“I think they wanted to see me coming.”

  Hendel laughed. The sound was muffled as he pulled the helmet over his head. It was, Gillian reflected, a very different type of conversation from the adult-child interactions so typical back at the Grissom Academy. She had been a very unstable twelve-year-old when they first met. Now, some six years later and thousands of light-years away, the relationship had matured. It had been difficult for Hendel, but bit by bit he’d been able to evolve away from stern authority figure to something more akin to a wise uncle. And she had grown as well, both as a person and a biotic, although she still had a tendency to lose her temper. But so did he.

  A male named Ugho was in charge of the boarding party. He completed a quick head count, said “Follow me” and led the team out into the main corridor. From there it was necessary to pass through the equivalent of what would have been the crew deck on an Alliance warship. But rather than the usual galley, sleep pods, and medical bay the space had been divided into cubicles. They were arranged in groups of six, separated by half-walls, and accessed through openings that were normally sealed off with colorful curtains. The fabric partitions had been pulled to one side and secured lest they slow the ship’s damage control parties.

  Then the group dropped to what the quarians referred to as the “trading deck.” It was lined with lockers, one for each member of the crew, where they could store items they weren’t using but were willing to share with others. A “take what you need” system that served to put goods in the hands of those who needed them and was consistent with the limited amount of space on a ship like the Idenna. Like the living spaces located higher up, the trading deck was clear and the lockers were closed.

  “Okay,” Ugho said, as the boarding party came to a stop in front of the main hatch. “You know the drill. If the ancestorless scum try to take control of the ship it will be through this lock. The rest are too small for more than two people at a time to pass through. Our juveniles could handle that. So get to work on those barriers. They won’t move themselves. Gillian, we need to chat.”

  The barriers were a little over one meter tall, about two meters long, and ninety centimeters thick. They were mounted on rollers so they could be moved easily and were equipped with hooks that slotted into the decking. Once in place they would channel the boarders and provide the defenders with much needed cover. There was a loud rumbling noise as the barriers were moved onto the outlines already spray-painted onto the deck.

  Ugho wasn’t known for his sociability, so Gillian knew that rather than a “chat” she was about to receive some orders. It was impossible to see Ugho’s face through the reflective visor, and Gillian was equipped with one as well, so there was no such thing as eye contact. His voice was flat and matter-of-fact. “The captain will try to destroy the enemy before they can close with us. That’s our advantage. We can use our primary armament and they can’t if they want to capture the ship intact.

  “But if they manage to come alongside, and blow the lock, we’ll have to hold them off until reinforcements arrive. You humans are the only biotics we have and your skills could make a critical difference. Especially if we can take them by surprise. So stay back, conserve your energy, and wait for my order. Got it?”

  Gillian could tell that Ugho was worried and felt the weight of some very adult responsibilities settle onto her shoulders. Could she do it? Was she good enough to make a difference? There was a hollow place where her stomach should have been. She nodded. “Got it.”

  “Good. Let’s get to work.”

  ABOARD THE SLAVE SHIP GLORY OF KHAR’SHAN

  Captain Adar Adroni sat at the center of the Khar’shan’s U-shaped control center with his first officer to the left of his thronelike command chair and the navigator on the right. A curved screen was situated in front of them. On it they could see a computer-generated display that included images for all of the local planets, an icon that represented the ship they were pursuing, and lines of data that scrolled down both sides of the monitor.

  The Khar’shan had been on its way to deliver a load of slaves to a mining operation when a host of alarms sounded. The whole thing was a matter of luck really. Good luck for Adroni and bad luck for the gas-sucking quarians.

  So thanks to his good fortune Adroni was about to pick up a substantial bonus. Quarian slaves were especially sought after due to their sophisticated tech skills, and their ship had value as well. Adroni’s thoughts were interrupted as the first officer spoke in his ear. “Two disruptor torpedoes are coming our way, Captain. ETA one minute and twenty-two seconds.”

  Adroni nodded. “Fire four interceptors. Two apiece. That should take care of it.”

  And he was correct. Both of the incoming missiles were destroyed in a pair of overlapping explosions. Then, as the range began to close even more, the quarian vessel turned on the batarians and opened fire with two magnetic accelerator cannons. They were very dangerous weapons, especially at close range, and the devastating projectiles they put out couldn’t be intercepted by a missile. So all the batarians could do was take the punishment as the distance between the combatants continued to close.

  But Adroni’s ship was equipped to deal with such situations. The Khar’shan was powered by a standard Tantalus Drive Core and equipped with H-fuel cells that could deliver the extra power required to stop the hail of incoming projectiles.

  Still the onslaught put the batarian barriers to the test as a shield went down exposing the ablative armor beneath. The incoming shells were busy chewing their way through that layer of protection when Adroni gave the order the weapons officer had been waiting for. “Fire the drive killers.”

  Drive killers were very specialized weapons designed to shut down but not destroy a ship’s propulsion system. In order to make good use of such weapons it was necessary to get in close lest those in the other ship have time to intercept and destroy the small missiles. But that requirement had already been satisfied and Adroni uttered a grunt of satisfaction as one of two drive killers made it through the incoming fire and hit the other ship’s hull. Not just anywhere, but at a location intended to sever the connection between the engine’s drive core, and the rest of the ship. The damage could be repaired but it would take time—and the gas suckers would have to rely on backup power until then. “Close with them,” Adroni ordered, as the fugitive ship lost power. “And send the boarding party. There is work to be done.”

