[Omega] Blocking Out The Sun

Melindra Vesh did not like Omega. She never had. Such obvious, straightforward danger was routine, uninteresting... No, Vesh belonged on Illium, amidst the veiled threats and deceptive elegance, not... here, where her stiletto heel had just embedded itself in something that had once belonged to a vorcha.

And to think, they have the nerve to call themselves civilised these days.

Oh, to be sure, Aria and her enforcers had done an excellent job clearing up after Cerberus, and trade with C-Space necessitated the transformation of Afterlife and a select few docks into something vaguely respectable, but to claim that Omega was anything but a filthy hive of scum and villainy was simply laughable. Omega's 'golden age' was a veneer, and said veneer was incredibly thin in the darker reaches of the station.

Vesh was, of course, deep within said darker reaches, having landed just outside an Eclipse-controlled district that Aria had never contested. It wasn't hard to see why - there was no reactors here, no particularly interesting clubs, just a few strip joints and dingy motels for the few Eclipse members who actually wanted to spend their leave on Omega, of all places.

Still, it was inconspicuous enough, and The Queasy Mongoose (Athame take the human that thought of that name) served a passable Biotic Explosion. And besides, Vesh had to stop here to retrieve Simms before heading out, so it was convenient, if nothing else. She could only hope that the salarian she was meeting wouldn't be late - the thought of spending a night in this undoubtedly vermin-ridden place made her physically ill.

"Vaelon, be a dear and get me a Biotic Explosion, would you?" Vesh asked, straightening the skirt of her dress as she settled into a moth-eaten booth. "See if you can't find our elusive engineer while you're at it, too. I will await Major Dij and his entourage."

Now this would be interesting. Vesh had worked with a good number of the higher-ranking Eclipse over the centuries, but Dij had not been among them. Unsurprising, considering he'd only been around for a decade or two, but nevertheless, Vesh was almost looking forward to this little conference. Almost being the operative word, of course.

Keynra Dij, once of the Union Military and now a Major with Eclipse, was in fact on time. Dressed in a hardsuit proudly emblazoned with the Eclipse logos, he stalked down the gloomily lit streets with a fellow salarian in tow as he pondered the unfairness of the universe. It was a mystery to Dij, it really was, why the Wheel refused to have him be on top for a turn or two. Nevermind the loss of the 22nd, or the shrelling arm, no here he was, once more playing infantry.

Not by choice, of course. When Nassa D'Veyra had offered him a billet as supply officer for her rump battalion of 16 and 89 companies, he'd been more than happy to accept. Back where he belonged with his datapads and a nice glass of Mannovai Malt after a long day of crunching numbers? Fine by him. And for a few weeks as 16 and 89 Companies had rebuilt after the War, Dij had very much been in his element.

And then D'Veyra had gone on leave. And rather than pick one of her experienced company commanders, or any of the other blood-and-guts types she'd had on staff, it had been the highly-strung salarian logistics officer who'd gotten the call to take charge in her absence.

Because that made perfect sense.

D'Veyra must've inspired tremendous loyalty or ridiculous fear in her subordinates because not a soul questioned the decision. Not the top noncom, the easygoing Chief Operative Imf, not the 2IC, no one. And knowing the Eclipse officer who had earned the nickname of "the Ogre", Dij could probably guess which one it was.

Now here he was off to meet with another asari. Time to get his deferential face on: salarians might have kept the corp running but it was the asari who owned it, and they knew it. He might have been the same rank as Major Vesh, but if half the rumors he'd heard about the woman were true, she wasn't likely to act like it. And in the Eclipse, the asari were always right.

"We there yet, Sir?" Tregor Rez had been Dij's Senior Operative while commanding the logistics of the battalion, and when Dij had been bumped up a notch, he'd kept his fellow salarian on as his second. If Imf didn't like it, he hadn't said a word, and Dij had made sure to include the Chief in command decisions and briefings. No sense antagonizing the old guard, after all.

Dij stopped, looking up at a blinking neon sign with a jaundiced eye. "The shrell is a mongoose? Yes, Senior Op, I'd say we're here."

Rez shut up as the pair stepped in. He knew to let his commander do the talking during this briefing.

It wasn't hard to spot Vesh; the elegantly attired asari couldn't have looked more out of place if she'd tried. Dress and heels in an Omega dive? That's just begging for the wrong kind of attention.

Somehow, though, Dij had a feeling that anyone trying that on his fellow Major would be in for a rougher time than they'd bargained for. As he and Rez paced over, Dij suddenly felt something he hadn't had since his first meeting with D'Veyra as her direct subordinate: apprehension.

