A/N: 35 years after the events of the Cambir story. Ruuk worked for Thieris Trade at the colony until 1234. Then Kedari Galactic Group bought out Thieris, and Ruuk transferred to the mostly-asari world of New Tayari. He has been here now for just over two whole years; he went through partners at not an abnormal pace to start with, but lately he's either had bad luck, bad judgement or bad attitude, and has been through partners quickly.
Mass Effect is owned by Bioware.
Year 1237
"Plant the beacon, you stupid lumbering mountain of meat!"
"Trying!"
There was a barely audible rumble and hiss in the recording and a few blips of static.
"Wait, what was - no. Tell me you didn't just put a shockwave into the ground."
"Fine. Won't." A krogan grunt of effort, and then the beep of deployed electronics. A few echoing thumps, rather like an armored fist pounding something further into the ground. "There. It's in. Can we go now?"
The recording stopped before the gunshots that had been his partner's reply. Ruuk smiled at the memory: it had been an entertaining excursion. First a nest of what the asari said looked like giant mutant spiders, then some sort of many-legged worm that was almost as long as he was tall and turned out to have a venomous bite, topped off at the end by those big flying scavenger bugs that never failed to appear whenever something fell in the forest. His partner had accused him of deliberately inciting them with the shockwave, after she finished having a panic attack when they swarmed out of the brush. He didn't disagree.
The asari on the other side of the desk, however, didn't accuse him of anything. She just frowned at him and sighed. She was Lessia's equivalent on New Tayari, and supposedly his former boss had written him a glowing recommendation. She might have forgotten to mention how they didn't really do partner matchups at Cambir. This liaison - Malina Telaris was her name - looked like she was regretting taking Lessia at her word.
"Four partners in six months. You know they're beginning to bet how long it will take you to break another one. And holding a lottery for exemptions."
"Not my fault they can't keep up."
"She won't be fit for duty for six weeks."
"I brought her back alive."
Telaris gave him an almost krogan glower. "Let me be frank. The only reason you are still employed is because you have completed all your surveys and you did bring her back alive. This tendency you have to shuck off partners has got to stop. You are sent out in pairs for a reason. I don't care that you don't think you need one. As long as you're on our payroll, you'll play by our rules. Are we clear? Or shall I pay out your severance?"
"Fine." He was scowling just as fiercely as she was, now, and he leaned forward and planted his hands on the desk to look her in the eye. "If you can find one that pulls her weight and doesn't squeal when a bug rears up in front of her."
Aeiri Navir waited in the loading bay by the shuttle, superficially making sure that the bay crew loaded into it everything she and her partner would need: water and rations, emergency shelter, secondary beacons, extra ammunition and suit repair kits, check. Rough camp gear, in case they got stuck and the science team didn't make it in on time behind them, check. Maps and reports from the primary survey, big check. Foul weather gear. Climbing equipment. Field recyclers.
All good things to have, and perfectly reasonable to be crossing off a list. It wasn't the real reason she was here, though. She was nervous. She didn't think she would be able to take it if she showed up late and her new partner - a krogan - the krogan, according to some of the surveyors, the one that ate partners and spit them back out - if her new partner got a bad first impression of her because of something as stupid as holding up the tour because she forgot to grab a roll of tape.
So she came early, over prepared, and fretted herself to uselessness.
She had never worked with krogan before. There hadn't been any on Cyone where she grew up (the mistresses at the Academy loved telling that tale), nor at Lusia or the militia there, nor on any of her previous assignments with Kedari Galactic. Her only experience with them came from the few krogan merchants she had encountered on the Citadel or Illium, or the laborers and mercenaries populating the bars and public spaces after hours. She knew there were a few here on the colony. The company had hired them specifically because they could go outside without protection. She had seen them, walking around in the common areas, boisterously loud and seeming to enjoy the suspicious glances cast their way by other races. She didn't know if her partner had been among those krogan or not. She hadn't bothered to talk to any of them. They hadn't seemed like good company.
It was embarrassing. She was a grown woman, with more than two centuries of service to her people. Get ahold of yourself! She didn't even know why she was so nervous. The company had gone over his credentials. The company had proceeded to hire him. Therefore, his credentials were good and he was an asset. Just like her. Just like any other employee. Even if he was loud and obnoxious. He would do his job, and she had nothing to be worried about.
