C H A P T E R 3

Omega, The Terminus Systems

2184 C.E.

"You did what?" Janina Craster's voice was like a whip as she almost spat the words at Amos Kenyon, the corners of her mouth quivering ever so slightly with the cold rage that hid beneath her suave surface. As expected, she had not taken the news of the assignment Aria T'Loak, the de facto ruler of Omega, had had for them lightly.

"You sent me to make a deal," Kenyon answered laconically, consciously ignoring her anger. "Well, I made one, and I stand by it," he told her from behind crossed arms.

"I sent you to that Asari bitch to get us some information about the abducted colonists," she snapped. "I didn't send you there so you can offer her your services as a messenger boy!"

Kenyon was not certain as to what he felt as he looked at her from behind the mask that was his stoic face. Anger? Disgust? Or was it maybe even pity? So this was how she had kept her own confidence after a year in Levenworth and the scorn of her peers? By dropping the blame and the hate on the Asari? Maybe that would have kept him from drinking and from the nagging suicidal thoughts, a dry voice commented in Kenyon's head, simply dropping it all on the guy he had executed. He subtly tilted his head to one side and opened his mouth to give her another non-answer, but to his surprise the elderly Frank Antweiler stepped in front of him, his hands half-raised in a conciliatory gesture.

"Captain, verbally getting at each other's throats won't get us anywhere," he told her in that calm, uncle-like voice that embodied his whole appearance. Craster's flashing eyes told Kenyon very clearly that here and now she would have been more than willing to get to the physical part of the getting-at-each-other's-throat metaphor, and again he felt something that he could not really pinpoint. Craster, so cocky and secure in who she was and where she belonged, so condescending even after court martial and prison. And yet so very angry, so very ready to blow at the slightest mishap. That was how the events had changed her. Faced with the loss of all that wonderful and convenient prestige of her old life, she had filled herself with rage. For Kenyon, however, there was only a black nothingness inside of him.

"I gave Lieutenant-Commander Kenyon a simple order," she responded more calmly, but there was still fire in her eyes. "An order you recommended, Mr. Antweiler. You wanted us to go to her, to buy that info!"

Frank shook his head, his voice that of a patient teacher.

"Ma'am, this is the Terminus. Knowledge and favours are a lot more tangible here than credits if you operate in the necessary circles. Aria has no interest in the money we might offer her," he gave Craster a thin smile. "She's making more in a single hour, running Omega, than we could have offered her for the whole data she has. This is how business is done here. I'm surprised your briefing didn't inform you of that," one of his eyebrows rose in an inquiring look, and Janina Craster's cheeks gained a subtle blush. But the commanding officer clenched her teeth and said nothing. Frank obviously drew his own conclusions from her silence, sharing a short yet telling glance with his wife Mellie before he continued. "No, as freelancers working for the Alliance we're far more useful to her if we do some of her legwork for her."

"You've told her we're with the 'Corsair' programme?" Craster almost squealed in sudden angry horror, her gaze rapidly switching to Amos Kenyon and back to Antweiler again, but the old spacer simply shrugged.

"She already knew that, ma'am," he stepped away from her and took a seat at the table with the holographic projector, pouring himself a lukewarm coffee. "Knowledge and information are her currency. Facial recognition software," he gave Kenyon a brief glance, "scans of our ships, cross-referencing with Citadel-space databanks, a few calls here and there...," he shrugged. "This is her domain, captain, and it is hers because she remains in the know. Always."

A brief silence filled the room, only pierced by the sounds Marak made as he worked on an ever-greater pile of electronics and what Kenyon identified as compound explosives, unconcerned by the verbal exchange in the room.

After what felt to him like all eternity, Craster finally relaxed and took a deep breath, but her voice was still hard.

"Fine," she nodded. "Fine. We'll do it your way. This one time. Mr. Amin, get your ass aboard Chimaera and plot a course to the Orieste star system."

Nidal Amin elegantly slid from his chair and saluted in one fluent motion. Amos Kenyon gave the man of Arab descent a cordial nod, and Amin responded in the same manner before leaving their quarters, Karina Buckley close on his heels. Kenyon turned to follow them, only to be stopped by Craster's cold voice.

"Not you, lieutenant-commander. Assemble your people. You'll lead the drop team. You'll be my liaison on the Mercury Star," she smiled mirthlessly.

In Transit, 2184 C.E.

