The terminal in Webb's rented apartment buzzed for the third time in ten minutes.
Nolan stared at the caller ID. Sara Webb. He'd ignored the first two calls while trying to figure out how the apartment's coffee maker worked — Webb's muscle memory was useless for a model this cheap, which told him the man had bought it after the divorce. After everything went sideways.
The fourth buzz.
He answered.
The woman on the screen matched the photo. Braided hair. Sharp eyes. But the warmth in that photograph had burned away years ago, replaced by something cold and efficient.
"Marcus."
"Sara."
"I heard about Eden Prime. The dig site incident. It's on the news feeds — 'Alliance soldiers engage unknown hostiles at Prothean excavation.' Want to explain why your name's attached to an intelligence report I had to hear about from Janice at the JAG office?"
"Janice at the JAG office. Webb's ex-wife has friends in military legal. File that away."
"It was a classified operation. I can't—"
"Don't give me that. You've been giving me 'classified' for two years while Emma asks why daddy doesn't call anymore."
The words hit like shrapnel. Not because they were aimed at him — they were aimed at a dead man — but because the dead man's four-year-old daughter was real, and he had absolutely no idea what her school was called.
"How is Emma?" he asked, and immediately knew it was wrong.
Sara's expression froze.
"How is Emma. She's at Westlake Preparatory, Marcus. The school you picked. The school you haven't paid tuition for in three months."
"I know—"
"Do you? Do you know her teacher's name? What she's studying? Whether she still cries at night because—"
Sara stopped. Pressed her lips together. Her eyes were wet, but nothing fell.
"You know what, forget it. I called because the child support payment is late again. Two thousand credits. I need it by Friday or I'm going to the judge."
"I'll get it to you."
"You said that last month."
"I mean it this time."
The look she gave him could have stripped paint off a hull. She opened her mouth. Closed it. The call disconnected.
Nolan sat in silence for a long time.
Webb's apartment was a single room in a prefab housing block — the kind colonies mass-produced for transient workers. Bed, kitchenette, a desk with the terminal. A closet with three sets of civilian clothes and two Alliance uniforms. Nothing personal except the photo of Sara and Emma, which he'd brought from the hospital.
He checked Webb's bank account on the omni-tool. Three hundred and forty credits. Alliance Lieutenant's pay — suspended during administrative leave. No secondary income. No savings.
Child support: two thousand credits. Due in four days.
[SYSTEM NOTE: FINANCIAL RESOURCES INSUFFICIENT FOR IDENTIFIED OBLIGATION. TERRITORIAL INCOME GENERATION REQUIRES TERRITORY CLAIM (0 TERRITORIES CURRENTLY HELD).]
"Thanks for the tip."
He pulled up Webb's financial history. The picture was worse than the bank balance suggested. Credit lines maxed. Two personal loans — one from a legitimate bank, one from a name he didn't recognize. Combined debt: fifteen thousand credits. Minimum payments alone exceeded Webb's suspended salary.
The man hadn't just been demoted. He'd been drowning. Drinking too much, spending too little on the right things, cutting every corner until there were no corners left. The demotion didn't break Marcus Webb — it started a collapse that was still happening when Nolan arrived.
"I inherited a dead man's body, a dead man's enemies, and a dead man's debts. Lucky me."
---
[Constant — Lower Markets, March 18, 2180, 2:14 PM]
The lower markets of Constant were where Eden Prime's veneer of colonial paradise peeled away. Down here, the prefab architecture was older, grittier. The shops sold secondhand omni-tools and black market thermal clips. The food stalls served protein paste disguised with aggressive seasoning.
Nolan was buying a skewer of something the vendor called "grilled varren" — it tasted like pork that had been insulted — when the batarian found him.
Four eyes. That was the first thing. Two sets, stacked vertically, all four locked onto Nolan with the particular attention of a predator who'd been tracking something.
"Webb."
The batarian was short for his species, which still put him at eye level. Scarred hands. A jacket cut to hide a weapon. He moved through the crowd like water flowing around rocks — people stepped aside without being asked.
"Kragen," Nolan said, pulling the name from Webb's memories like pulling a tooth. Loan shark. The unofficial loan. The one that wasn't from a bank.
"You remember. Good."
Kragen stopped two feet away. Close enough to be threatening. Far enough to claim he wasn't.
"Fifteen thousand credits, Webb. I've been patient. My employers have been patient. But patience has a shelf life, and yours expired last week."
"I'm on administrative leave. Pay's suspended."
"Not my problem."
"I'm saying I need time."
Kragen's upper eyes narrowed. His lower pair didn't move.
"Two weeks. That's what I'm authorized to offer. After that, we discuss... alternative arrangements."
"What kind of alternatives?"
Kragen smiled. Four eyes and a smile that showed too many teeth.
"The kind where we find out what your organs are worth on the open market. Healthy human male, Alliance training, military-grade immune boosters — you'd be surprised what that fetches in the Terminus Systems."
He turned and walked away. The crowd closed behind him like he'd never been there.
Nolan stood in the middle of the lower market with a half-eaten varren skewer and two weeks to find fifteen thousand credits he didn't have. The system interface pulsed gently in his vision.
[THREAT DETECTED: FINANCIAL — SEVERITY: HIGH]
[SUGGESTED ACTION: ESTABLISH INCOME SOURCE OR VACATE CURRENT LOCATION]
He threw the skewer in a waste bin. His appetite was gone.
---
[Constant — The Anchor Bar, March 18, 2180, 9:38 PM]
The Anchor was the kind of bar where Alliance personnel went to forget they were Alliance personnel. Dim lighting, cheap drinks, a jukebox playing music from three decades ago. Nolan sat in a corner booth, nursing something amber that Webb's memories told him was bourbon.
