"This is Emily Wong, coming to you live from Illium, where the Torgue-Urdnot corporation is unveiling their newest headquarters building: The Spike of Baddasery!"
Nights on Illium were rarely dark. There were just too many light sources from too many buildings in the planet's vast cities, resulting in perpetual twilight during the nighttime hours. Aircars streamed past the crowds gathered outside the Spike of Badassery: thousands of sapients, many asari but just as many of other species. Humans were scattered among the multitude of species, visible due to their wildly varying body shapes: a slender whip-thin woman barely seventy pounds in full clothes stood next to a hulking brute weighing in at over five hundred. An unusually large assortment of krogan were on hand as well, but that was what happened when you dealt with a corporation half-owned by the biggest krogan clan in the galaxy. An excited murmur filled the air as they looked up at the tremendous tower overhead, dominating the Nos Astra skyline.
Emily Wong stood above the crowds on a viewing platform, protected from Illium's winds by a mass effect field that deflected the air around her and her camera crew. The dark-haired human woman reported gestured up toward the building everyone was gathered to commemorate the opening of: a vast, wide spire painted alternating red, black, and gold. Its architecture clashed almost violently with the elegant asari spires, consisting of sharp right angles and blocky shapes. But none of the asari buildings were close to its size; the only buildings in the city that could match it were the Maliwan Center of Graceful Humility, and the Hyperion Convergence Tower, both of which loomed in the distance.
"Now, if you've been paying attention to some of the controversy surrounding this ambitious project," Emily continued, "You'll know that the building's construction went well over budget when an additional ten levels were inexplicably added to an already-staggering eight hundred floors. But Citadel NewsNet has managed to do the impossible: we have managed to schedule a personal interview with Mr. Torgue himself regarding this unusual construction addition. And here he comes now!"
Mr. Torgue lumbered into the view of the holocameras, towering over the much smaller and genetically-normal Emily Wong. All massive muscles, he wore a massive mullet under a bright red bandana, large black sunglasses, and a mightily manly mustache.
"Mr. Torgue, I want to say how much of an honor it is to meet you in person!" Emily said, holding out her hand. He reached out with massive fingers and gingerly shook hers.
"YOUR PRESENCE IS JUST AS MUCH OF AN HONOR, MISS WONG," he screamed at the top of his lungs. "I DON'T OFTEN GET A CHANCE TO SPEAK TO A JOURNALIST OF YOUR INTEGRITY! MOST OF THEM WANT TO CONDUCT THE INTERVIEW FROM ORBIT, BECAUSE THEY CAN'T STAND THE POSSIBILITY OF BEING CAUGHT IN THE WAKE OF PURE AWESOMENESS."
"Indeed, they often are," Emily said, having taken a couple of steps back from the force of Mr. Torgue's speech. "We're only moments away from the ceremony commemorating the opening of the Spike of Badassery, Mr. Torgue. And everyone has been wondering about the secretive construction at the top of the tower. Could you shed some light on what's happening up there?"
"MISS WONG, I WOULD BE HAPPY TO! IN FACT, AS PART OF THE OPENING CEREMONY, I WILL BE SHOWING YOU EXACTLY WHAT THOSE FLOORS ARE FOR!"
A horn sounded over the speakers around the plaza, and everyone went quiet. The crowd looked up in expectation, and Mr. Torgue produced a cylindrical device from his pants pocket.
"BRACE YOURSELVES, MOTHERFbleepERS!"
He pressed the button.
The top ten levels of the immense skyscraper exploded. A tremendous column of fire and light shot up into the night sky, shaped by mass effect fields of immense power to keep the flimsy debris from the limited construction from going anywhere but straight up. The fire and fury twisted and shaped, with much of it shooting about fifty meters in the air, but one part of the blast rising twice as high in a tight, narrow column.
The crowd gasped and cheered in awe of the tremendous detonation, which could be seen for many kilometers in all directions. But as the fires rose, Emily Wong frowned. She turned to Torgue, who was belting out a sick air guitar solo while the city around him was lit up by the tremendous, shaped gout of fire.
"MEEEOWOOOWOWMEEDLYMEEDLYOOOOOOW!" he was shouting.
"Mister Torgue," she said, "was it your intention to shape that explosion to look like a massive raised middle finger?"
"YOU ARE INDEED VERY OBSERVANT, MISS WONG!" Torgue shouted. "BUT THE PROPER DEFINITION OF THIS GIGANTIC BADASS EXPLOOOOOOSION CAN ONLY BE APPRECIATED IN CONTEXT!"
She turned, looking back out over the city, and with a startled gasp, she understood.
The giant exploding middle finger was oriented toward both the Maliwan Center of Graceful Humility and the Hyperion Convergence Center.
"MEEDLEYMEEDLEYMEEDLEYMEEEEOWOOOWOOOW!" Mister Torgue shouted as he continued playing air guitar, while the Torgue-Urdnot Spike of Badassery flipped off their competitors. He then leaned in toward the camera and jabbed a finger at the lens.
"THAT IS HOW TORGUE-URDNOT DOES BUSINESS, MOTHERFbleepERS!"
Chapter Four: Bloody Business
Roland sat in the back of the shuttle, listening to the faint rumble of the engines through the hull while cleaning one of the rifles stored in his SDU. The Alliance Marines and his own troops stood or sat around the bay, save for a couple off to one side being checked by Alenko. Among them lay Lilith.
Roland's helmet lay beside him - what was left of it, anyway. He guessed he would need to get a new one, but he might be able to repurpose most of his leftover armor into something useful. Everyone else had doffed their helmets too. Williams was dozing, her dark hair plastered to the sides of her head, while Reiss sat beside her, grinning quietly at Roland as he usually did after a completed mission. The Marines also possessed weary but triumphant looks, and there was a tense but welcome feeling of camaraderie around the shuttle bay.
Alenko had taken off his helmet and was sweeping over the worst wounded with his omnitool. He had a strong but not exceptional face, with short black hair that met in a point over his head. He glanced to his omnitool with dark eyes, and applied careful Insta-Health injections to the wounded, save for Lilith herself, who was the only one that was unconscious. Like everyone else, her helmet was off; Alenko had insisted on that to check her vitals. Roland hadn't been sure what to expect when the helmet had come off; he knew Sirens were supposed to be beautiful, but he hadn't expected a woman he looked barely out of her teens, with bright red hair and slender features. She looked oddly small and vulnerable laying there.
