Omega's Child
(Khentu Emrys)
Date: 3-18- 2187
Location: Afterlife District, Omega Station, Sahrabarik System
"I still say you shouldn't have come."
I turned to give Laila a raised eyebrow. "Right, because 'I don't want to' would have been a great reply to Aria's summons."
"You're on stims just to stay upright," Laila retorted, "You're in no condition to."
"If you think Aria didn't know Khentu's exact condition when she sent her little 'at your earliest convenience' note," Ptolemy cut in from her other side, "then you're being uncharacteristically naïve."
Laila opened her mouth to retort, and then closed it with an angry twitch of her mandibles. Of course, a 'request' from Aria T'Loak for any lowly gang leader to come to Afterlife 'at your earliest convenience' was a direct order to any mere mortal straight from the hands of the gods.
Or 'goddess' perhaps, in this case.
The added fact that we'd all been kept waiting for three hours was also a factor that hadn't been lost on us. We'd been summoned to answer for our sins, and were being kept out here to stew in our own juices.
The door opened and a heavily armored turian entered the small room, followed by a half-dozen equally heavily armed Blackshirts.
"Gavorn," I stated with a nod. From what I remembered, the big turian had been a famous big game hunter or something before Aria had specifically recruited him directly from Palavan. In his time here on-station, he'd completely revamped the recruitment and training programs for Aria's regulars, and the Legends had interacted with either him directly or one of his recruiters on several occasions. Today however, there was no returning smile or anything remotely close to 'friendly' in his expression.
"She will see you now." Gavorn's expression was blank, betraying absolutely nothing of what awaited us inside. Facing Aria after everything that had gone down… was not a promising encounter, to say the least.
Ptolemy and Laila stood to their feet at the same time I did, grasping their helmets under their arms, but the turian captain stopped them with an uplifted hand. "Just you. Alone."
Ptolemy looked like he was about to protest, but caught the slight shake of my head I sent his way. Laila's mandibles flared, but she sat back down slowly and deliberately. With a glance at exactly how many rifles were casually pointed in our general direction, my brother followed her example.
"Don't worry," I reassured, placing confidence I didn't feel into the sentence. "I'll see both of you in a few."
Before either of them could reply, I turned and made my way down the narrow hall, almost positive I was seeing both of them for the last time and that I probably should have chosen better last words to them both. The hallway seemed to stretch on forever, and my mind made the doors that opened in front of me seem giant and menacing.
Inside, a dozen screens and monitors flashed information of all kinds: ship specs, cargo manifests, tactical projections, and maps of a half-dozen sections of Omega, as well as distant worlds.
Seated in the middle of the organized chaos was an Asari, clad in a suit of fairly light armor, but even a casual glance was enough to inform me that it probably cost more credits that I would ever see in my lifetime. Especially given how short that lifetime was likely to be.
Aria.
She was seated on an expansively padded chair, which looked oddly out of place in what was obviously some kind of military command center.
"Emrys." The word was flat and also devoid of any kind of clue of how this conversation was going to go.
"Lady Aria," I answered, bowing slightly at the waist, trying my best to hide the wince of pain the movement brought with it.
"So," she said, and a screen behind her brought up an image that I immediately recognized as a layout of the Deep District of the station. "You fired on my station, and brought a small army of rampant, racist mechs into the heart of Kima."
She was speaking English, which was automatically a red flag in my book: she was addressing me as if I was an outsider, an Earth-born intruder on her station.
Several sections of the map were highlighted red, blinking angrily. I felt a wave of dread wash over me, but I kept it from my voice and my posture. I had already decided, no matter what Ptolemy had planned to say, to take full responsibility for the Blood Arrow's arrival and actions on station. After all, anybody with a decently suspicious mind had no-doubt concluded already that all this had been a brotherly conspiracy of some sort. And that would spare Ptolemy, at least.
"Yes, ma'am."
I made the statement in Thessian, rather than the trade language of my own species. But other than an infinitesimal lift of an eyebrow, she made no response before waving her hand. The image on the screen changed again, only this time showing a video feed of the aftermath of what several people were calling 'The Battle of the Deeps.' There wasn't much left, below Kima, at least. Even the ruins and rubble had been destroyed, for fear of giving the Deepers any kind of defensive positions. Tunnels and passageways had been collapsed, to funnel enemies through tactical choke points. Any kind of rebuilding would have to be done literally from the ground up.
