Astraea looked upon the stricken face of the mother with pity. "Stand away. She must answer for her crimes."
"It was an accident! She's only a child!" Stubborn, the woman, Meleta, tucked her daughter behind her, putting herself between hunter and prey.
A perilous place to be. The justicar raised a brow and aimed her pistol a little higher, centering the sight over Meleta's heart. "A child who caused the death of six other children. A child who murders is no child at all."
The adolescent girl looked around her mother with terror twisting her round, flushed features. Astraea felt a twist at her heart to be looked at so. By this child and all who'd come out of doors to witness this judgement, as though Astraea was the monster here. An assessment that struck too close to the mark for comfort. But then again, Astraea had not picked this vocation for comfort.
The flaming wreckage behind her warmed her back. A reminder that wrongs had to be righted, at any cost. "If not for this child's actions, none would have perished today. By the Code, let her accept her punishment. Stand away. I will not tell you again."
Meleta's mouth opened in a silent wail. Astraea could almost hear it. And in it, an echo of a time long since past. When she herself had screamed her despair to the uncaring universe.
Kallika, the girl who killed six of her peers in drunken revelry with an aircar she'd stolen and driven illegally, stepped around her mother and approached the justicar. Astraea looked upon her with sorrowful approval and prepared to end this child and any future she might have once had. Kallika looked up into Astraea's eyes and said, "I'm sorry."
"As am I-"
Before the justicar could fire, the girl's mother yanked her away and threw herself at Astraea's feet. "No! Please, wait!"
"Unacceptable."
"I am responsible! Not my Kallika."
"Yours were not the hands on the controls. Yours was not the mouth that imbibed alcohol and caused this travesty-"
"But I am the one who raised this child. I am the one who failed to teach her right from wrong," Meleta begged with such passion that it moved the justicar. "I am the one responsible."
The Code had a lot to say about ultimate responsibility. Astraea considered the matter, tapping her fingers on her lower lip. She looked from one tear-streaked face to the other. Killika fought to get back to the fore, but her mother kept her from doing so. Both cried and cursed the other. Such is love. That one would sacrifice everything for the other.
Finally, Astraea said, "Acceptable."
With that one simple word, she fired. The bullet ripped through Meleta's skull, spraying grey matter on the pavement. The woman crumpled in a heap.
Kallika threw herself over the corpse and screamed, "Mother!"
"Justice is served. The Code is satisfied." Astraea made to turn away, back to her path. Back to her mission.
The girl's sobbing voice stopped her. "How can you be so cold? How can you be so cruel?"
"The cruelty is mine? For her part in the making of you, she has paid. And bought you a future. With this, you also did not escape punishment. Do not let her sacrifice be in vain. Take this lesson to heart. As I did." The justicar commanded the girl's utmost attention with her sympathetic, but stern gaze. "There are consequences to our choices. There is always a ransom to be paid."
With that, the justicar strode away through the colony's commons. Kallika's cries of grief rang in her ears. Sadness made her steps heavy. Astraea consoled herself by silently reciting sutras.
If the justicar hadn't happened by to witness the collision and ascertain the cause, it might have turned out much differently for Kallika and her mother. Both would have survived, for one. The girl would have been in police custody and on her way to face a jury of her peers.
Which is better? thought Astraea. Would that have sufficed to deter the girl from her destructive path? Will this, the death of her mother, accomplish that? Or drive her further away from the light?
Astraea put doubt aside. No use imagining what might have been. I was there. That is all.
She turned her attention to the ship docked at the spaceport. The one she'd come to investigate. And perhaps there she'd find a lead. A step closer to fulfilling her promise. A step closer to meeting fate.
The ship stank of offal and terror. Of too many bodies crammed into its cargo spaces. Through the vents, she could hear them moaning their despair. Occasionally, a shouted order and subsequent sharp cry resounded through the tight maintenance shaft Astraea inched along.
She grimaced at the idea of those suffering not three meters away, her sense of injustice chiding her for her patience. It demanded she fly out of the corridor that ran parallel to the inhabited parts of the ship and destroy these abusers, these traders in misery.
Only the idea that if she did, her target might escape her grasp and, thus, cause even more misery out in the cosmos stayed her hand.
Silently, Astraea swore to those people bleeding and crying out that she'd return and see these slavers cast down.
Muted conversation drew her toward the fore of the ship. Ducking down a smaller tunnel, she leaned into a grate to hear better.
