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?

  “That part of my escape went well,” McCann continued. “I sold the shuttle at a steep discount, but still walked away with a hefty chunk of change.”

  “Then what?” Hendel demanded skeptically.

  McCann looked down at his filth encrusted boots. “I figured I’d take the money and double or even triple it playing Star Cluster. So I went to a batarian-owned club called Fortune’s Den.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Hendel said disgustedly. “You lost all your money.”

  “Yes, I did,” McCann admitted shamefacedly. “But I lost more than that. I bet my freedom and lost that as well.”

  “My father,” Gillian insisted. “Tell me about my father.”

  “That’s where I heard about him,” McCann said, as his eyes came back up. “Aria T’Loak had people combing all the bars on Omega looking for him. So when they entered Fortune’s Den, and said they were looking for a human, the batarians brought me up out of the basement. Money changed hands and I wound up in front of T’Loak. But the whole thing was over by then. According to T’Loak your father was killed on a space station in orbit around Elysium.”

  Gillian’s eyes grew wider. “The Grissom Academy. That’s where I went to school. You’re sure? My father’s dead?”

  McCann shrugged. “No, how could I be sure? But Aria had no reason to lie. Not to someone she sold to a batarian slaver two days later.”

  The first emotion Gillian experienced was a deep and abiding sorrow. She was forever cut off from the only person who hadn’t been paid to care about her. Paul Grayson had been less than perfect. That was why she and Hendel had been forced to hide aboard the Idenna. To escape her father and whatever was controlling him.

  But she believed that he loved her, to the extent that such a flawed being could love another person, and she loved him in return. In spite of all the things that he had done. She fingered the jewel that hung at her throat as tears trickled down her cheeks. “Who killed him? And why?”

  McCann had been there. Had seen the horrible things the Illusive Man and those working for him had done to Grayson. More than that, he’d been part of the team. And there was no way the Illusive Man would want people to find out what Cerberus had been up to. So if Grayson had been able to escape, somebody had been sent to kill him. Kai Leng perhaps? Quite possibly. But it wouldn’t be very smart to tell Gillian Grayson about his role in her father’s captivity and he didn’t. “I don’t know,” McCann lied. “But one thing I can tell you is that your father talked about you all the time.”

  Gillian’s sorrow began to morph into anger as she thought about what had been taken from her. The only person other than Hendel that she could count on. She wiped at the tears with the back of a wrist. “I’m going to find out who killed my father. And when I do they’re going to die.”

  McCann nodded sagely. “I don’t blame you. Chances are the information you need is on the Citadel.” There was no basis for that, at least not that McCann was aware of, but that was where he wanted to go. Omega was out of the question. “I’ll help you,” he promised. “We’ll figure out who did it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Hendel put in. “There’s no way to know where the killer or killers went. Besides, how would we get there?”

  “The slave ship,” Gillian proclaimed tightly. “We’ll take the slave ship.”

  Hendel frowned. “The slave ship? Why would the crew of the Idenna give you that? It’s theirs to recondition or sell.”

  Gillian’s mouth was a horizontal line. “They’ll give it to me because I saved every single person on the Idenna from slavery. Ask them. You’ll see.” And, much to Hendel’s amazement, she was right.

  THREE

  ON THE CITADEL

  The electronic concierge was waiting to greet Anderson and Kahlee as they entered their apartment. “Welcome home. All systems are functioning properly. Five voice mails, twenty-three text messages, and two holos are waiting.”

  “Nick isn’t here,” Anderson said after taking a quick look at the guest room. “And his belongings are gone.”

  “Let’s check those messages,” Kahlee said. “Maybe he left one of them.”

  “I’ll tackle the voice mails,” Anderson said. He was deleting a message from the retired officers’ association when Kahlee called him over.

  “Here it is, David. Come look.”

  Anderson turned to see a holo shiver, back up, and start again. Nick was seated on a chair in a pool of light. He was dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing earlier in the day. That suggested that the message had been recorded after he left the Citadel Tower. There was a guilty expression on his face. “I’m sorry about taking off from the tower,” Nick said, “but there’s no need to worry because I’m with friends.”

  Anderson and Kahlee looked at each other. Were the so-called friends the mysterious biotics named Ocosta Lem and Arrius Sallus? Both feared that was the case.

  “There’s something I have to do,” Nick said importantly, “and that’s to make things better. That’s what you’re doing, right? Only I have skills that most people don’t. So it makes sense to use them. Not by myself, but as part of something larger, a group called the Biotic Underground.”

  What followed had a formal singsong quality. As if the words had been memorized. “We believe that because biotics are special, they have a special responsibility to help others. And the best way to do that is to bring all of the races together. The creation of the Council was a good first step. But thousands of years have passed and the various members are still bickering with each other. So now it’s time to take a significant leap forward by forming a single government. An organization that will be run by biotics representing all of the various races.”

  Anderson ordered the holo to pause before turning to Kahlee. “It sounds like these people are biotic supremacists.”

  Kahlee nodded soberly. “Nick’s very idealistic. They’re taking advantage of him.”

  Anderson said, “Play holo,” and the three-dimensional image jerked into motion. “But that will take time,” Nick continued. “So you won’t see me for a while. Please tell my parents not to worry. I’ll be in touch from time to time but only if I’m left alone. Otherwise it will be necessary to cut off all communications.”

  At that point Nick looked to his right as if seeking approval from someone before turning back. “I guess that’s all. Thanks for being so nice to me.” The holo imploded at that point. Motes of light sparkled and disappeared.

  “Damn him,” Anderson said.

  And rather than object the way she might have otherwise Kahlee nodded. “He knows better. Or should have. What will we tell his parents?”