MEHR Chapter 52, Snippet 2 (Patreon)

"Now, I go and get the Deep Eyes' number one asset," replied Frost.

~[h+]~

There was going to be a fight, Jane knew it. Leaning casually against a nearby bulkhead, she watched as the rest of the Deep Eyes stonewalled the Alliance soldiers from getting inside the squad's own little corner of Special Projects, where their experimental gear was stored.. She was, of course, ready to pounce on Allie in the blink of an eye, should it come to it. She knew that it would come to that pretty soon: the Deep Eyes were unarmed and unarmored, and the Allie goons were in full gear, and not at all intimidated.

"Step aside," growled the Alliance Sergeant.

"This is United States military property," Grey growled back.

"Not anymore — Ares Accord gives us the right to take everything... including you."

Grey glared at him, hard. "Over. My. Dead. body."

"Heh, that can be arranged..."

Jane cursed Marcus and Wrex for not being here, as having them both around would have been a great help. In fact, all of the Durendal's DARPA 'contractors', had been ordered to leave the ship, taking with them as much tech as they could... almost as if Hein saw this coming. Could have warned us too, she thought ruefully, thinking Hein had abandoned the Deep Eyes to being swallowed up by the Alliance.

"Hey there beautiful," said Frost, leaning casually on the wall, having already turned the charm on. "Waiting for someone?"

"Sorry, I prefer aliens," Jane replied. Then she added: "They fuck better." This, she hoped, would shut Frost down, as she wasn't in any mood to flirt.

"What a coincidence, so do I!" replied Frost, not breaking stride at all. "Now that we've established we got something in common, mind telling me what's going on here?"

Jane sighed, pointing at Grey, who was arguing with an Alliance Sergeant. "My Captain wants to keep the Alliance away from our DARPA gear."

"Why's that?"

"It's high-end stuff, and he doesn't trust Allie with it."

"Is that right?" said Frost, as he disengaged from Jane and walked away. Jane knew things were about to get interesting, and kept a hand on her knife.

~[h+]~

"You leathernecks in trouble?" asked Frost casually.

"Butt out, grunt!" snapped Grey.

"They already are," said the Alliance Sergeant, a round-faced Ossie. "I'm just waiting for the rest of my boys to come along and put these little cocksuckers to the brig."

"...Yeah, can't let you do that," replied Frost.

"Oh? And why's that?"

"Because I need one of them in her Sunday best," answered Frost, as he unloaded two rounds from his M6G Magnum into the Sergeant's knees. Jane pounced immediately on the rest of the Alliance Marines, and the other three Deep Eyes joined the fray, taking advantage of the shock of Frost's attack to grab their foes and wrestle their guns away from them. It was over in a minute, but reinforcements were on their way.

"Grab your shit and head to an escape pod!" barked Frost over the alarm klaxon, as he kept incoming Alliance Marines suppressed with a Lancer.

~[h+]~

Needless to say, Tigris wasn't happy to get involved in Terran in-fighting.

"I can't believe you did that," said the Spectre in the tight confines of the escape pod. "Spectre candidacy can only go so far—"

"The Alliance won't do a damned thing," said Frost, as he worked the pod's controls for a landing at the nearest open dock.

"How do you figure?" said Jane, as she adjusted the wrist mounted computer on her DEMONICA. There had been no time to fit the custom MIPS parts onto it, except for the helmet, which had been remodelled to resemble the Marines' Nightmare tactical helmet.

"Because I was audited to serve in the Alliance once, and the process takes months, not minutes. This is Vandermark calling favours with his friends in the AIA, no doubt," left unsaid was the fact that no intelligence service liked the police sniffing around. "Well, fuck him. I don't need a warship to track Adam Jensen down."

"And you don't need us either," said Grey over the TACCOM, "Why help us at all?"

"I may not need the Deep Eyes ," replied Frost, "not yet anyways..." he gave Jane a knowing look. "But 'El Cazadoras'... now HER, I definitely need."

"...I'm sorry, who?"

"He's talking about me, cap'n." said Jane." ...I'm sorry, but the rest is classified."

"See you on the Saratoga!" said Frost cheerfully, as he switched channels and deployed his helmet, surrounding his face. "Sorry, darling," he said to Tigris. "Private conversation."

Tigris, in response, merely shrugged.

Jane deployed her helmet, sealing her face and her voice under several millimetres of plastic and metal. "Alright," she said over an encrypted channel. "How do you know?"

"Vandermark isn't the only grunt with connections. Allow me to re-introduce myself. Agent Nathaniel Frost, FAI."

For some reason, that didn't quite surprise Jane. "I see... well, there's not much to be said, then."

"But there's so much to talk about! I especially love the part on your file that says 'primary cause of the defeat of the Venezuelan Rebellion of 2177 by single-handedly tracking down and assassinating Luis Perez and most of the Alianza de Libertad Venezolana's leadership..."

Jane didn't want to remember the day she stuck two daggers in the very heart of the Venezuelan Rebellion... but she couldn't help it. Two young lovers, deep in the jungle, sharing a moment of privacy together before the battle that would decide everything, a moment for tears, and goodbyes... she would have been moved, but Luis had killed her squad, and revenge had been fueling her. She had descended upon Luis and Ines like a hawk, and they had barely a moment to react before they died.

"...after that," continued Frost, "All the Army and the Marines had to do was mop up the scattered rebels. With a resumé like that, I keep wondering why the FAI didn't give you a job."

"Gee, I wonder why." They'll kill you, Hein had told Jane a long time ago. A lot of people wanted a good little war, and you ruined that for them... "Let me guess, you're offering me one?"

"Yeah. Help me track down Adam Jensen."

"Can't exactly say no the FAI, now can I?"

"Hey now, it's not like that. Work with me, help me become Spectre... and the FAI will owe you one big favour."

~[h+]~

"What an interesting bunch," said Tenma.

"Indeed," agreed Yang. They had just spoken to Jensen's roommate, a group that included two Krogans, four humans, four quarians, a volus, and a pookah. One might thing that would be too many people to share an apartment, but this one was quite spacious. Terra Branford — a rather fine specimen of a human being — was actually the only actual roommate, legally speaking. Apparently, Adam had invited all these people to live with him, and had not consulted here at all, much to her supposed chagrin. Yang had not believed a word she said, and strongly suspected that Tenma found a bill for that Indian restaurant because she wanted him to.

Yang tucked the plushie the Pookah had sold him in his avatar's storage compartment. "Well, we have a lead. I'm surprised the Citadel even has an Indian restaurant... real meat is hard to come by, and I doubt the spices are grown locally."

"Apparently this Bhatia managed to come up with a pretty good menu, regardless."