Absolute Magnitude

-Chapter Six-

Hostage Situations

The first thing Shepard noticed as the door of the clinic slid open was the large turian crouched behind some sort of massive piece of medical scanning equipment. The second thing she noticed were the unarmored but well-armed humans threatening a woman in the back of the clinic, which unfortunately came at almost the same moment she was seen. The man nearest the doctor grabbed her to his chest, whipping out a pistol and brandishing it in Shepard's direction.

"Who are you?" the man demanded.

"Don't you know you lock the door during these kinds of things?" Shepard replied as she counted the number of armed men they had to put down without a stray bullet catching the civilian. Before she had a chance to try talking the men down-playing the merc who'd just happened to stumble in and wasn't at all invested in the life of the doctor except for looking to use her services-Vakarian surged up out of cover and nailed the thug holding the doctor hostage.

No armor meant no shields, so the thug's right eye was suddenly a leaky, empty cavity that revealed the path his bullet had taken. The doctor was rattled enough that she just hunkered down in place, hands fisting over her ears like it would somehow provide protection against the gunfire that was suddenly echoing in the enclosed space. There were five hostiles left when the C-Sec officer had taken his shot and Shepard sprinted forward, sliding across the scanning equipment.

She focused her attention on the ones who'd retreated behind a structural support column, trusting Nihlus to quickly round the equipment and take care of the thugs closer to the doctor. She held her fire, letting her shields prove the veracity of the manufacturers claims-not only was medical equipment massively overpriced, there tended to be less-than-bulletproof cabinets of things like oxygen in clinics like these.

Almost before her feet touched floor on the other side of the scanner, she caught the one sheltering behind the column in the shoulder and the force of it was enough to send him stumbling back just that one step she needed to make a clear head-shot. She turned her gun on his partner almost before his body finished sagging to the ground. The second gunman had thrown himself away from the pillar to shelter badly behind a stack of half-unpacked medical supplies. He panicked, dropping his pistol and pulling out an SMG.

"God save us all from idiots who want to use automatic weapons," Shepard hissed under her breath as she stepped directly into his path of fire, knowing that an unlucky ricochet would be all it took to leave them sans a Wards doctor. Her kinetic barriers absorbed the momentum, leaving the bullets to drop harmlessly at her feet as she took the three steps it took to give her a good enough opening to put a bullet in his right temple. For a second, she didn't think his finger was going to release the trigger mechanism, pulled tight in death instead of releasing, but then the weapon overheated and locked up.

Between the two of them, Nihlus and Vakarian had the others already down, flanking the doctor who was now shakily rising to her feet.

"Perfect timing, Shepard," Vakarian said. "Gave me a clear shot at that bastard."

"Nice shot," Nihlus replied snidely before Shepard could respond, "But I'm curious what your plan was if we hadn't shown up."

Vakarian shifted a little uncomfortably at the rebuke, then rallied, "Sometimes you get lucky," he said, then turned his attention to making certain the doctor hadn't been hurt. Shepard felt her brows rise at what was as good as a blatant admission that they could have walked in on a far different scene if they'd come a little later.

Though their Ward doctor hadn't had enough composure to seek shelter during the firefight, now that the gunfire had stopped, she was quickly recovering. Or at least doing a good job of pretending. She did run a clinic in a slightly disreputable section of the Wards-posturing with guns might have been something she'd encountered before, though it might never have progressed to actual shooting.

Shepard was careful to temper her voice when she spoke to the doctor. "It looked like they were threatening you when we came in. They were saying something about Officer Vakarian...?"

The doctor nodded, sliding her hands up and down her upper arms in a self-comforting gesture. "They work for Fist," she said, and Shepard glanced to Nihlus and raised her eyebrows meaningfully, gaze shifting to the doctor as she went on, "They wanted to shut me up, keep me from telling Garrus about the quarian."

