing like a geth dreadnought. They are aware something extremely dangerous is lurking out there, but they are not willing to do anything drastic to deal with the problem. As far as I know, they've deployed more STG units to the Terminus systems, but that's about it. Interestingly enough, the salarian Councillor seemed awfully convinced the dreadnought was of batarian make."
"Batarian? Ah, right. Valern must know about the Leviathan of Dis. He is not completely wrong. The Collectors are working for the Reapers, the Beacon was clear on that."
"Conjectures, that's what they'll say. Only you have seen the vision, and it has been 50,000 years." Hackett frowned with a slight shake of his head. "This is enough evidence to motivate me to do something about it; hardly enough for the Council to send out a ship to investigate. Especially when the most informed Councillor is convinced the batarians are to blame."
"And the batarians are the Alliance's own problem." Shepard finished with a scowl on her face. "Typical."
"Exactly. So we are on our own until you can bring forward irrefutable proof to the Council that this is a threat to all the races, not just to humanity."
"Working on it, sir. My anonymity has its advantages."
"I trust you to do whatever that's necessary to get the job done." Hackett paused, and added, "one more thing. I'm kicking your mother off my ship to take over as the CO of the new Kilimanjaro-class dreadnought, Orizaba. I don't know how, but she figured out the switch on her own, and she's not happy with me. The Alliance needs competent leaders. I'm not letting her refuse promotion this time. You probably don't need me to tell you how furious she is with you, do you?"
Shepard winced. "I didn't want her involved in this mess. The whole world was watching. I needed her to show genuine reaction in front of the camera."
The Admiral shook his head. "Well, she is genuinely pissed, I can tell you that. In any case, I should let you go. Stay safe, Shepard. Hackett out."
The transmission cut off after that.
Great. Angry family and friends to look forward to. On top of that, more paperwork. Maybe it's easier if I just stay dead.
Sighing to herself tiredly, Shepard slowly took off her armor and headed to the washroom. Hopefully a hot shower would wash away enough of her exhaustion so that she could go back to work again.
She would rest when she was dead.
x-x-x
Forest.
Shepard found herself lost in the same forest again. The half withered trees were tombstones, and the leaves on the forest floor were bleached bone.
Her body was filled with lead. Her heart, dread.
Shadows and laughter. The dead were haunting her steps.
She was alone.
Shepard…
She spun around, but the reedy whisper already dissipated into the fog.
Shepard…
Liara's voice. Liara was calling to her.
Shepard!
She was no longer in a forest. The trees transformed into broken concrete pillars. The floor was asphalt littered with debris. She looked up, and saw the column of light, the Conduit.
Harbinger screeched. Its red energy beam carved a charred path at her direction. Shepard ran towards the light.
The edge of her vision was dark and tinged in red. Her body was heavy. She could hear her heart thumping dully inside her skull.
Liara is dead. Why am I alive?
Husks were blocking her path. Her biotics was completely tapped out. She raised her arm and squeeze the trigger of her pistol.
"Hey!"
Shepard woke with a gasp. There was a whoosh, and then a loud clatter accompanied by an angry curse.
"Jesus fuck!" Jack yelled while picking herself up from the far end of the living room. "What's your problem?"
"Wha?" Was Shepard's reply. Clutching one side of her head in confusion, she took a moment to survey her surrounding. She was sitting on the couch in the apartment on Omega, wearing a black jumpsuit and a recon hood; she must have fallen asleep in the middle of typing out her report to Admiral Hackett.
Jack looked pissed. "You fucking hit me, asshole!"
"I did what?!"
"Yeah, you threw me with your biotics." Jack frowned at her, clearly annoyed. "You were like, thrashing on the couch. And then you just bolted up and threw me across the room."
Shepard scratched her head. "Sorry, I didn't mean to do that. I, umm, had a nightmare."
