DISCLAIMER: Mass Effect video game is the property of its respective owners and the author has no financial gain from it. Original Characters and story concept are mine though.

A/N: Here is the second part of Chapter 9 for your enjoyment. Dubois is in the Batarian Hegemony space now and up to no good. This part is about 6,2k words long. Hope you enjoy it!

My beta is still the one and the only Redentor

Orbit above the planet Aratoht

Bahak System

Viper Nebula

Earth Year: 2172

The planet Aratoht was not a looker by any standards or stretch of the imagination, and from orbit it looked brown and ugly. Still, one could easily see that the Batarian Hegemony put a lot of time and money into terraforming the planet up to some level of habitability, especially if the constant cargo traffic to the spaceport was any indication. The population of the planet was about three hundred thousand, but only eighty thousands of them were free citizens. Curiously enough, only the regular contractors worked in the effort to increase the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, while the whole slave population was used in the extensive mining operations. It seemed like the ever paranoid Hegemony didn't want to risk involving slaves in the terraforming for fear of them sabotaging the whole undertaking.

Contrary to how many people imagine living in a totalitarian society, the fact is that it's very difficult (if not impossible) to achieve a level of total control over a population – especially its lower tiers. The common people are not as stupid and gullible as the ruling establishment would like to think and the batarians were no exception. With the help of Lox I did an infiltration of the batarian extranet, which was firewalled and controlled much like the internet in some of the authoritarian countries in the 21st century. Despite that, a quick search revealed a thriving community of anonymous users who used blogs and communication boards to debunk each and every statement provided by the official media. To my amusement I even discovered a website which contained nothing but the political and anti-establishment jokes. Here is one:

Question: "Is it true that the Batarian Hegemony is the most progressive power in the galaxy?"

Answer: "In principle, yes. Life was already better yesterday than it's going to be tomorrow."

This sad little jibe summed up the batarian approach to their standards of living and to their current political situation. They basically had no hope for any improvement whatsoever and all that was left for them was poking fun at official propaganda. Still, the simple fact that there were voices of dissent in a significant number gave me hope for their species and for my future guerrilla campaign against the Hegemony's ruling establishment. It would be a long, hard and dangerous road, but I saw no other option – batarians were too apathetic and too used to the status quo to bring about the change in a peaceful fashion.

As I observed the colony I reached the conclusion that Aratoht was treated like the crown jewel by the Batarian Hegemony. It clearly showed even if someone chose to follow only the official announcements by the Hegemony's Department of Information Control. The amount of resources that the Hegemony was willing to throw at Aratoht was staggering. Unfortunately for the colonists, the inefficiency, the corruption and the general incompetence of the batarian administration caused most of those resources to go to waste. Obviously, you wouldn't know that from the official statements, but I learned to read between the lines:

The today's 'Aratoht State News' told us: 'The daily water rations were increased by 5 percent this week'. That was true – if you chose to ignore the fact that it was decreased by 20 percent the week before.

Another was: 'Three tons of terraforming cyanobacteria were contaminated by human saboteurs and had to be disposed of.' It was a truckload of bullshit – the overseer responsible for the shipment sold it for nearly a hundred kilograms of Red Sand. The batarian in question had been running the biggest drug dealing cartel in his part of the city for the last year.

Each accident was blamed on Alliance spies or the batarian fifth column. Each shortage of essentials was caused by 'saboteurs' or 'abolitionists'. The reason for any shipment delays were the bloodthirsty Alliance raiders attacking innocent civilian transports. The poor quality of the Batarian State Arms pistols were obviously the fault of the 'defeatists', 'cowards' and 'enemies of the Hegemony'. The people who worked for the Hegemony's Department of Information Control were my enemies, but I was truly astonished by their capability to produce such incredible amounts of propaganda every day. They must have had literally thousands of people, and possibly Vis, committed to this endeavour alone.

The Batarian Hegemony wasn't anywhere near the totalitarian Oceania from Orwell's 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four' in terms of the information control and the micromanagement of the population, but they had nothing to be ashamed of either.