"Okay, no serious injuries," Alenko said as he finished the examination, and stood. "She's exhausted, and I'm getting some odd brain activity. I'd need a full medical suite to do a serious exam, but as far as I can tell she's fine."
"Good," Roland said with a nod. He collapsed his weapon back to digistruct space and stood. "Now we just need to figure out what to do."
Alenko nodded and gestured toward the ramp to the cockpit. Roland followed him up there, and once inside the small room he glanced over the readouts. They were about halfway across the Utopia system where Eden Prime was located, far enough out that no one could easily find them in the system.
"What now?" Roland asked, crossing his arms.
"Now, tacos!" Claptrap said. "Wait. I don't have a mouth. Or a digestive tract. So why do I want tacos?"
"I can guess that you wanted that beacon for less-than-noble reasons," Alenko said to Roland, ignoring the rambling robot. Roland nodded. "Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what you did down there. My Marines would have been hurt a lot worse than they are now without your help."
"And my team might have been wiped out without yours," Roland agreed. "We didn't go after the beacon just for money. We went after it for payback."
"Well, you got it in spades," Alenko said with another nod. "But the Alliance sent my team down there to acquire the thing, and we still need it. Especially considering the geth were after it so badly as to attack a core planet."
"My team aren't government soldiers," Roland said, shaking his head. "We're paid for our work."
"I can probably get you amnesty for helping the Alliance, and likely wipe whatever mark the Lance will put on you," Alenko said. "But the beacon is Alliance property, and . . . the Siren-"
"Lilith," Roland grunted immediately, and found himself a bit surprised he was so quick to correct the Marine. Alenko nodded.
"Lilith is, well, a rarity." He exhaled, and for a moment Roland could see the exhaustion in his features before he hid the weariness again. "The Alliance won't like it if-"
"Hell no," muttered a tired woman's voice from the entrance to the bridge. Roland and Alenko looked up to see Lilith leaning against the wall, posture alert but exhausted. Her gold eyes were narrowed, and she glared at both of them.
"Lilith," Roland said. "You okay?"
"Feel like I got spit up by a skag," she grunted, straightening. The room felt warmer than it had before, but when she stopped and breathed for a moment, it cooled again.
"You sure?" Alenko asked. "That beacon did a number on you."
"I'm fine," she said, shaking her head. "Just healthy enough to be experimented on by curious scientists against my will."
"That's not what I meant," Alenko said, and sighed at her glare. "Don't worry, I haven't reported you to the Alliance yet. I'm not going to, either, if I can avoid it. I owe you that much for helping us."
The anger faded from the Siren's eyes, and she slowly nodded.
"Good to know I'm not going to have to incinerate everyone on this tin can," she replied, only the slightest edge to her voice. "So, where are we headed, and who are we selling the beacon to?"
"Ideally, no one," Alenko said.
"I don't fight armies and get mindzapped by Eridian artifacts just for charity," Lilith muttered. "I'm not letting that artifact go without getting paid."
"The Alliance can't afford to let any corporation or Terminus power get the device," Alenko said, crossing his arms. "My orders were pretty clear. We're not letting that thing out of our hands."
"I don't think you have much of a choice," Lilith countered, and the air temperature shot up again. "I'm getting paid." The air around her began wavering slightly, and a moment later Alenko's body was sheathed by a blue aura. His face was partially hidden underneath the roiling surface of dark energy, but Roland could see the shift to hard certainty, and Alenko put a hand on his collapsed sidearm.
"Hey, enough!" Roland barked, stepping between Siren and Marine. His left side - the side facing Lilith - broke out into a sudden sweat, but he held up his hands to separate them. "We're on the same damn team here, and the last thing we need is you two ripping the ship apart!"
Both of them broke gazes and looked to him, and the fire - figuratively and literally - faded from Lilith. The blue aura around Alenko dissipated as well.
"Sorry," Lilith said, shaking her head. Alenko nodded.
"I apologize for that," he grunted softly.
"Yeah, long day," Lilith said in agreement. "Lots of internal bleeding."
"Okay, so we have a problem," Roland said once the air temperature returned to normal. "Lilith and my people need to get paid, while the Alliance needs the beacon. So, we sell the beacon to the Alliance."
The room was silent for a moment, before a quiet clang sounded as Lilith quietly bonked her her face against the bulkhead.
"Well, now I feel like an idiot," Alenko muttered. "Didn't consider that."
"Same here," Lilith said.
"So, how are we going to handle this?" Roland said.
"I can call the Alliance," Alenko said. "They should give a fair price for the beacon once we get to safe territory."
"No. Not Alliance space," Lilith said, and the Marine raised an eyebrow. "I'm not setting foot on an Alliance space station or planet. Not with the military ready for me, and not after what the corps and geth did on Eden Prime." Alenko nodded after a moment.
"Fair enough," he admitted, and Roland agreed. Especially after what they had just seen at Eden Prime. Even without the general attitude toward Sirens, Roland found it hard to believe the Systems Alliance could protect any location against attacks on the scale of the geth fleet that had just burned down Eden Prime.
"Omega?" Roland suggested. Lilith shook her head.
"Worse than Alliance territory, and an Alliance ship in the Terminus would trigger all kinds of violence."
"Agreed," Alenko said. "I doubt any Alliance captain would be willing to enter the heart of the Terminus anyway."
"Illium," Lilith said after a moment, her tone certain.
"The Gateway to the Terminus?" Alenko asked, and she nodded.
"Neutral territory," she said. "Accessible to the Alliance. Well-defended. Far enough out that the geth would have trouble getting there unseen. Perfect for this kind of deal."
"Except for the corporations," Roland said.
"Nothing we can avoid about that," Lilith said, her tone grim. "We'll just have to keep under their radar."
"I'll make the call," Alenko said, and opened the door to the cockpit. Roland glanced back to Lilith.
"Surprised you didn't suggest the Citadel," Roland said, "Considering how worried you are about the corps."