Jack seemed stunned by her frank admission. "Oh. That's fucked." The heavily tattooed woman sat down on the couch, looking slightly unsure of herself. "Did the mind thing with Blue mess with your head?"
"Yeah." Shepard admitted quietly.
"You two knew each other." Jack said. It wasn't a question.
Shepard nodded. "Yeah."
"You love her." Jack said after a long pause. It wasn't a question, either.
With her eyes concealed behind the recon hood, Shepard gave the woman an evaluating look. "Yeah."
"She's totally still in love with Commander Shepard."
"I know."
Jack cursed. "Damn. That's shitty. I'm sorry."
"I'm not." Shepard stated with complete honesty. "As long as she's happy, I'm happy."
Jack gawked at her like she just said the dumbest thing in the world. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." She declared.
Right.
"Blue is not happy. In case you didn't notice, her bondmate is dead. We saw her corpse. You want her, you should just fucking go for it. None of this honorable, noble shit. This is real life, not a fairy tale, Girl Scout."
Shepard rolled her eyes. There had to be something in the water when Jack was giving her relationship advice. "Dr. T'Soni does not appreciate unwanted advances. She is very reserved."
"Oh, yeah? You into the nerdy librarian type?" Jack scanned her up and down appraisingly. "I can see that. Not my usual style, but I've been around. Her types are total freaks between the sheets."
On second thought, no. Maybe Jack just wanted to talk about sex. Shepard shook her head in exasperation.
"What? Am I making you uncomfortable? You a prude or something?" Jack grinned evilly at her. The scantily clad woman scooted closer next to her on the couch. "Normally I'm not a member in the girl's club. I like my meat tough, you know what I mean." She made an obscene gesture to get the point across. "Something solid to sink my teeth into. But I've eaten my fair share of pussy. You want some pointers on how to work the freaky Blue, you let me know. If you ask nicely enough," Jack licked her lips and put a hand on Shepard's knee. "I might give you a personal tutorial."
Having known about Jack's attitude towards casual sex, her advance was not completely unexpected. "No, but thank you for the generous offer. I know my way around an azure." Shepard declined politely.
Jack pulled her hand back and crossed her arms around her chest. "Fine, whatever. Let me know when you change your mind." She slipped her middle and ring fingers all the way into her mouth, sliding the digits between her lips a few times before popping them out to make a very graphic point. "I'll even let you keep the clothes on if you're feeling shy. I can work my magic, Boss Lady."
Shepard couldn't help but chuckle good naturedly at Jack's open-ended offer. "Sure. You'll be the first to know if I change my mind. I wouldn't hold my breath though."
Jack sulked at the rejection. "Your loss."
"Jack." Shepard explained patiently to the younger woman who had suffered much since the day Cerberus got their hands on her as a baby. "I don't do casual sex."
Jack jumped up from the couch and pulled her lips back in an angry snarl. "I get it, you think you're too good for me. Well, fuck you too, you stuck-up bitch." She cupped a hand over her crotch and made another incredibly obscene gesture. "'Cause I can get what I want anywhere else." She shouted, before storming off the apartment.
Shepard sighed. She would need to discreetly follow Jack just to make sure she wouldn't do anything rash to harm herself. Purgatory was a bad place for Jack. Parading around in a maximum security prison with nothing but tit-straps invited attention of the worse kind. Shepard didn't know exactly when the Blue Suns would capture Jack in the original timeline, or even how, but she would do her best to prevent this from happening again. She already failed Jack once - she died under her watch during the suicide mission. Failing her again would be unacceptable.
If her mother had not hidden her away on Mindoir after the second eezo exposure, it was very possible she might have ended up in the same Cerberus facility as another test subject. Having seen what was left of the research lab on Pragia, Shepard was determined to help Jack recover. She was no psychiatrist, but it was obvious to her that all the drug abuse, violent outbursts, and excessive display of sexual promiscuity were another form of self-harm. Jack might think lonely and alive worked just fine, but the scarred young woman deserved so much more in life than she allowed herself to believe.
