C H A P T E R 1
It felt good, being back in space, even though it was onboard a slow and rusty Volus merchant doing irregular runs between the local cluster, the Attican Traverse and Omega Station in the Terminus Systems. Unlike in the confines of his shabby appartment in Amazonas Metroplex he felt strangely at home in the cramped intestines of the 300-metre freighter. Sure, it was no Alliance military ship, and most of the crew and of the passengers were aliens - volus, two asari, salarians, a handful of turians and even an unwillingly funny elcor -, but they spoke his language, the language of people who had spent years and years out among the stars.
You saw more of them on the colonies and in the Traverse than on the inner worlds, or Earth. That was due to economic reasons, many claimed - why travel to the local cluster if you could just do the deal three and a half thousand light years away with the local human colony?
But that was only one reason. Humans had had a bad reputation from the moment they charged onto the galactic stage with the First Contact War, received by the other races as bullies and potential aggressors. And it had only gotten worse during the past two years.
Ever since the Citadel, the heart of galactic government and commerce, had been attacked and the old council killed, the blame had been squarely lay at the feet of humanity. Few openly went so far as to claim the humans had killed the council and sat out the heavy fighting that saw the destruction of the Destiny Ascension and the majority of the Citadel's fleet, but most observed in their way of thinking that humanity had been far too eager to fill the void of power by itself.
He was not really sure of what to make of it. For one, he had always been a supporter for Terra Firma, going so far as having helped with campaigns when he still been young and easily impressionable. Still, on the other hand, travelling between the stars for twenty-two years had rather unforgivingly opened his eyes to the fact that the universe was neither black nor white.
The universe as a whole had definitely become more dangerous to humans in the past eighteen months, but it was not easy to point fingers. For all the martial prowess, aggression and willingness attributed to them by the other three council member races, human forces were stretched dangerously thin. For every dreadnought the Navy fielded, the other three major powers combined fielded eight - and their responsibilities had not grown!
Laughter from a few metres away ripped him out of his thoughts as a small crowd, lead by a Volus in his kind's signature pressure suits forced itself through the narrow bulkhead of the ship's second mess hall. Amos could almost feel the temperature in the room dropping as the passengers began to avoid eye contact with the newcomers, doing their best to pretend they were not there at all. He would not have needed his long frontier service experience to realize that those newcomers meant trouble. That the ship's owner stood at the centre of it surprised him even less.
Ursa Gol ran a tight ship crewed by a mix of Turians, Batarians and even a handful of Salarians. He did business with the Alliance because it paid his bills, but a few exchanged sentences with the man had proven to Kenyon beyond a doubt that, like many other Volus, the stout merchant harboured a strong dislike against humans. Even confined to their pressure suits the ammonia-breathing species could be quite expressive.
"What a coincidence," Gol exclaimed to no one in particular, his short arms pressed against the sides of his black and grey and brown suit. "So many of my dear passengers in one place at a time! And that," his respirator cut the sentence in half, "when I had an announcement - to make."
The men who had arrayed themselves behind him in a half-circle snickered and jeered. There were six of them, including Ursa Gol.
"Running a ship is - expensive business," the four and a half feet tall creature continued. "This is a dangerous - journey, and you people could not imagine - the overhead. Well, Ursa Gol cares for you - but you will have to pay - a, let's call it 'service and safety' - fee."
The sailors accompanying him burst into raucous laughter.
Amos watched them from the corner of his eyes while drinking slow, concentrated sips of his coffee, his other hand working the notepad he had brought from his cabin. It showed the ship's course and its momentary position. They had left Alliance space about a standard hour ago; they were now in a region of space where everybody made their own laws and rules. Ursa Gol had just made his.
"This is not what we agreed on!" a Salarian in used clothes and a pale purple skin tone complained angrily. "I paid my fare, I-"
One of the Batarians accompanying Gol casually stepped forward and sucker-punched him in the stomach, sending him back to his seat where he collapsed with a pain-filled moan. A tall Turian sporting red tattoos cracked his knuckles, the gesture dousing whatever flames of resistance might have existed among the passengers. Amos refilled his cup and kept his eyes on the pad in his hands. With the two Asari probably resting in their cabin the Volus had proven a good sense of timing for his little extortion racket. Doubtless he had weighed the chances of his success against two natural biotics and come to the most sensible conclusion: staying the hell away from them.