"You demolished not only the Arena, but also your own foundries in the Deeps."
"Yes," I answered again. There was nothing else to say: she was not seeking explanations, and I strongly felt that offering excuses at this time would be the very last thing I ever did. Never mind that my people had fought and died to keep her people safe. People who had waited until the absolute end to even get involved, while the Legends and Blood Arrows had been down there for weeks.
She regarded me flatly, without any particular emotion. "Give me a good reason to allow you to continue breathing."
I fought down both the flash of anger and the rush of panic I felt, and carefully began my long thought-out response to someone who was arguably the most powerful being in the Terminus Systems.
"I did what I thought was best, given the tactical situation we were facing," I stated, doing my best to not make the words sound like the carefully-rehearsed speech they were. "Firing on the Deeps vented several hundreds of… those things into space, which meant there were that many fewer we had to deal with later. I did what I had to, for the good of the people of this station. I lost a hell of a lot of my people, good people, in the process. That will haunt me to the end of my days."
There was a flicker of something behind the Asari's eyes, but she made no other response.
"But if I had to make all of those choices again," I went on, a rush of adrenaline accompanying my rash words, "I wouldn't change a damn thing. For the sake of your people and your station."
There was a long, pregnant silence following my words. I half-braced for the arc of warpfire that would take my head off, or burn through my chest like a mining laser.
Or she may just order me tortured to death as an example to the rest of the station.
Aria leaned forward, and her hands interlaced in a gesture of careful calculation.
"At your request, the Talons have moved down into Kima, taking over both your territory, and your role as peacekeepers in that sector," she said finally, "With the losses the other gangs have sustained, no one is strong enough to challenge them."
I nodded, but said nothing. She was giving information, not seeking a dialogue. I had needed every Legend in the Deeps, and with me taking the thresher maw's share of the other gangs' fighters, of whom precious few had made it back, I had a very good idea of the state of Kima's local gangs. In point of fact several neighborhoods had risen up and kicked their local thugs out in favor of declaring for their much stronger, and therefore much more stable, Talon peacekeepers, electing to stay with Aria's new favorites on a more permanent basis.
"The Deeps is a wreck, as is the Arena," Aria continued. "You'll be hard-pressed to rebuild anything down there, both in numbers and in credits."
Again, I said nothing. She had yet to ask me any direct questions or say anything untrue.
"In short," Aria mused, "the Legends have little or no future on this station."
My teeth and fists clenched, and there was a sinking feeling in my chest as I felt cold certainty wash over me. That was the death sentence falling upon us: We were useless to her, and the queen of Omega had no patience for useless things.
"But I can't abide waste, which is what killing you and your little band would be."
"Ma'am?" The word escaped me before I could recover from my shock and surprise.
"What do you know about Dheje?"
I blinked, scouring my scrambled mind for something, anything on something called "Dheje", but coming up with… nothing.
"Umm… not much," I answered finally.
"It's a mining colony on the fringes of the Terminus," Aria stated, and my Omni-Tool buzzed with an incoming message. At her nod, I opened the file to reveal a holo of a small planetoid. My thoughts were spinning, but I did my best to process the several pages of text information accompanying the image.
Orbital Distance: 1.7 AU
Orbital Period: 2.5 SY
Radius: 5,320 km
Day Length, Atmosphere Pressure, Surface Temperature…
"You're the new colony leader there."
I could not have been more surprised if she had shot me. In fact, that would have been much more expected.
"I'm… the… sorry?" I stammered.
"The foundry there is very similar to the one in the Deeps, and the idiot who is supervising there now is costing me time and credits. I need someone I can count on to turn the entire operation around, as well as defend the colony against any and all comers, if it came to that."
Aria's head cocked slightly. "Does that sound doable to you, Emrys?"
With a effort of will, I forced my jumbled thoughts to form a coherent plan.
"If I can take my people with me, I can get it accomplished," I stated confidently.
I had exactly no clue how we were going to do that, or where this supposed colony even was, but it sounded a hell of a lot better an option than 'get your people up here so they can be lined up against a wall and shot.'