"Like hell I'd set foot on the Citadel," she said, a mocking laugh in her voice. "If a Siren can't trust the Alliance, there's no way one could trust the Council, let alone board the Citadel. A Siren trying that would be crazy."
Halfway across the galaxy, a Siren passed through Citadel Security, accompanied by the ominously cheery beep of a security scanner and a dangerously perky greeting from a smiling asari.
"Enjoy your stay on the Citadel," the blue-skinned alien said with a smile, and the Siren nodded back with one of her own. Inwardly, she wondered whether the asari even knew what kind of human she was talking to. The Siren stepped through the scanner, recovered her bags and SDU - loaded with weapons that were all perfectly legal thanks to the weapons permits she had carefully forged - and stepped out into the Ward proper beyond.
The familiar, stale scent of filtered, mass-manufactured air wafted past her, carrying the distinct bouquet of a dozen species all existing in a limited area. The distant hum of aircar engines and the faint, deep alert chimes of incoming shuttles could be heard behind her, over the low, constant murmur of sapients talking. Crowds moved past in the open street just outside the station, composed of the dozen or so species that occupied Citadel space: a few lumbering quadrupedal elcor and the humpbacked forms of krogan visible among the thinner and smaller salarian, turian, and asari people making up the majority of the crowd. She spotted a couple of volus waddling here and there. Humans were scattered among the crowds as well, almost all of them baselines with only slight genetic abnormalities.
"Welcome to Zakera Ward," the baseline human officer sitting behind the desk said as she walked out of the checkpoint. He was older, hair a mix of white and blond, with a gruff voice used to barking orders. She nodded to him, but the evaluating look he gave her was far more alert and intent than the perky asari in the checkpoint itself. The Siren glanced around the interior of the small security station, noting the officers moving in and out of the station or working at their desks. It took her only a few moments to evaluate everything, and conclude that the officer was local station chief.
And the only reason the local chief would be talking to her would be if she was important. Which meant someone had noticed what she was, and that meant everyone would know in short order. Unfortunate, but, well, unsurprising.
"Hi," she offered. "You in charge around here?"
"The law in these here parts," the chief replied with a faux borderlands accent. He glanced down at his data screen. "Captain Bailey, Zakera Precinct. Not often we get a woman of your skin condition in the heart of Citadel space, Miss . . . Maya?"
She nodded, and spotted a reflection of her face in the holographic screen of his computer. It was an older picture - her hair was shorter in it, still growing out from the much shorter bob she'd sported while still a lackey of the Order of the Impending Storm - but it matched her well enough: thin features, blue-gray eyes, blue hair hanging down the sides of her face, tall and lean and limber. She was still wearing a hardsuit in that picture, unlike her current outfit: a light yellow-orange leotard of ballistic-weave on her upper body that allowed for excellent freedom of movement, and a looser set of brown ballistic-weave fatigue pants and combat boots. She wore a gray colonist's jacket over the leotard, but that was mostly to hide the complex assortment of blue whorls and Eridian script flowing down the left side of her body that marked what she was.
"Just announce it to the whole Citadel already," she said, keeping her tone deadpan.
"You were already marked by C-Sec hours before you set foot on the station," Bailey replied. "Not much we could do about that. The kind of attention that someone like you catches is difficult to avoid. Especially considering what you did on Athenas."
Maya sighed and nodded, stepping toward the doorway leading out of the station and into the crowds beyond. No one reacted to her, not even to her odd hair color, which was a perfectly natural,benign offshoot of one of the minor mutagenic strains Maliwan had introduced a century back. It was a disconcerting sensation to not have everyone staring at her with slackjawed awe, or slack-jawed greed. Anonymity was a rare experience for her.
"So, what's with the guards?" Maya asked, keeping her tone casual. Bailey glanced up from his desk, and his eyes flicked to the pair of C-Sec officers looming a bit too close and a bit to intentionally casual. A human and a turian, wearing the usual black-and-blue ballistic-weave-under-hardsuit armor of Citadel Security, were standing and talking idly, but their eyes kept a regular pattern of checking her, scanning the concourse outside the station, and then back to her. Bailey grunted.
"Don't worry about them," he said. "They're not here to stick their heads up your ass. Opposite in fact."
"Really," Maya replied, her tone dry. "I'm not eager to shove mine up theirs."
"Oh, ha ha. I'm dead serious, poor choice of words notwithstanding," Bailey said. "Look, we're trying to keep the fact that a . . . someone like you passed through as quiet as possible, which means that you've got maybe an hour before everyone with an interest in females with blue tattoos and mystical powers knows you're here. And women like you are legendary for bringing trouble. The last time we had someone like you here, she was a krogan."
He visibly shuddered at that memory, and Maya winced in sympathy. Krogan Sirens were on the top of the galaxy's "Seriously, Do Not Fuck With" list.
"So, what, they're my bodyguards?" Maya asked, frowning. The deep-space dryness of her tone spoke of her opinion on that.
"In a manner of speaking," Bailey said with a shrug. "Mostly they're just there to deter the riff-raff by pointing out that we're watching your back. That and to give me an early warning if a sector of the Wards is about to explode."
"No offense to your guys, Captain," the Siren said, "but anyone able to tackle me won't be deterred by a couple of C-Sec troops."
"It's not the ones able I'm worried about," Bailey replied. "Its the ones willing. Much as I don't like morons, I'd rather some idiot hotshot who thinks he can drop a Siren think twice before he gets turned into mush. The paperwork for a justified self-defense killing is still a nightmare."
"Fair enough," she replied. "Anyone in particular I should watch out for?"
"I'd have to sit you down for a day-long brief on that," Bailey grunted with exhaustion. "Worst customer on this Ward is a fella named Fist. Human, got some bruiser mutations to him. Runs half the crime on Zakera."
"Never taken him down?" Maya asked, curious.
"Never got the go-ahead," Bailey said. "A big-shot is covering him. Might be a megacorps or a Citadel big-wig. C-Sec can't pin him down enough with whoever it is running interference. So watch yourself out there."
"Thanks," Maya said with a nod.
"You can thank me by giving me a head's up if you plan to start something," the captain replied.
"I'm not planning on killing anyone if I can avoid it," she said. After a moment's thought, she added, "I'm looking for a volus. Barla Von. I just need to talk to him and then I'll be gone, hopefully."
