Suppression
The hacker knew he had failed. The N7 had cut a swath through all of the forces and obstacles that had been thrown in his path, and now there were none left to deploy, with the two ships separated, though in truth the majority of the gang had been killed in any case. In all likelihood, this was a direct result of his reluctance to use measures of unrestrained lethality whilst his forces were at full strength, a frustrating fact, but the calculation that was behind it remained a sound one. Nero's standing bounty for such deadly individuals made the operation as potentially valuable, if not more so, than just the acquisition of the journalist would have been, and Nero only wanted them alive.
In any case, two courses of action now remained; to throw himself on the assassin's mercy with an offer of any intelligence that might be deemed valuable, or to try to take his vengeance from beyond the grave. Given the circumstances, his choice had already been made for him. Even if the marine was sufficiently interested in the gang's associates to be worried about not being able to find the same information without the hacker's help, there was no chance that the criminal would be allowed to survive in the long-term, as a witness to an operation that officially would never have happened; whether through this operative or another, the Alliance would have him silenced.
As such, he did possibly the only thing he could to disadvantage the man who would doubtless murder him in a few dreary, defeated minutes time; smiling bitterly, he surrendered control of the ship's systems to Simon Ross.
Locked in his cabin, struggling to work in spite of the loss of artificial gravity, Ross laughed in incredulous delight as he finally managed to oust the hacker from the computer network, and set to restoring everything to its proper state; gravity and lighting reactivated, and ensuring that the hacker had the heating systems pushed to compensate for the energy loss through the open airlock and the airlock itself contained (as effectively as possible on a cheap transport with a possibly criminal lack of internal airtight compartments, that is), allowing the rest of the ship to be pressurised, before he began the laborious process of reviewing the feeds from the ship's remaining surveillance systems on his limited screens, verbally dictating the distress call he would send once he was fully appraised of the current situation to his omnitool.
With a stuttering hum, the ship's internal lighting flickered back on, giving Shepard a moments warning before the reactivated gravity dropped him to what could once again be defined as the floor, landing awkwardly on his back, his scavenged helmet's visor tinting to compensate for the sudden change in ambient light. Taking a moment to readjust to the evolutionary default of working under a constant force, he sprung to his feet and got his bearings, before moving on his way. He passed a nearby camera, suddenly unsure of who was in control, and realised that his helmet had yet another use that he had neglected to consider in concealing his identity, before an instinctive urgency made itself known to him and he hastened his gait into a run. Of course, he still had only a very general notion of where to find the hacker, and refining that consumed his thoughts as he traversed the corridors almost entirely subconsciously, gun up and constantly sweeping to compensate for the reduction in sound that resulted from a vacuum.
There was no quick, certain way to find the hacker with only his current resources. Any scans would be distorted by the ship's systems, newly resurrected and now serving as camouflage where before there would only have been isolated activity, whilst any deductions made from troop deployment could easily be misdirection; and a simple search would take too long now that either the hacker was at his most desperate or Ross could be in control, and looking for him on passenger manifests. He wouldn't be found; the identity code that was scanned when Shepard boarded had in actuality concealed within it a virus designed to erase his booking and delete itself, but the traces were there and would contradict the lies he had already told. Thus it was necessary to secure new resources, and with that in mind Shepard made for the bridge.
He found the relevant doorway sealed against him and had no time for anything other than vague curiosity about whether or not the pilot was still alive and trapped in the airtight room, whether or not he had his helmet on, and whether or not he would survive the methods the N7 was about to employ in order to enter. It would likely be best for all concerned if he didn't; Shepard had no intention of leaving behind an individual who could provide testimony about a mysterious individual who cut his way into the ship's control centre, accessed the computers, and then left and disappeared without a trace. A quick death would spare him a surge of hope that would be curtailed as he stared down the barrel of the assassin's Karpov, and would spare Thaddaeus the moment required to shut down the surveillance first and deal with the body properly afterwards.
The universe is not often kind to bystanders – it is rarely kind in general, but since misfortune is initially required for one to become a bystander to such violence, further unpleasantness is merely a continuation of the trend.
