Chapter Text
Omega, 2178
"They should be calling us the damn Butchers of Torfan," Jack snorted as she downed another shot. "It was our intel that gave the brass the jump on the batarians." Juliette shook her head, nursing a sip of martini to soften the hard, thumping music of Afterlife. It was undoubtedly the seediest bar in the galaxy, and yet the only place the spies could congregate without fear of recognition: nearly everyone at the club was too far gone off of hallex, red sand, or shitloads of booze to notice or care.
"I don't even want to think about what we had to do for the coordinates of their strongholds," Juliette murmured into her glass. "At least Vega's got some spine in him."
Miranda nodded at Juliette's assessment. Her perfectly-manicured fingers rested on her temples. Dark circles rimmed her striking blue eyes. She pulled up another article on her datapad chronicling the Alliance's retaliation against the batarians on Torfan, skimming over that the cost of victory was nearly a full unit of human lives led by a brash Marine by the name of James Vega. He was being equally ridiculed and lauded for his leadership in the brazen show of force by the media, and from the clips Juliette had seen of him, he wasn't exactly camera-trained. Vega's weariness and anger were hardly unique; however, they were all worse for wear. Juliette's head was swimming from liquor. Anything to get the thought of the rising death toll out of her head, pools of crimson blood and lifeless human bodies littering the moon's surface. And was the revenge for Elysium even fucking worth it?
But if this job had taught her anything, it was that nothing in the Milky Way was ever as simple as it seemed. Juliette Shepard, Miranda Lawson, and Jack Nought were typically at opposite ends of the galaxy on missions. The life of Alliance Intelligence agents was such that, when you made and kept a friend who stayed alive or around long enough, it was good enough to see them once a year commiserate in some hole-in-the-wall. They would trade bits and pieces about what they did they did - the things that didn't make it into their official reports, mostly - and distracted themselves with their vices of choice. Tonight, it was bottles of expensive spirits and dancing until their feet were ready to fall off.
Was it reckless for them to be together like this, ripe for the taking by any hostile force that was able to figure them out? Maybe, but that would mean they'd have to be incapacitated first. Juliette would bet on their biotic trio any day. There was something illicit and thrilling about the risk. The three women lived their lives for the Alliance. Clinging to some shred of normalcy, like a night out with girlfriends, was enough to keep Juliette sane in the depths of hell that could be her missions.
Torfan was...not worse than Elysium, God knows how that turned out, but she'd been at the end of her very long rope by the time she'd been given the okay to extract herself. She, Miranda, and Jack had the rare opportunity to work together for an extended period of time, posing as representatives from a front company that had dealings with the batarian criminal groups who burrowed on the moon. She'd crawled through dank tunnels, coming out covered in unidentifiable sludge, as they paid visits to the groups for deals. Juliette could handle a lot, but when she saw their cadres of human slaves, she nearly lost it. That could have easily been her. Miranda had sensed her distress brimming, Juliette's usual unshakeable poker face threatening to slip into something lethal for the batarians and them. They each were subject to increasingly horrifying and creative threats of death, dismemberment, or far worse by the staunch anti-humanists. Creds were creds, so they'd happily take theirs that were secretly funneled by the Alliance, but not without reminding them how much prettier they'd look with neural control chips.
Were they not responsible for delivering the intel on the full extent of the underground networks so that the Alliance could formulate the strongest retaliation possible to demonstrate human military prowess or whatever the fuck the brass told themselves, she would have blown the place sky high herself - damned if the kill count wasn't as impressive as Hackett would want it to be. But they were, so they politely nodded and listened to wannabe crime lord after wannabe crime lord detail their ludicrous plans for galactic domination before they had the full details on the key strongholds for the attack and could get off the forsaken rock. The trio had flown straight to Omega.
Juliette's nerves were fried, but at least she was feeling pleasantly floaty from several cocktails. Across the room, she spotted large group of male turians, raucously toasting a gray-plated one in the middle of their booth.
"Ever tried it with one of them before, Shep," Jack asked, gesturing to them with her glass. The loudest one of the bunch, a man with intricate white facial markings, took Jack's motion as a toast. Nudging his friends, they all raised their glasses to the human women across the bar.
"Once, for a mission. Two words, ladies: Sharp and Teeth." This prompted Miranda and Jack to burst out in laughter, Juliette joining in. For that moment, Anderson and the Alliance unaware or uncaring of their location, they were free.
"To Vakarian - the newest member of Blackwatch. Who knows, Blue, you might be the next damn Primarch," Nihlus toasted with a wink.