As I was standing on the bridge of the 'Coronado' and contemplating the planet below, my artificial second in command was searching for any signs of our target – Commander Ka'hairal Balak of the Batarian External Forces. Not much was known about this part of the batarian military, but we suspected it to be the equivalent of a black operations wetwork team of some sort, or even the Confederacy's Security Branch. We hoped to learn much more about the inner workings of the Hegemony by probing Balak for information and hopefully subvert him to our cause.

Finally done with reading various batarian websites I turned off my omni-tool and turned to the glowing apparition of Lox.

"Have you found anything about Balak?"

The apparition looked at me and shrugged in a very human-like manner.

"I'm afraid not, lieutenant. Are you certain that he can be found somewhere on this planet?"

"This is the information that we received from Barla Von and it came straight from the Shadow Broker's network. If anyone had a valid Intel on our target it's the Broker."

I took another look at Aratoht. Thankfully, our corvette was cloaked using the Confederacy's superior technology and we didn't have to worry about being discovered by their LADAR.

"Besides, this planet is a strategic staging point for any operation in Alliance territory and it's more militarized than a Confederacy's base-world. There is no better place for a Batarian External Forces officer. So unless Balak went on holiday and forgot to let anyone know about it we'll find him here."

"You are awfully certain of the accuracy of the Shadow Broker's intelligence, lieutenant."

"I'm not certain of anything, apart from the fact that we paid a lot of credits for this piece of information. Had the Shadow Broker been providing bogus data on a whim, he would have been out of the business a long time ago."

The AI's glowing hologram tilted his head at me with a curious expression.

"I do not understand why you didn't want me to use our own resources, lieutenant? Security Branch Intelligence community is much more adept at gathering Intel than even the best of the Shadow Broker's agents."

"It's the absolute last resort, Lox. I'd like to keep as many resources as possible in the Terminus and not divert them unless necessary. I also want to ensure that the Blue Suns have the capacity to wage war on the Reapers even without our constant support."

"Why is that, lieutenant?"

I sighed, not sure whether I wanted to share my suspicions with my AI helper. I decided to do so, because as strange as it sounded, he was the only one that I could fully trust here. Excluding the possibility that someone shut him down and copied data directly off his memory banks.

"What I'm about to tell you now I'd like to keep confidential, Lox. And that is my direct order."

"Acknowledged, lieutenant."

"I believe that the Security Branch will pull the plug on our operation the moment the proverbial excrement hits the rotor. This whole deal seemed like a sham from the very beginning. I mean, think about it – sending a single displaced agent to maintain an espionage network? This galaxy doesn't need another Shadow Broker. What it needs are weapons, spaceships and the resources to maintain them. All of those in numbers that would make a difference in the fight against the Reapers."

I stretched my arms, feeling the crack in my neck.

"And that's what I'm trying to do now, Lox. The more resources we supply to Zaeed, Solem and Das'Maral now, the bigger the chances of survival they have when the Bureau decides to whisk us out of here."

"Permission to speak freely, lieutenant?" asked Lox his voice carefully neutral.

"Go ahead." I responded.

The glowing AI stood with his arms folded and looked at me with concern.

"I believe you are stressing yourself for no reason, Lieutenant Dubois. The Parliament made a nearly unanimous decision to do a limited insertion to the Mass Effect galaxy. Security Branch is duty-bound to follow that decision, because just like any other agency we fall under the control of a civilian administration. Rest assured that the revocation of the Parliament's decision is an administrative process that takes a long time to unfold. Should it happen, the procedure will remain clear and transparent and you would be the first to know, lieutenant."

Well, that made sense actually. Sometimes I kept forgetting that the Confederacy was just as much of a victim of the institutional inertia suffered by any other modern country. Lox was right; after the decision was made by the administration it couldn't be undone just like that, no matter what the people back home thought about it.

I furrowed my eyebrows in thought. Perhaps my work-related paranoia, so finely honed by the Security Branch training regime had more drawbacks than I initially thought. Sure, it had kept me alive so far and probably would in the future, that was a given. But if I kept second-guessing even my closest associates then it won't end well. On the other hand – nothing could be done about it now. It was a dangerous game that I played and I couldn't afford to get complacent.

My musings were interrupted by Lox who was observing one of the holographic displays.

"Lieutenant Dubois, I have managed to locate Commander Ka'hairal Balak."

I raised my eyebrow, rather impressed seeing as Lox was sceptical about our chances before.

"How did you do that?"