The two salarians came to attention, Dij saluting. Ordinarily quite unnecessary amongst the more relaxed Eclipse (this wasn't the Union military after all), but it was best to make as good impression as possible for the new superior.

"Ma'am, Major Keynra Dij reports."

Oh, he's one of those.

Former Union military. Now that should make things easier. The salarians Vesh had worked with tended to be slippery fellows, difficult to work with and more so to trust. Vaelon was a good second-in-command, but sometimes he was too clever for his own good. The military types, on the other hand, tended to be more straightforward, more... obedient. It would be nice to have someone who wouldn't second-guess her every order for once.

"Major Melindra Vesh. A pleasure, I'm sure," she replied, a self-satisfied smile fluttering across her lips as she extended a hand, purple-lacquered nails glinting in the dim light. "Please, take a seat. And may I offer you a drink while we wait? My second, Vaelon, will be here shortly, along with my chief engineer."

Right on cue, the two officers appeared out of the gloom. They were polar opposites of each other: Vaelon, scrawny, twitchy and inconspicuously blending with the shadows in black leathers; and Simms, a great grinning giant of a man with slicked back hair, a gaudy gold tooth, and a bright Eclipse yellow shirt, unbuttoned to show gratuitous amounts of chest hair. The latter, however, was hastily corrected following a particularly stern glare from Vesh.

"Ahem. May I introduce my second-in-command, Misha Vaelon--" The salarian gave a tense little wave as he set down a tray of drinks. "And Engineer Andino Simms, who will be responsible for 24 Company's mech contingent. Now, unless we're waiting for anyone else, I suggest we get down to business. Vaelon, if you would?"

Vaelon bobbed his head in response, keying a few commands into his omnitool and bringing up a holographic display over the table. A 3-D model of the Terminus world Tshombesha hovered next to a minimised version of a certain news story, a list of the planet's basic attributes (terrain, temperature, major settlements, etc.) scrolling by on the other side of the model.

"I take it everyone is familiar with the recent news? This is a PR mission as much as it is anything else, which, as I'm sure you'll agree, makes planning our course of action many thousand times more important. We don't want to look bad in front of the galaxy, now do we?"

Dij lowered his salute, nodding a greeting at Vesh's two subordinates as he sat down, though he had to restrain a surprised blink at the burly senior engineer. The Eclipse was a long long way from being an actual army, but most units took care to maintain standards of some sort. Judging by his glance over at his commander, Rez was thinking much the same thing.

Might be the exalted Major doesn't run that tight a ship. That could be a problem. 24 Company was a little-known unit in Eclipse, not having built up a reputation for lethality like D'Veyra's 16 Company, but what little gossip Dij had managed to glean on the unit had indicated an efficient and well-run outfit. Damned godsquid could have changed that.

Might as well get down to business, anyway. "Pleasure to meet your staff. This is my Senior Operative, Tregor Rez." Dij's top noncom waved his greetings as his major hunched over the table to examine the data. Judging by the abrupt way he sat up, Dij was unimpressed. "No Ma'am, we don't. We will though, if we don't get better intelligence. Media was kind enough to identify the Suns force hired by the secessionists, so we need to dig up as much as we can on them to find out what capabilities they have."

Rez nodded his agreement. "There's also corporate security forces on-planet. Info on their composition should be publicly available."

Teeth gritted, he awaited Vesh's reply. It probably would not be pleasant---so much for being deferential to the asari.

Vesh didn't miss Dij's double take at Simms's appearance. It was to be expected, of course - the engineer was a master at his craft, made the machines sing, but no one could deny that he didn't exactly fit in with his well-dressed peers. Particularly not when he was fresh off leave and undoubtedly still rat-arsed.

He'll be better behaved in the field. Or I will personally tear out that ridiculous tooth of his.

"Yes, Operative, I'm very much aware of that," Vesh sneered, eyes blazing at the salarian as she took a sip from her brightly-coloured concoction. "In fact, if you had the patience to wait but a few minutes, you'd see that we've already taken the liberty to acquire said information."

Before the Major could turn her fiery gaze on him, Vaelon swiped at the haptic interface, which promptly reformed itself into two screens. The first displayed copious amounts of information on 9 Commando, from notes on notable personnel to news stories about their exploits; the second, considerably smaller, showed what could be gleaned about the forces already present on Tshombesha.