"Presidium, financial district," Bailey replied almost immediately. His fingers danced over the haptic interface. "I'll clear you to be on that level."
"I appreciate it."
"Just keep the collateral to a minimum," Bailey said. "Not easy. I mean, come on. There's enough of our species on the Citadel to make that impossible these days. But I'd appreciate it all the same."
Three security stations down, ten C-Sec officers stood ready in full armor, weapons in hand and ready to aim. They watched the doorway with cautious intent, and a moment later a mass of muscle and restrained violence sauntered through the doorway. He loomed over the baseline humans and equivalently-sized aliens, clad in tight-fitting jeans and a muscle shirt of ballistic weave that strained against the rippling slab of meat. His face was a squarish mass that had been broken and repaired often, and his hair was brown and shaved close. A necklace with a dog's paw dangled from his neck.
He was human, and blessed by the random assortment of genetic mutations that permeated the human genome: not only was he huge and covered in enough dense muscle to let him heft small vehicles with no trouble, but he walked with a steady ease that warned he was quick on his feet, and he spoke with a clarity of intellect that confirmed he was at least reasonably sane.
As a famous man once said, "Smart plus strong plus quick equals badass." That image was reinforced by the storage deck unit loaded with a dozen weapons he carried - all registered and legal, of course, he wasn't a moron.
"Well," he boomed with a grin at the greeting party. His voice wasn't particularly deep, but there was a lot of lung behind it, and his words echoed around the station. "This is my favorite kind of greetin'!"
"We're not here for your amusement, Brick," snapped the station chief, a human who edged toward tall and lean. He didn't have a weapon in hand, instead keeping his arms folded behind his back. "You're marked."
"I damn well hope I am," Brick replied with a laugh. "Otherwise I'd be disappointed in myself!"
"We've got our eyes on you," the station chief said.
"Awesome, I'm gonna be on TV!" Brick replied with a growing smile. "I always work better with an audience!"
"You keep your guns holstered on the Citadel, Brick," the chief snarled. "I just need an excuse to kick you off the station!"
"Heh. I'd like to see you try," Brick grunted, the smile slowly fading. "Might be fun. Might not. I don't like shooting cops."
"Then don't cause trouble, understand?" the station chief said, eyes still stony.
Brick nodded. Both he and the chief knew what this conversation was really about. It was going to be impossible to prevent violence in an urban environment with as many people on it as the Citadel, and human presence only exacerbated the issue. But the station chief wanted to minimize the damage whenever a bounty hunter showed up, and Brick agreed with him. As much of a fan of mayhem as he was, he agreed that collateral should be avoided, so he would have to hold his fire on the Citadel.
"Understood," Brick said, and held up his hand in a placating gesture. "I'll keep it civil. And call you guys if I think it might become uncivil."
The station chief exhaled, obviously unhappy. But he obviously didn't want to try to arrest Brick, especially when he hadn't done anything beyond being Brick. Which, depending on the planet, would be enough to get him jailed and/or shot at - but those planets were the ones he didn't so much "land on" as he "assaulted."
"Okay, fine," the chief said. "Get out of here. I'd better not find you causing trouble, because my men will shoot to kill."
"If they didn't, it wouldn't be as fun," Brick replied with a cheerful grin. He picked up his baggage and SDU from the station's scanners and went on his way. He jauntily walked down the streets of the Ward, everyone giving him a wide berth, and began planning out this job. He'd do C-Sec a favor and make it quick, and keep the damage to minimum, just as promised.
Brick may have been a brutal savage who had beaten men to death with their own spines before, but he respected police. And he had one big rule: No collateral. Ever. The bloodlust and savage fury that came with his mutations were tempered by seeing too many innocents die. Too many children. Especially on Akuze.
But checking his fire wouldn't be hard. Not with this target. He just had to walk inside, pick a direction, and start shooting and/or punching. Those were his favorite kinds of jobs.
The C-Sec officers were no slouches at their jobs, but Maya had been dodging minders just as well-trained and a whole lot more diligent since she was a child growing up in the monasteries of the Order of the Impending Storm. The warrior-priests had kept strict tabs on her, or at least they tried. She'd learned how to slip them, and just as easily slipped her C-Sec minders before she ever got to the Presidium.
Once on the upper levels of the Citadel, where the important people lived and worked - bureaucrats, politicians, military, diplomats, scientists, white-collar criminals, and so on - she slipped among the crowds of the well-dressed and powerful. There were fewer humans up here compared with Zakera Ward, but less suspicion and wariness as well. Maya spent a few minutes admiring the scenery: the lush green plants from a dozen and more different planets, the flowing water in the endless lake running through the circular structure, the false sky drifting past on the Presidium "ceiling" that made her think for a moment that she really was back on a planet's surface.
But her objective called, and C-Sec was doubtless trying to find her to keep her safe, so the Siren kept moving. She worked her way through plazas and shopping areas toward a series of offices and high-class shops outside built across the lake from the main embassy complex for most of the Citadel member species. One of the offices was relatively small and unassuming, lacking even a nameplate on the sliding door. All it had was an address number. Maya tapped the glowing door panel, and it chimed once. A moment later the door slid open, revealing a small, spartan office consisting of Citadel-standard white walls, a bank of computer processors on the far wall, and a simple desk with a glowing terminal display. Behind the desk sat a volus, his narrow fingers clacking away at the haptic interface for the terminal.
"Ah, Miss Maya," the volus said, his voice cheerfully pedantic. Maya stepped inside and closed the door. "I worried that you might be late."
"Had to give the police the slip," she replied, and took a seat across from the rotund little alien.
"A wise decision, considering your heritage," the volus replied. Von paused, inhaling from his suit's breather, before continuing. "Your advance has cleared, and I have acquired some useful information."
"You mean your employer has the information," Maya replied, and the volus' head bobbed once. She didn't anticipate that Barla Von would have something as esoteric or broad-reaching as data connecting Sirens and the Eridians. He was a financier and had a close eye on diplomatic maneuverings on the Citadel, but wasn't an archaeologist or specialist in Eridian studies. But his employer would have that data.
