Late August, 2168 CE
“Ah, now what have we here! Sneaky, sneaky little AI. Not nearly as good at dodging a proper runner as what I’m used to now, are you?”
Lucy was pleased, really, that Rylia had been willing to spend Marketplace credit on upgrading the Shadow Broker systems with tech from her Earth. Well, a mix of hers and Bruce’s, actually. Technically, neither of them had more powerful systems than what was available in this local reality. Yet, for whatever reason, none of the ‘Mass Effect’ species had ever developed full-dive tech.
It had apparently been a thing on Bruce’s Earth, though not to even a fraction of the extent it had on Lucy’s. Likely a difference in how common cybernetics were in general, as full-dive experiences had required it in either world, and Bruce’s Earth hadn’t treated implants quite as casually. As far as the actual number-crunching hardware went, strictly speaking, some of the computer systems from this reality were more powerful than their counterparts on either Earth. But…well…the lack of implants and full-dive had really limited how well the locals could leverage what they had. Something which had resulted in a bit of a Frakenbuild to get the best of all relevant worlds. Even with the upgrades, the experience wasn’t quite the same, since the extranet as a whole wasn’t designed for full-dive netrunning.
Yet, even just having a personal full-dive environment meant she was several steps beyond any non-AI runner in this reality. For that matter, as evidenced by what she was looking at now, the AI here weren’t as capable as she was used to either. She wasn’t fool enough to believe that would be true of the Reapers themselves, but the various Government AI (which they predicably all lied about not having) were weak.
Even the Geth weren’t up to the standards of the AI she’d been pit against beyond the Blackwall back home. As evidenced by the fact she was monitoring one of their runtimes right now, with it none-the-wiser. Quickly custom crafting a daemon that would shadow this particular runtime, and split off more of its kind to follow any other Geth runtimes it encountered in the process, she considered what it had been doing.
Monitoring.
That was it. Not, in all honesty, all that much of a surprise, based on what Rylia had said about the Geth. Sexy blue boss lady had suspected they were probably already in the Citadel Systems, already watching everyone, and Lucy had just proven her right. C-Sec had been almost hilariously easy to infiltrate via the extranet, the group already compromised to hell and back by several dozen different groups. Worse, unlike the various species Governments, the Citadel didn’t seem to have an AI protecting it, shackled or not.
Well, not beyond the one that might be at the heart of the thing, running the show. But Rylia was skeptical about that.
Apparently, the media she’d consumed that told the future of this reality (and wasn’t that a hell of a head trip) had gotten last minute rewrites and she didn’t know if their reality followed the original script or the rewrites. She thought it was the rewrites, since ‘Dark Energy will Consume the Galaxy if Used too Much’ didn’t fit the Reaper MO of guiding species to use that tech in the first place. But Rylia had admitted she didn’t know enough about that version of the story to understand the logic it might or might not have had.
Lucy shook away that thought and focused on matters she could actually do something about. The Geth, at least, seemed to be doing mostly what Rylia had expected. Making contact with them before Nazara did the same might well be both possible and advantageous. But for now, observation and building up a profile of what they were up to was enough. Besides, Lucy had other things to do.
Like arrange for a bunch of psychopaths to take jobs killing other psychopaths.
Bruce might be uncomfortable with that sort of thing, but for Lucy it was just a logical way to reduce the total number of psychopaths. Both theirs and hostile ones. It wasn’t like she was screwing the psycho mercs over, either. If they succeeded, she paid them…and set them up with another job attacking yet more psychopaths that could do with eliminating. Eventually, the truly irredeemable groups the ‘Shadow Broker’ had on tap for jobs like this would be whittled down, all while smashing other nasty groups in the process.
Like the Cerberus lab she was planning to set a minor group called the Talons on this time. The Cerberus project wasn’t one that had any sort of innocents involved, so using rape-kill-pillage sorts of thugs to smash it was perfectly acceptable. At least to Lucy. She’d spare Bruce the details. Just as Rylia had intended when she’d summoned her to compliment the old man’s admittedly deft hand at guiding the more ‘information broker’ side of the Shadow Broker business… Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
… … …
“Zaeed Massani. You helped him regain control of the Blue Suns?”
