It was early in the morning. Too early, as far as a considerable chunk of the Normandy's crew was concerned; having Shepard on board had moved the effective start of their workday ahead by an hour. She had insisted on a traditional Marine Corps bugle call—"To the Colors" or just "Colors", as it was affectionately known—being played every morning at six a.m, an hour before work was to officially begin. It was window dressing, a simple decorative gesture with the intention of placating Shepard, and the crew of seventy-eight saw little charm in the antiquated ceremony at first. However, these days most seemed used to it, with the correct application of coffee and a hefty dose of perspective.
This morning, after standing at attention for the call (during which she could see Joker saluting, though he couldn't stand, and a little part of her chest swelled with pride for him), Shepard settled in at her terminal, already scowling at her inbox and drinking from her everpresent mug of coffee. The holographic galactic map beside her already showed the tiny little Normandy making a tiny little jump towards what was probably a tiny little mass relay when Kelly arrived at ten after six.
Kelly approached with a styrofoam cup in hand, and set it down beside the commander, not sure what else to do with it.
"You're here early, Commander. Early night last night?"
Jane glanced at the auxiliary coffee, chugged the last two mouthfuls of her original cup, and started on the new offering. "Not by a long shot." She paused in appraising silence, then gave her assistant a thumps-up. "You're an angel, Kelly."
Kelly gave her a crooked, bashful smile. Kelly always expected harsher reprimands out of Shepard than she ended up getting, and finally figured that she was probably projecting; Shepard had treated her like a peer rather than a subordinate. She did that with everyone of a certain rank, really. "Just tell me if you need another, okay?"
"You should probably just ask Chakwas for one of her IV drips. Probably a more efficient way of doing it." Shepard's eyes came close to crossing, trying to examine the tiny text on her screen. She shook her head and pushed back away from her desk.
"I'm going to go check on Joker. If the Illusive Man harasses you, tell him to shove it."
Kelly giggled. It was a giddy, tinkling noise that became peppered with gentle snorts if she really got going. She nodded. "Aye aye, ma'am."
Shepard circled around Kelly, and strode to the front of the room, down the catwalk to the main pilot's helm. Joker turned around at the sound of her footsteps, his expression making the leap from neutral to saucer-eyed and agape in a matter of split seconds.
"Morning sunsh—whoa, what happened to your face? You look like a panda bear." Then, as an afterthought, "I have to get a picture of this."
"By that you mean cute and cuddly, right?" Shepard asked, voice mock-offended. "And I will break both you and your camera."
"Yeah, sure." Joker replied, straight-faced. "Cute, cuddly, exactly what I meant."
"If we could navigate from the topic of my mistreated face for a bit..." Jane said, exasperated, "I've plotted a course for Omega, if you can tell me when we get close."
"Sure thing, Commander. If you're going to buy a new face, I hear that's the place to do it."
"Joker..."
"Kidding, kidding! Jeez. Everyone's so touchy."
Beside him, a pleasant jolt of blue-white light assembled itself into a globe on a shallow stint, glowing, and EDI's voice filled the chamber. "Common knowledge of human cultural mores suggests only positive comments in regards to the female's physical appearance are suitable for most conversation, Jeff."
"Not surprising," Shepard put in, with preemptive self-satisfaction of a jibe well-delivered, "considering Joker doesn't have any knowledge of women, let alone common."
Joker huffed a sigh, and spun back to his control panel. "Fine, fine, you win. Jerks."
"The first step to understanding a strange life form is to communicate with it, Jeff." EDI continued, tone maddeningly diplomatic. "Perhaps conversations with the female crew members could help in this regard."
Joker turned his head slightly towards EDI's panel and, before he could retort, the hologram shook and collapsed, with no further wisdom to impart. Shepard bit her lips to keep from laughing.
"You claim to not have a sex, EDI," Joker mumbled, "but you sure do gang up like a girl."