". . . you know Boss Silva wouldn't like it." Astraea's heart thudded at the name the one, a turian by the sound of it, mentioned. She willed it back into its slower rhythm as she concentrated. The turian continued, "She wants the whole lot sold."
"Yeah? Well, Silva ain't my boss. She don't pay me to feed all these fleshbags. Selling the weak ones won't half pay what I spent keeping them breathing. I say we space the sickly ones and skip out to Omega to sell the rest. Aria's paying top cred for bodies to mine her asteroid." That one, a batarian, snorted in contempt. "Silva don't even have to know."
"Boss Silva," corrected the turian, "It'll be all our asses if she does, though. She's got her eye on us, make no mistake. And I have no intention of getting myself flayed, spaced, or used for target practice just because a pyjak slaver doesn't know how to follow orders." Threat laced his words, overt and deadly. Astraea heard the undeniable whine of a loading heatsink.
The batarian backpedaled, "Wait, friend, I'm just saying." To something the turian did, the slaver sucked in his breath and blurted, "Okay, okay. We'll sell them all. I got-I got a pal on Illium who'll take the skinny ones for his 'ponic farms. Doctor the paperwork so's they look indentured and all. The rest we'll take to Aria, yeah?"
"Get this boat in gear, then. We got to finish this deal quick, then I gotta head out to report to the boss." The turian feet clicked on the decking as he left the cockpit. "She doesn't like to be kept waiting."
"Sure, sure," the slaver called after the turian. Then muttered, "Merc bastard."
Astraea heard enough to confirm her suspicion. The turian was the one she wanted. He'd lead her to Silva.
Using her booted feet, she kicked through the grate and slid into the room, coming up in a crouch in front of the startled batarian. Before he could even so much as utter a word, she shot him, one round through the cranium.
Muffled shouting on the other side of the door informed her that the pistol's loud report did not go unnoticed. The justicar slid to one side of that portal just as it opened and put her gun to the investigating slaver's skull, pulling the trigger in one smooth action.
As that body dropped right across the threshold, an alarm wailed throughout the ship. Astraea peered into the long hall that led to the cargo bay and saw at least a dozen more flesh-peddlers scrambling to meet her with weapons drawn. And at the very end, her turian swung toward her with astonishment.
Astraea tossed a biotic stasis at him, which he rolled to avoid. He shouted to the rest, "Take her out!"
The justicar dropped back into cover as a hail of bullets pounded into the portal. When they paused to reload, she leaned out and picked off five of them, then performed a more complicated mimetic. A huge glowing ball grew to size in their midst, picking half of them up off their feet.
A bullet tore through her shoulder and she fell back with a hiss. With a mental shove, she put the agony to the back of her mind. Reloading, she dropped into a crouch and peeked out just enough to finish off the slavers floating around in the air. Sweet relief flooded her as the medi-gel injectors in her suit numbed her wound.
The turian hid behind the others, safely tucked in the lee of his own piece of cover. She had to find a way to get to him before he fled the ship. Taking a chance, Astraea darted out of cover in a charge. The remaining slavers tried to pick her off, but she stayed just ahead of their curtain of fire.
She tucked her shoulder and rammed into a towering crate she knew at least two of them cowered behind. It toppled, crushing the unfortunate men under it. Not pausing to watch, Astraea ran straight at another slaver, trusting her shields to deflect his bullets. An orange blade flicked out of her omnitool at her silent command.
Her intended target started to realize she wasn't stopping. Astraea felt a grim sort of satisfaction as her omniblade sunk deep into the man's belly. She carried him with her to the protected side of another crate, using him to shield her from oncoming fire. She paused for a moment to catch her breath. Counting the panicked shouts, she tallied only three remaining slavers. Not including her turian, who must be taken alive to answer some very pointed questions.
Astraea tossed another stasis at a retreating slaver, then followed up with a burst of lethal gunfire. She clipped another with it and that man went down in a screaming heap, clutching his shattered kneecap.
She heard dual-toned cursing and knew her turian must have thought of retreating, for the elevator at his back to the lower levels slid open with a swish. No, he could not be allowed to get away.
The justicar put a bullet in the wounded slaver to end him and searched out the last one. She found him cringing behind a low table. He gibbered and dropped his weapon at the sight of her, crying, "Mercy! Mercy!"
She didn't even dignify that absurdity with a vocal response, just planted a bullet in his heart and kept moving. The door opened at her hand on an empty lift. She stepped in and pressed down, the only direction it could go. Odds were, she'd find him heading toward the shuttle bay, trying to escape her by stealing a transport and heading off world.
