CHAPTER 57: All you have to do is wait
The citadel was... Not what I was expecting. There was a party going on and everyone was wearing scarred Krogan masks. Even the Krogan!
It made it ridiculously easy to get onto the station. All I had to do was tell them I was there for the Krell-Day celebration (which had been going on for far longer than a day, by now) and the guards just let me through like I was some kind of Geth infiltrator. C-Sec even congratulated me on my costume when my ID scan came back as Nakmor Krell!
Of course they asked who I really was, so of course I had to tell them.
'I'm Commander Shepard and this is the best Krell costume in the Citadel.'
The officer blinked.
'Are you sure? The last I heard she was locked up tight on Earth. And, well, your records are coming up as Professor Nackmor Krell.'
He looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. Luckily, his desk had a nameplate.
'I assure you, Captain Bailey, that I am definitely Commander Shepard. You know how much we SPECTRES get paid. How could I possibly not have the best costume of my beloved older friend?'
He looked at me, I looked at him.
He nodded. 'Well, if you're sure? It's only that I can-'
'I'm sure.' I replied, quickly cutting him off while he was still convinced. The sooner I got past this C-Sec nonsense the quicker I could fix the inaccuracy regarding my demise.
He nodded again. 'Understood. I'll put in right here that you're Commander Shepard, and definitely not Nackmor Krell; who is dead. Have a great time Commander Shepard. You SPECTRES really do get all the best toys.'
Huh. That was an odd monotone there, wasn't it? Well, whatever, as long as he wasn't going to cause any trouble in my quest to fix the inaccurate reports of my demise.
'I definitely will! But if not for my personal knowledge of my good friend Professor Krell I never could have pulled off a costume this realistic.' I laughed back before hastily beating my retreat.
That was close.
I remember C-Sec Security being a lot worse than that!
Did the Council finally decide to reform it in preparation for the Reapers?
That must have been my fault then. I can't believe I almost screwed up my own plan to get declared alive again!
I wonder if I should compliment Shepard on her disguise? And her escape?
Nah. I'll let her find out later.
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First stop? My favorite shop on the citadel! Honest Jim's Honest Disguise Center.
The entire Citadel looked like a Masquerade and if even C-Sec could almost tell I was me, then I was severely under-masked.
I strode into the shop, wondering if the proprietor had the fortune to be born with the first name 'Honest', as I listened to the dulcet tones of 'me' telling everyone that this was 'my' favorite shop on the citadel.
Man, Shepard really did love committing advertising fraud, didn't she? Why did she even need a discount to a cheap costume shop like this? The masks were all thin flimsy plastic! And they only had one kind of mask!
Well, I probably shouldn't throw stones while disguised as 'her'.
'Hello. I'm here to buy a mask.'
The proprietor blinked. 'Are you sure? Because that's already an excellent Krell costume. Did you have a plastic surgeon do it?'
'No. It's all prosthetics. I'm surprised you don't Recognize me. After all, This is my favorite shop on the Citadel.'
Matching Shepard's exact tone and intonation wasn't hard. Not after hearing it from every single shop on the Citadel every time I visited over the last year.
'Commander Shepard? Amazing! You SPECTRES really do get all the best toys!'
'Yes. But for reasons that are classified I need to buy a much cheaper Professor Nakmor Krell mask. How much are yours?'
'Well... Factoring in your discount? 2 credits.'
'Excellent.' I said, transferring two credits.
'Oh, wow! you even managed to get your credit transfer to look like it's from Professor Krell!'
'Oh, yes. due to our closeness, he gave me control over all of his accounts.' I lied, transparently.
'Oh, I thought it was some super-cool SPECTRE program, or gear or something. But I guess using his actual money while you're in disguise is better. You know I heard that Krell has faked his death before. Is that true?'
'Definitely not.' I lied.
If people knew I faked my death to get out of awkward conversations it would never work again!
'Well, here's your mask, Commander Shepard! Enjoy the celebrations! I hear Counselor Valern is giving the next part of the Eulogy at the Human Embassy after Lunch!'
'Thank you!' I replied.
The Human Embassy. That was where I would reveal my survival.
____________________
With my mask on I no longer had to fear discovery. I looked just like one of my fellow Krogan, dressed up as me.
It really was interesting seeing so many Krogan milling around the Praesidium.
And... was that-?
It was! Someone had painted the Krogan Statue to look like me! They'd even given it a labcoat!
Awww... That was so touching!
And... were those suits of Vol-tech Battle Armor modified to look like me?
When I was young I made weapons. The shifting technology that lets you compress your weapons for easy storage? I had absolutely nothing to do with the invention of that. Stupid idea. The Salarians came up with it before my time. But I did have to study it as a weapons engineer. The Salarians were adamant about that in our training.
That experience carried through when I began to work on Mass Effect research. My focus was mostly on vehicles, I didn't actually build all that many; but I did create blueprints.
A thousand years is a great amount of time for boredom to build up. You start creating concepts that stretch the limits of what anyone thought was possible. You theorycraft improbable and impractical devices. You combine technologies that were never meant to be combined.
Some of them were more impractical than others; as in, 'costs the gross domestic product of multiple races just to build the thing' levels of wildly impractical. That was okay, they were never meant to be created anyway.
But apparently the Volus saw something in the idea I didn't and one day, a few days after I saved the tech, Vol-Tech called me and asked if they could license the design for military use and create a scaled down less complex version of it for them as a personal mobility assistant and safety device.
Armor, in other words.