"Indeed. The Shadow Broker appreciates your willingness to give him the Order's money," Barla Von said, and produced an OSD from a compartment in his desk. Maya nodded, holding out a hand for the disc.
"They weren't using it anymore," she replied, and the volus dropped the disc into her palm.
"As agreed, all of the details the recent excavation on Eden Prime," the volus said. He inhaled again. "It might interest you to know that you are not the only party on the Citadel with such an interest in the device."
"Not shocking," Maya replied, pocketing the OSD. Digistructing it would be safer, but it also ran the risk of the data being corrupted.
"No, but I suspect it would be worrying," Barla Von replied. Inhale. "The Broker wanted to make it clear that there has been a recent defection within the ranks, and that knowledge of this transaction has been leaked. The fact that you possess that information will spread, likely within seconds of you leaving this office."
"Great," Maya muttered. "It was getting boring here anyway."
"In particular I would advise you to be wary of a human named Fist," Barla Von added.
"Yeah, I've heard of him already," Maya said, standing.
"What you may not know,' the volus said, and paused to inhale again, "is that he was until very recently in the employ of the Shadow Broker. And as of late, he has taken an intense interest in the same subject that you have. Obsessive, almost."
Maya frowned. If that was the case, and if Barla Von's warnings were on the level, then Fist might try to grab the data. Not to mention that he might take a shot at Maya herself. The connection between Sirens and Eridian tech was not common knowledge, but anyone who worked for the Shadow Broker - and who had the kind of interest in the Eridians that Fist apparently did - would know about it.
She started to speak, but paused, and her brow furrowed as she started reading between the lines. Barla Von wouldn't let information like this slip freely without payment. And Fist recently leaving the Broker's employ meant more than he'd let on. Plus Von's warnings . . . ..
She looked back down at the unassuming little alien. He stared back at her, his breather hissing a couple of times. Maya then exhaled in understanding, folding her arms over her chest.
"Fist was the one who betrayed the Broker?" she asked. The volus nodded, and despite the body-concealing suit, there was an almost approving air to the gesture.
"Quite adept, I see," he replied. "Indeed. Fist has withheld very valuable data from the Broker, which has made the Broker exceedingly angry. Enough to hire assassins."
"And enough to let slip to a Siren that he has such information and might take a swing at me?" Maya asked, and Von waved a hand in an agreeable gesture while taking another breath.
"I can't say anything on that matter," he replied. "But if you were to seek out such data, and in the process be attacked by or attack Fist, thereby weakening his organization and making it more vulnerable to infiltration and data extraction by Broker agents, well, that would be beneficial, wouldn't you agree?"
"Right, and the Broker wouldn't have to pay me for the job, unlike his assassins," Maya said.
"Of course, any information you would acquire while fighting Fist would be very valuable to the Broker," Barla Von added. "Not to mention recompense for removing Fist."
"Look, you want me to kill Fist for you, you're not going to get it by offering to pay me," Maya replied with a frown. She'd made her living through violence since leaving the Order in shambles behind her, but Maya didn't take jobs from just anyone to kill just anybody. She may have been a mercenary, but she was an ethical one.
"I doubt that Fist is any sort of angel," Barla Von said. The translator made the dryness in his tone perfectly clear.
"No, and I won't lose any sleep taking him down, especially if he starts shooting first," Maya replied, and turned to leave. She paused at the door and glanced back over her shoulder. "If he does, and I do put him in his place, I expect the Broker would be happy and generous."
"Indeed," Barla Von said. "The Broker will be happy to repay you for violence, no matter the route your conscience demands you take to get the job done."
"This isn't a job," Maya replied with a frown. She opened the door and stepped outside. "I'm not working for the Broker."
"Indeed," Barla Von replied. "You are merely doing what he wants done, and then expecting payment for it."
Maya didn't respond to the volus' arid response, and let the door close behind her. She glanced around the gleaming white of the Presidium for a moment, and shook her head.
Fist was a big target right now, and he could have information that would be useful to her. And Barla Von was right: he wasn't an angel. But the idea of working for the Shadow Broker didn't sit well with Maya. She wasn't an assassin for hire and she wasn't going to go looking for trouble by picking a fight with some bandit king because he might have data she wanted. Plus Barla Von hadn't made it clear if he really did have what she wanted, he'd only hinted at it. If she'd just jumped at the hints without thinking on it, she would have played right into his hands, which meant she would be doing the Broker's bidding anyway. Slippery little volus.
Maya shook her head and started down the white-tiled street. She had some contacts elsewhere she could use to verify the information the volus was hinting at. If Fist took a shot at her, or if she could confirm that Fist knew what she needed to know about the Eridian tech from Eden Prime and how it connected to Sirens, she'd happily pay him a visit. But until then, she'd keep the guns holstered.
Brick stopped outside the locked door, and a big, savage grin spread over his features.
The clinic was a relatively small place - the kind of place that tended to minor injuries like cuts, burns, broken limbs, unanticipated amputations, and so on. The kind of stuff that a qualified doctor with a steady supply of Insta-Health could tend to pretty easily. It was built into a suite high up on one of the commercial high-rises that made up the majority of every Ward's occupied space. A bright, cheery sign outside advertised that the clinic was set up to deal with any species, regardless of mutations.
The door was also closed, locked tight, and the clinic was marked as closed, despite the local hours being among the busiest of the day. Exactly like the thug he'd left in a bloody heap in an alley four levels down had told him it would be. Said thug was the most recent of a steady trail of batter lowlifes he'd been beating into a talkative state since he arrived while running down his quarry, and the last scumbag had told him said quarry was sending a few of his best men to have a chat with on Cloe Michel, M.D.
So Brick did what anyone with said information would do when confronted with a locked door.
He knocked. Politely.
Several seconds passed, and he knocked again. He looked up at the camera pointing down at him from above the clinic door, smiled, and waved. Then he fired up his omnitool, waved it over the locked door, and triggered an automated hacking program. Brick was not technologically adept, but he had enough money that he could buy software to make up for that shortcoming. The hacking tool worked within seconds, unlocking the door, and he cracked his knuckles.
The C-Sec station chief had asked him to limit the damage, so when the door opened, he went in with all his weapons still locked in digistruct space. His fists were more than enough.
