Disclaimer: Mass Effect and all related concepts and characters belong to Bioware; I'm just playing in their sandbox.
Series: Downtime
Notes: *facepalm* So life's finally stopped kicking my ass enough that I could finish the vignette languishing half-written on my hard drive for eight months. The chances of me finishing the Downtime series before ME3 is released is slim to none, but I'm officially at the halfway point now, so I consider that a win. Also, Zaeed is a really uncooperative bastard. Also, all the names I used here were carefully chosen for my own amusement, but if you can guess my reasoning for them, you get a cookie!

Goddamn but this was annoying.

Zaeed glared at the blank document on the datapad in front of him. Both his agent and his editor were breathing down his neck, demanding at least an outline for the latest Solomon Rayne adventure novel with the addendum, "We don't care when the final product comes in, Mr. Rayne, we know you have other obligations, but for the love of all that's holy, take the Haidar Lazzari series in a new direction, the fans are getting bored and sales are down."

Damn nattering harpies. Damn petulant fanbase. Damn writer's block. Damn need for another source of income.

Sure, his hiring fees were through the roof; his services were damn well worth the price, of course, but the price was so high was because freelance mercenary and bounty hunter work were not cheap. Weapon and armor maintenance and replacement, transport costs for himself and his weapons, food and shelter, bribes for either information or just to get someone to shut the hell up, and his biggest expenditure: medical fees. There wasn't an insurance agent alive willing to even discuss policies with a freelance merc, never mind one that worked almost exclusively out of the Terminus Systems, so he had to pay out of pocket for his (frequent) trips to the hospital and goddamn, even after twenty years of freelance work, looking at the bill was almost enough to send him into cardiac arrest. What little there was left over after a job went into a Swiss bank account (some things never changed) that was strictly for emergency use and/or retirement. Two decades later and the balance was still pathetically small.

Hence his writing stint. It wasn't a whole lot of creds, but he got a semi-decent check once a month that allowed him some higher quality basic necessities and even a few indulgences, like cigars, a more expensive brand of gun oil for Jessie, or the (very) occasional real Porterhouse steak at a reputable restaurant (read: did not retaliate against whiny customers by poisoning their food).

(Unlike many mercenaries, though, Zaeed did not use any of his money to pay for sex. Be it with an Afterlife dancer or the average off-the-street hooker, the only thing paying for a tumble meant was more medical fees. Like he was going to give those vultures any more excuses to bill him.)

And hell, if he had to admit it, he did kind of enjoy writing about his past exploits, even if he did have to embellish and invoke creative license at times.

(Of course, he hadn't included all of his jobs as entries in the Lazzari series. Some were boring – escort or guard duty, especially when pickings were lean. Others... Well. Those had involved a lot of non-disclosure agreements and confidentiality clauses and more fine print then there were humans on Earth that if he even thought about his involvement in those jobs, never mind talking about them, he'd be gutted like a fish and his remains jettisoned into the nearest star or black hole.

Nothing remotely entertaining about blacks ops, anyway. Too goddamn filthy, even for a bastard like him.)

Zaeed drummed his fingers on the desktop. A new direction for the series? What the hell, the entire point of the series was the ups and downs of freelance mercenary work – plus Haidar Lazzari's quest for vengeance against his backstabbing former partner. Haidar was blunt, had an unhealthy attachment to his old assault rifle, quite possibly had a death wish, and much preferred to work solo rather than hire on as part of a group. The only thing he hadn't done at this point was take part in a suicide mission as part of a formalized crew under the command of someone other than himself-

...

Zaeed pinched the bridge of his nose. Son of a bitch, he really had taken one too many hits to the head over the years.

All right, there was a possibility. A pretty strong one, too, considering all the shit the crew of the Normandy got into recruiting specialists, running errands for both the Illusive Man and Alliance brass, and solving every damn little mystery they came across and that was all before they'd hit Horizon. There was at least two books' worth of material right there, if not three, especially with Zae- Haidar's attempted confrontation with his old partner on Zorya and the utter beatdown the Commander gave him back on the ship for putting his own vengeance before the safety of civilians.

He could practically hear his raving lunatic of an editor going on and on about character development and growth and blah blah blah. If only the bastard knew.

The question now was, was he allowed to write about this goddamn suicide mission?

Zaeed closed the writing document on his datapad and pulled up a folder labeled "contract copies." He scrolled down the list, and called up the newest entry. He kicked his legs up and rested his feet on the desk as he read.

"Hiring for the purpose of such and such...services to be contracted until yadda yadda...for the sum total of a wonderfully beautiful number with lots of zeroes at the end," he muttered as he went through the, now that he thought about it, oddly short contract.

Huh. No confidentiality clause at all. No loopholes to speak of when it came to carrying out the job for which he was hired, though that was to be expected, but not a single word about not talking about the mission. Of course, if the Illusive Man was playing the long game (and, honestly, from all the snarling Shepard did on the subject of Cerberus' leader, he probably was), he was likely planning at some point in the future to use the resurrection of Commander Shepard and the fight against the Collectors as some sort of crazy propaganda to rally support for Cerberus in the mainstream media. Though that raised the question of why Cerberus didn't want people to keep mum about the mission until they were ready to go public...

Zaeed shook his head. He supposed he could always talk to Lawson about his contract, but hell, if they didn't think to put it in writing, he wasn't going to give Cerberus a head's up about anything if he could help it.

Satisfied, Zaeed closed the file, pulled up the writing program, and set to work on the story of Haidar Lazzari hiring onto the crew of the Brécourt under the command of fresh-from-her-grave Captain Tatiana Wolf.

Business had been slow of late, otherwise he wouldn't have picked up the job to grab some batarian bastard – and alive at that. Haidar wasn't even going to bother tracking him; scared, desperate scum like that always eventually find their way to Omega. It was only a matter of booking passage on the next shuttle off Ilium to the Terminus Systems.

So he wasn't expecting the ping on his omnitool that he'd just received a new message – and one that came through the high-priority channel, at that. Someone was looking to drop an obscene amount of credits.

Wonder what they needed killing.