The batarian didn’t answer.

“Sooner or later that Spectre will track you down,” the bounty hunter warned, pressing his point. “When he does, your only hope of staying alive is to have me on your side.”

Edan brought his hands together, forming a five-fingered steeple as he considered the situation. The krogan was correct; he needed his help now more than ever. But he wasn’t willing to admit total defeat.

“Very well,” he conceded, “I’ll double your pay. But in exchange you’ll have to do something for me.” Skarr didn’t say anything, but merely waited for the batarian to continue.

“I was never at Sidon,” Edan explained. “Sanders has no knowledge of my identity. With the files at the base destroyed, there is only one connection left linking me to this crime: Dr. Qian’s supplier here on Camala.”

“Dah’tan Manufacturing,” Skarr said after only a moment’s hesitation, quickly putting the pieces together. Once again Edan was impressed at how quickly his mind worked. “Does Sanders know about the supplier?”

“I can’t be sure,” Edan admitted. “But if she mentions it, that’s the first place the Spectre will go. I’m not willing to take that risk.”

“So what do you need from me?”

“I ordered you to come back to this world so you could wipe out Dah’tan Manufacturing. Eliminate all the personnel, all the records. Burn it to the ground. Leave nothing behind. Nothing.”

“You brought me back for that?” Skarr spat out. “Are you stupid? Saren’s going to have his people watching for me. He’s probably already on his way here to try and track me down. We attack Dah’tan and he’ll be there inside an hour. You’d practically lead him straight to your supplier!”

“He might learn about Dah’tan from Sanders anyway,” Edan countered. He refused to back down this time. He was tired of losing face to this brute. “You can get in, finish the job, and disappear before Saren ever arrives,” he insisted. “By the time he gets to Dah’tan all the evidence will be destroyed and you can be long gone. There won’t be anything left for him to find.

“You’ll just have to work fast.”

“That’s how mistakes get made,” the bounty hunter argued. “I don’t like sloppy missions. Tell your men to go in without me.”

“This is not open to negotiation!” Edan shouted, finally losing his temper. “I hired you to kill someone! You failed! I demand something for the money I’m paying you!”

Skarr shook his head in disbelief. “You know it was a mistake bringing me back here for this. I thought you were smart enough not to put your pride ahead of business.”

“You thought wrong,” Edan replied, no longer shouting. But his voice was cold as ice. It was more than simple pride; batarian culture placed tremendous value on social caste. He was a man of high standing; if he simply forgave the krogan for this failure it would be an admission that they were equals… something he was not about to do.

The krogan took another long look at the Blue Suns stationed around the warehouse, their guns still raised and ready and pointing right at him. “Dah’tan has heavy security,” he finally said. “How are we even supposed to get inside?”

“I have some of their people on my payroll,” Edan replied with just a hint of smugness. He’d finally managed to back Skarr into a corner. They were bargaining on his terms now.

“You really think these hrakhors are good enough to handle a job like this?” the bounty hunter asked, making one last attempt to get out of it.

“They were good enough to take out the Alliance soldiers at Sidon.” “They screwed that mission up,” Skarr objected.

“That’s why I’m sending you along this time” was Edan’s smug reply.

Anderson flashed his military ID and slipped his thumb into the portable scanner held by the Alliance guard working the port authority entrance. The young man, who’d jumped to stand at attention as they’d approached, glanced down at the computer screen to confirm the readout.

“Sir,” the guard replied with a curt nod, handing it back to him a moment later. The lieutenant did his best not to hold his breath as Kahlee placed her own thumb into the scanner and handed over her phony ID and the optical storage disk with the counterfeit authorization orders they’d purchased earlier that day.

The man who’d forged them had come to the house first thing in the morning, arriving less than ten minutes after Grissom’s phone call. He was young — no older than twenty by Anderson’s guess. He was dressed in shabby, wrinkled civvies and he had long, greasy black hair. His face was covered with a dark growth he was trying to pass off as a beard, and it looked like he hadn’t showered in a week. The

admiral didn’t say who the man was or how he knew him.

“He’s a professional,” he told Anderson. “He works fast, and he won’t rat you out.”

When he first arrived, the kid had looked in surprise at the broken windows, the smashed furniture, and the burned hole in the lawn where the shotgun blast had narrowly missed decapitating the krogan. But he hadn’t asked any questions. Not about that, anyway.

“What do you need?” was all he had said once he was inside, setting a nondescript case he had with him on the kitchen table.

“Something to get them into the restricted loading bays at the spaceport,” Grissom had replied. “Plus a disguise and a new ID for Kahlee. They need to leave today.”

“I gotta charge extra for a rush job,” he warned. Grissom just nodded. “I’ll forward it like always.”

The young man opened the case to reveal an array of unusual tools, gadgets, and exotic equipment Anderson couldn’t even begin to guess the function of. Using a variety of these, it took him half an hour to produce an OSD with the appropriate authorizations. It took another twenty minutes to encode a new name and rank on Kahlee’s Alliance ID — Corporal Suzanne Weathers.

“That’s not going to work,” Anderson warned. “They won’t have any records for Corporal Weathers in their systems.”

“They will twenty minutes after I leave here,” the kid assured with a cocky grin. “I’ll add Corporal

Weathers to the system. Then I’ll mirror all Kahlee’s data and block system access to her file. When

“You have access to the Alliance data files?” Anderson asked in disbelief. “Only the ones at the ports. Don’t try to use this ID once you’re off Elysium.”

“I didn’t think it was possible to infiltrate the Alliance systems,” Anderson said, fishing for information. “You sure I can trust this guy?” the kid asked Grissom.

Funny, Anderson thought. I was wondering the same thing about you.

“For today,” Grissom replied. “Next time you see him you might want to turn around and walk in the other direction, though.”

“The Alliance has solid security,” the young man admitted, speaking with a casual nonchalance as he worked. “Getting in is tough, but it’s not impossible.”

“What about the purges?” Kahlee asked. Anderson looked at her quizzically and she explained for his benefit. “Every ten hours the Alliance runs a full security sweep on their systems to track down and quarantine any new data coming into the system. It lets them identify fraudulent data and trace it back to the source.”

“I plant a little self-regressive algorithm in the data before I upload it,” the kid explained, bragging more than just a little. “Something I came up with myself. By the time they run the security sweep your data will be back online and all traces of Corporal Weathers or these phony authorizations will be long gone. They can’t trace something that isn’t there.”

Kahlee nodded in appreciation, and the man gave her a wink and a leering smile that made Anderson’s fist involuntarily clench. It wasn’t jealousy. Not exactly. Kahlee was his responsibility now. It was only natural he’d instinctively want to protect her. But he had to be careful not to overreact.

Fortunately nobody had noticed; they were all focused on the young man and his work. “They might have a physical description of you, too,” he warned Kahlee. “We better change your appearance, just in case.”