Omega was as it had ever been. It smelled like stale rainwater capped with a faint whiff of burning garbage, and even from outside the dock, Shepard could hear rowdy yelling and the thick, vital sound of bustling crowds—thousands of pairs of stomping feet, laughing, the din of street vendors. She heard Samara follow from the Normandy'slanding ramp at her back, the heels of her shoes tapping on the ground in a delicate cadence. Shepard turned to her; Samara was draped with a shawl, deep red and made of a luxurious fabric that looked like silk. A single, tiny jewel dangled from the middle of the hood, above and between her eyes. It was the closest to 'dressed up' that any of the women on board ever got.
Samara looked around.
"You're sure this is where you want to be dropped off?" Shepard asked, readjusting the helmet tucked under her arm. Her tone was skeptical; contrasted with Samara's poise, Omega looked even more like a garbage heap than usual. "We can swing by another system, if you want."
Garrus, the ever-present figure at Shepard's side when she left the Normandy, followed after the asari, peering around after touching down.
Samara turned to stare at Shepard, blinked her blue-silver eyes, and then looked into the distance. "No. This is where the guidance of the Goddess is most needed, and so, I shall be her arm."
Shepard briefly wondered if Morinth's residence on Omega had anything to do with this, but didn't say as much. Garrus was looking at the back of Samara's head with an expression of grave understanding: he had the same idea, once upon a time.
"Walk with me, Shepard."
Shepard did. The three of them made the walk to the markets without so much as an exchanged word; Garrus and Shepard glanced at each other, unsure, but Samara was distracted, taking in the scenery, the smells, the throbbing music from far off clubs. Her hippy, confident walk attracted many shouts, all of which she ignored, seemingly in her own small world. They passed many sets of doors. A batarian stood on a crate, screaming religious zealotry to all who would hear. The three approached the staircase leading the markets proper, and stopped. The crowd split around them, flowed past them, like water breaking over rocks in a stream.
Samara took a deep breath, regarding the bustling crowd, and then turned to her companions that stood fanned out behind her, and offered a polite smile. Shepard tilted her head; it was silly, but she felt a bit like a father must, giving away a daughter to an unknown and scary world. Only this woman was old enough to be her grandmother many times over, and instead of a nervous man, it was Omega that Samara was preparing to be married to, until death she did part, most likely. Hot tears pricked Shepard's eyes, and she was all at once acutely aware why she did not do goodbyes: because she did not do goodbyes.
Samara moved to her, and Shepard accepted the hug willingly. It was neither brief nor professional, as before—Samara squeezed her, face laid against the side of Shepard's neck. When Samara pulled back, her eyes were shining, and she laughed a raspy, embarrassed bark at her own emotion. It was a genuine sound, and a touch raw.
Samara looked to the side, to Garrus, and he extended a two-fingered hand which she took, and shook, holding it for a moment afterwards.
"Goodbye, Samara." Shepard's voice shook the slightest bit. "Take care of yourself, okay?"
Samara nodded, her expression calm. No tears were shed, but she had come dangerously close. "Goodbye, Shepard. Please... be well."
Then she was gone, turning and falling in step with the bustling crowd, weaving out of sight.
For a long time, there was nothing but the sound of the crowd.
"I think she'll do fine here," Garrus said, gently, breaking their personal silence. "She was right. Omega needs her."
Shepard looked down, wiped her eyes with a hand. Garrus reached out, grasped her shoulder, and squeezed in a display of support.
"Sorry," Shepard said, embarrassed. Garrus' mandibles fluttered at her, a precursor to a laugh but not quite.
"Ah, the iron maiden does have a soft side," he said. Reflexive, Shepard turned and kicked him in the shin with a resounding CLANK; he barked a sudden protest, mingled with surprised laughter.
"Why did the good one leave and I'm stuck with you?" Shepard pantomimed reeling back for another kick and Garrus hobbled away, holding out a hand in half-hearted defense. Behind him, from the corner of her eye, Shepard spotted a box nestled in a vendor's kiosk, covered in dust and neglected.
