The Penthouse

"Spider, if you close the door we'll begin shortly" Monarch said from his comfortable red leather chair at the opposite end of the long, imposing ebony table. Spider complied silently, entered the room and closed the door behind him, shutting it with a still clout. He was met by the faces of his colleagues, glancing at him for a brief moment before their eyes wandered elsewhere, going about their businesses. Right next to the seat that was soon to be occupied by Sir Spider, sat Timothy 'Barghest' Fitzgerald, the suave and charismatic leader of Clandestine Operations and scribbled something on a white piece of paper. He looked neat and clean, having sleeked his lush raven hair back across his scalp as per usual. He was neatly shaven and soignate, yet a slight wound showed itself on lower left side of his chin, indicating that he might have been in a hurry that morning. Playful figures of smoke dancing in the air spoke as silent witnesses and testified that he had just finished a cigarette before Spider had entered the room. The rake cleared his throat and corrected his red tie before scribbling on, distrubing the white veil of smoke, breaking it like a membrane being punctured as he leaned forward. Right next to the old bon-vivant sat the old, grey Sir Gabriel 'Mr. Smith' Smith, acting as a stark contrast to the youthful neatness of the former. He was the oldest member of the group and in charge of Industrial Espionage. While he might have looked very old and frail, looks were deceiving, as he was very competent and was largely the sole reason human companies were up-to-date with the previously much more advanced alien ones. He wore his old dusty brown suit, as he had done the last several years without ever buying a new one or bothering to have it cleaned. Skimming through a paperfile on the table in front of him, he scratched his white, ungroomed moustache and hummed a jumbled little tune, that sounded like an off-key version of the old classic, 'My Funny Valentine'. He licked his bony thumb and turned the page, squinting through his small slim glasses as he glanced over the next. On the directly opposite side of the table sat Sir Hollis "Little Man" Walliam, the little balding imp in charge of Military Intelligence, wheezing for his breath like a rabid dog. One could see the protruding veins on his head as they stood out like a purple nest of serpents on his balding scalp. His face was near violet and he was sweating heavily; that was the price one paid for being obese, drinking too much coffee and smoking two packs of cigarettes every day without excecising what so everr. He had always been an unpleasant person but he got the job done, being the true professional that he was. At Little Man's left, Anderson 'Watchdog' Finch, the dark-haired, densely built afro-american leader of Diplomatic Reporting sat in his chair, doodling on a piece of paper, looking very absent-minded. Finch had a hard time staying inside the small windowless room, having been a claustrophobe since childhood.

Most senior officers of the Centre Block were thereby present and another dreary weekly meeting could commence.

At the very end of the table sat the ageing director of Alliance Secret Intelligence Service, Monarch,sporting his unkind face with dark, rough complexions and greying hair with high tendons. He was scrathing his chin and looked like he was deep within his own thoughts, going some details over in his head. He had brewed himself a can of coffee which spread a pleasant and calming odour throughout the room.

Spider found himself inside the little box of a room known as The Penthouse, named so because it was placed on the very top of Centre Block, the headquarters of ASIS. The soundproofing of the room took away so many beautiful variations of vibrations in the air, killing it, making it uncomfortably bleak and stale that one almost couldn't even hear one's own thoughts as they were absorbed by the thick layers of porous latex material on the walls. Spider found his way to his black chair at the rectangular table, carefully placing himself at the table as not to do any damage to the old ebony antiquity. He put his khaki trenchcoat on the backrest of his chair, took off his black gloves and laid them neatly on his lap, putting them to rest just above the knees. He corrected his large spectacles, pushing them up by the bridge with his index-finger and turned his attention to his boss. Immediately, he noticed that Monarch went unshaven that morning and his eyes were bloodshot. His tie was awry, he had not buttoned his waist-coat properly and from the smell of it, it seemed quite unlikely that he had bothered to take a bath.

"Okay. Most of us should be here now" Monarch said with an exhausted voice, sounding like he neither had the time nor the energy to be there. He had probably been up all night smashing his head against the wall doing some important negotiating, Spider figured. After all, he did also have the position of diplomat on the citadel, a position that came with many responsibilities indeed. " Okay, if you gentlemen wouldn't mind, I would like to get this over with; I have a very important meeting with an informant in the STG later on and I didn't really have a good night's sleep". Being obviously tired, he said the words with little enthusiasm and slurred them.

Monarch looked to Walliam first. Monarch did not really look like he wanted to speak to Little Man at all. The pair of them had never seen eye to eye.

"So, which kind of news do you have for us, Walli?" he asked the little obese man. Walliam looked through some of his papers for a brief moment, looking for notes that did not exist as Walliam never bothered to bring or write notes.