"Good," Aria nodded curtly. "Gavorn will be your main contact to arrange passage for your surviving people. And your brother's."
I froze at her expression and tone, which had suddenly turned ice-cold.
"I will say this once and only once, Emrys," she said slowly, each word carefully chosen for maximum impact. "There is no future for any Blood Arrows on Omega. Or any territory to be regained for the Legends. Is that clear?"
I nodded, equally slowly and deliberately.
"To hear is to obey," I stated in Thessian, making an asari salute across my chest as I did so. It wasn't the most blatant 'leave and don't come back' I'd ever heard, but the meaning was certainly unambiguous.
Aria then made a slight wave of her hand, and swiveled her chair to face the opposite direction. I took the opportunity to beat a hasty retreat, my mind going at a thousand miles an hour with plans and contingency plans, replacing all of the famous last words I had planned to say before my unceremonious execution.
Welcome to fucking Omega.
Bereft Mother
(Nakmor Chell)
Date: 3/25/2187
Location: Doru Docks, Doru District, Omega Station
The 'Dawn of Destiny' was, in my opinion, a rather ostentatious name for a ship. I suppose the best that could be said about it was that it was new, at least by the standards of the Terminus Systems. What had once been a luxury cruise liner had been converted into a slave transport, an ore hauler, and then back into a transport carrier all within the space of a few years. But it was certainly big enough to offload the nine hundred or so Legends to their new home.
"I'm surprised Aria let us keep them," Muerta'Harel stated, the quarian exile nodding in the direction of the space immediately around the station. Just off the Docks, the Fury and the Duat hung in station orbit, providing an armed escort to the massive unarmed vessel. "I'd have thought she would have crammed everyone aboard the Dawn and taken the other two ships for herself."
"Nobody in their right mind would want the Fury," I chuckled, "and all the repairs and maintenance that entails."
"Explains why you lot still have it," Muerta retorted, but I could hear the amusement in her voice.
"And on top of that," I continued, "letting us have two nominal warships suggests that Aria is entrusting us to keep the space around Dahje clear of raiders."
"To whom much is given," Ignatius spoke up as he joined us on the overlook, "much is required. Gospel of Luke, twelfth chapter, forty-eight verse."
"Or 'demanded,' one might say in this case," I nodded in greeting. "To be honest, priest, I'm still surprised you're coming with us. I thought your… church specifically sent you to Omega."
"They did," he nodded. "But there are still members of my congregation that survived the battle and are going with the rest of the Legends. I will not abandon them just to stay here. I've already relayed my intentions back to Earth."
"With a war going on, it may take a while to get the message to them," the quarian biotic snorted. "Longer to get a reply back."
"Yes", the ever-practical priest nodded, "it just might."
Once again I was impressed by the human's commendable practicality.
"Little Khen?" I asked, more to change the subject than out of actual worry that someone responsible might be watching my… my son.
That IS who he is, girl, I thought grimly, at least if you have any hope of Aria T'Loak letting him off this station alive.
"Drella and Hadasi have him with the rest of the children," came there answer.
"They drew babysitting duty?" I felt my own brow-ridges attempting to climb my forehead. "On purpose?"
Ignatius' face fell, becoming an unfeeling, inexpressive mask. "I think they're happy to do anything besides fighting for our lives."
All of us nodded. The past several weeks had been nothing short of a living hell, and the close-knit community we had spent years building in the Deeps was now broken and shattered. Shift after shift we had watched friend after friend die, and then had to kill them all over again, watching them shift and transform into monsters from some bottomless pit. We were all very lucky, and very happy to be alive.
"And speaking of surprises," Ignatius went on, forcing joviality back into his tone, "I would have thought Syed would have loved to take this opportunity to branch out on his own. I mean, we certainly can't stop him."
"He might have, under the right circumstances," I admitted. "But Atria and I put our foot down and told him that the female Nakmor Clan was sticking with the Legends. If he and all the males wanted to go off and be mercenaries, they were free to do so."
Ignatius threw his head back in a full-throated, unguarded laugh. It was a laugh that infected and washed over the rest of us, and soon, we were all laughing, enjoying the sensation of being alive and amused.
"Well I bet that put them in their place," Ignatius replied finally, wiping a tear from his eye.