Shepard checked her Omni-tool. Ten minutes head start should be long enough. Jack didn't trust her yet, so it was best to leave her enough breathing room. She just hoped getting into a drunken barroom brawl was the worst trouble Jack would get herself into.
x-x-x
Nope. Apparently, Jack was a lot more inventive when it came to getting herself into sticky situations. The ten minutes head start she had given her? Jack had handily managed to use only half of that time to successfully pick a fight with a gang of Blue Suns mercs and hijack their shuttle for a joyride. By the time Shepard found the half-dead mercs, the stolen shuttle was off-world already. The harmless grand theft auto escalated into piracy when she took over a small space station in a drug-fueled rampage with the group of low-lives she partied with at a sketchy bar. Immediately after forcefully taking control of the space station. Then she crashed the thing on a hanar moon because no one should initiate FTL jump while under influence.
Jack was lucky that she was smart enough to stumble into an escape pod before it was too late, 'though the poor moon would never look the same.
"Aww. My head." Jack groaned in pain while gingerly sitting up from the shuttle floor.
"Here. Drink some water." Shepard set down a water bottle next to her.
Jack looked around blearily. "I don't get hungover. Why does my head hurt?"
"Because you are a dumbass. And you are now wanted for vandalism by the Illuminated Primacy." Shepard pulled up a holo of Jack's wanted poster from her Omni-tool. "I had to haul your tattooed ass out of the new crater on a hanar sacred moon. Just so you are aware, you are also being fined for indecent exposure at a religiously significant site. I don't know what kind of orgy you were having on that space station, but you were in the buff when you crashed it."
Jack's face scrunched up in concentration. "Oh yeah, that. It's not my fault the navigation system was complete crap! I just wanted to take a closer look at the tourist trap. They wouldn't stop talking about it. And it was hot. The air condition system was shittier than the navigation system, so I took off my clothes. Though it could have also been the Hallex I took. It was a blur. There was some banging… I thought there was a hanar hanging there at some point, either before or after the threesome with the drells. That must be it. Should've spit it out rather than swallow. I forgot drell jizz is hallucinogenic."
"Too much information, Jack."
"Why am I here anyway?" Jack looked around and found herself inside a shuttle while covered in a blanket. Next to the bottle of water was a stack of neatly folded clothes and a few nutrient bars.
"I'm taking you back to the apartment. You need a shower." Shepard made a vague gesture at her direction and explained delicately, "the, umm, hallucinogenic material should be washed off ASAP. You might like it, but I consider it a biohazard." She paused for a brief second, and added with a shudder, "and it's gross. Seriously. It's disgusting. Just talking about it makes me want to take a shower."
"That's not what I meant." Jack said slowly. "I walked out. You didn't have to do anything. So why?"
"Do I have to have a reason?"
"Yes, you do. People stay around for sex, for biotics. It's always the same story. You don't want sex, and you hardly need my biotics, so what is it?"
Shepard shrugged. "I miss your friendly nature when you're not around."
Jack frowned at her. "I don't get you."
"Why not just take everything I say at face value? I could be genuine."
"Genuine? You?" Jack scoffed at her. "Come on, you've been around, you know how the galaxy works. You let someone get that close, it just means they need a shorter knife."
"That's a depressing way to live your life."
"Ha! At least I'm honest about it." Jack pointed at the recon hood Shepard was wearing and said, "me? What you see is what you get. I can't even see your face. And you want me to think you're my friend?"
Shepard considered it for a long moment. "Would you trust me more if you saw my face?"
Jack was taken aback by the question. "What? No. I don't care what you look like, alright? Forget what I said."
"Ok." Shepard dropped the subject and settled back into her seat.
"Ok." Jack crossed her arms across her naked torso and glowered at the bottle of water. The thin blanket was draped across her lower half, but she made no move to cover herself up more. "Hey."
"Yes?"
"Thanks. You know, for bailing me out."