"Well, nothing groundbreaking, I'm afraid" he mumbled, after giving up his futile search, turning his fat little face and small squinting pig's eyes towards Monarch.

"Frog Man has updated some of his freighter-class ship's armour, but he does that all the time. He also seems to have increased funding for his navy, having ordered a lot of new ships from private contractors" he said looking back at monarch. "Some of our crackers hacking into salarian military intelligence databases were compromised, though, and might have to keep low for a while" he explained.

Monarch sighed and drank a little coffee from his mug. It had writing on it, written by a child's rather unrefined hand, saying 'Galaxy's best dad'.

"Is there any way that Frog Man might have discovered the identities of our crackers?" Monarch asked, leaning back into his chair.

"Yes, but my guess is that it's unlikely that he did" Walliam replied.

"Fine. Did they sweep up anybody?" he asked.
"No, sir"

"Good. No harm done, then. I expect you to pass your information on to Alliance Navy HQ and try to see if you can find another way into the salarians' databases. Just don't take any foolish chances, okay? Oh, and change the crackers' ID's and relocate them to safehouses on earth for at least a month."

"Understood, sir" Walliam said and nodded.

"Anything else, Walliam?" Monarch asked.

"Uh, yes. It seems that the Asari are moving some of their ships closer to salarian territory. Nothing big, but Frog Man might get pissed about this all. I have cooperated with Diplomatic Reporting on this one but they report no signs of mounting conflicts between the salarians and the asari as a consequence of this"

"Maybe they are looking to secure some mineral-rich rocks near salarian space or something to that effect. I suggest you keep an eye on that too." Monarch said. He scribbled something down on a piece of paper.

"Here's the name of a Salarian contact. He should be able to help you out" Monarch said, handing Walliam the piece of paper. "The number underneath is the extranet channel on which you will be able to contact him"

"How about you, Fitzgerald?" he asked, turning his attention towards Barghest.

"Well, we've had a little more... shall I say 'success'?... with Frog Man" he said in a tone that sounded much more suave and cool than that of Walliam's. Even though they were related, Fitzgerald and Spider were as night and day, the former being a charismatic bedhopper and the latter the epitome of boring bureaucratic professionalism.

"We have 'extracted' some scientists from Olor" He said explaining with a crooked grin. "We believe they were working on some kind of spy-software we might be able to use. They have not told us anything yet, but they'll be interrogated further and repatriated" the young intelligence officer said. "If possible, that is. If not, we'll dispose of them"

"Good" Monarch replied. "But they are more use to us alive. Treat them gently. Anything else?"

"Yes sir. We have reports that the prominent turian clans of 'Wexerrus' and 'Igshroth' are in a struggle for mining rights on one of Palaven's moons. We have prepared a false flag operation that will stage the death of Vespus Wexerrus at the hands of Veles Igshroth. As the Igshroths have very strong ties to the top of the hierarchy and the Wexerrii do not, we might be able to 'motivate' some of the latter to join our cause. This might especially be beneficial in case of future wars, as the Wexerii have lots of allies in the colonies" Timothy said.

"Indeed. They would make excellent sleeper agents. Have you got anything else?" Monarch asked calmly, leaning himself forward in his chair, elbows on the table.

"Nothing I can discuss with you while the others are here" Fitzgerald said.

"Okay, that's very good" Monarch said and took another sip of his hot coffee."Oh, there's another matter we need to discuss. It's not that important now, but we might want to see how it develops" he said.

"All of you in here, who follow the news will be familiar with this; Frog Man, the Asari and the hierarchy have just come to an agreement on something called 'the Veritas Initiative'. No one is certain what exactly it is, but it seems to grant the SPECTREs unlimited access to the intelligence archives of all the citadel races. However, this does not include all the client races, meaning that we actually won't have to cough up any information" He said. "Now, some of my men on the inside have told me that this should be nothing to worry about since the SPECTREs don't seem to care much about us; however, they also said that this is a move that, while it may weaken our competition, will strengthen the council's interests. Seeing how we don't have any representatives in the council, this might be a rather bad thing"

"Yes, I heard about that on the news" Gabriel said "It might be a good thing, actually. I mean, it won't affect us and it seems like it would be the first step towards more cooperation within council space. Win-win, you know" he shrugged.

"It seems rather odd" Fitzgerald said, leaning back in his chair.

"I don't see why they would do something like this. Since when have any of the council races ever cared about putting the interests of the intergalactic community over their own?" Fitzgerald asked in his calm voice. "Also, It'll be a cold day in hell, the day Triangle would ever agree to anything like this. After all, it'll put them in a slightly weaker position, and that..." he paused and turned his jade eyes towards Gabriel. "... is the last thing they would want" he said and smirked slightly.

