The bloody red light of the dying star filled his office, reflecting off mirror-polished black tiles and the white-and-gold paneling of the office walls. He leaned back in his chair, thin fingers tapping at the haptic interface that gleamed before him, stretching nearly two meters across and wrapping around his chair. Data played across the interface, flickering and shifting at minute gestures, video feeds and personnel files and incident reports appearing, viewed in a matter of moments, and then dismissed.
It was his greatest asset, really. Data management and control, coupled with a sharp memory. Not perfect recall, but deadly-sharp nonetheless. He couldn't sift through tremendous amounts of data - that was what Angel was for - but he could take what was relevant, absorb it quickly, and then begin working with it. It had made him an excellent programmer, which had been parlayed into excellence at engineering and operational planning, and from there, it had been developed into a swift and decisive campaign of promoting oneself over the corpses of his superiors. And even more importantly, it had led him on the path to the Vault.
His name was Handsome Jack, and he was the President of the Hyperion Corporation, one of the most powerful megacorps in the galaxy, and both he and his company were on the fast track to ever greater heights.
A blue box flashed in the corner of the haptic display, and he stopped everything. A twitch of a long finger, and the image of a young woman with pale skin, black hair, and cold blue eyes filled the display. The constant swirl of a snowy white background showed she was in the middle of another data-dive in the extranet. There was something... off about the transmission; her face seemed too crisp, too clear, to be real. An aftereffect of the data-dive.
"Sir, I have an update from the Citadel," Angel said. Her face did not move in time to the words, another indicator of the data-dive.
"Lay it on me," Jack said with a handsome, award-winning smile. "The Siren? What's her name, Maya? Or is it the quarian?"
"Neither," Angel replied. "I picked out an exchange between Citadel Security's Traffic Control and a freighter that departed Eden Prime less than an hour after the geth attack. The freighter was stolen from one of the orbital docks, and impounded by C-Sec shortly after it arrived, but not before the pilot disappeared."
"Really, now," Jack murmured, curious. "Yeah, that's no coincidence. Play it."
The first voice that spoke up was a female. Asari or human, Jack guessed. She sounded harried and exhausted.
"Transport XTF-000-0122, please state cargo and business."
The second voice was different. It was carefully modulated into a low, faintly rasping growl that reminded Jack of that guy from...whatever that tactical sneaky videogame was.
"Traveling alone / No cargo aboard this ship / There is only me."
"Whoa, whoa, pause it," Jack cut in. "Did...did that guy just speak in haiku?"
"Yes sir," Angel replied. "Let me play the rest of it."
"Alright, transport," the asari continued, confusion creeping into her voice. "Your business on the Citadel?"
"Contract employment / Valuable skills, with which / I shall pay my bills."
"Okay, I'll mark that as 'Seeking employment,'" the controller murmured. "Sending berth number now."
"Okay, so, we've got a guy on a stolen Dahl transport speaking in haiku who is landing on the Citadel hours after the Eden Prime raid, at the same time as this whole mess with Fist is going down," Jack said. "Any idea who our haiku-spouting buddy is?"
"None yet, sir," Angel replied. "Security footage from Eden Prime shows nothing substantial, and I haven't recovered anything from C-Sec's archives either."
"Come on, Angel, you have a brain the size of the entire damn extranet," Jack muttered. "Find me more. Whoever this haiku guy is, I want to keep an eye on him. I'm not letting an unknown screw up my plans."
"Yes sir."
"And get me a line into the Alliance Embassy too," he added. "I need to know what the quarian knows, and I need it now."
"Yes sir."
Chapter Six: Five, Seven, Five
Captain David Anderson stepped through the airlock and passed through the docking tube, and caught a full wash of the sounds and scents of the Nos Astra spaceport. The rumble and hiss and thrumming engines and burning fuel of the spaceport swept into him, all familiar to a lifelong soldier. He could hear the footsteps of his escort behind him: four Systems Alliance Marines and a couple of Navy officers, both technical crewmen.
The escort, and especially the tech officers, underscored the unusual situation before him. Anderson had a long, storied career as both a Marine and a Navy officer. He'd fought pirate armadas, intervened in corporate conflicts, raised bandit camps and insurgent bases, and had worked alongside Citadel Spectres. But he'd never handled an exchange for an Eridian artifact.
As he stepped out into the docking platform, Anderson took his first look at the odd group that had extracted the artifact from extreme odds. He recognized Lieutenant Alenko and his Marines immediately, standing apart from the rest of the group. Three of the other four were the Crimson Lance deserters, clad in the battle-scarred remnants of Lance armor - minus their breastplate sections. Anderson picked out the leader instantly: a dark-skinned man with sharp, evaluating eyes who stood at the front of the trio.
Standing a bit away from the others, arms crossed over her chest, was the Siren.
Anderson had only seen one Siren in person before, in passing, and she had been a turian. He wasn't surprised at her piercing gaze, or the blue markings running up the left side of her neck from beneath the hardsuit, or the faint air of expectant energy around her, as though the universe were waiting for her to tear it apart.
What did surprise him was that he recognized her. This particular Siren was Hannah Shepard's daughter. He'd been under the assumption that Lilith Shepard was hiding out in the borderlands, not dealing Eridian technology. He made a clear note of that fact for his report, and also to call Hannah first before submitting it; she would want any news from her estranged child.
The group stood in the shadow of the parked Hyperion shuttle, the sharp, yellow-and-gold lines of the ship now battered and blackened by small arms fire and an atrocious landing attempt. The cargo bay of the shuttle stood open, the ramp deployed, but from his location Anderson couldn't see into the bay.
Alenko immediately stood at attention when Anderson approached, his Marines following suit. He snapped a sharp salute to Anderson, and to the captain's surprise, so did the Crimson Lancemen. Shepard glanced at them with a raised eyebrow but did nothing else.
"At ease," Anderson replied, returning the salute. "Lieutenant. Good to see you in one piece again."
"Agreed, sir," Alenko said. Anderson looked back toward the quartet of mercenaries.
"The Lieutenant's transmission indicated that you helped him recover the device," the captain said, walking toward them. He extended his hand toward the leader. "The Alliance owes you."
"Lots and lots of zeros better be behind what's owed us," Shepard murmured. The Lancemen ignored her, and their leader took Anderson's hand with a firm shake.
"Though Lilith is right," he said, "I do appreciate the, ah, appreciation. Sir."
"You have a name, son?" Anderson asked.
"Roland Taylor, sir," the ex-Lanceman answered. "Sergeant, former Crimson Lance." He gestured behind him. "Corporal Williams, and Corporal Reiss."