Shepard breached the seal with a controlled application of plasma and strained to expand the opening, feeling the rush of escaping air buff at him and tug at his coat as it passed, until the gap was a comfortable size and he stepped through, turning immediately to stare at the man clad in a battered hardsuit covering him with a pistol held in a competent but wavering two-handed grip. Holding his own sidearm still at his side, Thaddaeus scanned the room for any surveillance devices and found that the one obvious camera had already been sabotaged. Making sure the crewman saw him looking, the assassin then nodded at him deliberately, and made a show of holstering his Karpov, before signing a communicator frequency and tuning his earpiece to it via omnitool.
"Who the hell are you?" The pilot demanded, without lowering his weapon, his Chinese ethnicity clearly evidenced by his accent.
"I'm known to some as Ombre. Didn't fancy being sold to batarian slavers, so I'm here to help you regain control of the ship." Shepard answered easily, roughening his English accent to mimic an old acquaintance from the more run-down areas of London.
"You're a merc?" The explanation had done nothing to allay the man's suspicions, but Shepard suspected claiming to be with the Alliance would only have heightened them.
"Of sorts."
"Then what happened to those hijacker fucks out in the corridors?"
"I blew most of them out of an airlock, and the rest either got their heads blown off or are still on their own ship. Their hacker should be the last one left, but I don't know what he's playing at, bringing all systems back online."
The pilot hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. "I couldn't get through his firewalls, but you can take a look at the computer if you want." He made no move to lower his pistol, but could hardly look over the assassin's shoulder without sacrificing the distance with which having one's gun ready would prove an advantage. Shepard turned away and brought up his omnitool to interface with the main computer; the hacker could throw up all the firewalls he wanted, but unlike with the other stationary terminals on board, he couldn't cut this one out of the network.
Thaddaeus had expected to be dismayed by the formidable nature of the hacker's cyber-fortifications and the amount of time it would take for him to circumvent them. He instead found himself more unsettled by the fact that there were no longer any serious defensive attempts at all. That meant that if Ross' tenacious reputation even slightly reflected his true character, he would also be accessing the network as well, which would feasibly explain the restoration of light and gravity. Setting aside the issue of locating the hacker the marine instead made the focus of his efforts shutting down the distress beacon, and then checking whether any message had yet been sent. A brief task, fortunately, but a critical one. A signal would have to be released eventually, but the N7 intended to be the one deciding upon the content of the message, and he was quick to ensure that that would be the case.
Shutting down the beacon and making sure it stayed that way for as long as it suited him temporarily defused the threat Ross represented, leaving Shepard free to concentrate on dealing with the hacker. His first approach was not one that he was entirely confident would work, but as the hacker seemed to have lost control, there was the possibility he would not have been able to erase the record of him accessing the ship's systems. And yet, when he accessed the logs, only two other shipboard terminals were on the list, and one of them he recognised as where he left Ross.
This was too easy, especially in comparison with the arduous experience of tangling with hacker's well equipped and well led subordinates, and it put Thaddaeus on his guard, as much as the experience of dealing with those thugs had done. The problem was a total lack of information about his quarry with which he could attempt to deduce the nature of his game, and the only way to secure said information would be to pay him a visit.
"Got you, you bastard." He muttered, loud enough for the pilot to hear, as he disconnected his omnitool.
"You found him?" Scepticism joined suspicion in the other man's voice, as he pondered how a supposed merc who travelled by cheap converted freighters could so thoroughly defuse a hijacking and then go on to bypass some of the best firewalls he had seen in a rather chequered past all without breaking a sweat. And that meant that, as Shepard had intended, he was a little slow to pick up on the threat when the marine turned, omnitool still glowing on his left wrist, and too late to dodge when a payload of plasma was launched straight at his chest, burning through the hardsuit in the same way the assassin had carved through the door and then vaporising his innards. Thaddaeus caught the corpse before it hit the ground and carefully repositioned it so that it slumped against the pilot's chair, roughly aligned with the plasma wound in the door, before using his freshly earned privacy to wipe all of the surveillance footage and shut down the ship's primary systems, leaving only the basic life support, emergency lighting, gravity, and the still-locked beacon.
