A/N: I am taking liberties with the Normandy's layout. If we have enough room for a lab, there's a wardroom and staterooms for officers somewhere. Also, I think being asked to sleep in the open in what are essentially tilted coffins might be asking a little much of the crew, especially if we're talking months long deployments. So we'll pretend they have real, assigned racks where they can pretend to have privacy and personal space.

Also, I know that ME uses a simplified rank system that mashes the Navy/Marines together and seems to do away with the Army/Air Force entirely, but my military-beta threatened to jump ship if the Marines weren't recognized as a distinct branch. So, Ashley Williams is a Marine, Kaidan Alenko is Navy, and Shepard originally enlisted in the Marines, but switched branches because the N-program belongs to the Navy-sort of SEALs in space. And because ground and in-atmo air combat is still a thing, Army/Air Force still exist. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

As always, lines are borrowed directly from the games, but where they go is another story.

Absolute Magnitude

-Chapter Five-

Hark, Hark, The Hounds Do Bark

All appearance of amiable turian vanished the moment they entered what the crew had taken to calling "the retreat," which consisted of officers' staterooms and the Normandy's tiny wardroom.

The turian military often housed all but their very senior officers-their Captain and XO-with their units on smaller ships, but they also had more relaxed personal restrictions than the Alliance, who weren't about to allow over-familiarity to blur the line between officer and enlisted. They also tended to create their warships-or any of their ships large enough that they weren't intended to do unassisted ground landings-with tiny private rooms sharing communal heads and washrooms and common areas laid out in what they called vicari, being that space didn't have the same issues with weightor frictionor even wind resistanceas atmo-bound vessels.

Shepard supposed that if you expected your entire population to serve a fifteen-year stint, allowing them privacy once they passed the rank of private was probably safer than trusting that every turian was somehow biologically suited for the concessions that came with military life.

Anderson never usually left the stateroom that doubled as his office on Deck 2, so he hadn't hesitated to offer his stateroom proper to Nihlus. Which was why Shepard was surprised when he followed her to the stateroom she shared with Dr. Chakwas, who was the only other female officer aboard the Normandy with enough rank to merit a place in the staterooms.

(Anderson had told her-he'd briefed her when she'd been assigned, just as he'd been briefed when irreconcilable differences of the likely to cause a political incident kind had seen the first captain relieved of duty-that the idea of separation by gender had baffled the turians during the design phase, but no one had been willing to explain that the idea of women as frontline combatants was still wasn't as automatic an assumption the way it was for turians. There were women on the Admiralty Board now and women captained warships, but no one had even seriously considered merging the quarters for male and female crewmen. Humanity had grown considerably more egalitarian even before they'd escaped Earth and was moreso every year, but they had brought ancient, well-entrenched ideas about gender into space with them. The discovery of the asari-an entire race of nubile young females whose culture fed into some of humanity's worst stereotypes-had not helped matters.)

When he seemed content to stare broodingly down at his omnitool, she retrieved her unmarked armor from her locker. While she'd earned the N7 designation and its distinctive markings through a lot of pain, blood, and toil, there were times when displaying that insignia was more hindrance than help. After watching people react to the N7, it was almost strange how easily she passed unnoticed when she wore something a little more battered and less standard issue.

Shepard ignored the turian as she stripped and returned her uniform to its place, sliding into the skintight undersuit with the ease of long practice. She waited patiently as the systems came online and ran their automatic checks before she began interfacing the elements of her hardsuit. She favored stealth-tech and mobility over the ability to be a one-man wall, and despite the intentional scuffing that made her look more merc than soldier, it was good armor.

Shepard considered if it was worth the trouble of taking down her hair and braiding it. It was too long to meet regulations in anything but a bun-not only personal preference but officially encouraged for Spec-Ops infiltrators to blend into civilian populations-but it was oddly useful in disguising herself even when she wasn't trying to pass as a civilian. Aliens had a strangely difficult time identifying a human when their hair was styled differently.

Of course, given that such a dramatic change of appearance would require surgery for most other species, she supposed learning to identify people by the shape of their crest, head tentacles, cranial horns and so on might have been common sense before humanity and their hair came along.

