Chapter 20
Kevin didn't hang around with Ralik's lab for too long. There was a lot about it he didn't understand, much less be able to work with, so his forced interest on it waned rather quickly. After merely an hour, he was browsing the lab's systems entirely on bored momentum alone. In fact, he was quite glad to hear Arla's voice calling for him over the comms. He didn't think he could handle another fifteen minutes of that. Not at least until he better understood the technological and scientific jargon the system used ad nauseum. He wasn't inept – he could figure his way around as well as anyone else with fairly good problem solving and recognition skills – but this level of specialization was best left to trained personnel. He pushed himself away from the blocky metal mess and let himself roll most of the way across the bottom floor of engineering as he replied to Arla.
"Yeah, I'm all set. Already in engineering, in fact."
"Alright. Be down in a minute," she said.
Kevin used his foot to add to his dwindling momentum and he pushed himself over towards the workbench that they had used the last time she taught him tech. He wondered what she might teach him this time, since his knowledge of the scope of technology was limited. The implementation of tech was obvious wherever it could be found, but he wasn't just looking at it and appreciating the pretty blue lights anymore. He was intending to learn how it all worked behind the scenes, even if it took quite a while. Such knowledge could only serve to be beneficial to him, especially in his line of work. Many a time has he been crucially impeded by a locked door that he could probably have hacked with the right knowledge. Plenty of times he wished he could slice into a video monitoring network to more easily get a location of a target or number of bodyguards.
When he reached the workbench, he used the same foot he used to push himself around to buffer his rolling impact with the bench itself. In the end he had to abandon the chair anyway – even at its highest setting, it was still uncomfortably short next to the bench compared to the stools already there. With a kick, he sent the amusement device back towards its typical resting place near the lab. Just as he sat down on a bench to wait for Arla, he heard the large doors above him open and shut. The elevator near him lowered quickly and Arla stepped off.
"Well well, anxious to get started aren't you?" she asked.
"Don't get your suit in a twist. I was already down here talking with Ralik. You apparently didn't notice me enter while you were working with the engines."
"Anyways, where did we leave off? Recap what you learned last time." Arla stepped on over and took a seat on the stool next to him.
"Basic and some advanced branches of omni-tool functions. I don't think there was much else. A lot was introductory related."
"Okay then, we'll pick back up on differing methods for accessing more detailed methods, processes and engine class calls on your omni-tool. I'll explain what all that means as we go."
She spoke so fluently and easily about it, it was almost like she was starting out the lesson by making Kevin insecure in his lack of knowledge. Insecure or not, his right eyelid twitched with comical timing as she finished her statement. If he wasn't here to learn this, he might have already lost interest.
"You'll find this particularly applicable to life since this methodology is relatively consistent when accessing things on external devices, from things as simple as a door control panel to a VI core."
Kevin nodded and let her continue. Before he knew it, he was face first in an ocean of information regarding the inner workings of the omni-tool and the many branching ways to access its deepest seated features. Arla certainly did not follow the same pace that she employed the first time she taught him, and Kevin was struggling to keep up at first. Once he was able to get his mind into a state of absorption, not unlike when he was memorizing details of a marked target, he didn't have to have Arla pause so often. Good thing, too. It was starting to frustrate her. Kevin simply thought it amusing that she was now the one having her teaching methods questioned.
The lesson went on for somewhere between two and three hours. Periodically, they paused the lesson so that Kevin could regurgitate what he was learning. He knew Arla was using this stop and go method to both keep track of progress as well as see if the information she was unloading on him was sticking at all. She only had to go over one of the many topics twice, and that was because it dealt with minor differences when accessing different classes of electronics. Smaller details were always harder to commit to net memory, so it wasn't unusual for Kevin to ask her to repeat such minute details on occasion.
At the end of the lesson, Arla disappeared from the engineering room with the simple order for Kevin to stay put. When she returned, she carried with her a mechanical-looking orb not unlike the drones they had used against the Cerberus soldiers. This one, however, appeared to be deactivated. It didn't have the internal glow of a functioning one, any lights on it were unlit and it didn't hover on its own. She casually approached the workbench under Kevin's masked gaze and set the orb down on the countertop with a mechanical crack.
"This. . . This is an ultra-scaled down version of my combat drone," Arla stated. "I call her Tula'Rok vas Namor."
"Wait, let me get this straight," Kevin said, pivoting his body on the stool to face Arla. "You named your combat drone? And gave it a gender?"
"Don't insult her. She may be micro-factured, but she's my sidekick in a sense. Wouldn't you name a pet that followed you into battle?"
Kevin still found it a silly idea to name a mechanical construction, but in regards to the pet thing, he could see where she was coming from. It was probably the closest thing to pets quarians were allowed to have anywhere in the Migrant Fleet. "Do all quarians have personal drone-pets?"
"Not all, no. They're usually only favored by techs and a few marines here and there. You'll find, though, that all of us here except for Kar'Welkas has one. They do more than distract enemies and blow up, you know."
"Really? You all have one? Why haven't I seen them?"
"Counter to popular belief, they aren't entirely self-sufficient. They require a disposable remote source of power, and the materials for such things aren't easy to come by on the flotilla and aren't exactly cheap on the market, either. Plus, we don't just bring them out for any occasion. We use them when needed. Only Tosh has been able to engineer a drone that can last longer than a couple hours, and that's idling."
"Okay, so, why am I looking at a dead Tula'Rok again?" Kevin asked, failing to see where this was going.
"This is your exam. Using what I've taught you about software tech so far – and a little mechanical ingenuity – you are going to restore Tula'Rok back to functioning order."