"Captain David Anderson," the captain replied. He glanced to Shepard again, but the Siren stood with impassive silence. Anderson decided to cut to the point after a moment. "Where is the device?"
At the question, Roland nodded to his men, and Reiss and Williams hurried onto the battered shuttle. A couple of moments later they were pushing a hovering cargo cart down the ramp, and secured atop it was the gleaming, delicate spire of the Eridian artifact. It looked exactly like it had in the briefing, complete with the slowly-spinning stones that circled close to the central spike.
Anderson felt the air temperature jump up a few degrees, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Shepard take a few cautious steps away from the device. Her gun hand fell to the pistol holstered at her side, and her eyes flicked over the Alliance delegation in wary suspicion. His own Marines bristled at the vague threat, but they held position.
"There you have it," Roland said. "Now, payment?"
Anderson nodded and activated his omnitool. The air temperature rose another degree as he moved his fingers through the display. Alliance Command had reluctantly authorized the payment once Alenko had ECHOed with the offer; while initially hesitant to part with that much money, they had concluded it was a small price to pay to recover the device without any further violence, especially if that violence involved fighting a Siren. He input the two bank accounts that they had been given, and transferred one and a half million to the first and half a million to the second.
When Anderson looked up, he saw both Roland and Shepard were checking their own omnitools. Roland nodded in satisfaction, and Shepard made a quiet, pleased sound, cracking a slight smile. A heartbeat later, the temperature dropped several degrees.
What in the galaxy is going on? he wondered. It's obvious that Shepard is the source of those temperature variations, but what's causing them?
"A pleasure doing business," Roland said, smiling, and behind him, Williams and Reiss traded a laugh and bumped their knuckles.
"Likewise," Anderson replied. "However, I do have another offer for you, if you're willing to listen."
Roland raised a curious eyebrow, while Shepard's smile vanished once again into suspicion. The temperature shot up again, by a couple of degrees. Yes, Shepard was definitely behind it. It must have something to do with her emotions, especially fear or tension.
"Lieutenant Alenko's report mentioned you were all damned good fighters," Anderson continued. "And going by his report, and the fact that you've severed ties with Atlas and the Lance, I suspect you to be more honorable than the average mercenary. Correct?"
Roland exhaled, and glanced back at his squadmates. They gave noncommittal noises and shrugs.
"They were ordered to shoot civilians," Shepard cut in, and everyone looked toward her. She shrugged. "They turned on their own instead. One of them was killed for it."
"I see," Anderson replied, turning back to Roland. The former mercenary sighed and nodded.
"True enough," he said. "That was the last straw. We ditched the armor and shot our way out."
"With help," Shepard added.
"A lot of help," Roland agreed. "And here we are." He frowned. "Let me guess. This is a job offer?"
"The Alliance has declared war on the geth," Anderson said with a nod, pushing out the offer. "We're going to need good soldiers, and soldiers with both honor and experience fighting the geth will be welcome. That those soldiers were too good for an army of amoral killers like the Crimson Lance is a bonus." He paused to let them consider it, and then continued. "We can offer you a chance to fight a real enemy, and do meaningful work. And we can protect you from Atlas retaliation. I know that you'll be marked for death for leaving the Lance, but with the Alliance military you'll be safe from reprisal."
"A tempting offer," Roland said, but Anderson could tell that he was skeptical. Williams and Reiss looked a lot more thoughtful. Shepard remained suspicious.
"The Alliance won't just be willing to add a few ex-mercs to their ranks like that," the Siren said. "There's a catch."
"Yes," Anderson said. "Testimony. For everything Atlas did on Eden Prime, with full immunity and pardon for previous crimes. A clean slate."
"Immunity, a good job, and a chance to stick it to the assholes who tried to kill us for doing the right thing?" Williams asked. "That's a damned good pitch, Sarge."
Anderson could tell Roland was mulling it over, but the former mercenary shook his head after a moment.
"That's a hell of an offer, sir," he said, and the slow, clear pitch of his words spoke of a man picking his words with caution. "We'll have to consider it. You understand, sir, that all of us would be a bit hesitant to sign up for one military a day after dumping another."
"Yes, I do, Sergeant," Anderson said, and glanced to Shepard. "The offer applies to all four of you."
"Right," the Siren said, drawing the word out.
Anderson waited a moment, but Shepard didn't waver from her suspicious glare, her almost-hostile stance, or the elevated temperature that warned of restrained violence. He finally relented, turning back to the former Lancemen.
"If any of you do want to accept the offer, you know where to find us," he said, and gestured for the Marines and Navy techs. They hurried up to the Eridian beacon and whisked it away. Anderson bid the group farewell and turned to leave with the rest of the group, Alenko and his Marines included.
"Huh, that was kind of disappointing," he heard Shepard mutter, barely audible over the background noise of the spaceport. "No one betrayed anybody."
The Citadel Presidium was not Brick's top choice of places to relax. It was too clean, too stark, and all too secure. He especially didn't like how C-Sec was everywhere up here, keeping a careful eye on the playground for the galaxy's elite. Maybe they were just out in force after what had happened down on the Wards a few hours ago, but that didn't make a man who made his career out of violence any more at ease.
Waiting in the heart of the Alliance Embassy on the Presidium put him even more ill at ease. And it didn't help that the Siren was a hell of a lot more relaxed about it all.
The weird little blue-haired woman was sitting on a bench in the hallway outside Ambassador Udina's office, reading an old book, posture relaxed and casual. It was a book, too, which weirded Brick out even more. Actual paper.
Brick leaned against the wall across the corridor from her, arms crossed and fingers tapping impatiently. They'd been stuck in place for the last two hours, though he had to admit that he wasn't being forced to wait in the Embassy twiddling his thumbs. But when the quarian girl with secrets relating to the Vault asked you to accompany her to her meeting with some of the biggest honchos in the galaxy, well, you went along with it, and not just for the Vault itself. Brick liked her, and it was no skin off his muscular butt to go with her. Still, he wanted to get back out there, run Fist down, and then fatally reorganize him.
"So, how'd you get involved in all this?" he asked, breaking the silence. The Siren - Maya - looked up at him, raising a blue-colored eyebrow. She frowned for a moment, thinking, and shrugged.
"I've been researching Siren lore and history for some time now," she said. "Trying to determine the origin of our powers. I've been recently following the Eridian connection, and I came here to get some more data on what Hyperion's been assembling. Fist's goons greeted me, and Nihlus helped me shoot my way out of it." She sat back, eying Brick. "You?"
"I came here to introduce Fist to my fists," Brick replied. "And get paid to do it. Crossed paths with Tali on the way in."
"And what's your interest in the Vault?" she asked.
