“Yeah.”

  “My name is Foster. Mick Foster. I’d like to talk to you.”

  Leng was suspicious. And for good reason. He was surrounded by criminals. “About what?”

  Foster smiled. His teeth were yellow. “About Cerberus. May I come in? It’s cold out here.”

  Leng hesitated for a moment. He had heard about Cerberus. It had once been the code name for a black ops group that had been part of the Systems Alliance but had since gone rogue. According to the rumors the shadowy figure in charge of Cerberus was determined to make sure that humans weren’t pushed aside or overwhelmed by the freaks. Leng stood to one side and gestured for Foster to enter. “Watch your head. The roof is kinda low.”

  “Ah, but it keeps the rain off,” Foster said as he stepped down onto packed dirt.

  Kim, who had been sitting next to the fire repairing a hoe, looked up. “The name’s Foster,” the man said as he reintroduced himself. “You must be Cory Kim.”

  Kim looked surprised. “Do we know each other?”

  “Nope,” Foster said. “Not yet. Mind if I sit down?”

  “Go ahead,” Leng replied, and pointed to the handcrafted chair where he’d been sitting a minute earlier.

  “Ah, that feels good,” Foster said, as he settled into the chair and held a pair of filthy hands out toward the crackling fire. “Home sweet home, eh?”

  “Not exactly,” Kim said as she placed the hoe on the floor. “No offense, but what do you want?”

  “And none taken,” Foster assured her. “Oh, wait a minute, I have something for each of you … Gifts from Cerberus.” And with that Foster reached under his ratty cape, felt around, and brought out a pair of flick knives. Razor-sharp stainless-steel weapons equipped with five-inch blades. Each knife was worth a fortune inside Hell’s Half Acre and Leng liked the weight of it. But rather than tuck it away he looked Foster in the eye. “There are no gifts. Not in this place. What do you want?”

  “You,” Foster said simply. “Both of you. I’m a recruiter. For Cerberus.”

  Kim frowned. “A recruiter? Here?”

  “Where better? For our purposes at least. There are others such as yourselves. People who were thrown into prison for crimes against things you would expect to see in a zoo.”

  Leng looked at the knife and back to Foster. “How did you get these things in here?”

  Foster chuckled. “Some of the tools are Cerberus sympathizers. The rest can be bought. Not cheaply mind you, but bought nevertheless. And that brings us back to you two. If you agree to work for Cerberus we will buy your freedom. You could be off Misery in a matter of days.”

  Kim wasn’t sure. “Let’s say we agree … What would we be asked to do?”

  “The same sort of things you did as a member of the Alliance Marine Corps. Except that every mission you participate in will be dedicated to strengthening and protecting the human race. The freaks can look out for themselves.”

  “I like it,” Leng said. “I’m in.”

  Kim paused for a moment and nodded. “Me too.”

  Kai Leng was removed from Hell’s Half Acre in order to receive special medical treatment three days later. Shortly thereafter Cory Kim was assigned to a work detail outside the fence and never returned. Cerberus was two people stronger.

  THIRTEEN

  SOMEWHERE IN THE CRESCENT NEBULA

  The Illusive Man had returned to his home. If the Spartan office on a remote mining world could be described as such. There were a lot of things to work on including a new guerrilla marketing campaign aimed at Alliance-held worlds, the construction of a new space station, and the need to monitor the steady stream of reports from his field agents. And that was what he was doing when Jana entered. “Sorry to interrupt, sir … But there’s a message that you’ll want to see.”

  The Illusive Man looked up. “From whom?”

  “The Biotic Underground. They have Leng … And they want money.”

  The Illusive Man nodded. “Of course they do. But how did they know where to send the message?”

  “They didn’t. The message went to half a dozen of our front organizations all of which passed it along.”

  “Understood.” There was a momentary flare of light as the Illusive Man lit a cigarette and touched a button. A computer-generated image appeared, shattered, and came back together again. Though human in appearance the avatar had an androgynous quality. “Greetings,” the messenger said. “I represent the Biotic Underground. We are holding one of your top operatives. A human named Kai Leng.”

  At that point the video dissolved to a shot of Leng sitting on a cot in what looked like a cave. The camera was located above him looking down. He seemed to be unaware of it but there was a strong possibility that Leng was ignoring it. The avatar reappeared. “As you can see Leng is unharmed, and he will remain that way, assuming you follow my instructions.”

  The Illusive Man said, “Pause,” and turned to Jana. “Were we able to trace this message?”

  “It originated on Omega but that’s all the information we have.”

  The Illusive Man flicked the ash off his cigarette and said, “Play.”

  The holo continued. “We want ten million credits,” the avatar said, “to be paid in the form of Beryllium slugs on Omega. The payment will be delivered by the Illusive Man, and only the Illusive Man, so as to ensure that all of our conditions are met.

  “We realize that the Illusive Man may be, and probably is, somewhere other than on Omega. With that in mind we will give him three standard days to arrive here. Once he’s in position you will send a message to the contact number that will appear at the end of this holo. Final arrangements will be agreed on at that time. Or, if you would prefer to save the ten million credits, let us know. We’ll shoot Leng and leave his body where your operatives can find it.”