Compared to the military vessels he had served on the Mercury Star basically slouched through hyperspace. However, to Kenyon, with more than two decades of Navy service along the borders of human space on his rep sheet, this state of being was a lot closer to his personal equilibrium than he had ever felt back on Earth. The white and blue lines and twisting and twirling clouds of the mass-effect induced hyperspace were a calming play of colours to him as he looked outside the small armourplast porthole of the team's quarters. Somewhere out there Johanson and his Dragonfly were following them on a parallel course. The huge difference in achievable transit time between the literally thousands of ship designs flying through explored space always gave Kenyon a tiny sense of pride and appreciation when more than two of them operated in formation. The computing power a VI had to put into the necessary faster-than-light calibrations was astronomical.

He imagined the tall Scandinavian was still muttering and cursing that the whole plan was one large waste of his speed advantage, and for what Kenyon knew of naval engineering the man was most likely correct. But then the whole 'plan' Craster had formulated had the taste of one large dose of stupid anyway. Maybe he should have said something then, but after his first clash with his CO Kenyon had decided there was only so much antagonizing one day could hold.

Craster ran this whole thing as if she was commanding an Alliance Navy patrol squadron. In her mind, she was probably still flying around in a cruiser, and the Mercury Star and the Dragonfly were here frigate screen. She thought in terms of fleet engagements, and not the type of freelance cloak-and-dagger work Amos had been re-instituted for. Marak had nonchalantly stated that maybe she did not think at all. Given the Batarian's gravelly voice, Kenyon had not been able to figure out whether the man had tried himself a joking, and he had not offered any comment of his own. He was too much an Alliance soldier, born and bred, as to openly heap scorn over his CO's head behind her back. The training, experience and discipline that had paved Craster's way to a heavy cruiser command – granted, aided by family patronage – was something he respected in a fellow officer. Still... .

"Eighteen minutes till transition back to real-space," Melissa Antweiler's grandmotherly voice echoed through the Mercury Star's intercom. Carl Amos Kenyon drew his eyes off the twisting dimension outside the ship and focussed back on the people in the community quarters aboard the freighter. The Mercury Star was a standard design seen all over civilized space, with an engine section on the one end and a spearhead-shaped command module on the opposite end. The long tube between them held docking pylons for up to sixteen flat freight modules, but outside the secure inner-state trade routes hardly anybody ever used more than eight. That way, the commercial faster-than-light engines could give the ship a higher terminal velocity, and it was easier to manoeuvre in the less well-charted regions of real-space. Especially in and close to the Terminus Systems the latter was a feature upon which one's life could depend on.

The Mercury Star also went with the eight modules approach, but apparently less of its internal space was used to haul freight than Kenyon had assumed. The module they were in at the moment contained what amounted to a regular house worth of personal belongings and rooms for the Antweiler couple. Given the two of them had lived in space for at least the past twelve years or so, if he remembered Frank's explanation correctly, that made sense. The ship was their home. Only today they were sharing it with strangers: Kenyon's team.

Nidal Amin was there, cleaning the parts of a sniper rifle with the methodical precision of someone who had been doing this for a long time. The Chimaera's chief navigator had jumped aboard Mercury Star almost the minute the freighter had left Omega's port, having primed the main ship's course and instructed his replacement. There were so few people aboard Chimaera for her size that everybody had at least two fields he or she was proficient in.

Marak was there, too. The Batarian explosives' expert had donned his body armour, a well-protected suit of washed-out crimson, orange and black. A submachinegun and a dozen thermal clips laid on top a simple cloth backpack besides him as he sat on a bench, his four eyes closed and his head resting against the bulkhead. Kenyon was convinced the man was not sleeping but very much aware of all that happened around him. He did not like Marak. In fact, he did not like Batarians in general. Still, Amos Kenyon knew a professional when he saw one, and he could respect that.

Corporals Frederica Adams and Sun-Hi Tsen were volunteers from the Alliance's marine corps, both veterans of the Skyllian Blitz. Adams was tall and broad-shouldered, with the short-cropped hair so prototypical for marines that generations of movies and recruitment ads had used it. Tsen, on the other hand, was almost a head smaller but no less muscular than his comrade. He had spent most his life on New Canton before joining the marines. They were a silent duo, but from what he had been able to learn about them, they would certainly be a welcome addition to the team. At least there would be someone who knew what the hell they were doing, he added sardonically.