"Gettin' paid," Brick replied, with a grin he knew was ugly and not caring.
The door to the office hissed open, and the pair looked up.
"-logical, not prone to flights of fancy," Nihlus said as he walked out of the room with Udina.
"Even a synthetic species can be mistaken," Udina replied. "But Eden Prime indicates that they are well-informed. I agree that we need to follow up on this."
Behind them came Tali, and Brick noted her body language: tired but alert. She looked at the human and turian who had been questioning her for the last couple of hours, and then stepped past them, hovering along the wall close to Brick.
"I will forward a report to the Council," Nihlus said. "They will respond quickly, I suspect." He turned toward Tali. "In the meantime, I suggest we move directly on the source of all of our recent troubles: Fist."
"Agreed," Tali said, and there was a slight but sharp edge to her voice. "I want to know who set me up."
"Hell yeah," Brick said with another ugly grin. The cracking of his knuckles and creaking of tightening muscles echoed down the hallway. "Let's go punch him until answers fall out!"
In the wake of the sale and payday, the trio of former Lancemen spent several hours apart, contacting family or friends, doing some shopping with their newfound funds, or simply resting after the insanity of the previous day. Roland insisted that they keep in regular contact, and they agreed to meet up later on.
Several hours afterward the three former Lancemen were sitting in a booth in a bar in the Nos Astra spaceport, laughing and drinking. The Eternity bar was a breath of fresh air on asari-ruled Nos Astra, as it was a place where all levels and species of society mingled, brought together by the presence of the massive spaceport. Salarians, turians, a couple of volus, elcor, stable humans, and even a quarian were all in evidence. Even the asari present had a rougher, less-elegant edge to them than the usual populace of the sleek, silvery city-spires spreading in all directions around the port.
The cheer was muted among the trio of human ex-Lance, for they mourned their losses: Jenkins, brave and stalwart in death, and also the ugly but certain past that they had faced as Lancemen, and the uncertainty of their future.
"To Jenkins," Roland toasted, and Reiss and Ash clinked glasses. By now they wore civilian clothes: simple but clean jumpsuits and jackets, the standard outfits of freighter crews and colonial travelers the galaxy over. The armor and Lance fatigues were both too distinctive and ill-suited for blending into the civilians that flooded the spaceport.
As they finished off their drinks and ordered another round, Roland settled back in his chair and cast an introspective look at the glass in his hand. It was good to settle down a little bit; while his future was uncertain, he at least could look forward to it instead of waiting for a brutal death.
"Sarge," Ash said, and he looked up at her. She had a new drink in hand, and sipped slowly from it. Reiss passed Roland another round from the auto-waiter drone floating overhead. He picked it up, frowning at the green-tinged drink, and nodded toward her.
"Reiss and I talked about Captain Anderson's offer," she said. Roland took a quiet breath.
"We're taking it," Reiss said.
Roland nodded, held up a finger, and threw back his drink. As the levo-variant alcohol burned down his throat, he mulled over the implications of that fact. The offer was tempting, and he could see the appeal. Part of him was still surprised, and another felt an extra weight of weariness settle over his shoulders. They hadn't fought together for a long time, but they had fought together, and the bonds forged in battle, even as mercenaries for the Lance, were stronger than hull plating.
"You certain about that?" Roland asked after he finished the drink. Ash and Reiss both nodded.
"I was going to die in the Lance," Reiss said. "We all were. No chance to get out. And I knew it wasn't going to be for a noble reason either. I was going to likely die getting my guts gnawed by psychos on some random border planet." He shook his head. "And prospects as a freelancer aren't much better. This is a chance to do at least die for a good reason."
"Fair enough," Roland said, hiding the quiet but definite implication that Roland's thoughts on going freelance would be no better than his previous doomed life as a Lanceman. That worried him more than a little.
He glanced to Ash, who was staring down at her drink.
"Grandad was a general," she murmured. "A general in the Lance, until he got an entire division massacred back when they first colonized Pandora out in the borderlands. And neither Dad nor myself could work our way past the black mark on his record."
She shook her head, and knocked back half of the green liquid in the mug.
"My family's been military for generations. Alliance, then Lance. I wanted to follow in those footsteps. But the Lance never gave me a chance to be anything but a rifleman slogging in the mud."
"A rifleman I'd want at my side," Roland said, and she grinned.
"Yeah, likewise," she replied. "But I can't be just a mercenary. I wanted to serve, and I didn't know how corrupt the Lance was when I signed on. Dad and Grandad never told me. Maybe they tried to deny what they were a part of." She exhaled. "This is a chance to be something more than just a hired gun with a delayed death sentence and no career prospects."
"If you're certain about it," Roland murmured, and she nodded.
A moment later, a frown crossed her features.
"You're not joining us, are you?" she asked, and Roland shook his head.
"Torfan," he said, and the other two ex-mercs nodded in understanding. They said nothing further.
He appreciated that. He didn't want someone repeating that whole "It's not your fault" mantra to him; he knew that what had happened there had not been his call, but that didn't change the fact that he had pulled the trigger often enough to stain his hands. General Knoxx had earned the title of "Butcher of Torfan" for pushing hundreds of Lancemen into those tunnels to die fighting the batarians. Roland had been one of the few to survive the slaughter - on both sides.
He wouldn't be anyone's weapon ever again, not even for an honorable, legitimate military like the Alliance. Roland was his own man now.
"Sarge, you're getting all serious again," Reiss said suddenly, and Roland blinked. "Killing the vibe!" Ash grinned and raised a hand, and the drone waiter swung back around.
"Fresh round!" she called.
Nihlus observed his impromptu team checking their gear, a ritual of flashing digistruct motes, clicking firearm components, and whirring chimes form electronics. The group were working inside a small C-Sec Special Response armory/garage where the elite of the Citadel's military police would prep for raids. He'd co-opted it for their own use with a single transmission from his omnitool.
The massive human, Brick, had given them the location of Fist's current hideout after making a single call. Nihlus had tried tracing it, but was unsurprised that the Shadow Broker had easily defeated any attempts to backtrace the call; the trail had gone dark after the seventeenth dummy proxy he'd run through. Fist had holed up in a warehouse deep in Zakera Ward's factory district, according to Brick's source. It hadn't taken long to pull up the layout and plan an assault
Admittedly, said assault plan mostly involved kicking in the doors and shooting everything that moved. But Nihlus was a Spectre, and as a Spectre, he'd worked with ad hoc teams like his current motley crew. With such a team, he knew the keep the plan simple. Containment would be handled by C-Sec units surrounding the building; his assault team of berserker, Siren, and giant-robot-engineer would handle the hard part.
