Chapter One
Few Quarians ever step foot in Nos Astra. They aren't missing much. For all it's glamour and sex appeal, the place is little better than a Batarian pirate den. It's like a shiny apple, making your mouth water just looking at it, but take a bite and you find it's bitter and full of parasites. Fortunate for me then, I don't eat apples. Still, the place is certainly clean, that at least is a relief. I don't know quite how they get it so spotless, but every surface seems bright, clean and shiny. Some of the places I've been to on my pilgrimage have been so dirty I spent the whole time focused on how quickly I could die from an infection were I to receive a suit puncture.
As I enter the central commerce hub I find myself engulfed by the sounds of traders going about their business. The Volus are the loudest here, shouting out what must count for a battle cry on their homeworld "Sell Now!" they hiss in that wheezy voice of theirs. In between, I can hear the frantic chattering of the Salarian traders, trying to play all the angles at once so they have some chance of making their fortunes before the end of their brief lives and under all of it like a dull hum in the background is the quiet patient song of the Asari, biding their time. Probably just waiting for the Volus to finally shut up or the Salarians to die (which from my experience is probably more likely).
The main trade floor is wall to wall market terminals, filled to the brim with eager punters that can't wait to part with their credits to buy the fashion accessory of the day or the newest and most expensive tools with which to deal out painful and bloody deaths. Weapons are amongst the most popular of trade goods here. With the proximity to the Terminus Systems, demand for death is always high and Illium likes to make sure the supply is equal to it. I make my way quickly through the crowds. Despite being the only one of my species here everyone seems far too focused on their own greed to give me more than a passing glance.
Today, I have business here too. I have a lead on a valuable bit of merchandise, but acquiring it requires doing a favour for the Shadow Broker. Not a position I would normally choose to be in, but I have already been on my pilgrimage for some time and this was too good an opportunity to pass up. I'm here to meet an agent for the Broker, a Human by the name of Salvador Crux. Meeting Humans creeps me out at the best of times, but meeting a human Shadow Broker agent may well be my limit. In many ways it's like meeting my own ancestors. They are so young as a race, yet so familiar, so like the stories I've heard about the Quarians, before the Geth, before the suits and before our endless convoy across the stars to destination nowhere. They represent all we've lost and all our mistakes, only they are yet to make them. It's no surprise that whenever I hear stories about rogue A.I.'s, there is always a Human involved. The greatest trap, is the one we make for ourselves.
The Agents office is near the trade floor, up a short flight of stairs. Not very fancy compared to everything else I've seem so far. At the top, I find a large service desk complete with an Asari secretary peering down her nose at me. She looks over me so thoroughly I feel the need to run an extra disinfecting routine on my suit. "You're late," she said accusingly. "Mr Crux does not like to be kept waiting!"
I let that hang for a moment, I'm already late after all. I could tell that annoyed her, probably as much for the fact that she couldn't read my expressions through my mask as for my unwillingness to play the scared little Quarian for her. I said: "Well then, maybe he shouldn't be kept waiting any longer?".
She sneers at me and I could tell there were calculations going on behind her eyes. I'm not sure I'd be too thrilled with what they were calculating. Without taking her disapproval off of me she activated her intercom. "Mr. Crux, the Quarian has arrived."
"Thank you Nyxeris, show Mr. Reegar in will you." returned the disembodied reply from the intercom.