Mass Effect: Revelation

by Drew Karpyshyn

  After five minutes he had cleared the camp. The buildings housing the workers formed an evenly distributed ring around the entire refinery, but nobody wanted to live butted right up against the metal security fence. The inner edge of the camp stopped a good hundred meters away from it, leaving a wide tract of empty and unlit land occupied only by a few scattered public lavatories.

  Anderson kept his pace at a brisk walk until he was far enough away from the lights to avoid being seen. Anyone who had happened to spot him disappearing into the darkness would have assumed he was headed to the bathrooms, and not given him a second thought.

  Safely out of sight, he slipped on a pair of night-vision goggles, then broke into a run until he reached the fence. Using a pair of wire clippers he cut a hole large enough for him to fit through. He ditched the long coat before crawling through—it would only get in the way. Once on the other side, he pulled out his pistol, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it.

  From here on in the mission became more difficult. He was in a restricted area now. There were small security squads patrolling the grounds inside the perimeter of the fence; if they saw him they’d either shoot him or set off the alarm. Avoiding them wouldn’t be too difficult, however; he’d see the glow of their flashlights on the ground long before they were close enough to spot him.

  Cautiously making his way across the grounds, he approached a corner of the refinery. The complex was enormous—a main central building nearly four stories high held the primary processing plant. A number of smaller two-story structures had been built on every side to house storage, shipping, administration, and maintenance—Anderson’s destination.

  When he reached the maintenance annex he headed around to the small fire door in the back corner. It was locked, but only by a simple mechanical bolt, not one of the far more expensive electronic security systems. A refinery plant in the middle of the desert was typically concerned with limiting casual theft; they weren’t built with the purpose of preventing infiltration operations.

  Anderson placed a small glob of sticky explosives on the lock, stepped back, and fired the pistol at the putty. It exploded with a sharp bang and a bright flash, blowing the door open. He waited to see if there was any reaction to the noise, but hearing none he pushed open the door and stepped in.

  He found himself standing by the employee lockers. The room was empty; it was the middle of the shift and the employees were all out on repair calls. In one corner was a large laundry basket on wheels, filled with soiled mechanics’ coveralls. He rummaged around until he found a pair that fit over his body armor, then slipped it on. He had to remove his pistol and assault rifle—he didn’t want to be fumbling beneath the coveralls to grab them if needed. He stuffed the pistol into the deep hip pocket of the coveralls. He didn’t unfold the assault rifle, but wrapped it in a large towel he found in the laundry.

  The disguise was far from perfect, but it would allow him to explore the plant without attracting too much attention. Seen quickly from a distance, most people would just assume he was one of the maintenance crew headed to a job and ignore him.

  He rolled up the sleeve of the coveralls and glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes gone. He’d have to hurry if he wanted to find Kahlee and get her out before Saren started his misson.

  Waiting on the outskirts of the work camp, Saren glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed. Anderson was no doubt somewhere deep inside the refinery by now—too far in to turn back.

  Stashing his weapons beneath a long coat in much the same way Anderson had done when he’d wanted to pass unnoticed through the camp, the turian stood up and marched toward the buildings.

  He’d waited long enough. It was time for his own mission to begin.

  Anderson navigated through the numerous halls, passing from the maintenance building into the main refinery. His heart began to pound when he saw his first employee heading his way. But the batarian woman only glanced at him for a second, then looked away and continued on past without saying a word.

  He passed several more employees as he made his way up and down the halls, but none of them paid him any attention, either. He was beginning to grow frustrated—he didn’t have time to search the entire facility. He’d assumed they’d be keeping Kahlee on the lower floors, but he was still going to need some luck if he wanted to locate her in time.

  And then he saw it: a sign saying “No Admittance” beside a stairwell leading down to what he remembered from the blueprints was a small equipment storage room. The sign was so clean it almost sparkled; obviously it had only been placed there in the last few days.

  He hurried down the stairs. At the bottom were two heavyset batarians, each marked with Blue Sun tattoos on their cheeks. They looked bored, slouched down in chairs on either side of a heavy steel door, their assault rifles propped up against the wall beside them. Neither of the guards was wearing body armor—understandable, given the nature of their assignment. They’d probably been sitting here all day, and body armor was hot and heavy. Wearing it for more than a few hours at a time was incredibly uncomfortable.

  The guards had already seen him, so Anderson just kept on walking straight toward them. Hopefully they’d been warned to be on the lookout for a turian Spectre. If that was the case, a human in maintenance coveralls wouldn’t seem like much of a threat.

  When he reached the small landing at the bottom of the stairs one of the mercs stood up and stepped forward, grabbing his assault rifle and pointing it at Anderson’s chest. The lieutenant froze. He was less than five meters away; at this close range there was no possible way he’d survive if the merc pulled the trigger.

  “What’s that?” the guard asked, pointing the barrel of his gun to indicate the towel-wrapped assault rifle Anderson was carrying tucked under his arm.

  “Just some tools. Gotta keep them dry.”

  “Put the package down.”

  Anderson did as he was told, setting the assault rifle on the floor carefully to make sure the towel didn’t slip and reveal what was concealed beneath.