Kevin stared blankly at the orb. It looked so pitiful. Broken. Not function-y. He had no idea where to begin. He obviously couldn't just omni-tool his way in if it was off. He wondered if such things actually had a power switch, and internally chuckled at the concept of a combat drone with an on/off switch. After his brief self-distraction, he slowly reached out and slid the hunk of carefully manufactured metal bits to the area on the bench directly in front of him. Time for his 'wing it' instincts to kick in.
Any moment now.
Despite the fact that the device was clearly deactivated, he tried using his omni-tool to access it anyways just to see if he could. No results.
"I don't suppose inducing a electrical overload will kick it on?" He asked, half-joking.
"I hope that wasn't a real question," Arla replied, leaning back on her stool and using an elbow on the bench to support her weight.
"Just checking. . ." Kevin said as he tossed the idea out like a discarded drawing done by a disgruntled artist having a bad day.
After about two or three minutes of brainstorming what the start of this really was, something in his head clicked. It wasn't on because it wasn't receiving any power. Perhaps it should be plugged in. It appalled him how something so simple could have eluded him for so long. If this involved killing someone, he'd probably have aced it by now. He picked the orb up and started fiddling with it, attempting to look for some sort of small cable that was hanging loose. Anything that represented a break somewhere in its electrical circuit. Once his eyes failed to reveal the answer to him, Kevin turned to his omni-tool. He remembered one of the different scanning functions he was able to access after Arla's last lesson, and he used it to scan the electronic makeup of the device. He saw his disconnected cable – which looked oddly like post-manufacturing modification – but it was somewhere near the middle. He had to tinker a bit.
As he started to work towards that goal, Arla tilted her head. "So what is being a professional murderer like?"
"I already told you. I'm anything but professional," Kevin said without looking up from his task or ceasing to tinker with it.
"Whatever, my question still stands."
"Remember when you shot that Cerberus soldier in the face?"
"Yes. All too well. It's like it's burned into my mind."
"Did you have any feelings just as you did it? Anger, maybe?"
Arla nodded slowly and looked off to the side. "Anger because they attacked us and tried to kill us when all we wanted was to go home. Fear because I had never shot anyone like that before. Duty because it had to be done for the safety of the Migrant Fleet."
"Alright. Replace anger and fear with "I need to eat tomorrow", and replace duty with "I always get the job done or else". Throw in a bit of creativity when dealing with death and you've go yourself a contract killer. At it's most basic level, anyways."
"You make it sound so exciting," Arla dryly stated with a heavy serving of sarcasm.
"That's only because I've been doing it for years," Kevin explained while edging closer to his objective. "Don't get me wrong, the job is definitely thrilling. Danger around every corner, espionage and subtlety on every other floor, free reign on playing the predator and a free pass to be schizophrenic. You don't have to be a true master at anything in particular except for being a master of deception. You need to deceive your target long enough to make the fatal blow. That could be something as simple as not ever being made aware to the target, or as complex as constructing an entire alter ego that befriends the target just to get in, make the kill and get out without staring down a platoon of guardsmen."
"And just like every other job, it's not all fantasy and storybook," Arla concluded.
"Naturally. For instance, I'm a constant target for big name gangs whose member's I've been hired to kill. I have to keep a low profile on the Citadel if I ever want to keep going back. Those are the easy parts, though."
"What are the hard parts, then?" Arla asked, fully attentive and genuinely curious.
"When you get hired to kill a friend or someone you are familiar with that isn't that bad of a person. When you go weeks without a paying contract because your target found out and fled early on. When anyone you talk to more than a few times gets a nasty message from the local dominating gang about your 'deeds' and willingly or unwillingly cuts contact."
Kevin paused.
". . . When a paying job turns out to be a trap. Things like that."
There was a brief moment of silence. Arla had no witty response this time. Even if she did, there wasn't much of a time window to get the words out. Kevin had achieved his goal with a quick 'Ah-ha!', as if the success came at the perfect time to distract him from something else.
The orb powered up, its lights flickered on, the inner glow became more and more radiant, and its mechanical bits whirred to life with the occasional shift of its scarce external shell. That was all it did, however. It did not hover in place as expected, and it certainly didn't respond to voice or omni-tool commands. It went from a dead drone to a mortally-wounded-and-unable-to-continue drone. Kevin already had an idea of what to do next, though. He couldn't give it orders via omni-tool, but he could certainly transfer data.
"I need a kernel for the drone's operating system. I don't have one."
"Well done," Arla half-praised. "I'm uploading a basic kernel to your omni-tool now, along with several other core pieces of software and potentially inefficient firmwares for it. I'll leave it to you to determine what should be uploaded and what shouldn't."
Kevin nodded and set to work right away getting the kernel uploaded and configured according to things he had learned to be acceptable defaults. During the configuration stage, Arla started up her inquisition again.
"So you just kill your target and leave?"
"It's never quite that simple," Kevin replied amidst continuous blips. "A lot of times the target is most vulnerable in areas that aren't private. Public view is an easy to use shield, and most targets are wholly unaware they are using it as such. You never want to assassinate someone in plain view unless either A, your employer requested it, or B, the circumstances will not allow for any other feasible option. You could argue that a ranged kill from a sniper rifle or some similar method is acceptable in public as long as the killer is out of sight, but that's not quite true. People in civilized locations will often react quickly to the death, and it isn't hard for authorities to quickly trace the source and become problematic."
"There's a lot more to the job than meets the eye, apparently," Arla stated with a nod.
"Most times the employer will ask for a specific result, such as how the body is resting after you leave, or how the visible damage is administered. Other than that, though, you're often given free reign to carry out the hit however you see fit. I like to be creative and unpredictable, it makes figuring out who made the hit a lot more difficult. Some prefer to leave 'signatures' or 'calling cards' as they used to be called. Something unique that they leave on the scene intended to be found by any investigating party. That boosts your reputation as a contract killer tenfold in speed, but it also makes you way too easy to trace and find."
