

Zaeed managed to stab his ex-girlfriend in a scuffle while the ship itself was being fired upon by the garrison. Impera's gravitational forces acted on the crashing ship, freeing him from Tristana's biotic grasp. Zaeed mused to himself he had terrible taste in women, but he did have great luck. Tristana unexpectedly blasted him with her biotics as she revealed herself to be under Vido's employ. Zaeed set the frigate on a crash course to Impera, relying on the turian garrison there to shoot the vessel down before it happens.

With the job almost done, he thought he could live with that. Instead of kissing Tristana he asked her about Jace, but it appeared the payoff was now split fifty-fifty. Tristana and Zaeed had a thing in the past, but Zaeed claimed he broke it off before it killed him. The landing team were flushed right back out of the airlock's outer door, where their tethering cables secured them all except for Kendo Holin. Zaeed thought he anticipated everything, but he had not counted on the Verrikan's chief of security Garkko catching Polonis in the act. The entire plan hinged on the turian letting them in, as the next steps were to head straight for the bridge, lock themselves in, and crash the vessel into the nearest planet.

Zaeed had an inside turian named Polonis who was supposed to open the airlock for them. The jump took ten seconds and they hit the target location spot on. Thrusters strapped to their backs, the team then performed a space jump from depot to frigate, flying like bullets and careful not to deviate in trajectory. The team laid low at the refueling depot on Trebia, anticipating the Verrikan there and the flurry of activity to conceal them. The team won't be taking the Verrikan down by strength, they'll be doing it with stealth and simplicity. Zaeed called them all together and elaborated on his plan. All of them accepted, but they had reservations against taking on an entire frigate with just the four of them. He asked the salarian Kendo Holin, the asari Tristana, and the ex-Blue Sun Jace Reyn to join him while they were all in the middle of their own jobs. To that end, Zaeed recruited three freelancers as he reckoned anyone from established merc gangs would be out of the question. The Broker didn't care how the ship was to be brought down as his client was willing to pay a large fortune for it, so Zaeed accepted the job eager to claim the bounty. Zaeed saw it as a chance to restore his name, but asked the Broker for job specifics. The Shadow Broker tasked him to crash the turian frigate Verrikan. It eventually landed him a stint as a Shadow Broker hireling. The work got him by, but he figured the only way to restore his name and reputation is to do something big. Zaeed kept hearing from people how he ended up being a washed-up has-been that no one would hire even to "scrape vermin shit out of a trash block." He would have none of it and started taking advertised jobs as an independent contractor after pulling himself together. Zaeed survived the hit and took to drowning himself in alcohol as he recovered, calling it "adjusting just fine." Not a day went by without him thinking of revenge, initially, but as time went by it did happen eventually. Most guys in Zaeed's age can't handle a career change at that point in life, he claims.
