Interloper 2: Chapter 51
I raised my free gauntlet to ward against an attack but none came. Instead the salarian started talking in an almost incomprehensibly fast and high pitched voice.
"Get away from me I won't go you can't make me oh you're not him." The salarian finally took a breath, silencing the unfiltered stream of words for a few short seconds. When the alien started talking again, he was a little more coherent. "You have come to rescue me?" He blinked wide black eyes hopefully.
Liara stepped in, gently prying the contact's vice grip away from my arms. "Zarbal Diss? It's Liara T'Soni, we spoke earlier regarding your services. Am I to understand by the state of your lodgings that you have not already hired on with another group?"
"A most astute deduction, and an accurate one, unfortunately, not that he didn't insist vigorously and at great cost to the unfortunate operation which hosted me." A gasping breath. "But it is as you say, that is to say, I remain a free agent as we discussed, though I would be willing to reduce my asking price significantly, say to something in the region of passage aboard your vessel?"
"I think that that can be arranged," Liara said smartly. She turned aside, signaling the Heart. Her words faded away as she stepped out of the room, leaving the rest of us to Diss' dubious company. Jan was the first to break the awkward silence, with all her usual subtlety.
"You're covered in blood," she exclaimed, her words bursting out with considerable force as if propelled by pent up force. The salarian Zarbal grimaced, cracking the flaky vitreous coating around his mouth and neck.
"Ah yes, not my blood, also not blood at all, extract of Dathomir syrup pods, highly illegal, quite expensive. Part of the necessary deception, you see, could not be thought alive, would likely be tortured." He chuckled uncertainly, his erratic pupils bounced around the room. "Combined with spinal poison of Thessian lionfish to simulate lack of vital signs. Also very expensive contraband."
Before Diss could elaborate further, Liara reappeared. "We're moving, The Broker's men are travelling in-system faster than we anticipated. Decna, you take point as we…"
"The Shadow Broker, here, how could you not have told me this? We'll never escape them, forget what I said about taking passage, we have to hide, where is my lionfish serum?" Zarbal's panic grew with every syllable and he began to toss his head back and forth with searching eyes.
"Don't be ridiculous," Liara cut across his screeching with the cloaked steel befitting her position as the new Broker. "As successful as your ruse may have been on your earlier attackers, do you really think it'll work a second time? I assure you, the ships coming for you now are not piloted by nice men."
Zarbal Diss stuttered slightly, his narrow jaw quivering as he apparently weighed the options. He wasn't given long.
"Jan, kindly escort our new guest. Try to keep him out of the line of fire." Liara nodded to Decna as she slipped a fresh thermal clip into her rifle. The turian mercenary took cover in the doorway with practiced ease before leaning out into the empty hallway. When nothing took a shot at him, he disappeared out view. I followed close behind. Despite myself, my heart hammered madly as we pushed through the dusty and deserted halls. Inwardly I cursed myself. Despite all my hours in simulation, practice I'd assured myself would make me ready to be back in the thick of the action, had done nothing to replace the steel in my spine lost over weeks comatose on Cook's Landing. I tightened my grip on my weapon as the passageways around us groaned menacingly.
"Boss, bad news. Whoever you've got down there, the Broker's men want him bad. The Q-Ships just pulled an intra-system jump. You're in for some company! I… wait. Damn it." The radio connection cut off as alarms blared in the background. Before we could raise the Heart again, the ground shook, eliciting more tortured screeching from the outpost's aging metal. Dust drifted from the ceiling in showers, blanketing the hallway in a choking cloud as more impacts shook the ground.
"Drop pods, eyes front!" Decna barked. Silence loomed as the dust settled, the only noise in the place the rap of our boots on the deck plate, the noisy breathing in our helmets. But then there was another sound. A whirring clank and rattle, the telltale digitized voices. "We got mechs!"