"Exactly what I was thinking" Walliam exclaimed.

"The council races have never been able to agree on nothing. Their little spooks in the Triangle on even less. You think they're best buddies just because their intelligence high-ups meet up once in a while to jerk each other off? Well, I've got a surprise for you, because that shit don't mean shit 'cause whether you like it or not, they're all still sworn enemies and would never agree to be set at a disadvantage. Not unless they secretly were looking to fuck somebody over" he argued in his thick New-York dialect.

"Well," Finch said "they say it will make it easier for the SPECTREs to put organised criminals in gaol. Could it be that it ain't just spin when they say that?" he suggested.

"In this game of shadows, everything is spin. If this was about putting perps in the nick, it would have been C-sec that had given this kind of authority" Monarch said looking down at the surface of the table, studying the fine carvings in the dark brown wood.

"And what if the game is finally changing?" Gabriel asked, pathetically hopeful in voice.

"Well, no matter what, I think we ought to watch if there's any new developments and act accordingly, should there be any. I just wanted to hear you lot's opinion on the matter" Monarch concluded. The rest of the people around the table nodded their heads in agreement.

"Okay, Gabriel. Your turn" he resumed with a slight sight.

"Okay… let's just get this over with, then" Gabriel said with his usual positive disposition, looking up from his paper-file.

"We'll start out with some of the funnier stuff" he said, smiling broadly from under his big greying moustache. Spider could not help but smile a little also. Gabriel had always had a good, endearing sense of humour so this was probably going to be rich. Everyone turned their attentions to the old man.

"Well, apparently Finch, you need to brief some of your guys a little better before sending them in to deal with other races. An undercover access agent in salarian counter-intelligence sent me an urgent message being all fire and brimstone, yelling about how incompetent our men were and so on" he said.

"When I asked him what he was talking about, he told me that some of our assets in the citadel had attempted to recruit diplomats using human swallows. A good idea, if not for the fact that salarians don't have sex-drives. This led to some very awkward situations where some of our broads would try flirting with completely oblivious salarians. It says here in the report that 'Any advances went straight over their heads'"

The men around the table chuckled for a few seconds. Even Monarch drew a slight smile upon his face. It withered and died seconds thereafter, absenting itself. Walliam, however, was not amused.

"Wait a second? You find this fucking funny?" he said in disbelief. "I'm tired of these reports about untidy affairs coming from the DR department!" Walliam yelled. He had always been a pottymouth.

"Relax. There was no harm done to none of our assets" Finch said, trying to calm down Walliam. His efforts were in vain and failed to calm down the fat blob.

"Maybe this time. But what about next time, huh?" Walliam retorted, now even more unbelievably red in his face than before. "This is your department screwing up yet again. Don't make me remind you what happened on Palaven just last month"

"Hey!" Gabriel said, being a little upset. "That has nothing to do with the case at hand!" he cried with an old man's trembling voice.

"It is a little odd that these things only seem to happen with his men" Fitzgerald added, unphased by his collegues' raised tempers. "Maybe it's time that we took another look at his abilities as an administrator" he said looking Finch in the eye. "Or maybe we should have itsy-bitsy Spider here turn some rocks over and see what crawls out from underneath them" he said and nodded at Spider.

"How... Dare you" Finch said, clearly taking umbrage at Fitzgerald's statement. "You smug-ass little motherfucker. Here I bust my arse off, recruiting people in high places and yet, you dare question my abilities as an intelligence officer? You dare question my loyalty to the Alliance?"

Spider remained silent in his chair, the reflections in his glasses obscuring his eyes. The dear Mr. Finch's frustrations were understandable, but Sir Fitzgerald and Sir Walliam had a point. His performance as a leader had not been optimal lately and he seemed to have become more of a liability than an asset. Too many times, incidents had occurred that had put the alliance's political position in jeopardy, the most recent of which had been the one on Palaven, where three agents were executed for trying to blackmail a Turian general. Someone had apparently tipped OSSR off, compromising their covers. Spider had investigated the case but found nothing that had led him to any leak inside ASIS.

"Oh, and why the hell not, Anderson?" Walliam asked. "Your intel is bad, your performance is bad and you take stupid risks that gets our men killed! For all we know, you could be a double-agent!" he continued.

"Guys... Please" Gabriel pleaded. "Giffard investigated that case and found nothing that lead to Finch. You guys know how good he is. If Finch had been anything but air-tight, surely Spider would have told us"

The Palaven incident had not been the first time, far from it. Before that, there had been the failed bribery of the dalatrass Menoi, where salarian secret police had rolled up the dalatrass and all of Finch's assets. Other incidents, too. It seemed that most of Anderson's operations had struck by a streak of bad luck lately.

