After was felt like a few minutes but what had actually been several hours, Magnus was rudely awaken by a loud, persistent banging on the door to his room. With much reluctance and without enough energy to fully buckle his armour on, he rolled out of bed. He took a quick glance around to reorient his groggy senses before approaching the disturbance of what had been a brief and pleasant nap. If he needed a weapon, he knew it would be in close reach on the night stand on top of his other gear.
"What do you want?" he demanded before opening the door. It wasn't the most polite way to greet someone but neither was it polite to wake someone up who was trying to sleep in what had turned out to be rough neighbourhood full of shouting and fighting in the middle of the night.
"Delivery for you," came a scratchy voice from the other side. "Open door. We give you message. No questions, ok?"
"A delivery from who?" Magnus had never given his whereabouts to anyone and the only person who knew he would might be coming to Omega was his brother. Cautious optimism began to fill his mind, speeding up the waking up process. It could be the second message from Andronicus.
"Blue Suns, heard of them? Mercenary gang, pay really well. Hey, we said no questions!" the stranger said again but Magnus was certain he could only hear one person talking.
"What do they want with me and are you sure you're at the right place?"
"Yes! Know where everybody is. Not paid to chat. Take message then we leave."
Still rather confused by the manner in which the stranger spoke, Magnus decided to open the door and was minorly surprised by the sight of a creature he had only read about on rare occassion. A vorcha wearing nothing but a loincloth and a satchel full of "deliveries" held out a small OSD. Now he had seen everything the galaxy had to offer. The small object was forced into his hands before he could make any further inquiries and the busy vorcha left without another word.
The device contained a short text-message and a small map:
"We have your brother. Come to our warehouse by the shuttleport to discuss payment options for his release. Looking forward to doing business with you.
- The Blue Suns Mercenary Corp"
Rather underwhelmed with the amount of details, Magnus searched the file stucture on the OSD multiple times for any hidden data but there was nothing else on it. He was grateful for the map and the polite tone but couldn't figure out what they meant by releasing his brother. Was he some sort of prisoner? Suddenly he felt slightly sick about the prospect of having to break his brother out of a privately own jail. He had expected that some credits would probably be needed to bail him out of whatever trouble he had wound up in this time but nothing had indicated that the situation might be worse than a few unpaid debts. That wasn't the sort of crime people got locked up for on a world without any judicial system. Letting out a big sigh and rubbing his chin slightly, Magnus came to the conclusion that he would have to see what the Blue Suns were going on about. It was the only information he had so far to follow up on.
The warehouse was a lot larger than he been expecting and he was doubly surprised by the efficiency the mercs ran it with. Who knew that a private army could operate with such order and preciision. He showed his OSD to a human working the front desk of what appeared to be a fully functionable office. It was the most civilised scene he had seen since arriving on the lawless station. The female (or at least he thought it was, she did have those strange bumps that the asari all had) pointed him in the direction of a lift that would take him to the section of storage designed for moving shipments out of the warehouse and onto space bound vessels parked nearby. He wasn't sure why that's where he was being told to go but didn't question it.
When he got there, he realised it wasn't just merchandise and other physical goods that were stored there. There was a a short hallway with a pair of imposing batarians in full, heavy armour guarding a reinforced door at the far end ready to greet him. They both had their arms crossed and looked absolutely bored, their sidearms were holstered in plain sight
"You Thorn?" one asked casually without moving.
"Yes?"
"Good, boss-man says you can talk to the prisoner before deciding if you want to pay for release. Must be in a good mood today, usually just asks for the money first."
Well, that answers that question, Magnus thought to himself. Things were starting to look fairly grim. He couldn't wait to see what his brother had to say about it all. The batarian guard ushered him into the next room which lead to a small area full of small holding cells, all of which were empty save for one.
"Hey it's your lucky day, someone's here to see you," the guard greeted the lone prisoner, still holding the door to the main room open for Magnus but not moving towards the cell.
"Not falling for that again," a familiar voice responded dismissively. The grey-skinned turian looked over his shoulder and was about to say something else before the sight of Magnus left him speechless.
"Right, well, you look like you can take care of yourself if you have to," the batarian nodded at Magnus with approval. "Don't take too long." He left the two brothers alone, to which Magnus was both thankful and somewhat annoyed by. It wasn't exactly the sort of reunion he would have preferred to have.
Andronicus broke the awkward silence first, "You're finally here! I didn't think you'd come."
"Yeah.." Magnus rubbed his mandibles slowly as he tried to think of what else to say. Of course he had come for his brother, why wouldn't he have? But the circumstances were too unsettling for him to dismiss and he had to know more. "Ando, what in the name of spirits are you doing here?"
"It's a long story.."
"Last time I heard from you, your unit was working on a new initiative in the Attican Traverse to protect colonists from pirates. It's been months since you checked in after that assignment, we thought something might have happened to you."
"Yeah, well, lots of stuff happened. Maybe we could talk about it later after you get me out of here? Your timing couldn't be better, another day and they would have shipped me off to one of their prison ships. The Limbo or something. Would have cost a fortune to get me out of there."
"And how much is it going to cost to get you of where you are now? I don't make nearly as much as you do or as much as mom and dad. Why not call them for help?"