Brick and Maya were finishing up with their weapon checks. Nearby, Tali was crouched next to the juggernaut of machinery that was her pet robot, replacing damaged components. She was muttering something that sounded halfway between curses at the bandits who had shot up the mecha-skag and soothing reassurance for the damaged machine.
Nihlus' ECHO system chirped in his ear, and he opened the incoming link. Udina's face appeared in the corner of the projected head-up display inside Nihlus' iris.
"Nihlus," he said, without preamble. "The Council has responded with unusual speed to your report."
"Unsurprising," the Spectre replied. He checked his personal inbox, though all it held was the standard message he received whenever there was an urgent dispatch waiting in the central Spectre Office in the Embassy level.
"Sparatus has said that he would prefer a large military deployment to recover the Vault," Udina said, but the dismissive tone-translation of his words indicated what he thought of that. "Tevos and Velarn overruled him. They decided that a military deployment would be pointless if there was nothing to deploy it against, especially with the geth threat looming."
"Then what did they decide?" Nihlus asked.
"An investigative force, small-scale," Udina said. "A single ship. Likely Alliance, since the data points to geth incursions in the Skyllian Verge, right in our borderlands and corporate territory. Therum, Noveria, Feros, Thorne . . . ."
By "our," Nihlus knew he meant the Alliance. Which meant they would be operating in some of the most dangerous areas in explored space. That also added credence to Velarn and Tevos' opposition to a Citadel fleet deployment. A major military expedition would alarm and anger the corporations, pirates, and independent species in those regions, as well as draw the attention of bandits, corporations, and the geth on the same Vault they were hunting. A smaller expedition to investigate the clues from Tali's data would draw much less attention.
"We've all agreed to deploy a single ship," Udina continued. "I've already put your name forward to lead the investigative team."
"I appreciate the vote of confidence," Nihlus replied.
"In addition, I would suggest we employ a team of experts to assist in the investigation," Udina added. "Individuals experienced with combat and Vault lore, as well as familiarity with the geth."
"I know just who to recruit to that end," Nihlus said, glancing at the trio as they finished prepping for action. "We will be bringing Fist in for questioning soon."
"Excellent," Udina said with a nod. "Keep me updated, if you would, Nihlus."
He closed the link, and Nihlus turned toward his team.
"And done," Tali said, bolting on the last armor plate to Chitikka's frame, and then patting the skag on the top of its gun-laden head. Chitikka let out a whirring rumble that might have sounded vaguely like a varren's purr if one was drunk enough. A tap of her omnitool digistructed the repaired robot into a torrent of blue-white motes. "We're ready."
"Same here," Brick said, sliding a shotgun into place on a holster over his shoulder.
"Likewise," Maya added with a nod.
"Then we should waste no more time," the Spectre replied, and started toward the heavy Special Response transport they had commandeered. "We will all have our answers soon."
"You want answers," Brick said with a savage, scarred grin. "I'm just here for Fist's head, remember?"
"After we're done interrogating him," Nihlus corrected. He had worked with teams that required similar prices before, and had no qualms with letting a bounty hunter take quarry when it was scum like Fist. "Secure yourselves and be prepared to come out shooting."
"Heh. Like always."
Lilith scowled as she trudged through the skyscraper corridors, high-rise balcony plazas, and shadowed alleys of the Nos Astra spaceport complex, She closed her ECHO link and breathed carefully, trying to keep her frustration and anger under control, lest things all around her catch ablaze. She didn't yet know precisely what the Eridian artifact had done to her Siren powers, but she'd pretty quickly figured out that intense emotion heated things up, and she didn't know what would happen if she became too angry or excited.
It wasn't easy to keep calm, considering how her contacts so far weren't turning up anything she could work with. The ones planetside were working on pulling what they could regarding Eridian tech and the few scraps of information she could decipher from the garbled images she'd recovered from the device. The off-planet contacts were doing the same, but they were also reporting the same lack of results.
The problem was simple: nearly everything they knew about the Eridians was either already catalogued, deciphered, and published, or was locked away in corporate and government research installations and secured with the kind of defensive setups that would daunt battlefleets. The whole reason everyone had been scrambling to grab the device on Eden Prime was because it was under such relatively light security.
The data that Lilith had taken from the device on Eden Prime was too garbled and uncertain to make out just yet. She knew some of it was crucial - part of the wave of data she'd received indicated imparted an emotional impact that conveyed such importance - but she couldn't figure out which was relevant and which wasn't. For all she knew, most of what she'd downloaded in her brain could have been an Eridian porn stash. She doubted it, but without more data to compare it to and decipher it, she didn't really know what she had.
Distracted and annoyed as she was, though, Lilith was a Siren who had spent all of her adult life being hunted by one jackass or another. She kept up an automatic awareness of her surroundings, assessing threats, avoiding security sensors, and noting anyone and anything armed in her vicinity.
Thus, she spotted the man following her very early on. She watched him as she cut a path back toward the shuttle, and sure enough, he was tracking her, and not being very subtle about it. He was blatantly obvious: human male, baseline, blond, short beard. Armed with a pistol, Dahl design, green pattern, green ID marker indicating that it was better than street scum could afford but far from top-of-the-line.
His tradecraft was so shoddy that he was either a total amatuer or a deadly professional faking being an amatuer. Lilith had faced both before. He wasn't doing anything to hide, and kept checking behind himself constantly. He also consulted his omnitool every couple of minutes, the glow of the device obvious enough to give him away to anyone stupid enough to miss his presence otherwise.
Lilith made a decision, and moved into a quiet side alley between two of the complex's towers. She waited until he came into sight at the mouth of the alley, looking both directions in the street outside, and then started into the alley after her with a nervous, hurried gait.
She Phasewalked with a quick burst of energy, trying to reign it in as best she could, and he stumbled to a halt. In the span between stumbling and halting, Lilith crossed the distance and released her Phasewalk just far enough away that the shockwave of her transition sent him tumbling backward. Her left hand closed around his throat and her right jammed a pistol - Maliwan, shock-variant - into his left eye.
"'Sup," she snarled, and sweat started pouring down the man's face, his one visible eye widening in terror. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she could see the air wavering faintly around her from the sudden surge of adrenaline and excitement.
"Ohgodpleasedon'tshootplease?"
"Who are you?" Lilith asked. For a heartbeat she was about to follow up with more questions, but the man was so terrified - or faking terror - that she decided to take them one at a time.
"Verner! Doctor Verner! Doctor Conrad Verner!"
Lilith frowned, cocking her head to the side, and released his throat. Before he could do anything beside exhale, she snatched his pistol away and dropped it behind her. With a flick of her wrist, she activated her omnitool, and another motion switched it to voice controls.