There was a small waiting area with a long receptionist's counter beyond, and a clinic area with beds screened off by privacy dividers and mass effect field generators beyond. Four men stood inside, two in the anteroom and two in the clinic, all armed with pistols and wearing red ballistic weave shirts and black trousers. All but one were baselines, and the last was a tremendous bruiser standing over two meters tall, his shirt bulging over enough muscles to flip an aircar. Hell, the big bruiser was nearly buff enough to rival Brick - "nearly" being the key word. In the middle of the gang of thugs was a small baseline human woman with bright red hair, a doctor's scrubs, and a screaming buzzsaw axe that was currently tearing into one thug's jugular.
Brick stopped in mid-step, blinking in surprise as the small woman pulled the spinning, diamond-edged buzzsaw free, its edges glowing yellow-hot, and whirled on another thug. He jumped back as she howled and cursed in what sounded like heavily-accented French.
Then Brick charged, pounding across the room toward the nearest goon while hauling back with one massive fist, fingers clenched tight enough that the straining tendons cracked like broken wood, and drove his arm into the middle of the thug's back. Something broke - Brick guessed it was the thug's everything - and he went flying through the air over the counter to smack into the bruiser who was backing away from the screaming doctor. The huge human stumbled, and then let out a deep, pained howl as Doctor Michel chopped her buzz-axe into the meat of his upper arm.
The last thug spun toward Brick, pointing his pistol at him, which just gave the massive slab of humanity an easy target to grab. He slapped his hand down over the top of the pistol and wrenched, and the baseline's wrist broke. He let out a high-pitched squeal, which redoubled when Brick grabbed his forearm and snapped that as well. Then Brick grabbed the screaming thug by the leg, wrenched him up into the air like a whip, and beat him on the floor hard enough to smash ribs and break his back.
He spun toward the wounded bruiser, who tried to backhand Michel as she tore the buzz-axe free. She stumbled back, and the blow hit her hard in one shoulder. Enraged or not, the impact knocked the small baseline off her feet.
It also cleared the line of sight between Brick and the bruiser, and the former hefted the latter's broken comrade and chucked him end over end into the bruiser's face. The huge thug was knocked over backward by the impact, hitting shelves with his flailing arms and scattering medical equipment all over the floor.
Brick hopped over the prone doctor. His first instinct was to grab her and pull her to safety, but after seeing her with that buzz-axe, he opted for caution, and instead closed to grappling range with the bruiser. He slammed his shoulder into the hefty mutant human as he rose, knocking him off his feet, and the bruiser struck the floor again with a shout of surprise. Brick leapt atop him, driving a knee into the mutant's sternum, and then rained punches until he heard crunches and the last thug went still.
Job done, Brick hopped onto his feet and looked around for something to clean up the blood on his knuckles. Bad guys lay scattered around the clinic in various states of broken, and Michel was pushing herself to her feet and wiping blood from her lip. Her eyes fixed on Brick, and she clutched her buzz-axe tightly.
"Whoa, relax, Doc," he said, holding up his hands. "Name's Brick. I came here to save your ass."
She stared at him for a few moments, and her eyes then flicked around the clinic. Finally, she lowered the buzz-axe.
"Thank you, Mister Brick," she breathed, setting the weapon aside. Her accent was a thick French, going by Brick's autotranslator, and that just made the "Mister" sound even weirder to his ears.
"Just Brick, ma'am," the slab of muscle replied. He glanced around, and found a chair, which he hefted. He led her out into the anteroom and set the chair down, and she tookt he offered. Brick fetched her a glass of water and waited for her to stop trembling.
"You okay, Doctor?" he asked, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. She nodded. Brick considered how he was going to get what he needed out of the shaken doctor now that the crisis had passed, and decided to play the wandering hero card. It worked in the past.
"Heard someone sent those men to shake you down over something or other, so I came to check it out," Brick said after she'd recovered. "Guess you can call the police now, if you wanted to, but I got no idea what they wanted."
"They were sent by Fist," Michel said almost immediately.
"The crime boss?" Brick feigned ignorance. He didn't know how she'd react if he told her that part of his job was to fatally rearrange Fist's organs. Maybe positive, maybe not.
"Yes," Michel said with a nod. "They were sent to keep me quiet. I think they were going to kill me, or hurt me, or-"
"So you grabbed the axe and started swinging," Brick said with approval. Michel nodded and took another drink of water. "What were they trying to hide?"
"The quarian," Michel said, and Brick leaned forward a bit. "She came into the clinic last night. She had been wounded. Shot. Said that assassins were after her. Said that she had information that needed to get back to the Migrant Fleet. I guess it must have been too sensitive to transmit."
"She say what it was about?" he asked, trying to hide his interest. After all, half his mission was to kill Fist. The other half was to find out why he'd betrayed the people who he worked for in the first place.
"A Vault," Michel whispered, and Brick stood up off the wall, eyebrows rising in surprise.
"Go on."
Maya had been expecting trouble when she went down to Zakera Ward to check up with her contacts. Barla Von's warning was foremost in her mind, so when the elevator from the docking ring connecting the Presidium to the Ward reached one of the promenade streets, she stepped off warily and prepared to disappear into the crowds to avoid the expected prying eyes.
What she hadn't been expecting was Fist's goons jumping her three steps off the elevator.
As she'd stepped out into the street, Maya's instincts had immediately started screaming at her. Her brain caught up a step later, noting that the usual crowds of sapient life that she'd noted before had vanished, leaving the street oddly empty.
At the third step, she'd started drawing a submachinegun from her SDU, and as it materialized in her hands, Fist's men opened fire with a shuddering storm of metal and noise.
The street was the standard promenade in the Wards: a long, wide corridor built into one of the many tall buildings along the interior of the Ward, constructed of the dull gray metal that was ubiquitous down here, with a darkened service area about five meters above with catwalks and maintenance tunnels running parallel to the street. Shops lined either side of the corridor, bright holographic lights and signs identifying them, but many had their doors sealed and the crash glass of their windows were covered with armored anti-theft shutters. Cylindrical advertising kiosks, automated public-use terminals, and benches split the corridor down the middle. Garish holographic advertisements and video displays lit up the entire corridor in a dazzling display of light.
And there were also the jackasses shooting at her.