The glowing apparition didn't move, but it didn't have to. I knew that the AI was now deeply in batarian cyberspace, but unlike organics he could easily multitask and talk to me at the same time.

"I have hacked the Batarian Navy code and I've managed to access their network to see what military assets they have available in the Bahak System. The Batarian External Forces have their own separate network, but if you try to access it as a naval operator you can use some back doors – if you know the system of course. I have been observing one of the military bases that doesn't exist in the official manifests, but which received multiple cargo shipments in the last couple of weeks. I accessed its monitoring system and managed to identify Commander Balak of the External Forces. From the conversations I'd managed to intercept it seems like our target won't be leaving the base for some time."

"How much is some time, Lox? I need to get my team here and prep them for the acquisition of the target." I said crisply.

All my previous doubts were quickly forgotten. After hours of waiting I had been presented with a clear target and nothing else mattered now.

"It seems like Commander Balak arrived in the facility two days ago and he has not received his marching orders yet."

I grinned savagely. It gave us at least a week or so to prepare. The Batarian Hegemony's military was notorious for their administrative backlog, lack of organization and poor staff work. They basically were an army of lions led by the donkeys. It happened in the past that units had remained stranded on one planet for weeks, because they were 'forgotten' in the chaos. In addition, the Hegemony's traditional caste system more often than not promoted into positions of power the people who were wholly unsuitable for their tasks. Even their legendary, gruelling training was not enough to weed out the undesirables, because batarians from high castes received special dispensation from it. The final result was that for each talented officer like Solem Dal'Serah the Hegemony received three bumbling idiots, who shouldn't be allowed to manage a grocery store, let alone a military unit.

Commander Ka'hairal Balak was definitely in the first category though and for that reason it was imperative that we captured him alive. For all his personality faults Balak was an able and driven commander who would be a great boon if co-opted to our cause. It was the man whose mission to crash an asteroid into Terra Nova would have been successful if it weren't for Commander Shepard's timely intervention. The questionable morality of such an operation aside, it took courage and organizational skills in large proportions to plan and execute such a task, especially since his subordinates were nothing more than thugs and slavers.

I had a plan on how to take him in already. It was elegantly simple and audacious, but I was sure that it would work. After all, we were in Batarian territory and they hardly expected anyone to infiltrate their security network as deeply as we did. I looked at the patiently waiting AI.

"Keep an eye on Commander Balak, Lox. I think that he shall be receiving his new marching orders sooner rather than later, wouldn't you say?"

Lox could read between the lines, and he caught on quickly to what was left unsaid.

"I will prepare them right away, lieutenant."

Batarian External Forces facility 'Aratoht Gamma'

Planet Aratoht; Bahak System;

Viper Nebula

Earth Year: 2172

For some time now I considered myself a paranoid person. My original self would be rather put off by that statement, since he was nowhere near as distrustful as I was now. Still, the facts were difficult to dispute and besides – it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you. On the other hand, my newly developed cautious nature made me put a lot of thought into each and every plan that I executed.

It took us two days of careful planning before I gave my team the go ahead. Only WO Rod'barr and I would be deployed to the planet surface – I wanted to minimize our presence down to the most essential personnel. Garem had to go because he was the only batarian that we've had at hand. As for me – let's just say that I didn't feel comfortable sending someone else to the hornet's nest that was Aratoht. The mission plan was daring and rather straightforward, but it didn't make it any less dangerous. There was no doubt that there were lives on the line and I couldn't ask anyone else to shoulder the responsibility if I wasn't willing to put myself in harm's way.

For that reason Garem and I found ourselves sitting in a stolen Batarian State Automotive transporter. It was a rugged, wheeled design, suitable for military use. It lacked the sleek elegance of the asari vehicles or the all-terrain performance of the turian transport vans, but its raw interior and rough controls had a certain charm of their own. With its bulky bubble-tyres and narrow chassis it was oddly similar to the Alliance's 'Grizzly' IFV – the 'battle taxi' of the Alliance Marine Corps. Ours had its weapons removed obviously, but thanks to the Confederacy's technology we were far from helpless.

