Hello there,
If you enjoy my stories, you can read up to 15 chapters in advance per story on my Patreon page / patreon.com/Samael61.
If you like how Shepard is a total genius badass, you should check Arrival : Ruptures to enjoy more of the same.
—
The Citadel
Thane, the drell assassin that made more than one crew member nervous, had family issues.
As an assassin for the hanar, he had a pretty extensive list of targets neutralized, which had eventually spilled over into his family life. His wife was killed, and Thane had gone to avenge her, leaving his son, Kolyat, with his aunts.
Not having seen his son for a long time, Thane had recently learned that Kolyat had taken an assassination contract on the Citadel and requested Shepard's help to stop him before it was too late.
"Commander, how can I help you?" Bailey was at his station, working, when Shepard and a drell came out of nowhere.
"My friend here is trying to find his son. We thought you might be able to help."
Family issues.
Sometimes they were worse than most other crimes. "Should be easy. Not many drell here."
"There we go. One of my men reported a drill recently. And he was talking to Mouse. Interesting." A drell talking to a middleman like Mouse?
Trouble was afoot.
—
Shepard merchandise was everywhere, more so in human space than the rest, but it was prevalent.
Toys, blankets, kitchen robots—anything his likeness could be plastered on existed out there for the consumers. Of course, he did get his royalties, earning himself a fortune every day, so there was no problem with it.
Except for the illegal VI personality thing. Not only did he not get any money from it, but they were also buggy.
An insult to him.
Shepard tapped the human speaking to his omni-tool on the shoulder. "You Mouse?"
"What do you— oh shit, Commander Shepard." The former vent rat jumped back, all color drained from his face.
Shit, he shouldn't have sold those VIs.
"And Krios? I thought you retired?" Double shit, because Krios' son had just contacted him days ago.
"What do you want with me?" Mouse just hoped Commander Shepard didn't know about the VIs.
Or that he wasn't angry about them.
Thane patted Mouse on the shoulder to ease the human. Fear was good to instill, but not to the point where it made a person unable to talk. "Be still, Mouse. You can change your pants in a moment."
"Thane's son, Kolyat. We are looking for him."
"Well, I usually wouldn't talk about the people I am working for, but if it's you, I am sure they won't be a problem." If his employers had a problem, they could take it to Shepard.
—
Mouse had given them a name, Elias Kelham, an old acquaintance of Thane who had hired Kolyat.
Shepard also implored Mouse to stop selling his VI personalities, or he would take a cut, either all their credits or their lives.
Bailey, who had an agreement with Elias that Shepard didn't care enough to shoot someone, had agreed to bring him to the station before Kelham's lawyer came to bail him out.
"I don't think Elias will say no to you."
—
"Oh shit." Elias, who was struggling in the chair he was strapped to, stopped at seeing who entered, his threats dying on his tongue.
Shepard had a look as if he had chewed a whole lemon. "Elias Kelham."
Not good.
"C-Commander Shepard. Did I do something wrong?" For fuck's sake, what could he have done for it to piss Shepard off?
"You hired a drell to assassinate someone. I need the target's name."
Was he protecting that damn anti-human turian?
"Will you let me go?"
Shepard let out a long, suffering sigh. "Elias, you aren't worth the time it would take me to kill you. Just give me the name; we have places to be."
That was the best thing he heard all day.
"Joram Talid. He's a turian running for Intendant of Zakera Ward."
"See? That was simple." Shepard left the room, with the drell following, and Elias decided to make a rather large donation to charity for his fortune.
"All yours, Bailey."
—
Shepard was following Talid on the catwalks, while Thane lurked in the shadows.
Boy, was Talid himself annoying, speaking about how the appeasers in the Council gave humanity so much power and how he would take back the Zakera Ward.
All the while running a racketeering scheme.
"Hey, who are you? What are— Commander Shepard?!" A worker, a stock boy who was on the catwalk, interrupted Shepard.
Shepard shooed the worker away. "Keep it down, will you? I am here for something important. Get going."
"Uh, yes, sir."
The stock boy stalled him enough that Talid left, heading home now that he was done for the day, and Shepard saw Thane's son, Kolyat.
Who was trailing Talid and his krogan bodyguard to finish the job.
"I see him. Get ready." He informed Thane and moved out.
Just as Kolyat raised his weapon to shoot, Shepard pulled him with biotics, the drell yelping in surprise, while Talid turned around to see what the commotion was but saw nothing.
