The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

-Henry Ward Beecher

The Cradle: Location Unknown

Fingers tapped expectantly on the shiny desk. The female salarian frowned in the dark environment as she huffed out loud to herself. The meeting was not scheduled to start for at least five more minutes but she despised the fact that time was being wasted right in front of her. She was not accustomed to dealing with…brutes such as these, but one had to make amends from time to time.

She just wondered if she had made the right choice. This was not a decision she could willingly back down from.

The female wished that she had something to sit down on, if she was just going to keep standing in this room, alone. If she was going to wait like this each time she was summoned for a meeting at the Cradle, an amenity such as a chair really should have been placed in this circular room as a contingency. Not everyone in here was in their prime, their peak of physicality. The war had changed all that.

The place was intentionally kept dim as it was easy on her weary eyes; the same went for her colleagues. They had been meeting weekly on this damned station for the past eight months on a regular basis and she had been standing in place, waiting on her fellow members for as long as fifteen minutes every time. She wondered to herself if she should have one of her aides bring a stool from an adjacent room in the station for the next time they would meet.

Three minutes to go and still no one was around to make idle chit-chat. Sighing, the salarian grabbed the data slate in front of her and mindlessly flipped through some of the news articles so that she could see if there were any current events going on that she might have missed while she was away from her usual posting.

If anything, this room, even this entire station, was the last place she had ever wanted to find herself on. Might as well occupy her mind so that she could shake off her discomfort in the meantime with such distractions like the extranet.

Reading through the bulletins, she just saw more and more drabble about the end of the war, exactly as expected. She frowned. Fools, she thought silently. It had been at least eighteen months since the Reapers fell and yet the galactic body was still celebrating as though everything ended yesterday.

All of them are blind. Their victory makes them overconfident and their overconfidence makes them stupid. They are unwilling to dig further into the spoils of war to reclaim what should be ours.

Still she scanned: cities on Earth had finally been rebuilt, the Citadel and all of the mass relays had been fully repaired, the krogan population was experiencing its highest boom in a thousand years (much to her distaste), and the quarians were in the process of developing a major city on their homeworld, Rannoch.

Completely predictable in these circumstances. Nothing out of the ordinary. The salarian tossed the slate to her desk in frustration but perked up when she heard both doors opposite from her open simultaneously and straightened her posture in response.

On the dot, both the human and the batarian strode in and took their respective places. The human was dark, bald, and wore a simple suit, as always. The batarian had his arms crossed and was garbed in the traditional fashion of a slaver. The alien's expression was one of distaste, but there had never been a time when she had seen the batarian in a mood other than grumpiness. Warm and fuzzy feelings had apparently been bred out of whatever marble of a cortex these four-eyed aliens possessed.

Perhaps the batarian was still reeling from the fact that his people had been the first hit by the Reapers when they had invaded. All of the worlds that his people had claimed were little more than ash at this point of time, the dying light from the embers tainting the atmosphere and poisoning their claims. Eighteen months and their society was the only one too fragmented to organize a recolonization effort, preferring to squabble amongst themselves as the rubble continued to smoke. The batarians, for the most part, had been the Reapers' primary source of cannon fodder, using them as a near infinite wave of ground troops that had fought against the organics who still had their free will. The height of the batarians would come to an end when they all summarily perished when the Crucible fired, the red light turning all of their thralls into dust.

Where there had been billions, now only remained hundreds of thousands. Combined, the batarians were probably now the weakest force in the galaxy at the moment, even numbering underneath the quarians. The fact that the batarians were still in dire need of aid only necessitated their involvement in this gathering, this Coalition. Their representative had been quick to jump at the chance to join forces, to claim what was rightfully theirs.

It was not the salarian's idea to bring the batarians into the equation at all, but the human had insisted. Petty grievances, he had reasoned, were to be cast aside in this case. It would be more beneficial for the galaxy for the animosity between the batarians and the Citadel species to be ignored entirely. As long as they were part of this Coalition, there would be no segregation here, no conflict, just the opportunity for all species to become a part of the most important movement in the post-galactic cycle. Of course, it was numbers that the human meant. It was all about the number of forces they had at their disposal.

But now that the three of them were all ready at their stations, the salarian resisted the urge to berate one of them for their tardiness. Technically, she had been early in coming hereand would most likely not endear herself to her cohorts if she started this meeting with acid. The few times that had happened, the human and batarian had been equally as frosty in kind, putting a damper on the progress made during those days.

