Mass Effect: The Complete Novels 4-Book Bundle (21 page)

A second later the buckle detached. She managed to keep her head from slamming to the ground, though she did bang one of her knees painfully on the mangled dashboard as she fell. Strong hands seized her arms and pulled her to freedom through the gaping hole that had once been filled with tempered glass.

Now that she was upright, the excess of blood rushed away from Kahlee’s head, allowing her world to slowly come back into focus. Miraculously, the marines in the back of the APC had all survived. The five of them and Kahlee were now huddled in the shadow of their overturned vehicle, temporarily using it for cover.

She could hear the sound of gunfire. It wasn’t the heavy
thunk-thunk-thunk
of antitank weapons, but rather the sharp
rat-tat-tat
she recognized as bursts from an assault rifle. She could hear the metal pings as bullets ricocheted off the armor-plated rover that hid them from enemy sight.

Kahlee didn’t even have a pistol on her, but the marines had recovered their weapons from the crash. Unfortunately, they were pinned down by a steady stream of enemy rounds, unable to use them. Given the constant barrage of enemy bullets, even a split second of exposure to try and return fire was too great a risk.

“Why aren’t they using their cannons?” Kahlee shouted, her voice almost drowned out by the sounds of the battle.

“They must want to take us alive!” one of the marines replied, giving her a look that made it clear they all knew the enemy was only concerned with the survival of one specific person.

“They’re trying to flank us!” another marine shouted, pointing off at the horizon.

One of the rovers had sped off in the distance, so far away it was barely visible. It was circling around behind them in a wide, looping arc, well beyond the range of the marines’ automatic weapons.

Kahlee’s attention was pulled away from the rover by a deafening roar from above; the unmistakable sound of a space vessel’s drive-core engines burning in the atmosphere. Turning her attention upward, she saw a small ship swooping down from the sky.

“It’s the
Iwo Jima
!” one of the marines cried out.

The ship was moving fast, diving straight for the lone rover trying to flank them. Less than fifty meters from the ground it pulled up sharply and opened fire. A single, well-targeted blast from the ship’s
GARDIAN
defense lasers turned the rover into scrap metal.

The
Iwo Jima
banked and changed direction, its trajectory bringing it straight toward the two surviving rovers as the marines let loose with spontaneous, exultant cheers. The cavalry had arrived!

Skarr had seen the frigate approaching long before it fired the lethal volley that took out the first of the Blue Sun rovers. Its arrival was an inconvenient, but not unanticipated, event.

Moving with a quick but calm sense of purpose, he leaped out of his own rover and started shouting orders. Following his commands, the mercs quickly unloaded and assembled the portable mass accelerator cannon they’d stashed in the back of the vehicle.

While the Alliance frigate fired its lasers on the defenseless rovers, Skarr was arming the weapon; loading an ammo packet filled with hundreds of small explosive rounds. As the frigate banked toward them in a long, sweeping arc, he adjusted the aim and locked in on his target. And when he heard the cheers from the marines hiding behind the overturned APC, he fired.

The
GARDIAN
laser systems of the
Iwo Jima,
programmed to target and destroy incoming missiles, were overwhelmed by the sheer number of hypervelocity rounds fired at point-blank range. Normally the deadly projectiles would have deflected harmlessly off the ship’s kinetic barriers. But in order for a space-faring vessel to touch down on a planet’s surface and pick up a shore party, the barriers had to be shut down. As Skarr had suspected, the
Iwo Jima
hadn’t had time to reactive them yet.

Hundreds of tiny explosive shells impacted the ship’s exterior, shearing fist-sized holes in the hull as they detonated. The personnel on board were shredded by the sudden storm of burning shrapnel ricocheting around the interior of the vessel. The
Iwo Jima
veered out of control and crushed into the ground, disintegrating in a fiery explosion. Huge chunks of shrapnel rained down all around them, sending the mercs scampering and diving for cover. Skarr ignored the melted chunks of metal falling from the sky, instead slinging his assault rifle over one shoulder and marching out toward the overturned APC.

He headed straight at it, knowing the Alliance soldiers on the other side wouldn’t be able to see him coming. The vehicle providing them with cover was also obscuring their view of what was directly in front of them.

As he approached the APC, the mercs behind him split out to the sides, triangulating their positions so they could keep firing around him. They kept a steady stream of deadly high-velocity rounds trained on the vehicle, keeping the marines pinned down behind it.

