Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn

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.”

  “Try this again and I will kill you,” the Spectre warned before releasing him. Anderson had no doubt he meant it. Besides, fighting with Saren in this bar didn’t accomplish anything. If he really wanted to help Kahlee he had to be smart instead of impulsive.

  He stood up and stared at the turian for a long moment. Despite being immobilized, the only thing hurting was his pride. So Anderson simply brushed himself off, then went and sat down at the table again. Realizing the human intended to hold his anger in check, the turian joined him.

  “They didn’t find Kahlee’s body at the scene,” Anderson said, resuming the conversation where they had left off. He’d need to come up with a plan to help Kahlee, but he didn’t even know where she was being held. As much as it galled him, he needed to get the turian back on his side. “Were you there? Did you see what happened?”

  “Your ground team was attacked by Skarr and the Blue Sun mercenaries,” Saren told him. “When all hope was lost your soldiers tried to surrender, but the Blue Suns gunned them down.”

  “What about Kahlee? Is she still alive?”

  “She was,” Saren admitted. “They took her inside the refinery. I assume they must need her for some purpose.”

  “If they know we’re coming, they might still kill her,” Anderson said.

  “That means nothing to me.”

  It took every ounce of military discipline the lieutenant had not to attempt to attack him again, but somehow he managed to stay in his seat.

  “She means something to me,” he said, straining to keep his voice even. “I want to make you a deal.”

  The turian shrugged, a truly universal gesture of indifference. “What kind of deal?”

  “You don’t want me here. You’re only doing this at the order of the Council. You take me to Edan’s hideout and give me a chance to rescue Kahlee, and I promise to stay out of your way for the rest of the mission.”

  “What do you mean by ‘a chance to rescue Kahlee’?” the turian asked suspiciously.

  “If they know we’ve found them, they’ll probably kill her. So when we get to the refinery you let me go in first. Give me thirty minutes to find Kahlee before you go in after Qian and Edan.”

  “What if somebody sees you?” the turian asked. “There’s security at the refinery. Not to mention Edan’s mercs. You set off the alarms, and they’ll all be on guard. That makes my job harder.”

  “No,” Anderson argued. “It makes your job easier. I’ll be a distraction; I’ll draw them off. They’ll be so concerned with me they won’t even notice you sneaking in from the other side.”

  “If you get into trouble, I won’t come to help you,” Saren warned.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  Saren considered the offer for a full minute before nodding his head in agreement. “Thirty minutes. Not one second more.”

  TWENTY

  Neither one of the men spoke during the long drive through the desert night. Saren was behind the wheel, staring straight ahead through the windshield of the rover while Anderson studied the blueprints of the refinery. He’d been hoping to see something that might give him some clue as to where Kahlee was being held, but there were simply too many places they could have converted into a makeshift prison for her. Instead, he focused on trying to memorize the general layout so he could find his way around quickly once he was inside.

  After an hour they could see a dim glow in the distance; the refinery lights shining in the darkness. The facility ran two day shifts and two night shifts of nearly two hundred workers each; the eezo production continued around the clock. To accommodate such enormous labor requirements, the refineries offered free room and board to employees and their families in the surrounding work camps: prefab buildings assembled in an ever-widening circle around the chain-link fence protecting the refinery itself.

  They were only a few hundred meters from the edges of the work camp when Saren stopped the rover. “We walk from here.”

  Anderson made a mental note of where the vehicle was parked; he’d have to find his way back here through the dark after he found Kahlee. If he got lost, he doubted Saren would bother to come looking for him.

  He grabbed his pistol, but hesitated before taking his assault rifle. The pistol had a silencer on it, but the assault rifle was loud—one burst from that and the whole place would know he was there. Plus, it was a lot easier to pick your targets carefully with a pistol than an automatic weapon.

  “You’ll need that,” Saren advised him, noticing his indecision.

  “Most of the people in that plant are just ordinary workers,” Anderson replied. “They won’t even be armed.”

  “Edan’s working with the Blue Sun mercenaries. You’ll run into plenty of them in there, too.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I’m a little concerned about accidentally shooting innocent civilians.”

  Saren gave a harsh, bitter laugh. “You still don’t get it, do you, human?

  “Most of the workers in these camps own firearms. This refinery represents their livelihood. They aren’t soldiers, but once the alarms go off they will try to protect it.”

  “We’re not here to destroy the plant,” Anderson objected. “All we have to do is grab Qian, Edan, and Kahlee and get out.”

  “They don’t know that. When they hear sirens and bullets, they’ll thin
k the plant is under some kind of terrorist attack. You won’t be able to pick and choose your targets when half of them are running around in a blind panic and the other half are firing guns at you.

  “If you want to make it through this mission alive,” Saren added, “you better be willing to shoot civilians if they get in your way. Because they’ll be more than willing to shoot at you.”

  “Necessity is one thing. But how can you be so cold about killing innocent people?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Practice. Lots of practice.”

  Anderson shook his head and took the assault rifle, though he promised himself he wouldn’t use it unless absolutely necessary. He folded it down and snapped it into the armor slot on his back, just above the belt. Then he slapped the pistol into the slot on his hip, where he could easily grab it if necessary.

  “We’ll split up,” Saren told him. “I’ll head east, you go around the other way.”

  “You promised me a thirty-minute head start before you go in,” Anderson reminded him in a hard voice.

  “You’ll have your thirty minutes, human. But if you’re not here at the rover when I get back, I’m leaving you behind.”

  Anderson quickly made his way through the darkness to the edges of the work camp. Although it was the middle of the night, the place was buzzing with activity. Because of the staggered shifts at the refinery, there were always people who were recently getting off work or just about to start. The camp was like a small city. Over a thousand families made their homes here—husbands, wives, and even children were milling about the streets, nodding greetings to one another and going about their daily lives.

  With so many people around it was an easy matter for Anderson to simply blend in with the crowd. He’d thrown on a long, loose-fitting overcoat to cover his body armor and conceal his weapons. And while most of the employees of the refinery were batarians, there were enough other species, including humans, in the crowd that he didn’t draw undo attention.

  He hustled through the camp, pushing his way through the crowd, occasionally nodding a greeting as he passed some of his fellow humans. He walked with long, quick strides, maintaining a brisk pace as he worked his way toward the fence surrounding the secured grounds of the refinery. He knew time was slipping away, but breaking into a run was sure to attract notice.