Mass Effect: The Complete Novels 4-Book Bundle (89 page)

Gillian had been giddy with excitement as she followed the rest of the quarians onto the batarian ship. But now she realized how much danger they were in. If the slavers managed to break contact with the
Idenna
the quarians would be trapped.

That possibility caused Gillian to push her way forward. Having caught up with Hendel she followed him to the emergency access shaft at the forward end of the compartment. “We can’t use the lift,” he explained. “They might shut it down and trap us inside. Be careful, Gillian—you were lucky back on the
Idenna
.”

Gillian knew he was right as she swarmed up the ladder to the control deck. It was heavily defended
and this became apparent when projectiles struck Gillian’s armor, pushed her back, and forced her to take cover in the shaft. “Freeze ’em,” Hendel advised from a few rungs below. “But let us squeeze past first.”

Some biotics could create a moment of stasis, meaning a mass effect field that could lock an opponent inside, rendering them momentarily invulnerable to attack. And while that ability wasn’t as natural to Gillian as propelling an object through the air, she’d been working on it. But would it be effective on targets she couldn’t actually
see
? There was no way to be sure.

As Hendel led the others upward Gillian sought to gather as much energy around her as possible. Having done so she shaped it into a sphere and “saw” it freeze some imaginary batarians in place. Then came the struggle to sustain the stasis field for as long as she could. Three seconds later Gillian felt the bubble “pop” and lunged upward.

She stepped out of the shaft with pistol in hand. Half a dozen bodies were scattered around the center of the U-shaped control area and three batarians stood with hands on top of their heads. “You did it,” Hendel said proudly. “You froze two of them
and
Ibin Vas Idenna. He’s pissed, but he’ll get over it.”

Gillian felt an enormous sense of relief followed by a sudden emptiness as the aftereffects caught up with her. “Catch her,” Hendel said, and everything went black.

Six hours had passed since the end of the battle and Hal McCann felt disappointed. Rather than being freed he and all the rest of the slaves had been placed under guard and led onto the quarian ship. It was a sensible precaution. He knew that. The quarians wanted to find out who the slaves were before turning them loose.

So as the ships remained locked together, and the quarians worked to bring their command and control systems back online, teams of interrogators were interviewing the slaves. Some were freed, but some weren’t, and McCann felt a sense of apprehension as a couple of them were led away in handcuffs.

The line snaked across the bloodstained trading deck to a table where a couple of quarians were seated. Finally, having waited through the queue, it was McCann’s turn to answer questions. The interrogators were invisible behind their reflective visors, and like many people in the galaxy McCann had a poor opinion of them. “Name?”

“Hal McCann. There were humans among the boarding party. Two of them. I respectfully request that they be present during my interview.”

There was a moment of silence as the quarians looked at each other then back to him. Had they been communicating via a comm? It seemed that way when one of them pointed to a spot off to one side. “Wait there. Next.”

McCann did as he was told. His legs were free, but his wrists were cuffed, and a heavily armed guard was stationed three meters away. He didn’t have a watch, but what seemed like an hour passed before the humans
appeared. McCann was sitting cross-legged on the deck by that time, so he pushed himself up into a standing position as the newcomers went over to speak with the quarian interrogators.

When they came his way McCann saw that the man was over six feet tall with a closely cropped mustache and goatee. He had rusty brown hair, dark-colored skin, and an air of confidence about him.

The girl was shorter, but not by much, and thin. Her hair was black and pulled back away from a long narrow face. Her wide-set eyes seemed especially intense somehow, as if the mind behind them was hard at work. “Hal McCann?” the man inquired. “I’m Hendel Mitra. This is Gillian Grayson.”

McCann felt a sense of shock so profound that his mouth opened and closed like a newly landed fish. “
Gillian
Grayson? Paul Grayson’s daughter?”

Gillian’s face brightened. “You know my father?”

“Well, yes,” McCann admitted. “We were on a Cerberus space station at the same time.”

Gillian’s coal black eyes seemed to drill holes in him. “ ‘Were’? What happened?”

McCann could tell that the girl wasn’t aware of her father’s death—and knew he would have to be very careful in order to win his freedom. “The turians attacked. We fought back but were outgunned. I took a hit right here.”

So saying McCann pulled his long unkempt hair aside so that the other two could see the patch of white scar tissue. “It knocked me out. When I came to a body was lying on top of me. The turians were searching them—taking whatever they wanted. So I played dead, and given all the blood on my face, they bought it.

“Eventually they carried all of the bodies including mine off the station and onto a shuttle. Based on what I overheard the dead were supposed to be transported to a ship. But I knew better than to go along with that. So as soon as the shuttle got under way I fought my way free of the bodies, took one of the weapons that the turians had captured from us, and went forward. There was a pilot and a copilot. I shot both in the back of the head.”

“But what about my father?” Gillian wanted to know. “What happened to
him
?”

“I didn’t know at that point,” McCann answered honestly. “The shuttle had a basic FTL drive. All I could do was point the shuttle at the nearest mass effect relay and head for Omega. I figured that was the best place to go since I had no way to know if the Illusive Man was still alive. Plus I was at the controls of a stolen shuttle. So where else
could
I go?

“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.

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.