And there it was, all the pieces assembled in their little puzzle. A crime lord who'd gone against the Shadow Broker to side with Saren, a rogue Spectre who'd sent out mercenaries of his own because he didn't trust someone who'd double-cross the most powerful information broker in the galaxy, and a quarian who had something that both the Shadow Broker and Saren wanted. Whatever Saren had offered Fist, Shepard hoped he'd enjoyed his reward while he could-he'd as good as signed his own execution warrant.

Shepard was silent as the doctor went on to explain the circumstances of her meeting with the quarian and was quietly impressed with her competence-she doubted many doctors on the Citadel knew how to treat quarians. The long and short of it was that the quarian had been shot and during her treatment, she'd asked about the Shadow Broker, intimated she had something valuable enough to exchange for safety. Dr. Chloe Michel had sent her on to Fist, who was apparently an open agent of the Shadow Broker.

"Not any more," Vakarian spoke up. "Now he works for Saren, and the Shadow Broker isn't too happy about it."

"We know," Nihlus said dryly.

"Fist betrayed the Shadow Broker? That's stupid, even for him. Saren must have made him quite the offer," Dr. Michel commented, one hand coming up to press a fisted hand worriedly against her lips.

"Whatever the quarian has, Saren has committed enough resources to retrieving her to make it worth our time to get there first. She didn't mention what sort of information it was?" Shepard pressed.

The doctor's brows furrowed, then relaxed as she volunteered, "Yes! She did. She was fevered when she arrived-standard quarian autoimmune response to a suitbreach-she kept talking about the geth. Once I'd brought the fever down, she didn't want to explain. Insisted it was dangerous."

"If her evidence can link Saren to the geth, there's no way the Council could ignore this!" Vakarian insisted, which Shepard hoped was the case.

"Time to retrace our steps," she said to Nihlus.

Who gave the turian equivalent of a wry grin. "Back to the bar," he agreed. "If that krogan you ordered hasn't already slaughtered a path to Fist and taken out our best lead."

"...you're going to hold the krogan against me?" she asked him dryly.

"If it doesn't work out? Yes," he replied unabashedly.

"I'll keep that in mind. I'm sure that Officer Vakarian can arrange for some sort of protection for you until we get this taken care of, ma'am," she said to the doctor. She looked at Vakarian. "Can you arrange it in the transit taxi? Nihlus will take care of authorizing the investigation, but this has to hold up in court. If they've already got you flagged for going on an unauthorized witchhunt, we're going to face accusations of manufacturing or tampering with evidence. This they might excuse. Did you contact Officer Vakarian after he originally contacted you? Tell him you felt concerned about your safety?" This she addressed to Dr. Michel, who gave her a startled, jerky nod.

"Good," Shepard replied shortly, turning her attention back to the turian. "We have a Spectre, so we don't need a warrant to enter Fist's place of business. When we reach the quarian, any evidence she has will be turned immediately over to you and you will immediately follow C-Sec procedure to establish chain of evidence, understood?"

She'd automatically fallen into the tone she used to make new soldiers fall in line, a close, slightly kinder cousin to the one she'd used to guide her men during the hell of Torfan. Vakarian responded to it, drawing himself up his full height. "Understood, ma'am," he rasped, hand rising like he might salute-turians brought a fisted hand over their keelbone. Then he looked faintly sheepish. "Shepard," he amended.

She couldn't help that one corner of her lips tugged upwards in a good humor that felt at odds with the situation. Most of what she knew of turians came from books about their tactics and their history, observation through a scope, or hardened soldiers or mercenaries. She'd never met one who seemed so...young , for lack of a better word. "It's alright-I answer to ma'am," she told him as she stepped aside to let him take the back seat of the transit taxi.

She heard Nihlus scoff softly, but it sounded amused rather than disdainful.

"Yes, ma'am," Vakarian repeated, humor saturating his subharmonics. "...so, neither of you seemed very surprised at all this. What with Fist and everything."

"We've already been in contact with another Shadow Broker agent," Nihlus replied. "So we knew about Fist. We'd already heard about the quarian as well, from a mercenary who was likely hired by Saren."