As soon as it started down, the lift groaned and trembled under her feet. She narrowed her eyes at this development. With a loud boom that rocked the elevator, Astraea felt the cable give way with a sound of shearing metal. As the lift plummeted, the justicar quelled a surge of panic. It would serve no purpose here, other than getting her killed.
Her feet left the decking and she peered down at them, an idea forming in her mind. Flaring every eezo sensitive node in her flesh, she started to float in earnest. Just in time too, for the lift crashed into the bottom of the shaft with enough force to liquify bone. Doubtless, if she had not negated her own momentum, that would have been the end of her quest.
The doors shuddered and creaked open, the mechanism whining and shrieking as it did. Astraea felt a rare flash of amusement as she found herself staring at the startled and frustrated face of the same turian she pursued. He stood at the far end of the room at the door to the cargo hold.
She couldn't resist commenting in dry tones, "Thank you for speeding up that infernal device."
He cursed at her from across the room. The door past him opened, and he ran from her, threading through the slave pens. She noted that he did not head starboard, where the shuttle bay opened on the docks. What was he doing?
Shouting from ahead alerted her to the fact that more slavers must be down here, guarding the chattel. Astraea counted her remaining heatsinks, running a thumb across where they lined her belt. One, just one. Four shots, total.
Her gut sank as she espied the bulky silhouette of a krogan heading her way. Four shots wouldn't even put a dent in that thing.
The krogan paused as it spotted her, then grinned a contemptuous grin. "Must be a justicar. Only asari bitches I know that go into battle with their boobs hanging out."
Pressing her lips in a grim line, she eyed the weapon the beast had dangling from his fist. An energy whip, designed not to kill, but to incapacitate in the most painful way possible. A touch of its nanofilaments would send electricity shooting through her nervous system. From the deft way the krogan snapped it once in the air between them, he knew how to wield it well.
She put away her pistol and flicked out her omniblade. Then, pausing to consider him, flicked out the right one, too. Two orange blades flickered on the ends of her arms and she rued the lack of a helpful grenade or two.
This would be a hard fight. Even without the whip, krogan had an annoying tendency of being nigh unkillable.
Putting away her trepidation, Astraea stalked toward the giant. He chuckled, a dark, deep sound. "We don't have to fight. I could show you a good time another way, sweet thing. Work that fine, blue ass into a lather."
She lobbed a stasis at him, which he nimbly dodged. He struck out with that crackling whip. She had to flip sideways to slip over its wide arc. Then, the justicar slid close and scored a hit along the krogan's left forearm. The omniblade sliced through his armor like tissue paper.
The hulking alien grunted in pain then slapped at her with the back of that hand. It glanced off her shoulder, turning her backward leap into a sprawl. Astraea grimaced as she lunged back into a balanced stance. She squared off with her opponent and glared at him with cold fury.
"Maybe having a real male between your legs would melt some of that ice." Then he came on with a barrage of powerful overhand swipes, keeping her at a distance. She had to leap to and fro to avoid getting hit. "Or maybe it's true what they say about you justicars sewing your cunts shut."
Astraea looked for a way to negate his advantage. Get in close, strip that weapon out of his hand and give her a chance to do some damage with her knives. If he forced her to keep dodging like this, she'd tire much quicker than he. She didn't like the idea of being at this slaver's mercy.
As she flung herself over another brutal lash, inspiration struck. She sneered. "As if your tiny member could even begin to please any female."
The krogan growled, deep and menacing. Yes, here is an avenue with potential, she thought.
"No more words, krogan? One would think that you'd have a lot more practice using that tongue than what must be a truly pathetic example of manhood." She filled her expression with pure contempt, glancing down at his codpiece. "I believe I'd need a nanoscope to even find it."
With a shout of rage, the krogan charged forward, no longer careful about her getting too close. Satisfaction curled around her thoughts, That's right. Get mad. Get stupid.
Krogan are ever touchy about comments regarding their sexual prowess. The genophage made them a race of impotent men and heart-sore women. Astraea felt a tiny shard of regret for using that tragedy to her advantage, but disregarded it as a meaty fist almost found its way around her neck.
Using a crosscut that slid over the whip handle, she felt her omniblade cut deep into the flesh of his wrist. A simple rotational twist and she severed all the tendons there. The whip fell to the deck, much to the delight of the slaves in their cages around her. A ragged cheer went up.
