Chapter 2: Competition and Compromise
Bright green liquid sloshed out of Drack's tankard as he plopped it on the table with a grin. "Bartender's a hoot," he chuckled as he sat. "I like him, even if he won't tell me what's in the drinks." He eyed his own curiously. "What's a 'leprechaun,' anyway?"
Ryder giggled. "A bit of old Earth folklore; Irish, to be specific. It's a sort of… mischievous spirit."
"Good enough name for a strong drink," Drack grunted. "So what makes this one 'lucky'?"
"I'm not sure," Ryder replied with a shrug. "I mean, I tried one and woke up a half hour later on the stage over there, so I guess you're lucky if you're still standing when you finish it?"
Roaring with laughter, Drack clapped her on the back, hard enough to cause her to nearly face-plant on the table. "You're cute, Ryder. I think I'll keep you around."
"Uh-oh, Jaal," Peebee teased with a wink. "Looks like you've got some competition!"
Jaal laughed heartily with everyone else—but wrapped a protective arm around Ryder's waist anyway, pulling her close. She leaned her head against his broad shoulder, relaxing into the warmth and solidity of him as everyone's attention turned back to Drack.
"All right, where was I?
"Oh, yeah. So I hightailed it away from Kahje; left the cluster altogether and started looking for work somewhere else. Anywhere else. Took some odd jobs for merc gangs, shook down some pirates here and there, but I was living pretty much hand-to-mouth for a while.
"Then eventually I get hired by this young turian salvager, name of Ilaria Rixus. She needs a bodyguard while she sells off her haul on Omega—seems there's this elcor, Harrot, who's set up shop there and is willing to do anything it takes to keep the market on lockdown, up to and including sending armed mercenaries after the competition. Ilaria's no slouch with a gun herself, but Harrot's well-established. Got the resources to make her life pretty miserable… and short.
"I figure it's easy money, so I take the job. First impression, I like her. And when Harrot gets wind of what she's doing, he sends batarian mercs after her, heh-heh-heh. I beat 'em up and send 'em back so the elcor knows what he's up against. It's fun; you know me.
"Trouble with elcor, though, is they're stubborn and don't know when to quit. Harrot would send more and more of his men after us every couple of days. I'd fend them off every time. At first, Ilaria didn't want me to kill them if I didn't have to—she was only staying long enough to sell what she had, and didn't think it was worth killing for. Kind of innocence Omega burns out of you in a hurry.
"But one day, she sees his guys come marching up to her stand, again, and just gives this tired sigh. She opens up a case marked 'Not for Sale' and pulls out a shiny new Phaeston assault rifle, latest thing out of Cipritine Armory. Dunno how she got hold of one of those, but it sure was a beauty.
"'Fuck this,' she says. 'Let's take 'em out, Drack.'
"Between the two of us, it was a slaughter.
"Ilaria packed up and left after that. But not before she paid me every credit she'd promised, plus five percent of her profits. Ah, she was a good kid. I was amazed at how generous she was—until I did the math. She could afford to be generous; she'd made a killing.
"Heh. A killing.
"Anyway, that got me thinking: if there was really that much profit in salvage, maybe I should get in on it, too. Would you believe, in fourteen hundred years I'd never tried salvaging? So Ilaria told me about a recently abandoned outpost in Anhur that used to belong to a gang of batarian slavers.
"Yep, you guessed it, Kallo—same ones.
"Only reason she hadn't raided it herself, she said, was because the planet was on the verge of civil war over slavery, and she didn't want to get caught in a Na'hesit base when all hell inevitably broke loose. 'But I get the feeling youmight actually enjoy that,' she says with a wink. Heh-heh-heh. She knew me well.
"So I rented a small cargo shuttle with those extra credits and headed for the Eagle Nebula. I wasn't gonna take Ilaria's word entirely on faith, of course, but when I scanned the planet from orbit, I found the base exactly where she said it would be, hidden deep in a thick rainforest. It certainly seemed abandoned, but I went in armed, anyway. You know how scavengers can be, and there were Eclipse mercs running around the system, too. No telling what I might come up against down there. Heh-heh, I couldn't wait.