Vakarian made a trill of interest-the vocal range of turians, she was coming to find, wasn't dissimilar to a bird's, but much thicker vocal folds made the pitch closer to a big cat's or what the sound engineers in Hollywood had always thought dinosaurs might sound like. "Would the mercenary be willing to testify before the council?" Vakarian asked.

"The mercenary is dead," Shepard answered tonelessly.

An awkward silence descended in the cab, but the ride was thankfully short. Kaidan's group was waiting at the taxi hub and accompanying them was the large krogan that she'd seen in the club earlier. He had deep and very clear facial scarring, which she'd heard was supposed to be attractive. He also had a large hump; like camels, krogan stored fat in their humps as a survival mechanism and given how they'd essentially nuked themselves back to the Stone Age before salarian intervention, hump size had developed into an important social marker.

Off their home planet, it became less so, but from the way he carried himself now and the behavior she'd seen earlier, he was high enough in the order of things to not need to posture aggressively. A little posturing was unavoidable. What had Warlord Kitanghur said? The weak are meat and the strong eat.

Nihlus was lurking at her shoulder, silently disapproving, but Shepard ignored him and approached the others. "So you're the leader, huh?" the krogan grunted as he rose from where he'd been slouched against the wall. He grinned. "At least they've got the sense to follow the one with the good scars," he said, tapping his own facial scarring meaningfully. "I'm Urdnot Wrex."

If he knew how she'd gotten that scar, Shepard thought wryly, he'd have been less impressed. After all, a panicking, disoriented turian captive who'd had his hands so badly broken that he could only extend one finger to claw at her face wasn't exactly an imposing opponent. She'd only taken her helmet off in an attempt to convey that she wasn't batarian and wasn't there to hurt him. He wrote her faithfully every Compitarsus.

"Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy," she replied. "I assume Kaidan had time to brief you?"

"I know who you are. Your lieutenant used your name to bring me in on this, told me that you have some questions you wanted to ask Fist before I took off half his face with my shotgun. That ain't no hide off my hump," Wrex said, crossing thick arms across a powerful chest. "Just so you know that Fist is a dead man."

Shepard nodded, though she thought privately he'd have to be faster on the trigger than Nihlus if past behavior was anything to go by. "Good. Kaidan, Williams, when we go in, you two will remain at the entrance to the 'employee only' area. I don't want any surprise visitors and I trust that the two of you will be able to control a nervous crowd-keep in mind where we are."

"Should we expect the civilians to be armed?" Williams asked dutifully, though she looked slightly skeptical of the thought of a drunken crowd being a threat to a pair of well-armed, well-trained servicemen.

Shepard was sharply reminded that Williams had admitted she'd seen only groundside garrisons without much action, but from Kaidan's sober look, he knew exactly what they might be facing.

"Probably, possibly illegally-keep in mind that this is the Citadel," Vakarian answered her. "There are gun mods being traded here from every independent arms manufacturer in the galaxy who thinks that the Council shouldn't have the right to tell them just how messily they can kill each other."

"Great," Williams drawled, "Too bad I left my riot gear back on the ship." There was that same stiffness in her stance that Shepard had noted whenever she'd noticed Nihlus nearby. Ashley Williams was made uncomfortable by turians, but she was putting a lot of effort into being professional about it.

Vakarian chuckled, either overlooking or ignoring the uneasiness of the human.

"So you're taking two turians and a krogan into a bar-sounds like the start of a bad joke," Nihlus muttered.

"Only if anyone other than the krogan walks out alive," Wrex said. "Otherwise that's what passes for good humor on Tunchanka."

Before the two could escalate into anything more than snide remarks, Shepard strode away toward her destination. They fell in quickly enough after that, neither willing to let the other have an advantage. She told herself that mercenary groups managed multispecies cohesiveness all the time, but then again they tended to be there voluntarily.

