have any noticeable effects on the physical world, dark energy could be concentrated into extremely dense fields by biotics through mental conditioning. With their natural talents augmented by thousands of microscopic amplifiers surgically implanted throughout their nervous system, biotic individuals could use biofeedback to release the accumulated power in a single directed burst. Which was exactly what Skarr was doing; stalling for time as he gathered enough power to unleash it against the young man still foolishly holding a gun on him.
But the merc didn’t realize what was happening. Humanity didn’t have any individuals with latent biotic abilities; Edan suspected he wasn’t even aware such a power existed. But he was about to find out.
“Two.”
The merc opened his mouth to say something else, but he never got the chance. Skarr thrust a clenched fist in his direction, and the air rippled as a wave of invisible dark energy surged out and over his adversary. The unsuspecting human was picked up off his feet and thrown backwards several meters. He landed heavily on the floor, knocking the wind out of his lungs and sending the pistol flying from his hand.
He was stunned only for a second — plenty of time for Skarr to cross the distance between them and
wrap his three-fingered hand around the merc’s throat. He raised the human to the ceiling, easily holding him with one arm as he slowly crushed his windpipe. The merc kicked his dangling heels and clawed at the scaly forearm choking the life from him to no avail.
“Your death comes at the hands of a true krogan Battle Master,” Skarr casually informed him as his victim’s face turned bright red, then blue. “I hope you appreciate the honor.”
The rest of the Blue Suns stood by and did nothing, watching the whole affair with cold disdain. From their expressions Edan could tell they weren’t enjoying the spectacle, but none of them was willing to step in and put a stop to it. Not if it meant offending their employer… or incurring the krogan’s wrath.
The merc’s struggles grew weaker, then his eyes rolled back up into his skull and he went still. Skarr shook him once then gave a final squeeze, completely collapsing his trachea before dropping him disdainfully to the floor.
“I thought you said he had to the count of three,” Edan remarked. “I lied.”
“An impressive display,” Edan admitted, nodding his head in the direction of the bodies. “I only hope you have similar results with Kahlee Sanders. Of course, you’ll have to find her, first.”
“I’ll find her,” the krogan replied with absolute conviction. “That’s what I do.”
Jon Grissom woke to the sound of someone pounding on his door in the middle of the night. Grumbling, he rolled out of bed and threw on a tattered housecoat, though he didn’t bother tying it closed. Any visitor rude enough to get him out of bed at this hour could damn well suffer through seeing him in his boxers.
He’d actually been expecting something like this ever since he’d heard Sidon had been attacked. Either someone from Alliance brass showing up to try and convince him to make some kind of public appearance or official statement, or some reporter looking to get the reaction of one of humanity’s most recognizable icons. Whichever it was, they were out of luck. He was retired now. He was done being a hero; he was sick of being some kind of symbol for all of humanity. Now he was just a cranky old man living off his officer’s pension.
He flicked on a light in the hall and winced at the brightness, still trying to shake off the last vestiges of groggy sleep. He plodded his way slowly from the bedroom — tucked away in the back of his small, single-story dwelling — toward the front door. The pounding continued, growing more insistent and frantic.
“Goddammit, I’m coming!” he shouted, but he didn’t bother to pick up his pace. At least the noise wouldn’t wake the neighbors — there weren’t any. Not close enough to hear, anyway. As far as he was concerned, that was the main selling feature of the house.
Elysium had seemed like a good place to retire. The colony was far enough away from Earth and other major settlements to dissuade people from making the trip out of simple curiosity. And with a population of several million, Elysium was large enough for him to just disappear among the masses. Not to
mention it was safe, stable, and secure. He could have found somewhere even more remote, but on a less established colony he’d run the risk of being looked at as some type of savior or de facto leader
whenever something went wrong.
It wasn’t perfect, though. When he’d first arrived on Elysium five years ago, local politicians had pestered him constantly, either wanting him to run on their party’s behalf or looking for an endorsement of their own candidacy. Grissom chose to remain completely fair and unbiased: he told every single one
of them to go to hell.
After the first year people stopped bothering him. Every six months or so he’d still get a short video message from the Alliance encouraging him to come back and help serve humanity. He was only in his fifties: too young to sit around and do nothing, they’d say. He never bothered to reply. Grissom figured he’d already done plenty to serve humanity. His military career had always come first; it had cost him his family. But that was just the beginning. There was the five-year media circus that had followed his pioneering journey through the Charon relay, thousands upon thousands of interviews. Things only got worse after his efforts during the First Contact War: more interviews; public appearances; private conferences with admirals, generals, and politicians; official diplomatic ceremonies to meet with representatives of every freaky mutant species of alien the Alliance ran into. Now he was done. Let someone else take the banner and run with it — he just wanted to be left the hell alone.
And then some jackasses had to go and attack an Alliance base right on Elysium’s doorstep, galactically speaking. It was inevitable somebody would figure this was a good enough excuse to resume bothering him again. But did they have to do it in the middle of the goddamned night?
He was at the door, and the pounding hadn’t let up at all. If anything, it had gotten more urgent and intense the longer he took. As he unlocked the door, Grissom decided he would tell the visitor to piss off if they were from the Alliance. If it was a reporter, he’d punch him — or her — right in the mouth.
A terrified young woman stood at the door, shaking in the cold darkness. She was covered in so much blood, it took him a second to recognize her.
“Kahlee?”
“I’m in trouble,” she said in a quavering voice. “I need your help, Dad.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Citadel control says we are cleared for landing” came the helmsman’s voice over the shipboard intercom. “ETA to docking, seventeen minutes.”
Through the Hastings’s primary viewport, Anderson could see the Citadel in the distance, the magnificent space station that served as the cultural, economic, and political center of the galaxy. From here, several thousand kilometers away, it resembled a five-pointed star: a quintet of long, thick arms extending out from a hollow central ring.
Though he’d seen it many times before, Anderson still marveled at its sheer size. The middle ring was ten kilometers in diameter; each arm was twenty-five kilometers long and five kilometers in breadth. In the twenty- seven hundred years since the Council was established on the Citadel, great cosmopolitan metropolises known as the wards had been constructed along each arm, entire cities built into the station’s multilevel interior. Forty million people from every species and sector across the known galaxy now made their homes there.
There was quite simply no other station to compare it to; even Arcturus would be dwarfed in its presence. But it wasn’t just its size that made it so amazing: like the mass relays, the Citadel had originally been created by the Protheans. Its hull was formed of the same virtually indestructible material used to construct the mass relays — a technological feat no other species had equaled since the Protheans’ mysterious extinction fifty thousand years ago. Even with the most advanced weaponry it would take days of steady, concentrated bombardment to do any significant damage to the hull.
Not that anyone would ever consider attacking the Citadel. The station was located at the heart of a major mass relay junction deep inside a dense nebula cloud. This gave it several natural defenses: the nebula was difficult to navigate — it would slow any enemy fleets and make it difficult for them to launch any sort of organized attack. And with several dozen mass relays in the vicinity, reinforcements from virtually every region of the galaxy were only minutes away.
If anyone did penetrate these exterior defenses, the station’s long arms could fold up around the central ring,