Oh Goddess, what if he's old enough to remember the rebellions? She knew krogan lived a long time. She'd once asked one of those Illium merchants about a battered old rifle he'd had hanging behind his counter. It didn't look like it would even still fire, and she hadn't taken the krogan for a sentimental race. 'That lets the turians and salarians know they aren't welcome here,' he'd told her. 'I killed dozens - hundreds - with that rifle, and she's got a few rounds left in her yet.' She had finished her business and hurried on, chilled by the utter sincerity in his voice. What if ... what if he remembers the rachni? Would he come to hunt Tayari bugs if he killed rachni? Probably.
Aeiri took a deep breath and closed her eyes, concentrating on clearing her mind and settling her body's rhythms. It was a ritual borne of long practice, and it took her but a moment to steady herself.
"All loaded up, sir," said one of the crew behind her. "Ready to go when you are."
"That's fine, I-"
"Good," said a deeper voice. Aeiri turned and there he was: a mountain of krogan clad in grey and red armor. His crest was a deep red-brown and his eyes an odd pale blue. She didn't think she had seen this particular one among those groups she had observed here before. She was unsure if that was a good thing or not.
"Let's go," he continued, and the crewman who had addressed him nodded her head, speaking to her mates to finalize procedures as she walked away. He looked around, narrowing his eyes at the piles of crates packed into the shuttle.
"Nakmor Ruuk?" Aeiri interposed herself between the krogan and the shuttle, something she would berate herself for in later years. "My name is Aeiri Navir of Cyone, biotic adept, best shot on Tayari with small arms. I'm your new partner." She smiled and extended her hand to the krogan. He looked at her, and then past her.
"I don't need a partner, asari. Just try to keep up, and stay out of my way." He stepped around her and pulled himself into the shuttle.
When Lessia offered him a place at the New Tayari colony, she had promised a normal planetary daylight rotation and all the monsters he could handle. She hadn't mentioned the part where everyone not native or krogan had to wear exosuits or live under domes. She had also failed to mention the heat. It didn't bother him; in fact, it was almost homey.
The pilot settled the shuttle onto a low outcrop of rock and popped the hatch. Dry, dusty-smelling air flooded the compartment and bright sunlight made Ruuk shade his eyes as he hopped out. There was a faint sour smell behind the dust, as well, and he took a few moments to breathe deeply, acclimatizing to the toxic atmosphere. It burned in his lungs, but it was good to breathe non-recycled air. His new partner, covered head to toe in a bright yellow exosuit, followed behind him. Ruuk ignored her.
The outcrop rose a few feet above the general elevation of the desert. Everywhere he looked was flat, scrubby brush and sand, interrupted here and there by tables of stone ranging from low piles like the one they had set down upon to pillars towering many times his height. One of the giants pushed up out of the sand just a few minutes' walk away. The stone was a rusty red color and contrasted sharply with the knee-high, grey-green plants of the basin. There were a few bare patches at irregular intervals, roughly circular areas with a suspicious lack of vegetation. It was still early morning, and the chirps and drones of the indigenous bugs had yet to fade away in the day's heat.
Tuchanka might have looked like this.
It rankled a little bit that he wasn't the first to see it. Don't you like to try new things? Telaris had asked as she passed him his orders. You're so eager for new partners, I thought we'd try new parameters, too. Every other survey they had asked him to perform had been a primary: a preliminary scout tour to get a general idea of the local geography, flora and fauna from a person on the ground, to see if the site might contain valuable resources worth sending more people to inspect and study or extract. This one was a secondary survey. Supposedly, it was a more detailed inspection of a camp site before a science team arrived on their heels. Their jobs were to make sure the site was safe and secure. Secondary surveys were more commonly referred to as "bug patrol." To be knocked off primary and assigned to secondary - it was demeaning.
Ruuk banged his fist against the side of the shuttle and gave the pilot a thumbs up. She waved back, and the shuttle lifted off again to head back to the colony. There, she would begin the long process of loading up the scientists and their many hauls of equipment, shelters and shield generators. His 'partner' yelled out a protest.
"What the hell? I wasn't done yet!" She looked from the departing shuttle back to the krogan, her hands in the air in an expression of disbelief. A few boxes and crates were piled on the ground beside her, all she had managed to offload before the pilot lifted again.
"Too slow then," he grumbled. He didn't bother turning back to address her. He looked around until he spotted the nearest bare patch, then jumped down from the rock and began to walk toward it.
"What? Hey! Where are you going? You can't go out there alone!"