And then there was Karina Buckley. The young woman looked not only decidedly out of place, she looked miserable. Thin and nervous, with eyes that constantly seemed to scan the room from beneath a mane of uncombed auburn hair, and with her hands folded in her lap so fiercely that the white of her knuckles shone though her skin, she left the impression of a caged animal. Karina Buckley was young enough to be his daughter, he thought, the idea leaving him with a strange feeling.

He sat down besides her and gave her an encouraging smile.

"I heard you were with the Ascension Program, Ms. Buckley?" he asked her politely.

She tilted her head to look up at him and relaxed a bit when she noticed his smile. Nodding, she unclasped her fingers and wiped them on her trousers. They were wet with cold sweat, Kenyon noticed, but decided to ignore that for the moment.

"Yes, for five years, sir," she answered in a weak tone. It was a quite beautiful voice, but a strange shiver seemed to run through it. "One on Jump Zero, the rest at Jon Grissom Academy on Elysium, till last year. I'm a L4 biotic."

"And you volunteered for the 'Corsair Program' directly after graduating? Some people must think you've got quite some potential, then. Well, it's certainly shaping up to be more of an adventure than your standard Alliance service would be," he flashed a friendly grin, but to his surprise Buckley winced, then meekly shook her head.

"I didn't...," she broke off, then took a deep breath. "I did not volunteer, sir," Karina replied almost defiantly. "And I have not graduated, yet." This time she looked down at her lap again.

Kenyon frowned.

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Ms. Buckley."

To his surprise, no, shock, he saw tears in her eyes when she answered.

"I fucked up, that's why! I," she audibly drew in breath through her clenched teeth, "I developed a," she frowned, her voice turning harsh, "habit back at Jon Grissom that got me in all sorts of trouble. The judge gave me a simple choice: detox and ten years in a special prison for biotics, or I join the 'Corsairs'." Buckley laughed bitterly. "That's why I'm here, sir, where don't know if I should piss my pants because I'm going cold turkey, or because I've never been in combat before!" Tears were running down her cheeks now, but she did not sob. Before Kenyon could say anything, she blurted out: "Is it true that you're here because you killed someone?"

Amos' features automatically stiffened, and it took a deep, controlled inaudible breath to force himself back to a semi-relaxed outward appearance in a brink of a second. His face was blank as he considered his answer. Well done, Amos, a small voice told him with a sneer. Where ever you go, your deeds will always haunt you.

"I did what was necessary, Ms. Buckley," he replied almost automatically in an emotionless voice. "I'm not proud of it, but I did it. And I expect the same from you."

Instead of answering him, she stormed out of the compartment, her shoulders shaking. Amos' eyes followed her as she left, not sure what to make of her and what she had revealed. Whatever her personal issues were: that she had been chosen for this program added just another layer of doubt about the whole 'Corsair' idea. He saw the Batarian stir to his left and turned to face him.

Four black eyes looked directly into his own two.

"She'll get somebody killed," was all Marak said before closing his eyes again.

Orieste Star System, The Terminus Systems

2184 C.E.

"Transition in four,...three,...two...one!"

The blue and white whirling lines of faster-than-light travel vanished in an instant, making way for the infinite field of diamonds on black satin that was the galaxy. There was no real stop in their travel - the inertial dampeners prevented them from ending up as fleshy chunks of salsa in a tin can - but Kenyon's body always felt as if he was leaning against an invisible resistance whenever he dropped below the light-speed barrier. Forty-eight minutes and one hundred and thirty-nine parsecs away from Omega the Mercury Star slipped back into real-space.

"Orieste star system, ladies and gentlemen, twenty-one point five-two AUs from the sun."

Frank Antweiler's voice could be heard throughout the ship, but the older man turned in his seat and looked at Amos who stood behind the central console of the Star's cramped command module. "Couldn't stand it any longer down there?" he asked jovially.

"I just like to see where we are going," Amos shrugged. "Citadel and Alliance data on the region is about as airtight as a sieve. Is Dragonfly with us?"

The old spacer turned to his co-pilot.

"Mellie?"

"Just a moment, hon," she told her husband while her fingers raced across her station's holographic interface. A three-dimensional ladar display appeared in the console in front of Kenyon, and only moments later a small green dot slid next to them. "There she is. Magnus saying he'll stay on our ten. Are we good to go, lieutenant-commander?"