The blazing gunfire of a dozen weapons coming from multiple directions and converging on the startled Siren just added to the riot of light. Men in plainclothes ballistic weave, some of normal build but others clearly too tall or thin or heavily-muscled to be baseline humans were shooting at her from open doorways in both directions on the street. She could hear the thugs shouting and cheering and cursing with a furious, manic glee that was all too familiar in the borderlands. Rounds slammed into her shields with a fury that turned the barriers opaque, and Maya knew she had only a couple of seconds before they fell and she was turned into hamburger.
So she charged.
And as the adrenaline shot through her and she vaulted over a bench, bullets whipping past her from all directions, Maya grinned. He arm came up, gesturing toward one of the doorways where Fist's men were crouched, and the Eridian markings etched across half her body erupted with azure fire as she initiated a phaselock.
There were two men in the doorway she was charging, both baseline humans, and both with expressions that shifted from manic glee to sudden terror right before reality rewrote itself and one man was yanked off his feet. Dark energy rippled around the bandit in a roaring sphere of searing heat and crushing force. Piercing screams of helpless agony erupted from the thug as his skin and clothing burst into flames. The second man was yanked off his feet by the force of the sphere's formation and was thrown toward and past his companion, bouncing off the doorframe and tumbling into the street.
Maya landed a couple of steps away from the prone man, and fired into him while charging the door and the roasting man inside. Rounds smashed into his shields and punched through, half a dozen shredding his torso and arms as she ran past. The heat rolling off the trapped, screaming thug in the doorway washed over Maya, but she barely felt it; whatever gave her the ability to trap people in miniature crushing hell-singularities also protected her from the effects of the same. She ducked behind the doorframe, bullets whipping past her and ricocheting off the metal. As she crouched behind cover, there was a snap of released air, and the crushing singularity collapsed. A charred, mangled corpse toppled to the floor beside her.
Okay, she thought. I've got cover. Now, I need to either get clear of this ambush or kill enough of them to make them retreat.
She glanced around the interior of the shop. She guessed it was some kind of furniture store, as holographic displays showed various chairs and couches and tables and such, some familiar and human while others were of elegant or twisty alien designs. There was a back door to the shop.
Fist's goons closed in outside, pouring suppressing fire into the doorway, and the decision wasn't a difficult one. Maya rose and ran toward the door, slapping the control. The door slid open, and Maya ran into the service corridor beyond.
Or at least, she started too, but a looming shadow not a meter in front of her aborted that plan. Maya skipped backward right as a massive slab of muscle brought the butt of a shotgun down where he head had been a heartbeat ago. The shotgun hit the floor so hard that the stock broke off and the metal plates dented. She snapped the submachinegun up and opened fire as she dove aside, but the rounds smashed off the thug's shield to no effect. The bruiser lumbered after her, snarling and laughing, moving with the kind of ponderous strength and mass that could stop a charging krogan.
"No getting away from us!" he boomed, leveling the shotgun at her. He didn't have a perfect shot, but the deafening roar of the shotgun filled the room, and the hypervelocity slugs smashed into Maya's shield and collapsed it. The shotgun pumped again, and he swung it to bear on Maya.
"Quiet," she hissed as the shotgun's action clicked, and blue fire swept over her left side once more. The phenomenal cosmic power surging through her beat him to the shot, and fire and crushing force swept over the immense bruiser. He was lifted up and back, screaming, and Maya bolted past him.
She didn't have more than a moment; the second phaselock wouldn't hold for long. Even as she reached the door behind the bruiser, she could feel it collapsing, and heard the huge thug hit the floor behind her.
"Goddamn little witch!" the bruiser snarled. "That hurt!"
Maya glanced both ways in the hallway behind the shop, and picked a direction. She ran to the left. She made it a dozen strides before a door ahead burst open and another thug burst into the hallway. He was a baseline human armed with a shotgun, and he pivoted toward her, bringing the weapon to bear. Maya was already firing as he spun, and blood and mangled gore erupted from his back before he got the chance to fire.
She nearly leapt over his corpse, but a flicker of insight instead sent her through the door he'd emerged from, right before a torrent of gunfire cut through the hallway from the bruiser chasing her. Maya entered the shop beyond and let out a yelp when she slammed into another of Fist's thugs. He was a big and muscular baseline, and his arms shot up in a bear hug intended to trap and pin her in place. He had the mass and muscle to make it work, if she had been an ordinary human.
Maya clapped her off hand over his face as he tried to grab her, and sent a pulse of her immense reservoir of power through her arm. It surged through her fingertips into the thug's face and burst out the other side, blasting his skull to charred ribbons.
She bounded around the collapsing body and out into the street beyond. Most of Fist's thugs were running toward the shop she'd ducked into just a few moments ago, and only a couple spotted her as she emerged. She put a dozen rounds through one of the latter as he turned to fire at her, and then dove behind an advertising kiosk as the rest whirled toward her. Bullets bounced off the kiosk's overengineered frame, and she silently thanked the madness of whoever made the things bulletproof.
Maya didn't stay put. She waited barely a heartbeat before bolting back out of cover, firing on the run with her right hand while sending more tingling power through her left. She picked out one of the thugs - a hulking brute toting an assault rifle who was barking orders to the rest of the group - and seized him in another phaselock. The crushing heat closed around him, and he started screaming, though more in anger and outrage than pain. Maya advanced, firing and ducking into and out of cover, cutting down another of Fist's gunmen as they scrambled for cover.
She didn't give them a chance to recover, constantly moving and shooting and dropping them one by one, with the huge thug commanding them falling first. Now that she was out of the ambush, Maya had the edge, even against an enemy that outnumbered her greatly. For all their numbers, Fist's men were just thugs with guns. Maya had been trained to fight since she could walk; if there was one good thing about her life under the Order of the Impending Storm, it had been the intense combat training and all the versatile applications thereof.
She heard a barely articulate howl of pain and fury, and spun to see the massive form of the bruiser come pounding out of one of the shops, his skin charred and red in many places. He turned toward her, raising his shotgun, and she snapped her weapon up to target him in turn.
Then his head exploded.
The echo of a rifle shot bounced around the street, and Fist's men froze.
