"Because nothing says 'smooth' like a krogan with a warhammer."

She laughs deep in her throat. "You'd be shocked. Anyway, we've got a source. A quarian girl set up a meeting with one of the Broker's agents, claiming she had intel on Saren. Regrettably, said agent is a double-crossing piece of shit, and he sold her out to the bastard himself. Barla Von found this all out about fifteen minutes ago. We need to find out where that meeting is happening, save the girl, and get the data. Got it?"

"Oh, where has loyalty gone in this galaxy?" Teddy deadpans. How hackable is the general class of 'Citadel surveillance equipment', she wonders? Tiny windows flicker into light-only reality around her face and hands. "I'm assuming we're looking on-station."

"Hah! You're a real go-getter, Terentin. I was thinking we'd find the traitor and beat it out of him, but if you can find one quarian out of the thirteen million people on this station, be my guest. Her name's Sal'Poma nar Marvan, lemme forward you the email she sent in case you can get a trace. Or something."

With a flick of her wrist, Teddy is forwarded an email.

Shadow Broker,

You don't know who I am, probably - I doubt you pay attention to random quarian teenagers, and if you do I'm disappointed with your priorities. But I have valuable information, information that implicates Saren Arterius in the geth attack on Eden Prime. I want to make sure it gets to the Systems Alliance and the Council, but they won't listen to a quarian teenager. You might.

Please respond ASAP,
Sal'Poma nar Marvan

Psh, this should be easy. She sets a cuddly little VI out to crawl for anything that looks like 'Quarian not around other Quarians' on whatever security feeds it can worm its little body into. Not a huge chance of pinging anything useful, but it's free and it's fun.

"Exactly what I needed, thank you, Warhead." The compliment doesn't hurt, either.

Terentin's main plan now is a little less fun, but just as free, and even lower-tech than the VI crawler. She tosses out an auto-email to Sal'Poma's address, coded to resend as constantly as local spam filters will allow. The email leaves behind a snail-trail in every part of the Citadel net that it gets routed through. Now they should be able to just follow it, at least to her general area. Ideally they'll catch the girl crossing from one router service to the next, but that's relatively unlikely. The end product of all of this hovers over her wrist, a single blue section of the Citadel in a horde of orange ones. A little timer ticks down until the next email ping in about four minutes.

"It's nice working somewhere with public wifi for once. I'd say there's a 90% chance she's in there somewhere," she says, indicating the blue zone. "She might have just dropped her tech, though."

(The email itself, for listeners at home, is a pretty standard Alliance recruitment flyer!)

"Nicely done. That wasn't even illegal, was it?"

(The isolated quarian crawler returns fifty results, then a thousand, then chokes. It turns out the quarians on the Citadel don't actually cluster together very much, for some reason?)

She gets a response to the flyer within a couple of minutes.

I'm kind of fascinated with how badly the human military designs its scrapers if you're spamming random quarian teenagers. I'm not even of age, guys. Thanks for the laugh, I needed it today.

"You'd basically have to arrest every corporation on the station if it was!"

–––

Oh, huh, an actual response. That wasn't in the cards. Nice.

"Well, she's probably alive. Unless Saren or whoever is good at roleplaying."

Hello, random quarian teen, Terentin's reply from her personal email reads. So! You've been betrayed by a Shadow Broker middleman! I need you to power down all of your personal electronic devices and go here, (she links a food court approximately midway between their respective locations) if you want to survive. I'll protect you, and buy you lunch if you want. Reply in the affirmative and then lights out, see you soon. –T

"I'm telling her how to stop anyone from doing what I just did. Anyone hungry?" Her holomap is predicting quarian walking speed, transit times, etc. "I dunno what your traitor-beating timetable is like, Warhead, but I would appreciate the backup if it can wait."

Shit. ...fine but if you're also trying to kill me I do have a shotgun.

Her signal goes dark.

"I don't have to do it personally," Warhead shrugs. "And I could eat. Lead the way."