Kevin finished his software changes to the drone, hesitated a moment and then had the device commit the changes to memory. Once that was complete, the drone started to hover and move about.
"Ha. Did it," Kevin said with suppressed excitement.
"So you did," Arla replied. Whether or not the inflections of being impressed were artificial or not remained to be seen.
Arla scanned the drone with her omni-tool and pondered the results. "Well, she's not quite configured completely and she's running slightly inefficient, but you pass. That wasn't bad for a first shot."
"That was an awfully convoluted exam to have pop into your head at the last moment," Kevin mentioned, trying to catch Arla off-guard.
"That's because it didn't," she admitted. "That's – more or less – one of the entry-level exams students studying electronic and mechanical technology in the Migrant Fleet take."
"How old are we talking?" Kevin asked.
"Early teens or so. They don't get their own limited omni-tools until they pass this exam."
"Oh, so I'm on par with a thirteen year-old. Great."
"You wanted to know," Arla shrugged before she stood off of the stool. "I guess we're done for now."
"Alright. Now I'll just go curl up in a corner somewhere while I try to absorb all that information."
"Oh come on. It was child's play. You're capable of more than that."
Kevin froze for a second before turning to look at Arla with his head cocked to the side. "That was a compliment! I heard it."
Arla didn't respond to that at all and instead moved on to something else. "Anyways, I suppose we move on to combat training now?"
"Sure, sure. Also, I'm saving that audio sample. Going to put it in my personal files with all my other especially important documents."
Kevin was sure that Arla executed a classic eye-roll before she started off towards the nearest elevator. He had fallen behind just enough so that when Arla sent the elevator upwards the moment she stepped on it, he was not aboard. Instead of running across engineering to grab the elevator he used to get down here hours ago, he waited for Arla to step off so he could call it back down. Up on the 'top' floor of engineering, he had to sprint after Arla to catch up with her as she left the room.
"Aren't you going to eat first?" Kevin wondered aloud, more interested in her reasoning than food.
"No. I'm quicker on my feet with half an empty stomach than with a full one"
Kevin nodded. A valid and logical choice. "Right. I'll just grab a couple of waters on my way for afterwards."
At the top of the stairs, Arla turned into the entertainment room while Kevin dashed off to the mess hall to grab some hydration for their session. It took him less than a minute to get the water from the refrigerator and get back to the entertainment room. Why the rush? Kevin hadn't even thought of it as rushing. He was simply. . . Excited. He hadn't thought of sparring as an enjoyable event by any means previously, but he was no longer sparring against random Alliance marines whose only goal was to win and look good. He was sparring with a squadmate who may or may not give two pyjack droppings about his well being. For some reason, that small detail changed his view on the combat lessons entirely. As long as she was in a relatively good mood, he could even consider it 'fun'.
By the time he entered, Arla was only just beginning to shed her armor. She had only removed a pauldron and was working on the second. Kevin tossed the water containers off to the side and moved to the center of the room, about three meters from where she was. He focused on removing his own armor, with his reason being the same as hers for doing so – this way he could use full range of movement with the whole body. It was necessary for the combat lessons, especially since he learned all his techniques armorless. The more her armor came off, the more he began to realize that he had unconsciously begun to view the exosuit as the natural appearance of a quarian and anything covering that – cloths, armor or trinkets – was analogous to clothing. It was almost as if the more armor she removed, the more her curves seemed to. . .
That's when something caught his eye. The twinkle of lights shining off of a shiny object. Her Xelvas'taersh icon. She had already chosen a way to wear it, something he still needed to do. She wore hers at the side of her left hip with the strap wrapped twice around. It crisscrossed over the front her lower abdomen and tightened snugly around her waist and hips so that the medallion dangled at her side as if it were attached directly to her suit. It worked for her because her pistol holster clip was on her right side since she was left-handed. And then she removed that too.
"Kevin, are you going to take your armor off or not? Trust me, you'll regret it if you don't," Arla said bluntly while carefully setting her medallion down in a piece of removed armor.
Kevin snapped to and started trying to remove his left pauldron. "Yeah, yeah. Gimme a sec." This quickly became a problem for him when he forgot where the clip release button was. He knew that there was one, he knew that Bela told him where it was, but he couldn't seem to remember just where it was and he certainly couldn't twist his helmeted head enough to get a good look at the pauldron to figure out where it was. He started to feel around for the release button.
"Hold on. Uh. Few more seconds."
Arla shook her head and started to approach him. She already knew what the issue was. "Quit fooling around, Folner." She pushed his hands away, reached under the lip of the pauldron and pressed a finger into a depression on the underside. The pauldron lifted and shifted freely before she pulled it up and off. Once off, she handed the piece of armor to Kevin and turned to walk back to where she was.
"Well, now I feel like a five year old," Kevin sulked. He replicated her moves for the remaining pauldron and set both on the floor off to the side. The rest followed shortly.
Now that they were ready to begin, Kevin and Arla simultaneously broke into various warm-up routines. That lasted only a few minutes, as both parties seemed eager to begin the training.
Kevin held up a finger. "Okay, first I'm going to-WHOA!" He was cut short by the immediate need to dodge an incoming quarian fist.
"Don't talk. Just fight," Arla said just before she went to follow up.
Kevin smiled. She was taught by example, and she knew that almost as much as he did. While her method of making such a fact known was crude, it made a valid point. She'd much rather learn with fewer words. Kevin focused on her next move and he made ready to counter.