Ignoring the constant gunfire, the krogan stopped less than ten meters away from the APC. Every muscle in his body tensed as he began to focus his biotic abilities. The reaction triggered an automatic biofeedback response in the amplification modules surgically implanted throughout his nervous system. He began to gather dark energy, drawing it in and trapping it the way a black hole traps light. It took almost ten full seconds for the power to build to maximum capacity. Then Skarr thrust forward with a fist, hurling it toward his target.

The overturned APC launched into the air, flying over the heads of the stunned Alliance marines to land a dozen meters behind them. They were caught off guard, completely surprised and totally exposed by the unexpected maneuver. Nothing in their training had prepared them for this. Uncertain how to react, they simply froze: a small group huddled together, crouching in the sand.

They would have been gunned down right then were it not for the fact that their enemy was just as surprised as they. The mercs had stopped shooting, watching in utter amazement as the krogan biotic had simply hurled the four-ton APC out of the way.

“Throw down your weapons!” Skarr growled.

The marines complied, knowing the battle was lost. They slowly stood up and raised their hands above their head, letting their assault rifles fall to the ground. Knowing she had no other choice, Kahlee did the same.

The krogan stepped forward and seized her by the upper arm, squeezing so hard she let out a cry of pain. One of the marines made half a move to help her, then pulled himself back. She was glad—he couldn’t help her; no sense getting himself killed.

While the mercs kept their weapons trained on their prisoners, Skarr half dragged, half carried Kahlee over to one of the vehicles. He threw her into the back, then climbed in beside her.

“Kill them,” he said to his men, nodding in the direction of the Alliance marines.

The sharp retorts of gunfire drowned out Kahlee’s screams.

Saren watched the entire scene unfold through his binoculars, never moving from his carefully chosen position. He was surprised when Skarr didn’t kill Sanders, instead taking her prisoner. Obviously her connection to all this was more than he’d first realized. But it didn’t really change anything.

The mercs climbed into their vehicles and sped off into the dusk, switching on their lights to guide them through the gloom.

Saren leaped down from his vantage point and ran over to the small scout rover he had parked nearby. The vehicle had been specially modified for stealth missions at night: the headlamps were equipped with dimming covers to disperse the illumination and angle it down toward the ground, creating a faint glow that would be enough to navigate by but was barely visible from more than a kilometer away.

In contrast, the high-powered beams of the other vehicles blazed like beacons in the darkness of the desert night. He’d easily be able to spot them from as far as ten kilometers out.

All he had to do was follow them, and they’d lead him right to wherever Edan was hiding.

NINETEEN

Anderson couldn’t help but feel nervous about this meeting. Even though the Council had officially approved the ambassador’s request, he was still haunted by the memory of his last meeting with Saren. For several long moments he’d been absolutely convinced the turian was going to leave him for dead outside the ruins of Dah’tan. When Ambassador Goyle had revealed that Saren might have a general hatred of the Alliance, he wasn’t the least bit surprised.

“Personal information on Spectres is sealed,” she told him, “but our intel dug up something interesting. Seems he lost his brother during the First Contact War.”

The lieutenant knew there were more than a few turians who were still bitter about the conflict, especially those who had lost family members. And he suspected Saren was the type who didn’t just carry a grudge, but fed it constantly. It may have started as a desire to avenge his brother, but after eight years it would have grown into something much darker: a twisted, festering loathing for all humanity.

As much as he wanted to catch those responsible for what had happened at Sidon, he wasn’t looking forward to working with Saren on this mission. He had a bad feeling about all this; just like the one he’d gotten when the
Hastings
had first responded to Sidon’s distress call. But he’d been given his orders, and he intended to follow them.

The fact that the turian was over an hour late didn’t make him feel any better. In the interests of trying to smooth things over, Anderson had let him pick the time and place of the meeting. He’d chosen midday at a small, dingy bar in a run-down neighborhood on the edges of Hatre. The kind of establishment where the customers made a point of ignoring neighboring conversations. Nobody here wanted to know what anybody else was up to.

Not that there was much chance of anyone overhearing them, anyway. The place was practically deserted this afternoon—probably the reason the turian had chosen this time of day. It made sense, but as Anderson sat alone at a table in the corner nursing his drink he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of game Saren was playing.

Why wasn’t he here? Was this some kind of setup? Or maybe a ploy to get him out of the way while the Spectre continued his investigation?

Twenty minutes later, he’d just made up his mind to leave when the door opened and the man he’d been waiting for stepped through. The bartender and the only other customer in the place besides Anderson glanced up as he entered, then looked away as Saren crossed the room with quick, angry steps.

“You’re late,” Anderson said as the turian sat down. He wasn’t expecting an apology, but he felt he was at least owed an explanation.