There was one thing she had to say about krogans-once their services were bought and paid for, they tended to stay bought, even against bad odds. "I told you to stay away, Wrex," the krogan who'd sent Wrex away earlier growled as the krogan in question shouldered his way to the front of their group.

"Eyes open-the barkeeper has his hand under the bar and he looks a little twitchy," Vakarian said softly from somewhere behind her shoulder.

"Another one on this side," Kaidan reported. "Dressed like a bouncer, but given our new insight into Fist's profession, I'm thinking enforcer."

"Crowd's looking a little restless," Williams added.

Shepard didn't need to be told about the mood of the crowd shifting-she could already hear it, the tempo of conversation changing, people pushing themselves to their feet. If their need weren't so pressing, she'd suggest they wait to question Fist somewhere more private and with less chance of explosive violence, but her options were limited. The part of her mind that existed only to protect itself shored up the steely walls that kept her from regret. "Bring him down," she told Wrex, who gave the other krogan a wide and toothy grin before he commenced firing.

The blast of a shotgun ringing in her ears despite the mandatory auditory implants, Shepard agilely boosted herself atop the bar, where she stared down the barkeep, who stepped away from her until his back impacted the wall behind the bar. "Ladies and gentlemen," she said, addressing the crowd, "I'm sorry to cut your evening short, but I'll ask you to leave this establishment in a calm and orderly fashion. You may take your drinks and dancers with you," she finished on a wry note.

The exit was not precisely calm nor orderly, except for the turian patrons, but it did leave the bar mostly empty. What remained were a couple krogan-one of whom was human culture conversant enough to toast her-who clearly thought that the fight was better than the asari and more thugs who thought Fist was someone worth dying for. The barkeep tried to lunge for the gun beneath the bar, but Shepard leapt on him, which also put her safely behind cover as people around the room opened fire.

They landed hard on the floor and the man wheezed desperately for breath beneath her, eyes so wide she could see the white of his sclera on every side of his pupil. She jabbed him in the throat once, twice, his Adam's apple threatening to kiss his spine, trachea collapsing beneath the force of her blows. His skin was already flushed red, but now he shaded toward purple as he fought to breathe.

Then she was off, surging back over the bar as Wrex's shotgun continued to roar. He used his greater mass like a battering ram, knocking the other krogan back. The two turians moved forward into the gap, assault rifles at the ready, and they were already firing on hostiles by the time Shepard made the door, Kaidan and Williams moving to flank the entrance as they put down the last of the enforcers. She felt the press of Wrex's bulk against her back as he finally convinced his opponent that he was dead and should stay down, and she stepped aside as she used her off-hand to key her omnitool, dominant hand bringing her pistol to bear. She winced as Wrex bellowed, right at her shoulder, and charged forward into the room.

It was a little like hunting, Wrex flushing thugs up out of cover where they were vulnerable to the fire of her allies, who were more than a credit to turian military training. All of Fist's underlings, except for that first krogan, were human and poorly armored. Shepard was grateful for the oversight, which meant that their advance through the room was brutal and quick. Wrex grunted as the last of the bodies fell. "Che, that was hardly even fun," he said as the wrenched the next door open, shotgun falling back into the ready position in his hand. "Look at these two in here," he called to her. "They're shivering so hard I don't think they could even hit me at this range. What do you think, Shepard? Should I be nice, let them take a free shot or two?"

He stepped aside as Shepard came up behind him and she was confronted by two men who clearly had no idea what they were doing. Her eyes quickly swept the room behind them and discovered neatly inventoried supplies. "I don't kill stock boys if I can help it," she told the two workers. "Take the rest of the evening off. A business like this? You'll have a new boss by next week."

The two men exchanged a glance and dropped their weapons, which made Shepard wince. Luckily, they didn't accidentally discharge and the two men scampered off toward the outer room, where the sound of gunfire had died down.

"Well, you're no fun," Wrex commented teasingly. "We could have messed with them a little bit, even if you were going to let them go."