Garem was driving the vehicle and I was sitting in the crew compartment hidden under the cloaking device. I used a similarly cloaked drone patrolling above us to observe the perimeter around the vehicle and to provide us with fire support should things go south. My batarian navigator drove up to the entrance of 'Aratoht Gamma' and parked in front of the gate near the scanner. I noticed that a single visor opened on the driver side and a laser beam scanned Garem, who shifted uncomfortably. When the scan was done a disembodied voice said, "State your purpose here."

Despite the voice distortion I could clearly hear that the man who spoke held his finger on the proverbial trigger. The quality of the batarian troops varied from unit to unit, but the Batarian External Forces were true professionals that recruited only the best. The guards at the 'Aratoht Gamma' facility were no exception.

But Garem despite his relative youth had been in a private army for a couple of years now. He responded without any hesitation.

"I am here to provide transportation for Commander Ka'hairal Balak of the External Forces."

"Your orders, sir?" asked the sentry.

Rod'barr responded shortly, his tone of voice sounding bored.

"Here they are. And I'm not a sir, soldier."

He extended his left hand through the side window and activated his omni-tool, allowing the laser scanner to connect to it. The Warrant Officer maintained an aura of nonchalance, his fingers tapping impatiently. He played the role of an irritated professional non-com rather well. Meanwhile I kept my eye on the perimeter through the cloaked drone, identifying automatic weapon placements near the entrance just in case. For a tense few moments I thought that the marching orders that Lox prepared were incorrect and our deception would be discovered, but the scanner only beeped once and we heard the sentry's voice.

"Everything is in order, sergeant. Proceed."

The heavy blast doors that had blocked the entrance opened up and Garem drove our vehicle through it. My cloaked drone trailed behind the transporter passively scanning the perimeter and mapping all possible escape routes. Hopefully we won't need them, but I knew better than to bank on everything going smoothly.

We parked on the inside of the bases perimeter in a fairly spacious courtyard. Garem Rod'barr left the driving seat and stood next to the vehicle at parade rest position. Meanwhile, I used the drone to look around the courtyard. I noticed that it was the perfect defence for dealing with a land-based attack, as it funnelled the enemy combatants into a kill zone. Before any potential attackers could move deeper into the base they had to traverse the courtyard surrounded by the elevated firing positions on all sides. I wasn't very happy that we'd had to park here, but I expected nothing less and we had planned accordingly. I set the cloaked drone to slowly circle around above us and check the surroundings for activity that could be perceived as hostile. Now we could only wait.

The base wasn't in any state of emergency. There was a squad of batarian troopers exercising outside doing push-ups and whatnot. They all carried their weapons with them, some of them even wore armour, but there was no sense of urgency or any alertness whatsoever. I was relieved to see that – should anything go wrong it would give us those few precious seconds when the batarians tried to get their stuff together. Even the best trained soldiers need some time to react to a dangerous situation when they are not prepared for it.

My cloaked drone marked a figure coming out of the building complex ahead. The batarian didn't wear any helmet and after zooming in with the drone's camera I recognized Commander Ka'hairal Balak of the Batarian External Forces. He wasn't wearing his characteristic red and black armour yet. He still sported the standard batarian military uniform without any additional markings as was required of the External Forces who were expected to work undercover away from the Hegemony's territory. He approached Garem who snapped a quick salute.

"Good morning, Commander."

Ka'hairal Balak responded with his own salute.

"I understand you are here to pick me up?"

"Yes, sir," said Garem with a quick nod.

"Good. I've been waiting here long enough. Have District Command approved my idea yet, sergeant?"

Garem led Balak into the entrance to the crew compartment, which was located in the rear. I made sure to double check my cloaking device and prepare my taser. The door opened and I heard Garem respond with my own ears.

"I'm sorry Commander, but my orders are to take you to the District Command Headquarters in the Aratoht City. I don't know anything else." WO Rod'barr's response was respectful, but firm.

Balak shrugged as he entered the crew compartment. I had him fully in my sights now.

"No, I didn't think you would know."

He looked around the rather cramped interior and said.

"By the ancestors, couldn't they send us a proper air-car? How old is this thing?"

Meanwhile Garem sat back at the driver's seat and spoke through the intercom.

"I'm sorry Commander, but this was the only vehicle that the motor pool could provide at such short notice. I'm sure you know how it is..." he trailed off knowingly.

The transporter's engine started and Garem slowly drove back toward the entrance.