"It certainly did," I agreed. "And besides, he also is looking forward to being a favorite uncle to Little Khen."
"Abdul is the same with little Alex," Muerta snorted, "Probably the main reason Ptolemy hasn't taken the Duat out on his own."
"The bonds of blood between Khentu and Ptolemy are strong," I said, shaking my head. "Stronger than even they are fully aware of, if I don't miss my guess. Ptolemy has too strong a sense of responsibility to abandon his brother to the task of founding a new colony alone."
"Not when there's a chance that he can be the living god of 'New Egypt,'" Muerta continued sullenly. "Within a few years, Dahje is gonna have a new name, Mark my words.
I started to say something, but this time it was Ignatius who cut in on her eternal pessimism:
"Not if we don't want to alienate the locals," he warned. "To the, we'll already be the 'invaders,' the overlords placed over them by the 'foreign tyrant' far, far away. It'll be difficult enough as it is to build bridges between the locals and us newcomers."
"Mostly batarians and turians, if the intel is to be believed," I added. "They'll be clannish enough anyway."
"Khentu will win them over," Ignatius replied with an almost-dismissive wave of his hand.
"Yeah, the boss is good at that," Muerta nodded. "If anybody can convince a group of saps to sell us their homes for beads and blankets, it's our Emrys, sure enough."
"If anyone can," I repeated. "Even Ptolemy recognizes Khentu's leadership skills, and Aria's reasons for placing that leadership upon him."
"Do you think that's going to be a problem in the long run?" Muerta cocked her helmeted head to one side as she asked the question. "Older brother-younger brother boshtets and all that?"
"I don't think so," Ignatius answered. "With the Jackals gone, so to is the main driving force behind their human-centric dogma and standoffish-ness. Abdul has spoken of possibly setting up different settlement for the different groups, but that's about the extent of it. So long as we stay on top of it, we should be able to prevent any factionalism boiling over."
At our blank stares, he just smiled and gave a half-shrug. "Not to say it won't be difficult, but certainly not impossible to overcome. I think our people are up to the challenge."
We all nodded once again, and then we stood in silence for a long while, watching the lines of people in line for the shuttles that would take them and their families to a world far away from anything most of them had ever known.
For the opportunity of a new life, for themselves and their children? I thought to myself, and then felt a subconscious grin spread across my face in answer.
There is NOTHING these souls would not do for such a chance.
Broken Vessel
(Laila Adonis)
Date: 4/8/2187
Location: SS Dawn of Destiny, in FTL
"Are you ready Khen?" I asked as I pulled on my boots and readjusted the practical coveralls. The cabin was smaller than our quarters in the Arena had been, but by the standards of Terminus System cargo ships, it was palatial. On top of the expansive bed, Khen and I even had our own shower and mini-kitchen.
It had been… nice, to get the opportunity to reconnect. With everything that had been going on in Kima, and with me trying to hold everything down in the Deeps, some inevitable drifting apart had taken place between the two of us. But…
I whirled at the sound of some kind of crash from the small washroom, my hand instinctively snatching up my pistol to repel an attack. Instead, Khen lay sprawled on the floor in a fetal position, his eyes and teeth clenched shut.
"Khen!" I cried out, rushing to his side. "Is it the leg again?"
His eyes shot open, and they were wide and filled with an unnatural terror. "How will we breathe?"
"What?" I blinked at the non-sequitur.
"There's no bulkheads on-planet," Khentu went on, his words pouring out in a rush. "There's no roof, walls, or ceilings. Just… open sky. Open to the vastness of space…. "
"Khen," I cut him off, grabbing his face and turning it towards me. "Khen, look at me. Focus on breathing, OK? Just breathe…"
We sat there for a long while, just gazing into one another's eyes. A tinge of normalcy returned to Khen's expression, quickly replaced by shame.
"Sorry," he mumbled, closing his eyes and breathing deeply.
"You have nothing to be sorry about," I insisted, pressing my forehead against his. "It's a common reaction for spacers. You've been doing your studying, I see."
I glanced to my right and reached out a hand to collect Khen's dropped datapad. On the screen were several images and pages of information on Dehje. It wasn't a paradise, by any standard, but we had been luckier than most colonist in that our new home wasn't actively trying to kill the newcomers on its surface.