The first mechanized hunter-killer rounded the corner up ahead. It was a strange looking thing, like someone had kludged together a LOKI mech from spare parts. Its red, annular optic sensors burned within the clamshell head as it leveled its mismatched arms. One was tipped with a cruel looking serrated blade; the other cradled the wide mouthed barrel of a shotgun. Decna scythed it down with a burst from his HMG. It fell to the side, its armour plating cracked and smoking but it was quickly followed by another, and another. The dark plated skeletal forms filled the corridor, the vanguard amongst them letting off unaimed shots from arm-slung or shoulder mounted weapons. Diss wailed while the rest of us threw ourselves into the scant cover offered by the bare walls of the outpost. I felt the world around me narrow until all that existed was the far end of the corridor. I unloaded on the nearest mech, stitching heavy tungsten slugs across its torso. The robot fell back, crackling against one of its companions.
Red lit fireflies flickered back and forth between us and our attackers as more and more of the mechs poured into the cramped quarters. "At least the front thirty are getting in the way of the back thirty!" Jan said brightly. The diminutive fighter made her own mark on the encroaching wall of attacking mechs, hefting her overpowered rifle and bracing it against the wall above her quailing charge's head. The Salarian jumped near out of his skin as the massive bore of the weapon discharged.
"It doesn't matter if the front ten get in the way of all of the rest," Decna replied gruffly. "If we don't get out of this hallway these things are going to walk right over us!" A thick jet of red hot gasses burst from his machine gun as the rack of thermal clips mounted atop it reached capacity. The turian bit back a curse and dumped the whole rack before reaching for his reserves. He would only be able to reload twice more. Our attackers took advantage of the slackening fire to rush ahead, ignoring potential cover in their haste to close with us.
"Get back against the walls!" I reacted to the yell before my brain had finished processing the words. Behind me, Liara stepped out into the center of the hall, already wreathed in biotic fire. She gathered her psionic power before her in a turbulent cyclone that scattered the mechs' incoming fire. With a grunt, she thrust the whirling ball of destruction away from her. It passed us by with a rushing sound, its tendrils plucking at my armour even as I pressed myself into the lee of one of the hallway's stanchions. The blazing psychic sun struck the lead mechanoids with the sound of a wildly crackling lightning storm. It tore at them, evaporating the surface layers of their armour plating to black puffs of pyroclastic dust and shattering their delicate internals until they fell to pieces on the floor at her feet. The ball of force burst against the far wall, collapsing the roof in a shower of twisted girders and yet more of the ever-present silicate dust. "That won't hold them for long. Quickly, we'll have to find another way down and out of this maze." Liara sent a pair of shots into the rubble pile as if to underline her point. Already the collapsed pile of rubble was stirring as more of the scrap metal mechs attempted to claw their way through the wreckage.
We beat feet in the opposite direction, rushing through twists and turns, barreling on heedlessly in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the motorized rabble that snapped at our heels. Several times we had to turn back and launch a hastily aimed volley to discourage the fastest of our pursuers from sticking too close. Even so, scattered shots chased at our running feet, pinging off of the walls and ricocheting on our shields.
"If we keep running like this, we're going to run out of building!" Diss cried as we turned another corner. His words turned out to be almost prophetic, as to my dismay the corridor we had just turned into ended abruptly in another of the shoddily welded barricades. "You see, you see!? We are trapped, trapped like Tuchanka devil-rats, also highly illegal to transport, though the Exclusion Zone officers will…"
Exactly what the officers manning the Tuchanka DMZ would do remained a mystery, as at that moment Jan clamped a gauntleted hand over the excitable contraband peddler's mouth. After a few muffled sentences, the salarian gave up and was quiet.
"Can we tear down this barricade?" Jan asked. The diminutive sniper loosed another concussive blast as a mech raced around the final corner. The weapon locked open, its ammunition spent. "Grr, I'm out. Anyone have a spare thermal clip?"