Shepard smiled. "Try not to make it a habit. But it was pretty funny if you think about it. You mooned the hanar moon. You should get a tattoo to commemorate that."
Jack grinned. "You know what? That sounds like a great idea."
x-x-x
In the wake of the Battle of the Citadel, several things happened on a galactic level.
First and foremost, the galactic community was finally forced to recognize how mature humanity was as a whole. They might be the newcomers, but they were adaptive and ambitious. In two decade's time, they had elbowed their way into the galactic economic system to the point that it would be unthinkable to conduct business without any human input. In the arms industry alone, several human-controlled corporations now occupied a third of the market share. From the geographic point of view, humanity had expanded out of their safe haven and settled in all corners of the galaxy. With or without Alliance support, entrepreneurial settlers ventured off to uncharted worlds and made the untamed frontiers their home.
Before they had a Council seat, humans were only good for merc gangs and private security companies. After the invasion, humans began to fill the ranks of C-Sec in great numbers.
Secondly, there was a not-so-secret arms race happening at a feverish pace after the invasion. The key word people kept slinging about was "geth innovation", although there was murmurs of hyper-advanced proto-AI, the word "Reaper" was strongly discouraged by the authority.
Jormungand Technology was one of many small corporations that cropped up after the invasion to ride the geth-inspired new tech bubble. But unlike many other small tech companies that winked out of existence as soon as their first product hit the shelf, this Illium based private tech firm took off to an absurd height instead. Their first product, an easily detachable heat sink called the thermal clip, was an instant hit to every arms manufacturers out there. With a few minor adjustment to their production line, the use of thermal clips became the gold standard that would fit every small arms available.
Their second product was an Omni-tool attachment call the Tech Armor. Inspired by the geth shield, savvy users could customize their suit to add a new module to support the extra energy requirement to significantly boost their shields. They also developed an app to facilitate easy use of flash-forged Omni-tool weapons. The new app was not as useful for the civilian populations, but they were a perfect fit to supplement the Alliance's updated ground combat standard that required proficiency in melee combat against multiple opponents.
Rumour had it that instead of going public, this new startup had begun negotiation to buy out the flagging Sirta Foundation that was on the verge of bankruptcy. Whether the acquisition would go through or not was still too early to tell, but it was clear Jormungand Technology intended to expand to other sectors beyond personal arms tech.
In other news, a rising batarian warlord, Charn Korragan of Camala, had begun an aggressive land grab campaign in the Bahak system with his mixed raced gang of mercs. This resulted in a galactic travel advisory that strongly discouraged tourists from visiting the system to avoid becoming collateral damage. Conflict between different factions was a common occurrence within the Hegemony and travel restriction in the region was to be expected, but overall, there was no significant trade disruption.
In entertainment news, Blasto: A Game of Stingers, featuring the galaxy's first hanar Spectre, opened with 1.8 billion credits in the box office. The sequel, Blasto: A Clash of Tentacles, was already in production.
Fifty-two days after the Battle of the Citadel, a small human colony of 786 people on the planet Ariel located in the Terminus systems, vanished without a trace. This did not make the news anywhere. It was widely believed that a slaver gang had attacked the colony. No one had claimed responsibility, and no investigation had taken place. It was unlikely any action would be taken any time soon.
x-x-x
Jack came back to the apartment after dinner and found Grey sitting in a corner of the room, holding her head in both hands. The ex-Alliance had blended into the shadow so completely, Jack wouldn't have seen her if she hadn't noticed the faint glow of the recon hood light.
"Hey, you alright?" Jack approached Grey cautiously. She had no intention of being thrown across the room again.
"No. But I'll deal." Grey replied tersely. Jack could tell from her voice just how tired and burnt out she sounded.
Thinking hard to herself, Jack eventually decided to do the decent thing and repay Grey's kindness from before. She sat down next to the ex-Alliance and asked a bit awkwardly, "want to talk about it?"