Kevin had a simple plan for this lesson: reinforcement. He wasn't going for innovation or new content – there wasn't exactly as great a depth to the amount of information he could pass on in combat as she could with tech. His intent with the session was entirely to see if the lessons she had learned so hard last time stuck fast in her mind. Once that was on a level Kevin could consider 'settled', he would move on to more diverse forms of the same thing. It would also serve as a trust test. Kevin believed that Arla would no doubt quickly learn that nothing seriously new was being implemented or taught. If she failed to trust his new method of instruction, it would be obvious and the lesson would not complete until she did. And so began a very familiar back and forth with brief pauses for proper stance and approach explanations.
The lesson began as Kevin expected, with Arla automatically reverting to her predictable, memorized moves. Once they were considerably warmed up, however, she had started to switch to a less familiar set of attack and counter combinations. After an hour and a half of mildly frustrating stop and go bouts, Arla had begun to rely less on memory and more on what her immediate situation was. She even managed to knock Kevin off his feet more than once this time. That was reason enough for him to move on to his more strategically complex repertoire of moves to fully test her mettle in this sense. Her results were far from perfect, but they showed promise.
It was a learning process for Kevin as well. While he was testing her predictability at the start of the lesson, he was actually more focused on his own situation instead. He was busy finding out the physical limitations of the suit itself, how they affected his performance and how he would have to adapt. He found that the suit was a bit more flexible than he had given it credit for. His range of motion was largely unimpeded except in one crucial and expected area – the helmet. While it wasn't as bulky as his old hardsuit helmets, the tubes and wires that came out of the back of it and attached to the upper back of the environmental suit were too short in his opinion. It restricted his head's movement at times where he needed to turn it at a sharp angle or move it in an awkward way. The lack of peripheral vision only deepened the effect. He wondered how Arla overcame these problems, if she faced them at all.
In the grand scheme of things, however, this impairment turned out to be more minor than he would have thought. He actually had more trouble adjusting to the weight of his armored legs during combat than he did with the helmet issues. He did his absolute best to minimize any outward appearance of this time of learning, though. If a student, whatever the level of training, was not confident of their instructor's skill or knowledge in that field, then the lessons would ultimately fail. He had to prove to Arla that he could adjust to new parameters and still outperform a very experienced combatant. To that end, he was successful. To that end, he believed he was able to retain a certain level of respect.
Nearly four hours had passed since they warmed up before they called it a day. Muscles strained and panting heavily, the dueling duo finally trudged off to the side where their water rested. With their backs against the wall, they slid down to a sitting position. They both popped their straws at the same time and started chugging water. Once Kevin's initial burning thirst was sated, he took a moment to breathe before downing more. As he cooled down, he suddenly became aware of yet another wonder about the suit.
He was well beyond the point where he should be sweating. In fact, he should have had sweat pouring into his eyes right now, but he didn't. He could feel beads of sweat gathering on his face, but they never seemed to accumulate to the point of rolling down his skin. It was with this train of though that he realized that he could feel a slight breeze wafting across his face from his chin up. He didn't know if quarians could sweat or not, but this was an oddly effective way of keeping his visor from fogging up and his face from sabotaging itself with salty fluid excretions.
Eventually, the loud panting in his ears from both him and his squadmate receded, giving way to an empty silence. It reminded him of their first bout, how it ended in quite the opposite way – what with the noise and frustration and an onlooker. The second time was quite a stride from that, ending in pretty much the same way as now. The difference was that there was more conversation last time. Some of it was combat related, but one particular question stood out in his mind.
"So. Why are you, a human, so openly hospitable to us?" Arla asked.
"I already told your captain why," Kevin started, retracing his own very words in this memory. "I have a soft spot for quarians."
"You said that last time," Arla pointed out.
Kevin suddenly realized that she actually did ask that question again. She must have been thinking the same thing as him. It was beginning to strike him as odd how often that had been happening lately.
"What? Oh, well, yes. I did. Were you expecting a different answer?"
"No, I was hoping to continue following the script of our last conversation on this matter," she said. It was very difficult for Kevin to tell whether or not she was being sarcastic, so he decided to humor her.
"I think you told me I was dodging the answer," he continued.
"And then?"
"I dodged it some more."
"Yes, but you had a reason."
"I did. 'It's a long story'," Kevin said seriously, actually trying to dodge it once more. "I don't see where you're going with this."
"We have plenty of time now, don't we?"
Kevin was stuck. He wasn't exactly sure how to go about this. "That we do, but. . ."
"But what? Spit it out, Folner. You've been hiding this for too long now. If I'm going to trust you, a squadmate, at my side in battle, I need to know you don't have a reason to hide anything from me."
"Alright, then practice what you preach," Kevin demanded, buying more time. "Tell me why you have such a problem with humans."
"Aside from the political spew and buzz-words?"
"You never did strike me as the political type."
Arla sighed. He had a point. If she wanted to dig information out of him under that guise, she had to be equally open.
"Okay, okay. My pilgrimage was. . . Longer than normal. Extended. I wound up finding myself in need of transportation. A group of humans with a freight craft were heading in the same direction as I, so I bartered passage as a stowaway. It was supposed to be my last stop before I could acquire what I needed to complete my pilgrimage and return to the Flotilla. I was 'accidentally discovered' in their cargo hold. Those who I traded with for passage denied the deal we made, and the crew had me acting as their personal maid, housekeeper and punching bag for what I thought was almost two months."
"How long was the intended trip?"
