Mass Effect: The Complete Novels 4-Book Bundle (6 page)

“Lieutenant Kahlee Sanders, you’re under arrest on suspicion of conspiring to commit treason against the Alliance.”

In her surprise it had taken Kahlee a second to realize what the man was wearing. Now she clearly recognized his uniform: Alliance MP. They’d found her already. He must have spotted her on the main road and followed her into the deserted alley.

All the fight went out of her. Her head slumped forward as she surrendered to her fate. “I didn’t do it,” she whispered. “It’s not what you think.”

He grunted as if he didn’t believe her, but he did drop his hand from her shoulder. She could feel the skin beneath her shirt bruising already.

Pulling out a pair of cuffs from his belt, he held them up for her to see. In a curt voice he ordered, “Turn around, Lieutenant. Hands behind your back.”

She hesitated, then nodded. Resisting would only make things worse. She was innocent, now she’d have to prove it in front of a military tribunal.

“Don’t try to run,” he warned. “I’m authorized to use lethal force if necessary.” His words drew her attention down to the weapon on his hip even as she slowly turned her back to him, complying with his commands. From the corner of her eye she was just able to make out the Ahial Syndicate–manufactured Striker pistol holstered on his hip.

Her mind screamed out a warning even as she felt the cuff slap onto her right wrist. The Hahne-Kedar P7 was the standard-issue pistol for all Alliance personnel, not the Striker!

The realization came a millisecond after she felt the second cuff slap around her left wrist. Acting on instinct and adrenaline, Kahlee threw her head back violently. She was rewarded with a wet crunch as it smashed into the face of the fake Alliance MP.

She spun around as the man dropped to his knees, momentarily stunned by her unexpected attack. His arms dangled limply at his sides and a river of blood was pouring from his mouth and nose, creating a moist, dark stain on his face: the perfect target as she brought her knee up, inflicting even more damage to the injured area.

The blow knocked him backwards, and he slumped down onto his side, gurgling and choking as the blood clogged his throat. His body twitched and he flailed his legs, trying to ward off his attacker. But Kahlee was remorseless. She didn’t know who this imposter was—mercenary or assassin—but she knew if she didn’t get away from him, she was dead.

Calling on memories of the hand-to-hand combat classes all Alliance personnel received during basic training, she easily avoided his feeble kicks. With her hands still cuffed behind her back her feet were her only weapon. She danced around the prone figure, moving in so she could deliver the steel toes and heavy heels of her combat boots to the vulnerable areas of his head and chest.

Her opponent rolled onto his stomach, trying to protect himself. Kahlee hesitated for a second, then spotted his hand fumbling at the holster of his gun. She leaped forward and stomped on his fingers, again and again, turning his digits into a mess of broken bones and mangled flesh.

She ignored the whimpers and burbling cries as the man tried to beg for mercy through blood and shattered teeth. He was still conscious, so he was still a threat. She kicked him hard in the temple, possibly fracturing his skull. His body spasmed once, then went limp. Another hard kick to the ribs evoked no reaction, assuring her he was really out.

She dropped down onto the ground beside the body, moving quickly in case somebody came into the alley to investigate the commotion. The fake MP had cuffed her hands behind her back, but he hadn’t done a very good job of it. The metal rings were loose enough on her wrists to allow Kahlee to slide them several inches up and down her forearms—there was just enough play that she might be able to get free. Squirming and struggling, she managed to contort her body enough to slide her chained wrists down past her hip bones and along the backs of her thighs to her knees. She rolled onto her back and side, twisting so she could pull her feet through. Her wrists were still cuffed, but at least they were now in front of her.

Suppressing a gag reflex, she crawled on her hands and knees through the blood of her assailant until she was directly over his motionless body. He was still breathing in shallow, half-choked gasps. Kahlee let loose the breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding. She felt no remorse over the savage beating she’d inflicted while fighting to save her own life, but she was glad she wouldn’t have this man’s death on her conscience.

Training and adrenaline had saved her. That, and the carelessness of her opponent. But as her adrenaline wound down and she took in the gruesome scene, she felt the first hints of panic. She was a soldier, but she’d never seen combat duty. She’d never encountered anything like this.

Come on, Sanders!
The voice inside her head was that of her former drill instructor, though the words were her own.
You’re not out of this mess yet.