Grey raised her head from her hands and slowly turned toward Jack to stare at her for a long time. Just when Jack was about to give up, Grey spoke. "Yeah, if you don't mind."
"Alright. Shoot."
Grey lean back against the wall and began. "Let's say, you know bad things are about to happen to innocent people. For example, you overhead a gang of slavers planning to hit a list of colonies. But at the same time, you don't know when they are going to attack, or how you are going to stop them without an army. There just isn't enough to go on. And the only source of this information was some snippets of conversations you've overheard in a bar like a lifetime ago, hardly reliable. Now it comes back that over seven hundred people are dead because you didn't do anything."
"This doesn't sound like a 'what if' question."
Grey shook her head and dropped into her hands again. "No."
"Do you have a plan to stop them?" Jack asked, getting curious on what the woman was talking about.
"I can't. The timing… I don't have the resources."
"What kind of resources are you talking about? 'Cause if it's ship and crew, I know how to get them." Jack said with a bloodthirsty smile.
Grey chuckled. The sound made Jake feel like she had done the right thing trying to cheer her up. "I wish it were this simple, Jack. I need the best ship, and she is not ready. I need the best crew, but I can't muster them without the ship. There's other stuff I could do, but they are all secondary; long games that would take years to bear fruit. What I want to see is immediate results, even though intellectually I understand there are more important things I should focus on. But to sit on this information and do nothing? I feel utterly useless."
"Alright, so the ship you want is not ready. But it doesn't have to be this specific ship, does it? Sure, other ships might not be as good, but they are good enough to get the job done, right?"
"No, even this ship I want could barely do the job I need done. And she is… unique. Not even Commander Shepard's Normandy could stack up. That's the best stealth frigate the Alliance had."
Jack's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Wait a minute, you are talking about the dreadnought that shot down the Normandy. You want to take on the Collectors… Holy shit! Are you crazy?"
"Maybe a little."
Jack snorted at the reply. "Crazy works for me. So you need a stealth ship that's better than the Normandy to play the hero. Fuck, you're like, not just a girl scout. You're the bloody Queen of the Girl Scouts. I take it you know where to find another one of these, right? 'Cause I can't say I've seen a stealth ship before."
Grey nodded. "It's still being built and won't be ready for at least another six months. In the meantime, the Collectors are going to hit more colonies. I know which ones, but I don't know when or how to stop them."
"How do you know so much?"
Grey pulled up her Omni-tool and played a vid clip. It showed the Pirate Queen slaughtering an entire warehouse full of people with her biotics. Amongst which were the Blue Suns mercs, all the slaves they held in the warehouse, and a few monstrous beings that could only be the Collectors. The whole scene was a literal bloodbath. People were ripped to shreds like they were made of wet tissue paper. By the end of it, only a few Blue Suns mercs were intentionally spared before they were taken into custody by the Queen's subordinates. Jack had never seen another biotics remotely close to being as powerful as Aria T'Loak. "Fucking hell! No wonder she rules Omega." Jack grumbled, but couldn't hide the look of admiration on her face.
"Yeah. There's a reason asari matriarchs are so well respected. They live for over a thousand years and their biotics only grow stronger. Aria is as powerful as she is ruthless. Here, watch." Grey paused the vid at the frame where Aria picked up a data pad from a dead merc's hand, and zoomed in. It was a long list of specific genetic requirements, locations, and associated human census data. At the top of the list was Commander Shepard's name. "Kasumi installed a whole bunch of cameras to watch where the mercs stash their goods. This footage was taken two days after the Battle of the Citadel." Grey explained.
"And you still let Blue meet with the Cerberus bitch because...?"
"Because I need to know what other dirty secrets Cerberus knows and we don't. Also, it would be very difficult to explain where I got this information. I don't want to piss off Aria. You've seen what she was like when she found Cerberus spying on her. Operative Lawson almost pissed herself."