Two minutes wasn't going to change the world in this case, she decided as she unpinned her hair and deftly braided it. Slightly more of a risk in a bar fight, but she didn't intend to cause trouble. Shepard turned back toward Nihlus, who had fixed that unnerving stare on her instead of his omnitool. "Did you really intend to go to a bar?" she asked him when it was clear he wasn't going to speak.

"I was going to meet with my contacts, before I remembered that Saren helped me to establish most of my best contacts," he growled in response.

"You think they'd feed you bad information?"

"I think that Saren would eliminate them and do it in such a way that it couldn't be proven to be anything but a string of tragic accidents," Nihlus said bitterly, hands clenching and unclenching. "And my contacts know it. I doubt I'd even be able to get any of them to agree to meet. He's crippled me without firing a single shot."

"You don't have any contacts that he doesn't know about?"

"Some, yes, but no one with access to the kind of information we need. Anderson was right, when he said that the Shadow Broker would be the most likely to have any actionable intel. Unfortunately, I trusted Saren completely-he was my mentor and a friend," Nihlus replied, subharmonics broadcasting his distress. "My contacts to the Shadow Broker were first his contact."

He shook his head roughly, mandibles fluttering in a gesture that she couldn't interpret. "You look thoroughly disreputable," he said, obviously finished with the topic of his contacts.

"That is the idea," Shepard agreed wryly. "If this is the kind of place I think it is, no one will look twice at a human mercenary, but they might have something to say about Commander Shepard."

"It's exactly the kind of place you think it is," Nihlus told her. "The drinks are cheap, the asari are plentiful, and the lights are turned down low."

"It's somewhat comforting to know that sleazy bars are universal and not just a human invention."

Nihlus waggled his mandibles at her, though it looked slightly forced. "Don't you know? Sensual dance is integral is asari cultural heritage," he teased.

"Oh, I know," Shepard said wryly. "I had an audience with the Consort before the hearing."

"That's...unexpected," Nihlus ventured after a silent moment. "She's been known to make full Spectres wait on her pleasure. Do you prefer asari neural entanglement exclusively? Because according to your medical reports..."

He trailed off, but Shepard knew his question. Due to a galaxy full of diseases that could be transmitted by bodily fluid exchange, the 'Are you sexually active?' question and its relatives became a permanent part of the medical record of anyone who served shipside, because while fraternization regs prevented officers from propositioning those under their command, the sailors not in a superior/inferior relationship were technically free to mingle in whatever way they pleased so long as it was not "prejudicial to good order and discipline"-though everyone was generally encouraged to keep such activities to shore leave. No one wanted to catch something exotic from a liaison and despite military cleanliness standards, there were some hardy things that could sweep through the closed confines of a ship.

Humans had feared the possibility of a global pandemic before they'd ever left Earth; the intergalactic medical community had been predicting the rise of a mutated panspecies supervirus for the past decade. It was another reason that asari were the favorite bed companions of every species-all of the pleasure, none of the risks.

She gave him a wry smile. "I'm celibate. And asari mind-sex still counts as sex."

"Really?"

"Religiously."

"...has anyone ever told you that human religions are very strange?"

"Repeatedly. Anyway," she said as she led them through the public areas of the ship, "the Consort decided that a Spectre-candidate in need of contacts and favors was also the best candidate for running an errand."

"And what would that errand be?" Nihlus asked.

"If it becomes necessary to involve you, I'll let you know," Shepard replied. "Just a heads-up that if it doesn't interfere with our pursuit of evidence against Saren, I'll cooperate with her request."

"Ambitious, multitasking when we're trying to stop Saren from whatever the hell he is doing with the geth."

"Favors with highly-placed people are an important form of currency," Shepard said with a one-shouldered shrug, then cocked her head to one side. "Although favors with lowly-placed people in important strategic positions are good too."

Nihlus chuckled, then made a thoughtful humming noise deep in his throat. "How do you intend to confront Harkin?" he asked as they took a transit taxi to the lower wards.

"Depends on Harkin. Do you know anything about him?"

"Even less than I know about Vakarian."

Shepard nodded. Judging by Anderson's description and his suspension despite political pressure exerted by Udina, Harkin was the kind of cop no one wanted to deal with unless they were looking to exploit him. "I'll defer to your superior experience if you want to convince him to part with the information," she offered.

Nihlus glanced sidelong at her. "That sounds gracious and properly deferential, right until I consider that leaves meto talk to the suspended C-Sec officer who apparently spends so much time in a seedy bar that its location has become his home address."

