Mass effect, p.84
Mass Effect, page 84
“That part of my escape went well,” McCann continued. “I sold the shuttle at a steep discount, but still walked away with a hefty chunk of change.”
“Then what?” Hendel demanded skeptically.
McCann looked down at his filth encrusted boots. “I figured I’d take the money and double or even triple it playing Star Cluster. So I went to a batarian-owned club called Fortune’s Den.”
“Don’t tell me,” Hendel said disgustedly. “You lost all your money.”
“Yes, I did,” McCann admitted shamefacedly. “But I lost more than that. I bet my freedom and lost that as well.”
“My father,” Gillian insisted. “Tell me about my father.”
“That’s where I heard about him,” McCann said, as his eyes came back up. “Aria T’Loak had people combing all the bars on Omega looking for him. So when they entered Fortune’s Den, and said they were looking for a human, the batarians brought me up out of the basement. Money changed hands and I wound up in front of T’Loak. But the whole thing was over by then. According to T’Loak your father was killed on a space station in orbit around Elysium.”
Gillian’s eyes grew wider. “The Grissom Academy. That’s where I went to school. You’re sure? My father’s dead?”
McCann shrugged. “No, how could I be sure? But Aria had no reason to lie. Not to someone she sold to a batarian slaver two days later.”
The first emotion Gillian experienced was a deep and abiding sorrow. She was forever cut off from the only person who hadn’t been paid to care about her. Paul Grayson had been less than perfect. That was why she and Hendel had been forced to hide aboard the Idenna. To escape her father and whatever was controlling him.
But she believed that he loved her, to the extent that such a flawed being could love another person, and she loved him in return. In spite of all the things that he had done. She fingered the jewel that hung at her throat as tears trickled down her cheeks. “Who killed him? And why?”
McCann had been there. Had seen the horrible things the Illusive Man and those working for him had done to Grayson. More than that, he’d been part of the team. And there was no way the Illusive Man would want people to find out what Cerberus had been up to. So if Grayson had been able to escape, somebody had been sent to kill him. Kai Leng perhaps? Quite possibly. But it wouldn’t be very smart to tell Gillian Grayson about his role in her father’s captivity and he didn’t. “I don’t know,” McCann lied. “But one thing I can tell you is that your father talked about you all the time.”
Gillian’s sorrow began to morph into anger as she thought about what had been taken from her. The only person other than Hendel that she could count on. She wiped at the tears with the back of a wrist. “I’m going to find out who killed my father. And when I do they’re going to die.”
McCann nodded sagely. “I don’t blame you. Chances are the information you need is on the Citadel.” There was no basis for that, at least not that McCann was aware of, but that was where he wanted to go. Omega was out of the question. “I’ll help you,” he promised. “We’ll figure out who did it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Hendel put in. “There’s no way to know where the killer or killers went. Besides, how would we get there?”
“The slave ship,” Gillian proclaimed tightly. “We’ll take the slave ship.”
Hendel frowned. “The slave ship? Why would the crew of the Idenna give you that? It’s theirs to recondition or sell.”
Gillian’s mouth was a horizontal line. “They’ll give it to me because I saved every single person on the Idenna from slavery. Ask them. You’ll see.” And, much to Hendel’s amazement, she was right.
THREE
ON THE CITADEL
The electronic concierge was waiting to greet Anderson and Kahlee as they entered their apartment. “Welcome home. All systems are functioning properly. Five voice mails, twenty-three text messages, and two holos are waiting.”
“Nick isn’t here,” Anderson said after taking a quick look at the guest room. “And his belongings are gone.”
“Let’s check those messages,” Kahlee said. “Maybe he left one of them.”
“I’ll tackle the voice mails,” Anderson said. He was deleting a message from the retired officers’ association when Kahlee called him over.
“Here it is, David. Come look.”
Anderson turned to see a holo shiver, back up, and start again. Nick was seated on a chair in a pool of light. He was dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing earlier in the day. That suggested that the message had been recorded after he left the Citadel Tower. There was a guilty expression on his face. “I’m sorry about taking off from the tower,” Nick said, “but there’s no need to worry because I’m with friends.”
Anderson and Kahlee looked at each other. Were the so-called friends the mysterious biotics named Ocosta Lem and Arrius Sallus? Both feared that was the case.
“There’s something I have to do,” Nick said importantly, “and that’s to make things better. That’s what you’re doing, right? Only I have skills that most people don’t. So it makes sense to use them. Not by myself, but as part of something larger, a group called the Biotic Underground.”
What followed had a formal singsong quality. As if the words had been memorized. “We believe that because biotics are special, they have a special responsibility to help others. And the best way to do that is to bring all of the races together. The creation of the Council was a good first step. But thousands of years have passed and the various members are still bickering with each other. So now it’s time to take a significant leap forward by forming a single government. An organization that will be run by biotics representing all of the various races.”
Anderson ordered the holo to pause before turning to Kahlee. “It sounds like these people are biotic supremacists.”
Kahlee nodded soberly. “Nick’s very idealistic. They’re taking advantage of him.”