Lucy spun idly on the stool, privately admitting that Rylia’s insistence on ‘Spinny Stools of DOOM’ was completely justified. They were just plain fun. Not to mention it was amusing to see Bruce’s eye twitch just a little when she did this during a meeting. Pity he’d had enough chaotic teenagers working with him in the past that an eye-twitch was all she got.
“Yeah, I used some of the assets we wanted to burn anyway to deal with Vido and his Batarian backers. Even made sure Zaeed would find proof of everyone who had helped backstab him, and that it was ‘The Shadow Broker’ that did him a favor, so he’ll be more open to taking contracts from us. Enough of the Blue Suns were still provably loyal to him that he’s restoring the organization, so a few PMC contracts we tip him to will help with a bit of redirect. Giving him jobs that pay well and aren’t morally fucked, will only help him there and deepen the favors owed. All while shifting the organization to a mindset that’s better for us.”
Bruce nodded, checking off that point.
“Good. Massani is no saint, but he draws a hard line on things like slavery. Drug and gun running we can handle, and his more destructive tendencies can be focused. Under him we can turn the Blue Suns into a net positive, even if he doesn’t realize it.”
Lucy shrugged at that. Bruce was probably right, from what she’d seen of the man’s file. Also, fuck slavers. That had been enough of a reason to off Santiago. She was honestly glad the old man was handling the bigger strategic picture, though. She thought she probably could have handled it, sort of. But nowhere near as well as Bruce was managing. Tough old bastard was like a maestro maneuvering shit so they got all the payoffs without a lot of the really fucked up stuff. He’d already increased the Network’s profits by five percent, despite the number of assets Lucy was quietly ‘burning.’
“The Blood Pack are a bigger issue, but one mostly confined to the Terminus. Eclipse are going to be our real problem. Jona Sederis is a psychopath even the Shadow Broker didn’t want to deal with, though ‘he’ used smaller parts of the organization from time to time. Still, I think I have an idea how to deal with her. It turns out that the Shadow Broker does already have an agreement with Tela Vasir.”
Lucy stopped spinning as Bruce brought up the file on the Asari Spectre. They’d discovered quickly that certain files had been secured even here on the Broker vessel. Thankfully, between Lucy and the R3s, it hadn’t taken too long to crack them open. She’d gotten derailed with the nitty gritty of the blacker side of the operations that Bruce wasn’t suited to handle, so she hadn’t seen what was in those files after they cracked them. Apparently, Bruce had found the time to go through them. Somehow. Despite the fact he was juggling way more things than she was.
“Vasir’s relationship with the Broker is about what we expected. She trades favors with him, information swapped for specific high-difficulty jobs. From what I can tell, she has legitimately used the information to derail a number of extremely damaging plots inside Citadel Space. In reality, she appears to be a model Spectre. Not nice, and certainly not moral. Someone who will go to extreme lengths and work with whoever necessary to deal with genuinely major threats.”
Lucy nodded. Bruce sounded…flatly neutral. Which was to be expected. He obviously didn’t approve of the way Spectre’s in general operated, yet was pragmatic enough to acknowledge they served a purpose. Lucy herself was more ambivalent. Frankly, most of the Spectre operations she’d been able to look up in the Broker database would have been easy justifications to any Corp. A few of the methods used were a bit fucked even to her, but she understood and accepted them more readily than Bruce. She’s seen worse from Arasaka, in most cases.
“You intend to use Vasir to eliminate Sederis? Doubt she’ll protest, given Sederis’s known list of crimes. What are you planning to offer her, though?”
Bruce smirked in a way that Lucy suddenly didn’t like…and flicked the file from his console to hers. Ah…fuck.
“That’s for you to figure out. You understand mercs, and your more ruthless touch will better convince her that nothing has changed in the Broker. Find something she’ll want and offer it up. Even better if you can make it something that will benefit us. Perhaps by making her suspicious of Saren, positive toward humans, or even give her a useful connection to Nihlus Kryik. Who seems to be a cleaner sort of Spectre. Get as much out of it as you can and establish a rapport with her. Vasir will be yours to handle, going forward.”
Yep, fuucccckkk. She just knew this was going to turn into one of those ‘learn from this’ things that Wayne did. Which would be incredibly annoying if, you know, she didn’t usually come out having legitimately picked up a few things. He was a much better mentor than Kiwi had ever been, but that was a double-edged sword when it meant he was willing to give her far greater room to both grow…and fuck up. Sighing, she opened the file.