“I was working” was the curt reply.

The turian looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept all night. Anderson had contacted him early yesterday afternoon, right after he’d turned Kahlee over to the security team that was to help get her off world. He wondered if Saren had been working the case nonstop since then. Trying to finish everything off before he was forced to join up with his unwanted human partner.

“We’re in this together now,” Anderson reminded him.

“I received the Council’s message,” Saren replied, his voice heavy with contempt. “I intend to honor their wishes.”

“Glad to hear it,” Anderson replied coldly. “Last time we met I thought you were going to kill me.” There was no point in holding anything back; he wanted to know exactly where he stood with the Spectre. “Do I have to spend the rest of this mission looking over my shoulder?”

“I never kill someone without a reason,” Saren reminded him.

“I thought you could always find a reason to kill someone,” the lieutenant countered.

“But now I have a very good reason to keep you alive,” Saren assured him. “If you die, the Alliance will be crying out for my head. And the Council just might be inclined to give it to them. At the very least they’d revoke my Spectre status.

“Truthfully, I couldn’t care less whether you live or die, human,” the Spectre continued. From his tone they might have been discussing the weather. “But I don’t intend to do anything that will put my career at risk.”

Unless you’re sure you can get away with it,
Anderson thought. Out loud he asked, “You got the files we sent?”

Saren nodded.

“So what do we do next? How do we find Edan?”

“I’ve already found him” was the smug reply.

“How?” Anderson asked, surprised.

“I’m a Spectre. It’s my job.”

Realizing no explanation was forthcoming, Anderson let the matter drop. “Where is he?”

“In a bunker at an eezo refinery,” Saren replied. He tossed a set of architectural blueprints down on the table. “These are the schematics.”

Anderson almost asked where he’d gotten them, then bit his tongue. By law all eezo refineries were required to undergo a semiannual inspection. The layout of each plant needed to be available to the inspectors; it would have been an easy matter for someone with the authority of a Spectre to get his hands on them.

“I scouted out the exterior,” Saren continued. “It’s surrounded by a civilian work camp; the defenses are minimal. If we wait until nightfall, we should be able to get inside the perimeter without alerting anyone.”

“Then what? We just sneak in and kill Edan?”

“I’d prefer to take him alive. For interrogation.”

Something in the way he said
interrogation
made Anderson shiver. He already knew Saren had a cruel streak; it wasn’t hard to imagine that he actually enjoyed torturing prisoners as part of his job.

The turian must have seen his reaction. “You don’t like me, do you?”

There was no point in lying to him. Saren wouldn’t have believed him anyway.

“I don’t like you. It’s clear that you’re not my biggest fan, either. But I respect what you do. You’re a Spectre, and I think you’re damn good at your job. I’m hoping I can learn something from you.”

“And I’m just hoping you don’t screw this mission up for me,” Saren replied.

Anderson refused to rise to the bait. “You said we should infiltrate the refinery after dark. What do we do until then?”

“I need some rest,” the turian stated flatly, confirming Anderson’s suspicions that he’d been up all night. “The refinery’s about two hours outside the city. If we leave two hours after sundown, we’ll get there at midnight. That should give us enough time to get in and out before it gets light.”

The turian pushed his chair away from the table; obviously he felt the meeting was over. “Meet me back here at sixteen hundred,” he said before turning and walking away.

Anderson waited until he was gone, tossed a few credits down on the table to cover his drink, then got up and left. Camala used the galactic standard twenty-hour clock and it still wasn’t even 12:00 yet. There was no way he was spending the next four hours in this dive.

Besides, he hadn’t spoken to Ambassador Goyle since yesterday morning. Now might be a good time to check back in and see how Kahlee was doing. Strictly for the sake of the mission, of course.

“Is this line secure, Lieutenant?” Ambassador Goyle asked him.

“As secure as we’re going to get on a batarian world,” Anderson told her.

He was speaking to her via real-time video conference. Real-time communication from a colony in the Verge back to the Citadel was an incredibly complex and expensive process, but Anderson figured the Alliance could afford it.

“I met with Saren. Looks like he’s willing to let me tag along.”

There was a split second of lag as the signal was encrypted and packaged in a top-priority burst, then transmitted to a comm buoy orbiting Camala, and subsequently relayed across the extranet to the ambassador’s terminal on the Citadel before finally being decoded. The delay was barely noticeable, but it did cause a slight hitch in the ambassador’s image on his monitor.

“What else did he tell you, Lieutenant?” There was something gravely serious in the ambassador’s expression.