Clutching his wound, the krogan heaved himself after her, intent on bludgeoning her with his bulk. She, deft and quick, flanked him by ducking under his reaching arm. The point of her blade slid between his ribs with ease, sizzling as it cauterized everything upon its entry.
The krogan went rigid as she bisected one of his two heart clusters. The other knife she dug in on the other side to remind him she had a second blade. She leaned into his hump and spoke right into his aural canal, "Where has the turian gone, if not to the shuttles?"
He spat bloody phlegm on the deck. "Keigan? You're after that merc piece of shit?" Then, he started laughing.
"What, pray tell, is so amusing?"
The krogan heaved, trying to throw her off, but she clung tight to his side and thrust her knife just a little deeper. He let out a choked scream, then subsided, and grinned a pained grin. "That twist came yelling in here, after his property like some feral pyjak broodmother. I did your dirty work for you, justicar. Normally, I charge sixty percent, but let me go and we'll call it even."
He killed the turian? Anger stewed under her tight control. Back to square one, it seems.
Astraea looked around. At all the cages. All the sentient peoples of different races stolen from their lives who stared back at her with hope and horror. Many of whom exhibited scars from that same weapon that had been in this krogan's hand.
Bringing her disgusted regard back to the slaver, she adjusted the angle of her knife by a fraction and struck, deep and true. "No."
Dead before he even hit the ground, the krogan toppled forward, sliding off the points of her knives. Then, with a deep breath of resignation, she faced the soon to be former slaves. "I am looking for a turian. Once I confirm that he is alive or dead, I will free all of you."
Frightened, but clearly hopeful, they watched in silence as she picked her way past them. A small hand shot out of a cage and grasped her wrist. She looked down at it and followed it past a skinny wrist to a sallow, wrinkled human face. Rheumy, watery eyes looked up at her in terror.
"What is it?" For she felt somehow that this slave had something of import to impart.
The old man whispered, as though afraid to be overheard, "He went inside the arena. No one comes back from the arena alive. 'Cept Gargath." He pointed to the deceased krogan.
Astraea looked from face to face and found confirmation in each. She looked along the cages into the deep shadows at the far end with a touch of trepidation.
"Please. Don't go," begged the slave.
"I must. There is something that must be done." She patted the old man's hand and graced them all with a serene smile. "Do not worry. I will be back."
This placated them, though she felt the weight of their stares as she made her way to the darkened portion of the cargo hold. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom enough to make out a wall enclosing this section. Floor to ceiling, with a single opening in one side. She slipped through it and nearly stumbled over a body lying in her path.
Flaring her biotic aura to a dim glow, she reached down and flipped the corpse over. It was her turian. She resisted the faint urge to give him a kick. Instead, she rifled through his pockets. Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. It seemed this whole thing had been a waste.
Admonishing herself, she thought of the slaves. Freeing them was enough. Though it did set her back on her main objective.
A shuffling noise nearby drew her attention. She brightened her aura just in time to catch a small, blurry shape running at her in the dark with a shiny object in its hand. Astraea waved a complex mimetic at it and winced away from the sudden blossoming of a singularity so close it almost caught her as well.
And floating in the heart of it . . ., a human child. Surprise drew her brows up as she took in the long knife in the girl's hand, poised in a deadly upward stab. A stab that would have gutted Astraea had she been but a second slower in her defense.
A closer inspection brought some startling facts to light. The child was small and slight, but strong. Lean but developed muscles twitched under her fair skin, which scars crosshatched in pale relief. Her belly, arms and legs lay bare, but a rudimentary sort of armor protected ribcage and loins. Someone had cut her dark hair short and jagged. That, combined with the piles of bodies that lay along the arena walls, convinced Astraea that this girl, little more than a toddler, had been used as a gladiator.
Fury alighted in the justicar's guts. That someone could use a child so. She felt fiercely glad, then, that she'd killed them all.
The tiny fighter spun in the singularity until she came face to face with Astraea, only inverted. The keen assessment in the child's pale brown, almost honey-colored eyes struck the asari to the core. Then, Astraea watched, amazed, as this girl reached out with her off-hand as though to touch the justicar's face.
Her bruised and scarred face broke into a wondrous smile and she whispered, in broken common, "Pretty!"
It startled a chuff from her and she replied, "Drop the knife."
"Okay." The steel clanged on the decking. Astraea kicked it away. It clattered along the floor until it fetched up against the turian's corpse. The girl reached out to the dead man. "'Gan!"