The dark-skinned human picked up his data slate and gave a thoughtful nod. "Greetings to you all again," he began politely. "I hope that we can keep things short today. I know that each and every one of us have frightfully cramped schedules, so I must thank you for taking the time to come at all."

The gratitude was unnecessary; it was merely typical human nature to bloat up the introductions, taking their sweet time in getting to the meat of the conversation until his audience was frothing at the mouth with anticipation. It irked the salarian to no end but the batarian did not seem to mind, rather he looked like he was eating up every word the man was saying.

As if he seemed to detect the salarian's ire, the human tilted his head and cleared his throat. "Straight to business then, the past few weeks have been quite fortuitous in implementing whatever countermeasures we have required in order to properly convey our intention to the Citadel Council. Within the next few days, our prepared statements should be sent immediately following the fallout."

The batarian now spoke for the first time, "Yes. That is confirmed. The respective unit has reported to me that everything is in place. This galaxy will soon become a little more interesting overall." The batarian looked up in thought, "Well, less interesting as when the Reapers came through but interesting nonetheless."

The human looked at the salarian, "Any word if there are factions among the asari wishing to join us?"

The human was referring to the topic of interest that she had pointed out during their last meeting and she regretfully shook her head, "None. The asari as a whole have been severely reprimanded with their mistake of withholding Prothean technology but they sure do keep their chin up when they've been knocked to the ground. The places I've probed have indicated that High Command believes that their punishment has been well deserved and that they are choosing to move forward with this black mark on their record. Embrace it as a sign of humility, so to speak."

The human sighed, "Hm. With fines that steep and with Citadel investigators breathing down their necks, I would have thought that they would have been more eager to join an organization such as ours."

"As did I. Clearly we underestimated the pride that the asari hold that is ingrained into them as a species. Perhaps we were pursuing a fool's mission this whole time."

"Perhaps," The human mused. He did not bother asking the batarian for his opinion as the alien was an inherent racist and would not provide an answer outside of his usual range of responses that delegated to tolerance and friendship. Shame, the batarians would have been better off as a species if they had given up their petty ambitions. There certainly would be more left standing now.

"It matters not," the salarian continued. "They are now out of the equation but we have the necessary components in place. All we need now is to adjust the parameters."

The batarian leaned forward, "And how exactly is that going, human?"

The man allowed a tiny smile, "You will be updated on its progress by next morning. Right now, I have a team in place working to prepare against any potential hitches in the plan."

The salarian lowered her eyes, "You haven't sent one of my operatives on your mission, I hope?"

"I would never do such a thing without consulting you first, my dear." It aggrieved the salarian to no end when the human addressed her as my dear. She made sure to scowl but the dim lighting coupled with her already chilled facial expression caused the gesture to be lost on him. The human picked up his data slate and tapped a few buttons on the touchscreen, tone mild, "I've even prepared a dossier for the man heading up this mission so that you can see the kind of person I would trust to a task like this. You can read Darren Randolph's file in your own time but I'd like you to get a first look so that you can ask any immediate questions."

The salarian frowned as the image of a stocky human filled her screen, trying not to wince at the sight of the repulsive alien. The man looked to be broad-shouldered, brown hair, and fair skin, despite the fact that his face looked like it was lined with wires underneath the skin, a faint white glow piercing through. The obvious marks of an implant. To the right read a list of his accomplishments and they trailed down the page to where the salarian had to scroll to read further. Soon, the words all blurred together and she set the slate down so that she could rest her eyes.

The batarian across from her frowned, all four eyes blinking, "It says here that this Randolph used to work for Cerberus, though. I was under the impression that all of the agents from Cerberus died when the Crucible fired."

"Only if they had been implanted with Reaper technology," the human corrected. "The units that the Illusive Man had unleashed were so heavily ingrained with these implants that the Crucible could not distinguish them from the Reapers themselves. Those whose implants were not Reaper based were unscathed." The human smiled as he tapped the base of his neck, "Case in point."

The batarian glowered a bit but looked back at the data slate in what the salarian could see was an enormous effort not to lash out, "Well, it seems like he has been very productive in the past couple years. What exactly is his desired purpose?"

"Assassination. If you look at the item marked 'Contracts' you'll see a list of the latest assignments he's carried out over the years."