Interest in abusing Garrus forgotten for the moment, Jane shoved him out of the way and thumped down the stairs, pushing through the flow of people like a minnow fighting the stream, and leaned over the counter. She got a good look at the box's contents—there must have been at least fifteen paperback books in there, and from what it looked like, they were all in English. She could see a cover she recognized: an impossibly gangly, stylized illustration of a human man wrapped in flaming newspaper, trying to shield himself from an offscreen threat. Bradbury. High school literature, but human literature, and a good example of it, too. She'd promised to find some for Thane, and was pleased greatly at her stroke of serendipitous luck, despite the tangle of sadness and remorse her mind was currently trying to untie.
Suddenly, in the back of her mind, a niggling, warning voice lambasted Shepard about even thinking of Thane at a time like this.
She pushed the though out of her head with an inner vow to stop being such a girlish ninny about it: she was doing something nice, a favor for a friend, and that was it. He liked books, and specifically asked for human books. Here they were, so she was making good on a promise—two promises, if you included Samara's.
The vendor, a salarian with purplish-black skin who was greedily stuffing his face with noodles from a steaming bowl, peered at her from his stool with a questioning grunt.
"How much for that box?" She asked, indicating it with an outstretched index finger.
He turned and gave it a look of interest, which immediately paled into disappointment. "...Eh. Hundred creds?"
Jane didn't argue the price, even though she knew they probably all sold for a tenth of that, especially in such a clumsy, archaic format. "I'll take it."
The two exchanged money, and the salarian passed Shepard the box with a look of acute disinterest in the cargo. Wow, there were a lot of books in there.
Garrus peered at her, clucking his tongue thoughtfully, then bent over to take a gander at her newly-acquired treasure trove.
"Didn't exactly peg you as a big reader, Shepard." he mused, plucking one book from the pile and dusting it off. It had downy brown rabbits on the cover, frolicking in a field of emerald grass.
Jane gave him a wary look. "If you say anything about big words..."
He shrugged, all feigned innocence. "Me? Never. I'm simply... complimenting you on the maturity of your reading material." He tapped the cover with a talon, indicating a bunny rabbit. "That's all."
"Hey. Watership Down is a very mature title." Shepard protested, snatching the book from him.
"Of course. By the way, when is craft night? I haven't finished my macaroni duck. I've been meaning to ask; can I borrow your glitter glue?"
Shepard reared back to kick him in the shin again and he hopped.
"Hurting my feelings and my award-winning legs? Tsk, tsk."
"Just figured the Normandy could use some human culture, being a human frigate and all." Jane explained, giving him a hearty, playful shove. "Given my present company, culture might be a stretch."
This back-and-forth behavior continued most of the way back to the ship, but never erupted into a full-blown fight, much to the chagrin of passers-by.
Somewhere across the station, while Garrus and Jane were saying goodbye to a trusted friend, Thane was saying hello to one. Thane hadn't officially been given any kind of leave, but that had never stopped him from leaving the Normandy before—for air, for medicine, for shopping. He had assumed they'd be docking at Omega for an hour or better; today, on the surface of this very specific station, Thane had a Job.
There were stairs, lots of stairs. The air was heavy, thick and smelled like rain; the moisture irritated his throat, chest solid with a phlegmy swelling, expanding but not drawing in enough air. As Thane ascended the narrow, soaring staircase, he'd had to stop once or twice to succumb to a wet, hacking coughing fit, one which had nearly resulted in vomiting. It was like having arthritis in an internal organ; most of the time they did what he needed them to, but other times they yelled, burned, made him into a miserable heap of a man that felt much older than his forty years should... especially after doing something as mundane as simply climbing a staircase. His eyes watered, his surroundings floating in a haze of irritated tears.
The stair case was simple, carved from dark stone and beset on both sides by walls that hooded the heavy metal doorway barring entrance to the loft apartment at the top. The hallway was built this way on purpose, as a choke point. One person could fit up this staircase at a time, easy pickings if the owner found himself beset upon by enemies, which, on Omega, was a likely if not annual occurrence if you were worth more than a nickel. The man that owned this property was worth quite a few nickles, that much was for certain.
Thane arrived at the top, cleared his throat louder than he intended to, rapped on the door. He checked over a shoulder to make sure he'd not been followed.