  ABOARD THE QUARIAN SHIP IDENNA

  There was a resounding BOOM as the spaceships made hull-to-hull contact, and Gillian was knocked off her feet. “Here they come!” Ugho said over the comm as she picked herself up, and a muffled explosion was heard. The outer hatch had been blown and the batarians were in the airlock. Seconds later the metal around the control panel on the inner door began to glow. Then a jet of plasma punched its way through and began to trace a red hot line around the box. There was a loud hiss, followed by a clang, as one of the slavers gave the control panel a kick and it fell in onto the Idenna’s deck.

  Atmosphere was already rushing out, taking anything that wasn’t secured with it, but the suction grew even more intense when the batarians pushed the hatch open. Then, as both sides opened fire, pressures were equalized and the flow of air stopped.

  Because of the vacuum there was no sound other than what came over the comm. So Gillian couldn’t hear the gunfire that lashed back and forth. But there was an almost nonstop flow of orders and commentary from Ugho as a phalanx of heavily armored batarians pushed their way into the Idenna.

  The weight of their armor slowed the slavers down but enabled them to take a lot of punishment as the quarians opened fire on them. “Hit them hard!” Ugho urged. “Chew through their armor. We have to stop them before they can reach the barriers.”

  From her position toward the rear, where she was mostly concealed behind the last barrier, Gillian could see the wisdom of Ugho’s words. The weapons being used by combatants on both sides fired particle-sized rounds at relativistic speeds. That meant a single magazine could hold a lot of rounds. The downside being a steady increase in heat. Failure to eject an old heat sink and replace it with a new one could disable a weapon and leave its owner vulnerable to attack. Just one of the many things Gillian had to remember.

  A batarian fell as a steady stream of quarian projectiles burrowed through multiple layers of protection to find flesh and bone. The result was a horrible-looking geyser as the slaver’s bodily fluids were sucked out through the hole in his ruptured suit. The sight was enough to make Gillian feel sick to her stomach as she pointed her pistol at one of the invaders and pulled the trigger. Sparks could be seen as the rounds struck, but the projectiles made no appreciable difference as the batarian lumbered forward.

  Then an already difficult situation took a turn for the worse as a krogan mercenary entered the fray. Gillian knew very little about krogan firearms but didn’t need to see how powerful the newcomer’s assault weapon was as he cut two of her fellow crew members down and Ugho rose to throw a grenade. There was a flash of light as it went off but the effects were minimal.

  The krogan fired at Ugho and the quarian began to backpedal in a futile attempt to stay vertical. Then it was over as the heavy slugs beat the quarian’s kinetic armor down and tunneled through. The resulting hole was so large that the quarian’s suit ruptured. As Gillian looked on in horror the vacuum sucked most of Ugho’s organs out of his chest cavity and dumped them onto the deck.

  Gillian felt the emotion boil up from deep inside of her. There had been a time when the combination of anger and grief would have been her undoing. But she had grown since then and learned to use hate as fuel for her talent. So as the quarians were forced to back away from the barriers and the steadily advancing krogan, the teenager emerged from hiding. Hendel shouted, “No!” over the comm, but Gillian Nar Idenna wasn’t listening. The Idenna was her ship, Ugho was one of her people, and it was Gillian’s duty to protect them.

  Having returned the pistol to its holster Gillian raised her hands. Then, having gathered energy until she couldn’t contain it anymore, there was no choice but to let go. The krogan was stomping a wounded quarian to death as the bolt hit him. In spite of his size the monster was plucked off the deck and thrown into a steel bulkhead. He fell, hit the deck hard, and was struggling to rise when Hendel took command. “Now! Kill the bastard.”

  Gillian was already in the process of collecting more energy by then. And as Hendel and the others shot at the krogan she targeted a batarian who was about to circle around the barriers and attack the defenders from behind. The first step was to lift the slaver twenty feet up off the deck. Then, as the terrified batarian sought to walk on air, Gillian let him go.

  The Idenna’s mass effect generators were still on, so the invader came down hard. A leg gave way, he collapsed, and Gillian fired into the batarian’s faceplate. It caved in.

  Even though it seemed longer, only ten minutes had passed since the battle had begun. Enough time for quarians from other parts of the Idenna to grab weapons and rush to the trading deck. And their timing couldn’t have been better. As Gillian paused to insert a fresh heat sink clip, quarians flooded into the space and charged the lock.

  Having lost the krogan, plus some of their own, the batarians were forced to turn and run. Hendel was quick to see the opportunity and seize it. “This is our chance! Follow me.”

  And follow him they did, through the batarian lock, and into the Khar’shan’s hull. The lock opened onto the slave deck and Gillian saw at least a hundred slaves seated with their backs to the bulkheads, all locked into place by formfitting steel cages. But there was very little time to analyze her surroundings as a handful of batarians turned to fire on their pursuers. Some of the rounds went wide, and a couple of slaves were hit as Hendel shouted, “Kill the bastards! We need to take the control room before they can break loose.”

  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.

  ABOARD THE QUARIAN SHIP IDENNA

  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?