Khen smiled weakly, and nodded. He'd been trying his best to surround himself with as much imagery as he could, but it was still mildly unsettling for someone raised on a space station to consider concepts like 'open air' and 'free range.'
"I've never even been off-station, Laila," he said in a low voice. "When I was a boy, it was all I could think about. Now… now I feel like having a panic attack every time I think about seeing a sky."
I reached out and took his hand in my own, curling my talons around his cybernetic fingers.
"You're going to do fine," I insisted. "Maybe just keep your helmet on though, just to start."
He gave a weak chuckle, and then his head went back to rest against the shower wall.
"You've got this," I whispered, giving his hand one more squeeze. "You've got me. It's just a matter of time and getting acclimated to the place. In no time at all, you'll be taking the sky for granted like any planet-born colonist. Now," I stood to my feet and extended my hand, "our meeting is in twenty minutes. Are you coming with me, or are you taking a shower first?"
I gave a perfunctory sniff and grimaced. "Never mind, shower first."
"Yes, ma'am." Khentu's smile was weak, but it was genuine. He reached up and I pulled him to his feet.
"Right," he snorted, resolution coming back into his eyes. "Let's do this."
About an hour later, the doors to the impromptu 'conference room' we had assembled opened, and Khentu walked in, looking much more like his ever-confident self. It was distinctly odd, I noted, to see so many of us in casual dress. On Omega, wearing armor was just as natural as breathing: an everyday fact of life, if one was interested in making that life a lengthy one. Ignatius was the only one who looked even remotely normal, his suit of armor replaced by a black floor-length robe that I had only seen him wear once or twice before. He was filling a coffee and handing it to Khentu, taking the opportunity to subtly engage him in conversation and gauge his psychological condition. I saw him shoot me a glance out of the corner of his eye and I gave him an appreciative nod. It was good to know that someone else was as wholeheartedly and altruistically invested in Khentu's well-being as myself.
In the corner of the room, Jesse Jalos was lounging with a carafe of that impossible-to-drink Hanar coffee, looking out the expansive window at the swirling maelstrom of FTL-space. I blinked as I realized that the last veteran of the original gang besides Khentu and I was nearing fifty standard years of age. That was old by drell standards, and ancient by the standards of a Terminus Systems mercenary.
Nakmor Chell was seated at the same table as Khen and Ignatius, holding the sleeping form of her "son." Khentu's not-so-miniature namesake could sleep through an aircar crash and didn't even bat an eye at the adults' laughing conversation. It was by Chell's indomitable will alone that we still had the Nakmor krogan for muscle. Exactly when Nakmor Khentu would learn of his true parentage and birthright… was an issue for another day, maybe even another generation.
At the next table over, Jehu ul Cokat sat, gingerly patting the Med-Patch that covered where one of his upper eyes had been. He hadn't regained his full balance and depth perception yet, but he was well on his way, and had thrown himself back into our reorganization efforts with gusto. Leaning against him, Jasmine El Sadat was hugging the arm wrapped around her chest, resting her head almost on the lap of her batarian boyfriend. There was a significant age difference between the two, but none of us had made any big deal over it. Since the loss of her brother, Jasmine had seemed determined to step into the enormous hole Osman had left behind, and any comfort she could derive from her and Jehu's relationship was well-deserved happiness, in my opinion.
In the corner, Muerta'Harel sat alone, nursing her own cup of coffee through a straw. She was far from the naïve pilgrim she presented herself as to those who didn't know her well. I wasn't very familiar with the Migrant Fleet and their customs, but I did know that her surname of "nar Galaw" denoted that she was a quarian criminal, meaning that her departure from her people had been less than voluntary. I had no idea what kind of crime the Flotilla would have considered worthy of exile, but I had a feeling that wasn't anything petty. Of all of the Legends' senior members, she was the most likely to be a problem in the future.
In the chaos surrounding our annexation of Kima, she had gathered a small faction of the closest thing to 'dissidents' that Khentu could permit. In the time since then, she had been the most vocal opponent of our policies. Of course, the Battle of the Deeps had deprived her of most of her cronies and their support, and she had fought just as hard as any of us, and proved not only her military leadership, but her administrative talent as well. She would be a valuable asset on Dahje, but neither Khentu or myself intended to let her run around without one or both of us keeping a careful eye on her in the future.