An inch-wide slat in the door opened, and a pair of angry red eyes peered out, glaring at Thane from neck-height.
"What?"
"I'm here to speak to Jonathan." Thane said, voice froggy, and he cleared his throat again. "Excuse me."
"Yeah, alright, fucker. What's your name?"
"Krios."
'Yeah, sure."
They locked gazes. After a moment, the eyes narrowed, regarding him with skepticism, and the slat slammed shut. A minute or so later, the jingling clanks of heavy locks being released on the other side of the door rang their rusty sing-song, and the door creaked open. The krogan on the other side—hunched, suspicious, and very intimate with violence if his scars were any indication—looked at Thane with a species of violent mistrust that said Just give me a reason. Thane nodded his thanks, adjusted his collar, and continued inside.
The 'office' was as indulgent as Thane remembered it. It was a flat, with a broad, vaulted sitting room, painted eggshell white. The hardwood floors were buffed to an immaculate finish, with a white fur rug, a glass coffee table, and dark blue leather furniture in the center of the room. A large fireplace was crackling inside the far wall, and the dry, warm atmosphere immediately soothed Thane's aching chest, like a dose of airborne medicine. The heat smelled divine, and the shallow, grooved pits under his ears, used to sense direction by heat, felt dry and relaxed, out of the cold air and moisture.
Sitting on the sectional sofa was a corps of eight bodyguards. They were playing cards, what looked like Skyllian Five-Poker (or what Thane had learned in his adolescence to call Watch Me), throwing down cards onto the glass table and cheering, betting what looked to be cigarettes.
However, there was an interesting fact about the guards—two of them were drell, a male and a female, with skin so dark it was almost black, blotched with warped stripes of copper. They were watching Thane pass with wary, disbelieving expressions, a dissonant sight against the jovial crush of their seat mates. The male was tense, but it was the female caught Thane's eye—she was young, perhaps fresh from late adolescence, with orange-ringed, unaltered eyes. She had the soft fringe of back pointed, nubby fins bisecting her head like a tiny mohawk, a common trait in drell females of sexual maturity, just as males tended towards frills that lined their back jaw.
He held her gaze just a beat too long for it to be casual eye contact. Thane was the one to break it, and he strode into Jonathan's office.
"I'll be a son of a bitch!" The man exclaimed as he came into view, hopping up from his seat, rounding the sizable oak desk to greet Thane where he stood. David Jonathan was a man that may have been handsome if not for a pronounced cleft palate that he had grown a thick beard and mustache to cover; he kept his dark hair cropped close and combed back, and was more fond of expensive clothing than expensive bodyguards. "Krios?! Holy shit, I thought you were dead!"
"Close." Thane said, and shook Jonathan's hand when the human extended his hairy-knuckled paw. "Business is well, I assume? Your home is beautiful." It was true--even Jonathan's office was like something out of a décor magazine, decorated tastefully in burgundy and deep red. A framed painting of a cityscape hung on the back wall, and against the right of the room stood an elaborate display of stacked, decorative wine glasses on top of an expensive-looking armoir. His window was closed, thankfully, the cold, moist air kept at bay for the moment.
"You know. Same as it ever was. And thanks, man." Jonathan indicated the large oak chair opposite his desk, offering it to Thane. "Heard you knocked off Nassana over on Illium a few months back. Had guys trying to get at her for months."
"I had help." Thane sat. "I've come to ask you a favor, Jonathan."
"Yeah, yeah, of course," Jonathan said, unflapped. Most people came to him for favors, not to say hello and compliment his rugs. He sat, and pulled his chair close with a muted screech of wooden legs on tile. "What do you need? Lay it on me."
"There was an incident earlier this week on the Citadel."
"Yeah, the one with Shepard." Jonathan uncorked a fluted crystal bottle of whiskey, dug under his desk and came up with two matching shot glasses.
"Two assassins attacked her. Who were they?" Thane waved a hand as if to say 'no thank you', and Jonathan returned one of the glasses to its shelf.
"Well, that's some expensive intel, Krios." Jonathan said, pouring himself a drink. "It'll cost you. Discounted, for old times' sake, but—I'm runnin' a business here, you know?"