"Let's be fair, Walliam" Fitzgerald said. "He's probably not a double agent" he said with a smile upon his lip and debonair warmth in his eye. "All I'm saying is that someone were close to him in his department might be. It might also just be his lack of abilities that might be to blame for this" he said, standing as cocksure as ever.

"How dare you!" Finch cried and jumped from his chair, outraged at Fitzgerald's remark.

"Enough!" Monarch yelled and slammed his fist into the table. Everyone fell quiet and turned their attentions to him.

"I will not hear another word of your pesky infighting. We have plenty to deal with without fighting each other" he said angrily. "Finch's abilities are not the subject of this meeting. Is that understood, Walliam?" he said in a strict voice and looked at Walliam.

"I understand, Monarch" he replied. "But we have to consider..."

"Good" Monarch said, cutting him off.

"We'll discuss this matter no further" he declared and looked over at Gabriel, sighing slightly. "Okay. That was fun. What else have you got?" he asked.

The meeting went on for another excruciating hour. Spider didn't put his black gloves back on before he stepped out of the elevator going down from the uppermost level of the old Peace Tower. The fresh air stroked his face gently, cooling the man down after a long day's stress and commotion. The wind sung its wonderful aria as it blew past him, telling him tales of the many places it had been before traveling elsewhere. He paced along the tarmac, reflecting on what they had talked about during the meeting. It was hard not to feel a little sympathy for Mr. Finch. He was known for his good work-ethics and while Spider hadn't actually worked with him for very long, he seemed like a competent and trustworthy gentleman. However, the proof was always to be found in the pudding and Mr. Finch's results were far from perfect. As much as Monarch seemed to trust Anderson, it would seem that, perhaps, Monarch's trust was unfounded

"Giffard!" an all too familiar voice cried out behind him. He turned around and was met by the amicable and gentle eyes of Anderson Finch. Anderson was wearing his blueish grey coat and had his hands in his pockets, sheltering them from the cold of november. Spider raised a brow as he turned around, facing his colleague, whom approached him from behind.

"Why, hello Anderson. How can I help you?" Spider replied in his rather monotonous voice.

"I need to talk to you, Spider. I might need your help with something" he said, looking over his shoulder. He was short of breath and sounded rather stressed out.

"Well, I do have an appointment in a few minutes" Spider said looking at his watch. "Is it work-related?" he asked looking Anderson in the eye through his colossal glasses.

"Well, not strictly" Finch said. Spider paused a few seconds before replying.

"Could it wait until tomorrow then?" Spider asked. "I have an appointment"

"I would prefer to talk this over now" Finch insisted, looking over his shoulder. Spider looked at his clock once again for a brief while before continuing.

"Fine Mr. Finch. Lay it on me" Spider gave in.

"Do you want to go somewhere where we can talk in private?" Finch proceeded to ask him. Spider looked him in the eye. He obviously meant it. It seemed rather important, but Spider just did not have the time.

"Oh I do not have the time for that kind of business right now, especially if it's not work-related. I can see, however, that there is something you wish to get off your chest. Why don't you give me a call by tomorrow and we will talk it over"

"Well..." Anderson said and looked at his feet. He paused a little before speaking once again "That'll have to do, then... I'll see you tomorrow" Anderson said, in a voice that was slightly deeper and less joyful than before.

"That is good to hear, Anderson. Good day to you" Spider said and turned his back on his colleague. Spider had taken a couple of steps in the other direction before he once again heard Finch's voice call out for him.

"Oh, Giffard!"

Spider turned around and faced his colleague once again.

"I just wanted to thank you... I read your report from your investigation of the Palaven incident. You were actively defending me, standing in my defence against walliam's accusations. That was my ass on the line in there; had you not put in a good word in for me, they might have sacked me" he said with a sincere look in his dark eyes. "Or worse"

"Well, you are not a double agent, now are you?" Spider asked, taking a few steps towards Finch.

"No, of course not" Anderson replied.

"Neither did I think so" Spider replied. He looked Anderson in the eye for a brief moment before he turned his back on him, and slowly went down the concrete walkways down towards the city centre.

Frog Man = Code name for the salarians, akin to the name 'Jerry' used when talking about germans during WWII.
Penthouse = The heads of Alliance Intelligence. Named after the fact that they sit in a room on the very top of the Peace Tower.
Centre Block = ASIS HQ
Crackers = Hackers working for ASIS.
Swallow = Female agent trying to recruit foreign agents by means of sex or seduction.
Spin = Propaganda