Ah. Now that had been a good twitch. Even if Wayne recognized the good move running a Sex Toy Empire for startup money had been, bringing it up at the right moments got a response out of his normal stoicism. Bless her ultra-horny boss for giving Lucy ready made ammunition! Doubly so since she’d tried a few of the toys in question to scratch an itch or two and they were pretty awesome…
… … …
Kara was surprised to find she was getting a little lonely, working down on Hagalaz by herself, save for some droids. Ones that, sadly, hadn’t been online long enough to develop a full personality. It wasn’t too bad yet, since she was still in contact with the rest of the team via QEC, but she was startled that it was happening at all. She’d been mostly a loner for the last year and change before being summoned, after all, and it hadn’t bothered her much.
For that matter, she’d never been the extrovert her cousin was, even if she wouldn’t claim to be a true introvert either. Honestly, the fact that Kryptoinans in general weren’t overly community-focused meant she’d never really been bothered by being alone most of the time. It wasn’t like she’d been isolated, routinely interacting with people like Barbara up until her tiff with the League had caused issues between herself and most of the other Heroes. Even then, she’d been largely fine, mostly just feeling awkward about the stilted conversations whenever she dealt with her remaining friends or her cousin and his family.
Rylia’s influence on her had been, apparently, greater than she’d realized.
The Asari girl was very touchy feely, prone to random touches and hugs, though thankfully not to the extent her mother had been. Even having been leveled out a bit by the introverted human half of her mental makeup, she’d still ended up more extrovert than introvert. At least with those she knew and liked, which by now certainly included Kara herself. In truth, she reminded Kara a great deal of Starfire, the few times she’d met the Tamarian girl. A bit more mischievous imp, rather than perpetual ray of sunshine, but similar vibes in energy and opinions on personal space.
Honestly, in retrospect, it probably indicated that Kara had been a bit touch starved when she arrived, that Rylia hadn’t overwhelmed her entirely.
Shaking her head, she put aside such thoughts. She was due to head back to Nevos fairly soon anyway. As soon as she got the existing mining operations all up and running, really, and she was on the last one of those now. New mines would need to be set up in the long run, but doing so from scratch was a job for either a professional or, more likely, a specialized mining droid purchased from the Omniversal Marketplace. Getting the mines that the previous Shadow Broker group had already carefully mothballed up and running was more than enough for now, considering they still needed to build facilities to do much with the output.
Humming to herself as she finished working on a console that had been stubborn about coming back online, she nodded in satisfaction as it booted properly this time. It was one that the R3s couldn’t access properly and she only had a small handful of DUM-series pit droids for each mining facility. She’d brought along a few of them to handle small spaces that needed actual hands, but there weren’t enough of them to go around, really. Not by this point, at least.
Rylia had ordered several dozen of them from the Marketplace, but some of them were maintaining the Broker ship and she’d parceled out the rest one facility at a time. The things weren’t too bright, but served as excellent hands to follow up on what the much smarter R3 and JN-66 models required. Since this was the last facility, she didn’t have extras to throw at tasks, and was doing more by hand.
Honestly, she kinda wanted to make something like the useful little things as the next product of their labor mech line. They weren’t anywhere near intelligent enough to fall afoul of Citadel AI laws, and the small size they folded down to would make them an absolute gem for every ship in the galaxy to keep on hand for maintenance. Ships of all kinds were known for small spaces that needed to be worked in for repairs, after all, and the pit droids could squeeze into tight places much better than most species. For now, most of the materials mined here were going to be going to the labor mech manufacturing lines anyway, so it might be worth considering as a product?
Shaking her head, she moved on to the next item on her checklist. The sooner she got this done, the sooner she could get back to Nevos and work on new ideas with Rylia. If, for some reason, that thought put a warm spark in her chest? Well, she was aware of that fact but willfully ignoring it for now. She had yet to decide what, if anything, she wanted to do about it, after all…
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1:
Bruce: "If you murder a murderer, you haven't changed the number of murderers in the world!"
Lucy: "Duh, that's why I get a bunch of murderhobos to kill a bunch of OTHER murderhobos instead. Not only is it more efficient, I make money doing it!"