"Of course." Thane allowed, clasping his hands. "Name your price."
Jonathan took his shot, and came out of it looking like he'd just sucked on a lemon. "Last I heard you didn't get caught up in politics. You gonna knock the Commander off?"
It was a half-assed question, one meant as a joke, mostly. Thane's expression was neutral, and his lack of immediate response suggested Jonathan may have touched on something heavy. "She has enemies," Thane replied, at length, "I prefer to have information on my competition so I may learn from their mistakes." It wasn't a lie; just phrased to sound like one.
Jonathan's eyes were the size of dinner plates. He let out a long, low whistle. "That's gotta be a big one. Set you for life."
Thane shrugged. "My interest is not in the money."
Jonathan grinned, realization dawning in his eyes. "Conquest, eh? You sick fuck." His laugh suggested he didn't think Thane quite as sick as he led on, and he leaned across the desk, pushed Thane's shoulder hard in a gesture of good-humored understanding. "And what a conquest she is, ah? You're gonna piss off a lot of little kids, there, Krios. It's like putting a slug in Superman's computer."
Thane smiled, polite, though the reference eluded him completely.
"Well, let's make the trade." Jonathan looked at his watch, and balled his hand into a fist; the telltale golden glow of a rudimentary omni-tool lit the immediate vicinity in a soft golden wash. He hit a few buttons on the console, and extended his arm to Thane to verify the amount displayed on the inside of his wrist. "I'll give you the info on the assassins for ten k. Sound fair?"
Thane reached into his jacket, wordless, and retrieved a tiny metal cylinder about the size of a small pencil attached to a chain. It stretched taut against something under his coat. Jonathan kept his arm extended, letting Thane swipe the tube over his watch. Jonathan briefly checked the display for the correct amount of credits transferred, hit a button, and the light disappeared.
"Alright, well. Let's start with the asari." He reached into the drawer of his desk, retrieved a flimsy, white plastic frame around the size of a sheet of paper, with a clear sheet of plastic comprising the center. He toyed with the omni-tool again, and Thane could see the information downloading onto the disposable tablet, pictures, forms, and status bars flickering as the information was transferred onto the clear mini-monitor from some remote location connected to the tool surrounding Jonathan's arm.
Finally, Jonathan pushed it the tablet to Thane, and Thane picked it up.
"Name was Noyala Rhem. Your run of the mill Eclipse Sisters rung-climbing trash. She was somewhere around Sergeant status, I'd say." Mugshots. Her skin was deep blue, with a spotted-white scalp, and a heavy brow. "Not worth a second look. Dime a dozen."
"The turian's where it gets interesting. Her name was Kirre Farraj. She was the actual assassin there—had a pretty esteemed military history with the Fleet." Thane scrolled. The woman was a turian, surely; her eyes were unsettling, her face unsmiling, and she had a powerful, angular build. "Recon scout for most of her career, then full-on spy work, then she was court-marshalled and lost her commission over falsified records on one of her assignments concerning some quarian brass. Dropped out, went AWOL. Word is that Farraj was pretty deep in debt to the Eclipse sisters for one reason or another, so she was training Noyala as a way to pay them off. Got her to do her legwork—workers in the office, clearing the rooms, shit like that, so Farraj could take the real targets out in peace. Doesn't seem like it worked out that way this time, though."
"Farraj was training Rhem?" Thane asked. "This was to be a test?"
"No idea what the intentions were. But it looks that way. Kinda stupid, in hindsight... you test your kids on politicians and vid stars, not in close-quarters with the galaxy's number one ranked badass. Shepard's some Bruce Willis shit. Why not just snipe her and be done with it?"
"Poor execution." Thane said, with an obvious edge of distaste. "Sloppy."
"Anyway, those are your assassins. Normal rules with the plexi-tablet... don't get it wet, try to take the slug out in the next few days. Should keep, though."
Thane scrolled through the content. "This doesn't say who hired them."
Jonathan laughed, loud and full.