"Dossiers on both 9 Commando and the corporate security forces have just been sent to your omnitools. This is all the publicly available information we could acquire, as well as some of my personal impressions of 9 Commando, since I had the dubious pleasure of working with them on Earth. Anything else is not my department - I'm a commando, not intelligence. I'll leave the data gathering to REMFs like yourself."

Vesh paused a moment, regarding the pair of salarians levelly. She'd been with Eclipse for nearly a century. She'd been a commando, and a huntress before that, for well over four. And they dared question her competence? Honestly, if a couple of uppity frogs were all Command were going to send her, she would rather do this alone.

"In any case, I think our angle is clear. The Suns as a whole - and this unit in particular - have something of a reputation for being unnecessarily brutal," Vesh continued, satisfied that she had made her point. "And,of course, they are fighting for the dissidents. We, therefore, are the heroes that swoop in to save this poor colony from the atrocities committed by the fanatical rebels."

Oh, excellent. Shrelling perfect. Dij could already feel himself already tensing up at his fellow Major's attitude. This was going to be a problematic command relationship, he could already tell. This woman had to have been from the upper crest of Asari society. Or had desperately wanted to. Only explanation he could think of for her obscenely condescending attitude.

But in the meantime he had an enemy to learn about. Dij leaned forward to get a closer look at the intelligence, vaguely aware of Rez next to him doing the same. "Shock infantry...roughly battalion size---human battalion, at least," he muttered to himself. "Five line companies with one in support handling logistics and other duties."

He frowned. There were quite a few things missing from that list. "No artillery, no air support. They really are trying for a PR coup. Suns don't like to hold back on the big guns."

Rez silently nodded his agreement. Apparently the Senior Operative had been easily cowed by Vesh's overbearing attitude. Great. The last thing Dij needed was for his staff to think he and his top noncom were knuckling under to 24 Company's CO. He'd no doubt D'Veyra's loyalists (that is, all of them) had already found him wanting.

What else did you expect when you put the loggie in charge?

It was probably best to gloss over the whole playing hero thing. Also probably best not to mention that to his staff on the rump battalion---or at least not in those exact terms. "Understood ma'am, hearts-and-minds. Recommend we do bring in gunships for close air, if not the artillery. We should outgun the Suns in at least one area." Dij permitted himself a taut smirk. "Gunships are a bit more PR-friendly."

"Hah! You can bet your scrawny little ass we'll bring in the gunships!" Simms roared, standing up and slamming an emphatic hand on the table. "I haven't taken my girl out for a spin since th--"

"Sit down, Engineer!" Vesh hissed, shooting the big man a glare sharp enough to cut through diamond. Simms hastily obliged, snapping back down into his seat and clenching his jaw shut. He might still be a little boozy, but he knew exactly what that look meant.

"My apologies for that little display," Vesh continued, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "Engineer Simms is talented, but an... exuberant sort. Sometimes he forgets his place in things. That said, he is correct - we do have a squadron of gunships available. Vaelon, if you would?"

The holographic display changed once again, this time showing the make-up of 24 Company. It was a diverse group, with clearly defined divisions for engineers, mechs and their technicians, snipers and the assorted biotic classifications. Someone like Dij, however, would probably notice that the company was very light on basic infantry - just about everyone was a specialist in their field.

"Vaelon has combat data on all of these groups, if you're interested," Vesh offered, . "I'm sure you'll find it more than satisfactory. After all, we're not only trying to impress the public here." A dark smile crept over the asari's deep purple lips. "I want to crush the Suns beneath our heel. Beat them at their own game, if you will. This is the perfect opportunity."

High Command would like that. Sending their only real competition running with their tail between their legs. Why, Vesh might even get another promotion out of it, if she put on a good enough show. Two promotions in as many years. Practically unheard of in the asari world. Now that would get her noticed.

"So," she eventually said, having given Dij ample time to mull over the data. "Might I ask what you will be bringing to the table?"

Dij squinted at the hulking human for a few seconds before jerking his head at Rez. His second fumbled about with an OT for a couple seconds before the TO&E of D'Veyra's rump battalion scrolled through the air in holographic form. Dij knew that the Eclipse was more keen on specializations in their ranks than an actual standing army but the lack of straight-up footsoldiers was a tad unsettling.

"As the humans say, we're bringing the heat for this one," Dij began, "or at least I think the humans say that. At any rate, we're mostly regular line infantry, with a squad or two of biotics and engineers mixed in here and there to provide combat support as needed. We also have a squadron of gunships attached for close air."

Dij cocked his head, pondering how the somewhat uppity asari would react to his fire superiority. "Will that be enough, Ma'am?"