Caleston Wake
The yellow moon was a tiny, spinning dot against the backdrop of an exploited giant. Its features, aside from craters and dried up ammonia riverbanks, were the dozens of habitats where the brave and desperate made homes as miners, prospectors, and criminals. Most buildings were small. Dots on a dot.
One overlooked limestone moguls. It was larger than most, the inhabitants feared. The scavenged steel and prefab plastic coverings stretched a hundred meters across the moon. If you looked closely, under the incidental camouflage of shoddy repairs and modifications, you might recognize a square-shaped building. Two squares, actually, joined by umbilical tubes of scarred polypropylene. The largest habitat on Yagi, it had been rebuilt and repurposed countless times by bandits who knew far more about using hammers against the heads of hapless victims than for any constructive pursuit, and so had achieved for themselves an unsightly cocoon that festered on a scar dug into the moon. Whoever originally built the habitat, explorers or prospectors, had abandoned the facility long ago to the sort of people who mistook the function of hammers. Slavers and slaves. Outlaws and victims. Those were the only sort left to call the old mining station home.
The air inside grew staler with each new slave brought in to partake of breath. Sodium dust and lime deposits found their way into every corner and cranny. Given the maze of corners that existed, it spoke to the ambition of dust.
Tunnels branched across, upward, down into the earth, and criss-crossed with one another in maddening confusion. Clusters of exhausted men, faces dirty and fingers bloodied, dwelled in these tunnels because there was no room left for them in the cargo holds. Their tunnels were decorated with broken trinkets. Such men might have tools, or as likely be robbed by rival work crews, and seem more like squatters than laborers. Other tunnels ended abruptly at the site of archaic machinery chugging at their tasks, or led to no prize, baffling and purposeless.
Most people lived in the tunnels of Building B. Only a few lucky individuals claimed accommodations along a wall where they might catch a glimpse of the outside and they guarded their turf jealously. Falindra Deltos had not seen sky in two weeks. No sun or horizon or reminder of any universe that existed beyond the confines of the two conjoined buildings.
Two weeks doesn't sound long. It becomes aeons when you're denied sunlight. But she had endured the time, finding comfort in knowing her luck might have been worse. It was a stretch of a morbid imagination to think of how.
She sat in the safety of shadow, apart from the other captives, mulling over her plans and how they'd gone awry until a prolonged chorus of hollers and shouted goading, disturbed her thoughts. She followed the noise from one tunnel to another until it opened into the largest room she'd so far seen.
Enormous industrial drills perched against the southern wall of the room, awaiting operation, when they'd crack chunks of ice brought in from Kobayashi's fifth ring. Automated claw shuttles funnelled chunks of ice from the gas giant's orbit. At present, the drills were motionless and silent, peering over the ring of gathering miners with conical, menacing points.
Slaves, mostly human and salarian, gathered together in a ring of thirty to watch the chief entertainment available: fights. The Drau kept vorcha foot soldiers. Useful cannon fodder in a battle, they satiated their aggression upon one another if no bigger fight was available. What Falindra witnessed hardly matched her definition of a fight, more of a lynching. Four of the vorcha had turned against one of their own and beat him. Their claws drew blood freely and the bestial creatures showed little sense of restraint. .
The defender, his hide a deep brown with streaks of yellow across the shoulders, kept his back to the nearest conveyor belt. He shrieked and hissed, arms flailing and parrying the worst of the blows. The aggressors punched and clawed and kicked and bit. Rows of fangs dug deep into sinew, turning the rich, brown hide black from the bodily fluids seeping out of the wounds. The slave laborers who watched this pummeling enjoyed a sadistic, if fleeting thrill of revenge watching one of their wardens abused. Inevitably, one of them would face a similar lashing for some arbitrary infraction.
A gun blast boomed through the air, ending the fight. One of the krogan waded through the audience, shoving the human and salarian audience aside, until he waded into the ring of brawlers. The slaves gave him a wide berth without fuss for fear that the shotgun used to attract their attention, would only point skyward the first time. It surprised Falindra that first shot had not already been fired in a less civilized direction, eviscerating one among the hapless throng. Krogan niceties were a strange art.