It was not bourbon. It was grain alcohol with delusions of grandeur.
He drank it anyway. The burn was grounding. Real. Something his body could process while his mind tried to solve an equation with too many variables and not enough numbers.
Fifteen thousand credits. Two weeks. No income. A system that built turrets from thin air but couldn't generate a bank transfer.
"I can claim territory. Build structures. Generate resources. But I need to be somewhere worth claiming, and Eden Prime's an Alliance colony with Alliance oversight and an Alliance Intelligence agent who already thinks I'm hiding something."
The War Council timer pulsed. 3.2 years.
"That seat taken?"
Nolan looked up. A man stood at the booth's edge — late twenties, stocky, a face built for grinning and currently doing so. Alliance fatigues, Corporal's stripes. Webb's memory placed him instantly.
Corporal Vega. Not the Vega from the games. This one had been at the dig site. One of Chen's squad.
"Vega."
"LT." He dropped into the opposite seat without waiting for an invitation. Waved at the bartender. Two fingers. "You look like hell."
"Feel like it."
"Yeah, beacon'll do that." Vega leaned back, studying him with an open, uncomplicated gaze. "Chen's writing her report. Harlow's been up everyone's ass asking questions. Yusuf's still in a coma." He paused. "And you're here drinking alone."
"Seemed like the thing to do."
Vega's drink arrived. He took a long pull and set it down.
"I was at the interdiction, you know. The batarian slaver thing."
Nolan kept his face neutral. Webb's memories of the event were fragmentary — adrenaline and gunfire and screaming civilians.
"I was on the Kochi. We were running the blockade from the left flank when you broke formation. Everyone on the bridge lost their minds. Captain Osei was screaming your name so hard his voice cracked."
"I remember."
"Forty-three people, LT. Six species. Kids in that group. I saw the manifest after."
The bar's jukebox switched songs. Something with a slow bass line and a woman's voice singing about leaving.
"You saved forty-three people that day." Vega's grin had faded into something quieter. Harder. "Brass just didn't want to admit the blockade was wrong. Whole op was political — some admiral's deal with a batarian diplomat to let a 'trade convoy' through without inspection. You blew the lid off it by actually doing your job."
"Webb didn't just disobey orders. He exposed corruption. That's why they buried him."
"Lot of good it did me," Nolan said, and the bitterness in his voice was partly Webb's and partly his own.
"Yeah, well." Vega finished his drink. "Just wanted you to know. Some of us remember." He stood. Fished a credit chit from his pocket and slapped it on the table. "Next round's on me. You earned it."
He left. The bar's noise filled the gap.
Nolan picked up the credit chit. Twenty credits. Enough for exactly four more drinks at this establishment. Not enough for child support, or loan sharks, or anything that actually mattered.
But it was the first time anyone had treated Webb — treated him — like he was worth something. And that mattered in a way he couldn't quantify.
He ordered Webb's usual drink from the bartender — just pointed at the glass, said "another one." The bartender's eyebrows lifted.
"Since when do you drink whiskey, Webb? You've been a beer guy for six months."
"Felt like a change."
The bartender shrugged and poured. Nolan stared at the glass and filed the information away. Webb drank beer. He'd need to remember that.
The system interface pulsed. He opened the Territory tab and scrolled through the requirements. Physical presence. Minimum population or strategic value. Nominal control.
Eden Prime was Alliance territory. He couldn't claim it, couldn't build here, couldn't generate income through the System. He needed to go somewhere ungoverned. Somewhere in the Terminus Systems, where law was whatever the strongest person in the room said it was.
He needed credits to get there. He didn't have credits. He had two weeks before a batarian carved him up for parts.
He pulled up the colony's public job boards on his omni-tool. Scrolled past listings that paid five hundred credits a month — warehouse labor, agricultural monitoring, security patrol. At those rates, Kragen's deadline would pass twelve times before he earned enough.
One posting caught his eye. Near the bottom, flagged for hazardous duty:
TERMINUS SYSTEMS — HIGH RISK ESCORT Cargo vessel requires armed escort through Omega Nebula transit corridor. Duration: 3 weeks. Compensation: 20,000 credits. Requirements: Combat certified. Immediate departure. Contact: Docking Bay 14, Constant Spaceport. Ask for Reyes.
Twenty thousand credits. Enough to pay Kragen, cover Sara's child support, and still have three thousand left over. All it cost was three weeks in the most dangerous region of the galaxy.
Nolan set down his glass. Pulled up the posting's details. Read them twice.
The Terminus Systems. Where the Reapers hadn't reached yet. Where Alliance Intelligence couldn't follow. Where nobody cared who Marcus Webb used to be, only what he could do right now.
His finger hovered over the contact button.
[WAR COUNCIL REMINDER: 3.2 YEARS REMAINING]
[MANDATE POINTS: 42/100]
[TERRITORIES CLAIMED: 0]
[NOTE: TERMINUS SYSTEMS CONTAIN MULTIPLE UNCLAIMED STRATEGIC LOCATIONS]
He pressed the button and sent a message. Three words:
I'm in. When?
The reply came in forty seconds.
Tomorrow. 0600. Don't be late.
Nolan closed the omni-tool, left twenty credits on the bar, and walked out into the Eden Prime night. The stars were thick overhead — too many to count, too far to matter, except every one of them was a system the Reapers would darken if he couldn't figure this out.
He had a ride off this rock. He had a destination. He had a dead man's debts and a countdown clock stitched into his brain and exactly zero idea how any of this was going to work.
He started walking toward the spaceport. Docking Bay 14. Reyes. Tomorrow at six.
The timer pulsed. He kept walking.
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