"All right, all right, gather round, everyone," Khentu's shout brought me back to the present, and I tore myself away from the window to join everyone else around the long central table. Khentu gave a carefully casual look at each of the table's occupants, and I knew that he was thinking the same things and coming to the same conclusions I was. "I hereby call this meeting of the Legends to order, yada, yada, yada, and so forth, let's get this done. Jesse?"
"Going by the latest reports, our arrival will be increasing the planet's overall population by nearly fifty-five percent," the drell reported, holding up a datapad of his own. "We've got the modular pods that we can assemble quickly for temporary shelter, but they won't be worth kralka when the monsoon season hits, roughly nine standard months from now. We'll have to make that one of our highest priorities, once we get dirt-side."
Khentu nodded, and then lifted an eyebrow at the next figure at the table.
"Going by those same 'official reports'," Ignatius said gravely, "the soil on Dehje is not compatible with most crops, but they report the colony has a full hydroponics bay more than capable of servicing the colony. I fully expect that most of that report is a complete fabrication designed to cover incompetence and corruption," he went on, waving his hands in a dismissive gesture, "but I also figure that the colonists have to be eating something besides basic protein bars. If even a quarter of what they reported is true, it'll be a good starting point for our own food production."
"Nakmor will be organizing several hunts once we arrive," Chell added. "If the local wildlife proves compatible, they should provide the colony with a much fresher source of protein."
"Good," Khentu nodded. "We're just about all set, then. Does anyone have any last-minute revelations, questions, or perspectives?"
There was a moment of silence, and then Muerta shifted in her chair.
"I would just like to suggest that Procyon will be worth more dead than alive," the quarian insisted stubbornly.
Several occupants of the table groaned outright at the revival of the now weeks-old argument. Kaeso Procyon was the current "supervisor" of the Dahje Outpost and Foundry. By the official reports he sent in on a regular basis, he was the efficient leader of a prosperous and flourishing colony. According to the much more covert, and much more reliable, sources of information flowing back to Omega, the overweight turian was the inept ringleader of the thugs skimming from the struggling outpost, foundry, and the poverty-stricken inhabitants that were attempting to make a living in the shithole.
"He has local contacts," Muerta said loudly over the groans and protests. "His authority is the one the locals are already predisposed to obey."
"And that's the problem," Chell grunted. "If Khentu is going to be the colony leader…"
"His loyalty is next to guaranteed, if we spare his life," Muerta cut off the female krogan's interruption. "And his motivation to perform well for us will be off the charts, given he'll only be too aware of the alternative we chose not to use. His every day of existence will be at our sufferance."
She held up her hands in a half-shrug, half-imploring gesture.
"I'm just saying that we wouldn't have to start from scratch when it comes time to set up our authority structure."
"Those are all valid points, Muerta," Khentu said, holding up a hand to cut off any other responses the rest of us might have made. "But the fact that he is the current leader is the very reason we can't leave him alone. As you said yourself, he'll already have a network of cronies and henchmen in his own back pocket. He'd have to have them, or else the locals would have strangled him in his sleep long ago. Leave him alive, and that sends the wrong message to the rest of the people of the colony. We'd just be more of the same; version two-point-zero. We need to differentiate ourselves from him and his ilk and show the consequences of failure and incompetence."
"But on the other hand," Ignatius responded, holding up a hand of his own towards the clearly peeved quarian biotic, "won't killing him and making examples of his cronies just make us more of the same anyway? 'Tyrannical Invaders from Outer Space,' supporting an oppressive dictatorship from far away, that sort of thing?"
"Exactly," Muerta nodded. The tone of surprise at the priest's support of her own position was obvious, but she was clearly willing to take whatever support she could get.
"If this guy is half as incompetent as I think he is," Khentu shrugged, "we'll be the liberators, sent in to reestablish law and order."
"As Khentu said," I added, "we need to firmly establish ourselves as outside the existing power structure on-planet. If we just replace Procyon and his goons, we'll have the worst of both worlds: the people and the workers will hate us for not punishing him, and he and his supporters will hate us for supplanting them and taking away their cash cow."
"Precisely." Khentu gave me a nod of gratitude and approval. "We need one of those on our side, and personally, I'd rather have the side that Aria hasn't personally and publicly declared untrustworthy and incompetent. She's made her displeasure with Procyon fairly obvious."