"Ok, so let me get this straight." Jack started, "you want to play the big goddamn hero and stop the Collectors from attacking the human colonies on that list, but without a top-of-the-line stealth ship, there's literally nothing you can do. That about sums it up?"
Grey nodded tiredly. "Yes, that sounds about right."
Jack rolled her eyes at the Boss Lady. "You need to think less like an Alliance soldier, dull stone."
"What do you mean?" Grey sounded genuinely puzzled.
"Duh! You are talking to a criminal. You need to think outside the rigid confines of the law. From what I understand, you need a good stealth ship before you can take on the Collectors. This special ship you are talking about couldn't possibly be the only stealth ship in existence. Didn't they say the Normandy was unique too? I bet you those sneaky bug eyes have a few stealth ships of their own. Why not just take one from them?"
Grey remained motionless, seemingly stunned by Jack's out-of-the-box suggestion. "You're saying I should steal a stealth ship from the STG?"
"Yeah."
"I don't even know if they have one."
"Of course they do. Salarians are sneaky bastards. They probably jizzed their pants when they saw the Normandy when it first came out. I would be totally shocked if they haven't tried to make their own stealth frigate since. And we're just stealing, right? It's not like we're hurting anybody." Jack conveniently did not mention that stealing a warship from the salarian government was essentially piracy of the highest order.
"We do have a master thief on our team." Grey was starting to sound excited. "I need to do some research. Gather intel. That is something I can do; I'm not just waiting for stuff to happen. This moves my schedule up by a few months, at least. I can..." She roared in laughter and slapped Jack's back in visible approval. "This is good, Jack. You just gave me the best idea. Oh, he is going to have an aneurysm. I love it! I'll tell you later. Now I need to make a few calls. Muahahaha..."
Jack sat there watching the Boss Lady bounce into her quarters, cackling maniacally all the while. For a moment there, she wondered if she had made a huge mistake introducing Grey to the wonderful world of lawlessness. Stealing a warship from the STG would not be the same as hijacking a lightly secured space station that was meant to monitor cosmic weather events. But hey, at least Grey looked much happier now.
A week later, Grey brought home a young female quarian and two sets of commando leathers complete with full-faced breather helmets. "Tali. This is Jack, and this is Kasumi." She pointed at the thief as she decloaked. "When I'm in the commando leather, call me Red. Other times, call me Grey. Are we clear?"
Everyone nodded.
"So I gather we really are going to steal from the STG." Jack said.
"Yes. You were right about salarians being sneaky. They stole the Normandy's stealth drive design, made some improvements, and built a few experimental light frigates on the sly. My sources tell me they are planning to modify the stealth system to fit dreadnoughts eventually, greedy bastards." Grey explained. "One of the light frigates is currently drydocked at a shipyard on Senoquol to be refitted with more powerful guns. I don't care about the guns. I only need its stealth capability."
"Keelah! We are talking about stealing a ship from the STG. If my father finds out, he will execute me himself." Tali wrung her hands together tensely. "Are you sure? Sh… Sounds like a really bad idea."
"Relax, Tali. It's not like it's your first time stealing a ship." Grey said to the young quarian teasingly. "What your father doesn't know won't hurt him. We're going to return this ship once the new one is available in about six months. It's for a good cause. It'll work out."
Kasumi chirped up, "besides, where is your sense of adventure? Dodging the STG is old hat for me. Have I mentioned that a salarian Spectre has been trying to catch me for years? He never got close, and I'm sure he will find out I'm involved in this one, too. No one would ever suspect you. We want your help to make sure the stealth drive works just right. I'll handle the breaking and entering. The rest of the team is only here as the backup plan in case anything goes sideways."
"Ok, when you put it this way, I feel much better about our chances. It would be disastrous if we get caught." Tali said with a nervous laugh.
"Then we'll try our best to not get caught." Grey promised.
x-x-x
It was actually kind of amazing, Jack reflected.