"Stupid vorcha," screamed Drau Gorba. "You're going to damage the conveyor belts." The bulging, overweight krogan kicked and shoved the vorcha apart, not sparing the victim of the swarm attack.
"Me not stupid," the dark vorcha sulked, limping away.
Talking back proved a mistake. Gorba found it unforgivable. "Stupid enough to talk back," he spat and kicked the mongrel hard. Even from the entrance, Falindra heard the cracking sound as ligaments snapped.
The slaves retreated, ashamed of the carnage they'd cheered for now that it became an excess. Others feared that Gorba might discipline them. Some of them scrambled toward the mess hall. The rest headed in Falindra's direction for the tunnels.
She retreated, having no taste for witnessing the disciplinary whips and fists thrown about as ironic punishment for the unsanctioned use of whips and fists. She had gone to see if an event might prove noteworthy, because making mental notes had been her sole preoccupation since becoming a captive on Yagi.
She had suspected her journey might lead her into the Caleston Rift. Despite the scattering of legitimate settlements and turian military outposts, the cluster lost its largest colonies to the devastation of the Reaper invasion. Its star systems had since become plagued with pirates and helium-3 cartels spawning underworld empires. She foresaw needing to journey here. Being drugged and abducted, though, had not been the travel arrangements she wanted.
She strode through the another tunnel, before turning left into one more, unconsciously winding her way back to where she'd been nesting. She moved gingerly past the abode of Hastings's gang in what had once been a cargo room. The man led a motley group of humans, stranded fringe merchants, once selling supplies to the Dread Claw, now dependent on the krogan gang's mercies as a host. When they saw Falindra first arrive they immediately 'fancied' her. Ravishing an asari became a prized conquest for the group of men. They watched her movements closely, the length and shape of her body, and when she roamed the tunnels alone. They thought to follow her once. She had delivered three cracked ribs and two broken noses before the disturbed hunger in their eyes ebbed away. They had not tried following her since.
Hastings McCara glared at her f the cargo room entrance, his face punctuated by a jagged scar running across his right cheek. His eyes held the mixture of respect, fear, and hate that comes with trying to deduce your rank in the predator pack. If he'd possessed any dignity before arriving on Yagi, it had long since faded into oblivion.
His pants pockets were ripped. Falindra's fingers tore them open when they'd grappled and she overheard him complaining about the lost contents ever since. It made her smile, his complaints.
Technically, Hastings and his crew weren't even slaves. They'd begun as ice traders, 'licensing' rights with local gangs on Yagi to export some of the ice being mined from Kobayashi's rings. Independent ice trading operations of his sort were hazardous. Aside from requiring the wits to survive dealing with the sorts of gangs that find services with independent ice traders, useful, and aside from the regular perils of space travel, rogue merchants saw their freighters break down so often than turning a profit became a hazardous gamble. The only chance for real fortune lay in hearing about a colony facing disaster, such as contaminated water supplies, then being the first merchant to arrive, smiling as heroes to the rescue and shaking hands on a deal to sell exorbitantly priced water. Gleeful is the ice trader's smile when he hears that famine has struck a world.
Hastings had not been lucky enough to come to someone else's rescue. His thirty year-old freighter's air rectifier had broken down. No air, no travel, it doesn't matter how fast your engines will accelerate. The Drau charged handsomely for requested spare parts, and handsomely again for food that Hastings's crew ate in the meantime. Slaves ate for free, but independent merchants often gave each bit of coinage they earned to keep their bellies peaceful. It grew hard on Yagi to distinguish the man who possessed liberty and the man who went without.