"Strange," Shepard replied as she lead them through the room, "how much that does not appeal to me." The next door was locked electronically, but Shepard was underwhelmed by the security firewalls. It took her less than twenty seconds to have them through the door, the two turians flanking her as Wrex stalked first into the room, his biotics flaring as he snatched one of Fist's enforcers and slammed him into the wall.

They were getting closer to Fist-they were in some sort of private entertainment area, with two semi-circular couches gathered close to a round table. High-stakes Skyllian Five? Board meetings for the local red sand import/export business? Private VIP dances where there were fewer clothes and fewer boundaries?

"Does that count as knocking?" he sneered at someone, but Shepard's attention was focused on eliminating the rest of Fist's guards in this inner sanctum, who were actually armored and slightly better trained than the ones who'd tried to stop them in the out rooms. For lack of cover, Nihlus and Vakarian went down on one knee to minimize their profiles.

Shepard took the opposite approach, dashing forward, hand flickering through another two-stroke pattern on her omnitool interface. Her target's gun jammed and he looked down instinctively in betrayal, which was why he didn't see her pistol as it whipped through the air to impact his temple with a meaty thunk. Kinetic barriers had been developed to stop bullets-slower objects didn't register, because otherwise it would be impossible to interact with an environment while in armor.

When Wrex's shotgun roared again, she glanced over the rest of the room. As his target clutched at his belly and sunk to his knees, Wrex's fist came down to smash his face against the floor so hard he rebounded. He'd been the last enemy standing.

She had a moment's triumph before her mind registered the sound of machinery. Some part of her was utterly unsurprised as she watched automated defense turrets slide out of the floor. The rest of her was already shoving her body into action, pitching herself over the nearest couch in the very sleek, very modern sort of seating arrangement that almost echoed the circular bar in the first room. She hooked the table at the center with her leg as she rolled beneath it, causing it to come crashing down just as the turrets opened fire.

With a cheap enough target acquisition matrix, diffusing her body heat behind solid objects would have been enough to confuse the sensors, but as bullets slammed into her makeshift shelter, it was clear that Fist had invested plenty of credits into his fail-safe line of defense.

"Overload the shields," Wrex snarled at her as his huge body joined hers behind what felt like an increasingly small table.

"Say please," she replied tartly as she did as he'd demanded. She exchanged her pistol for her sniper rifle, sucking in a deep breath before standing upright and using the reflex sight she'd mounted atop her scope to sight quickly. She was vaguely surprised when its shields stuttered and fell before she overcame the resistance of the trigger. As soon she'd counted the one, two beat that was the heartbeat of her sniper rifle's cooldown, she finished off the turrent that Wrex had been antagonizing with his shotgun. "Thanks for the assist," she said as she glanced back at the turians. It was Vakarian who nodded, silently accepting the gratitude.

"It was a nice welcoming party," Shepard said as she turned back toward the inner doors. "Let's go thank our host."

"I didn't think krogans took cover," Nihlus commented to Wrex, who snorted.

"I like this set of armor. It doesn't regen like a krogan," he said pointedly. But he took point, charging the door, which couldn't take the weight and force of a full-grown krogan, crumpling inward. The man inside was sheltering behind a desk, and he stood and tried to unload his clip into Wrex, but the krogan's momentum wasn't stopped by the door and his biotics manifested and solidified into an extra barrier. His boots pounded across the floor and Wrex slammed his hand into the underside of the desk, spinning it into Fist.

It wasn't heavy enough to trap him, but it was heavy enough to make rising awkward. He didn't even try. "Wait!" he bleated, "Don't kill me! I surrender!"

"There's a quarian," Nihlus replied, "tell us where she is."

"She's not here," Fist said. "I don't know where she is. That's the truth!"

"That's your question, there's your answer," Wrex grunted, extended his shotgun so that it wasn't more than a foot and half from Fist's face. "Let me save us all some time and kill him now."