The omnipresent hum of the power draw on the ship's generators stilled to the point that it was no longer really noticeable, and everyone still alive on the ship save three men looked up with instinctive unease. It was almost as if the ship had drawn one deep breath, and would hold it now as it waited for the final plunge. Those three who did not look up knew that wasn't so much a metaphor as an accurate description of the situation.
Once again the short journey was largely operated by his subconscious; Shepard was consumed with pondering hypotheses regarding what he would find waiting for him along with the hacker. An individual who planned so thoroughly would not be without the odd unpleasant snare close to hand in the event of an emergency...
Ross' face was ashen as his pupils adjusted again to the sudden decrease in visibility, the terminal having cut out entirely to leave only his omnitool and the ominous dim red glow of the backup lights. Turning back towards the door, he pried open the emergency compartment and donned the decrepit oxygen rebreather that was the limit of the crew's observance of safety regulations, feeling disproportionately relieved that he had found even that, though he had been informed that he would by what he was coming to believe to be a reliable source. Then the microcomputer, shaking with his wrist, tapped into the inert cabin door's circuits, supplying it with power and prompting it to open ever so slightly, subjecting the room and its occupant to the gradual depressurisation that was the only way he would be able to survive the vacuum outside, albeit for a brief period.
The process quickly became excruciating; he didn't have the kind of time to ease the process along at a rate that would allow him to avoid decompression sickness, or in fact the kind of facilities available to do so, and he fancied he could feel the resultant nitrogen bubbles forming in his blood vessels, though it was difficult to tell with the encroaching light-headedness that seemed indifferent to the oxygen in each gasping breath he took. The journalist slumped against the door and devoted his tangled thought processes to a measured count to twenty (one, one thousand, two, one thousand...) – about one third of the time it should have been, but Ross had been convinced that even forty seconds was a precious commodity that must be carefully spent on things other than standing around doing nothing more than counting. His count finished, he opened the door the rest of the way and staggered through before following the directions he read with blurred vision on the holographic readout as best as his malfunctioning body could manage.
Karpov at the ready, sheltered off to the side, Shepard forced the door to open as quickly as its motors would allow. No air rushed past him; the room had already been depressurised, and as such the only sound-carrying medium to communicate some level of warning was the solid structure of the ship, muffling any noise to the extent that Shepard didn't notice it in favour of the dazzling white projectile that moved past him and dashed itself against the opposite wall, where it disintegrated into a cloud of miniscule droplets. Not knowing what the function of the projectile was, other than presumably to cause harm, Thaddaeus elected not to satisfy his curiosity about it for the time being and dived backwards, away from the perilous area. He felt vindicated by his caution when he began to feel the temperature of his surroundings drop noticeably, despite the fact that the ship was already bleeding heat from exposed innards and thus so far on the brisk side of temperate that a severe gradient would be required for any transfer of thermal energy that he would be able to detect wholly biologically.
The assassin eyed the spreading mist for a wary moment. Then, as abruptly as the opening moves in this skirmish had been made, he dived back through in the direction he had come, intending to roll to his feet within the confines of the hacker's cabin. As he tumbled through the white haze, he felt his body temperature plummet even through the insulation of his hardsuit. The sweat brought on by the exertions of combat froze and melted and froze again, further drawing the heat from him as well as hindering his movements where the ice accumulated at his joints. Thaddaeus felt certain that in his haste he had made a critical error, one that would probably be fatal, and through the grim focus that made time seem to inch along bitter mirth tugged his lips into a smirk.
BLAM.
The shot rang out hard and final in Shepard's ears, and he hit the floor shoulder first, his subconscious awkwardly tucking him into a roll as the assassin's mind pondered the absence of the searing agony he had come to expect scant milliseconds earlier. By the time he had reached his feet, the N7 had realised two things. First - here was not a complete absence of pain, therefore as he had retained full motor function he could not have been wounded. Second – the shot rang out hard and final in his ears.
Sound does not carry in a vacuum.
For a detonation to sound so piercing, it must have occurred within a sound carrying medium.
The only such medium present was the pale mist that had so nearly ended him.