"Place is dead quiet when I get down there, though. Not a soul in the complex, so far as I can tell, but plenty of valuable salvage. It had obviously been evacuated in a hurry, and the ventilation filters had either clogged up or shut down, so there was a lot of yellow-green pollen all over everything—it was springtime in that part of the planet, and all the trees were in bloom. It was in the air, too, so thick it looked like smoke.
"I explore deeper into the base, tagging what I think I can sell as I go, and soon I notice a few places here and there where the pollen was recently disturbed. And I mean really recently—there were clean spots where someone had brushed it away, maybe to inspect a box or read a datapad. But with so much of it in the air, it had to have been minutes ago, or less.
"Which meant that someone was still there.
"I look down, and sure enough, there's footprints. But when I try to follow them, they just stop, as if whoever left them behind just vanished, like a ghost or something. Before I can figure that one out, though, I hear boots hit the ground behind me! I grab my shotgun and spin around, only to find the barrel of a pistol about a centimeter from my head.
"You'd've liked the guy's entrance, Liam. It was like a scene out of a jump-scare horror vid—except those make me laugh, and I wasn't laughing. His landing had kicked up a big cloud of pollen, so at first all I could see was the gun and a scaly green hand holding it, finger on the trigger. Then the air clears, and there's this drell there, just staring at me.
"Well, when I say 'just staring,' I mean he's not moving, might as well be a statue. But no statue has a look on its face like this guy did.
"Now, I've seen a lot of shit in fourteen centuries. And when you've seen as much death and loss and pain as I have, you get kind of numb to it. Doesn't mean you don't care exactly, just that it doesn't get to you like it used to. Nothing really scares me much anymore. So when I tell you the expression on that drell's face still crops up in my nightmares sometimes, I want you all to know exactly what that means.
"I don't usually get poetic like this, but there was murder in his eyes, no other way to put it. A kind of half-crazed desperation that didn't seem to care if I took him down with me. The rest of his face was just… cold. Grim, like… like death itself. The face of a man with nothing left to lose. Seen that before. But those eyes of his—I could live another fourteen hundred years and never forget those eyes. Especially knowing what I know now, knowing what I…
"Well, I'll get to that in a minute.
"So anyway, there we are, just staring at each other. I feel like I'm cookin' a grenade, but I'm too damn surprised to move. Like I said yesterday, I know an assassin when I see one, but if he's actually been gunnin' for me, I'm surprised I'm even seeing him at all. I wonder for a second if maybe he's new to the job, but that doesn't sit right. This guy was silent as a ghost until he dropped out of the ceiling—no rookie is that stealthy. Or that slick. That, and… he just doesn't carry himself like a rookie.
"Nah, this is a pro. So that's gotta mean I'm not his target; I just got in the way. If that's the case, I'm glad he's a pro, 'cause a rookie would've just shot me anway. Still doesn't mean he won't, though—whatever principles are holding him back seem dangerously close to breaking down.
"I keep my gun pointed at his gut, just in case, but I try to talk him down. 'I'm not the one you're after, assassin,' I say carefully. I'm layin' all my cards on the table here, tellin' him everything I know. I don't wanna give him any reason to be suspicious of me. 'Just a salvager lookin' for some creds.'
"He blinks both sets of eyelids, but otherwise doesn't budge. He doesn't speak, either, for a long moment, and I start to wonder if his translator is working. Then he says, so quiet I can hardly hear him, 'What do you know of my targets?' I can tell he's fighting to keep his voice calm.
"I just shrug. 'I know how guys like you operate. If I was your mark, I'd be dead.'
"But he still doesn't lower his gun. He narrows his eyes. 'How did you find this place?'
"'Like I said, lookin' for salvage,' I tell him. 'Got pointed this way by a turian girl I—' I stop as a realization hits me, and I get a sinking feeling. 'Aw, shit. Did Harrot send you?'
"'Harrot?' The drell blinks at me again, then finally relaxes. 'Who… no. I have no contract for your turian friend.' He holsters his pistol and introduces himself, using that fake name I can't remember.
"Just so he knows where we stand, I shrug and say, 'I'd hardly call crawling around in the ceiling "hiding in plain sight," but whatever, nice alias. I'm Drack, Clan Nakmor. And that's my real name.'