Anderson said, “Play holo,” and the three-dimensional image jerked into motion. “But that will take time,” Nick continued. “So you won’t see me for a while. Please tell my parents not to worry. I’ll be in touch from time to time but only if I’m left alone. Otherwise it will be necessary to cut off all communications.”
At that point Nick looked to his right as if seeking approval from someone before turning back. “I guess that’s all. Thanks for being so nice to me.” The holo imploded at that point. Motes of light sparkled and disappeared.
“Damn him,” Anderson said.
And rather than object the way she might have otherwise Kahlee nodded. “He knows better. Or should have. What will we tell his parents?”
“The truth,” Anderson said grimly.
“And C-Sec?”
“We’ll contact them immediately after we talk to Nick’s parents.”
Kahlee sighed. “They live on Anhur. I met them at the academy. I’ll work on a call.”
“Use my priority—it could take days otherwise.”
The call didn’t go well. Nick’s father was furious. He blamed Anderson and Kahlee for his son’s disappearance, calling them “careless” and “negligent.”
Nick’s mother was a little more understanding, but not much, and broke into tears when she saw the holo. Both parents wanted to board a ship for the Citadel to join the hunt for their son but lacked the money required to do so. Anderson assured them that C-Sec would be notified immediately—and that both he and Kahlee would participate in the search.
Nick’s mother was concerned about the possibility that Nick would break off all communications the way he had threatened to, but eventually surrendered to arguments put forward by the others, and left her husband to complete the call. By the time it was over both Anderson and Kahlee felt even worse than they had before.
It was getting late by then, but they knew it was important to start the search as quickly as possible, so Anderson called a C-Sec officer named Amy Varma. She’d been one of Anderson’s aides before he retired from the navy and was currently working as a shift supervisor in C-Sec’s Customs Division. That meant she could help them file a missing person report—and ensure that the Citadel’s customs personnel were watching for Nick. Otherwise the shadowy biotics who had befriended the boy might try to take him off the space station. Varma promised to warn her people immediately.
It had been a long and exhausting day. So Anderson and Kahlee ate a simple dinner and went to bed hoping C-Sec would find Nick during the artificial night and the whole episode would be over before morning. But it wasn’t to be. At the point when the alarm went off and they rolled out of bed, the only call waiting in their inbox was from a volus-run travel agency trying to interest Kahlee in a trip to Earth.
So they showered, ate a quick breakfast, and went to meet with Varma. The officer had short black hair, bangs that fell halfway down her forehead, and brown eyes. They were bright with intelligence and Kahlee took an immediate liking to the young woman as she came out of her glassed-in office to meet them. The Customs Division was headquartered in one of the towers that circled the station’s inner ring. “Admiral Anderson. It’s good to see you again, sir. And Miss Sanders is ex-military as well, I believe.”
The last was said with a smile and Kahlee responded in kind as they shook hands. “It’s been awhile, but yes. Have you been reading my file?”
“Of course,” Varma said unapologetically. “With a case like this there’s no way to know what kind of information will turn out to be important.”
“So, no luck?” Anderson inquired.
“Nothing actionable I’m afraid. But all of our people are on high alert, so who knows? We could get lucky. In the meantime Central Command has been hard at work. So we have some images to review. Please follow me.”
Anderson and Kahlee followed Varma down a sterile-looking hallway. “CENTCOM terminals are located at various places on the Citadel,” Varma explained. “And all of them are restricted. So we’ll have to pause for a scan.”
Once cleared through the security checkpoint Anderson and Kahlee found themselves in a chilly room. The dome-shaped space was lined with what Kahlee thought were colorful tiles until the salarian seated at the center of the room pointed a wand at one of them. It blossomed into a large three-dimensional holo of a batarian holding his hands up. A pair of uniformed officers entered the shot moments later with their weapons drawn.
“As you know there are hundreds of thousands of security cameras on the Citadel,” Varma said, as the holo was drawn back into the video mosaic covering the walls and ceiling. “And by monitoring them we’re able to respond to violent crimes within a matter of minutes. Fraud, confidence games, and the like are harder to detect as they take place. But later we can go back and search CENTCOM for relevant evidence. And that’s what we did in this case.
“The photo you provided was uploaded to CENTCOM along with a command to scan all images of Nick Donahue captured since the moment you discovered he was missing. And here’s what it came up with. Officer Urbo? Roll the video for case number 482.976 please.”
Urbo was seated on a raised platform behind a curved semitransparent control panel. His fingers seemed to flicker as he entered the number into a ghostly looking keyboard. Moments later another six-meter-tall holo appeared. It quickly became apparent that snippets of video from many different cameras had been edited together to create a jerky but nevertheless telling record of Nick’s movements after he left the Citadel Tower.
Anderson and Kahlee watched via a number of camera angles as their charge passed through the Presidium, took public transportation home, and disappeared into their apartment building. The next shot was a time lapse that showed Nick leaving twelve minutes later. And there, waiting outside, were two individuals. Ocosta Lem and Arrius Sallus. Varma ordered Urbo to freeze the holo. “Here they are,” she said. “The biotics you told us about.
