Saren nodded.
“So what do we do next? How do we find Edan?”
“I’ve already found him” was the smug reply. “How?” Anderson asked, surprised.
“I’m a Spectre. It’s my job.”
Realizing no explanation was forthcoming, Anderson let the matter drop. “Where is he?”
“In a bunker at an eezo refinery,” Saren replied. He tossed a set of architectural blueprints down on the table. “These are the schematics.”
Anderson almost asked where he’d gotten them, then bit his tongue. By law all eezo refineries were required to undergo a semiannual inspection. The layout of each plant needed to be available to the inspectors; it would have been an easy matter for someone with the authority of a Spectre to get his hands on them.
“I scouted out the exterior,” Saren continued. “It’s surrounded by a civilian work camp; the defenses are minimal. If we wait until nightfall, we should be able to get inside the perimeter without alerting anyone.”
“Then what? We just sneak in and kill Edan?” “I’d prefer to take him alive. For interrogation.”
Something in the way he said interrogation made Anderson shiver. He already knew Saren had a cruel streak; it wasn’t hard to imagine that he actually enjoyed torturing prisoners as part of his job.
The turian must have seen his reaction. “You don’t like me, do you?”
There was no point in lying to him. Saren wouldn’t have believed him anyway.
“I don’t like you. It’s clear that you’re not my biggest fan, either. But I respect what you do. You’re a
Spectre, and I think you’re damn good at your job. I’m hoping I can learn something from you.” “And I’m just hoping you don’t screw this mission up for me,” Saren replied.
Anderson refused to rise to the bait. “You said we should infiltrate the refinery after dark. What do we do until then?”
“I need some rest,” the turian stated flatly, confirming Anderson’s suspicions that he’d been up all night.
midnight. That should give us enough time to get in and out before it gets light.”
The turian pushed his chair away from the table; obviously he felt the meeting was over. “Meet me back here at sixteen hundred,” he said before turning and walking away.
Anderson waited until he was gone, tossed a few credits down on the table to cover his drink, then got up and left. Camala used the galactic standard twenty-hour clock and it still wasn’t even 12:00 yet. There was no way he was spending the next four hours in this dive.
Besides, he hadn’t spoken to Ambassador Goyle since yesterday morning. Now might be a good time to check back in and see how Kahlee was doing. Strictly for the sake of the mission, of course.
“Is this line secure, Lieutenant?” Ambassador Goyle asked him.
“As secure as we’re going to get on a batarian world,” Anderson told her.
He was speaking to her via real-time video conference. Real-time communication from a colony in the Verge back to the Citadel was an incredibly complex and expensive process, but Anderson figured the Alliance could afford it.
“I met with Saren. Looks like he’s willing to let me tag along.”
There was a split second of lag as the signal was encrypted and packaged in a top-priority burst, then transmitted to a comm buoy orbiting Camala, and subsequently relayed across the extranet to the ambassador’s terminal on the Citadel before finally being decoded. The delay was barely noticeable, but it did cause a slight hitch in the ambassador’s image on his monitor.
“What else did he tell you, Lieutenant?” There was something gravely serious in the ambassador’s expression.
“Is something wrong, ma’am?”
She didn’t answer right away, choosing her words carefully. “As you know, we dispatched the Iwo Jima
to pick Sanders up yesterday. When they arrived, the ground team was under attack.” “What happened?” Anderson asked, already knowing the answer.
“The Iwo Jima went in to help, then dropped out of contact. By the time we convinced the local authorities to send out a rescue team to the sight, it was too late. The marines sent to accompany Sanders were all dead. The Iwo Jima was destroyed. Nobody aboard survived.”
“What about Lieutenant Sanders?” he asked, noticing the ambassador had left her conspicuously absent from the list of casualties.
“No sign of her. We think she may be a prisoner. Obviously we suspect Edan and Dr. Qian were behind the attack.”
“How’d they find out about the pickup?” Anderson demanded angrily.
“The request for clearance for the out-of-port landing was entered into Hatre’s main transport system data banks,” the ambassador told him. “Someone must have seen the information there and relayed it to Edan.”
“Who leaked it?” he wanted to know, remembering Kahlee’s fears that someone in the Alliance brass might be working with Qian.
“There’s no way to know. We can’t even be sure it was intentional. It might have been an accident. A
mistake.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, we both know that’s a load of crap.”
“This doesn’t change your mission, Lieutenant,” she warned him. “You’re still going after Qian.” “What about Lieutenant Sanders?”
The ambassador sighed. “We believe she’s still alive. Hopefully, if you find Qian, you’ll find her.”
“Anything else, ma’am?” he asked, a little more curtly than he’d intended. He was still shaken by the news that someone had betrayed Kahlee again. And while he didn’t suspect the ambassador, she had made all the arrangements for the pickup. He couldn’t help blaming her at least a little for allowing this to happen.
“Saren’s going to be evaluating you on this mission,” the ambassador reminded him, shrewdly refocusing him back to his true priorities. “Do well and it could go a long way to proving to the Council that humanity deserves to have someone in the Spectre ranks.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you what that could mean for the Alliance,” she added.
“Understood, Ambassador,” he replied, subdued. He knew she was right; he had to put his personal feelings aside for the sake of the mission.
“We’re all counting on you, Lieutenant,” she added just before signing off. “Don’t let us down.”
Saren wasn’t late for their second meeting. In fact, he was already there, waiting at the same table when
Anderson arrived. The bar was busier in the evening, but it was still far from crowded.
The lieutenant marched toward the turian and sat down across from him. He didn’t waste any time with
a greeting, but simply blurted out, “Did you see any sign of Kahlee Sanders when you were scouting out
Edan’s hiding place?”
“She is no longer a concern of mine,” Saren told him. “Or yours. Stay focused on Edan and Qian.” “That’s not an answer,” Anderson pressed. “Did you see her or not?”
“I’m not going to let one human life get in the way of this mission!” Saren hissed at him. Something in his tone flipped a switch in the lieutenant’s brain; the light came on and he suddenly understood.
“You’re the one who leaked the pickup! That’s how you found Edan. You used Kahlee as bait, then followed his people back to the refinery and scouted it out last night. That’s why you were late this morning!”
“It was the only way!” Saren fired back. “It would’ve taken months to find Edan. Months we might not have! I don’t have to explain myself to you. I saw an opportunity, so I took it!”
“You son of a bitch!” Anderson shouted, leaping across the table to grab him by the throat. But the turian was too quick for him. He jumped back beyond Anderson’s grasp, then leaped in and seized Anderson’s outstretched arms by the wrists, yanking him off balance.
As the lieutenant tumbled forward, Saren let go of one wrist and twisted hard on the other one, bending Anderson’s arm up and behind his back. The turian used the human’s own momentum against him to slam him to the ground. Still keeping Anderson’s arm bent behind him, the turian dropped his knee between the lieutenant’s shoulders, pinning him to the floor.