Falindra crawled into the crevice she'd called home these past four days (since a hardy batarian judged her last locale as choice real estate; she chose eviction over another confrontation hours after fending off Hastings's crew). She'd secured a blanket from one of the krogan, Mar, who deemed an asari as prize property that warranted survival amenities. A salarian who claimed squatters rights nearby gave her an appraising look, perhaps deciding whether or not she might be worth thieving from while she slept, or if her designs on him were the same. They exchanged glances in the dim of fluctuating, broken lights. Then he turned away, rolling into tattered sheets on the ground.
She sat legs stretched out, pulled the blanket to her knees, and retrieved the morsel of bread she'd hidden in her pocket during lunch. It hadn't been extra rations or stolen fare, simply part of the day's meal. But eating in the public mess, wondering which fellow diner might bring blades to bear, strained her digestion. The habitat felt more like prison than slave camp. She preferred to eat in the comfort of solitude, ruminating. None of the slaves liked Hastings, but the news of her victory against his gang had not won her any friends. The human slaves kept to themselves. Same with the salarians. A pair of asari was among the ranks, but Falindra had not approached them so far.
After she ate, she prayed.
Once she finished praying, she decided to wander. The heat regulators on the ice drill had broken down again, and until the krogan had the devices fixed, the slaves were free to wander. Most of them chose to amble far away from the krogan and vorcha whose tempers soured when circumstances gave more work to them and less to the slaves. Drau Bodix, the krogan group's chief, permitted this freedom. After all, to escape the segmented, oblong-shaped habitat was to enter the lethal cold of outside where, weather aside, the radiation from Kobayashi promised agony within hours. Patrolling krogan and vorcha made certain that slaves and miners did not kill one another in irreplaceable numbers, or sneak into one of the few off-limits locations: the krogan bunks, security room, and vehicle bay. Beyond these limitations, Falindra felt free to roam.
Prayer and the opportunity to think over food had been exactly what she needed. It gave her time to consider her predicament. Strategize. That's what she needed to do. The bewilderment and fright of her means of arriving had kept her from thinking clearly.
The habitat was dilapidated, a collection of broken metal tiles, jutting rebar, potholes, and jutting rebar. The Dread Claw was the latest in a gang who occupied the decades old site. The place still functioned, still supported life. Its rundown condition was undeniable, but breathable air gusted through vents, outside radiation stayed at bay, livable temperature maintained warmth.
Who fixed the broken machinery? The krogan of Clan Drau rallying under the flag of the Dread Claw gang, were unlikely to count mechanical engineers among their rank and file, none that she had noticed. Their vorcha lackeys, full of fangs and tempers, were not brought into the gang for their technical prowess.
She folded the blanket and carefully hid it under a square of ripped sheet metal and refuse, then ventured toward one of the downward sloping tunnels, on the hunt for whoever kept the habitat operational. It had not been her intention to come upon the pirate base how she had, but she had plans to move forward, someone to rescue and another to kill.
The tunnel extended underground, reaching into the perpetual hum of rusted air filtration systems. The tunnel threatened a cave-in. Every machine gave the cantankerous growl of disjointed cogs. Falindra roamed further downward, an archeologist in the catacombs, gingerly maneuvering around clumps of refuse on the floor, broken rebar drooping from the ceiling: the stalagmites and stalactites of an artificial cave.
She chose one path when she came to a fork. Bits of metal shaken loose from traffic above dusted her head. The tunnel ended abruptly where its doorway collapsed. She turned back from another route when the sound of snivelling vorcha growls approached. Each time, though, another fork and route presented itself. She accepted the chance of getting lost without fear. Sooner or later she has to learn her way around the labyrinth.
After twenty minutes she reached a part of the sub-level where snakes of ceramic tubes met at the secondary power router.
The man who monitored the control systems was an unexpected figure: a bulbous, squat shaped volus. Falindra took measured steps toward him, allowing footfalls to carry noise as courtesy, a declaration that she'd not come to surprise him, knife in hand. With luck, it was the volus she'd been hoping to find. She'd been sidetracked by the betrayal that saw her stripped of supplies and sold into slavery.