"Shooting this out with the mechs isn't going to get us out of here," Liara said through gritted teeth. "It's through this barricade or through the mechs, and they don't look like they're ready to stop pouring them in. Hold them back, I'm going to try and tunnel a way out with my biotics." The asari set about the wall of scrap with a desperate energy, her hands wreathed in undulating chords of force. She clawed at the gaps in the barricade, finding or making finger holds with which to lever away the beams. As she worked away at our escape route another wave of mechs burst around the corner. We met them with carefully placed bursts of fire, but even with our attempts to conserve ammunition we were down to reserves. Decna was the first to empty out, his thirsty weapon emptying within seconds. The turian drew a shotgun from his back and continued to fire sporadically. Jan dropped next, leaving only with an active weapon.
"Liara, we need that exit now!" I struck down another attacking mech. With a whooping alarm and a jet of molten spray, why submachine gun ejected another thermal clip. I reached for my reserves and found only one. I looked down at the thin strip of metal held between my fingers. I almost dropped it as another round thumped against my chest shields. I slapped the clip home hurriedly and shot back, taking the shooter's head at the neck. "Liara, now!"
"I'm almost through!" Liara called back. She dug her ceramic covered fingers in again and tore away a massive sheet of corrugated metal, opening a hole just big enough to crawl through. "I've got it."
Something speared through the new hole and caught Liara in the shoulder. One of the mechs' serrated blades skated off her barriers. Liara fired her pistol back through the hole in a blind panic, sending the attacker reeling. The mech steadied itself and raised its serrated arm blade again. Liara gasped audibly as the blade sprung apart, the shards suspended in a bright orange mass effect field. The metal teeth of the omni-saw began to spin until the blade was a hazy blur. The blade stabbed in again, this time shattering Liara's barriers. The teeth bit deep, drawing shrieks of metal on metal and then, to my sickening horror, screams of pain. Blue blood spattered the torn down barricade.
In a lurching panic, I threw myself between Liara and the mech and dumped my entire clip into its scored chestpiece. The mech fell back, the omni-saw flicking and dying. Through the gap I spotted more of them clattering towards us with saws and blades aglow. I tossed a grenade through and dragged Liara away. She shook in my grasp, her face a mask of shock and her breath a rasping gurgle. I fumbled for the injector switch on her combat harness. Liara shook slightly as thick medigel coursed through her system. I looked around, staring blankly at Decna and Jan in turn, silently begging them for help as words stuck in my throat. Decna kept his eyes on his enemy, as though every ounce of his focus was pinned forwards. Jan, however, had heard the sound of the blade. She whirled around, eyes wide with panic. Her lips traced words that were lost in the sound of battle. What do we do? I looked back at Liara, clinging only barely to the vestiges of consciousness and asked myself the same question. Behind me, Decna roared in pain as a stray shot pierced his shields, adding his dark turian blood to the pool forming on the ground. It was enough to shock me out of my daze. My eyes regained focus as something cool clicked in somewhere in my brain, clasping together all of the threads that threatened to spiral away in a fit of panic.
"We have to move," I said. My voice was tight, constricted. I tried again. This time I sounded more confident to my own ears. "Decna, Jan. We have to get out of here!"
"Yes!" Decna snapped. He fished something from his hip pouches, a shining disk. He hurled it at the closest mechs, taking chunks out of a cluster of them. "We do. How." Each word was a harsh bark punctuating blasts from his shotgun. The barrel glowed white hot from shots taken without cooling.
I wracked my brain. Mechs in front of us. Mechs behind. Mechs on all sides… except maybe… I eyed up the walls to either side. Through gaps to my right I could see more of the bare metal grating, but to my left thin strips of desolate grey dust flickered past. "We're going out!" Carefully I laid Liara down out of the firing line and put my eye to one of the gaps in the wall. Sure enough it ran straight through to the outside, not more than a few centimeters thick. Too much to shoot through, but a lot of the supporting struts looked weakened, sand scoured and rotted even in this moon's thin atmosphere. A heavy enough blow with enough force. Something snapped up behind me and pain blossomed in my right calf. I gritted my teeth, almost fainting against the corrugated metal. I fell down to the ground and fired between my feet. Whatever had shot me was nowhere to be seen, though more blade armed androids were charging us again. I tried to put some weight on my wounded leg, tried to scuttle backwards as Decna pumped round after round downrange, but my leg gave out and sent fresh waves of pain racing up my spine.
