Mass Effect: The Complete Novels 4-Book Bundle (97 page)

Anderson’s train of thought was interrupted as Brinsa entered the office. “Lieutenant Varma is holding, sir. Shall I put the call through?”

“Yes,” Hana replied, before returning to his desk in order to pick up the handset. “Please excuse me, but this call could have a bearing on the subject at hand.”

The salarian had chosen to keep the call to himself rather than pipe it over the sound system. “Lieutenant Varma? Hana here.”

The ensuing conversation was a one-sided affair in which Varma did most of the talking. Hana’s responses were limited to comments like, “Really?”

“Interesting …” And, “Yes, double check to make sure that you got all of them.”

Once the call was over Hana put the hand unit down and returned to his chair. “You’ll be interested to know that the lieutenant is in your apartment.”

“In our apartment?” Kahlee demanded. “She doesn’t have a right to go in there.”

“Oh, but she does,” Hana replied coolly. “C-Sec officers can go anywhere they need to so long as they have permission from the right people. In this case
me
. And I authorized a search because the missing boy, McCann’s death, and the theft of Grayson’s body all share a common element. And that’s
you
.

“No,” the salarian said preemptively, as Anderson started to object. “I don’t think you stole Grayson’s body. I said that all of those events were related to you in some way. And that’s why Lieutenant Varma was authorized to enter your apartment and sweep it for bugs. Her team found twelve of them. Someone was monitoring everything you did.”

Kahlee blushed and Anderson swore.

“I agree with your sentiment,” Hana said with the hint of a smile. “And it’s apparent that someone is worried about what you might learn. That would suggest caution. A great deal of caution lest one or both of you wind up like McCann.”

It was a sobering thought. Anderson looked at Kahlee and back again. “We’ll be careful.”

“Good. What do you plan to do next?”

Hana’s eyes were as dark as the depths of space. Once again Anderson felt a sense of caution. Why did Hana want to know? It was a silly question. It was his job to know. “We’re going to Omega.”

“To find the boy?”

“To find the boy
and
Grayson’s daughter Gillian,” Kahlee put in. “She wants to find the Illusive Man and kill him.”

“A noble ambition,” Hana responded. “But wasted effort. So you’ll try to intervene?”

“Yes,” Kahlee replied. “And see what we can learn. Maybe Gillian will stir things up. If so we could find the kind of information we’re looking for.”

Hana stood. It was his way of announcing that the meeting was over. “Stay in touch,” he said.

It could have been an invitation, or a way of conveying concern, but Anderson was a military man and knew an order when he heard one. “Sir, yes, sir.”

The air was cool as Aria T’Loak stepped out of her bedroom and onto the veranda. It was protected by a roof supported by seven fluted columns. One for each of the city’s softly rounded hills. Three of them were visible from that side of her house. Their carefully groomed slopes were home to hundreds of expensive houses and the early-morning light was reflected off broad expanses of glass, swimming pools, and weapons turrets. The hallmark of the rich.

But as Aria had discovered more than once during her long life, there were some things that money couldn’t buy. One of which was peace of mind. Because the vision of her daughter’s dead body was always there, always in the back of her mind, never letting go.

The Illusive Man maintained that Paul Grayson
was responsible for Liselle’s death. And that made sense because they’d been lovers and he was a red sand addict. So perhaps there had been some sort of quarrel, Grayson had been high, and slashed Liselle’s throat.

The problem was that T’Loak was a criminal and a very accomplished one. Many people believed she was the dominant force on Omega and they were correct. That, plus the fact that she was hundreds of years old, meant T’Loak had lots of experience where the act of murder was concerned. And something, she wasn’t sure what, was wrong.
But I’ll figure it out
, she promised herself,
and sooner rather than later
.

But it would have to wait. Because rather than cremate Liselle on Omega, it had been T’Loak’s decision to bring her daughter home, where tradition said her spirit would join those who had gone before. T’Loak wasn’t sure about that but hoped it was true. So she took a last look at the city she loved, then turned her back on it as she had so many times before, and went inside. The funeral was to begin in less than an hour.