Shepard flicked Kolyat's pistol away and stuck the drell in stasis.
Talid wasn't even aware he had just narrowly avoided getting assassinated.
—
"Kolyat." Once away from the would-be crime scene and hidden in an alley, Shepard let Kolyat go so Thane could address him.
As expected, the son was less than happy to see his father. "This—this is a joke. Now? Now you show up?"
"Your father is dying, and he is trying to make up for the past." Which was not an excuse, but the truth.
Kolyat did not take it well either. "What? So you came to get my forgiveness? So you can die in peace or something?"
"I came to grant you peace."
Thane and Kolyat's conversation went as expected. The young Drell was bitter that his father had never been in his life, or his mother's, of course, while Thane admitted that she was killed because of him.
He confessed to hunting down everyone responsible, saying that he had taken plenty of bad things out of the world and that Kolyat was the only good thing he ever added to it.
Kolyat was taken aback by learning the cause of his mother's death, and Shepard took them to the station so they could spend some time in private.
—
"I ran some searches in the C-Sec database. About ten years back, a bunch of really bad people were killed. Like someone was cleaning house. The prime suspect was a drell. He was never caught." Bailey informed Shepard, and both knew who the one responsible for it was, especially after Mouse was questioned by C-Sec.
"If he wasn't caught for a decade, I doubt he would just show up in front of the precinct to surrender."
"Guess you are right." If Shepard wanted him to stop, Bailey was all too happy to oblige.
Instead, his console's screen lit up as files were uploaded to it. "Here, evidence on Joram Talid's racketeering scheme. You have my authority as a Council Spectre to arrest him. That should help you a bit."
"That makes things a lot easier for me. I just need your signature here." No one was going to question the number one Spectre of the Council.
And it would be good to put Talid behind bars after all those investigations that went nowhere.
—
"Any hope for progress?" Shepard asked in the most diplomatic way possible, knowing there was a good chance that the bonds between father and son could never be fixed.
"Our problems—they aren't something I can fix with a few words. We'll keep talking and see what happens." Shepard patted Thane on the shoulder.
He was alone as a child, and the only father figure in his life was Anderson, and their relationship was excellent.
So he didn't know what to say.
"Your son was about to assassinate someone, an important figure in the ward. I don't have any sympathy for him, but the situation is what it is." An anti-human figure like Joram Talid avoiding assassination and getting arrested the same day?
The press and his voter base would have a field day with this.
"No one in the C-Sec except you knows anything about the assassination, and I doubt those outside will just come to confess. Keep this silent, help the kid find a job around here, and I'll be here if you need help with anything." Shepard offered to sweep this situation under the rug.
"Actually, there is something." Shepard's help was more than worth the trouble of making some files disappear.
—
Apparently, there was a new forger on the Citadel called Fade, and he was giving the C-Sec no end of trouble. They even considered that Fade might be an ex-C-Sec officer, with the way he bypassed their systems and protocols.
It sounded like the kind of thing Garrus might be interested in, so he left Thane with Kolyat.
—
Garrus had arranged a meeting with Fade, and what do you know, a volus guarded by two krogan was waiting for them.
"You are Fade?" Shepard crossed his arms, looking at the volus with a scrunched-up face.
The krogan guards run away, leaving the volus alone. "Commander Shepard and Garrus Vakarian? Oh no."
"Yes, yes. Let's skip the part where you piss in your suit and tell us where to find Fade." Usually, a Volus in a suit was a headache for the detectives because you couldn't read their facial expressions.
In this case, it was a blessing, because no one wanted to see a volus piss himself in fear.
"He's in the old factory district works out of the old prefab foundry." Harkin was dead, and he saw no point in protecting him.
Garrus nodded to Shepard. "I know the place."
"He's got a lot of mercs there, Blue Suns. Harkin thinks they're protecting him." The volus offered more, lest the duo begin to think he was being tough.
"Harkin? That moron? I guess even he has a talent for something." Garrus had always wondered how that idiot ended up being humanity's first representative as part of C-Sec.
"A corrupt cop, wonderful." Shepard hated dealing with those.
"Not really. He got fired a while ago, but he still knows the system. Helps the mercs put their people in important places now."
—
Harkin was at the entrance to the old factory district and tried to run when he saw the two of them, telling his guards to stop Shepard and Garrus.
As if.
Three laser bolts crossed the distance at the speed of light; two went through the heads of the Blue Suns mercs, while the third one seared Harkin's thigh, a painful but ultimately nonlethal shot to bring him alive.