"EDI! EDI, I'm going to need you to drive my servos again," I croaked. I hauled myself up until my back was to the wall facing the outside. Almost at once I felt my suit begin to move of its own accord.
"Acknowledged. Where do you plan on going, if I might ask? Your suit sensors indicate that you have no apparent escape routes."
I chuckled darkly as a thin smile tugged at my lips. "EDI, did I ever tell you about the time I rammed a thresher maw with the Normandy's Mako?" EDI was silent, usually a sign that she was accessing some kind of data. After a pause, she replied.
"I think I understand."
I nodded, not exactly a wise move in a servo locked helmet, and EDI powered my suit's artificial muscles even as I felt my shields evaporate around me. My suit clomped over to the far wall and braced against it, lifting slightly as my apparent mass drained away. "We're going to make a new door. Keep up the covering fire, then follow me. Jan, I need you to make sure Liara gets out. Once we hit the ground it'll just be a short run to the pickup. You take her and make that run, do you understand? Decna and I will cover, while Diss here follows you." Jan nodded grimly. "EDI. Do it."
It was an odd sensation as my servos buzzed suddenly with power and launched me like a projectile across the narrow hallway. Within my split second flight, my mass shifted from almost half my natural weight to near double it in a stomach turning lurch. Then came the impact. My teeth rattled in my skull as my shoulders crunched into the rust eaten barrier between us and freedom. For a horrifying second I wasn't sure whether it would be enough, whether I had just flung myself at a wall to be struck down without defenses of any kind. Then the wall began to shake. The thin struts buckled as heavy steel, ceramic, and human crushed them under localized double gravity and the connecting metal shrieked in protest. The wall bulged out beneath me and with sudden sucking force the wind was biting into the structure, tearing at the newly loosed strands and plucking me from the darkened hallway. Then I was falling, plunging down.
"EDI, reinitiate shields!" I blurted out in a fresh panic. The white-blue shimmering walls of force burst back into existence just it tie to crash upon the deep drifts of sand. I lay on my back, momentarily stunned as I stared up at the fresh rent I had made in the shabby walls of the former Turian outpost. A figure moved in the shadows, then suddenly burst into the murky dim green light. Jan arced gracefully out of the darkness, the derelict form of Liara slung over her shoulders as if she were as light as a straw doll. The proto-phantom ended her arc mere meters away, careful to soften the blow for her injured charge with her own body. Decna appeared next, backlit by more red trails of mass accelerator fire. He was carrying something slung under his arm. With a thrill of shock I realized that it was our new contact. The burly turian hurled the salarian bodily, sending him shrieking into the gale. With a passing lob of more grenades, the mercenary hopped straight down towards the ground, narrowly avoiding the backblast of his thrown explosives. He caught the salarian black market dealer expertly and began jogging towards where the rest of us were still strewn across the dust clogged ground.
"That was unexpected. I suppose I have underestimated you, human."
"We can hug it out later," I groaned out as fresh aches and pains lanced out from my wounded leg and battered back. From the sluggish way my suit reacted even under EDI's care I was sure that it was a ruin, but that would need to be addressed later. "Kasumi, we need pickup, like, yesterday." I hobbled over to where Jan was slowly gaining her feet and helped her up. Between us we supported Liara's weight. The asari sagged between us like a ragdoll. Already her dark blood was going grey with blown dust, staining the front of her armour the colour of dark concrete.
"Inbound," Kasumi said, unusually businesslike, "be warned, Broker ships might try to intercept. I'll send coordinates as soon as I can shake them."
Before I could acknowledge, fresh shots rained down around us. More mechs had appeared at the ugly gash in the building, some dropping down to pursue us on foot.
