Chapter Three

After their meals had settled, the stranger could very well see the weight of thought on Garrus' mind. He had been staring at the table leg for the past ten minutes, tapping his foot idly against it now and then as if hypnotized by the reverberating sound it made through the deck of the ship.

"Shall we get down to business?" the stranger was beginning to follow the hypnotic power of Garrus' boredom and it was rather irritating to watch after a while.

Garrus nodded almost immediately "That's exactly what I wanted to talk about" his sudden interest pulled himself out of the lazy slump he was in and he sat up straighter in his chair.

For two hours they talked on an almost professional level. The stranger learnt the importance of Garrus' mission and Garrus learnt some important information about his target.

The krogan had been following an old pirate trade route that passed through three mass relays from the Horse Head Nebula to the Voyager Cluster and he was now en route towards the Omega space station. He was more than just a hired mercenary for Othar Keene; he was a valued informant who had an incredible knack for gathering data from classified resources and selling that data to the highest bidder. As it turned out, the data that the krogan acquired came from a derelict ship, which –aside from being badly damaged – had memory banks that were left remarkably intact.

What exactly the krogan had salvaged was beyond the realm of Garrus' knowledge. All he knew was that it was a crime to salvage the contents of a turian scout ship that was within the boundaries of the Traverse. There were reports that the ship was already derelict before it drifted into the Traverse and that in itself was rather strange news. There were usually distress signals sent out to the nearest comm. buoys if a ship and its crew ran into signs of trouble from pirates, but there were no known recordings of any distress signals sent out at all. It was only three months ago that an Alliance freighter class ship had confirmed that debris was making cargo drop-offs difficult within the Asgard system of the Exodus Cluster. Plans for turian freighters to come in and clean up the mess had been made but Terra Nova was on a state of alert since batarian terrorists had tried to turn Asteroid X57 into a weapon of mass destruction. The amount of red tape to get through with the Alliance and the turian fleets would of took almost a year to settle so the council decided to send a spectre in to clean the job up quickly and efficiently.

The problem was, the krogan got to it first.

Garrus knew that the krogan spy had to be terminated indefinitely; he had even bumped into him several times whilst working for C-Sec. He was charismatic, conniving and enigmatic yet there was never a chance to convict him of doing anything out of the ordinary because he was so careful at covering his tracks. Garrus rubbed at his temples thoughtfully and looked over at the quiet and intrigued bounty hunter. This kid was in way over her head and this worried him terribly, any reasons for suspicion would cause the krogan to drop all plans and disappear into the terminus systems until another prosperous deal came up for him and the council will never learn of what had happened to the turian crew of the STF Thargoid.

Garrus caught the look of anxiety on the strangers face and empathized, she had originally thought that this was just another contract job and she was led to believe that the krogan was nothing more than a common mercenary. Garrus obliged in sharing a little of the details with her but he refused to tell her the whole story as it was made confidential by the council. Now she had realized her predicament and she had more than enough knowledge to go on that she was in lot of trouble in more ways than one.

"You could always seek immunity on the Citadel" Garrus proposed tentatively.

The stranger placed both her hands face down on the table in front of her in protest. "Absolutely not, I'd be safer on the run then in the protection of some crooked C-sec officer"

Garrus couldn't deny the possibility of a torturous interrogation or a silent assassination if a bribed officer wanted to make a few credits on the side. He had seen credits passed around dirty hands way too often for his own liking while he was a turian agent and it would be foolish to assume that she would be safe and sound in the hands of the law.

He began to softly drum his talons upon the surface of the metal table. "The only other suggestion is that you work with me on this and only on the condition that you keep your head low and not compromise my mission in any way whatsoever."

The stranger drew in her breath, ready to protest again before Garrus raised a finger mid-air to silence her. "Afterwards, you'll get your credits as I offered them to you earlier, double the amount of your contract and…" he paused while clasping his hands together in front of him, leaning closer towards her and lowering his voice to a more softer, agreeable tone "…I'll get you out of the terminus systems and into the traverse, there's a developing colony planet that I know of that you'll be safe on. You'll have a new identity, everything you need and I will be the only person to know about it all."

The stranger closed her jaw shut and gazed dolefully back into Garrus' eyes, for a moment he thought that the offer wasn't good enough for her. "Once a bounty hunter, always a bounty hunter" was a motto that his father liked to boast and usually the presumption was always true to a point. The stranger kept quiet for a few moments, pondering over the proposal before speaking again, her tone full of anxiety.

"On what guarantee do I have that you won't mention me to anyone?"

Garrus motioned over to the empty bowl that now rested back in its place on the shelf above the mini-fridge. The woman's eyes followed his; confused at first but then her expression relaxed when she realized what it was he was trying to say.

"The same guarantee you gave me that the food wasn't ill-prepared."