"Harkin, I thought you were an idiot; turns out you are a scumbag too."
"Working with the Blue Suns? Don't you know their founder is already dead? You are on a sinking ship, Harkin." Garrus added, chuckling as he dragged the human out.
"God fucking damn it."
"There has to be more mercs in the district, and I don't want to wait for the C-Sec. What do you say?"
"Loser pays for lunch."
—
Zakera Cafe
Donnel Udina, the Human Councilor of the Citadel Council, the human at the peak of the political arena, wanted to lie down in his room and cry.
"Commander, may I ask why half of the old factory district is burning, and there are half a thousand Blue Suns corpses there?" He asked Shepard, who was having lunch with his turian friend, Garrus Vakarian.
Shepard frowned. "Only half a thousand? I must have microwaved a lot more than I thought."
Of course, Shepard focused on the wrong part of what Udina had just said.
"And I might have gone overboard with those incinerator grenades." The turian admitted, swallowing his food, which looked like some sort of beef.
"How did you make those anyway?" Shepard put down his fork, curious, and Udina was ignored.
"Ah, just a controlled fusion blast. I had a small accident while trying to replicate the micro-fusion cells and thought it might actually make a good weapon."
"Nice."
"Commander, please. This is important." Udina pleaded. The rest of his colleagues weren't happy with the damage caused to the Citadel, even if it was a part no one really used anymore, and had sent him to take the heat.
Shepard rolled his eyes. The politicians couldn't even let him eat in peace. "Here is a list of every single merc the Blue Suns managed to put into the Citadel administration to feed them intel and protect their organization."
Udina's eyes shined. There was a top-secret C-Sec investigation into the matter, and if he brought proof back, then it wouldn't look good for the rest of the Council, who had denied quite openly that there was any infiltration by hostile forces at the administrative level.
"Enjoy your lunch, commander." Udina took the files and was ready to bolt back to his skycar before Shepard snapped his fingers.
"While you are here, pick up the bill, will you, Councillor?"
"Of course." A couple hundred credits was nothing compared to the price of the information.
"I love watching politicians grow a plate to please you."
—
The Normandy
Captain's Quarters
"Yes, Father, I am fine. Wait, why are you asking me that? I am not the one who almost got himself killed." Tali snapped at her father, who was being his overbearing self again.
Even though she outranked him now.
"Just take care of yourself, Father."
"Maybe spending some time as a grunt will do him good." Have the people in charge do the work of the grunts for a day, and Shepard knew it would do wonders for their attitude.
Tali lay next to him, one hand over his chest. "I hope so."
"What are we doing now, Captain?" she asked coyly.
"Go and help Liara find the Shadow Broker. He somehow found a clone of me, and I want to know how." It was inevitable for his DNA to get around, and Shepard
"Ugh, I can't imagine clones of me running around the galaxy." Tali groaned. Seeing that clone, watching as it was possessed by Harbinger, still disgusted her at how the Reapers could just violate everything sacred about life.
"I think it would be sexy, having a couple of Tali'Zorahs." Shepard winked, saying it just to tease his girlfriend.
Tali slapped his chest gently. "You wish."
However, their sweet time was ruined by EDI. "Commander, there is a message for you from Admiral Hackett."
"I'll take it on my console." Must be important, since Hackett wouldn't call him for something that was not.
"Commander, there is a bit of a situation on Earth." Boy, if Hackett had to call them all from Earth, then it must be more than a bit of a situation.
"What happened?"
"A recruit in the Marine Corps was showing extreme talent in combat, and someone had a DNA test done without permission."
Shepard groaned. Fucking hell, were they now just cloning him for fun? "Don't tell me I have another clone out there."
An image of a red-haired, green-eyed woman appeared on the screen, with the name Hailey.
"No, she is your sister, and there is a literal army of reporters trying to get the biggest headline of the decade and several people trying to kill her." And of course, Shepard fans wanted to see his sister to get an autograph, even though the young woman had no idea why she was locked up in the most secure place in the Alliance space.
This was definitely worse. "EDI, set course for Earth."
"You have a sister?" Tali asked. With how small the quarian population was, it was incomprehensible for family members to not know each other.
"The first time I am hearing about it." A clone would have been a simple problem; just shoot and forget.
He couldn't do that with a sister.
—
Notes: Not sure about the sister. I found the idea interesting enough to write, but let me know what you think, and I'll decide on whether to keep it or delete it.