The volus turned and stumbled back into his two-foot high workbench, jarring it hard enough that a pair of tools fell to the ground.
"Didn't mean to startle you," she said.
"You didn't," he responded, surly. "I simply hadn't expected, well…," his breathing apparatus hissed. "You're not the usual sort I've grown accustomed to seeing down here."
They took the moment to gauge one another. His self-enclosed environmental suit was dark emerald green with silver trimming, which Falindra decided looked quite regal, if he'd wipe away the layers of dirt and silicate.
On his part, the volus considered the lithe, feminine form in front of him. Asari possessed the uncanny ability to be physically appealing to other species, a trait the scientist in him catalogued as curious. She had a small, smart face and round mouth. Lilac-colored lines arced across her temples, accenting the blue skin.
She tilted her head in ceremonial greeting and extended her hand. His yellow lenses stared back. She wondered if his hidden eyes were as unblinking. He turned away, ignoring the offered hand, and bent low until his belly scraped the ground, retrieving the fallen tools.
"I've no time for visitors. Please go away. I can't help you."
Falindra stood flummoxed. "What makes you think I came begging for favors? And if I did, how do you know they're not in your power to provide? Maybe I simply wanted to meet someone who doesn't look ready to stab me."
Tools in hand, the volus stood straight once more. "Well we both know the falsehood in that. As for help, I imagine you want what everybody wants: help escaping. Let me assure you that whatever machinery I've access to, whatever privileges the krogan grant me for my services, I'm not privy to the shuttles or freighters or some secret, magical FTL engine."
Falindra smiled. "Sir, you needn't worry. I'm definitely not looking to escape. Not yet."
The green-suited volus gave her a long, measured stare. Not for the first time, Falindra resented the species' ability to conceal expressions behind their pressure suits, the hide intentions she deciphered from a twitch to the eye, an unconscious grimace. Then again, with little knowledge about the stubby race's natural appearance, it might be that his expressions proved impossible to interpret even if nakedly exposed.
"I don't know which troubles brought you here, miss, but I fear more the ones you're courting. I'd thank you to keep me out of your schemes."
"That's the second time you've accused me of something unkind within the minute. I know a person's got to be guarded in this place, but you might consider a kinder greeting."
Waiting for a response, she surveyed the room: a large maintenance area with the service tunnel running through it. No privacy, save for the fact that nobody else seemed interested in lurking, at least this moment. Krogan and vorcha wandered (she refused to call it 'patrol', since the taskmasters lacked proper security discipline) to deter any schemes from the other residents. Tubes bracketed into the ceiling and walls creaked with the pressure of gas vapors being pushed into power supplies or jettisoned outside. Spouts of steam shot from leaks in corroded pipe, criss-crossing the tunnel beyond.
"I'm a practiced observer of empirical detail, miss…." She offered her name. "Miss Falindra. I caught sight of you the day that slave trader bartered with the Drau, trading you for a half-charged helium-3 cell. The same day Hastings and his men accosted you and lost."
"Had to defend myself," Falindra responded, matter-of-fact. She smelt a fungal aroma in the air.
"True, but you courted the attack. I saw you provoking his interest, insulting him in front of his old crew. You wanted the fight. And I'm concerned why. There are easier ways – and easier people to assault – simply to make a statement when you first arrive. Most people are too frightened to consider making a statement at all."
"You read too much into my having poor control of my temper. I responded in kind." The fungal smell, though not entirely, displeasing, grew stronger. She scanned for its source.
"Each human male has twice the weight on me," she continued. "Even if I wanted a fight, it'd be absurd against those odds."
The volus chortled and stepped closer, pointing a single, pudgy finger, toward her arm. "That tattoo below your left shoulder is for the Asari Navy. The one below that indicates service with the warship, Nefrane. And on your right arm, if I'm not mistaken, are the membership markings of the Serrice Guard. Absurdity is the idea that you lost control of your temper. Or ever feared harm brawling disgruntled smugglers."