He had not been impressed when she introduced herself in the loading bay back at the colony. Aeiri Navir of Cyone, biotic adept, best shot on Tayari with small arms. She had announced it like she was trying to intimidate him, then stuck out her hand in greeting. He hadn't been sure if she was just that confident or really had no idea that you couldn't impress a krogan with talk. He'd told her he didn't need a partner, and it was true. He could have done any of this twice as fast if he didn't have to worry about losing some company-line asari or turian tagging along.
"Then you'd better keep up."
The krogan frowned at the bare, baked sand as if his disapproval would make it reveal its secrets. There was a hint of a depression in the center, but it was old. Gravity and wind had spilled sand back into it, and now it was visible only because he had pointed it out to her. It was the fifth empty pit they had visited.
"Primary says they were here last time," Aeiri said, scrolling through the first survey's information. She had a datapad in one hand, her back to the blazing sun so that she could read it in the darkness of her own shadow. "Calls them sandeaters. Some type of big worm, ambush predator. Sounds nasty."
He grunted affirmation. "Saw them on the coast, too. Didn't see abandoned pits, though. Something isn't right."
"Hey, I know you're all for killing bugs, but I don't mind not finding them." She missed the venomous look the krogan shot her, since she was busy stuffing the datapad back into a pack. She fanned herself ineffectually through the suit. "By the Goddess it's hot."
"Why don't you go find some shade, then, asari? Sit this one out while I figure out where all the worms are."
Aeiri had lost her nervousness. She realized that she had wanted to impress him; krogan were bad news, and what better validation than to be treated as an equal by someone who had once made you want to turn and flee in the other direction? But he had proven himself to be just like the others she'd seen and heard, just as brutish and rude and conniving as they had been made out to be, and suddenly his approval didn't mean as much anymore. Now she just wanted to smack him. She was fairly sure she'd end up regretting that, so she held her temper and promised herself that when they got back, she'd put in her request for a different partner and have no more to do with him. She was surprised that he had managed to keep any partners longer than a single trip. They must have been thicker-skinned. Or masochists.
As much as she wanted to take him up on that offer, company policy was clear that neither of them was to be alone in the field. She understood why. There were still far too many unknowns. Too many dangers no one had yet encountered; unmapped environmental hazards, dangerous wildlife or just plain bad luck and circumstance.
"Yes," she agreed, not thinking ahead of her tongue. "Krogan are good at figuring out where bugs are hiding, aren't they?"
She froze. Despite the sweat trickling down her back, ice gripped her spine. She double-checked her memory, just to be sure she said what she thought she had said. Yep. She was in trouble now. She blamed the heat.
To her surprise, the krogan laughed.
"You asari," he smiled. "You all pretend that you're better than the other races. More evolved. More civilized. But you're just as base as the rest of us."
The cold flared back into heat, and she pulled up her shields without even thinking about it. She saw the krogan's eyes narrow and a thin glow of dark energy gather around his fists. Wait, wait … he's a biotic, too? Oh hell, what if he is that old?
"What do you want, asari?" he asked her, all the laughter gone. His tone was wary.
"I want …" She was confused. And hot. Her face burned, and she felt as if her hands and feet were swimming in her gloves and boots. She didn't know what she wanted, except … "I want some shade. I think the cooler in my suit is giving out."
He looked at her as if trying to determine if she was poking fun at him. She dropped the shields, and after a moment he let go of the energy he held, too. Finally, he gestured for her to head back to the rocks where they'd been dropped off and moved to follow behind her. She breathed a sigh of relief. He might be brutish, rude and conniving, but she didn't want to be responsible for even tacit compliance in allowing him to wander off by himself. She didn't want to be held accountable for getting her partner killed, no matter what he thought about it.
Ruuk stood by while the asari rooted through the stack of supplies she had offloaded from the shuttle. She was cursing to herself, but he could tell her heart wasn't in it. She might have been telling the truth about her suit. Her behaviour certainly indicated that she was more uncomfortable than his previous partners had expressed, and this dry heat was far preferable to him than the humid swamp of his last tour. He wasn't sure what difference it made for an exosuit.
Weak, says an internal voice. Unadaptable, he corrects it. He didn't have anything against her, personally - aside from the unsubtle prodding about the rachni - but he also wouldn't be hard off if Kedari Galactic revoked his contract because he finally lost a partner. His many years at Cambir had garnered him a comfortable safety net, and he could hunt another contract until he found one to his liking.