"I should go with you," Garrus decides. "I want this done right."

He stands up from his desk and indicates willingness to follow Teddy.

Teen with a shotgun! Cute in a distressing way. More importantly, people are falling all over themselves to follow Teddy's lead. This rocks.

Thus ensues a montage of elevator rides and crowd shots. Teddy is assertive enough in crowds that it only kind of makes a difference that she's flanked by a cop and a krogan.

There's a quarian in the food court, looking around nervously. When she sees Teddy, she tenses and her arm comes up in the familiar manner of a woman who wants her omni-tool ready for self-defense if need be.

"Hello," she says in a smoothly artificial voice. "Are you actually with the Alliance? Can you give me a serial number or something to verify?"

"Yup!" A hologram the size of an air conditioner with Terentin's rank, name, date of birth, and so on floats slightly forward of her left shoulder. It has a pretty charismatic photo of her from several years ago, with a shaved head and no tattoos. She copies its askance smile pretty closely, for effect. "Do you really have a shotgun?" As if she can't tell; Teddy just likes asking symmetrical questions.

She nods. "I don't actually use it much. How did the Alliance even know I had contacted the Shadow Broker? Let alone been betrayed."

"Well, I'm Alliance. Dude's a Citadel cop, madame is a Broker loyalist. C spoke to B spoke to A, i.e. me." She gets everyone as seated as possible. "Who's here to listen to a quarian teenager. I.e. you."

"I'm not a loyalist, I'm a merc. Broker pays me. Important distinction."

"Right. Alright. If you're Alliance this information belongs with you anyway... though I can't say I wasn't looking forward to the Shadow Broker's payment."

She slides a doohickey across the table towards Teddy. "This is a geth data core. It contains audio data from the invasion of Eden Prime - Saren commanding the geth, mostly, and a conversation afterwards on the dreadnought. He's talking to a woman he calls Belara - he calls the invasion 'a major victory', and she says they're one step closer to finding 'the Conduit'. I don't know what that is."

A holographic drone pops up next to her. "Men with guns are approaching this location, ma'am," it chitters.

"Fuck!" She stands up and looks around wildly.

Terentin's first instinct is to grab Sal'Poma by the shoulder and shove her down, back into her seat. But her other first instinct is to palm the doohickey and stow it away safe in an armor compartment. She has two hands; she does both.

"Do we bolt or shove Sal under the table?" she growls, still enforcing the seated posture firmly. She likes Plan B, since she is actually here for food, but it's the done thing to poll the group when this much interdepartmental collaboration is going on.

"I vote we meet the mercs, drop them, and come back for lunch. You said you were paying, which I like."

"If anybody in that group can hack a camera, they already know Sal's here; hiding her won't do much. I'd rather fight them outside the civilian food court, or not at all."

Sal makes a squeaking noise as she's shoved down into her seat.

"Usually I'm the bloodthirsty one, guys." Well, not now that Zanna's around, she guesses. "Sal'Poma, if it wouldn't take you out of my sight I would tell you to hide under the table anyway. Don't make yourself a target, stay behind someone, and for my sake route that loud-ass hologram through your comms." Not that they'll be doing much sneaking with the possibly-hacked cameras, and with a big beautiful krogan in tow. "And patch them through mine while you're at it, I'm on point."

As Terentin leads the way, she calls back, "I'm mid-to-close range with small arms, melee with a blade. And I can melt shields. No biotics."

"Okay," she says in the same robotically neutral voice as always. "I can do that."

Her wrist glows and the drone vanishes. At the same time, what looks like a metal crossbow bolt loads itself into a slot on her omni-tool. "I'm best at midrange, but I've got the shotgun as a close-in backup. And I'm good against shields too."

"Long-to-mid," Garrus says, taking a sniper rifle off his back and letting it unfold in his hands. "If they get in close I can take care of myself, but it's far from ideal. I'm best against armor, but I can do shields too. If they've got a biotic, somebody else do something."