Free Mass Effect™: Retribution by Drew Karpyshyn Page A

hair, and fibers. Another was processing the room’s extranet terminal while four more scoured the rest of the apartment, looking for any shred of evidence that might help reveal what had happened.
    The signs of a struggle were obvious, though how many had been involved in the battle—and who they were—was impossible to tell. All they knew for sure was that the man known to them as Paul Johnson was gone, and so were the drugs.
    That wasn’t his real name, of course. As the enterprising human had worked his way up the ranks of her organization, Aria had had him checked out. It hadn’t taken long to discover that Paul Johnson was an assumed name, but that hadn’t alarmed her. He was hardly the only person in her organization using a forged identity.
    A few months of careful surveillance assured her that he wasn’t working for a rival gang or some lawenforcement agency looking to move in on Omega, but she never had figured out who he really was. She’d had her people take biometric samples: fingerprints left on glasses at the club; retinal, facial, and morphology scans from the station’s various security cameras; skin, hair, and even blood samples gathered by Liselle while Paul lay sleeping beside her. None of it came back as a match to any known database.
    Aria didn’t like uncertainty. Her first instinct had been to have Paul eliminated, just to be safe. She’d even ordered Liselle to do it. But the younger asari had pleaded for Paul’s life. He had skills Aria could use, she’d insisted; he was valuable to the organization. Whatever his past was, he had left it behind when he’d come to Omega. He was loyal to Aria now, Liselle swore … as loyal as anyone who worked on Omega could be, at least.
    In the end, Aria had let herself be persuaded. And now Liselle was dead.
    Over the centuries, Omega’s Pirate Queen had seen thousands, if not millions, of bodies: both those of her enemies and her allies. She’d stood over more asari corpses than she could remember, many of them slain by her own hand. But it was rare she had to face the death of one of her own offspring.
    At her mother’s insistence, Liselle had kept their relationship hidden. Aria didn’t want her enemies to use the knowledge against her, and she didn’t want Liselle to go through life with a target on her back. Yet in the end, it hadn’t mattered.
    Despite the seething rage she felt over the death of her daughter, Aria wasn’t about to jump to any conclusions. There were too many possibilities in play.This could have been a retaliatory attack by the Talons, though that didn’t seem likely. Why come to make peace with her, only to start the war up again? They were smarter than that.
    Plus, the Talons had no reason to take Paul with them. If they were responsible, his body should have been lying beside Liselle’s. In fact, she couldn’t think of anyone who would want to take Paul prisoner … which meant there was a good chance he was in on it.
    She turned and strode quickly from the bedroom, her face an emotionless stone mask as she left her daughter’s body behind.
    Sanak was somewhere in the hall outside trying to find out if the neighbors had seen or heard anything useful. She’d sent a pair of krogans to accompany him—a not too subtle message that when Sanak asked a question, he expected a very thorough answer.
    Unfortunately, there wasn’t much chance of his learning anything new. Omega First Security had already offered a five-thousand-credit reward for any information that could lead to the apprehension—or elimination—of those responsible for killing their district guards. So far they had no significant leads. Aria’s reputation was known to everyone on Omega, but if five thousand credits couldn’t make someone come forward, neither could the legendary wrath of the Pirate Queen.
    She crossed the kitchen and entered the living room just in time to see Sanak returning. From the batarian’s expression she could tell his