"Yeah, I know. Three alone in the past six months."

The salarian shrugged, gesturing to the slate, "Are we supposed to know exactly who any of these people are? I mean, you've given us names but how are we supposed to be impressed when you haven't provided any details about this man's victims?"

"I would be happy to oblige," the human picked up his slate. "All three of these names that you see in this specified time frame were all ex-Cerberus. I say 'ex' because at the time of their death they no longer were in the official loop, owing to various circumstances. The first man, Randall Ezno, used to be an operative of mine until he defected some years back. I entrusted Randolph to eliminate him and his shuttle on Earth mysteriously exploded in atmosphere soon after he received his assignment. Little to no fuss, in that case."

The batarian had perked up a bit from this information but the salarian remained unconvinced, "Seems like a rather crude methodology-"

"-And the last two were carried out on the same day as both of them were located in the same prison," The human continued, not acknowledging the attempted interruption. "Randolph infiltrated a Systems Alliance prison and successfully executed both Hope Lillium, actual name unknown, and Oleg Petrovsky for divulging Cerberus information to their enemies. Randolph engineered a riot so it looked like they had gotten themselves killed in the chaos, so his hands have been washed from the matter entirely."

The salarian was skeptical, "Despite the fact that Cerberus technically was not around anymore, there was no actual reason for you to have these people killed."

"True," the human acknowledged. "But a message had to be sent nonetheless. In all fairness, we can't have former Cerberus soldiers running around and opening their mouths to the first person who would listen and blather out everything they ever knew about the organization. There are some secrets that are still in play so we all need to exercise caution in this case." The human smiled, "Call it 'covering our asses.'"

The salarian waved a hand in dismissal, acknowledging the change of subject, "Fine. But I still remain curious as to what you would put this man to do without consulting us first. Given Randolph's propensity for violence and destruction, how are we to know that he can come away from a job like this cleanly?"

"Don't you worry about how clean the job is. What you should have worried more about was your ass." The human smiled widely, "Because I'm about to cover it."

The Citadel

The helmet was hot. It smelled like it had not been washed in weeks and was somewhat loose, bumping his chin whenever he took a step forward. Nonetheless, he pushed on past the sour tang, it took a few minutes to get used to but now he felt like he lived with the smell his whole life.

Darren Randolph crouch walked down the keeper tunnel which ran parallel to the main hallway above him. Artificial light streamed down from the grating, throwing the contours of his armor all around the cramped hallway.

His pistol, an M-11 Suppressor, was out and front in a two hand grip. He kept a cautious watch overhead for some C-Sec officers would tramp on the grating, causing him to freeze in anticipation. He needn't have worried, down was the last place anyone would look as the security officers merely walked on without a care in the world.

Randolph squeezed the grip of the gun, feeling the plastic tense underneath. He had been ordered to keep the number of enemy casualties to a minimum for this assignment, something he had little experience with, admittedly. It was a good thing that his current route had minimized the number of potential encounters, but he felt that he might have been able to negotiate a higher fee if that was the case.

The whir of an opening door sounded above him. He glanced upward to see the bright glow of a locked door gleam through the grate. No matter to him, he just walked underneath it. This was a good sign, it told him that he was headed in the right direction.

He turned his body to skirt past a set of pipes without his armor coming into contact with one of them. He was so close; he would never hear the end of it if he was detected now. Carefully rounding a corner, he let out a quick breath when he saw no one down the next hall. Good thing too, his destination was just overhead.

The slow blinking and chirping of instruments reached Randolph's ears, causing him to mentally prepare himself. He carefully stepped up to a pipe and used his free hand to gently push the nearby grating upward. As far as his helmet could allow, he peeked upward and scanned the room in front of him.

The security station was completely empty, no one was in the chairs at the monitors. He had timed his infiltration perfectly.

Excellent.

Quickly shoving the covering to the side, he hopped upwards and took one more careful look around the room before determining that it was safe for the moment. Walking over to the nearest console, he rummaged around in his pocked for the OSD that the Director had given him. Locating it, he inserted it into the drive and the program automatically started.

Windows of all shapes and sizes were appearing on the monitor, detailing attempts to access the system. The OSD had just the crack for C-Sec's systems and in moments the program was through, punching through the lines of code that served as the station's firewall. Randolph turned back from the monitors momentarily to aim his pistol at the door for a few seconds. Sensing no danger, he glanced at the progress his little program was making, smiling underneath the helmet for how smoothly everything was going so far.