Now, he felt safe. That had been his first mistake. People, regardless of whether they were human, Salarian, Volus or any other species, became careless when they thought they held the upper hand. Careless, sloppy. The second mistake had been clustering together just the way they did. Yes, it raised the Volus' sense of importance, and yes, so much muscle on the spot was intimidating - if one was easily intimidated.
The other passengers - there were twenty-five aboard, eleven of them here in the mess - had the good sense to pay. Gol was quite generous in that he only took about a couple hundred credits from each of them, having his men go for rings and jewellery if the sum he extorted appeared too small to him. Amos sat in the back corner of the mess hall, having ample time to watch it all with a sense of cold detachment. The elcor sat the closest to him.
"[Meek and embarrassed] Here you are. Will that be all?" he said as he handed his chit over to the Salarian 'collecting' Gol's extra fee. The alien stepped closer to him with a sneer and a sparkle in his big, black eyes.
Salarian. Big, black eyes. Going with the coffee came as the most logical conclusion.
The steaming hot fluid hit the thug right in the face, and the sneer switched into a twisted grimace, the Salarian dropping to the ground, clutching his eyes, howling with pain. Using the momentum of the same motion, Amos hurled the cup at the Batarian in the centre of the group, hitting him square in the chest. The alien seemed more startled than hurt, but it was just this one second Amos Kenyon needed. While the Batarian looked at him dumbfounded, forgetting he was the one with the shotgun in his hands, the hollow-cheeked man brought up his own pistol and pulled the trigger.
The first shot hit the Batarian right between his four eyes. Four more shots left the heavy pistol with a hiss, the integrated silencer deafening the muzzle blasts. It all happened in a split second, and when it was over the Volus stood alone, surrounded only by moaning or very silent figures on the metal ground of the mess hall.
"Everybody, leave," Kenyon commanded, watching Ursa Gol over the sights of his gun. A small red laser dot hovered right in the centre of the Volus' pressure suit. He was breathing fast, his respirator working in rapid gasps, and his short arms were shivering. Behind him, people were doing there best to get out of the room without stepping into the extending pools of blood clustered around Gol. Kenyon himself ignored the Salarian on the ground. The man's agonized cries had turned into a whimper, but even a casual glance would have shown Amos that he was no threat, not anymore. Ten feet from Gol, he stopped, coldly eyeing the carnage. He felt the adrenaline flow through his veins, his arm forming a straight, unwavering line. Damn it, he felt so alive!
"What do - you want Earth - clan?"
Kenyon's smile was that of a wolf eyeing a lamb.
"Let's do some business, Mr. Gol, shall we?"
The smell was horrible, a heavy, pestering sweetness mixed with sweat and excretions. It made his stomach heave. Lieutenant-Commander Kenyon pressed a heavy security gauntlet against his mouth, closing his eyes for a moment to get his thoughts straight again, get the images all around him into the back of his head. He could work this out later, he could do it.
"This is Kenyon. Securing second cargo deck," he reported back to the Utah through clenched teeth, motioning the squad of marines behind him to move on. The faces of the men and women were completely blank, and that alone mirrored more of what he saw than any sign of shock or revulsion. Blood flies were everywhere, thick, black things that lived off the sick and implanted their eggs into infected tissue. Glassy eyes looked up at him from wire-framed cages that were at best waist-high. Pleading eyes in the skulls of sentient beings too weak to even speak, their lips dry and cracked. There were children in there, too. Or people reduced so much to skeletons that they could pass off as children. He could not say for certain in the twilight of the cargo bay.
Amos Kenyon had seen a lot in his two decades of service with the Alliance. Over time, he had erected barriers around himself, emotional barriers helping him to deal with what he saw and did. And right now, he could feel the cracks in them widening.
"Damn it, Mayers, get those damn light on!"
His own voice sounded hoarse and distant. There were dozens of cages, and there were people in all of them. And they had no light. A voice in his mind whispered to him that no lights were probably for the best.
"Call in the medics," he continued giving orders, "and everybody put on your breather masks. This air is ripe with infection."