“And, as it turns out, they had come to our attention before. Both have been involved in political demonstrations on behalf of an organization called the Biotic Underground. A couple of the gatherings turned ugly when some antibiotic pure breeders turned up and our friends began to throw people around. Officer Urbo has one of the scuffles cued up for you to take a look at. Watch the people in the background.”
The holo jerked into motion. The image had been captured in an area where thousands of menial workers lived. Lem could be seen in the foreground “lifting” an irate turian off the ground. As that took place an illuminated circle appeared off to the right. It wobbled for a moment before settling over a very familiar face. Nick was not only there, but judging from the expression on his face, entranced by what was taking place. “So,” Varma said, “it looks like Lem and Sallus found what they were looking for. A new supporter.”
“Nick’s more than that,” Kahlee observed. “He’s a Level Two biotic with the potential to become a three. So they could use him in all sorts of ways.”
“Good point,” Varma agreed. “And all the more reason to keep looking.”
“So where did they go from the apartment?” Anderson wanted to know.
“They disappeared,” Varma said simply. “They knew about the cameras, everyone does, and were last seen in the red ward entering a restaurant with Nick. I sent an officer down to check the place out. A back door opens onto a narrow pedway. All three cameras in that area had been disabled by a local street gang.”
“And the gang was paid off by the biotics,” Anderson said sourly.
“That’s the way it looks,” Varma agreed.
“But then what?” Kahlee inquired. “Surely you were able to pick them up somewhere else.”
Varma shook her head. “Not so far. But we’ll keep looking.”
“What about Nick’s omni-tool?” Anderson wanted to know. “Can you track it?”
“We have it,” Varma countered. “The signal led us to a bin under a public disposal chute. There’s another possibility though … One I hate to bring up. A place we haven’t checked.”
Kahlee frowned. “Where’s that?”
“The morgue.”
ABOARD THE LINER PARSUS II
There were times when Kai Leng was required to deal with various forms of hardship. This wasn’t one of them. After receiving his orders from the Illusive Man, Leng traveled to Illium where he booked a passage on the Parsus II, which was bound for the Citadel. And, in keeping with the identity he had chosen, Leng was traveling first class. That meant he could watch the arrival process from the comfort of his suite rather than one of the public areas where lesser passengers were gathered.
During Faster Than Light travel it was impossible to see anything, so the floor-to-ceiling viewport that occupied the outside wall of his cabin was filled with beautiful starscapes provided by the ship’s NAVCOMP. But after entering normal space Leng could see the incredible space station that functioned as the political, economic, and cultural center of the galaxy. The Citadel resembled a piece of fantastic jewelry surrounded by luminous particles that were actually stars.
But before the Parsus or any other ship could dock with the Citadel it was necessary to get rid of the powerful charge that had accumulated in the ship’s drive core during FTL flight. That was accomplished by pausing at one of the free-floating space stations designed for that purpose. It was a tiresome business, but absolutely necessary for safety reasons, and gave Leng the opportunity to enjoy the space-going equivalent of a fireworks show as the Parsus came alongside a discharge station and fingers of coruscating blue light strobed the inky blackness. Then, having been cleared, the liner was free to proceed.
The better part of three hours passed before the Parsus was allowed to dock with the Citadel. Being a first-class passenger had its advantages and Leng was among those allowed to leave the ship first. The Cerberus operative was equipped with a pair of self-propelled suitcases that trundled along behind him as he left the ship. It wasn’t that he needed everything stored in them, but the luggage served to support his cover story and provided more things for the customs officers to inspect. Because the more material they had to look at the less time would be spent on each individual item, thereby increasing the likelihood that agents would miss the fact that his cane could be converted into a rifle barrel—that the ornate carving set acquired on Illium included a razor-sharp knife that could be used for slicing just about anything.
So Leng felt a not altogether unpleasant sense of tension as he led his suitcases across a causeway and into customs. A turian with white facial tattoos was seated behind a waist-high counter. “Good afternoon, sir. Passport please.”
The folder that Leng handed over was nothing more than a frame for a chip on which information regarding his false identity had been painstakingly recorded by one of the first-class forgers that worked for Cerberus. The idea was to protect his real identity for as long as possible. A tone sounded as the turian slid the passport into a reader and CENTCOM acknowledged that the chip was properly formatted. “Thank you, Mr. Forbes,” the customs officer said, as he eyed the screen. “Look at the scanner, please.”
Leng knew the moment of truth was at hand. Would the colored contacts he was wearing spoof the retinal scanner the way they were supposed to? Or set off an alarm and bring a quick response team down on him? His heart beat a little bit faster as he took a step forward and turned right. A tone sounded and the turian removed the passport from the reader. “Welcome to the Citadel, Mr. Forbes. Please proceed to station two.”
Leng smiled. The specially designed contacts were a success. “Thank you.”
Flashing arrows led Leng and his suitcases to station two, where a robot was waiting to lift his luggage up onto a stainless-steel table. A uniformed officer greeted him, asked Leng to open both cases, and gave the contents a cursory examination. The cane, which he continued to lean on, went uninspected. “Welcome to the Citadel,” the officer said, as he motioned to the robot. “Please follow the floor lights out to the arrival area.”