Balak sighed and shook his head miserably.

"You don't know the half of it sergeant..."

This was the moment that I decided to silence our soon-to-be prisoner. I pressed the trigger on my taser and...Nothing happened.

The gun's click sounded like a thunderbolt in the confined space of the passenger compartment. Balak looked in my general direction, but he didn't see anything due to the still active cloaking device. His eyes narrowed in suspicion as I pressed the taser's trigger again.

This time it worked, but not the way I wanted it to. The coil fizzled to life for a moment without shooting a stunning bolt and then the battery mounted on the side of the device backfired and short-circuited my tactical cloak, revealing my armoured silhouette to the batarian officer.

I cursed the useless taser and threw it to the side, still momentarily distracted. But Ka'hairal Balak wasn't a batarian commando for nothing. Without hesitation he struck with his foot, hitting me square in the face. I wore my helmet, and it helped to dissipate the strength of the blow, but I was still stunned. Balak moved back toward the rear door with the intention of opening them and leaving the vehicle. I'd be having none of that obviously – if he raised the alarm inside the base then we would be as good as dead.

My taser lost I moved quickly toward the batarian who struggled with the manual handle. My hand to hand combat training kicking in, I tried to strike the Balak in the back of his head to knock him out. The lack of room in the vehicle compartment caused my fist to miss my target and hit him in the shoulder blade. He hissed in pain – my own considerable strength enhanced by the Interceptor armour was no joke – but he remained conscious. He half turned my way, his right hand reaching for the sidearm that I saw him carrying on his left hip. But now the drawbacks of the Mass Effect pistol drill showed themselves fully. His right hand had not enough room to comfortably grab the pistol grip and he fumbled for a second, trying to reach it. I used this moment of distraction to grab his wrist with my right hand and to hit him in the head once more with my left fist. This time I paid close attention to cushion my blow accordingly as I struck him in the temple, knocking him unconscious. Nevertheless, my fist still broke the batarian's skin in one place and some blood tricked down the side of his head. Hoping that I didn't break anything of importance I called out to Garem who undoubtedly watched us through the internal cameras.

"I've got the situation under control, Rod'barr. Are we at the gate yet?"

"Yes we are, el-tee. That was some mighty fistfight back there if I do say so myself," he added with a short laugh.

"Can it warrant officer," I snapped, not in the mood for his usual cheekiness. "Let's get out of here fast. And when we're out of this, someone better explain to me why they didn't check the operational gear before we left!"

"Aye aye, el-tee." He responded promptly, recognizing my bad disposition.

We stopped by the huge blast door once again, our unseen drone still hovering above us. We now had everything we came here for and I wanted nothing more than to leave the base intact. I whispered to Garem, my sub vocal receptors augmenting my voice in his earpiece.

"Just be cool, Garem. You came here to pick up the high-ranking External Forces officer and that's exactly what you did."

But luck wasn't on our side and the blast door remained closed. This time instead of the laser scanner we saw four fully kitted batarian soldiers leaving their guard house. Each of them carried the Batarian State Arms Terminator assault rifle and they looked as they were ready to use it. I cursed silently to myself as I watched them approach us. One of the guards, clearly a non-com, walked up to Garem's driver seat and said.

"Please open the rear door, sergeant."

That's not what I wanted to hear at all. We had an unconscious Balak in the back, who was still bleeding from the cut on his temple. What's worse, my cloaking device had stopped working altogether so I was completely visible.

Despite our dire situation Garem played his role still.

"Look guys, do we really have to do this? I've already got a bloody backlog and my CO will have my hide if I'm late again."

But the batarian's response was final.

"Open the rear door, sergeant – now!" he shouted.

"Oh alright, alright..." Garem grumbled something to himself as he turned away from the batarian non-com. He whispered to his sub vocal receptor.

"What are we going to do, el-tee?"

My voice was calm and collected as I attached a suppressor to my PDW. It seemed like we had no choice but to go out with a boom.

"Open the door, Garem and signal 'Flaming Arrow'."

The rear door hatch snapped open and I heard the footsteps of the batarian soldier approaching. His head appeared in the opening as he looked curiously inside. His eyes widened at the sight of an unconscious Balak and myself. He didn't have time to alert his comrades before I pulled the trigger, firing a short, three-round burst.