  The avatar disappeared at that point and a string of numbers appeared. They seemed to waver as if viewed from underwater. “We have the number,” Jana said grimly.

  “So now we know,” the Illusive Man said, as he stubbed the cigarette out. “They want money.”

  “Maybe. It could be a trap.”

  “True,” the Illusive Man agreed. “Although an attempt to get money would be consistent with the attack on T’Loak’s bank. They’re building a war chest.”

  “There does seem to be a pattern,” Jana agreed.

  “So what would you do?” the Illusive Man inquired. “Pay the ransom? Or let them kill Leng?”

  Such questions were intended to test Jana, and force her to consider complex issues, since she was being groomed to take on more responsibility in the future. Her features hardened slightly. “All of us are expendable.”

  The Illusive Man nodded approvingly. “That’s true … And Leng is no exception. He is valuable, however. I wouldn’t pay thirty for him, or twenty for that matter, but ten? Given all that he has accomplished, and may accomplish in the future, ten is a reasonable price.”

  Jana stood her ground. “What you say makes sense in many respects. But doesn’t this situation call Leng’s competence into question? He was taken prisoner by a third-rate group of biotic whackos.”

  The Illusive Man smiled. “You’re tough, Jana. I like that. But consider this … Leng has no way to know if we’ll pay the ransom or not. So he’s sitting in that cave cursing his own stupidity. And if we pay he’ll be grateful and determined to avoid making the same mistake again. Loyalty is a very valuable thing.”

  The Illusive Man watched Jana’s eyes as she took it in. “Yes, sir. I see your point.”

  “Good. Here’s what I want you to do … Send the biotics a message indicating that we’ll pay five million and not a credit more. The biotics won’t agree, not if they’re after money, but they will be suspicious unless we haggle. And we need to buy time. Mott’s on the ground trying to gather more information. Who knows? Maybe she’ll get lucky.”

  Jana nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “And Jana …”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell the bastards that if they harm Leng I will turn all of my attention to eradicating their organization.”

  Jana smiled. She’d been a military officer before joining Cerberus and an echo of that could be heard in her reply. “Sir, yes, sir.”

  ON OMEGA

  T’Loak felt a grim sense of anticipation as she slipped into a doorway next to a pair of her mercenaries and eyed the gigantic crawler that loomed on the other side of a lopsided square. Ever since the attack on her bank the Omega’s population had been waiting for some sort of reprisal. But there hadn’t been any. The result was a great deal of speculation. Was the Pirate Queen getting soft? Were the Skulls on the rise? Such questions were being posed in every bar, club, and cafe on Omega.

  And T’Loak knew it. But the Biotic Underground had evacuated the hotel where they had been staying and moved into new quarters somewhere. T’Loak felt confident that her operatives would find them soon. That left the Grim Skulls, who had chosen to remain in their graffiti-decorated crawler. A steel box that made a respectable fort and could serve as a coffin as well. And now, after considerable preparation, she was ready to strike.

  Immo had been opposed to T’Loak taking part in what promised to be a very active firefight. But she insisted on being present in order to inspire her people—and to make the extent of her strength absolutely clear to everyone on Omega. A strategy calculated to prevent attacks on her holdings in the future.

  The last couple of hours had been spent moving a hundred of her mercenaries into positions around the crawler. The idea was to get close, but not too close, lest the Skulls realize that an attack was in the offing.

  Now, as the final seconds ticked away, T’Loak heard Immo speak through the plug in her right ear. “Standby … Ten seconds from now. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”

  Nothing happened. T’Loak frowned, and was about to question Immo, when a muffled thump was heard and the ground shook under her feet. There was a momentary pause followed by a truly spectacular secondary explosion as the armory located deep inside the crawler went up and jets of fire and smoke shot out through doors, hatches, and other openings. The destruction had been caused by a specially modified subsurface torpedo launched from more than a kilometer away. After burrowing around a number of underground obstructions, the weapon had blown a hole in the crawler’s belly, thereby striking the Skulls from the one place they weren’t expecting it. And that was from below.

  What happened next was delightfully predictable. T’Loak figured that dozens of Grim Skulls had been killed during the explosions. But there were a lot of compartments inside the crawler, so it was safe to assume that a significant number of the mercenaries had survived.

  And that proved to be the case as at least a dozen Skulls dashed out through the main hatch. T’Loak’s forces were waiting and cut them down with ruthless efficiency. That put a stop to the escape attempt. T’Loak opened her mike. “Let’s go in and get the rest of them.”

  The mercs who had been assigned to act as T’Loak’s bodyguards were ranked to either side of the asari as she left the relative safety of the doorway and began to zigzag across the open area in front of the crawler. Seconds later she jumped a body and joined the rest of the troops who were rushing the massive machine.

  A trio of Skulls appeared in the main hatch, all firing automatic weapons, and one of T’Loak’s operatives was snatched off her feet. But the return fire swept the entrance clean so that the attackers could step over the dead bodies and enter the crawler. Thick smoke made it difficult to see. “Spread out,” T’Loak ordered over the radio. “Search every compartment. Kill all of them except for Tactus. I want him alive.”