He balked at letting that be the reason he finally broke a deal. It wasn't her fault the cooler had failed. It would be one thing if she made a decision to leave him or to make him leave her, but suit mechanics was something neither of them could control, like the weather, or the bugs. He looked over at a joyful exclamation from the asari and saw her pop a crate open and pull a cooling unit from its depths with shaky hands. He watched her fumble at the latches on her shoulders, but her fingers were clumsy and she couldn't quite get a grip to disengage the failing cooler. He sighed.
"Be still," he told her. He moved behind her and took the unit out of her hands. He had a little trouble with the releases for the old one, too: the latches were meant for smaller fingers, and he cursed at the last one until it came loose. He put the new one in its place and reengaged it, and the asari sighed in relief.
"Go sit in the shade," he said. "Drink water. Don't pass out. I'm not carrying your skinny ass back to the colony."
Her face was flushed when she looked up at him. "Thank you," she said, and he growled at her, motioning her with a jerk of his chin toward a bastion of shade at the edge of the outcrop. He followed her, but while she sat down in the sand and leaned back against the rocks, he stayed on top and watched the plains.
It was surprisingly peaceful.
Near dusk, a brisk wind blew up from the east and a line of dark, threatening clouds appeared on the horizon. He didn't much like the idea of being caught unprotected in this world's mildly acidic rain, and he slid down from his perch to prod the asari awake. The rain wouldn't hurt him, but it wouldn't be good for his armor and it wouldn't be pleasant. She blinked blearily at him from behind the faceplate, but she looked much better than she had a few hours ago.
"Don't suppose you came across a shelter in those crates of yours," he asked. He motioned toward the squall line, already much closer. Lightning pulsed behind the clouds, turning the darkening sky a violet grey. She sat up and stared toward the line of storms, then looked back at the pile of supplies. She had plundered it quite thoroughly in her search for a spare cooling unit.
"I had one on the shuttle," she said. "But someone got impatient and didn't let me offload everything before sending it back up."
Ruuk bit back a growl. She had packed more on that shuttle than any self-respecting surveyor would need. He'd given her time to unload the vital components - rations and water, ammunition, the secondary beacons and first aid and repair - and then sent the rest of it back with the shuttle. The first of the science team would arrive tomorrow to begin setting up their shelters and equipment. If she'd had it all, she'd have been half the day just setting up a camp herself.
Not that she hadn't ended up spending half the day at camp, anyway, tucked into a line of shadow at the base of the rocks. Ruuk had stood watch because he didn't know what sort of scavenger bugs there might be in this arid environment. Besides, if anything interesting had moved, he would probably have seen it from his vantage point.
"No caves?" she asked hopefully.
"None in the primary's notes."
She gaped at him. "You read the notes?"
"Just because I'm krogan doesn't mean I'm stupid," he muttered, and she threw up her hands in negation.
"No no, I meant … okay. Yes, I'm surprised you read the notes." She winced at the glare he directed toward her. "But I didn't mean it like that. I just thought you'd rather not rely on what someone else said."
"Waste of effort otherwise. I'll form my own opinions, though."
Thunder shook the plains. The storms had blown closer while they talked, and Ruuk could see the lighter bands where the rain was pouring from the clouds. The spikey desert foliage was bent almost flat in the winds preceding the storm. It might be a good idea, he thought, to move the supply crates to the lee of the outcrop. He hopped back up top and began to do just that. The asari followed after she saw what he was doing and added her labor to the effort.
They had just gotten the last crate nestled against the rocks when the wind hit, and even Ruuk was staggered by its force. He grabbed the asari by the arm before she was blown completely off her feet, and she held onto him for all she was worth. Then the first drops hit, and the sting of the rain against his face owed more to its force than to acidity. He scrambled off the rock as the sky was split by lightning, pulling the asari after him, and took what shelter he could in the lee beside the supplies. No doubt about it, it was going to be one unpleasant wait for the end of the storm. As quickly as it blew in, though, it should be over soon.
Ruuk watched the basin begin to shine as water steamed and then pooled on the hard-baked sand and reflected the flickering sky above. The tall rock tower was in his sight, too, mostly obscured now by the sheets of rain, but he could just make out the darkness of its shape against the lighter grey of the rain and clouds. Thunder rolled across the sky, pulled by streaks of lightning. The dusty smell was washed out of the air and replaced by a scent that reminded him a little of the wetlands: damp earth and wet leaves and ozone, but missing the undertone of rot.