"It was supposed to be a two day trip, relays included. Obviously I wasn't going to make it to my destination. Once I gathered enough courage to fight back, I did. I ended up killing one of the humans with his own gun. The others threatened to take my suit off as punishment. Instead, they sold me off to slavers. Luckily, the slavers didn't realize I could disassemble a pistol and hide it in my suit. The crew of the slaver ship was small, but they were well armed. When they all went to sleep, I hacked my cell door open and shot them all in their beds. I used the ship to bring the slaves home, get my cargo and return to the Migrant Fleet. That's my bitter tale."
"Alright, yeah, I can see why you wouldn't trust someone after something like that," Kevin said with a sagely nod.
"Now it's your turn for story time," Arla said.
Kevin grit his teeth at how quickly she jumped at the chance to get him to talk. "I don't know. I've. . . Never talked about this. With anyone. Ever."
"You don't think my story was personal to me? It's not like I had an easy time talking about it either."
"No, I wasn't as directly wronged as you were, but. . . Mine's a little different on the personal level, is all." Kevin was starting to fidget. He hated it when he fidgeted. It showed emotional cracks.
"Then just tell me why," Arla said in a much more gentle tone than he'd ever expected to hear from her.
"I swear to God, Nor, if you're involved in this somehow, I'll choke you to life and back again. Alright Arla, I'll tell you my story. I'll let you figure out the why on your own."
"Fair enough," she agreed as she shifted to sit more comfortably. She didn't even ask who Nor was.
"I'm no drell, but I can recall this particular memory pretty well. To the point that it won't leave me alone some days." He took a sip of water and started the reel of this memory from the beginning.
This was a couple years back. I was on Omega. I spent a lot of time there during those days. It was different. The stench hadn't quite settled into my nose yet. It was also because contract work was usually pretty good. Someone always needed someone else to die for some morally obscure reason. I didn't care. I just wanted my creds, and work elsewhere was in a major slump.
The problem was that when work was lacking, it lacked for a long time and it followed me. Finally there was a break – one of the local big name gangs, the Blue Suns, were hiring out freelance mercs to take care of some off-station trouble that they couldn't be bothered to handle at the time. The pay was good, especially during a slump, but it only paid when the job was done. I took the contract without hesitation since my current number of credits had dwindled down to about three hundred.
The job was to kill a certain high-ranking officer on an independent faction's military space station. It was marked as in the Satent system of the Pylos Nebula. The station was supposedly orbiting a planet called Raisaris. A simple enough objective, but I had a major, major setback. I didn't have a ship at the time.
After formulating several scenarios of what I could do to 'acquire' a ship, I ran into someone else who had just talked with the Blue Suns recruiters. She was your typical run-of-the-mill Omega-stranded quarian looking for ways to make some credits. She didn't have much going for her appearance-wise. All her clan colors had faded or been snuffed out by other materials used to fix them. Her hood was tattered and she had caked smudges on her visor. She had been there a long time. She also sounded miffed, so I decided to see what her issue was.
"You're a bit aggrivated for someone who just took on a high paying job," I said.
"No advance pay! How can they expect someone to just run off and pull off a stunt like that without advance pay?"
"Because they're the Blue Suns."
"Idiots. Bosh'tets."
"Why so upset? You should have expected that."
"I don't have a working ship," she admitted. I nearly lost interest after that, but she was a talker. "I was hoping for some advance pay so I can get the repair bill paid and get my ship back in working order. But No. No! I can't pay a bill if I haven't a credit to my name! That's a problem when they want you to retrieve a package from some obscure military installation!"
"What's the remainder of the bill, then?" I asked. I think I was just continuing conversation out of habit at this point.
"Two hundred and ninety!" She muttered a lot of things in a quarian dialect that my translator didn't pick up on.
She had my attention, though. A working ship. An obscure military installation. "Where was your pick-up point again? Was it in the Pylos Nebula?"
"Sadden or something. It's in my logs. Doesn't matter. I can't get there anyways."
The pay for the job was easily four times that of her repair bill. I took a chance. What can I say? I was bold.
"It seems we have similar destinations, if different missions. Tell you what, quarian, if I pay your repair bill, you let me ride with you to the station where you are to pick up your package."
"Tch! Human! Conniving, like those filthy batarians. You'll steal my ship. Everyone wants to steal my ship. When it works."
"I guess I'll just take my two hundred and ninety credits and be on my way, then," I said. A gambit. Fun to do with the Omega crowd.
"Wait! Wait wait wait wait wait. Wait. Nor."
"What the heck is a nor?"
"My name, you tool! Nor'Fessol nar Tonbay!" I didn't realize then what 'nar' meant.
"Derrik Trespa." A blatant lie, I know, but I had long since made it a habit of not using my proper name around eccentric, talkative strangers.
"Okay, Derrik, maybe we can cut a deal. I have the idea of a lifetime. You pay my repair bill and I'll sport you a round-trip pass to the Sad Sad system."
I didn't hesitate.
"Deal. Let's go get your ship."
We traveled to the docks a few levels down. They were mainly used for 'impounded' vessels and ones in need of a paid 'repair bill'. Nor told me it was in bay twelve, so we talked to the turian in charge of the bays on that level. I gave up the last of my credits to get the ship ready. Apparently there was a twelve credit interest on the bill. It was all I had. I know, I know, there's no such thing as interest on a repair bill, but I had little choice at that point.
Then I got to see what I paid for.
It looked like a very inflated shuttle, at best. It's chassis was like an elongated cube with rounded off corners and thrusters jutting out of the back. It had a single weapon, almost too big for the vessel and awkwardly mounted on top as if someone accidentally dropped it there and lost interest. Needless to say, I felt myself deflate.
"Yaaaaaaaay! I got my Shorlan back! My baby Shorlan!" she shouted. I took it that 'Shorlan' was the name of the misfit of a ship we were about to board. "Bonus points, Darren. I actually have a stock of levo-protein food aboard. You can have a snack!"