Moving on instinct faster than his brain could analyse or process the input from his eyes, Shepard struck out with his pistol, held in an achingly numbed fist, and felt a solid body yield ground to the impact. At that point visual processing caught up, and he followed the hacker's staggering course back out of the freezing cloud he had created. The man tried to retaliate, raising a pistol cradled in a two handed grip, his left wrist already wreathed in his omnitool's orange glow, but the marine was still right on top of him, and he wrenched the threatening muzzle aside before planting a pistol shot through his adversary's omnitool processor, and incidentally through the civilian grade flight suit and the meat and bone of his arm, eliciting a choked back scream through a rebreather. His fingers were limp, weak from shock, and Thaddaeus confiscated his pistol easily, before roughly guiding him to a seat before the terminal he had used to cause so much havoc.
After a moment, the hacker's ineffective struggling ceased, and his breathing stilled. "I don't suppose I could trouble you for a spot of medigel?" Shepard cocked his head dourly, his transparent visor revealing eyes that answered for him. "I suppose not..."
"Fascinating little surprise you had there." The marine finally began, his tone as conversational as the hacker's had been. "What was it?"
"Bose-Einstein condensate. A gas fabricated by the omnitool, then cooled with lasers to just above absolute zero, before being launched as a projectile to disperse on impact. First theorised by humans in the 20th century, though of course the asari had made the technology practical a few thousand years before that, giving the STG the opportunity to weaponise it more recently whereupon it was stolen by some acquaintances of mine who were generous enough to sell it along with a few other trinkets..."
"Stealing from the STG. An impressive feat... So you're allied to the Shadow Broker?" There wasn't much about the nigh-omniscient information dealer in the Alliance's databases, but then Shepard got the impression that no-one had anything on the Shadow Broker. Where they were concerned, knowledge was a one-way street. He'd heard the theories, that the Shadow Broker was a myth to cover for a dozen or more allies, but if that were true there would surely be more information available. One amongst multiple brokers would have blundered, or sought to advance themselves over their fellows, and some small token would have appeared on a market where demand infinitely exceeded supply.
"You might think that – I couldn't possibly comment."
Thaddaeus shrugged, as if the question had been of no real concern to him. "You played well, surprisingly so. You nearly got me, and in all likelihood you would have done if you hadn't been trying to take me alive. What could I offer you that's so valuable?"
"That would be telling. Pardon my being disingenuous, but I can't help but feel unmotivated towards helping the man who will shortly become my murderer."
"If that's your concern, I'm sure I can find some way to encourage a more talkative attitude..." Shepard suggested delicately, twirling the Karpov in his grip to add a rather less subtle emphasis.
"I've no doubt. However, I fear you might find the process rather time consuming, and I shouldn't think you have a great deal of leisure, what with our mutual friend Simon Ross on the loose. I'm afraid he must have found me more persuasive, or perhaps decided to back the losing side once they'd been dealt a mortal wound, hoping to bring down the victor, as well." The hacker's mouth stretched into a thin smile beneath his rebreather as he allowed mental images of the N7's future suffering to soothe the wounds of defeat.
"You seem rather triumphant for a man who has just ruled out all of the ways this might not end with his death." The assassin probed warily. Ross' data presented a more immediate threat than the organisation supplying the hijackers, but if this man really believed that he wouldn't have pointed Shepard in the journalist's direction, instead attempting to stall him. Unless it was a ploy designed to be so obvious that Thaddaeus would question the conclusions that could be drawn from it and allow himself to be delayed in any case, buying Ross time...
"You've destroyed a significant proportion of my life's accomplishments in rather short order, and I have no intention of watching the rest of them slip away in an Alliance interrogation room. Either way, I will die in your organisation's custody, but if you don't eliminate me now and protect my secrets, your own will be exposed. Would you take that chance in the hope that I hide something more valuable?"
He couldn't, he realised. If the hacker was concealing a direct threat against Thaddaeus, having knowledge of it wouldn't help him if he was immobilised by Hogan's displeasure, whilst having the Alliance's goodwill (and the journalist's sensitive material as a contingency) would give him resources, flexibility and a degree of security that ought to be sufficient to deal with anything less than multiple simultaneous inter-species wars.