She gritted her teeth, determined to finish the job. Even so, Kahlee shuddered as she fumbled around the man’s blood-soaked belt until she found the key to unlock her shackles. Releasing the cuffs proved even more difficult than sliding them around to her front, as she had to clasp the key in her teeth and try to fit it into the lock. But after several frustrating minutes she heard the click, and the bonds fell away from her left wrist. With one hand free it only took another second to unlock the other cuff and Kahlee was free.

Kahlee took a quick look around, relieved to see nobody had stumbled into the alley yet. She grabbed the gun from the man’s holster, checked that the safety was on, and stuffed it beneath her jacket and into her belt. She stood up, then froze.

She didn’t know who the unconscious man at her feet was working for, but it was obvious he had been specifically looking for her. That meant others probably were, too. They’d have the ports staked out, just waiting for her to try and get off-world. She was trapped. She couldn’t even go back to the main street. Not with her clothes covered in blood.

There was only one option left. Taking another breath to calm her jangling nerves, Kahlee left her assailant’s body where it lay, moving quickly in the direction away from the busy thoroughfare. She spent the rest of the night skulking through the back alleys of Elysium, careful to avoid detection, slowly making her way toward the house of the only person she could turn to for help. A man she promised her mother she’d never speak to again.

FIVE

Within a decade of its discovery by batarian surveyors, Camala had become one of the most important planets in the Skyllian Verge. Unlike most colony worlds, where initial populations were small and settlers tended to congregate around a single major city, Camala boasted two distinct metropolitan regions of over a million people each: Ujon, the capital, and the slightly larger Hatre, location of the world’s primary spaceports.

The two cities were nearly five hundred kilometers apart, built on opposite sides of a wide, inhospitable desert—the source of Camala’s rapid growth. For below the thin layer of orange sand and the hard, red rock underneath were some of the largest deposits of element zero in the Verge. The rich deposits of eezo—the galaxy’s most valuable fuel source—drove Camala’s economy, drawing in colonists eager to seek their fortunes working at the hundreds of mining and refinery operations scattered across the empty desert. The majority of the world’s population were batarians, and only they enjoyed the full privileges of true citizenship under local law. But like any colony world with a prosperous economy, there was always a steady influx of visitors and immigrants from every recognized species across Citadel space.

Camala was easily the wealthiest of the batarian colony worlds, and Edan Had’dah was one of the wealthiest batarians on Camala. He was quite likely among the ten richest individuals in the entire Skyllian Verge, and he wasn’t afraid to show it. Normally he wore the latest in cutting-edge fashions: asari-designed ensembles made with the finest materials imported from Thessia itself. His preference ran to the opulent and extravagant—flowing black robes highlighted with splashes of red to bring out the hues of his skin. But for the meeting tonight he had donned a simple brown suit covered by a drab gray overcoat. For someone as infamously ostentatious as Edan Had’dah, his plain garb was an almost impenetrable disguise.

Typically, Edan would be enjoying a soothing nightcap at this hour, sipping the finest of hanar liquors in the den of his mansion in Ujon. But this night was positively atypical. Instead of relaxing in comfort and luxury, he was stuck sitting on a hard chair in a dingy warehouse in the desert outside Hatre, waiting for the Verge’s most infamous bounty hunter to arrive. Edan didn’t like waiting.

He wasn’t waiting alone. At least a dozen other men, all members of the Blue Sun mercenary gang, were milling about the warehouse. Six of them were batarian, two were turian, and the rest were human.

Edan didn’t like humans, either. Like his own species, they were bipedal. Similar in height, the humans were thicker in the torso, arms, and legs. They had short, stubby necks and square, blockish heads. And like all binocular species, their faces seemed lacking in character and intelligence. Instead of nostril slits they had an odd jutting protuberance for a nose. Even their mouths were strange, their lips so full and puffy it was a wonder they didn’t slur their speech. He actually thought they closely resembled the asari—another race Edan didn’t like.

But he wasn’t one to let personal prejudice get in the way of business. There were several other so-called private security organizations for hire in the Skyllian Verge, and most of them charged a lot less than the Blue Suns. But the Suns had developed a reputation for being both discreet and ruthlessly efficient. Edan had used them several times in the past when “unconventional” business opportunities had presented themselves, so he knew from personal experience that their reputation was well earned. He wasn’t about to trust a mission as important as this one to someone else simply because the Suns had recently started taking on humans. Even though it had been a human member of the group who had screwed up on Elysium.