"Search. Verify: Doctor Conrad Verner. Keywords: Illium."
A couple of seconds passed before a public identity card - three years old - popped up on her HUD, showing the same human she was holding a gun on, plus a goofy smile. It was a verified Illium ID according the local police. Which again meant either a legitimate idiot or a professional of extreme caliber and monetary resources.
She glanced back at Conrad, who was still staring at the gun with naked terror.
She sighed and lowered heristol. The heat rising around her faded, and she kicked the pistol back toward him. If he really was a professional she'd be able to phase out before he could pull the trigger anyway, but her gut said otherwise.
"Why are you following me?" she asked. He stared up at her for a few moments, mind clearly racing to comprehend the abrupt shift between "gonna die now" and "probably not gonna die now." He finally finished processing the latter and stop shaking as much.
"Um, well. You're Lilith Shepard. The Lilith Shepard."
"Obviously. Why are you following me?"
"Oh, um. Um. Uh. Can I stand up?"
She nodded, doing her best not to roll her eyes. He hadn't even recovered his pistol yet.
Conrad scrambled to his feet, and scratched the back of his neck for a moment before abruptly realizing he wasn't armed. He bent for the pistol, but paused halfway down.
"Its fine," she said. "If I thought you were a threat, I wouldn't have given it back." And would have shot you anyway, but she left that part unsaid.
He nodded, either missing or ignoring the insult hidden in there, and holstered his sidearm again.
"Well, I work for Maliwan-"
He was cut off when Lilith jammed her pistol back in his eye again.
"-Ohgoddon'tshootgivemeasecondtoexplain!"
"Go on," she said. "This is just for peace of mind."
"Uhh, it's not-"
"My peace of mind. I've crossed paths with Maliwan's people before. Go on."
"Okay, I'm actually trying to find you because - uh - not experimentation but observation and I've noted some clear causality and, um, and, I, uh-"
"Calm down. Breathe, Conrad," Lilith said.
"You have a gun in my face!" he squealed. Lilith sighed, and pulled the weapon way. He visibly sagged in relief.
"Good thing I went to the bathroom before I left the office," he muttered. He took a few breaths, composing himself. "Okay. Um. Okay. Calm now." He took another breath. "The Vault. I can get you the Vault."
Lilith raised an eyebrow.
"See, if you'd opened with that, I wouldn't have pulled a gun on you," she said. "Tell me more."
The warehouse that Fist's organization was regrouping at was a standard hard-freight storage facility. Many digistruct-based goods were kept in storage deck facilities and transferred digitally via commerce grids across stations, ships, and planets whenever needed, but if someone wanted to store anything using mass effect technology, one needed a hard-freight storage building. Since expensive things were constantly moved through such warehouses, it was easy to smuggle or skim from legitimate shipments. Fist's men made a constant, sizeable profit from the operation.
They weren't right now, however, because of the lockdown, which had started the moment the quarian blew up half of Chora's Den, and the closing was costing Fist's organization enormous amounts of money every hour.
Fist didn't care. He was in damage control mode right now.
He sat in an office inside the warehouse, hunched over a holographic display that his tremendous bulk utterly dwarfed. He'd always been a big man; he was what modern genetics termed a "bruiser" mutant. From the time he'd been able to walk he could bench his own bodyweight, and he could kill a man with a thrown brick at the age of six. Unlike many of his abhuman ilk, though, he was smart as well as strong, and had forged a dominant criminal operation on Zakera Ward by the age of thirty. Every major criminal operation in the Ward was either run by him or paid him a cut to operate in his territory. More than a thousand thugs, hitmen, and assorted lowlifes and bandits answered to him.
And with all this power, Fist still answered to the man on the other end of the tiny display.
"Boss, all the artifacts and info have already been secured," Fist said, He wore a custom suit of black armor that barely fit his massive frame, but his head was exposed, revealing a blocky face and brown, crewcut hair. "Last shipment is leaving the station right now."
The man on the other end did not look satisfied. He leaned forward on the display, scowling and glaring at his subordinate half a galaxy away. He was an older man, his skin drawn close to his skull, and dark brown hair that was a little too long to be dignified swept back behind his head. He lit up a rolled-up joint - it was medicinal, he insisted - and took a long puff, before speaking.
"The quarian?" asked Baron Flynt. His voice was smooth, intelligent. Not cultured or erudite, but that of a man who had educated himself, often with knowledge he'd killed to obtain.
Fist swallowed before replying. Baron Flynt was one of most powerful bandit and pirate kings on the Terminus and borderlands. Fist was a powerful bandit leader in his own right, but Baron Flynt had accountants who existed simply to keep track of the accountants who kept track of all the bandits who answered to him.
"I'm tracking her down now," Fist replied. "I'll have her data soon."
"You'd best," Flynt said. His calm tone belied the anger Fist could sense boiling underneath "I have not spent my entire adult life sitting on T'soni's findings and building the greatest pirate armada in the galaxy just so you can cock up the whole enterprise right at the most crucial moment."
"Yes sir," Fist replied, sweat pouring down his brow. Technically, he was safe from Flynt's wrath this far inside Citadel space; it was the main reason he'd grown so powerful in his own right. But there were plenty of people he was not safe from. Like Spectres. Or the Shadow Broker, who he'd already pissed off at Flynt's orders. Or Sirens, like the one he'd tried to kill - again, at Flynt's orders.
"I know she's in C-Sec custody," Fist added, "But I've got my entire crew-"
Gunfire erupted outside. Fist looked up in alarm.
Normally, he wouldn't react with such worry to gunshots. He led a pack of human bandits, so the occasional round of gunfire was expected. But in his current state it was prudent to be nervous. After a moment, the gunfire ceased, and Fist shook his head and sat back down.
"Something wrong?" Flynt asked.
"Ah, no, just my men shooting again," Fist said. "Anyway, I have the rest of my army assembling here. We'll move on C-Sec within a couple of hours and hunt that suit-rat down."
"We need information, not a corpse," Flynt said, and puffed again. "Get the data from her regarding geth movements, then dispose of her. And then get off the station, obviously."
"Yes sir," Fist said with nod,and did not tell Flynt what he would be doing in the meantime. He would indeed send his men after the quarian . . . and while they were getting massacred by C-Sec, he was going to find a ship and run to the darkest corner of the galaxy. Maybe Pandora. No one would look for him there.
More gunfire outside, this time louder and closer. Fist looked up again, scowling.
"Those jackasses," he muttered.
"Once you have the data," Flynt added, "Head for Therum. You will link up with Krom's soldiers and acquire Doctor T'soni from her dig site. Its time we reintroduced myself and Liara, and she'll get us to the Vault."