Equally, he couldn't be certain of removing the danger the hacker presented without killing him. Knocking him unconscious would be too uncertain as he could recover at any time, whilst restraining him in a room with functioning computer equipment would be idiocy, and damaging it irreparably would be too time consuming when as a resource it was limited enough already. He sighed, moving to stand at the hackers side and rest the muzzle of his pistol against his defeated opponent's temple.
"You have my condolences."
"And you mine. Offer Rawne my regards when you see him-"
BLAM.
The shot that ejected much of the contents of the hacker's head to line the walls also cut off his dying remark. Shepard knew that whilst it would probably transpire to be important, it would be so enigmatic as to be completely useless in the present, and so he filed the phrase away for future reference, trying not to dwell on his unsatisfied curiosity, and the nagging suspicion that he was going to suffer for this decision.
He turned back to the door, pondered the remnants of the cryogenic blast, then stood well back and cleared it with a payload of superheated plasma. The way now clear, he strode back out and attempted to raise Ross on the frequency he had specified earlier.
"Ross. Come in, Ross. Please respond. The hijackers have been dealt with, over."
A pause.
"I hear you, N7. Congratulations, over." Ross' voice seemed rougher, his breathing deeper, though he was doing a reasonable job of hiding it.
"Good news for you too, I'm sure. I'm heading back to the rendezvous. I take it your position is secure, over?" The loaded question ran smoothly from Shepard's tongue, and precipitated another long moment of silence.
"Affirmative. Had to do a number on the door to keep them from getting through, though. I don't know how you'll get in and allow gradual depressurisation, over."
Thaddaeus crushed the urge to chuckle at the attempted deception. It would actually have been effective at slowing him down, forcing him to cut his way in at a painstakingly slow and careful rate to gradually let the air out without harming the cabin's occupant, only to discover at the end of it all that there was no-one inside.
"I might be able to improvise. Do you have breathing apparatus, over?"
"Negative-" his voice cut off abruptly, a rasp of static that sounded like a sigh crackling out of Shepard's earpiece. "Uh, that's a negative, over."
Ross had begun to lie instinctively, then realised that if the marine believed the journalist to be without a rebreather, he had no reason to try to break in because the man inside would probably asphyxiate before the air pressure could be safely equalized. Of course, if Simon had tried to alter his story, that could only have provoked suspicion. He'd just barely choked back a curse, before sighing and confirming his blunder.
"Since you're secure, the best thing now would be for you to stay put. I'll get up to the cockpit and see if I can't make a few repairs, maybe seal the breach and reintroduce the atmosphere, or at least activate the distress beacon so that we can get some assistance. See you on the other side, over."
"Acknowledged. Over and out."
Shepard headed back towards the cockpit, still cautious of the unsecured environment, and mapping out the possible paths events would soon follow. Ross knew he was coming, but there was still the question of how much the hacker had told him and how much the journalist had believed. Did Ross think he had sold his deception and would be able to ambush or avoid an unsuspecting pawn of an establishment that happened to be his enemy? Did he expect the arrival of a government assassin seeking his target? Would he try to stay out of sight, or would he gamble on being able to send a signal that mentioned the N7's presence before he was found? And what had he done with the precious data?
The helm was as he had left it. The dead pilot was splayed out just as the assassin had posed him, lying in a slowly expanding, partially congealed pool of gore; a pistol caught in a limp grip stiffened by the cold and rigor-mortis, a hole in his hardsuit revealing the cauterised mess of skin, meat and bone that was just one of the many additions to his legacy that he had made on this latest jaunt. Shepard scanned the rest of the room down the sights of his pistol and found it empty; one eye on the door, he holstered the Karpov in order to interface with the transport's command console via his omnitool.
And then he stopped.
A pool of gore around a man whose only wound was cauterised by the very projectile that inflicted it. Surely not...
The N7 twisted to look again, cursing himself for his stupid, pedestrian complacency, and found the once seemingly lifeless hand which had held the pilot's sidearm aiming said weapon at him. He froze, suppressing his natural instincts to move, and raised his hands slowly, before finally reopening the comm channel.
"...Mr Ross?"
