Today...
Awoke in the medbay back on the Normandy, feeling worse than the day after my N7 graduation. Alenko is there taking responsibility for losing the beacon. Owning up to it earns him points with me, plus he's still good-looking with those puppy dog eyes, but this is going on his damn performance review, not mine. Doc says I'll be okay but she's not the one with the splitting headache. What's that old saying about surgeons being shot so they know how much pain their patient is in? One of these days I'm going to have to get her drunk, and then deny her aspirin the next day.
We arrive at the human embassy on the citadel in time to hear our ambassador butting his head against a brick wall with the council. Like all politicians I've ever met, they won't admit to being mistaken about anything. Fingering this turian spectre for the attack is going to be tougher than we thought, but I've had to fight for everything I've ever gotten, and I'll fight for that spectre job. Udina blusters about a bit more, but we all just give him a blank stare until he goes away. Anderson tells us to head for the council chamber in the presidium tower next.
Alenko is like a kid in a candy store. He won't let us take a skycar to the tower, he wants to stop and look at everything, and talk to everyone, and he keeps going on about how peaceful it is. Fine. The exercise is actually good for my headache. We pass by a huge lake on our way to the tower and Williams and I make a bet on how long the volus ambassador would float if we threw him in. At Alenko's urging we stop and buy some grenade and medigel upgrades from a hanar merchant. It's coming out of his paycheque.
In the council chamber, we meet a turian c-sec officer who tells us he couldn't find any evidence of Saren's guilt in the Eden Prime attack. He stammers out an excuse when I ask him how hard he's trying. Makes me feel better anyway. At the meeting holo-Saren does a masterful job of deflecting any suspicion away from himself and insulting me in the bargain. I tell him he better keep looking over his shoulder because he won't enjoy our next meeting as much as I will.
So we're up against a spectre agent who has the council in his pocket and our only leads are a washed-up c-sec grunt on suspension drinking away his days down in a seedy little bar in the Lower Wards, and a volus financier who's connected to something called a shadow broker, who no one has ever seen. Terrific. We call on the volus first and he tells us about a krogan mercenary down at c-sec headquarters. Then, just outside Chora's Den we're attacked by a couple of Saren's goons and while they're easy pickings for us, they do little to improve my mood. Inside the Den, I make sure Udina's dirty cop understands how little his life is worth and he drops the name of that turian c-sec officer we met up in the council chamber. I'm forming a sneaking suspicion that Saren has set this whole thing up just to keep us chasing our own tails and not his, but okay, to the Lower Ward med clinic it is.
We walk in to find the turian -- what was his name? Garrus? -- in a stand-off with some thugs holding the doctor hostage. Our entrance distracts the thugs long enough for Garrus to get a clean shot at the one holding the doctor. I have no love for turians, but that was a damn good shot. I'm impressed. Alenko is wounded though, and has to stay at the clinic to get patched up. This leaves an opening for Garrus to join us. I'm not happy about it and I let him know that, but I can't overlook any help finding Saren at this point.
The doctor tells us a story about treating an injured quarian recently, who claimed to have some very important data she scrounged from a geth and didn't know what to do with it. The doctor put her in touch with a shadow broker agent named Fist, who just happened to be the owner of Chora's Den. Interesting. If Udina's dirty cop knew anything about this and didn't tell me, he's going to be picking his teeth up off the floor when I get back there. Before we leave Garrus reminds me there is still a krogan down at c-sec headquarters who might be connected to all this too. Turns out the krogan, Wrex, was hired by the shadow broker to kill Fist. The hell? Why would the broker hire someone to kill one of his own people? All the trails were leading to Fist though, so I couldn't let Wrex kill him before I found out what he knew about the quarian. I told Garrus to check on Alenko while the rest of us confronted Fist.
Fist was waiting for us and the bar was full of his thugs waiting to kill us. Good. The fight is short but satisfying enough, and it ends with Fist begging for his life before Wrex blows him in half. Just the way I like my missions to end. We trail the quarian to an alleyway outside the bar and eventually take her to the council chambers. There she plays them all a recording she'd salvaged from a dead geth of Saren admitting to the attack on Eden Prime.
For all my efforts in discrediting Saren, I've become the first human spectre and been given command of the Normandy to find him and bring him down. It's been a good day.