He stopped at the end of a long row of cages, shouldering his assault rifle. A part of him wanted nothing so much as to space every single crewmember of this floating death trap, another part just wanted to crawl into a corner and be left alone. And then he heard it. A soft, chewing sound, like someone was eating gummi bears. He looked down.
Amos Kenyon awoke, gasping for air, his heart racing frantically in his chest. He was bathed in cold sweat. It took him some moments to slow his breathing again, taking in deep, controlled breaths of the stale air of the cabin. Amos felt his heart beat slow down, beat by beat, staring at the blank, metal wall on the other side of his bunk. Even the dim lights in there seemed to strain his eyes, a dull, throbbing pain coming from insufficient sleep and four beer-fueled months creeping closer to the edge of suicide. But it was easier to face the pain than to face the images in his head he knew would come the very moment he closed his eyes.
The ship was slowing down. Having lived on spaceships for half his life, Amos had gotten a feel for such things; the way gravity seemed to momentarily shift for just the smallest part of a single percent despite the best inertial dampeners, they way the light of the stars shining in from the outside changed, how the volume of the soft hum of the engines lowered - how in a split second the whole atmosphere of a colossus of thousands upon thousands of tons of metal and composites seemed to change.
Amos shoved himself off the bunk. Standing on wobbly knees, he made his way to the small sink that provided a modicum of running water for the cabin. His own face stared back at him from a narrow mirror tucked over the sink. It was the face of a hollow-cheeked man with sun-tanned skin and short, deep black hair. Tired green eyes lay deep in his skull, high cheekbones and a square jaw giving it the look of something chiselled into stone. He would have considered himself somewhat attractive if he had not looked like death himself right now.
Amos took deep, controlled breaths. He looked a lot older, and a lot worse than his actual thirty-nine years. One look at his shivering hands convinced him that it was easier to bear some stubble than to accidentally cut his own throat with a razor. Unresolved issues, lack of sleep, the effects of mild detox and the excitement four and a half hours earlier took their toll. But it was still better than some day putting a gun to his own head in a garbage-filled rat hole in the Amazonas basin.
Asteroids appeared outside, far off in a safe shipping distance. The merchant did a wide starboard swing, then surged 'up' (even though, strictly speaking, there was neither up nor down in space), letting their destination come up in Amos' field of view. It looked like a giant mushroom cloud moulded into stone and steel.
The light from the stars outside faded as the freighter entered one of the massive hangar bays, and soon thereafter magnetic clamps held the ship in a firm grip. It was time to go. He disconnected the nasty surprise he had installed on his cabin's bulkhead - a makeshift anti-intrusion insurance policy featuring lethal electric currents - and made for the exit. Ursa Gol stood near the open bulkhead with two more crewmembers and watched as his passengers, one after another, left his ship. The Volus visibly stiffened when Kenyon wordlessly stepped through the metal frame and onto the station.
A long, wide corridor made from metal and inch-thick armor-glass lead from the long docking pylon deeper into the huge structure. On one side, grey rock and cables filled the empty spaces behind the glass. The other side presented a view into a massive, twilight-filled and bay-like open space from which tunnels, most of them hundreds of metres wide, lead 'outside' with no kinetic barrier fields between them. Only the metal and the glass stood between him and the vacuum in which dozens, if not hundreds of ships of all trades and sizes lay docked. For all he could make out from his position, some of them even looked like former cruise liners.
No starship captain with even half his brains still functioning would steer a major cruise liner through the Terminus Systems, but there were some smaller companies who had specialized in providing exactly this kind of service for that bracket of customers which had the money as well as the guts to bear such a voyage. Fast ships half the size of the Volus' freighter, armed well enough to fight off most pirates and equipped with luxurious suites and all the necessary amenities for a hundred and fifty paying passengers or more. Amos Kenyon had briefly played with the thought of applying for a job with one of those companies. It had been one of the few things he had really taken into closer consideration.
People said Omega was like the dark, twisted twin of the Citadel, and they were certainly right. There were the same species - a lot more Krogan especially, and fewer humans - and just as the Citadel was the centre of the civilized galactic community Omega was the centre of the, well, less civilized galactic community. There were even the same power-fights and the same back-stabbing, even though the back-stabbing part was, for the most part, a lot more literal here. Everybody who could afford to do so either armed themselves or paid one or the other gang or merc group to 'keep the peace'. The silenced pistol tucked behind his back between the belt, another automatic pistol in a plainly visible leg holster and an anthracite armour vest under his lather jacket the dark-haired, hawk-eyed man certainly had his reasons to hope to discourage Omega's less prolific scum from doing anything too stupid.