"Vakarian," the crew chanted, turian fire whiskey sloshing over the edges of their glasses. A pretty asari waitress sporting what could only be considered on Omega as appropriate workwear sidled up to them with a fresh bottle, refilling glasses.
"Keep it up, Garrus. Pretty soon, I'll be taking you under my wing as a Spectre," Nihlus commended. The asari's attention was caught at the mention of the elite Citadel force, a smirk playing across her lips. She slunk over to Garrus, cozying up to him by sitting on his leg - nearly fully on his lap.
He leaned back against the leather booth, gazing up at the red and purple lights of the club. "A Spectre and a Primarch," he said with a wink. "I think my father would have a heart attack at both." The group burst out in laughter, and the waitress ran a finger along his left mandible. Spirits, she was hot.
"A Spectre, huh? We don't see many of you on our little asteroid," she cooed. He reveled in her touch as he took a sip from his glass.
"Not a Spectre, sweetheart. Everything else is classified." With that, he hoisted the waitress off of his lap and handed her his empty glass. "Thanks, doll." The asari walked away with a huff, and Nihlus's subvocals hummed his approval.
"You're a natural already, Vakarian. Loosen up and go have some fun. Now which one of you lads is going to give our newest galactic friends a go tonight?" Nihlus lifted his drink and motioned to three human women in a booth acros the floor from them. The woman on the left was bald with intricate markings on nearly all of her body. Tattoos, he remembered they were called, and that they sometimes held the same degree of importance to humans that colony markings did to turians. Her glass was raised toward them in toast. The woman on the right had a sheet of inky black fringe - hair - that had an interesting wave to it. His eyes stopped at the woman in the center, and she looked up at the same moment he turned his gaze toward her. One moment, he saw a shock of red hair and her strange five-fingered hand making some sort of wagging motion. The next, the three were turned in toward each other, laughing as though they'd just been caught conducting a prank.
"They're supposed to be crazy in bed," Avitus offered, his subvocals hitting a filthy pitch.
"Your Fornax subscription is showing, Rix," Garrus chuckled. As they moved on toward discussing the female members of their own species, Garrus's thoughts lingered on the three women. Was soft the appropriate word to describe them? Despite only a second's glance, he was smart enough to know that anyone who was cunning and ruthless enough to stay alive, even for a night, on Omega would not fit the term. His musings were interrupted as Nihlus returned to their booth, arms around the waists of two dancers. How the turian managed to sneak off and reappear without a word was some sort of Spectre magic that Garrus hoped to learn one day.
"A present for our future Spectre and Primarch. May you live a little before you die for the cause." The men around him burst into applause and wolf whistles as he lost himself in smooth blue skin.
Spirits, grant me the strength.
Juliette, Miranda, and Jack stood in Omega's dingy docking bay, a tepid silence having come over them. They'd reveled through the night, pulling themselves away from an after-after-Afterlife party hosted by a group of dancers that were pleasantly surprised the three hadn't tried to make passes at them. Miranda and Jack had left moments before, needing to stock up on a particular ammo variety that wasn't easily found in Council space due to its less-than-legal nature. Juliette trailed behind them, having stopped to purchase a couple of mods herself, when two Blood Pack goons tried to jump her. And now one of her favorite party dresses had a blood spatter on it that was definitely never coming out.
Clocking the obvious stain on her garment but knowing it wasn't her bodily fluids, Miranda had contemplated the damage before firing off a string of her preferred boutiques on the Citadel for Juliette to replace her ruined garment. It was as close to a love ya, see ya next time that she'd get, but it felt just as good.
Their moment of respite was coming to an end, and they shifted in their disheveled party clothes as they waited for their separate transports off-station. This was always the hardest part, Juliette knew, but it didn't seem to get any easier.
"Godspeed, ladies," Jack offered, mocking the salute the traditional military members had to give. Juliette halfheartedly returned it, Miranda following suit.
"This time next year," Miranda offered.
"To 2179," Juliette confirmed. "May we all live to see it."
As the shuttle sped away from Omega and the carved-out asteroid receded in the distance, Juliette finally opened the slew of unread messages on her omnitool, most of which were from Anderson with the details of her next assignment. An ancient human adage that her mother used to say whenever her and John were testing their parents' patience surfaced in her mind. Fuck, Mom, if only you could see me now. Would she be proud? Would she be disgusted? Would she be happy? Allowing herself a moment to breathe, head in her hands, she pushed the thoughts of her previous life deep enough to where they couldn't get in the way until it was moderately more convenient.
No rest for the wicked.