In keeping with asari tradition, Liselle’s carefully preserved body had been bathed, anointed with oil, and dressed in a white gown the evening before. Then it had been placed on a specially constructed platform at the center of the villa’s spacious entry hall overnight. The four guards assigned to protect it were still on duty when T’Loak arrived.

She was dressed in a long gown with a formfitting bodice, as were the other asari who were awaiting her. There were eight of them and all were relatives. But not T’Loak’s
only
relatives. She had hundreds of
those. And most disapproved of the way she made her living. More than that, they blamed T’Loak for raising Liselle on Omega and allowing her to live there. And in retrospect the crime lord agreed with them. The fact that Liselle had fallen in with bad company was her fault. And the knowledge ate at her.

So as the guests came forward to lift the ornate stretcher off the platform there were barely enough of them to do the job. And as the mourners carried the body out through the front door to a long sleek hearse they were outnumbered by the heavily armed bodyguards positioned all around.
Bodyguards
, Aria thought bitterly.
How fitting
.

The funeral cortege consisted of four vehicles. A specially designed car that was equipped to ram vehicles and push them out of the way if necessary would take the lead. Next came the heavily armored stretch limo in which T’Loak and the other family members would ride, closely followed by the hearse, and what looked like a black delivery truck. Except it could open a pair of roof panels to fire missiles at air and ground targets. That was unlikely of course, especially on Thessia, but the price of power was powerful enemies. And T’Loak never took chances she didn’t have to.

Once the vehicles were loaded the processional departed. No one spoke inside the limo. That was T’Loak’s prerogative and she had never been one to share her feelings with others. So silence reigned as the vehicles wound their way down zigzagging streets, past hillside villas, to the flatland below. It was dense with clusters of high-rise buildings—many of which were bound together by delicate-looking sky bridges.
Lesser structures were gathered about the skyscrapers and represented self-governing neighborhoods. Some were quite nice and some weren’t.

T’Loak was very familiar with the city’s ugly underbelly because she had been raised in a twenty-square-block area called Hell’s Waiting Room, where everyone lived by their wits, no one could be trusted, and crime was the norm. Her mother
hadn’t
been raised there, but had been drawn to the flats for reasons T’Loak could only guess at, and never left. Since leaving home T’Loak had risen to what one of her more proper relatives called “an ugly prominence.” Words that were supposed to hurt but didn’t, because T’Loak saw her profession as being the natural expression of the way nature worked. Every planet had a food chain, predators were always at the top of it, and everything else was sentimental rubbish.

A row of stately evergreens blipped past on the left, each momentarily blocking the view of the sparkling river beyond, and the occasional groupings of homes along both banks. Then, as the highway followed a broad curve, the cemetery appeared in the distance. It had been in use for thousands of years and covered a vast tract of land. The seemingly endless maze of tombs, monuments, and markers came in every possible shape and size. Some looked like temples. Others took the form of soaring spires, statues, and pieces of abstract art.

The monuments surrounded the cortege as it followed a meandering street past a beautiful dome to the one-lane bridge that led out to the center of an artificial lake. The plot of land had been at the very edge of the cemetery back when T’Loak purchased it.

But thousands of monuments had been added since then, making the small body of water all the more remarkable. It was, some said, a moat. Put there to keep lesser beings at a distance. Others saw it as a testament to the size of T’Loak’s ego, an effort to manage her own passing, and a sign of poor taste.
And all of those criticisms are correct
, T’Loak thought to herself, as the cortege came to a stop.
Not that it matters
.

The pyramid-shaped structure was made of black granite, and harkened back to a much younger version of herself, a person who had something to prove and thought that extravagance was the way to do it. It was the sort of immaturity typical of someone who is only a hundred years old and on the make. Now, as an asari matron, T’Loak thought the place was overdone. But to change it would be to apologize, to betray her younger self, and that was something she steadfastly refused to do.