Amos nodded.

"Yes, proceed. Time for me to get the team ready for the drop."

Orieste was a white G-IV class subgiant twice the radius of Sol. There were no class "M" planets among his seven trabants, at least not today, but at some time during the Protheans' shrouded mystery the race that had built the mass relays and the Citadel had settled on Orieste IV. The Mercury Star's long range scanners showed a picture of a barren world, an orange-red ball of dust not unlike Mars, but with Earth's mass and size and only barely minor gravity to it. Large canyons and depressions still outlined where once surface water had been available. But heat and radiation had slowly cooked it all off during the past 50,000 years, leaving a planet formed by the dust storms which menaced its thin argon-nitrogen atmosphere. Only at the world's two poles did water remain in the form of a thick crust of ice.

The Antweilers fed the sensor data directly to his omni-tool as he walked back to the crew section to get the drop team ready. There were regions of purple haze dotted across the planet's surface. Those were the dust storms. Solar radiation and frictional heat highly ionized the thin atmosphere I them, so much in fact that they could down an unprotected shuttle that got caught in them. Kenyon got the pretty good notion that experiencing them on the ground was also one of the less pleasant things one could do. Their plotted course put their landing point a few hundred clicks away from the next larger storm, but Amos Kenyon had little trust in planetary weather patterns after twenty years in an air conditioned tin can. Well, he did not plan to stay down there any longer than necessary. Get in, get the doc, get back out again so that Aria got her data and her servant, and Craster got her information. He scowled as he thought about it. It was as if he had to please two spoiled princesses, with the wry upside that at least one of them knew how to deal with her issues. The other, unfortunately, was his commanding officer.

Oh yes, he had made that deal, so he better got that data, did he not? No need to waste more of Captain Janina Craster's valuable time and Chimaera's expensive fuel on such a task. No, she would only intervene when Kenyon and his people could not master the situation, something she of course would then blame on them! Damn, that woman had been deep in Alliance space for her whole career, and it showed. Sure, he could call her in, and with Chimaera's mass effect field she'd be there in less than fifteen minutes. But fifteen minutes could be a very long time. It was monumentally stupid of her, but it fit the petty streak he thought to have discovered in her earlier.

Amos Kenyon pushed the bulkhead door open, greeting the two marines with an appreciative nod. They had already donned their full gear and saluted him casually when he entered the crew quarters.

"Everybody, we'll reach orbit in ten minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to see you suited and ready in the shuttle in five, is that -."

Frank Antweiler's voice cut him off mid-sentence. He sounded anxious.

"Kenyon, we're less than two million clicks away from the planet and my sensors've just picked up the debris of at least three starships in orbit. I'm getting scrambled, automated distress signals all over the standard comm frequencies!"

Kenyon punched the intercom button.

"I'll be up with you in a second." He turned to the others. "Get moving, I'll join you asap."

The gaunt former lieutenant-commander sprinted back to the command module whose door opened with a hiss. Orieste IV had grown to a window-filling size already, and Mellie Antweiler was navigating the Mercury Star into a safe orbit.

"Frank, tell me what you got there," Kenyon wanted to know.

"Three debris fields. The remaining parts show signs of weapons fire, but it looks as if their cores had gone off. Must've pounded each other really good for that, so-."

"Active mass effect signatures!" his wife suddenly cried out, and two glaring red dots appeared in their ladar display. "They're closing in on an intercept vector!"

"Fuck!" Frank cursed. "They must've stayed on the other side of the planet to remain invisible. Call Craster, and then let's get the hell outa here!"

"Done. The VI's got a target ID, Frank!"

Kenyon looked at the plot where small packets of data began to appear besides the red dots. He muttered only one word.

"Geth."

An angry alarm blared through the freighter, its terse notes driving a sense of threat home.

"They're closing in fast!" Mellie Antweiler's voice was tense as her fingers rushed across the holographic interface. Amos Kenyon could not help himself but be fascinated as he observed the plump woman twenty years his senior. He tried to imagine his mother doing the same – and failed. "Thirty thousand clicks away, on an intercept vector."