After the rhythmic monotony of the trip the noise of Omega was deafening. The few wide open promenades connecting the larger subsections of each of the multitude of levels of the station were crammed with people hastening from one place to another, with peddlers and wandering merchants. Above them, advertisement banners for corporations and services offered on the station flicked, a thousand slogans in all directions and all language.
He saw people lead with chains around their necks - Batarian, Salarian, Turian, even a few bleak human faces - and had to force himself to maintain a blank, disinterested face so confronted with slavery. Nobody else here seemed to notice or even care. Omega was in the Terminus Systems. As long as it was profitable and did not endanger the station itself, it was allowed.
Kenyon had never been to Omega before - fat chance of that as a serving Alliance officer - but the people who had chosen him for the job had briefed him well enough. Making his way through the crowds he found himself in front of the Afterlife half an hour station time later. The club was the unofficial centre of the station, the place in whose backrooms all the important deals supposedly were made. It was always open, and there were always people lining up outside to get inside, to where the drinks, the music and the good deals were. It was amusing to see that they had an Elcor bouncer, though in a way it was actually a quite clever arrangement. After all, there was hardly a species as unreadable as the elephantine Elcor.
Patience was not exactly one of his greatest qualities, but he waited in line until it was his turn. Surprisingly, the bouncer did not check him for weapons, but solely scanned his omni-tool. Kenyon asked him why he did that.
"[Bored and repetitive] To see if you can actually pay for the services, human," the Elcor answered and motioned him to move.
He passed a second line of bouncers - this time Batarians with milspec firearms - before he entered the Afterlife itself and dove into an atmosphere of fluorescent, reddish light, hammering bass drums, chatter and the sight of scantily clad Asari dancers gyrating around poles on a gangway circling a massive, room-filling tube-screen. A smile crossed his face as he took it all in in one stride. He liked the place. It reminded him of shore leave during tours of duty.
Making his way along the edges of the dancefloor he took a seat at one of the club's bars and ordered a drink. The barkeeper was a Turian, a fact that created a small sting in his stomach that forced him to remind himself that not every Turian was like the one who, ultimately, had gotten him into all this. Feeling a pang of remorse, he tipped the barkeeper more than well enough, causing the man to lean forward.
"It's strong stuff, but I know what I can serve humans," he yelled. "The Batarian on the lower floor... not so much," he nodded and was off to another customer.
Kenyon picked the glass up and took a sip and shivered. The blue drink tasted peppermint-ish and was strong enough to make him cough. It did not take much of a genius to figure out that half a dozen of those and he would leave the club on all fours. Still, it tasted good enough, and after all, he had been told to meet his contact here, at the 'Afterlife'. The light caught some movement behind him in the glass held in his fingers. Amos frowned, but before he could react any further his head was mauled against the bar with force. Stars danced in front of his eyes and he felt his knees giving up from under him as he slid from the barstool. Still, he managed to stop his fall and throw himself around, if only just in time to catch a punch against the chest that pushed the air our of his lungs but at the same time chased the haze in front of his eyes away in a wave of clear-cutting pain.
"Ursa Gol sends his best regards," a Batarian male snarled as another punch hit Kenyon, but this time he deflected the worst of it. That only made his attackers mad. There were two of them, the Batarian and a Turian he remembered back from the ship. Amos saw a blade flash, knew this was more than just a beat-up, and old reflexes kicked into action as he evaded the cut. The Turian cheered his friend on, holding a crowbar in one hand and a bottle in the other.
Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he prepared his next move. His body moved instinctively, but his mind worked with cold, analytic clarity, assessing the threat the two posed, plotting his next moves. That ability to keep a level mind under stress would have sometime earned him a position as flag officer under better circumstances.
The knife raced forward another time, and Amos let it pass through, diving aside in the last moment. He grabbed the outstretched arm to keep the knife away from his body and hammered his foot against the Batarian's knee. There was a gut-wrenching, crashing sound, and the attacker's snarl changed into a howl of pain as he staggered backwards. Amos also noted with quite some satisfaction that his little stunt had swiped the smug grin off the Turian's face. Still, the Batarian was as determined as he was frothing-at-the-mouth angry now. The two attackers briefly looked at each other, each waiting for the other to make the next step against Kenyon.