To conceal their identity, Grey had brought a set of black commando gear for Jack to wear while she wore the set of dark red leather. Boss Lady walked out of her quarters clad in tight leather while moving like an asari commando. It was like watching her channel Dr. T'Soni. Her gait and her body language had completely changed from masculine military swagger to sensual asari sway. She had a hard time thinking of them as the same person.
"Jack, you'll need to follow Kasumi's instructions exactly. She is the lead of this heist. If everything goes according to plan, they wouldn't even know we were there until we are gone. Keep everything non-lethal, are we clear?" The ex-Alliance asked sternly.
"We're clear… Red." Jack replied. Listening to Boss Lady talk had confirmed that they were no doubt the same person regardless how she conducted herself.
They boarded an Athabasca class merchant freighter at Omega's main dock. The freighter rendezvous with an unmarked batarian cruiser at a hazard 1 moon in the middle of nowhere, and then they boarded the cruiser to rendezvous with a small Kowloon class freighter at a mining town in batarian space. They boarded the freighter and all but Kasumi climbed into a specially prepared crate.
"Trojan horse." The thief explained succinctly.
Jack had no idea what Kasumi was talking about, but since the Boss Lady was fine with it, she was fine with it too.
They didn't stay in the crate long. Kasumi must have done something to hack into the loading dock VI and override the control. The clamp drones grabbed the crate and set it on a conveyer belt to transport them into the cargo bay of the ship they were planning to steal. It was a breeze from there.
They crawled through the maintenance shaft to the life support module located on the crew deck and sabotaged the climate control to lower the interior temperature and reduce the oxygen concentration inside the vessel. The salarian technicians working inside the ship quickly passed out while the team were safe behind their fullbody hardsuits and breather masks. Apparently, salarians were more sensitive to their environment than humans were, something to do with being an amphibious species - Jack carefully filed this information away in case she ever needed to fuck with salarians again.
While Boss Lady and Jack were busy loading the unconscious technicians inside empty crates and shipping them out using the hacked clamp drones. Tali was checking the power and propulsion systems to make sure they could use the stealth frigate as their getaway ride.
"Eezo core stable, stealth drive on standby, all systems green. You were right, Sh... Seriously. The salarians stole the Normandy design. There is no doubt about it. They did make some impressive improvements to handle higher blue shift emissions, but the underlying structure of the IES stealth system is exactly the same. Now I don't feel bad at all." Tali complained with obvious annoyance in her tinny voice.
Jack briefly wondered why a young quarian would be so well-informed of the top secret Alliance ship design, but then she decided maybe it was best that she didn't know. Same reason as to why a thief would be so experienced in dodging Spectres, or why an ex-Alliance would be able to find the exact coordinates of an STG operated facility. Everyone had the right to keep their own secrets. Jack had a few ugly ones she never wished to share.
"Kasumi, how's your end?" Boss Lady asked while walking towards the stairs leading up to the bridge. Jack followed closely behind. This salarian built Skald class light frigate was tiny. The CIC and the bridge were compressed into one oval area on the upper deck, the crew deck was built to accommodate a small crew of ten, and the cargo deck only had enough space to fit two shuttles side by side. The back of the cargo deck led to the engine room. This frigate's oversized eezo core was so large, the engine room spanned the height of all three decks.
"Give me a minute to override the docking clamps, and then we're good to go." Kasumi answered through the communicator. Soon after, she decloaked on the bridge - Jack had no idea when she had boarded the ship - and sat down on the pilot seat. "Ready to take off, captain."
Boss Lady chuckled gleefully at the thief. "Excellent. Make it so."
x-x-x
A/N: It's interesting to write from Jack's PoV. I've always liked her as a character. The only reason I don't use her much in ME2 is because her loyalty power is useless to my preferred Vanguard build. Squad Cryo Ammo fits my play style so much better. Jormungand Technology (misspelled as Jormangunt in the first game) is a hidden manufacturer only accessible via console command.