"Wait, wait" Fist protested. "I don't know where the quarian is, but I know where you can find her. She didn't want to negotiate with me-wanted to offer her information to the Shadow Broker in person."

Wrex scoffed. "Every idiot knows that no one meets the Broker face-to-face."

"She's young," Fist offered desperately. "I think this is her first time away from the Flotilla. I told her I'd sat up a meeting. Only it'll be with Saren's agents."

"Where?" Shepard prompted sharply.

When Fist hesitated, Nihlus stepped forward. "You should answer her," he rumbled. "I won't ask as nicely."

"Here on the wards. The back alley by the markets. She's supposed to be meeting them now. If you hurry-" whatever else he'd been about to say was drowned out by the shotgun blast.

"What are you doing?" Garrus demanded.

"He said to hurry," Wrex replied unperturbedly. "I'm saving you time."

"Kaidan, Williams?" Shepard activated her comm as Nihlus turned wordlessly to the door. She received an acknowledgement immediately. "Fall in with our Spectre when you see him-you're going to that alley behind the markets."

"Yes, ma'am," they chorused in her ear as Shepard stepped around Fist's body to where his personal terminal had landed when Wrex had flipped the desk.

"Shepard?" Vakarian asked anxiously.

"Taking the hard drive," she answered him shortly. "If we're lucky, it contains a record of what Saren offered Fist. If it was money, even if it doesn't lead directly to Saren, if he paid him out of an account-"

"You might have a better idea what you're facing, what Saren's funding," he finished for her.

It didn't take her long to retrieve the drive, but she still jogged out of Chora's Den. "Fastest route to our destination, Vakarian?" she asked as the officer drew level with her shoulder.

"This way," he said, taking off on foot. Shepard followed, but she was surprised to hear Wrex's heavy footsteps behind them.

Despite their haste, Nihlus was already killing people by the time they'd arrived. The group wasn't large, to avoid spooking their target, but they were well-trained enough that though it was a short firefight, it was brutal in its lack of cover. By the time the last merc had finished sputtering bloody froth, her armor had gained a few more impact craters to add to its disreputable appearance.

"Fist set me up! I knew I couldn't trust him!" The young quarian's outrage permeated every word. The heat of her anger hadn't completed evaporated when she spoke again. "And who are all of you?" she demanded, then shifted uncomfortably as she appeared to rethink her tone. "Not that I don't appreciate the help."

"This is Nihlus Kryik, a Council Spectre," Shepard said, when she'd glanced over to Nihlus and he flexed a mandible toward the quarian. "I'm Commander Shepard, Systems Alliance. We're spearheading an investigation into Saren Arterius. We know he's gone rogue, but we can't prove it. Our trail led us to you. I'm hoping that you can help us."

The quarian nodded slowly. "Yes," she said. "I think I can. It will give me an opportunity to repay you for saving my life. But not here."

Shepard nodded. "This is Officer Garrus Vakarian," she said, introducing the turian, who took a half-step forward. "He's C-Sec-it'll be to him you'll officially turn your evidence over to." She read discomfort in the quarian's body language and quickly intuited the cause.

So did Vakarian. "We can take her to the embassy suites," he offered, coming to the same conclusion she had, that the quarian would be uncomfortable with the idea of going to the Academy. "Your ambassador will doubtless want to hear this before he demands another hearing. From there, it will be easy for me to coordinate with the Executor."

"I understand," the quarian replied, a little of her defensiveness evaporating, leaving earnestness in its stead. "Believe me, I will be more than happy to help bring Saren down."

Codex Entry:

Compitarsus : The turian spirit of crossroads, who lent its name to a day which is given over to reflecting on those who guided you during the crossroads of your life. It is traditional to write letters to the mentors you are most grateful to and detail what has happened in your life since they last helped shape it. Those in public service such as fire fighters, law enforcement officers, and teachers often receive dozens of letters after Compitarsus. Other than handwritten letters giving way in many cases to e-mail, this tradition is relatively unchanged since antiquity and is widely practiced in Hierarchy space.