It was all the time he needed. His hand dove for the gun at his side and found it. He still felt some numbed pain, but mostly he felt alive.
Screw them, he thought. Only a Batarian could be stupid enough to bring a knife to a gun fight.
The four-eyed alien only looked at him dumbfounded as the pistol rose in Amos' hand, but the Turian was quick. The crowbar came smashing down, and only through instinct did he avoid shattering his arm's bones as he turned his shoulder into the metal tool's path. It hurt like hell, but he felt no bones shatter. What he did hear was the shot he fired. It took the Batarian squarely in the chest. He slumped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, but so did Amos himself when the next swing of the Turian's crowbar hit him. He lost the grip on his pistol as the pain from the first hit finally cut through the adrenaline.
"I'm going to turn your face into varren food, human!" he growled.
He saw two boots step behind the Turian, and as if he weighed virtually nothing the grey-skinned alien was lifted from the ground. One hand tightly grasping his sleeve, the other pulling him up on his own belt, a human who would have looked compact with his wide shoulders if he had not easily been almost seven foot tall simply turned the surprised Turian away from Kenyon as if he was moving a piece of furniture. With a yell of rage he finally started to slash around with the broken bottle still held firmly in his right hand, but the movements were unfocussed, and the bystanders who so far had only watched the fight the same way someone consumed a movie began to laugh and cheer. Not because the turian was such a fearsome fighter, but because the human pretty much ignored him. The only notion that he seemed to care at all was the concentrated look on his face as he lifted the hardly lightweight alien over his head, took a deep breath and threw him across the 'Afterlife's' dance floor like a rag doll. The Turian's screams of rage and anger briefly turned into a panicked yelp before the impact against the solid wall on the other side pushed the air from his lungs and left him there, unconscious.
Without wasting another look on him, the huge man leaned down and offered Amos a hand. He took it gladly and winced when his shoulder touched the bar. From a secure lounge above the dance floor an Ssari watched him with an amused look to her face before she turned around, vanishing back into her own private floor. Aria T'Loak. She was the true power on Omega, Kenyon knew, the spider in the web, a powerful Asari matriarch.
But right now he was concerned with other people than her. He used the brief moment to examine the man who had helped him. Without a haze clouding his eyes he was seemed even more compact to him. Tall, wide shoulders, thick, muscled arms and a barrelled chest contrasted strangely with a rather friendly and almost boyish face. He had a lighter skin-tone than Kenyon and short, brown hair, but was no less thoroughly armed, even though Kenyon had no idea what for. What he had seen the guy could probably wrestle a Krogan and win.
"So, to what do I owe the honour of my rather timely rescue?" he asked.
"Well, I saw a fellow human in trouble and remembered I hadn't lifted any weights today so I thought, why the hell not?" he flashed a white-toothed grin. "Magnus Johanson's the name," he extended his hand. It was more like a bear's paw, and when Kenyon grabbed it he had to concentrate hard not to wince.
"Amos Kenyon," he responded and sat down back at the bar. The other man - Johanson - followed his example. At first, Kenyon had thought he'd get a new, elaborate fake identity when he agreed to take the job, but the people back at 'Jump Zero' had made it clear that this was no spy movie but the real life. And real life and facial recognition software made it nigh impossible to do what he had expected without extensive surgery. After all, he was on public records for decades by now!
"So, what are you doing here, at this god forsaken hole?"
"They make some pretty good honey on Terra Nova this time of the year," Johanson remarked casually, glancing at him from the corner of his eye.
"Yeah, but only if the yuka flowers get enough sun for two weeks," Kenyon responded wryly, then shook his head. Here they were, most likely two experienced soldiers with special training from the looks of it, and that was the best code phrase some idiot back on Jump Zero could come up with? "What a load of bullshit," he muttered to himself.
"Hey, don't blame me," the other 'Corsair' chuckled, having ostensibly heard him through the perpetual noise and guessed his facial expression correctly. "Wasn't my idea. But now to the really important questions," he grinned widely. "What do you drink?"