Shepard fixed a politely neutral expression on her face and didn't say another word until the transit taxi deposited them at their destination. Even from outside the club, she could hear the faint, insistent pulse of the music.

"Asari cultural heritage," she muttered just loud enough for Nihlus to hear.

"Asari cultural heritage," he agreed. "I haven't finished my observations, so you take the lead. I'll interfere if I think you're doing it wrong."

"Do you anticipate interfering?" she asked as she took him at his word, heading for the entrance. Chora's Den was located very near one of the taxi hubs and was accessible only by a bridge that spanned a structural gap that looked down into a very unpleasant drop. Not much regard for drunken bar patrons going home, she thought with a flash of dark humor. Though there were some safety concessions, in the form of an above waist-height solid barrier on either side of the bridge. The barrier to their left took an abrupt right turn at the end of the bridge, continuing to herd pedestrians up the ramp leading into Chora's Den.

"Let's just say you're older and more experienced than most of the turian Spectre-candidates and I'm nicer than Saren," he replied. She saw him tense in her peripheral vision and then disappear as he came to a full halt and she instantly had a hand on her sidearm, tracking movement across the bridge, over on the ramp outside the entrance, that was too intent to be casual. The weapons they were drawing were another easy clue that they weren't dealing with bar patrons.

Three gunmen, she thought to herself as her shoulder scraped against the bridge railing as she threw herself into cover, moving quick and low and closing the distance with their attackers. Not enough to guarantee take-down of a Spectre-whoever these men were here for, it wasn't us, though we might come as a nice bonus if they can bring us down if they're working for Saren.

Nihlus held back at the junction of the platform and bridge, drawing their fire, relying on his assault rifle and firing in short bursts as he popped above cover. Judging by the cry of pain, he got past the shields of at least one of their attackers, but Shepard was focused on maintaining control of their cover. If they managed to round the edge of the barrier, they'd have to depend entirely on their kinetic shields-there was nowhere to shelter on the bridge itself and it would be a long retreat to the taxi hub.

When she reached the end of the bridge, she dared chance a glimpse around the edge of the barrier while all three of the hostiles were occupied with returning fire at Nihlus, advancing as they did so. Which did nothing for their accuracy, but it did make the Spectre keep his head down as he waited for his own assault rifle to cool. Less than thirty seconds before she would come face-to-crotch with the leading hostile.

His leg rounded the cover before the rest of him and, bracing her weight on her hands, Shepard kicked out and caught the side of his knee. The sound it made was something wet and solid, almost something you could choke on as you tried to swallow it down. His rifle fell from his fingers as he tried to curl his whole body instinctively around the savaged joint. Her hand streaked out, gauntlet closing on a ridge that marked where helmet sealed to hardsuit and it was by that grip she yanked him forward. Unable to compensate for the weight shift, he sprawled next to her. Hand slamming down on the back of his helmet so that he couldn't rise, she nestled her pistol against the back of his neck. Once, twice, his body jerked beneath her hand and then he was still.

Shoving the body carelessly to one side, she rose out of cover. Keying her omnitool with her off hand, she held her pistol steady in the same hand wreathed in the omnitool holoface. As soon as she launched the program and saw the telltale shimmer of a shields failure, Shepard put four rounds in a tight cluster in the face of a second gunman's helmet.

The first only caused radiating cracks in the surface, the second pushed them deeper, but the third and fourth thudded home. Shepard stayed above cover, and as her hand came back from where it had been cupping the butt of the pistol for greater stability, she activated her overload program in two keystrokes. "Nihlus!" she barked and was answered by gunfire.

Keeping low, she checked around the corner again and found that their third hostile, who was bleeding profusely from a wound in his shoulder-Nihlus had apparently been targeting the vulnerable seams in his armor. He was sheltering behind the wall that enclosed the ramp leading into the club and didn't look as if he intended to attempt anything further until his shields restored themselves. Shepard measured the distance between them, the make and model of his assault rifle, and the integrity her own shields.

Take him alive or take him out? She had to decide, and quickly, if he'd provide actionable intel. She risked another glance and this time caught sight of an insignia she recognized. Mercenary. Disposable resource. He might not know who they're working for, but he'll know what they're looking for.