The program was busy sorting through a multitude of files C-Sec had on hand. And a multitude it was, every citizen on the Citadel had their files copied and contained on servers in entire buildings on this station, all of everyone's information organized onto one, supposedly secure, location. What the program was doing right now was not copying information, but searching for one bit of data that had been inaccessible to them for a long time. After today, they would finally have it. The crack was currently running through a list of outbound calls made in the past week in an effort to keep its attention situated to one area at a time, right now limiting its parameters to calls made within C-Sec.

In seconds, the crack hit jackpot.

Disregarding the sender of the call in question, one Garrus Vakarian, the receiver of the certain call was copied to Randolph's omni-tool, a blinking sound accompanying the completion of its task. The number was immaterial, what Randolph wanted was the location of the receiver. He brought up his spike command and sent a ping towards the number, a meaningless blip of data that tracked basic information that a user could unlock, given their skill set and tech. Such an attempt would not register with the user on the other line but it would allow Randolph to obtain a wealth of material on his end, material that would be revealed for all to see.

The spike pinged back from its endeavor and sent him a set of coordinates, along with the appropriate planet. Just to double-check, he pinpointed the coordinates with a holographic map of the area in question. He grinned as he saw the point line up perfectly with a structure in an urban area. This program was always one hundred percent accurate, based on previous experience. What he was seeing on his screen was definitely the right location.

As he was busy confirming the accomplishment of his primary objective, Randolph's OSD was now performing a different task entirely. This time, it was busy inserting a few errant lines into the security detection code that is used at all checkpoints across the Citadel. Unnoticeable to all but the most technologically experienced, these lines provided just a bit of beefing up with the software, the addition of one small process for the automated programs to handle. C-Sec would not know it, but their detection protocols were now on the alert for a new person, one they had not seen in some time.

Randolph tapped the eject button and retrieved his OSD, putting it back into his pocket with a smug face when he suddenly heard the door open.

He whirled and saw a C-Sec officer, a turian, drop his mandibles in surprise as he regarded the stranger in his presence. He was carrying a hot drink of some kind and his free hand twitched toward his side for either his pistol or radio, the man's training taking over.

Whichever, it did not matter for Randolph brought his arm up in a blur and depressed the trigger. The silenced shot sounded like a slight thwping! but it looked like the officer had gotten smashed in the face with a mallet regardless. The cup fell from the officer's hand, spraying the floor with the scalding sludge. The round entered the turian's head just below cheekbone and exited near the back of his head, taking some of its brains with it as a hole the size of a fist materialized. An explosion of blue blood stained the walls and began to drip along with the gore that had joined it. The turian collapsed without a cry of pain, but to Randolph, the noise sounded like an earthquake.

Ah, shit.

Cursing, he stowed his pistol as he stole away to the grating that was still ajar. Gently placing it back over his head after he dropped down into the keeper tunnel, he walked down the dark hallway with a little less caution than he had previously demonstrated, but confident that he would be detected no more in any case.

With any luck, the body of the turian would not be discovered until he had left the Citadel. Randolph did not like the idea of just leaving the turian there to rot but he had no time to waste. He needed to leave immediately. Minimum casualties, at least. It could not be avoided.

The Director would be pleased at the outcome nonetheless, the mission was still a success. Chalk that up as another mission accomplished on Randolph's record. Now they just needed to see if they would have to put the information gleaned to good use after all.

For the Coalition.

A Postlude to Reconciliation

A/N: I really need to stop stating my supposed "retirement" because it seems like I'm right back into the thick of things after mere days of thinking of a coherent storyline. Well, here we go again.

This is going to be my take on a post-war story as it is one area I haven't attempted yet so I want to see where I can go with this.

Postlude is not related in any way to my prior fics, just throwing that out there in case someone wants to make that connection. Just getting the bad news out of the way for you there.

I'd expect this to run for about 11 chapters (released in weekly intervals) as I just want to create a epilogue to the main story that is short but still endearing. Expect drama and fluff, for I have all this prepared in my schedule.

Don't worry, this in no way is going to be as dark as the Rage Inherent Trilogy so you can rest easy if you found that aspect of that story to be a huge downer. While there will be some dark moments here, they will be countered by the situations of lightness that will signify that there will be a happier ending waiting.

I mean it.

-Rob