He hated the rain. Not quite as much as he hated the cold, but almost. He hated being wet. But he had to admit, privately, that it was kind of pretty.
Thunder still echoed from the west, but the rain was slacking off. The air had cooled noticeably in the wake of the winds. He could see sharper outlines around the rock tower and streams of water cascading down its sides in thin arcs. Some parts of the rock looked darker than others, and -
"Down!" Ruuk commanded, and shoved the asari's head between her knees. He heard a protesting 'hey!' but she was drowned out by the crack of splitting rock. A boulder spalled off near the top, and a piece of rock the size of a shuttle twisted and slid down the face with deceptive slowness, breaking up and gouging out more rock along its path and paving the way down with thunder of its own. The earth shook as the largest boulders came to rest on the basin floor, but smaller rocks kicked up clouds of dust as they bounced and rolled and shattered off the pillar and finally stilled. None of them came close to where the pair sheltered. Ruuk let the asari up, and she looked over the scar in the tower and the settling dust with an expression of awe.
"Wow," she said.
"If that doesn't call the bugs, nothing will," he said.
The krogan froze almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Aeiri didn't think she had ever seen a member of that race look worried before, and she didn't much like it now.
"What?" she asked him. "What's going on?"
The rain was almost done. Only a few straggling drops pattered on the ground now. Aeiri wiped off her faceplate with one hand and slung the wet to the side. The krogan held himself very still and the worried look didn't go away.
"Listen!" he told her, grabbing her nearer hand and planting it on the ground. He shushed her as she tried to protest, and she set her jaw and listened. She could feel a faint tremor in the earth, but it didn't seem like anything to be concerned about, since the rockfall had finished, and hadn't reached even halfway across the basin, anyway.
"It's just the rocks settling."
"No," he spat. "I know what a maw sounds like."
"A maw?" Aeiri couldn't believe what she was hearing. "What - you mean a thresher maw? Are you crazy? There's no thresher maws here, just giant bugs and worms!"
"What do you think a maw is?" He rose and searched the crates piled beside them, finding the one labelled "ammunition" and and flipping it open to stock as much as he could on his armor. He took off at a run toward the rockfall.
"He is crazy," Aeiri confirmed to herself.
When he was halfway across, a giant worm rose out of the sand. That wasn't in the notes! The krogan went crazy. Crazier. He threw both biotics and bullets at it, but they didn't seem to even slow the thing down. Aeiri watched in disbelief as he deliberately drew its attention and dodged toward the field of fallen boulders. What is he doing?
She revised her opinion of the krogan yet again. The worm erupting from the sand was definitely a thresher maw. She had seen pictures. Two long, modified legs at its armored head, with a gaping mouth surrounded by two pairs of grasping tentacles and a glowing blue … tongue? Did worms have tongues?
It did look smaller than she'd thought it would be, but it was more than big enough to swallow either of them whole and look for more.
So that's what happened to the sandeaters. They got eaten by something bigger.
Across the way, the krogan was yelling at the maw, dodging behind the boulders - oh yes, they spit acid, too. Such pleasant creatures, she remembered - and pausing fire only to reload fresh clips. He seemed determined to take it down. The worm screamed, a feat of which Aeiri didn't think it should be capable, and disappeared backward back down into the ground.
The krogan stopped firing. He took the break to jam another clip into his weapon. He moved warily around the boulder he had been using as cover, then bent gradually and put one hand on the ground.
"Is it gone? Did you kill it?" she shouted out at him. His head snapped up and he shushed her again, and the maw burst from the ground behind him. He dodged quickly, putting the same boulder between himself and the worm, and fired at it again.
Aeiri couldn't do much damage to it with a gun from this distance, but biotics didn't lose energy like projectiles did. As long as she could see it, she could hit it. She threw a warp at the the wiggling body beneath its head.
She just made it mad.
It screamed again and dove once more back under the ground. The sand buckled and shook as the beast burrowed shallowly beneath it, and the krogan tried to throw it off with shockwaves directly into its face. It reared out of the sand again, and again Aeiri threw biotics at it, but it dodged the singularity she put in its path and appeared not to notice a pull as she tried to yank its head away from the running krogan.