"I'm overjoyed."
"Now, Warren, let's go get us some cash."
"Charrrge."
I had wondered why she, a quarian, had levo-amino based food, but I certainly wasn't going to argue with it. I went and got my hardsuit and boarded. I didn't know if I'd have to take any external detours on the military space station.
When we were aboard, Nor's demeanor changed almost instantly. Suddenly she moved with solid strides instead of that of a batty quarian whose had a bit too much to drink. Immediately I knew something was up. She sat down in the pilot's seat, straightened out her cloths and hood and rubbed the crap off of her visor. As we backed out of the docks, she asked me a question.
"So what's your real name, stranger?"
"I wondered how a crazy quarian managed to keep a ship under her name. Folner. Kevin Folner. And you?"
"Nor's my real name. No one knows of any Nor other than that Omega-stranded, loud quarian. Blends well, I think."
"Agreed."
"So do you actually have a mission out to the Satent system or were you really planning on stealing my ship?"
"Why do you ask?" I asked, literally gunning for trouble. She made the mistake of casually reaching under her terminal. An all too familiar and predictable sign that a weapon was about to be made manifest.
"Because my shotgun says-" I wasn't stupid, and I wasn't slow. A few quick shows of sleight of hand and suddenly I was holding the shotgun.
"You mean my shotgun. Protip: don't point guns at me. It puts me on edge and my trigger finger gets itchy."
Her hands were raised in defeat and she pressed her back square against the terminal. I couldn't see her face, but I could tell she really thought her days were about to end. What else can you expect after surviving alone on Omega for a long time? I played another gambit and slowly gave her the gun.
"Yes, I actually have a mission out in the Satent system, like you. I wasn't planning on stealing your ship, but it isn't considered stealing if the pilot and owner is dead because of a self-defense reaction."
"Point taken, Kevin. I like your style, but I wouldn't have let me live if I were you. Always comes back to bite you later."
"I can remedy that any time I want," I said. I went for 'imposing and dangerous figure with self-control. I still don't quite know how well I did, but it seemed to work. "I just don't want to right now." A smile and a wink sealed our temporary alliance.
The trip out was boring and quiet. After we bounced off of all the necessary mass relays, it was still at least a day's trip to the star system. We talked a little, the usual small talk between two people shoved into a cramped cockpit. The only other room on the ship was larger, but it was crammed full of. . . Stuff. Most of it was taken up by a huge, obviously aftermarket power generator. Its purpose wasn't clear, but I had to guess it was for the large weapon mounted on top.
When she announced that we were getting close to dropping out of FTL, I suited up and waited. When we came out of FTL, we saw the system in the distance. Unfortunately, we never made it there. As we approached, Nor picked up four or five ships flanking us on all sides, coming in fast. It was an ambush. Probably pirates.
"See that terminal haphazardly stuck to the wall next to your chair?" she suddenly asked me.
"Yeah, I see it. Haphazard and all. Did you mount this? Good lord."
"Hardy har har. I hope you can shoot better than you can joke. You saw that ugly can on top, right? It's a full size GARDIAN defense tower, but I added some extra punch. Got no targeting, though, so that's where you come in."
"Are you friggin' kidding me? That tower's going to put out so much heat that it'll cook us in here."
"Well then it's a good thing you brought a hardsuit with thermal dampeners. Now get on the guns while I drive. Unless you'd rather say high to those pirates with your face smeared on their viewports!"
"I'm shooting, I'm shooting!" I shouted as I threw on my helmet.
The resulting battle was a bit of a blur to me. We had this ungainly piece of crap for a ship with a joke for a gun emplacement. Nor was an amazing pilot though. I thought I could fly small craft, but she weaved in and out of their battle formations like a master craftsman creating a true work of art. She worked incredible angles with dizzying speed and got me more shot opportunities than I could have asked for. We actually won the dogfight against impossible odds.
But it wasn't without consequences. The last ship that we took out blasted the rear of our vessel, completely eradicating our thrusters and damaging our only weapon beyond repair. We still had some power left, but we had no means to move, and we were drifting away from the Satent system pretty quickly. Nor shut down all the systems except for basic life support and an emergency broadcast. It was all we had for hope that we'd get to see civilization again. Thanks to her convenient stocks of food, we were able to ration it. I figured my particular kind of food would last me about three weeks. Water shared between the two of us would last two at most.
And so we drifted. Minutes turned to hours. Hours into days.
Nor and I reacted to each other the same way any two individuals forced to coexist in a cramped space would. We were at each other's throats. Most fights were verbal, since she wasn't much of a fighter. We must have had it out for more than a day straight before either of us passed out from lack of sleep.
After we got some sleep in and took in our current fate, we both calmed down. We mutually agreed that just fighting and getting bitter with each other was just going to make this ordeal miserable. We decided to just talk for a while. We started with our early days, or what I could remember as early days. I told her about my life as a merc and she told me about her life as an Omega beggar. As the hours and days passed on, our conversations became more personal, more deeply rooted to who we really were, and what our homes were like. I learned a lot of interesting things about quarian culture from her. They were a fascinating people, and I normally wasn't one for sociology.
Maybe it was the cabin fever, but I started to find myself attracted to her personality. The real Nor, not the silly facade on Omega. I just figured that was what happened when two individuals spend every waking moment in very close proximity. Eventually, probably somewhere around the middle of the second week of drifting, I found out that the attraction was mutual. We started getting close. Really close. How odd, right? I had only known her, a quarian, for not even two full weeks and we were. . .