  Now that Anderson was no longer carrying anything that might be a weapon, the guard seemed to relax, lowering his own rifle.

  “What’s the matter, human?” he demanded. “Can’t you read batarian?” This drew a guffaw from his partner, still slouched in his chair.

  “I need something from the equipment room,” Anderson replied.

  “Not this one. Turn around.”

  “I have an authorization slip here,” Anderson said, fumbling around in his pocket as if trying to dig it out. The batarian was watching him with an expression of bored annoyance, totally oblivious as Anderson wrapped his hand around the handle of his pistol and slipped his finger over the trigger.

  The roomy pocket of the coverall allowed him to tilt the barrel of the pistol up just enough to bring it in line with the guard’s midsection. He fired twice, the bullets shredding through the fabric of the coveralls and lodging themselves in the merc’s stomach.

  The batarian dropped his rifle in surprise, stumbling back and instinctively clutching at the holes in his gut. He hit the wall and slowly slid down to the floor, blood seeping out and welling up from the fingers he had pressed over the wounds.

  His partner looked up in confusion; because of the silencer the pistol’s shots had been muffled to a faint zip-zip that he probably hadn’t even heard. It took him a second to realize what had happened. With an expression of dawning horror he went for his own weapon. Anderson whipped the pistol out of his pocket and fired two shots point-blank into the second guard’s chest. He slouched down to the side, fell off the chair, and was still.

  Anderson whipped the pistol back toward the first guard, still sitting motionless on the floor with his back to the wall. “Please,” the mercenary begged, finally figuring out who Anderson was with. “Skarr’s the one who gave the order to execute those Alliance soldiers. I didn’t even want to kill them.”

  “But you did,” Anderson answered, then fired a single shot right
between the batarian’s eyes.

  He stripped off the coveralls, snapped the pistol back onto his hip and unwrapped the assault rifle, unfolding it so it was ready to go. Then he kicked open the door.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Like Anderson before him, Saren entered the refinery through an emergency door in one of the refinery’s small, two-story annexes. But while the lieutenant had gone through the maintenance building on the westernmost side of the refinery, Saren entered through the shipping warehouse on the east. And unlike his human counterpart, he didn’t bother with a disguise.

  A pair of dockworkers saw him come in, their faces registering surprise and then fear at the sight of an armored turian carrying a heavy assault rifle. A quick burst from Saren’s weapon ended their lives before they had a chance to cry out for help.

  The Spectre moved quickly through the warehouse and into the main building. Again, unlike Anderson, he knew exactly where he was going. He made his way down to the lowest levels of the refinery, where deposits of rock and ore rich in element zero were melted down and the bulk impurities skimmed off the boiling surface. The molten liquid was then piped to an enormous centrifuge to separate out the precious eezo. He killed three more employees along the way.

  He knew he was getting close to his destination when he passed signs on the wall reading “Restricted Access.” He rounded a corner and yanked open a door with “Authorized Personnel Only” painted across it. A wall of hot, hazy air rolled out, stinging his eyes and lungs. Inside, half a dozen engineers were scattered on walkways built around and above the colossal melting vats and the massive generator core used to heat them. They were monitoring the refining process, keeping an eye on the equipment to ensure it operated at peak efficiency and didn’t experience a potentially deadly malfunction.

  The employees were wearing headsets to protect their ears from the constant rumble of the turbines feeding the generator. One of them saw Saren and tried to shout out a warning. His words were swallowed up by the thunder of the turbines, as were the sounds of gunfire as the turian mowed them all down.

  The slaughter lasted less than a minute; the Spectre was nothing if not brutally efficient. As soon as the last engineer died, tumbling from the catwalk into the vat of molten ore twenty meters below, Saren began the next phase of his plan.

  There were too many hiding places here inside the refinery. Too many places Edan could bunker down behind a wall of armed mercs. Saren needed something to flush him out. A few strategically placed explosive charges would trigger a catastrophic series of explosions in the refinery core, setting off a general evacuation alarm for the entire facility.

  Saren finished rigging the last of the munitions, then headed for the upper levels. He wanted to be well out of the blast radius when the charges detonated.

  Kahlee was hungry, thirsty, and tired. But above all else she was scared. The krogan had told her Qian would be coming to see her in a few days, but that was all he’d said. Then he’d dragged her into a storage room and locked her inside the small, dark closet at the back. She hadn’t seen or spoken to anybody since.

  She was smart enough to understand what they were doing. She didn’t know what Qian wanted, but it was obvious they were trying to break her will before the meeting. They’d left her for almost a full day in the cramped closet, in complete darkness with no food or water. There wasn’t even a bucket so she could go to the bathroom; she’d had to relieve herself in the corner.

  After two or three days of this Qian would come to her with his offer. If she accepted, they’d feed her and give her something to drink. If she refused, they’d throw her back into the makeshift cell and come for her again in another three days.

  If she refused them a second time, things would most likely get really nasty. Instead of starvation and mental abuse, they’d move on to actual physical torture. Kahlee had no intention of helping Dr. Qian in any way, but she was terrified of what was to come. Worst of all was the knowledge that in the end they’d win anyway. It might take days, maybe even weeks, but eventually the endless torture and abuse would break her and they’d get whatever they wanted.