“Is something wrong, ma’am?”

She didn’t answer right away, choosing her words carefully. “As you know, we dispatched the
Iwo Jima
to pick Sanders up yesterday. When they arrived, the ground team was under attack.”

“What happened?” Anderson asked, already knowing the answer.

“The
Iwo Jima
went in to help, then dropped out of contact. By the time we convinced the local authorities to send out a rescue team to the sight, it was too late. The marines sent to accompany Sanders were all dead. The
Iwo Jima
was destroyed. Nobody aboard survived.”

“What about Lieutenant Sanders?” he asked, noticing the ambassador had left her conspicuously absent from the list of casualties.

“No sign of her. We think she may be a prisoner. Obviously we suspect Edan and Dr. Qian were behind the attack.”

“How’d they find out about the pickup?” Anderson demanded angrily.

“The request for clearance for the out-of-port landing was entered into Hatre’s main transport system data banks,” the ambassador told him. “Someone must have seen the information there and relayed it to Edan.”

“Who leaked it?” he wanted to know, remembering Kahlee’s fears that someone in the Alliance brass might be working with Qian.

“There’s no way to know. We can’t even be sure it was intentional. It might have been an accident. A mistake.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, we both know that’s a load of crap.”

“This doesn’t change your mission, Lieutenant,” she warned him. “You’re still going after Qian.”

“What about Lieutenant Sanders?”

The ambassador sighed. “We believe she’s still alive. Hopefully, if you find Qian, you’ll find her.”

“Anything else, ma’am?” he asked, a little more curtly than he’d intended. He was still shaken by the news that someone had betrayed Kahlee again. And while he didn’t suspect the ambassador, she had made all the arrangements for the pickup. He couldn’t help blaming her at least a little for allowing this to happen.

“Saren’s going to be evaluating you on this mission,” the ambassador reminded him, shrewdly refocusing him back to his true priorities. “Do well and it could go a long way to proving to the Council that humanity deserves to have someone in the Spectre ranks.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you what that could mean for the Alliance,” she added.

“Understood, Ambassador,” he replied, subdued. He knew she was right; he had to put his personal feelings aside for the sake of the mission.

“We’re all counting on you, Lieutenant,” she added just before signing off. “Don’t let us down.”

Saren wasn’t late for their second meeting. In fact, he was already there, waiting at the same table when Anderson arrived. The bar was busier in the evening, but it was still far from crowded.

The lieutenant marched toward the turian and sat down across from him. He didn’t waste any time with a greeting, but simply blurted out, “Did you see any sign of Kahlee Sanders when you were scouting out Edan’s hiding place?”

“She is no longer a concern of mine,” Saren told him. “Or yours. Stay focused on Edan and Qian.”

“That’s not an answer,” Anderson pressed. “Did you see her or not?”

“I’m not going to let one human life get in the way of this mission!” Saren hissed at him. Something in his tone flipped a switch in the lieutenant’s brain; the light came on and he suddenly understood.

“You’re the one who leaked the pickup! That’s how you found Edan. You used Kahlee as bait, then followed his people back to the refinery and scouted it out last night. That’s why you were late this morning!”

“It was the only way!” Saren fired back. “It would’ve taken months to find Edan. Months we might not have! I don’t have to explain myself to you. I saw an opportunity, so I took it!”

“You son of a bitch!” Anderson shouted, leaping across the table to grab him by the throat. But the turian was too quick for him. He jumped back beyond Anderson’s grasp, then leaped in and seized Anderson’s outstretched arms by the wrists, yanking him off balance.

As the lieutenant tumbled forward, Saren let go of one wrist and twisted hard on the other one, bending Anderson’s arm up and behind his back. The turian used the human’s own momentum against him to slam him to the ground. Still keeping Anderson’s arm bent behind him, the turian dropped his knee between the lieutenant’s shoulders, pinning him to the floor.

Anderson struggled for a few seconds, but he couldn’t get free. He felt Saren applying pressure to his arm, and he went still before the turian decided to break it. The rest of the people in the bar had jumped up from their seats when the action started, but once they saw that the human was effectively helpless, they simply sat back down and resumed drinking.

“This is what it means to be a Spectre,” Saren whispered, still atop him. He had leaned in so close that Anderson felt his hot breath in his ear and on the back of his neck. “Sacrificing one life for the sake of millions. Qian’s research is a threat to every species in Citadel space. I saw a chance to stop him at the cost of a few dozen lives. The math is simple, human … but few people are able to do it right.”

“I get it,” Anderson said, trying to keep his voice calm. “So let me up.”