Two Geth dropships were covering the distance between themselves and the Mercury Star in what seemed like giant leaps. They looked almost organic in design, like an oversized, dull black hornet or wasp without wings. About the size of an Alliance or Turian Hierarchy frigate, they were nimble crafts capable of operating in space as well as inside a planet's atmosphere. Kenyon had seen some of the footage the Navy had released to all its combat units after Commander Shepard and his team had beaten back the Geth at the Battle of the Citadel. Those dropships were damn dangerous for their size.

"Their targeting sensors have locked on to us. Estimated time till firing range... fourteen seconds, Mellie," Frank told his wife. "Raising our kinetic barriers and getting the GARDIAN system on-line." Noticing Amos' surprised look he smirked.

"What? You didn't really think this was just a run of the mill freighter, did you? Don't worry, we've still got some aces up our sleeves."

The clock counted down the fourteen seconds, and as if on cue, two new and smaller blips appeared in their ladar plot.

"Missiles incoming!" Melissa Antweiler's voice was strained with concentration as she tried to manoeuvre the one hundred and twenty-thousand tons of mass beneath her seat away from the anti-ship weapons following them.

"Systems are online, darling," his hand raced to the plug in his left ear and he nodded. "Williams says we have full power on the core."

The speed with which the distance between the Mercury Star and its attackers shrunk seemed to slow down as the freighter's engines maximized their output. Angry warning sirens echoed through the command module as the pursuing warheads entered the terminal five seconds of their burn, and the freighter's GARDIAN system tried to stop them with beams of focussed light. Amos Kenyon held his breath as one ladar blip vanished. The ship shuddered as the second warhead was detonated by the defences far too close to its hull, showering the kinetic barriers with shrapnel.

"Bring us closer to the planet!" Franklyn Antweiler growled. "Kenyon, get back to your team, I'll call you there. Sorry, but you're in the way up here."

He managed to flash a brief smile while his fingers run across his own station's holographic interface, just as nimble as those of his wife, as he recalibrated their defences.

Kenyon simply nodded, donned his helmet and left the bridge.

The door hissed close behind him, and Frank leaped from his seat to seal it shut, just in time to notice the Geth had launched another salvo of missiles. The Star was pulling everything from her engines, but the distance between her and her attackers shrunk with every passing moment. This time, the GARDIAN lasers shot down both of them before they got too close. But on the other side, thousands of Geth programmes were working to negate his success, and they did so by taking a very time-tested human approach: if your enemy can shoot down two missiles, simply attack him with four.

The older man's face darkened as the four new blips appeared in the holographic plot.

"That's gonna be a close one," he muttered. Shaped like a 'V' turned upside down, the four warheads flew in a tight formation, but not so tight as if to allow the Star's GARDIAN lasers to kill them all in one shot.

"Can we take so many hits?"

Melissa Antweiler's forehead was wet with sweat. She had switched from the interface to a set of physical joysticks to steer their ship, leading her on a wild zig-zag that brought them closer to Orieste IV's atmosphere.

"Those things were built to penetrate the barriers of warships," he told her grimly. "I doubt we can survive even two of those."

Missile flight time was now less than ten seconds. Both Antweilers watched the four blips crawl closer, as if time had turned into quicksand. The defence suite began to pour focussed beams of light into the blackness behind them, but this time the attacking warheads aptly danced with them, evaded them – and still drew closer.

Suddenly, as if appearing out of thin air, a massive drive signature tore into their flight path. Mass driver artillery filled the void with one inch projectiles that tore into the missile swarm, blasting three of them to pieces. The fourth lost its lock-on with the freighter and raced after the attacker. He evaded it with a series of high-gee turns before dropping a pair of decoys into its path. The last Geth missile detonated harmlessly several thousand kilometres away from the Antweiler's freighter.

Dragonfly swept closer to them, a compact brick with short delta wings and two man-sized domes on the left and right side of its hull. She was tiny in comparison to the Star, but she moved as easy and nimble as a leaf on the wind.

"I can interpose my drive signature between the Geth and you, Frank. That should keep those missiles off you guys' back. I can keep this up for a while, but it won't be long until they've closed in to effective gun range," Magnus Johanson's voice was distorted by the massive ECM his small ship poured into the vast nothingness around them, offering fake targets for the missiles' homing warheads and filling the Geth's active sensors with white noise. Unfortunately, they did the same to Magnus and the Mercury Star, and that was a battle an AI platform would ultimately win.

Frank looked at the course his wife was steering their ship on and nodded to himself.

"Thanks, son. Do what you can to spring to minutes for us. And stay alive."