Astraea saw the wild grief in the child's eyes and puzzled it over. Perhaps the dead turian was her master? She watched as tears started to flow away from the slave's eyes, pulled out into the singularity to drift around in the air. Strange how the girl wept in utter silence. Was that also something slaves learned?
The justicar considered her options. Would the slave strike out again at her if released? She did not want to kill the child, but would if she had to. "Keigan was your master?"
"Yes." Sniffles, loud and pitiable, filled the silence. "Gar-guff kilt'em. Cuz the bettin' weren't done."
"If I let you down, will you be calm?"
Astraea watched closely for deception as the girl replied, "Yes."
"You won't attack me again?"
"Won't." Nothing but sincerity there. The child affixed her with complete earnestness as she turned her head this way and that to keep the justicar in sight. The blue bubble hummed as the slave spun slowly within it.
Astraea dispelled the singularity. The girl fell on her rump, then sprang to her feet, running to the fallen Keigan. She patted the dead turian's face, sorrow explicit in every movement. "'Gan was a good'un. Never hit me much. Never let no one touch me. 'Only the 'renas,' he said. 'Make me coin in the pit and I'll take care of you. Like you was fambly.'"
The justicar didn't have the heart to point out Keigan's faults, how he'd taken a little girl and made her a killer. Not in the face of the girl's sadness. Hard reality could come later, gently broken to the child in kind words. Astraea looked around and found cameras mounted in every corner of the 'pit', as the slave had called it.
She turned back to the girl. "You said Gargath killed Keigan because the betting wasn't finished."
"Yeah, I fight, they watch on holo and bet, only it never were finished, 'cuz the alarums went off. I only came after you, 'cuz I thought you was the next . . .," the girl's face screwed up in concentration as she finished her sentence, "cha-llen-ger. Gotta be fast. Gotta be quick to win. I'm sorry, Pretty."
When the girl stood and came to her side, looking up at her in child-like wonder with those huge eyes of such unusual hue, Astraea felt a stirring in her chest. A feeling long forgotten. A memory of another child looking up at her so from her side. She couldn't look away from the girl as those painful remembrances threatened to swamp her.
Luckily, the slave broke the stare first and looked back at her dead 'benefactor'. "'Gan said a few more fights, then he and me'd go see the biggest ocean ever and meet the boss lady."
With shock and more eagerness than she'd normally allow, Astraea inquired, "The boss lady?"
"Yeah, name of Bossilba. She's a pretty blue lady. Like you. Got white marks on her cheeks," said the girl, demonstrating with two diagonal slashes under her eyes, "like this."
"Did Keigan ever tell you the name of the place he was going to meet Silva?" What an unexpected boon.
"Don' rightly know the name, but 'Gan showed me on the big glowing map."
Opportunity knocked but rarely and while her Code might in some ways object to using a child to gain information, it definitely agreed that Silva had to be found and punished for all the asari mercenary had done. In the distant past and here, in the present.
There was something about the slave girl that intrigued Astraea and she knew a reluctance to let her out of sight. "It will take some hours to arrange passage for the other freed slaves and to inform local authorities to what has transpired here. Then, I will leave. I give you a choice. You can go with the others and possibly locate your people; a home, a family. Or . . . you can help me find Silva."
"Ain't never had no 'people', not like them out there. I's slave-born." The girl's look turned canny, far beyond her scant few years, as she eyed Astraea. "You gonna kill Silba?"
"Yes." She could tell the child appreciated such bald honesty, though the girl's complete lack of reaction to the inherent violence of the statement disconcerted the asari. "Does that bother you?"
The slave shrugged. "D'pends, I guess. Some'uns deserve it."
"Indeed, some do."
Again, those honey brown eyes speared the justicar and saw far more truth than what a child her age ever should. "She musta done somethin' awful."
"Yes, she did."
The child considered her, then thrust her skinny arms up in the air. Automatically, Astraea bent to lift her onto a hip, marveling at how slight the weight in her arms seemed. And how familiar. Another piece of the past come to haunt her. "What's your name, child?"
"Slave-born ain't got no names. Garg-uff called me Rat sometimes. 'Gan told folk I was his little sister. He got a big ol' laugh out of that every time. Silly old 'Gan." Bright, unshed tears welled in the girl's eyes.
Astraea felt a spark of warmth then, for the dead turian. For perhaps in his rough way, he had cared for the savage fighter in his possession. Must have, for this girl to have loved him so. After all, he could have abandoned her to save his own life and didn't. "Then, Sister it is."