Anyways, it was getting down to the wire. We had run out of water and Nor had to shut off the life support to continue to power the emergency broadcast. I had to don my helmet to keep from suffocating, but the hardsuit wasn't designed to be a long-lasting life support device. She told me about this thing that quarians did. Something about linking suit environments. I didn't quite understand. She was unusually bashful when she talked about it, so I had a hunch it was considered a touchy subject in quarian culture. It probably wouldn't have mattered, since we'd probably have died of dehydration before suffocation. In the end, we just figured we'd die in each other's arms or something overly poetic like that.
But fate has a weird sense of humor.
As we drifted towards an outlying asteroid belt, a ship big enough to fit our entire vessel in their cargo bay took us in. After about an hour of just sitting in the bay in our ship, three figures stepped into the large room and opened the airlock to our ship. They stepped in as if they owned the ship and proceeded to knock us both out. We had no fight in us anyways. Tired, thirsty and resigned to death, we were.
We woke up later in a small, clean white room with a single sliding double door on one wall. No windows, no furniture. My helmet and hardsuit was gone, but I still had my clothes. I couldn't tell if it was a closet, a prison cell or an interrogation room. Nor was already awake.
"I searched the room, but there's nothing. Just a camera in one corner. Not even one-way mirrors."
"Did you break the camera?" I asked. I hate cameras.
"No, I didn't want to provo-"
"Overload it. I hate being watched when I don't know where I am."
"We have no weapons in case they come in, you know."
"I don't need weapons," I stated.
She tilted her head and worked her omni-tool. A series of sparks emanated from the camera and its slow back and forth surveillance halted permanently. Shortly after, we heard yelling outside the door.
"Here they come," she said without interest.
"Naturally," I said as I made my way to the wall next to the door.
There wasn't exactly a lot of space to move in the room, but I could easily press myself against the wall where the door was to avoid immediate attention of anyone coming to visit. And visit is exactly what one guy did. He charged into the room with a pistol drawn, attention completely on Nor. I could tell by his attitude and stance that he had every intention of shooting her. I smashed my fist into his temple. Nor grabbed the gun and we exited. The next guy who showed up had an assault rifle, and he didn't wait to open fire. Fortunately I was ready for it, and I used dark energy to give him, the gun and any projectiles that were about to leave the barrel a slight nudge. A nudge across the room and straight into a wall on the-
"What did you just say? Dark energy?" Arla asked, interrupting Kevin's story with very little in the way of tact.
"Let me finish the story first! I'll explain that later."
"Fine!"
ANYWAYS. That guy was dead too. The third and final guy swore continuously after he saw that little display and tried to run away towards what looked to be a sort of control room, saying something about not being equipped to fight 'one of them'. I pulled him back through the air and I took the gun from Nor. As he was about to fly over our heads, I let loose two quick shots – pop-pop, just like that – and he rolled onto the floor behind us, dead and bleeding.
It seemed that those three guys were the only ones in the entire facility, which turned out to be a clandestine space station hidden in the asteroid belt. After Nor and I found some water and food devoid of any specific proteins, we chowed down and investigated. It was hard to tell the exact purpose of the facility, but it looked like it was some kind of relay or proxy for certain messages and data which used several machines scattered about the entire asteroid belt to receive and transmit it all. There was a lot of source locations, but no destination locations that I could find. Either way, the data was still getting out and it was likely that the purpose of this station was to mask those very details.
We soon learned that the relay station belonged to a group known as Cerberus. Nor and I had both heard the name before and we both figured that any data caches we pulled from the relay equipment would be worth a lot of credits to a lot of people. So I grabbed a flash storage device from one of the cabinets and downloaded as much data as I could pull before some sort of self-contained defense system cut me off and tried to fry the device. I pulled it before any damage could result.
Figuring ourselves compromised, we found our gear and started searching for the bay that the ship that captured us took us in. We found it, hijacked the ship – which was more or less a fancy cargo transport – and headed straight for Omega.
We wanted a word with those Blue Suns of guns. See what I did there? Suns of guns. Nevermind. Back at Omega in a bit of a more secure port, we made our way to Afterlife, the big club there, where the recruiters had relocated to. We were both so relieved to be back in civilization that we decided to spend some time enjoying ourselves first. We danced together for the first time and continued for hours, just having a great time. Actually, I think that was the first time I had ever really danced in a club. We had to stop sooner or later, though, and we had one thing to take care of before we would leave Omega.
"I'm going to have a brief word with these guys," Nor said.
"I smell trouble, Nor. If things feel off, get out. I mean it."
"If I die, I'll just come back to haunt you." I'm sure she meant that as a joke.
She ran a finger under my chi- She smiled a quarian smile and asked me to wait for her. So I did.
Not more than a a few seconds after she headed off, a slightly older human grabbed my shoulder.
"Hey. You with that quarian there? Looking for work from those Blue Suns?" His voice was raspy, and coated in worry. His attitude was that of a paranoid small animal surrounded by predators.
"Something like that. Not your business, old man."
"Don't take up that job, kid. It's a scam. A phony."
Suddenly I had reason to listen to his banter. "What do you mean?"
"That job they send mercs on? The space station in the Satent system? Doesn't exist. Never did. There isn't even anything of note in that system."
"And you know this how?" I asked, wary of conspiracy theories.
"I was part of a frigate team hired in to do what they always ask. Kill some guy, grab some cargo, it didn't matter. When we arrived, we dropped out of FTL a bit too close to the system. An error, but we were close enough to find out that there was no space station. Just as we turned to leave, we were ambushed by an unknown group. Our kinetic barriers just barely held long enough for us to hit FTL and get out of there."
"Sounds familiar. Where's the rest of your team?"
"I went to grab some grub for all the guys, and they went to 'have a word' with the Blue Suns recruiters. When I came back, I found their shot-up bodies being hauled off to be jettisoned into space. They killed them, boy. When they found out there were survivors, they killed them! Only reason I'm alive is because they don't know I was there!"