"Well," he said, smiling wide, and laced his fingers over his potbelly, kicked his feet up on his desk, "that's because you didn't pay me to tell you who hired 'em. That's an extra thirty, my friend."
Thane narrowed his eyes, almost imperceptibly. He was not a man who had problems parting with money, especially for important reasons, but he was a man that had problems with being taken advantage of.
"Steep."
"We live in hard times. Got five kids to feed and send to school. Your 'discount' is that I'm willing to give you the information at all. Selling this info is likely to get you spaced... but I trust you, 'cause I know if it comes to it, you'll hit 'em before they can hit me back. Always liked that about you."
Thane gave the plexi-tablet another cursory look, then put it back down. He reached into his jacket, once again groping for his credit chit, and brought it out, ready to swipe. When Jonathan didn't reciprocate, he canted his head.
Jonathan's expression was surprised, amused. "Damn, you're serious." He extended the arm again, allowing the transfer of credits, and gave the display an appreciative once-over, before pulling out another tablet, and once again starting a download.
"Malinda Cashin ordered the hit." He said, plainly, by way of explanation.
Thane tucked the chit away, and Jonathan could see the chain was tucked into a pocket on his shirt, like an antique watch. "I don't recognize the name."
"Then you're gonna jump out of your little alien penny loafers. Get this shit." Jonathan turned the tablet to Thane, and scrolled the screen to reveal a photo of a human woman—older, short, with curly cropped white hair, waving to a crowd of jubilant humans. She's a politician. Thane thought, immediately.
"Malinda Cashin is the current incumbent intendant of Zakera Wards on the Citadel." Jonathan explained, as Thane leaned over the frame, scrolling through the security photos. "She's had the job for the past fifteen years. The order for the hit, the money—everything came from her office."
Thane's world canted a bit, the information striking his brain in a queer, sharp way that made him doubt that Jonathan could possibly tie his own shoes if he believed it to be true.
"I'm not sold." Thane said simply. "It's too convoluted."
"Well, then, allow me to sell you." Jonathan clasped his hands together on the desk. "Talid's been kickin' the shit out of her in the polls, since humans... we tend to be apathetic creatures unless we're directly threatened. Cashin needs an equalizer. A big one, or she's out of a job, and there's suddenly a very real problem with the validation of anti-human sentiment on the Citadel.
Knocking off the only human Spectre would rally human voters the way that Talid's been pissing off the rest of them. Scare 'em. The assassins weren't human, right? Easy to pin it on savage aliens. Talid's been the first real challenge Cashin's had for her job in years. Looks like he orders a hit on a human hero, bam, people are pissed off. And pissed off people are the only people that vote. If they're pissed off and scared? Well... that's about as sure a slam dunk as you're gonna find outside... well, assassinating your opponent."
"Ordering a hit on Talid directly would have made him a martyr," Thane mused, and Jonathan nodded.
"Now you're getting it."
Thane flipped through the files, trying to find something to disprove the theory—there were account screens, showing the transfers of credits, pages upon pages of hacked messages showing the back-and-forth of logistics planning in the encrypted shorthand he'd come to read as a second language, used for drug deals and illicit black market information swapping.
He turned back to Cashin's photograph, took in her squinting, smiling eyes, her sloping jaw, the pocket of grandmotherly fat that laid between it and her throat. Her hands, veiny with age.
"Well? Like what you see?"
Malinda Cashin, career politician, age 58. No career details that would suggest combat training. Office deductions detailed the salaries of ten professional bodyguards.
Thane would cross-reference, check the information. Cross-cross-check it, if he had to. Even Jonathan was fallible, but given his reputation and Thane's personal experiences with Jonathan's information, it wasn't likely. Unfortunately, he was cagey, and his dossiers were notorious for their accuracy and thoroughness.
Thane squinted his eyes.
"Yes. Thank you, Jonathan. This is precisely what I needed."
"You know me. Always here to help." Jonathan said, smiling, regarding Thane with an ill-concealed species of appraisal. It was an ugly smile, full of motive; men like Jonathan were always full of motive one way or another. "Keep me updated, you hear?"