Falindra studied him, coolly. The dwarfish creature demonstrated worldly knowledge far too expansive for an indentured technician stranded in the periphery of space. It proved a mixed blessing, the enlistment she'd earned in so famous a unit. Service aboard the cruiser that had become champion to Council Media only meant her arms summoned the attention of admirers of military history. She did not seriously expect anyone on the habitat to recognize the motifs on her arms. The tattoos were not illustrious with vivid pigments or boastfully large; they were reminders of drunken revelries, of squad-mates and friends celebrating milestones with badges inked into flesh. The militaries of other species regarded asari emblems as too elaborate and runic for practical use. Indecipherable at a glance. Still, Falindra cursed the circumstance of her unconscious arrival without a long sleeve shirt.
"You served in the Turian navy?" she finally asked.
The volus laughed. "Hardly. But I like to consider myself a cultured individual. Enough, at least, to have heard of the reputable Nefrane."
The misfortune of having served on a famous vessel. When the Battle of the Citadel had been ugliest for the defenders, and the asari flagship had fled, carrying the Council to safety, it had been the Nefrane that weathered repeated assaults from geth squadrons and rallied the fleet. Refusing to grant the human reinforcements sole credit for saving the Citadel, asari media was quick to tout the Nefrane's accomplishment. Falindra ought to have been irritated by the volus' quick assessment of her, but instead felt a sudden spark of naval pride, a nostalgic reflection for the battle-sisters with whom she served.
"It's kind of you to notice. Civilians usually forget these things before long."
"I mentioned it to prove a point that you're trained to cause mischief. The Drau won't harm me unless I'm involved directly with an offense against them. So tell me what you want?"
"Elsk," said Falindra.
"Pardon?"
"That is elsk you're brewing, isn't it?" She had identified the fungal smell, a mushroom tea popular as a relaxant, a volus cultural custom. "I've not enjoyed mushroom tea in years. Do you mind the company?"
The volus squeaked surprise then stood in thought a moment. Falindra wished again that she might read the face hidden under the mask. He had already proven a canny enough observer to know when courtesy was a rouse to curry favor. Having krogan for conversational companions might convince anyone after a while to appreciate the niceties of favors being curried.
He opened a cabinet and retrieved two ceramic mugs that hung next to his tools. He poured elsk from the brewing pot until each mug was full. "Careful, it's hot," he said, and proffered one mug.
So began Falindra's friendship with the famous Professor Haylar.
She 'worked the ice' during the day with twenty other slaves. Since she had demonstrated some technical aptitude, the Drau had assigned her to operating one of the two ice-crackers, enormous, industrial drills, monitoring its performance, that the drill performed three thousand revolutions per minute, steadily breaking apart the large rocks of ice that dropped out from chutes into the ice catcher, a large polymer bin that held the ice until the drill attacked it. A batarian completed the bins' safety inspection, and then occupied the control platform for the other drill. A misstep on either of their parts and a drill might send shrapnel of ice shooting throughout the room where twenty more slaves processed the broken chunks of ice on the conveyor belts, preparing the ice for drinking, power usage, and trade.
The job was less arduous than working the conveyor belts and Falindra's vantage point near offered a strategic view of the labor floor. The position had drawbacks. She scanned the room, putting its interior to memory when she saw the five salarian slaves staring back at her. Each one, convinced of his own technical prowess, and having been slaves far longer, resented the easy role she'd won; as though some perverse rules of seniority ought to govern their advancement. The racial loathing between krogan and salarian assured the latter little opportunity for comfort. The Drau happily provided salarians unnecessary work.
Two quarians also watched her. Their rounded masks made their expressions as impossible to assess as Drin Haylar's, but it seemed a safe wager that they too, resented the comfort of her duties. Falindra decided she'd be wise to start cataloguing how many of the slaves might be building grudges.
During her first two weeks in captivity Falindra watched.
The Dread Claw numbered nearly two dozen, more than half of them krogan hailing from Clan Drau. The rest of their ranks were filled out by vorcha.