I agreed, of course. While the design did require biotics to operate, it would help a lot with Volus survivability offworld. And given the danger volus are in if their suits depressurize... Well, even if they were planning to make the armor for military reasons I didn't see any issues with helping them. The more sentients that survive, the more there would be to combat the Reapers.
Which led to the Vol-Tech Battle Armor. Take the general silhouette of a Krogan but turn it into a robot. Put the pilot in the hump, and give them the ability to control the suit directly with subtle uses of their Biotics, with VI assistance.
It was practically self-driving.
And now a pair of volus had modified and painted their suits to look like me.
With my foolproof disguise on, I couldn't resist the temptation. I had to approach.
_____________________
'It's true! My ancestor, Nefra Cal once delivered a package to his daughter! I have sent you the video file of the contract negotiation and Krell describing his invention. This was many years before the Humans came onto the galactic scene! Krell created the bow tie! Humans must have copied it!'
'The chances are minuscule. The Humans had the bow tie for well over a century before the incident which brought them to Turian attention. You must be mistaken.'
'Look at the timestamp! Look at the change log and the encoding! Niftu Cal is not a liar!'
'The timestamp matches, and the encoding. Yes. It checks out. This was registered in the hall of contracts before the humans arrived!'
'Hah! Doubt me will you!'
'But how can this be? Convergent development would not lead to the same name for the item, nor the same development of garments!'
'This is is cross pollination. Krell must have encountered Earth before it officially was exposed to the citadel!'
'Impossible! Krell's whereabouts are cross verifiable for over a millennium! By multiple different races! At least daily, if not more often! There was no opportunity!'
'Then a human must have come to citadel space early!' Niftu Cal proposed.
'And returned? Without being noticed by anyone else in the Galaxy? Not even Krell's many watchers? Impossible!'
It was time for me to step in.
'I have heard that Krell could see the future. Perhaps this is evidence in favor of that?'
'Ah yes, the calendar.' Niftu Cal agreed, doing air quotes with the Krogan-esque fingers of his power armor. 'We have dismissed such claims.'
The other Volus nodded. 'If he could see the future, he would have been rich many times over on the stock market. But instead Krell was a very conservative investor. He barely touched his assets.'
Those jerks! Don't they know I was the most surveilled Krogan in the universe! Every time I touched the stock market I created a financial panic! If I tried aggressively investing the whole system might have come down!
'Perhaps he feared creating a run on the stock market?' I offered in my own defense.
'Easily avoided by the simple expedient of creating a non-coordinating trust to handle the accounts.' Niftu Cal replied.
'But how would that allow him to use his knowledge of the future if he couldn't coordinate?' I asked, wondering if these Volus were perhaps criminals.
'What? Oh! You mean you think he'd use knowledge of specific events to profit? That's possible, this one supposes. However, there are many theories as to what form of precognition Krell had. To rule them all out we must compare Krell's earnings against the average return on investment. In other words: since Krell's accounts posted below average returns year after year, even after accounting for compound interest, he couldn't possibly have any sort of precognition. Even the simplest form of precognition would have posted at least average returns.' Niftu Cal refuted.
I stood, shocked.
'Perhaps he didn't care about money?' I tried to defend myself.
I mean, as long as I had enough money for personal purchases like Noveria and family expenses like secretly enrolling Liara in a human online library science course without telling her about it, I didn't really care how much I had in the bank.
At a certain point even a Krogan had issues spending all of it.
'If that is true then there's no sense divining Professor Krell's motives even if he did have precognition. So the question is irrelevant either way.'
'Then why are you here celebrating him then?' I asked, curious.
'The use of Vol-tech Battle Armor is normally restricted on the Praesidium. However, as a costume we are allowed to wear the suits. This allows for conspicuous consumption and also informs potential clients and patrons of the personal power we possess entirely separate from our financial power.' The other Volus explained.
'Personal power?' I asked.
The Vol-Tech battle armor was a fairly low grade personal protective device. Sure, it was rated to protect against most if not all Tuchankan hazards, but beyond that it wasn't particularly strong.
'The Vol-Tech Battle Armor is the premier in Personal equipment. It turns even the most lacking biotic into a tank capable of carrying enough personal weaponry to take on a thresher maw, and with enough defenses to survive the attempt! As a method of turning biotic power into fighting power, it is more efficient than any other product on the market. While wearing this armor, I am a god of war!' Niftu Cal proclaimed with a boastful roar.
'Indeed.' The other Volus agreed. 'Professor Krell may not have been able to to see the future, but this does not reduce his worth as an engineer.'
I blinked.
Maybe insisting the armor be able to tank at least one shot from Kalros was too much?
It's just, she was right there, and it wasn't like she was busy doing something else. So why not take advantage?
No!
Obviously ensuring that a suit made for personal protection and survivability actually protected the user and allowed them to survive was just industry standard.
I needed to get away from these crazy Volus before they tried to start making me cheap out on quality control in the name of profits!
'I see.' I nodded, desperately seeking some way to escape.
Then I noticed it.
'Well, have a wonderful celebration!' I added, trying to take my leave.
It was time to go anyway. Chancellor Valern had approached the dais and was about to speak.
_____________________
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
This song is a lovely little ditty from the musical City of Angels.
Hopefully the next bit comes out pretty quickly. Chancellor Valern has a speech planned (a eulogy, in fact), which is a different sort of writing than I'm used to.
All the setup has been laid for the next chapters so now I just need to type it out.
Actually, there's some setup in this chapter specifically for further in the future than that even. I don't think it's too hard to catch, but I'm curious if anyone realizes what i have planned.