"Let's move!" Urgency lent speed to our steps, but between the added weight and fatigue it was slow going across the constantly shifting dunes. Turning and fighting was hopeless, we'd long since ran dry our ammunition, and Decna's trusty shotgun had melted its barrel into an unusual glob of white hot metal. Instead we leaned into the wind and bore away as fast as we could bear. It was a great relief when the clamshell shape of the Heart scorched its way across the sky on full burn.
"Heads up, you guys," Kasumi's voice came through thread and staticy. "…might be… jam…" her warning broke of incomplete, eclipsed by a wave of garbled machine noise.
"Say again," I started, just before my suit went dead. I yelled out in pain as the full and unsupported weight of my gear came down on unpowered servos, throwing the strain onto injured legs. I crumpled to the ground, almost dragging Liara and Jan with me. I piled face first into the dust and barely managed to roll out of the way of a charging Decna.
"Fiver!" Jan slewed around, keeping her feet but almost dropping Liara. "What's wrong?"
"Suit dead," I managed, trying to prop up hundreds of pounds of unpowered armour. "Must be jamming our connection to the Heart." I wheezed with each breath as I clawed my way up to kneeling.
"Why would that kill your suit?" Jan asked. She was hovering worriedly over me, apparently torn between her duty to the wounded Liara and her desire to get me moving again. Her eyes kept flicking back over our path, almost assuredly to rapidly gaining attack mechs.
"Suit's systems still slaved to EDI's processes." I hacked out. I slammed at the ejector tab on my chest. Nothing. Those circuits must have been slaved as well, or else had been fused by some lucky hit in my gear's long and storied history. For a brief second I regretted leaving it crated up on tropical Cook's Landing for so long. "Can't eject. Can't walk. You're going to have to leave me behind."
"Don't be stupid," Jan spat, though panic seethed behind her words. "I'll, I'll carry you too. It's not too far!"
"No need," Decna said. I was on my back in a flash, then hoisted into the air like a toy. The turian mercenary slung me over one broad shoulder while leaning the fused shotgun against the other. "I think you've earned a rest for today. Let's go." Despite his confidence, the turian still grunted form exertion as his legs began to piston across the desert. Every step was agony for both of us, my weight bearing down on his shoulder, his shuddering gait jouncing my leg against its unnaturally stiff prison. But each step got us closer to the Heart. Then, with a lurch, we gained the ramp towards the narrow airlock. The five of us burst through at a run, nearly piling up against the far wall. Before any of us had time to speak, the ship pitched up and we were rocketing towards the sky. With muted satisfaction, I realized that our engines' backwash would likely vapourize any of our surviving pursuers. Decna spat on the deck as he ripped of his helmet and let me come to rest against the bulkhead. "This salarian better be worth it," he said before he prowled off, dragging his HMG rig and abused shotgun behind him.
"Jan. medical," I managed as the bump of atmosphere dropped away and the steady thrum of FTL replaced it.
"Yes, right," Jan said. She hefted Liara again, moving in the opposite direction from the angry mercenary. In silence, I leaned against the cold metal bulkhead. I let my eyelids droop and my head fall against the padding of my helmet as exhaustion replaced panic, leaving me feeling almost boneless with fatigue.
"Yeah. Me too."
"It'll be a close thing, but EDI is sure that she's going to make it," Jan said brightly. "Now hold still. I don't want to miss and take off something you'd rather hang onto." The whirr of the serrated cutting disk buzzed threateningly behind my right ear. I focused very intensely on remaining stock still. My eyes, free to roam, fell on the comatose form of Liara plugged into the autodoc. It was a chilling image, a reminder of how close we'd truly come to disaster. As Jan had said when I'd finally gathered the strength to hobble my way to the infirmary, "The knife cuts closest near the edge." And out here near the rim, in the hinterlands between the Terminus Systems and the Traverse, in a lone ship without major support, I couldn't imagine a place in the galaxy nearer the edge. I winced as the cutting blade met the ceramic and steel at my back. The armour, as it turned out, was a complete write off. And as such, it wasn't coming off without some fairly severe outside intervention. I lay still as Jan carefully cut away at the joints and connections, peeling away at the layers of armour, synthetic muscle, and integrated circuitry, until finally I felt the cool wash of air on my naked back. Jan tutted behind me.