"Oh, spare me the act. I know what you're here for. I know you killed the pilot with the same precise plasma work you've employed right in front of me a dozen times over. I know that, given the chance, you'd do the same to me." The Canadian's voice still held that strain that the marine had detected over the radio, a tension that gave the man a respectable air of command.
Thaddaeus chuckled grudgingly, and allowed his mental and physical posture to shift back to something altogether more predatory. Clearly, the time for grand deceptions had passed, but for all that his target held him firmly within the pistol's sights, there was still room for more subtle manoeuvres – otherwise he would already be dead.
"I have to admit, Mr Ross, I'm impressed. The disguise is impeccable. You really do have an exquisite eye for detail, though that was already clearly displayed in your work." He complimented his target softly, so quietly that the journalist couldn't help but lean forwards in his seated position, straining to hear.
"How long have they had you after me?" He demanded. Shepard smiled thinly. The fox had ambushed a hound, but before it could bring itself to deliver the coup-de-grace, it had realised just how little it knew about the hunt. In the end, it always came down to knowledge.
"No; I think the really surprising thing is the butchery you must have performed to get that hardsuit off of its original owner, and to imitate the wound. Your emotive writing always had you come across as the absolutist, empathetic type. I think I underestimated you because of that." The psychopath continued, blithely ignoring the query.
"Answer the question!"
"Although as fallacies go, it's not completely unreasonable. Most people aren't sufficiently intelligent to behave in a way that would allow society to function based solely on a selfish analysis of their situation."
"Shut up and answer the fucking question!" Ross yelled, letting his agitation get the best of him. Thaddaeus seemed not to notice.
"Since society is to the general advantage of the species, natural selection favours those who can make it work, which means that empathy and a baseline sense of absolute morality is more or less ingrained in the majority from birth, to be cultivated by the older generation. The simple fact that the majority are by definition not notably intelligent means that a moral education is usually dogmatic and promotes rigid and irrational behaviour as a result. Thus it is usually possible to predict the behaviour of humans who subscribe to conventional morality in situations containing supposed ethical dilemmas-"
BLAM.
His monologue was interrupted as the journalist dropped his aim for an instant and sent a round scything through the space immediately adjacent to the N7's upper torso. The retort sounded hollow for having relayed itself through the floor, and was given a warped echo an instant later as it was communicated through the radio link.
"Really, Mr Ross. Whatever happened to freedom of speech?" Shepard enquired rhetorically, injecting a false note of injury into his tone. Ross kept himself from responding to the jibe with obvious effort, and readjusted his aim.
"How long has the Alliance had you watching me?"
Shepard sighed and appeared to think for a moment before he replied.
"No comment."
"What?"
"Were I to have orders to the effect of holding you under surveillance, hypothetically speaking of course, the content of those orders and the date that they were issued would be classified information, Mr Ross. Even if I weren't legally prohibited from confirming or denying any allegations made about the Alliance's activities, my professional work ethic would keep me from talking to someone in your area of employment. What kind of psychotic thug do you think I am?"
"The mortal kind. If you test my patience further, I'll start looking for evidence to that effect, and as you know, I'm very thorough. What have you reported to your superiors?" The journalist snarled.
"Just what do you hope to achieve by threatening me? You must know that I'm trained to withstand enemy interrogation, and if you kill me you'll never find out how much the Alliance knows. You would only worry about so much if you've done something of critical importance in recent history which would attract the interest of my employers. That something would certainly have to be the transfer of information, which either means that someone received information from you or gave information to you, or a combination of the two. You can't possibly think we wouldn't know about the packages you give to your lawyers, so you're concerned that we have enough data to be able to find your source. And to that implicit question my answer is: no comment."
"And if I offer you a carrot instead of the stick?"
Shepard blinked – that was somewhat unexpected. It wasn't the change in approach that surprised him, but the suddenly altogether calmer tone in which the journalist spoke. There was still a hard edge to it that indicated a significant erosion of the man's patience, but that sort of control implied that he wasn't nearly as angry as he had seemed to be earlier. Throwing him off balance might require a slightly different approach...
"What could you possibly offer me that would be of greater worth than my honour?" It was all Thaddaeus could do to deliver the probe in a serious tone of voice.