T’Loak waited for the driver to come back and open the door before getting out and leading the other mourners to the point where they could remove the ceremonial stretcher from the back of the hearse. Liselle’s eyes were closed. Makeup concealed the horrible cut across her throat and her hands were clasped in front of her chest.
I will not cry
, T’Loak thought to herself.
Crying is a sign of weakness
.

After lifting the stretcher the female pallbearers followed T’Loak down a steep ramp and into the circular chamber below. It was cool there. The lighting was intentionally subdued, and water gurgled as it spilled out of the vessel at the center of the room and cascaded into a pool.

Equally spaced chambers were set into the wall like spokes in a wheel. Some were occupied and some weren’t. A capsule had been prepared for Liselle and was waiting. Slowly, using great care, Liselle’s body was lifted up and in. Once the process was complete, T’Loak bent to kiss her daughter’s cold lips. “I won’t give up,” she promised. “Not until I know the truth.”

Then as the casket was closed and pushed into the wall, the woman who wasn’t going to cry began to do so. Deep sobs racked her body as she stood head down in front of the name that had been chiseled into the marble. But none of the others dared embrace her, or to offer words of solace, because Aria T’Loak was the Pirate Queen. And to touch her was to die.

As the freighter
Pictor
shot toward the mass effect relay at a speed of nearly fifteen kilometers per second, it was little more than a momentary blur. Then there was a sudden flare of light as the ship’s element-zero core was taken off-line and its mass effect fields were snuffed from existence. Like a projectile fired from a rifle the
Pictor
flew toward what looked like an evil eye floating in the blackness of space. Two communications masts stood straight up from a structure that consisted of two gigantic rings that rotated around a glowing sphere.

Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, the rings began to spin as the ship closed in. Then, once the
Pictor
was about five hundred kilometers away, the relay fired and the freighter was consumed by a vortex of dark energy. It shimmered and disappeared.

But because Anderson was busy making love to Kahlee he missed the transition from one state to another. The big passenger liners didn’t serve Omega. So anyone who wanted to travel there from the Citadel had to have a ship of their own or book passage on a freighter like the
Pictor
. Like most of her kind she was equipped to carry both cargo and a handful of passengers.

The fact that the emphasis was on freight rather than people meant that the cabins were so small and cramped that there was barely enough space to walk around the bed. So it was the natural place to sit. And once they sat on the bed one thing led to another and it wasn’t long before the couple were on a journey of their own. A very pleasant interlude that was barely over when someone began to thump on the hatch. And that was necessary since neither the intercom nor the doorbell worked. “Yeah, yeah,” Anderson grumbled, as he pulled his pants on. “Just a minute.”

Having pulled the blankets up over her breasts Kahlee watched the hatch cycle open to reveal a portly volus. He was the ship’s steward and none too pleased. “Your Earth friend is causing trouble.”

“Hendel Mitra? Causing trouble? That’s hard to believe,” Anderson said.

“There was a fight in cargo hold two. Human Mitra attacked four crew members and two fellow passengers. Then he locked himself in the cook’s storeroom. He refuses to come out.”

Anderson swore and looked back over his shoulder. “Did you hear that? You know Hendel better than I do. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Kahlee said. “Close the hatch so I can get dressed. I’m coming along.”

It took fifteen minutes to throw some clothes on and follow the steward down into the depths of the ship where some of the passengers and crew had been gambling and drinking in a half-empty cargo compartment. An overturned table and some mismatched chairs lay strewn about. “The fight took place
here
,” the volus said accusingly, as if Anderson and Kahlee were responsible somehow. “According to witnesses the Mitra person attacked the others for no reason. Then, when they attempted to defend themselves, he ran.”

Kahlee didn’t believe a word of it. Hendel was one of the most disciplined and dependable people she knew. He had been born on Earth in the suburbs of New Calcutta. His mother had been accidentally exposed to element zero dust during her pregnancy and rather than the birth defects that some “dust” babies wound up with, Hendel was born with biotic powers.