Normally Edan would never meet directly with the mercenaries he employed. He preferred to work through agents and go-betweens to keep his identity hidden—and also to avoid dealing with those who were socially beneath him. But the man he was hiring tonight had insisted on meeting him in person. Edan had no intention of bringing a bounty hunter into his home … or of meeting with him alone. So he’d donned the nondescript clothes, left his mansion, and traveled hundreds of kilometers by private plane to the outskirts of Ujon’s twin city on the other side of the desert. Now he was spending the night in a cold, dusty warehouse filled with soldiers for hire, sitting in a chair that was causing his back to ache and his legs to go numb. And the bounty hunter was over an hour late!

But it wasn’t as if he could change his mind. He was in too deep. The Blue Suns in the warehouse knew his identity; now he’d have to keep them around as his personal bodyguards until this job was finished. It was the only way to make sure they didn’t reveal his identity to the rest of the Blue Sun crew. What happened at Sidon was going to draw attention, and Edan couldn’t take the risk of someone exposing his involvement. He also needed to make sure there were no loose ends that could link him to the attack, which was why he had agreed to this meeting.

“He’s here.” Edan jumped slightly at the voice. One of the Blue Suns—a fellow batarian—had crept up silently behind him and was now standing close enough to whisper in his ear.

“Bring him in,” he replied, quickly regaining his composure. The merc nodded and left the room as his employer stood up, grateful to be out of the uncomfortable chair. A moment later the guest of honor finally appeared.

He was easily the most impressive krogan Edan had ever seen. At two and a half meters tall and nearly two hundred kilograms, he was large even by the standards of his reptilian species, but not enormous. Like all krogan, the top of his spine was slightly curved, giving him a hunchbacked appearance. The effect was further enhanced by the heavy frill of bone and scaled flesh growing from his upper back, collar, and shoulders like a thick shell, from which his blunt head protruded. Rough, leathery plates covered the crown of his skull and nape of his neck. His features were flat and brutish, almost prehistoric. He had no visible nose or ears and his eyes were small and set wide on either side of his head, though they gleamed with a cruel cunning.

A krogan could live for several centuries, his or her complexion growing duller and darker with age; this one’s skin was all mottled browns and tans, with almost no remaining trace of the pale yellow and green markings common to younger members of the species. A labyrinth of discolored welts and scars crisscrossed his face and throat, ancient battle wounds forming a disfiguring pattern, as if all his veins were on the verge of bursting through the surface of his skin. He wore light body armor, but he carried no weapons—those would have been removed at the door, as per Edan’s previous orders. Despite being unarmed he still radiated an aura of menace and destruction.

The krogan walked with an odd, lumbering grace; a force of nature rolling across the floor of the warehouse, merciless and unstoppable. Four Blue Suns escorted him in, two marching on either side. They were there to intimidate the bounty hunter and dissuade him from any aggressive responses if the negotiations went poorly. But it was clear that they were the ones who felt intimidated. Their tension was obvious in every step; they moved as if they were standing on the edge of a volcano about to erupt. One of them, a young human with a Blue Sun tattoo covering his left eye, kept reaching down to the pistol at his side as if trying to draw courage from the mere act of touching it.

Edan would have found their discomfort amusing if he hadn’t been relying on them for protection. The batarian decided he would do everything in his power to make sure this meeting went smoothly.

As the krogan approached, his lips pulled back in a snarl, exposing his serrated teeth … or maybe it was a smile. He stopped a few steps away, still flanked on either side by the four mercenaries.

“My name is Skarr,” he growled, his voice so deep it sent thrumming vibrations across the floor.

“I am Edan Had’dah,” the batarian replied, giving a slight tilt of his head to the left, a gesture of admiration and respect among his species. Skarr tilted his own head in response, but he leaned to the right: a greeting usually directed at inferiors.

Edan bristled involuntarily. Either Skarr was insulting him, or the krogan didn’t understand the significance of the gesture. He chose to proceed as if it was the latter explanation, though from what he knew of Skarr there was a good chance it was the former.

“I don’t normally agree to meet with the people I hire,” he explained, “but in your case I chose to make an exception. Based on your reputation, your skills are worth bending the rules for.”

Skarr dismissed the compliment with a derisive snort. “Based on your reputation I thought you’d be better dressed. You sure you can afford me?”

There were some shocked murmurs from the other batarians in the room. Casting aspersions on the monetary worth of a social better was a grave insult among their culture. Again, Edan wondered if Skarr had done this on purpose. Fortunately, he was used to dealing with the less-cultured species of the galaxy, and he wasn’t hiring Skarr because of his renowned etiquette.