"At a guess, anything over twenty credits. Or a copy of the data your commanders are so desperate to suppress, perhaps? I'm sure an unprincipled bastard like you could put it to good use..." The journalist retorted, summoning his omnitool with a gesture of his unoccupied wrist to add weight to his words.
It was a trap, of course. Ross had no more intention of allowing the N7 to walk away with the data than Thaddaeus did the inverse, and the marine knew it. Ross probably realised that his opponent could see the snare, but also knew that the bait was too enticing and that the only alternative for each of them was either to open fire or receive a round to the face respectively – and neither of them were ready for that just yet.
So the journalist, one handed, copied and sent the package he had sweated and bled to defend for the sake of civilisation, to the psychopathic assassin who cared nothing for anything besides himself. Shepard felt a slight vibration in his armour, and without breaking eye contact with his quarry, called up the interface of his own microcomputer.
"Do you mind?"
"Be my guest."
Slowly, deliberately, the wrist wreathed in orange was brought around into his line of sight and the marine confirmed the receipt of a very specific sequence of ones and zeroes that would restore his control over his own fate. A burst of plasma was only one twitch away, but that choice's destination was mutually assured destruction. So he scanned the file, verified its origin, and brought his hand back up, open palmed in a surrender of temporary convenience.
"Congratulations. You are in the possession an item of not inconsiderable value."
"Thank you. Now, talk."
"But of course. The Systems Alliance government has had you under surveillance from the moment you became a published journalist, though you drew greater scrutiny when you grew in repute and influence, and more still when you seemed to specialise into anti-establishment stories."
"Nothing more than facts. If the men in charge think I act against them for exposing the truth, they ought to be doubly guilty for making the truth something damaging."
"Indeed, if you decide to take any calculations involving damage control and risk versus reward out of the equation. Physical surveillance has been significantly more cursory up until I was personally assigned to your case, an event less to do with your being an object of interest and more the result of a disagreement with my commanding officer. Chance's whims can be just fascinating, can't they? I picked up on your more elaborate methods of communication, though obviously tracing through all of the slave terminals to reach the actual messages will take time.
I watched you hand packages over to your lawyers, though someone else will be handling the task of stealing or destroying those copies, and finally discovered you were travelling off world via Cambodia. I got confirmation that I was to use this opportunity to remove you, if possible finding your source and any other relevant information. And then came the hijackers, who could no more be allowed to obtain classified documents than you, especially since they seem to have something of a fascination with live N7s. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
Ross paused just a little too long. "Not my problem."
"How neighbourly. I think that ought to conclude our little transaction, don't you?"
"One more thing. I want your name." Shepard sighed. If this was Ross' endgame, it was a disappointing one.
"That's really very unsporting of you, Simon. Here I am, saving your life, and you want to go and drag me through a mixture of mud and ink."
"I never said how I'd use it."
"Then we're each withholding something. I'm afraid if I told you, I'd have to kill you."
"And if you didn't, you'd have to die."
"As you wish... The name's Shepard. Thaddaeus Shepard.
I'm afraid I did warn you."
The assassin fell silent for a moment, a fierce glee welling up within him as he watched the revelation sink in, let the journalist's mind get caught up in all the implications, in how it all made so much sense-
And then he struck.
He launched himself forwards and to the right, and the journalist was just a moment too slow in responding.
BLAM.
The projectile hurtled through the space Thaddaeus had vacated seconds earlier, and the marine never heard the retort as there was no physical link between them to carry it, but Ross was already twisting to line up another shot. His aim arced around faster than his target and he squeezed the trigger again-
BLAM.
-only for the round to be sent awry, a result of the N7's roll carrying him within arm's reach. Ross kept a tenuous grip on the weapon and scrambled to his feet, staggering to his right to try and put some space between himself and his assailant. Too desperate to care about precision any longer, he brought up his omnitool alongside his pistol, intending to buy ground – and perhaps his life – with a dual salvo of metal and plasma. But Shepard was too close, too fast, and in no mood to be merciful or generous towards a man who had proven to be dangerous to underestimate. The journalist wasn't able to bring his arms to bear before his left was caught and yanked on, bringing his right forwards for the assassin to seize and sweep behind his back, before confiscating the sidearm that it wielded and pressing the muzzle against the back of his head.