The link closed, and Fist stood up. He walked toward a window overlooking the warehouse, and watched the still cranes and piled freight. He saw no movement below. More gunfire erupted, in another area of the warehouse. Snarling in annoyance, Fist activated his ECHO and raised one of his subordinates.
"Lenny, what's going on out there? I'm hearing more gunfire than usual," Silence. "Lenny? Hey, Lenny answer me!"
A scream suddenly ripped across the ECHO, and Fist jerked at the unexpected sound.
"Shoot him!" a bandit shouted. "Shoot the bouncy skag-lick!"
"My arms!" another bandit shouted. "He cut off my arms! Both of them!" There was a whistle, like something flicking through the air, and wet splatter. "My spleen! He cut out my spleen too!" More splattering sounds. "I think that was my pancreas!"
Fist spun around and ran back to the terminal, bringing up an internal security view of the warehouse. Camera feeds lit up, both visual and thermal. His heart pounded as he moved through the feeds. Some showed pristine, unchanged views of the warehouse.
Others showed a charnel house of slaughtered thugs and bandits, men lying in heaps, shot and sliced to pieces. Charred bodies were scattered about. Smoke and fire filled some of the feeds. He'd had more than a hundred men in the building, but something had gone through them all in a matter of minutes.
The Shadow Broker. The Shadow Broker had finally sent assassins after him.
Fist rose, snatching a shotgun from his storage deck and chambering a round. He turned toward the door, making plans.
The door to the office burst open, and Fist raised the shotgun. He nearly pulled the trigger until he recognized Lenny, a baseline who was reliably loyal if not terribly bright. The weapon drooped in his hands.
"Boss!" Lenny shouted, waving toward the door. "We gotta move! Half the crew's dead to that damned ninja thing, and-"
A blade flashed through Lenny's chest, impaling him on a silvery spike with a glowing, blue-white edge. Blood erupted from the wound, which doubled over when the sword was ripped from the bandit's chest and Lenny's twitching body toppled to the floor.
A lean figure stood over the corpse, clutching the blade in hands with three long, narrow fingers and a single thumb. It was tall and rail-thin, wearing a tight-fitting suit of armorweave fabric, with armored plates on its forearms, elbows, knees, and boots. A black-tinted, reflective visor covered its entire face, the helmet sweeping back and flaring a little at the top, stretching back like turian or asari headgear. Fist saw his own terrified features reflecting in that blank, apathetic mask's face.
It flicked the blade once to shake off the droplets of blood that were not digitized by the electric-blue edge of the sword, and fixed Fist solidly in its empty gaze.
"A warehouse of trash," a low, gravelly voice sounded, filtered and foreboding. "Not one granting a challenge." It pointed the blade at Fist. "Will you disappoint?"
Fist raised his shotgun again and fired, screaming at the top of his lungs.
"Okay, so you were at Eden Prime when the geth attacked," Conrad said. He'd sat down on one of those inexplicably waist-high cargo crates that were left lying everywhere in the spaceport. Lilith stood across from him, arms crossed, and let him speak. "Atlas and Hyperion weren't the only ones involved. Most of the corporations had passive data feeds, either into orbital satellites that the geth didn't take out, or into the Hyperion security network. It was hard getting in there, because Hyperion has one hell of a security VI patrolling its systems, but, well, we did. Maliwan, I mean. Maliwan had a feed into the security system."
"Go on," Lilith said.
"I was one of the people observing the attack. I was kind of, well, only paying some attention until you showed up, and then I was all "Ooooh, it's Shepard! Lilith Shepard, the bounty hunter!" And eventually I got punched in the face by one of the intelligence analysts, so I missed part of the show, and-"
"Wait," Lilith said. "Why were you allowed to view the footage?"
"Well, the only other scientist in the galaxy who knows as much about xenotech as me is Liara T'soni, and she's working for Dahl on Therum and focused on linguistics and culture and such. Not Eridian energy manipulation or particle flavor shifting or in-transition digistruct modification. Probably getting her face eaten by Threshers or something. Not relevant now, but she once-"
"Skip it," Lilith replied. "Back to the footage."
"Oh, well, the footage isn't really relevant either," Conrad said. "I just brought it up because it leads me to my actual point. I'm a xenotech scientist. One of the best in the field. Work out of the main Maliwan lab here, inside the Dantius Towers."
"How does this relate to the Vault?" she asked.
"How doesn't it?" Conrad said, sitting up, an eager gleam in his eye. "Shepard, the Vault is the end goal of nearly every bit of research into Eridian script and language! The entire reason why the beacon you accessed is so important is because part of the knowledge contained in it is the Vault's location!" He paused for a moment, waiting for her to nod in understanding. "Okay, so Maliwan's got a huge xenotechnology research lab and archive here on Illium inside the Dantius Towers. It includes a lot of information of Eridian script, translations, some hints at locations but nothing substantial."
"A treasure trove of data for someone with the right key to put it together," Lilith said, frowning. That was exactly what she needed.
"I've been doing a lot of research on the Eridian technology Maliwan's captured," Conrad said. "and I know what that beacon did. It left an impression on you, didn't it? Sirens are kind of attuned to Eridian tech. You absorbed knowledge from the beacon, but it's likely jumbled, confused, and incomplete. It probably wasn't meant to be understood without context. You can't understand . . . it's like, um. Like a video in a foreign language that's been chopped into tiny pieces. Hard enough to understand, even without a comprehension of cultural symbols, spatial placement, language, instinctual reactions of visual cues, and so on."
"Yeah, that makes sense," Lilith said with another nod. "So you think that I just need to understand more about the Eridians using Maliwan's archives, and the weird things knocking about in my head will make more sense?"
"Exactly! I can get you into that lab," Conrad said. "And that information can give you the clues you need to get the Vault."
"What do you get out of this?"
"A share in the Vault," he said, as if that should have been obvious. "Plus I get to work with the most badass Siren and mercenary in the galaxy! The two of us, fighting against all the scum and mercenaries and monster the universe can throw at us!"
Lilith opened her mouth to object to that part, but then Conrad's eyes went puppy-dog.
"I, uh, don't think you would work well with me," Lilith said. Conrad didn't back down; if anything, his eyes became more pathetically puppy-like.
"Please?" he asked. There was a little squeak to his voice.
"Agh," Lilith said, and shook her head. "Okay!" Before he started jumping up and down or trying to hug her or do something equally stupid, she held up her hand. "But I've got a team. I think. At least a couple of people we need to work with, because I'm not going into this by myself and definitely not while keeping an eye on you."