"Because..ok, let's just say I fell in with a bad crowd. Or rather, my whole unit did and I'm all that's left. I was just following orders you know, being a good little soldier. None of this was my idea. I didn't really want to ask you for help but had no where else to turn to."
"I can't do anything until I know what's really going on, and why are you sitting all the way back there in the shadows. Feeling embarrassed or ashamed, maybe both?" Magnus could feel anger rising in his voice, his brother had never been especially straightforward and he wasn't keen on dragging the truth out of him. He was going to get some answers and he was going to get them soon.
The younger turian picked himself up off the small cot of a bed and leaned in closer to the edge of the cell so that his dark green eyes were level with his brother's. Magnus let out an audible gasp at the sight of Andronicus' face, the familiar violet Invictus markings were faded and covered in scratch marks. His brother looked no different than the unruly barefaced turians that he had seen at the shelter the night before.
"What the hell happened to you?" was all Magnus could manage to say. "Did the mercs do that, does it hurt? Damn it, Ando, you've been in some stupid situations before but this is definitely the worst. No wonder you didn't want to bring mom and dad into this."
"What, oh yes, it was terrible-" Andronicus looked away and scratched the back of his neck as he always did when he was trying to come up with a good lie.
"Don't lie to me, damn it, don't I deserve better than that? That human downstairs told me you were a member of the mercs before they locked you up for thievery. Thievery! Why you'd join a group that's hardly better than batarian pirates is beyond me but that's not all you did, is it?
Spirits, what happened to your squad in the Traverse and why should I even begin to consider helping you if you're nothing to be upfront and honest?"
"I knew you'd be mad and you're not going to understand the why of it but alright, here's what happened:
My squad was protecting a vessel that had been boarded by batarian slavers. It was a mixture of aliens, a bunch civilians that couldn't protect themselves. Things were going alright for awhile but a second ship approached while we were fighting off the batarians. We assumed they were getting reinforcements, nothing we couldn't handle or so we thought. Turns out they weren't a normal group of civilians after all, some muck up with our intel probably, nothing new there. They were valuable not just to the slavers but to the Blue Suns who had just shown up. Something about escaped workers for one of their mines.
So we had both the batarians and the mercs to deal with but it quickly became obvious that the mercs wanted to help us and get their civvies back to work. Who were we to interfere? We were guards, ordered to defend not to make moral decisions. Besides, the mercs offered to compensate us for our efforts and it was a really good arrangement. We worked together to stop those blooodthirsty batarian scumbags and at the end of it we were offered to join ranks with the mercs on a more permanent basis.
They outnumbered us by a lot at that point since we had a few casualties from the fighting so our leader accepted the deal. And then we ended up here on Omega, one bad deal followed by another until eventually I wanted out. I wasn't going to end up dead because of a stupid decision my squad leader had made months ago. All I needed were enough credits to get out of here, then I could be free and self-sufficient, not owing anybody anything ever again. The short version is that I got caught stealing from the coffers. And here we are."
Magnus couldn't believe it and he noticed that his brother had avoided explaining what had happened to his unification markings. A simmering rage that had been stewing since he had entered the room finally boiled over, "I thought you were in trouble. I'm supposed to be on shore leave now but instead I'm at the ass end of the galaxy looking at someone who claims to be my brother throwing away a good life that he didn't have to work hard for at all."
He pointed at his own face, at the markings that they had once shared for emphasis and continued, "Spitting on the accomplishments of our ancestors, defiling our heritage, reveling in who knows what other blasphemous acts you've been getting into. You've only ever cared about yourself. How many times have I stuck my neck out for you before and how many times have you returned the favour?
Did you know that our mother finally achieved the rank of admiral last month, something she's been working towards her whole life? Do you even care? You go missing for months at a time on a regular basis and when you can't get what you want, you get others to do it for you.
Have you no honour, no sense of purpose? Does the concept of being part of a meritocracy mean absolutely nothing at all?"
Now Andronicus was equally angry and he lept to his feet, the brothers faces only seperated by a few centimetres and the bars of the cell.
"You have no right to lecture me, none at all. Nobody has the right to tell me what I can and can't do with my life. Shouldn't you of all people understand how unfair our lives are? You were taken from a loving family and forced to live in seclusion because of some mishap that rendered you biotic. What kind of society does that!
You're just a tool to be used and discarded by the will of the primarchs. Of course all you have are good things to say about them, they give you nice, simple orders and control your life for you. But I won't be used like that, I'm an individual. And so are you. So is every single turian out there. Those seperatists on Taetrus had the right of it though their methods of expressing it were extreme. Sometimes that's what it takes to change the world."
"You're beginning to speak treason, Andronicus," his older brother warned, purposely igoring the fond nickname that he had used for him all his life. Magnus took one final look at his brother then signalled to the batarian guards to open the door.
"You're going to leave me here? But I'm family. Isn't helping others important to you?"
"Don't you dare play the family card. If anyone finds out about what you've been up to, anyone important that is, then all three of our careers could be in jeopardy. Mom's admiralty, dad's chief engineering job, mine with the cabal..we can't risk you soiling the family name. We're still serving with dignity and distinction, all except for you. Perhaps you should think on that for awhile. A long while."
And with that he left the warehouse with his brother still inside it behind. He was going to need a stiff drink or two to mull things over.