Simon Ross braced himself, waiting for the end-
-and kept on waiting.
"I thought marines were supposed to be professionals. If you're going to kill me, kill me!"
"I'm not going to kill you." Shepard retorted, bringing the captured gun down, out of the executioner's stance. "Not yet. You see, if I were you, I wouldn't just hand over that data, even if I were certain of success, without a contingency plan in place. A few lines of code, perhaps, an instruction to erase it all if your vital signs fail." The pistol gradually descended, down the back of the armour clad skull to the lower neck, producing perfect symmetry with the path of dread that it drew in Ross' mind. "And it strikes me that you're not incapable of that thought either... So I'm going to keep you alive, for the time being. Something you really ought to have borne in mind, though, is that there is always a work-around."
BLAM.
Shepard angled the shot to avoid major blood vessels and organs, but accepted that it would cause needless complications to sever the spine at the T7 vertebra whilst attempting to avoid damaging the airway. One could hardly argue that the journalist would need it for long, in any case. The wound drew the expected scream from between Ross' clenched teeth, which quickly receded into agonised gasps as the quadriplegic was carefully eased down to the deck.
The psychopath gently posed his victim in the recovery position, then straightened and hastily began entering commands into the holographic interface of his microcomputer. Within fairly short order, Thaddaeus was satisfied that he had found and deleted the relevant additions to his property, and returned his attention to the wretched creature who was no longer even capable of ending his own suffering. A moment's consideration was enough to persuade the assassin to crouch down again with the pistol, this time aimed squarely at the temple beneath his target's helmet.
"For what little that it is worth, I respect your abilities and regret that your work has precipitated your destruction."
"Your words... are worthless... if no-one else lives to hear them." The Canadian grated.
BLAM.
"The mission was a complete success, sir. Ross has been eliminated in a way that cannot reasonably be connected to the Alliance, and his data has been kept out of the hands of those who would use it against us. The copy on his omnitool was deleted when he died, but the copies with his lawyers will be sufficient to ascertain what he knew."
"Any loose ends?" Hogan enquired curtly. Apparently the Irishman no longer had any patience for the niceties.
"None besides those mentioned in my report." Thaddaeus replied shortly. "Ross' distress signal was edited to remove any mention of my presence, and as soon as it was sent the remaining hijackers fled. They won't be talking to anyone about what happened there. As for evidence on board the transport, the crime-scene is already so confused that conspiracy theorists will have plenty to entertain themselves, but more stable minds won't be persuaded of anything sinister by the absence of an escape pod, since my pickup signal was sent from the other side of the sector. That does leave the matter of why they wanted N7s alive, and who was supplying them with military grade equipment. Since they were mostly unexceptional as an outfit, my guess would be that those two questions have the same answer. Any ideas?"
The Major's face hardened, his eyes conveying suspicious hostility instead of their formerly habitual curiosity. "I have a theory or two, but nothing sufficiently concrete to merit you needing to know. Dismissed."
"Sir." Shepard made to leave, but turned back as he reached the doorway. "Any progress on the hacker?"
"We're catching up." The intelligence officer declared, and the assassin caught a hint of that familiar speculative gleam in his eyes...
In his quarters, despite his outward repose, Shepard's mind raced. He had the data, and if Hogan suspected as much he didn't seem to care, so to some extent his position was once again secure. However, that look of distrust on his face had indicated that he could likely do more than guess at the answer to Shepard's questions, but believed it unsafe to do so – and that was different. Michael Hogan was intentionally withholding information that was directly relevant to Thaddaeus' wellbeing, and as much as the what and the why mattered, the question running through the N7's head was whether the present arrangement with the Alliance was really as advantageous to him as it had once been.
Yet the notion of leaving it behind was complicated by more than the fact that he was supposed to be dead. Uncertainty surrounded him, and conquered him more and more each time he recalled the numerous personnel listed as MIA in the journalist's stolen files – and one entry in particular.
Name: Staff Lieutenant Athanasius Rawne Operational Designation: Samael