I aimed at his neck to compensate for any recoil, but the gun had remarkably little, and the plasma-coil beads were as devastatingly effective as ever. The energy of the first bead completely disabled the kinetic barriers, while the next two pierced the batarian guard's collarbone. There was no blood, as the superheated beads cauterized his wounds instantaneously, but he fell dead nonetheless. I quickly moved to the back of the vehicle and left through the opened hatch, stepping over the dead body.

The three batarian guards that were left had not expect me to peak out from the rear door, and for a second or two they just stared at me and at their dead colleague. Deciding to give them no time to collect themselves I shot at the gaping non-com, producing much the same result as with the first. Both guards raised their Terminator rifles and fired at me, but my superior shields absorbed the shaving beads easily, especially since I was half concealed behind the vehicles entrance. Pulling the trigger once more I felled another guard, while the last one raised his hand to his headset to call the alarm. He never managed to do that however, as he fell down lifelessly, the third victim of the day. Not that it made any difference – External Forces were now fully aware that we were here.

I looked at the driver's cabin where Garem stood with his pistol, which fired the killing shot and gave me a quick nod.

We've managed to dispatch the guards at the gate, but we were not out of the woods yet. I shouted at Garem.

"Pick up Balak and move him to the guard house! I'll cover you!"

I had a Plan B as usual. The Security Branch instructors had always taught me to have a backup plans for my backup plans. Lox was very helpful in working out the kinks in them by running multiple simulations to find the weak spots. Fortunately, my AI helper had also foreseen a scenario similar to ours. So while I wasn't happy about the current turn of the events it didn't mean I was completely hopeless.

I noticed that while the blast door remained closed, the guards had left their guard house side door unlocked. We could use it to leave the facility on foot. We wouldn't be able to use the controls in the house itself to open the blast doors. Security protocols dictated that they would already have been shut down from the main control hub.

Without a word Rod'barr dragged out the still unconscious officer and toward the guard house, while I turned back toward the courtyard and opened fire at the approaching soldiers. The previously drilling batarians were well-trained and even if they weren't fully aware of what was happening they fell back to their training. As I fired from behind the transporter I noticed that they all moved by teams and laid covering fire at me. Thankfully, the vehicle's armour was thick enough to cover me from the worst of their fire. I saw that Garem managed to get into the guard house with our prisoner, but I needed a distraction to get there myself.

Speaking of which, I knew for a fact that my navigator sent out the 'Flaming Arrow' signal to my squad. They should have...

I didn't finish my thought before the building across the courtyard exploded. The reinforced glass windows were blown outwards, while whatever was inside caught fire as if it was doused in a flammable liquid of some kind, most likely fuel. It was followed by four more explosions in quick succession causing the alarms not already blaring like a banshee to go off. Most of the batarians at the courtyard either took cover or dived to the ground, fully expecting to be fired upon from all directions. Without further delay I took a last quick shot at them and then I ran towards the entrance of the guard house. After I got there I locked the door behind me, using my omni-tool. I left a viral program to scramble the opening app to keep the batarians busy when they finally get here.

'Flaming Arrow' was the designation agreed upon during the planning phase, for the detonation of the previously deployed, hidden explosive devices. For the two days that I used to prepare for the mission my squad utilized the quick in-and-out wormhole insertions to place low-yield explosives in vital places on the base. We placed fusion bombs in the armouries, control rooms, generator areas and the like to create as much chaos and confusion as possible. We wanted to keep the mission as low-profile, but if the situation got out of control (as it seemed to have now) I wanted to ensure that 1) we damaged the batarian war machine as much as we could and 2) ensure that the panic raised by the exploding devices would allow us to extract our personnel more easily. I freely admit that it wasn't the most elegant exit method, but I didn't really care. We would be hitting the Batarian Hegemony hard and I decided that if our mission went south, then we can at least give them a taste of what is to come in the near future.

Meanwhile I helped Garem grab the still unconscious Balak. This time we were taking no chances, so I motioned for the navigator to tie Balak's wrists and ankles with polymer flexicuffs. While our prisoner was unconscious now it didn't make him any less dangerous should he wake up – he was an External Forces commando after all. Just to be sure, I checked his vitals – batarians didn't have the carotid artery in the same place that we do, so I had to press my fingers under his chin rather than his neck. Balak's pulse remained steady, so I motioned for Garem to pick him up again as I took point.