That made the next couple of shots even easier for the unseen sniper, and Fist's men began to panic, searching for the source of the shots or scrambling for new cover.
Maya didn't give them the chance. Between the Siren and the unseen sniper, the few remaining bandits stood no chance. They died quickly but not cleanly, more than one set ablaze and crushed to a pulp by her phaselock powers, and others were pulped by precision fire from the marksman.
The last of the enemy fell or fled, and Maya reloaded her submachinegun. She could distantly hear the sirens of C-Sec units approaching, and slowly emerged from cover, scanning for the shooter. She spotted movement above, in the maintenance area above, and a moment later an armored form dropped down from the walkways. Maya recognized the distinct, slender form of a turian. He wore black armor and carried a marksman carbine along with a small arsenal on his back. His face was shielded by a helmet.
"Are you injured?" he asked in that distinct, flanged, metallic voice of the turian species.
"No, I'm fine" she replied. She glanced to the corpses. "Thanks for the help."
"You're welcome," the turian replied. "I apologize for taking so long to catch up. You are hard to follow at times."
"Not a problem," Maya replied. "Would have preferred you showed up earlier, but I'm not upset with results." She frowned. "You know who I am?"
"Yes. Maya. Human Siren, second identified of current generation." He paused, mandibles clicking, and then reached up to remove his helmet. Maya saw an avian face with dark red skin covered with flowing white tribal markings and bright green eyes.
"My apology. I should introduce myself. Nihlus Kryik, Special Tactics and Recon."
Doctor Michel was forthcoming, and what she said got Brick's blood pumping, in both anger and anticipation. As far as as the good axe-swinging Doctor was aware, Fist still had the quarian, who still had the information on Eridian tech and this Vault.
Eridian Vaults. Those things were legendary. Stories from translated Eridian script hinted that they were the storehouses for all kinds of things: Alien technology. Infinite wealth. The secrets behind element zero and digistruct technology and whatever the mysterious power source that Eridian technology drew from. Whoever could find and unlock a Vault would be rich beyond their wildest dreams.
Brick doubted the stories were true, but even a chance at that kind of wealth couldn't be passed up. Plus, going by Fist's reputation, Brick wasn't sure if the quarian was still alive. Maybe he'd killed her and taken the data. Maybe he was beating it out of her.
Brick clenched his fists as he strode through the back alleys to Fist's hideout, a sleazy strip club called Chora's Den. Maybe, just maybe, Brick was going to go in there and kill Fist with his bare hands.
The Den's entrance was located on a balcony overlooking an interior aircar route, the kind that ran between many of the buildings in the Ward. Cars shot past periodically below. Brick crossed a narrow walkway that spanned the gap between either side of the road. On the far end of the walkway was the entrance to Chora's Den, highlighted with a glowing hologram of a reclining asari.
Brick paused and checked the weapons in his SDU, and picked a big, heavy shotgun of Jakobs manufacture. He materialized it, and hefted the solid, powerful weight of the weapon. A shotgun made by Jakobs could drop a Thresher Maw. If a human was hit by one, they'd need a good air filter to clean up the mess. He grinned and started toward the door.
"Alright," he said to himself, "time to be a big, goddamn he-"
The door to Chora's Den exploded in a roar of sound and fire and fury, knocking Brick onto his ass.
Out the door leapt a skag the size of a small aircar, covered in armored hide. Or at least, Brick thought it was a skag, with the tripartate mouth, gleaming white eyes, and massively-built upper body. He realized a moment later that it wasn't organic: it was a machine, with a set of mechanical jaws, synthetic muscles beneath titanium and ceramic plates, and extremely sharp metal claws. Electricity sparked between the titanium teeth in the jaws, and four heavy cannons sprouted from the mech's shoulders.
And standing on the skag-mech's back, holding on to one of its metal ridges with one hand and firing a shotgun into the burning ruins of Chora's Den with the other, was a quarian.
"Go, Chitikka!" she shouted, pumping the shotgun one handed. "Get us out of here!"
The skag-mech roared and warbling, static-filled mechanical howl, and leapt clear over Brick's still-sitting form. A moment later several men, wearing the same kind of ballistic weave as the goons Brick had smashed earlier, came charging out of the Den with weapons in hand and ran past him after the quarian.
He blinked a couple of times at what he'd just witnessed, and then broke out into a wide grin.
"I don't know who that quarian girl is," he said, clambering to his feet. "But I like her!"
Codex - Megacorporations - Atlas
The Atlas Corporation is one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the galaxy. With offices and holdings spread across Citadel space and the Terminus, Atlas manufactures a vast range of products, but their most profitable enterprise the creation of powerful and expensive weaponry of all types: personal, vehicle, aircraft, and space-based. The Atlas Corporation claims that its technological edge granted by a vast, innovative staff of scientists and engineers are responsible for their high-quality armaments. Other corporations and detractors instead accuse Atlas of reverse-engineering Eridian technology to give them their edge.
Atlas maintains overt control of a number of worlds in the borderlands and Terminus Systems, which are used as mining bases, research facilities, or factories. Atlas also maintains a tight grip on several worlds of relatively little value save for suspected Eridian ruins. Atlas has also openly attacked groups in the Terminus to take control of suspected Eridian artifacts and technology, and has a very high standing bounty on all Sirens.
Atlas' primary military element is the Crimson Lance, a disciplined and elite force of soldiers recruited for life and outfitted with advanced weaponry. Lance troops are often recruited from criminals, bandit populations, and mercenary forces, and are subjected to harsh training and intense discipline. Lance membership is for life, and anyone who disobeys orders or attempts to leave the Lance is marked for immediate execution. Lance soldiers maintain Atlas' control over the many worlds fueling it with resources and manufactured goods, as well as defending Eridian ruins from rival corporations and seizing Eridian technology with brutal and ruthless force.
Author's Notes: The shift in characters and location here was deliberate. There's a lot of characters to juggle in the story, as I'm essentially trying to bounce back and forth between Mass Effect's immense cast and the smaller but no less diverse cast of Borderlands. That being said, this chapter was a lot of fun to write, though I'm not quite as good with Maya and Brick as I am with Roland and Lilith.
Also, if you were expecting Garrus instead of Nihlus, don't worry. Garrus will show up later on.
Until next chapter . . . .