"Oh, Fiver, that's going to bruise up something terrible," she clucked as she probed at my tender shoulders.
"Then maybe stop prodding it, yeah?" I groused. I rolled my much abused joints and slowly worked my way out of the restraining plates. Like a lobster molting from its shell, I shrugged first my shoulders, then my arms and finally my hands from their rigid prison, leaving the empty armour to hang bonelessly over the front of the gurney. I worked at my sore wrists and propped myself up on my elbows. Again the saw whirred up behind me. I shot Jan a harsh look. "We don't need to be cutting the rest. Give me that." I snatched the whirring blade away from her and let it run down before setting it aside and beginning the arduous task of wriggling my legs out as well. Jan watched on, occasionally making snide remarks in between catching glances of Liara. As much as the proto-phantom played off our predicament, I could catch the little lost child sort of look that loomed up behind her large eyes every time she looked over to the autodoc. "You said it yourself, she's going to be fine," I said, finally stepping out the bloodstone green hardsuit completely. I winced as I looked down at my own injuries. New scars had joined old faded ones, and my right leg down to my ankles was a red ruin that shook when I tried to stand on it. It was a marvel that I wasn't curled up somewhere, whimpering. Jan seemed to follow my gaze.
"Speaking of making it, maybe I should take a look at that leg of yours. I'd hate to have to amputate," the diminutive sniper said with a grin. "Back on the table, you."
I didn't argue. I tipped the armour down to the floor with a clatter and slipped onto the foam coated bed in its place. Jan came along with another of the medbay's hanging tools. Gently, she aimed the nozzle of the floating meditool at my injured leg and hosed the area down with antiseptic laced water. I hissed as the concoction stung the broken flesh.
"Ooh, don't be such a big baby," Jan said in childish singsong. Her grin fell as I grimaced again. "Sorry, I thought you'd be used to being stitched up now."
"Jan, some things you never quite get used to," I hissed through grit teeth. Fortunately Jan's next pass with the meditool carried a deadening agent that felt like plunging the entire leg into ice. I felt muscles I didn't know I'd been clenching slowly relax and let myself sink into the thin foam of the bed. I closed my eyes as Jan chattered away cheerfully about this and that. It was all just noise really, but after the clatter of gunfire and the close quarters explosions it was soothing. So I listened, and tried to ignore the tugging at the ragged ends of my flesh above my shins as Jan set about fixing my wounds.
"And I suppose we'll have to replace this ol lump of scrap."
My eyes snapped open in shock at Jan's pronouncement. "I hope you're not talking about me," I said shakily. I was afraid to look down at my leg, but after mustering up the courage to peer around the surgical barrier I found it perfectly intact. "Replace what, Jan?"
"Not your leg, silly," she said, uttering a girlish giggle I'd never heard from her before. "This junk. You know, I'm sure it was nice enough when you got it, but I don't think it's really worth patching this up again." She tapped something metallic under the table with the tip of her boot, making a sound like a pile of tin cans. My armour. I raised my eyebrows.
"There's nothing wrong with my armour," I said defensively. "Me and that suit have been through a lot together, It just needs a little work, is all. And as you say, maybe some patches. It's not junk." Even to my own ears, my voice had gained a petulant edge.
"Oh yeah, nothing wrong with it at all. 'cept the holes, and the scratches, and the fact that the onboard computer's cooked, oh, and the fact that you're basically a puppet on EDI's strings. But other than that, nothing wrong with it at all." Jan counted the points in her case against my old hardsuit on her fingers while flashing me a smug grin.
"Alright, you've made your point," I groused. "Maybe it is about time I looked for something else." Jan's smile broadened.