I had only a vague idea of the design of the guardhouse, but I knew that they had their own exit that led to the outside of the facility. Yes, the External Forces were the batarian's best, but they still traded the less essential military equipment for cigarettes, booze and other luxuries. What do you expect? They were the elite soldiers who lived in a boring, closed facility in the totalitarian state which was corrupt to the bone. Since they could hardly use the main gate for trading equipment, contraband and favours as it was screened thoroughly, they kept their own passages instead.

My gamble paid off as we went into one of the long, grey corridors. I noticed one of the doors with a sticker that said in the batarian language, 'MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY'

Disregarding the writing I opened the door with my omni-tool, quickly using one of my apps to scramble the receiver into thinking that the white noise data I sent it was the correct password. We went through it and dragged Balak with us. We found ourselves in a small guard post, with a spartan metal desk, an armchair and a computer, but the man who was supposed to be stationed here was nowhere to be found. It seemed that it was the unofficial 'trading post' of the Aratoht Gamma facility. There we saw another door with a window in it that led us to the outside of the facility's perimeter. I opened the door and summoned the cloaked drone which was still circling the facility and recording the garrison's reaction time.

Luckily, it seemed that the External Forces soldiers were too preoccupied with their base being on fire to look for the saboteurs. One of our devices had been placed in the officer's quarters – on detonation it killed couple of them and apparently cut off the rest. It would be only a temporary hindrance, but because of that there were barely any higher ranking batarians to coordinate the troops to put down the fires, let alone to search for us. As for the lower ranks, the Hegemony did not encourage initiative among the non-coms or the enlisted soldiers, lest they get any ideas above their station. This approach ensured obedience and reinforced the existing caste system, but in this case most of the soldiers were content with waiting for orders rather than doing something on their own.

I grabbed the unconscious Balak and motioned for Garem to follow me. We disappeared into the surrounding vegetation and moved on to our designated rendezvous point, which wasn't very far – we took into consideration that we would have to ditch the vehicle somewhere on the way and we planned the pick-up accordingly. Behind us we left the burning Aratoht Gamma base. I had no illusions that the attack would be blamed by the Department of Information Control on the batarian 'fifth column'. Even if someone saw me and recognized me for a human, the Hegemony would never admit that the Alliance managed to infiltrate one of its core worlds. But they'd have External Forces searching for us once they got back on their feet. An attack like this couldn't be left unpunished in their eyes.

Soon after we were aboard the cloaked shuttle and leaving the Aratoht atmosphere undisturbed. Our mission had a few close calls, but I deemed it an overall success. It only confirmed my previous point, that meticulous planning of both primary and secondary courses of action were the way to go. Improvisation was nice and all, but without additional precautions it was always doomed to fail if lives were on the line.

Our undertaking also gave me some valuable insight into the workings of the Batarian Hegemony. It seemed like their forces seemed inflexible on the battalion level – there was a distinct lack of communication between their NCOs and the commissioned officers, caused by their strict hierarchy. From Lox's investigation I knew that the Batarian general staff had some good, strategically minded individuals and their squad work was as good as anywhere else. But the critical operational and tactical flexibility was missing – the procedures were too conservative and bureaucratic. It showed me that by decisively striking the command of the battalion or a brigade we could effectively paralyse the whole unit for some time. This knowledge would surely come in handy in our future battles against the Hegemony's military.

I looked at the restrained batarian officer. He stirred slightly, on the very cusp of waking up. Distantly, I remembered his foot striking my helmet. "I'm sorry Mr. Balak, we seem to be busy at the moment."

He groaned, but fell abruptly silent once again as my foot slammed into his face. "The waiting room is that way if you'd like to wait? Of course you would."

'All we have to do now is to convince Balak to join our cause,' I thought.

Better get the knuckledusters and the thumb-screws ready. And the family sized surveillance picture of his family, taken via rifle scope.

END OF CHAPTER 9

A/N: So there it is - the second part of Chapter 9 is done. Please tell me what do you think so far and stay tuned for the Chapter 10 which may actually be slightly delayed, but worry not - I'm in the process of writing it as we speak. :)