Bodix, easily recognized by the pockmarks of acid burns across his face, commanded the krogan gang. He had long, muscular arms that looked more than capable of wielding the electrical hammer slung over his back. Despite holding leadership, Bodix was infrequently seen by the slaves. Instead, the overweight Drau Gorba monitored the slaves' daily routines. He was the one who broke up the vorcha fight. He stalked up and down the length of the conveyor belt, ready to admonish any slave whose performance he deemed subpar. He caught a human male, a short man with thin eyes, succumbing to fatigue, partially bent over the conveyor belt while he hauled ice into a coolant unit. Gorba wrapped knuckles against the soft side of the man's abdomen hard enough to leave bruises. The man yelped before redoubling his effort, carrying away usable pieces of ice.
She had identified Drau Mar ambling through the tunnels, patrolling where the slaves slept. She admired his omni-tool. The tattoo of a monstrous skull sat superimposed across his face.
Drau Hurx, the tallest of the krogan, looked bored when he drew the duty of guarding them, though he often stopped to leer at the two other asari slaves the Dread Claw kept. Falindra hoped to avoid winning the same attention.
Drau Zugo often seemed caught in a daydream. His efforts to chastise unproductive slaves were perfunctory compared to Gorba. She easily identified Drau Telx by the finger he usually kept busy plundering a nostril. Those were the only krogan she reliably attached names to so far. There were fourteen krogan in total.
The rest of the Dread Claw consisted of vorcha conscripts, led among their own number by one named Skeb, who retained authority through sheer frequency of violent outbursts, but always deferred to the krogan.
Falindra catalogued each member of the Dread Claw: wanted by agencies of several Citadel government authorities throughout the Caleston Rift for acts of piracy, hijacking, abduction, and slavery.
Twenty slaves and twenty pirates - in between them existed a bizarre version of the middle class in the habitat's social hierarchy. Stranded fringe merchants who occupied a nebulous middle tier between slave and master. Some were hopelessly marooned and only nominally distinct from the slaves, exploited and abused by the Drau, their fates as dim as any captive. Others, like Hastings, won greater respect through some unknown leverage.
Shifts ended when the slaves could no longer stand, even after the encouraging kick, no ice came in, or when machinery broke down (which occurred with blessed frequency). The cog to one of the conveyor belts slid from position, causing the belt to bunch into multiple folds. Ice fell to the floor. The shift came to an end.
Falindra avoided being fingered to assist with repairs. She left the ice drill and retreated downward into the tunnels that led to her new volus acquaintance, who'd formally introduced himself on her second visit as Drin Haylar.
This, her fourth visit, had already established tradition. News of the breakdown had preceded her arrival by way of alarm whistles. He'd already boiled water and had the pot of elsk brewing.
He sat on a work stool, his small feet jutting out. Falindra sat on the floor. A spare stool rested nearby, but she preferred sharing eye-level when they met.
"Last time I visited Irune, I saw a performance by Sura Non," Drin reminisced. That was ten months ago, for my brother's Day of Splendor. I'm not normally one to take in most comedians, but Sura Non has some deliciously barbed social commentary. Smart stuff; very funny."
On Yagi, so far from the comforts of even the humblest homes, people reached out to the memories of civilization and treasured them.
"Why were you so far from Citadel Space," asked Falindra. She knew from their last conversation that he'd already been residing somewhere in the Caleston Rift when the Dread Claw captured him, but little more. She hadn't pressed him at the time, but he'd quickly grown from being distrustful to grateful for her company, relieved to share conversation. Anyone who demonstrated talent for dialogue beyond grunts and growls was a pioneer of the art form compared to the vorcha.
Falindra relied on Drin for the success of their exchanges. Without translator devices they were left to their shared knowledge of one another's language. You grew accustomed to having technology at your fingertips. It made interspecies conversation possible, even easy. The omni-tool always on hand. She spoke one of the turian languages passably well, but no volus. Drin, fortunately, proved fluent in the Asari trade language. He spoke with an awkward Armali dialect, but she understood the words.
