hard against the other quarian's mask.
'How about you tell me for free?'
'Pel's renting a warehouse in the Talon district,' Golo sputtered out. Lemm took a half step back, lowering the shotgun.
'Take me there. Now.'
'Don't be stupid,' Golo snapped, emboldened now that the weapon was no longer pointing directly at him. 'What if he has lookouts? What do you think they'll do when they see two quarians strolling down the street toward their hideout?
'If you want to do this, you have to be smart,' he said, his voice slipping into a slick merchant's patter. 'I can tell you where the warehouse is, but that's the easy part. You'll need to scout it out. Figure out what's going on before you try to get inside. You need a plan, and I can help.'
'I thought you didn't care what happened to the Migrant Fleet. Why do you suddenly want to help?' Lemm asked, clearly suspicious.
'I could pretend it's because I feel guilty that I might have accidentally led the
Lemm seemed satisfied with the explanation. 'Okay, we'll try it your way.'
'Let's get off the street,' Golo suggested. 'Find somewhere more private. Like my apartment.'
'Lead the way,' Lemm answered, collapsing his shotgun and slapping it once again into the clip on the small of his back.
Golo smiled under his mask as he led the young man from the alley.
Fifteen
'Are you ever going to tell us where we're going?' Kahlee asked, startling Grayson from a fitful doze.
With the adrenaline rush of their escape fading, his body had crashed and he'd fallen asleep in the pilot's chair. Not that it really mattered; once the course was plotted there was nothing for him to do during FTL travel. Knowing an alert from the ship would wake him once they got within range of the mass relay that would take them from Council Space into the Terminus Systems, he had simply let his mind drift away.
'Sorry,' he mumbled, his mouth dry and his tongue thick and woolen, 'guess I drifted off.'
Kahlee sat down in the seat beside him, and he saw her nose wrinkle as if assailed by a pungent odor. Grayson looked down at his shirt and realized he was soaked in sweat; the sour perspiration of a duster going into the first stages of withdrawal. Embarrassed, he did his best to lean away from her without being obvious about it.
'I was just wondering where we're going,' Kahlee said, tactfully pretending not to notice the smell.
'I was wondering that, too,' Hendel added from behind him.
Twisting in his chair, he saw the security chief standing at the cockpit doorway, his broad shoulders almost completely blocking the view into the passenger cabin beyond.
'I thought you were watching Gillian,' Kahlee said, pointedly.
'She's sleeping,' Hendel replied gruffly. 'She's fine.'
'I have a contact on Omega,' Grayson said, turning his attention back to Kahlee.
'Omega?' Her voice was a mixture of alarm and surprise.
'We don't have any other choice,' he said grimly.
'Maybe we do. I have friends who can help us,' Kahlee assured him. 'I know Captain David Anderson personally. I trust him with my life. I guarantee he can protect you and your daughter.'
To Grayson's relief, Hendel actually shot the idea down. 'That's not an option. Cerberus has people in the Alliance. Maybe we can trust Anderson, but how are we supposed to get in touch with him? He's an important man now, we can't just show up on the Citadel and walk into his office.
'Cerberus probably has agents reporting on every move people like the captain make,' he continued. 'If we send a message, they'll know we're coming long before he ever will. We'd never reach him.'
'I never thought you'd take my side,' Grayson said, studying the other man carefully as he tried to figure out what angle he was playing.
'I just want what's best for Gillian. Right now, that means getting her out of Council Space. But Omega wouldn't have been my first choice. There are plenty of other places to hide in the Terminus Systems.'r
'We can't go to any of the human colonies,' Grayson insisted. 'The Alliance has people stationed there, and they track all incoming vessels. And we'll stick out like sore thumbs on any of the alien-controlled worlds. Omega's the one place we can go to blend in.'
Hendel considered his arguments, then said, 'I still want to know who your contact is.' It appeared to be the closest he would come to admitting Grayson was right.
'A customer of mine named Pel,' Grayson lied. 'I've sold him almost two dozen vessels over the past twenty years.'
'What kind of business is he in?' Kahlee asked.
'Import, export' was his evasive reply.
'Drug runner,' Hendel grunted. 'Told you he was taking us to his dealer.'
'How do we know he won't turn us over to Cerberus?' Kahlee wanted to know.
'He doesn't know anything about Gillian being bi-otic, or why we're really coming,' Grayson explained. 'I told him I was caught with a stash of red sand during a trip to the Citadel. He thinks I'm on the run from C-Sec.'
'And how do the rest of us fit into this?' Hendel asked.
'He already knows I have a daughter. I'll tell him Kahlee's my girlfriend, and you're the crooked C-Sec officer I bribed to get me off the station.'
'So he's expecting us?' Hendel asked.
Grayson nodded. 'I sent him a message when we left the Academy. I'll log into the comm network when we drop out of FTL at the next mass relay to see if he sent a reply.'
'I want to see the message he sends you.'
'Hendel!' Kahlee objected, offended at the violation of Grayson's privacy.
'I'm not taking any chances,' Hendel answered. 'We're putting our lives in his hands. I want to know who we're dealing with.'
'Sure,' Grayson said. 'No problem.' He took a quick peek at the readouts to get a sense of where they were on the journey. 'We should reach the relay in another hour.'
'That gives you time to take a shower,' Hendel told him. 'Try to wash the stink of the drugs off before your daughter wakes up.'
There really wasn't anything Grayson could say to that. He knew Hendel was right.
Sixty minutes later he was back in the pilot's chair, cleaned and wearing a fresh set of clothes. He'd stopped sweating, but now there was a slight tremble in his hands as he adjusted the controls. He knew it would only get worse the longer he went without another hit.
Kahlee was still sitting in the passenger seat, and Hendel was once again standing behind him, leaning on the cockpit's door frame. Gillian continued to sleep peacefully in the back; Grayson had checked on her before and after his shower.
A soft electronic chime from the navigation panel warned them a second before the ship dropped from FTL flight. They felt the faint surge of deceleration, and then the navigation screens came alive as their vessel began picking up nearby ships, small asteroids, and other objects large enough to register on the sensors.
The enormous mass relay showed up as a blinking blue dot near the center of the monitor. Despite the muscle tremors, Grayson's hands moved with a quick confidence over the controls as he plotted their approach.