Timing her sprint on another exchange of fire as Nihlus tried to flush him out, closing as he did so, Shepard burst from cover and had the mercenary down, his gun hand twisted at an uncomfortable angle and her knee in his back, before he could fire a single shot.

He was cursing her soundly and she applied enough pressure to make him gasp. "I know which group you belong to and I have a good idea who you're working for. Now, you have a choice. You live and go to C-Sec, or you die right here. Who or what were you here looking for?"

Shepard resisted the urge to apply further pressure when he was silent. Torture was against her rules; if she killed, she was going to do it cleanly. And the more she wanted to do it, the more convinced she was that it was a very good rule.

Finally, he spoke. "We were here looking for a quarian. A young female. We were shown her picture and yours, told to eliminate you and bring her."

"Thank you," Shepard said, relaxing her hold. But before she could let him go, an assault rifle barrel came to rest on the back on his neck. A three-round burst had red blood spilling onto the floor. Shepard had went very still at the sound of the first gunshot and now she stood up very carefully.

She met Nihlus's eyes. "I respect your judgment as the senior Spectre," she said quietly. "But next time, please tell me if you don't intend to leave anyone alive. My only saving grace with the Hierarchy is that I never offered surrender on Torfan-if I make an offer, I make it in good faith."

If he'd heard her and executed the merc anyway, it told her exactly why the Hierarchy had difficulties with him despite his skills. After Torfan, the turians hadn't been able to decide whether to applaud her thoroughness or despise her for breaking what they considered a sacred trust. Offering and accepting surrender and keeping the terms of treaties were almost religious concepts to them, presided over by very powerful spirits.

If she'd offered surrender to the batarians and then killed them, the turian Hierarchy might have declared her bellua sacer, which translators mostly rendered as "oathbreaker" to get the same sense of a cultural invective without the benefit of the sub- and superscripts that replaced subvocal cues in the written turian language. Doing so as an individual would have unpleasant but not insurmountable repercussions, especially because she was human, but as a commanding officer, they'd have objected very strongly to her appointment as XO of the Normandy and might have refused any public dealings with her.

Spectres existed outside that system of expectations, though that alone was cause enough for a lot of turians to mistrust them. Given Nihlus's silence and his expression, which showed not an iota of remorse, she could understand that.

She crouched next to the corpse and began searching the three bodies with the efficacy of long practice.

"Anything?" Nihlus asked when she'd finished the last body.

"The usual merc-kit-disposable credit chits, multiple IDs of varying quality, the man on your left was a narcotics user," Shepard said as she rose.

Nihlus stared down at them thoughtfully, then his eyes rose to meet hers. "Let's move on. Saren's not stupid enough to be traced through a third-rate merc group."

"Agreed," Shepard said, stepping away from the body she'd been crouched over and moving toward the Den's entrance.

"I'll drop an anonymous tip with C-Sec about the bodies," Nihlus murmured as he keyed in the message on his omnitool, but she almost couldn't hear him over the wash of music that greeted her as the door hissed open. Throbbing, pulsing music, for the benefit of the asari who were writhing atop the inner circle of the bar that dominated the club. The light was low and blue, except were the wall behind the bar glowed a reddish-pink, which made her almost feel like they were underwater.

Despite the music they'd been able to hear outside the club, the noise level inside was more bearable than she'd expected-enticement instead of overflow. That made her curious as to why club security hadn't at least taken a glance outside at the sound of gunshots, but as they passed a pair of krogan, she understood that they'd been otherwise occupied. Not her problem, however.

She keyed up an extranet search, intending to pull a photo of Harkin if she could, but Nihlus's hand came down on her shoulder.

"A human drinking in a C-Sec duty uniform," he said, gesturing to a man sitting alone at a table. "I think the odds are good that he's our target."

Shepard nodded, clenching the muscles in her jaw to keep her expression neutral as their target's eyes swept over her from head to crotch like she was something bought and paid for. "Hey there, sweetheart," he called out when she drew closer. "You looking for some fun? 'Cause I gotta say that you make body armor look good. Why don't you sit your sweet little ass down beside old Harkin and forget about your bodyguard there? Have a drink and we'll see where this goes."

Shepard couldn't remember the last time she'd been so bluntly propositioned. "No thanks," she said curtly, which made Harkin shrug faintly.