“Rest assured, I have sufficient funds to pay you,” he replied, his voice calm and even. “It is a simple job.”

“This have anything to do with the Sidon base?”

Edan’s inner eyes blinked once, registering his surprise. Negotiation was a subtle dance of deception and misinformation, each party holding secrets from the other in an effort to gain the upper hand. And Edan had just slipped up. His involuntary reaction had revealed a fact he’d meant to keep hidden … if the krogan was smart enough to pick up on it.

“Sidon? Why would you think that?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

Skarr shrugged his massive shoulders. “Just a hunch. And my price just went up.”

“Your involvement only requires you to find and eliminate your target,” Edan countered. His voice gave nothing away, but inside he was silently cursing himself for losing the first round of bargaining.

“Target? Just one?”

“Just one. A female human.”

The krogan turned his head from side to side, scanning the dozen or so Blue Sun mercs scattered about the warehouse. “You’ve got a lot of men here. Why don’t you make them do your dirty work?”

Edan hesitated. He preferred to ask the questions; he didn’t like answering them. He was wary of making another mistake in their negotiation. But even his reluctance gave away more than he intended.

Skarr barked out a laugh. “These
hrakhors
screwed it up, didn’t they?”

Every merc in the warehouse tensed up at his words, confirming them as fact. Not that it mattered. Somehow Edan knew Skarr would see through any false denials, so he simply nodded, conceding another point to his opponent.

“What happened?” the krogan wanted to know.

“I hired the Blue Suns to find her and bring her in for interrogation,” Edan admitted. “One of them spotted her on Elysium. They found him several hours later crawling around a side street, looking for his teeth.”

“That’s what happens when you’re too cheap to hire a real professional.”

One insult too many.

The man with the tattoo whipped his pistol out and slammed the butt against the side of the krogan’s skull. The force of the blow rocked Skarr’s head to the side, but it did not knock him off his feet. He wheeled around with a deafening roar, catching his attacker with a vicious backhand that broke the young man’s neck.

The other three mercs fell on Skarr before their comrade’s body hit the ground, their combined weight dragging the big alien to the floor. Before the meeting, Edan had given them strict orders not to kill Skarr unless absolutely necessary … he needed him to track down the missing woman. So instead of shooting the bounty hunter all three were piled on top of him, pinning him to the ground as they tried to pistol whip him into unconsciousness.

Unfortunately, nobody had told Skarr
he
couldn’t kill
them.
A long, jagged blade appeared in his hand, materializing from some secret hiding place in a boot, belt, or glove. Edan jumped back from the fray as the blade gashed open the throat of one merc. The return arc sliced through the vulnerable joint between the knee and thigh in the body armor of a second, severing his femoral artery. As he instinctively clutched at the gushing wound with both hands Skarr drove the blade into his chest, piercing his protective vest and puncturing his heart.

The blade momentarily stuck in the rib cage as the krogan tried to pull it out, giving the last surviving merc, another human, the chance to roll away from the pile and scramble to his feet, safely out of the knife’s range. The human whipped out his pistol and pointed it at the gore-covered bounty hunter, who was still on the floor.

“Don’t move!” the man screamed, his voice cracking with fear.

Skarr’s head snapped from side to side, ignoring the enemy in front of him as he took stock of the eight other mercs in the warehouse. Every single one of them had their assault rifles trained on him, ready to fire. The knife dropped to the floor and Skarr raised his empty hands above his head as he slowly stood up. He turned to face Edan as the merc with the pistol took a few steps farther back, just to be safe.

“So what happens now, batarian?”

Edan finally had the upper hand in their negotiations, and he was eager to press his advantage. “Maybe I should just order them to kill you where you stand.” He kept his inner eyes focused on Skarr, but let the other pair glance around the room to draw attention to the fact that the bounty hunter was surrounded.

The krogan merely laughed at the empty threat. “If you wanted me dead, they’d have shot me before I had a chance to pull my knife. But they didn’t. You must have given them orders not to take me out, so I figure I’m worth more to you than a handful of dead mercs. My price just went up again.”

Even with a warehouse full of armed mercenaries pointing their weapons at him, the krogan was perceptive enough to turn the situation to his profit. Underestimating Skarr’s intelligence was a mistake Edan vowed he wouldn’t make again. He wondered how many other people had underestimated Skarr in the past … and what it had cost them.