Shepard gave an excited crow as she triumphantly tapped the screen of her omni-tool. “Found it!”
Garrus leaned back in his seat and stacked his hands behind his head as he said, “I still don’t know what you expect to get from it. The guy’s a rightwing conspiracy-theorist nutjob.”
“A rightwing conspiracy-theorist nutjob who just happened to die mysteriously the day this book was published,” she pointed out.
“I know,” he said. “I worked the case, remember?”
“And you said…” she drawled pointedly.
He sighed and said, “I said it looked suspicious. The angle at which his neck was broken wasn’t consistent with the trajectory of his fall. But, Shepard, that doesn’t mean his death had anything to do with the book.”
She cocked a brow at him and said, “Just how often did you come across coincidences like this in your career?”
“Rarely,” he grudgingly admitted.
She leaned forward and said, “So if he was killed because of this book, then there’s a strong possibility that he at least knew something they didn’t want revealed. We just have to figure out what it is and how to prove it.”
What the Drell Don't Know: And the Hanar Won't Say was an alleged expose on the exploitation of the drell by the hanar written by the human conspiracy theorist Bernard Plim, founder and president of the Conspiracy Accountability League. She had been searching for a copy of the book for weeks. It had received five stars from the Illium Trade Review but had been pulled from production shortly thereafter and without so much as an explanation.
Arranged
“You have got to be shitting me,” Shepard said. “Why? He’s an alien, for gods’ sake. It’s not like we’re going to be doing anything together.”
Anderson cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “The, ah, asari look somewhat like human women. They’re just…blue and have…tentacles in place of hair. The asari councilor mentioned that they…commonly mate with turians.”
Shepard gaped at him. “Ugh. We’re different species, Anderson. Is that even possible? No. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. Fine. I can handle five years of celibacy. I don’t know how, but I can handle it. Just make sure I have a lot of shit to shoot. And after that, I can at least have a boyfriend? Assuming I can find someone who’ll be okay with, you know, my alien husband from a race we’ve been at war with for three decades.”
“Yes,” Anderson said. “After five years, you can have a boyfriend. You can’t cohabit. He’ll be limited to one night per week and you’ll have to have the turian’s consent to bring him into your shared home overnight but you can stay with him. It does have to be discreet, though. You can’t be open about it in public. The point is to appear happily married.”
“Great,” she said. “So I’ll need to find someone who’s okay with being the dirty secret while I live with my alien enemy husband. Do I at least get to stay on Earth?”
“No,” he said. “You’ll be provided with an apartment on the Citadel.”
Okay, she thought. She could handle that. That could be interesting. She wanted to see the seat of galactic politics. She would be one of the first humans to live on the space station about which she’d only heard rumors and descriptions from other people. There were far more alien species than she’d ever imagined and they apparently lived in harmony there like some kind of Eden. She would like to see that and experience it. She’d just spend a lot of time away from her so-called ‘home.’
“Okay,” she said. “But they can shove the idea of kids up their asses. I’d be a terrible mom. What about my military service?”
“You’ll be performing your military service,” he said. “You’ll still receive pay from the Alliance with a hefty raise and living expenses.”
“No,” she said. “Fighting. Do I still get to fight?”
“Fight what?” he asked. “The war will be over. Humanity is united. I don’t think there will be much action to be had for a while at least.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” she said again. “What the hell am I going to do, Anderson? I’ll go insane.”
“Think of it as a recon mission,” he suggested. “We still know very little about the turians outside of war. We know even less about the other races. You’ll be a pioneer. You’ll get to know them in a way that few humans will get a chance to do for a long time.”
“They have to have something like a shooting range or a sim there at least,” she said. “I want access.”
“Done,” he said. “I’m surprised you aren’t asking about arrangements for protection.”
She scoffed. “Like I couldn’t take down a turian. I can handle myself, Anderson. Proving that is what got me into this mess in the first place. So, who’s the lucky guy?”
“I don’t know,” Anderson said. “I doubted you took the time to ask for names before you started shooting them, so I didn’t think to request one.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “They’re all alike anyway. Might as well be interchangeable.” She paused and then said, “You don’t think…”
“No,” Anderson said, following her train of thought. “There are millions of turians, Shepard. The odds of it being that one are incredibly small.”