  During the first few hours of her imprisonment she’d sought some way to free herself, only to realize it was hopeless. She had fumbled in the darkness with the door of the closet, but it was locked from the outside and the interior handle had been removed. Plus, even if she did get out of the closet there were almost certainly guards waiting on the other side.

  She couldn’t even escape by killing herself. Not that she was at that point yet, but the room she was in was completely empty: no pipes to hang herself from, nothing to use to cut or wound herself. She briefly considered the option of slamming her head over and over into the wall, but she would only succeed in knocking herself out and inflicting a lot of unnecessary pain—something she suspected there was already more than enough of in her future.

  The situation was hopeless, but Kahlee hadn’t given in to total despair quite yet. And then she heard a noise; a sound sweeter than the singing of angels. The sound of salvation: automatic gunfire on the other side of the door.

  Anderson kicked open the door that the two mercs had been guarding. Beyond it was a large storage room. All the equipment inside had been dragged out; it was empty except for a small table and several chairs. Four more batarian Blue Suns were sitting around the table playing some type of card game. And standing off alone in the corner was Skarr. Like the men outside, none of them were wearing body armor.

  The krogan was his first target—a stream of bullets hit the krogan square in the chest. Skarr’s arms flew up and out as he was blown backwards, sending his gun sailing across the room. He struck the wall behind him, spun off it, and fell facedown on the floor, bleeding from too many wounds to count.

  The mercs reacted to the sudden attack by flipping the table and scattering. Seeing Kahlee wasn’t in the room, Anderson simply sprayed the entire place with bullets. He took the whole lot of them out before they ever had a chance to fire back. It wasn’t a fair or honorable fight; it was a massacre. Considering the victims, Anderson didn’t even feel bad.

  After the shooting stopped, he noticed a small door in the back wall. It probably just led into a closet, but it was reinforced with metal plating and sealed with a heavy lock.

  “Kahlee?” he shouted, running over to bang on the door. “Kahlee, are you in there? Can you hear me?”

  From the other side he heard her muffled voice calling back to him. “David? David! Please, get me out of here!”

  He tried the lock, but it wouldn’t budge. He briefly considered blowing it off, like he had with the maintenance building door earlier, but he was worried the blast might injure Kahlee.

  “Hold on,” he shouted to her. “I need to find the key.”

  He took a quick glance around the room, his eyes coming to rest on the krogan’s body lying crumpled in the corner. A thick pool of blood crawled out from beneath him, spreading rapidly across the floor. If anyone in this room had a key, Anderson knew, it would be Skarr.

  He ran over to the body, set his gun on the floor, and grabbed the krogan’s far shoulder with both hands, grunting at the effort necessary to roll him over onto his back. The krogan’s chest was a bubbling mess of blood and gore; at least a dozen bullets had ripped through his torso. His clothing was soaked and sticky with the warm, dark fluid.

  Grimacing slightly, Anderson reached out to dig through his pockets. Skarr’s eyes snapped open and the krogan’s hand shot out and grabbed him around the throat. With a roar the beast stood up, lifting the lieutenant off the ground with one arm. The other dangled bloody and useless at his side.

  Impossible! Anderson thought, struggling like a helpless child as the krogan’s grip slowly crushed the life from him. Nobody can survive those kinds of injuries. Not even a krogan!

  Skarr must have seen the shock in his eyes. “You humans have a lot to learn about my people,” he growled, bits of bloody froth bubbling up from his lips as he spoke. �
�A pity you won’t live to tell them.”

  Anderson kicked and flailed, but the krogan held him at arm’s length and his limbs were too short to reach his opponents body. Instead, he pounded down with his fists on Skarr’s massive forearm. His efforts did nothing but elicit a gurgling laugh from the krogan.

  “You should be glad,” the bounty hunter told him. “You will have an easy death. Not like the female.”

  Suddenly the room was rocked by a massive explosion from somewhere deep inside the refinery. Huge cracks appeared in the finish of the walls and several ceiling tiles fell to the floor. The ground beneath their feet buckled and heaved, throwing Skarr off balance. Anderson thrashed his body in that instant and managed to break free of the krogan’s grip, falling to the floor and gasping for breath.

  Skarr staggered and stumbled, trying to stay upright. But his balance was hampered by his dead and useless arm, and he was weakened by the loss of blood. He fell heavily to the ground, only a few meters away from where Anderson had dropped his assault rifle.

  Now free of the krogan’s grip, Anderson whipped out his pistol and fired. But he didn’t aim at the krogan. If a burst from an assault rifle hadn’t stopped Skarr, a single shot from a pistol would barely slow him down. Instead, Anderson aimed at the weapon laying beside the krogan, hitting it square and sending it skittering across the floor and just out of the bounty hunter’s reach.

  Alarms started going off throughout the building; no doubt a response to the explosion. But Anderson had more immediate concerns. Armed only with the pistol, he knew he’d need a direct shot to the head to finish Skarr off. But the krogan leaped up and lunged toward him before he had a chance to take proper aim.