Said krogan jigged to one side and slid into the protection of a different rock, discarding the heavy pistol he had been using in favor of a shotgun. Aeiri kept one eye on him as she threw every biotic trick she could think of at the giant worm. The maw lit up as if it had biotics of its own. Goddess let that never happen! Was it slowing down? Was that acid dripping from its jaw or worm blood? She couldn't tell. The krogan darted out from the cover of the rock and got one shot off before the maw retreated underground again.
It went deep, and the ground was still.
Her partner stepped cautiously out onto the sand, shotgun in one hand and biotic energy wreathing the other. He looked up and met her eyes, then shook his head.
Aeiri let out the breath she had been holding and sank back on the ground. She felt reasonably safe, sheltered at the edge of the outcrop. It couldn't burrow through solid stone. Maybe it was gone. Maybe they had hurt it and scared it badly enough that it would leave. She wasn't sure how smart thresher maws were, whether or not they could learn fear; they seemed pretty mindless from all she had ever heard of them. If that was a small one, she vowed, she never wanted to meet a big one.
The last daylight was fading from the sky. The rain was gone, and even the clouds were withdrawing to the west, leaving half the sky open to the last light of sunset and the stars above. The temperature had dropped precipitously, and as grateful as she had been earlier for a working cooler, she was now thankful for a functional heater.
The ground trembled.
The maw exploded upward again, not far from where it had disappeared, and the krogan threw a shockwave at it, immediately followed by a round from his shotgun. The worm oriented and reared its head back to spit acid.
The crazy krogan charged it. Aeiri found herself yelling - whether at the worm or the krogan, she wasn't sure. She didn't dare throw biotics at it, not with him right there. She hoped he knew what he was doing.
She didn't realize that she was also running toward it until she was too far from the rocks to change her mind. The crazy must be contagious, she thought.
The krogan charged, the worm spit its acid far behind him, and Aeiri brought her own guns out and started shooting now that she was close enough to hit it. She was the best shot on New Tayari, and she wasn't afraid she would hit her partner as long as she knew where he was. The maw screamed as the krogan bounced off of it, but even a biotic charge didn't appear to have its usual effect. The worm had too much mass to be moved by one little alien.
He was yelling at it again. The maw turned its head toward him, ignoring the little slugs Aeiri fired on it. It screamed and then it dove, scissor legs reaching for the krogan, who appeared to be waiting just for that.
She could tell her grandchildren that she had seen a krogan headbutt a thresher maw. They wouldn't believe her, of course. But she would know.
The maw and the krogan met each other in an awesome collision, and Aeiri felt the wavefronts of a different sort of shockwave rip through the air. It was biotic, but it was as if a bomb had gone off rather than the controlled direction of a normal attack. She was knocked backward to the ground, and she felt a dull thud reverberate through the desert floor as the worm's body impacted, too. One shotgun blast rang out. Then another. And then the night was still again.
Aeiri picked herself up off the ground and wiped wet sand from her backside and elbows. The worm was stretched out on the ground twenty meters away, its tail end disappearing back down into the sand. The little legs behind the head twitched, but judging from the mess in front of them, it was quite dead. She didn't see the krogan.
"Nakmor Ruuk," summoned a voice. It sounded impatient. "Wake up, damn it. I know you can hear me."
Ruuk didn't want to wake up. Waking up meant cold. And pain. He felt like he had just participated in a game of 'tackle the varren' with a thresher maw, and he lost.
Wait …
"I am not dragging your heavy ass all the way back to the colony," said the voice. Female. Asari. Aeiri, his new partner.
He became aware that he was on the ground, leaning against something that felt uncomfortably like a rock. He cracked his eyes open to see what it was. The foreleg of a thresher maw loomed in his sight, and his hearts skipped as he tried to summon the rage to fight it.
"Hey, hey, it's okay!" said the asari, and she pushed the leg fearlessly to the side and put herself in its place. She was an indistinct blob silhouetted against the sky, and watching her move made him dizzy. "It's dead. You killed it. Damn near killed yourself, too. I told you not to go out there alone."
He tried to growl at her, but it didn't come out right. It was fully dark now, the clouds were gone and the stars shone brightly overhead. The puddles hadn't yet all been sucked into the dry sand, and so the sky glittered both above and below. He took it in. It looked like space.