"Oh good! I'll put it on the to-do list." She scampered off, leaving me alone in the small infirmary.
"She has a to-do list?" I asked the empty air. I jumped as the emptiness answered me.
"It's her new thing," the voice said. Sheepishly I realized it was Liara, speaking from the bounds of the autodoc. "She goes through these phases. Has since I found her. I don't know why she does it." Liara smiled wanly.
"Liara, you're awake!" I said with evident relief.
"Thanks to you," Liara's smile warmed. "Thank you for pulling me out of the fire again. It's beginning to become a worrying habit of ours, isn't it?" She chuckled. "I'm glad I had you around this time. And hopefully the next?" Her voice contained a hopeful note, but also a kernel of concern.
"Don't worry, it'll take more than being shot up a bit to scare me away," I replied. "So, I don't know if you heard Jan, but…"
As if called by the mention of her name, the proto-phantom bustled back into the room carrying, to my surprise, an actual fabric binder filled with bound paper. Jan followed my gaze and gave an explanation. "If you're making a to-do list, you have to write it down on paper. I learned all about it. The first item on my to-do list was to watch all human media regarding to-do lists. Some of them raised more questions than they answered." Her brow knitted for a short moment before she launched back into her explanation. "Anyway, I just wrote this new entry. 'Get Fiver new shoot suit.'"
"To be honest, we could all use a little rearming," Liara said thoughtfully. "It's clear our opponents in this Shadow War aren't afraid to break out all of their toys when it comes to hardware." She paused as she tried to rise, but the tubes and wires of the autodoc arrested her. With a defeated look, she sank back into its confines. "I can collect up a few funds from various sources, but I'm afraid with governments mobilizing in the wake of the Illos Incident and this war amongst the dark organizations, the markets are getting very thin on the ground."
Somebody cleared their throat at the entrance to the infirmary. All eyes in the room fell on the salarian, Zarbal Diss, who stood nervously at the door. He scratched at his twisted horns in a show of embarrassment. "I… couldn't help but overhear, sorry, I wasn't sure what to do, you dragged me onto the ship and then everyone left. But I digress, you mentioned wanting to acquire new hardware, military hardware, yes? Perhaps something that might not appear on Citadel Council approved inventories. Contraband. Perhaps someone with inside knowledge of the black markets may be useful in this endeavor, someone like me; I do happen to have a number of contacts in this region, and others, good contacts, can be trusted." His mouth rose in a self-deprecating smile. "Of course, that is just my own humble opinion, yours could be different."
"No, I think this is a good idea," Liara said slowly. "If you're certain they can be trusted, a black market dealer might be better than a legitimate source. I'm sure a lot of our competition will be watching for purchases made out in the open. The wrong purchase made at the wrong time could lead them right back us."
Diss clapped his hands together in obvious glee. "Wonderful, I can send out feelers immediately, see which of my friendly fish is first to bite. Trust me, Madame Broker, you will not regret this, you'll see, my contacts are good. So much to organize, forgive me, I must begin at once." The salarian rapidly backed out of the infirmary and disappeared in the general direction of the bridge. Liara blew out her cheeks in a very human gesture.
"Well, that was interesting."
"That's one way to describe it… Madame Broker," I jibed.
"Please, just don't," Liara said, rubbing at her temples.
"I don't know about this," Jan said darkly, "I think he's slimy." She made a face, sticking out her tongue in a childish gesture of disgust. She cocked her head to the side, her face brightening. "But, on the bright side, shopping!" We all shared a chuckle that faded into companionable silence. As we one by one drifted away into our own little worlds, I looked down at my piled armour. 'So long, old friend. I guess there's no more space on this ship for worn out things.' I rested back against the hospital bed. Never had I felt so exhausted.
Author's Note:
What's this, another chapter in less than a month? Craziness. Hopefully a worthy entry in the eyes of you, my fine readers. Now, how soon the next one will come out, I can't say, but I'll be making every effort to keep them coming.
-Liddle Out