  There were rooms on both sides of the dimly lit main corridor, each of which had to be checked and cleared. The first space T’Loak entered was empty, and judging from the look of it, had been used as a ready room. As she backed into the hall T’Loak heard the rattle of an automatic weapon on her left and turned to see a merc stagger as he took a burst of projectiles in the back. Then there was a flash of light and a loud bang as one of his buddies tossed a grenade into the compartment and the firing stopped.

  And so it went as the invaders fought their way deeper into the machine. T’Loak allowed others to take the lead, but did her share of the fighting as they climbed an access ladder up to the second deck, and the living quarters there. That was when Immo emerged from the swirling smoke. She nodded. “How’re we doing?”

  “Well, so far.”

  “And Tactus?”

  “No sign of him yet. We came across the woman you interviewed at the bank though. She’s in the sickbay along with two others. I wasn’t sure how to handle that so I put a guard outside the door.”

  “Show me.”

  So Immo led T’Loak a few feet down the corridor to the point where a merc was standing outside a hatch. The word “SICKBAY” had been scrawled onto the metal next to the opening. The guard stood aside so that T’Loak could enter. The medical facility was small but well-equipped. There were four beds against the far bulkhead, two of which were in use. A turian who was hooked up to a respirator and appeared to be unconscious occupied one of them. And a human, who T’Loak recognized as Shella, was propped up on the other. A pillow supported her right knee. “So,” T’Loak said, “we meet again.”

  Shella was scared. T’Loak could see it in her eyes. But the human was determined to maintain her composure and nodded in response. “There was no point in trying to run.”

  “No, there wasn’t.”

  “So what happens now?”

  Shella feared the worst. T’Loak could see it in her eyes. “I believe you told me the truth about what happened to my daughter. So I will keep my word. Immo will make arrangements to have you transferred to an appropriate medical facility.”

  Shella looked both surprised and relieved. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” And with that T’Loak left the room. Tactus was still on the loose. But as her troops pushed the Skulls deeper and deeper into the crawler’s belly it wasn’t long before the turian was cornered. Having been summoned to the scene T’Loak found herself in a poorly lit corridor. An intermittent buzzing sound could be heard as a batarian stepped in to brief her. “We believe that Tactus and two of his men are trapped in a compartment at the other end of the passageway. A couple of grenades would finish them off but we were told to take Tactus alive.”

  “That’s correct,” T’Loak said. “Standby for further orders.” Having cupped her hands in front of her mouth, T’Loak shouted down the corridor. “Tactus … It’s T’Loak. Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” came the reply. “I can hear you.”

  “Good. There’s no way out of here except my way. So if you want to live, put the weapons down, and come out with your hands behind your head.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Okay. Don’t shoot. We’re coming out.”

  T’Loak turned to the batarian. “Put some additional light on the other end of the corridor. It would be a mistake to trust the bastard.”

  A handheld spot snapped into existence, wandered across the overhead, and focused on the partially opened hatch just in time for Tactus to emerge. His hands were behind his neck, and as he came forward, two additional Skulls appeared to stand next to him. T’Loak raised a pistol and fired twice. Heads jerked and the men fell. Tactus looked alarmed. “You promised!” he said accusingly.

  “I promised to spare you,” T’Loak replied. “And I will. Hold your position.”

  Immo had arrived by then and T’Loak turned to speak with him. “I want chains on Tactus. Lots of them. Then, once he’s ready, parade him through the streets. It won’t take long for the news to get around. Understood?”

  Immo nodded. “Understood.”

  “And find whatever is left of my money. I want it back.”

  And so it was that the once proud Tactus was marched through the streets to the Afterlife club, where he was placed in a cage for everyone to stare at and make fun of. Word of the turian’s humiliation spread quickly and the message was clear: Anyone who chose to attack the Pirate Queen would pay a steep price indeed. Normality, such as it was on Omega, had been restored.

  The Blue Marble restaurant was a mess. The front window had been shattered and there were hundreds of pockmarks where projectiles had flattened themselves against the concrete facade. And as Mara Mott watched from the other side of the street workmen were already in the process of making repairs under the supervision of a portly human. The owner? Yes, Mott thought so and crossed the busy street to speak with him. “Hello … Are you the proprietor by any chance?”

  As the man turned to face her Mott saw that he had a unibrow, a bulbous nose, and a five o’clock shadow. “Who wants to know?” he inquired belligerently.

  “My name is Hoby,” Mott lied. “Karol Hoby and I’m interested in what occurred here.”

  The man frowned. “Why?”

  “I have a client,” Mott replied. “A person who wants to know and is willing to pay. Assuming you’re the owner that is.”

  A gleam of what might have been avarice appeared in the man’s eyes. “My name is Garza and I’m the chef. The manager was killed in the fighting. Come … My kitchen is intact. We will have tea and talk. This location is far too public.”

  Mott knew Garza was correct. If she was watching others might be as well. So she followed the cook past the workmen and into the Blue Marble’s interior. It was empty of people, and judging from all the damage, the interior was going to require work as well.