"Your loss. But if you aren't here to see me for a good time, you want something else from me. I think that merits you paying for the drinks," he drawled without removing his arm from where he had it slung over the back of a chair.

Shepard caught the attention of one of the waitresses, handing over one of the credit chits she'd palmed from the mercenaries' bodies. She'd thought the conversation might go this way if Harkin proved to be the kind of dirty cop who could be bought. And she enjoyed the irony of Saren providing the operating fund for their pursuit of him.

Harkin just leered at her until his drink was delivered. "Alright," he said, waving his hand toward the seat across from him. "Let's hear it."

"I'm looking for a turian named Garrus Vakarian."

Harkin's brows rose and he took a leisurely sip of something that all but glowed in the dark. "Garrus, huh?" he said. And then he abruptly proved why he'd been one of the first humans in C-Sec. "With your friend there being a Spectre with a certain reputation, you must be one of Anderson's crew. Given that scar," he moved a hand to trace a line that began at his jaw, crossed the bridge of his nose, nearly touched the eye and continued across his forehead into his hairline, "you're Commander Shepard. Couldn't see it when you first came in. It's healed up nice. And that means that the poor bastard's still trying to bring Saren down, eh?" He shook his head, visibly amused. "Still blaming Saren for washing out of his Spectre audition. Can't accept that even the high and mighty Captain Anderson is subject to failure, just like the rest of us. I know where Garrus is."

"You know his location just like that?" Nihlus rasped, breaking his silence from where he stood at Shepard's shoulder. "No need to contact anyone?"

Harkin sneered up at the turian. "I might be on the executor's shit-list, but I have ears, two of 'em, and I know how to use 'em. That's how I lasted twenty years in C-Sec with you damn aliens looking down on me. Garrus is a good cop for his age and a damn sight more pleasant than his father, but he didn't inherit much of his control. He's sloppy when he's upset. I'd bet my own credits that I'm not the only one who knows his location-or the only one who knows how close he thought he was to finding evidence on Saren."

Shepard and Nihlus exchanged a speaking glance. If one of those officers had fed information to Saren, there might already be more mercenaries pursuing Vakarian.

"So, what's your price?" Nihlus demanded.

Harkin's sneer only deepened. "The executor wouldn't just have suspended me, he would have flayed me and hung me out to dry if he thought I was selling out fellow officers. Garrus was sniffing around Dr. Michel's office. She runs a med clinic on the other side of the wards. Last I heard, he going back to follow-up on a new development."

Shepard stood. "Thank you for your time," she said.

Harkin scoffed. "Just go."

Shepard did as he suggested. She contacted Kaidan as they exited Chora's Den. "What's the word on the Shadow Broker's assistance?"

"That it apparently doesn't pay to cross him. Or her. Or them. One of his informants was apparently going to turn an asset over to Saren instead of the Broker, so he took a hit out on him with a krogan merc."

"Who's the informant?"

"A human named Fist, runs a bar named Chora's Den. Sound familiar, Commander?" he asked wryly.

"Yes. And I might have seen our krogan."

"Barla Von said he was picked up by C-Sec, implied that we might want to pick him up when we go see Fist."

"Other than making certain the Broker's contract is filled, he suggest any other reasons that it would be a good idea to bring along the krogan?" Shepard asked as Nihlus gave instructions to the transit taxi's VI.

"Fist is apparently something of a small-time crime lord. More drugs running than gun smuggling, but you can't have a drug trade without a side of gun violence," Kaidan said.

Shepard made a thoughtful noise. "Alright. Go down to C-Sec, feel out the krogan. If you think he's an asset, bring him. If they've taken him into custody and assessed a fine, I'll forward you the credits. Keep him out of Chora's Den until Nihlus and I rendezvous with you."

"What, not trusting that a krogan won't ask questions first?" Kaidan teased lightly. "Williams and I will take care of it."

"You're bringing in a krogan?" Nihlus asked incredulously when she'd ended the connection.

"I am sending Kaidan in to assess a krogan," Shepard corrected. "You've met Kaidan. You think he's going to loose someone uncontrollable in a bar full of civilians? And," she added, "if it turns out this krogan is the same krogan from the club, he walked away from a refusal without turning it into a fight. Says something about his self-control."

"'Self-control' and 'krogan' are mutually exclusive."