"But I can watch your back, and-"
"Do you even know how to fire that thing?" Lilith asked, pointing at the pistol on Conrad's hip.
"Maybe. A little."
Lilith rubbed her forehead.
"Subject change," she said, exhaling. "How are we getting in?"
"I have access codes," Conrad said. "And I-"
Lilith saw movement over Conrad's shoulder, and held up a hand to forestall any further exposition. She drew her pistol.
At the mouth of the alley, there was a flicker of movement, and Lilith shot forward, around Conrad, pistol rising.
Two asari glided around the corner, wearing spacer jumpsuits and jackets, which let them conceal the heavy pistols they were leveling at the pair. Lilith picked the closest one, a slightly shorter asari with more purple in her skin tone than the brighter blue of her partner, and fired.
The Maliwan pistol had a small capacity for ammo, which was offset by power, caliber, and elemental tech built into the weapon. Lilith had four shots, and she made every one count. The first round hit the lead asari directly over her face, exploding against the kinetic barrier with a dazzling burst of raging electricity. She flinched, blinded for an instant, and the second round punched through her barrier. Lightning splayed over her chest and upper left shoulder, shocking her and sending her gliding advance into a stumble.
The third shock round blew through her skull, sending her tumbling in a twitching heap, blue-white sparks erupting from her eyes and nose and mouth.
Lilith shifted her aim as the second asari started to fire, and the Siren shot her dead center with the last round in the pistol. Lightning screamed across her shield, but they held, and she was out of ammo. Mass accelerator rounds flattened against Lilith's barriers, and she knew she only had a moment before they collapsed.
Then a Dahl pistol roared just over the top of her head twice, loosing a pair of three-round bursts. The first trio slammed dead center into the asari's shield, shattering it. The second burst went straight through her upper chest and throat, and the asari toppled like dumped cargo, a startled expression flickering across her face before she hit the pavement.
Lilith spun around toward Conrad, who stood with his feet set in a professional shooter's stance, pistol held in solid two-handed grip, his expression set and stern. He lowered the weapon as Lilith reloaded hers and regarded the dippy scientist with the same regard one gave sleeping skags.
Then that uncertain grin of his returned.
"I said I knew how to shoot," he said with a shrug.
"Right," Lilith replied, now certain that her original assessment might have been more on the mark. She glanced back to the asari. "You or me?"
"Oh, me, definitely," he said. "I think those were Eclipse. I, uh, kinda quit. Well, I will have quit after we hit the lab. But if they're sending assassins after me already, things might have changed in the office, so it won't matter if I will have been quitting later on, so-"
"Can you still get us inside?" Lilith asked. "Without weird conjugation or working access codes?"
"Oh, yeah, no trouble," he said. "I built some backdoors into the Maliwan security system. Standard practice when dealing with stuff they might kill you over, you know. But we'd better move fast. They'll have IT digging out the backdoors and trapping them if we don't move quickly."
"Okay," Lilith said. "Stick with me. I know some guys who might be willing to help us shoot up another corporate office." She paused, then winced at the next thing she was going to say. "And a robot who can help us get past any security you can't."
Lilith turned toward the mouth of the alley, checked the area outside for anymore shooters, and then grabbed the dead asari's weapons before leading the way back toward their docking berth.
"So, I think we're a bit late, huh?"
Brick poked one of the dozens of dead bodies lying around the main receiving doors to the warehouse, which were blasted open by a demolitions charge. Corpses of bandits, including several psychos and a couple of the bigger mutant human variants, lay sprawled around the doors and deeper inside. Many were riddled with bullets, but a large number were sliced apart.
"A very fine blade was used on these bodies," Nihlus said. He ran his omnitool over one of the corpses. "Extremely fine. I would say that it was a heat-edged weapon but I'm seeing no charring. Not a mono-edged weapon or omniblade either; those leave microscopic remains in the wounds."
"Hey, guys?" Maya called. "Can we save the forensics until after securing the compound?"
"A good point. My apologies," Nihlus said, standing up and hefting his rifle. Just ahead of them, Tali and Chitikka stood in the entrance to the warehouse, the mecha-skag leaning forward, weapons extended and ready to fire. "Anything on your scanners?"
"Just bodies and fires burning inside," Tali reported. "Chitikka, go scout."
The mecha-skag leapt away and bounded into the warehouse with the pounding screech of metal-on-metal. The quartet followed behind, checking the bodies. Brick made sure to poke each of the bruiser corpses they passed, making sure none of them was Fist.
"Any idea who did this?" Maya asked as they advanced.
"Wasn't the Broker," Brick piped in. "At least, I don't think it was. They tell me if they hire someone else to kill my targets. What do you think, Spectre?"
"None at the moment that I would care to speculate on," Nihlus replied. "We'll need access to the warehouse's security terminal."
"I can find that," Tali said, opening her omnitool. "Let me synch with local traffic . . . integrate the ECHOnet . . . okay, this way. Looks like its in the main control room."
They moved through the warehouse quickly, passing empty areas that were left untouched by the fighting, and then gore-splattered areas where a dozen bandits had died in close proximity. Nihlus traced the patterns of the bodies with years of investigative experience, and he could almost imagine how the fighting progressed going by blood splatter and where the bodies had fallen.
"Odd," Maya said as they passed another group of bodies. "I'd expect to see bodies of whoever attacked. Unless they carried them out?"
"Or they just kicked the bandit's asses so hard none of 'em died," Brick replied.
"No," Nihlus said, stopping at another group of dead bandit, who lay close together. They all had an identical wound, a blade cut in their chests. The lead bandit had one on the left, while the next one had a cut on the upper right, and the third had another on the upper left. It looked as though the killer had run between them, slicing them down in a single motion.
"There are no enemy bodies because there was only one enemy," he murmured.
Brick and Maya glanced at each other, and said nothing.
A minute later, they found the security office in the main control room. They stepped over the corpse of another bandit in the doorway, and found a massive bruiser lying in a pool of blood. He was neatly decapitated.
"Aw, this is no fun," Brick said, scooping up the head. He sighed in disappointment. "Yep, this is Fist. I guess the Broker will pay for his head, even if I wasn't the one to actually kill him."
Tali ignored him, and instead moved to the security terminal. Several minutes passed as she worked, muttering under her breath.
"Problem?" Maya asked, ignoring Brick as he stuffed Fist's head into a sealed preservation canister he'd been carrying in his SDU.
"Someone erased the files. I'm reconstructing, and it's taking my programs a few moments. Just a few more . . . okay, there."
Video files appeared on the display over Tali's omnitool. She selected one marked for today and fast-forwarded to the end. The video began to play, showing Fist hunched over the speaking with someone named Baron Flynt.