"The startled look on his face is priceless, heh-heh-heh. I can see him reevaluating me, realizing I'm smarter than he thought, trying to decide if I'm friend or foe.
"So I evaluate him right back. I peg his age at maybe thirtyish, if that. He's a little guy, wiry and not particularly tall, even for a drell. But it hadn't escaped me when he had his gun in my face that he'd charged biotic powers in his off hand. He had a weird-lookin' sniper rifle strapped to his back, too—I think it was an early prototype of the Incisor?—and I didn't doubt for moment that he was an expert in its use. Just as deadly at long range as he was at point-blank. There was something about this kid that was almost as intimidating as my old battlemaster was when I was young.
"The silence is starting to get uncomfortable, so I try to lighten things up a little. 'Ah, it's okay, I don't need to know your name,' I say. 'But who are you looking for, anyway? Ain't nobody else here but me.'
"That murderous look starts to come back to his eyes. This kid's on a mission, and he ain't messin' around. 'I'm looking for the batarian slavers that used to operate out of this base.'
"'"Used to" is the operative word, I think,' I tell him. 'Seems someone took 'em all out for you.'
"'Not all of them,' he says quietly.
"Me being the smartass I am, I make a big show of looking around the empty room. 'Looks like all of 'em to me.'
"But he just fixes me with this cold stare, waits a beat, and says, 'My contract was only for their leadership.'
"'…oh,' is all I can say.
"Then it hits me. 'Oh, shit.' This is the assassin I helped the Shadow Broker identify! What're the odds, huh?
"Heh. I remember thinking something like, At least I didn't get him killed. If only it were that simple.
"Anyway, I swallow hard as his stare turns inquisitive. So much for cards on the table. I've already let too much slip—I sure as hell don't want him knowing what I've done. 'You, h, have a contract on the rest of 'em now?' I ask quickly. I just pray it doesn't come out as hopeful as it sounds to me.
"And he says, 'No.'
"That's it. Just, 'no.' Then again, I'm surprised he's told me this much—and truth be told, I think he is, too. 'Okay then,' I say. 'I'll just grab some of this junk and be on my way. Good luck with… whatever you're doing.'
"And even though every instinct I have is screaming at me not to, I turn my back on him. I want to show him I'm not afraid of him—even if that's not entirely true. It seems like the kind of gesture he'd at least understand, if not respect. Besides, at this point I just need to get gone before he asks too many more questions.
"Just when I think I'm in the clear, though, he stops me. 'Wait,' he commands, and I turn around. 'What do you know?'
"'I'm well over a thousand years old, kid,' I retort. 'I know lots of things.'
"He narrows those big eyes of his and glares at me. 'About the slavers, krogan.' His voice is cold.
"Come to think of it, I use that word a lot, describing him. At least at that first meeting.
"Anyway, even though by now I'm getting really sick of folks who won't even use my name demanding information from me, I decide maybe it's best to give him some of the truth after all. 'I worked for the hanar alongside some Compact drell not long ago,' I tell him. 'Heard these bastards were attacking hanar colonies. I offered to take care of 'em, but I was told it was "being handled."' I shrug as nonchalantly as I can. 'By you, I guess?'
"He nods, looking around. 'And yet you came here anyway, presumably to salvage their… junk.' Presumably. I didn't like that. But when he turns back to me, he looks more thoughtful than suspicious. 'A curious coincidence. But perhaps it is the will of Amonkira that we should encounter one another here.'
"That's one of the Old Gods of the drell. I think he was testing me, testing my story, to see if I'd really spent much time among his people. 'You mean the Lord of Hunters thinks we should help each other out?' I shoot back.
"His eyebrow ridge arches up, and I could swear he almost smiles. 'Indeed,' he says. 'I could use some assistance, and you need the credits. Do we have a deal?'
"I don't know what was thinking. Just a minute ago, all I wanted was to get as far away from this guy as possible. But maybe it was the creds, maybe it was the thought of a little adventure, or maybe I was just curious, too. 'What the hell?' I say. 'Sounds like fun.'"