I felt so many red flags and heard mental sirens going off everywhere right then. I think it showed because the man's reaction changed as well. To one of pity.
"Run, boy! Save your friend if you can and get off of Omega!"
I was already running full tilt before he even finished. The door to the recruiters' room wasn't exactly five meters away. Of course, the crowds just happened to be particularly thick that night, so for all my frantic yelling, shoving and running, I wasn't moving as fast as I needed to be. I increased my mass so that I could shove my way through the crowds easier. I think I knocked a couple of krogan over, too, but I was gone before they could retaliate.
Panic was trying to seep its way into my mind, but I shoved it aside for a need to be fully functional when I got there. All I knew is that I couldn't move fast enough. I was already gathering more dark energy to me in preparation for some sort of gunfight to break out, but Nor left her pistol on the ship. Finally, I shoved passed the short line outside and hit the panel on the door.
It swooshed open and I came to a skidding stop inside with Nor right in front of me facing the Blue Suns on the other side of the room. Before I even had the slightest chance to react, I heard Nor scream out 'No!' and felt a dense and warm spray of liquid across my face. Red liquid. My eyes instinctively shut to keep the foreign substance from getting in.
"Oh, Keelah," Arla muttered under her breath.
After my eyes opened again, I saw Nor dropping to the floor in slow motion with a massive hole blown through her torso. I think I was in shock during those everlasting few seconds as she fell limp to the ground. I hadn't even realized that I was still gathering dark energy to myself, to a dangerous degree. I finally looked up from Nor's lifeless body to look the Blue Suns in the eye. The door had since shut behind me.
"Hey, that's one of the other kids we sent. He made it back too?" One of the batarian mercs in the rear stated. "Kill him too before this gets out of hand. We need to find out why people are getting back."
The merc up front, a turian donning the standard Blue Suns hardsuit and wielding a heavily modified shotgun, smirked at me as he raised the gun to fire again. I must have had a huge amount of pent up energy, because when I went to use it to send all of their weapons to the ceiling, I ended up sending everything. Mercs, guns, tables, containers – all of it crashed violently on the ceiling and stuck there. As surprised as I was to see that, I still had a focus. I used a pull on the turian with the shotgun, and as he flew at me, I stretched out my arm to the side and I countered all of his velocity with an enraged stab in his chest with my blade. I saw the tip punch clean through the other side before I threw him to the ground. Still racked with pain and rage from Nor's death, I grabbed the shotgun and gunned every single one of them down while they were pinned helpless on the ceiling.
All except the last one, who fell to the floor and was pinned under a heavy ammo crate when the dark energy lift ceased. This one, the one who ordered the kill, had a special place in my heart.
"I want your ship, your creds and an apology," I demanded. Not like I couldn't just take it.
The batarian let out a pained laugh. "What makes you think I'll give any of that to you? Get out of here, kid, before my boss finds out what you just pulled."
I lifted one index finger and brought it parallel to the front of his face. "You see this? I'm going to use this until you comply."
He seemed unphased and laughed again as though I was but a mere child having a temper tantrum. "If you want to threaten me, at least give me something to worry about."
And so I did as he asked, the nice guy that I am. Reaching back to where his armored legs were, I pointed down at his lower shin with that same finger. Using dark energy to execute a highly concentrated push, I thrust my finger downward where it was stopped by the armor, at least until the push was released. His armor crumpled and he experienced a very localized and destructive fracture of his leg bone where my push had impacted.
The batarian howled in pain. Disinterested in his noise, I looked back to his face and made my intentions clear. "Until. You. Comply. I could do that three more times to that bone before it turns to powder, and you have a lot of bones."
He resisted at first, but after the third impact, he was willing to acquiesce. He gave me all I asked for, apologized and begged for me to stop. I simply stood up, looked him in his teary four eyes, and spoke.
"I'll stop when you bring Nor back."
He only stayed conscious for about four more impacts. Once he was out, I used dark energy to violently lift and shove him into a nearby wall. There was no chance, as mutilated as he was after that, that he was still alive. Taking everything I wanted, I went to their ship and left.
"So that's my long story. Though, I guess that might explain why I hate the Blue Suns more than what we were originally talking about. Oh well."
Kevin's tone was more than somber now. He stood up from his spot with an empty water container in his hand and he sighed. "Funny thing is, She was right. Letting her live really did come back to bite me."
Arla didn't really know what to say. Sure her story was personal and it was a source of a lot of hurt, but she was able to push it aside. She doesn't look back on it anymore. Looking at the way simply telling this story pierced this human's near impenetrable emotional guard. . . She couldn't find any words appropriate for the current situation. Even more odd, she actually cared.
"I think I'm going to go lay down for a bit," Kevin said. "Guess today's combat really wore me out." He forced out a short laugh.
"Sure," Arla said with a nod. She decided asking him about the dark energy could wait until later.
Kevin looked down at the floor for one moment and then headed out with casual strides. It was different somehow from his normal showy walk, though. Once he exited, Arla stood.
"So that's why you have a soft spot for quarians," she said to herself.
Overall, she was more surprised that he could feel anything at all. He always came across as the kind of guy that never gave a crap about emotional response. He carried himself well enough to make it convincing, too. To think he ever had feelings for anyone was joke until now. At least now she knew that he really did have a soft spot, and it wasn't just some way to dodge questions or mask ulterior motives. Regardless, that last thing she expected was the story he gave. Perhaps there was actually more to that human than it seemed.
Arla shook her head as she made her way to the door. "Get yourself together, girl. Go find the captain. She'll think of something to distract you."