And it was cold, like space. He'd heard some salarian claim space was actually hot, once, but he didn't believe it. How could emptiness be hot? He could see his breath in the air. He fought a shiver. He pushed himself up off the rock (why were rocks always uncomfortable? and hard?) and sat with his elbows on his knees. The inside of his head felt stuffed full of wool and about to float off - he recognized the side effect of painkillers and guessed he had Aeiri to thank for it - but still his side ached. When he looked down to see why, he saw a hole wedged into the plates of his armor and not a little blood. Acid had pitted the surface of the surrounding ceramic. It looked like a map, all peaks and valleys. Had the maw's acid etched a map of its territory into his armor? It struck him as absurdly funny, and he choked on a laugh.
Aeiri looked at him in concern. She rose to a kneel beside him and offered her hand. He regarded her warily.
"If you can do it," she said, "I'd rather get back to 'our' rock."
"'m fine," he grumbled at her, more respectably this time, and shook his head to try to dislodge the fuzziness. She took his arm and hauled him up anyway. Pretty strong, for a little blue woman. The horizon wavered. Good thing it was too dark to see it properly.
"Keep up," she told him. She steered him toward a darker shadow on the desert floor.
He scowled at her. The nerve of her, throwing his own words back at him. That was just mean.
Oh, the fun she could have had with a drunken krogan. He remembered most of it, though, which made her just as glad that she hadn't entertained herself at his expense. Both of them stood before the desk of the Terrible Telaris, listening to her listening to a review of their tour. Aeiri studied the wood grain intently. She didn't dare look over at Ruuk. He was a solid presence beside her, decked out in shiny new grey armor.
There wasn't anything for Telaris to find fault with. They had done their job. The thresher maw had gotten rid of the sandeaters, and they had gotten rid of the thresher maw. They had run a check, just after daybreak, when Ruuk could walk in a straight line without stopping every five steps, but there was nothing else big enough to be a threat. All of the sandeater pits were empty. Camp site safe: mission more or less accomplished. The science team had had to do a little extra mapping, but they almost always ended up changing their minds ten times about where they wanted to plant the flag, anyway.
"Why didn't you call it in?" Telaris peered at them across the barren plain of bureaucracy. "We could have brought out heavier weapons."
"You don't leave a thresher maw," retorted the krogan, "You kill it, or it grows and then you can't kill it."
"In a day?" Telaris asked doubtfully.
"It had eaten all the sandeaters, ma'am," Aeiri said. "We think it only came up to investigate the shockwaves from the rocks hitting the desert floor. It might have moved on to find new territory, otherwise."
"Hmm," said Telaris. "They've never come up on surveys before." She eyed the krogan as if it were his fault. "But if there was one, there may be another."
"And bigger," Ruuk agreed. He sounded almost cheerful. "That one was tiny."
Telaris did not look reassured by this prospect. Aeiri empathized. She didn't particularly care for the notion of hunting larger worms, herself, and acid-spitting giant armored worms that gave even krogan pause were not her idea of fun. Even the sandeaters had been bad enough in her opinion.
"But that's why you've got krogan," Ruuk continued. He had a very satisfied look on his face and his eyes were alight with a fierce eagerness. "Give them larger weapons and support, and you'll have no problems getting volunteers for maw hunting."
Telaris considered his words. Her face was a mask of managerial boredom. "I'll take it up with the board," she said. "The two of you did well. The company thanks you for bringing this issue to its attention. You're dismissed."
And just like that, they were beneath her attention. Some of the krogan must have been rubbing off, Aeiri thought absently, because the abject dismissal after such a crucial discovery set her off.
"Dismissed?" she asked, keeping her voice polite. She stepped closer to the desk. "We bring you a report that could change the way you run surveys, deal with it on our own, my partner is nearly killed, and we're 'dismissed'?"
Telaris pursed her lips and glared in a very civilized manner. "I can dismiss you more permanently, if you like."
"I'd rather you recognize that we did you a service," she shot back. "Ma'am. How many other teams would have disappeared, to be shortly followed by your science teams and their expensive equipment, and you none the wiser what happened to them?"
Telaris breathed deeply and looked unhappy.
"I'll see what I can do," was all she said. Aeiri recognized bureaucratic road blocking and realized that she wasn't going to get anything else out of the liaison. She turned and strode out of the office before she said anything else, and the krogan followed behind her. He was chuckling quietly to himself.
"I like you, asari," he said after they were safely out of earshot. "You've got a quad."
"I'm your partner. Would it kill you to use my name?"
"Maybe."
"Do you even know my name?"
He smiled at her. "I think it was in the notes."