"Who is that?" Maya asked, looking to Nihlus.
"One of the most dangerous pirate kings in the galaxy," Nihlus said, mandibles twitching in consternation. "If he is the one backing Fist, then the situation has become far more dangerous. Continue playing the video."
They watched the rest of the conversation, up until the point where Fist finished talking to Flynt. Tali paused it again.
"Therum is where they were headed next," Nihlus said. "It was also one of the systems the geth were interested in. That should be where we go as well. This Doctor T'soni sounds like a logical next step in finding the Vault."
"But who killed Fist?" Maya asked, and Tali shrugged.
"Let's find out," she said, and continued playing the video.
It progressed, showing Lenny entering the room, and his sudden death. The corpse fell aside, revealing the strange, slender figure holding the sword. The harsh, low, sharp voice hissed out a haiku, and then Fist raised his shotgun and began firing. The bullets passed through the mysterious figure harmlessly. A moment later, the figure in the doorway vanished, and reappeared directly behind Fist, and decapitated him with a single swipe of his sword and a faint flash of blue light.
It then walked over the corpse and paused next to the terminal. An omnitool glowed briefly in its left hand, and then white static filled the display.
"Rewind," Nihlus said. "Stop."
They focused on the image shown; the strange, ninja-thing standing in the doorway.
"What the hell is that?" Brick asked. "Salarian?"
"It has the build, but not the torso shape," Nihlus mused. "I don't know. I'll have to forward this to the STG and let them analyze it. In the meantime, we know where to go next."
"After I mail this off," Brick said, patting the container holding Fist's head. "I don't mind getting paid, but I didn't get to beat the hell out of anyone! This job sucks."
Eternity was an apt name for the place. Activity in the bar was unending, due to the weird hours the local space crews ran by. There was always someone there, and the only "off hours" were when traffic was slow in the spaceport, which it rarely was. Right now it was a little slower than usual, and Roland had some space to think.
He sat at the bar alone, drinking slowly. Ash and Reiss had already headed back to the ship, and he told them he'd catch up soon enough. For now, he wanted to be alone and think for a time, while still keeping himself distinctly less than sober.
Without Reiss and Ash, where was he? A lone gun-for-hire who had no place in any real military. He could probably find a security job somewhere, or maybe do lone-wolf ops, but that was a quick way to get himself killed. For the first time since the Alliance offer had come down, Roland seriously considered taking it up. Or maybe he could take the money from the sale and hide out for a few years on a core world or the Citadel. That sounded like a good idea, but it didn't appeal to him. He was a soldier, not the kind to run and hide.] or retire quietly.
He had to live for something, but his only skillsets worth anything involved violence and military command.
"So, sugar, what can I getcha?" asked the asari bartender, cutting into his drunken ruminations. He wasn't sure how old she was, partially because the alcohol slurring his brain, and partially because he kept staring alternately at the huge tracts of land on display dead center and at the oddly human-style hat she wore: a purple hat with a playing card tucked in the band and a feather sticking out the side.
She must have been ancient - said something about being a matriarch - but that made no sense. What was a matriarch doing bartending? And what matriarch went by the name of "Moxxi" anyway? It was obviously a nickname, but still. An asari with that name just . . . it did not click at all.
"Hookay, I am a bit drunk," Roland managed to say as he realized the thoughts passing through his brain. He sat back, shaking his head. He blinked, shook his head, and waved the asari bartender back over.
"Need to get sober," he said.
"Got just the thing for you, sugar, though I don't use it often." She chuckled - a warm, sultry sound - and mixed something behind the counter. Roland fought to not stare at her dreadnoughts while she worked, and Moxxi handed him a blue-tinted concoction. He took a sniff and nearly retched.
"I said I needed to sober up," he muttered. "Not visit a hospital."
"Need to be somewhere, honey?" Moxxi said. She pointed to the vile blue liquid. "Drink."
He drank it. And he regretted it almost immediately.
"God, what did you put in this? Melted tires and rakk urine?" he asked after choking it down. His head almost immediately began to pound, but clarity accompanied the pain of the abrupt hangover.
"Close enough," Moxxi replied with a shrug. The asari started wiping the bar. "It's working though, isn't it?"
He looked up at her, blinking.
"Uh, I think its worse," Roland muttered, eyes flicking back and forth. "Might be hallucinating." Either that or his ECHO was malfunctioning, because flickering white static appeared at the top of his area of vision. Black and gray shapes took form, eventually turning into what looked like a black-and-white image of a young woman, though her proportions were . . . off, somehow.
"My drinks can take you places, but I don't mess them up," Moxxi replied, but he ignored her,t rying to process what he was seeing.
"That's weird," he murmured. Definitely something up with his ECHO.
"Don't be alarmed," a young woman's voice whispered in his ear, and bright blue eyes resolved themselves within the image floating before him. "I need you to stay calm and don't let on that anyone is talking to you . . . or everyone in that room might get killed by what's waiting for you outside."
Codex - Technology - ECHO Devices
"ECHO" is a generalized term for a series of personal data assistance and communications devices that are designed to augment omnitool and wireless extranet systems. ECHO devices are largely manufactured by the Dahl Corporation, although various militaries and corporations have begun producing their own proprietary versions. Most ECHO devices are small enough to be easily concealed, or are designed to form multiple small functional components that can be concealed around the body.
The majority of ECHO devices are worn either around the neck, in hats or helmets, on specialized eyewear, or in unobtrustive shoulder pouches. ECHO units interface with contact lenses or eyewear to project detailed and discreet head-up displays. These can display a variety of augmented-reality layers, including highlighting of objects of interest, displaying statistical data and local maps, and other extranet-related data at the user's command. ECHO devices can also integrate with personal electronics, omnitools, and storage decks to allow for device management. ECHO devices can also analyze data from the environment to provide localized assistance with locating items of interest, as well as sort and maintain emergency and personal contact information. In case of injury or emergency, ECHO units can automatically summon emergency response or transmit emergency distress signals.
Military-grade ECHO devices also produce secure point-to-point encrypted communication using microdrones, friendly aircraft, or deployed transmitters. They also have specific settings allowing for the tracking of personal shield defenses, health monitoring, and tracking of ammunition, equipment, and heat levels in weapons. Some ECHO devices also assist with maintenance, weapons system interfaces, and information warfare. Specialized ECHO devices are used by combat engineers to deploy, control, and maintain weapon turrets, as well as transmitting alerts regarding equipment, such as infiltrators sabotaging sentry systems.
Author's Notes: We're transitioning into the next phase of the first part of this three-part meat-play. I'm not sure yet who's going to win Best Supporting Actor...
Until next chapter . . . .