"I was a research professor," he finally responded. "On Maskawa." He paused, deciding whether a simple answer sufficed or if he felt comfortable sharing details. "Plasma Engineering. I had a legion of graduate students under me, funding for all my research, major laboratories to command, published papers." He recited the accomplishments with nostalgic pride, just shy of shameless bragging.
"You teach at the Ten-Clan Academy," Falindra verified, hoping he'd provide details about the topics of those papers. She supposed he had earned the right to be proud. He was too polite to brag outright, too soft-spoken. She'd known many people who would never wait for four conversations before guaranteeing that acquaintances were briefed on every merit in their possession, and most people were less qualified. She also sensed by the melancholy in his tone, that this was preamble to a less comfortable topic. Given his specialization, she grew convinced he was the scientist she'd been searching for.
"Yes. Well, no. 'Taught at' is more precise." He sipped his tea through his mask's access port. Shame kept him hesitant. He steeled himself for sharing vulnerabilities to the first attentive audience he'd enjoyed in far too long. Like sin, failures are unburdened with confession. "I conducted research and taught at the Ten-Clan Academy for three years. Except for the occasional departure to guest lecture or visit family, I called the planet home."
Falindra knew little about academia, but heard of the prestige associated with a position at Maskawa. Any scholar might operate from the safe luxury of some civilized bastion of education on a world like Thessia or Irune. Research on the primordial, methane-soaked world of Maskawa was the pursuit of a truly dedicated scientific mind. More so because the planet, in a neighboring system in the Terminus. Undergraduates told thrilling tales and imprinted boldly on resumes even a brief stint on Maskawa, where they risked the threat of pirates and slavers for their dedication to science. The untold side of those tales was when researchers actually became the targets of frontier outlaws.
Drin became preoccupied with the data coming in from the power supply data terminal and turned away. He pressed buttons, feigned busying himself with the task, and then quit almost as quickly as he'd began. "Taught at," he repeated. "My funding was cut."
"Your funding?" echoed Falindra.
"It's formal jargon for 'you are fired'. Not enough practical results, you see." Bitterness came into his voice. "They don't consider the wonderment of scientific discovery, of research for its own sake. To tell the directors that there might be untold applications later is tantamount to gambling. They provide grants and in exchange they expect profits, something that can be patented and sold into the private sector."
"They have to pay for your security somehow, don't they?"
He glared at her defiantly, his respirator making angry ticks. "My research might lead to using lightning storms to power entire cities. No waste. No environmental damage. Even if it took a generation ," Drin sensed his own rant building momentum and cut himself off abruptly.
One question on Falindra's part and he'd grown flustered, defensive. Calm minds don't have ears for zealots. She'd learned that pleading defensive tactics during the Reaper War. In the professor's case, the lesson came from arguing with the university's board of directors.
"Perhaps you're right," he said and sipped his tea.
"Probably not. Powering a city from lightning storms. Sounds fantastic." Falindra stood and stretched her legs, walking across the breadth of the room. In the distance she heard the clunking sound of heavy objects being moved. She thought it came from the landing bay, but had not yet learned the layout of the habitat well enough, let alone the misdirection of echoes and vibrations that gave a building its character.
"I miss the Nefrane," she said, looking back at him. "The ship deserved its reputation. It had a soul the way only old ships can, ships that see their crews through dangers when they have no right to survive them. Its crew were my friends, mentors. I miss having crewmates." She hadn't planned to share such intimate thoughts with the volus; but he had revealed a vulnerability to her and one was owed in exchange.
"I departed Maskawa to plead my case in person with the directors when Dread Claw captured my shuttle. First dismissal, now this." Drin raised his arms to engulf the state of their lives, exasperated at the levels of misfortune reaped upon him. "Or maybe I should simply consider this my new vocation. How about that? A war hero and a preeminent scientist: such a curious pair of slaves we make."
"Don't let the krogan depress you, Drin. I make a horrible slave."