He waved a hand around the table to emphasize his words.
"That's why we're even being sent out here, Muerta," he insisted. "We need to win over the everyday person-on-the-street, if our own people are going to have any future here. Because, unlike Procyon, we're not here to make money. Well," he admitted, "not just to make money. We're here to make a home."
Nods were going around the room, and even Muerta looked less sullen at being overruled again. But before she could make any admittance of defeat, the shipboard com unit on the wall buzzed and blinked red. Khentu set down the cup of coffee he was holding and walked over to press the acceptance key.
"Emrys."
"Good morning, Mr. Emrys," came the female voice that I recognized as the Destiny's executive officer. "I'm to inform you that we are ending our FTL jump in approximately three shipboard hours from now. Captain Horatio extends his compliments and would like to invite you and your officers to join him on the bridge at that time."
Khentu and I shared a look. Captain Horatio had been the very model of a professional turian naval officer, but this represented a monumental curtesy on his part towards what was, for all intents and purposes, his "cargo."
"My compliments to the captain," Khen replied quickly, "and we would be honored to do so."
"Very good, sir."
Approximately three hours later, we were all standing on the command bridge of the Destiny of Dawn, clad from head to toe in armor that was painted in the black-and-red of the Legends. It was much more polished and uniform that the Legends had ever bothered with while on Omega. But the five and a half weeks that we had been in transit to our destination had given us time for a lot of things that had been secondary compared to our survival.
The relay-assisted jump from Omega to the Hourglass Nebula had been accomplished in a matter of days, but the much-slower FTL travel from the Hourglass Nebula to the relay-less Invictus Cluster had been a very long trek indeed for the Destiny's civilian-grade drive. The Duat, and even the Fury, could have accomplished the task in half the time, but the decision had been made to hold their speed back, so as to arrive at the Kapotas System simultaneously. We did not want to invoke very recent memories of krogan raiding parties as a part of our people's arrival at Dahje.
Captain Horatio was perched on his command chair, and anyone looking at him would have been forgiven for thinking he was some Xenthan admiral on his flagship, rather than the commander of a converted slaver. His crew likewise worked with a precision and discipline that any military ship might have envied, which bespoke volumes about their captain's character, in my opinion.
"Helm, we are preparing to exit FTL," one of the crew members reported from her station.
"Very good," the turian captain nodded, the timber of his bass voice reminding me of the long-dead Agrippa. The memory brought with it its own pang of loss, albeit muted over the passage of time. "Take us out, Mykel."
"Cutting FTL drive in 3…2… 1," came the reply.
The swirling scene in front of us shifted suddenly as the ship snapped back into the startling clarity of normal space. The scene before seemed to be pitch black, except for the binary suns at the center of the system.
Out of the corner of my helmet's vision, I could see Khentu trying valiantly not to become violently ill, and suddenly realized that this was, in fact, the very first time he had experienced the disorienting transition. I was genuinely impressed by the fact that not only did Khentu not vomit into his helmet, but also managed to stay on his feet while the ship went through its cool-down procedures.
"Mr. Emrys," Captain Horatio stated, turning to give a courteous nod in our direction, "We are arrived. Maximize grid 1-40-32."
The viewscreen of the bridge zoomed in on a corner close to the system's twin suns and the expanding image of a grey-brown orb came suddenly into focus. It was a small planet, to be sure, unimpressive in almost every way, but for us, it represented so much more. That little hunk of rock with an atmosphere was for us, the entirety of our future. A new life, on a new world. I saw Khentu turn towards me, and I knew his smile was just as broad as mine.
"Welcome to Dahje."
Author's Note:
Well everyone, I want to thank you for sticking with us for this story! This is all of the story that Kat-2V and I had planned, and I'm grateful to all of you for sticking by us!
When I first envisioned this story, I wanted to tell the story of someone actually living in the universe of Mass Effect, but not from the perspective of of the great movers and shakers (like Shepard and Co.). I wanted to tell the story of someone growing up on the streets of Omega, and how they view their "world" and the galaxy around them. I've had a ton of fun telling the story of the Blood Arrows, and I hope all of you enjoyed it as well!
As always, your thoughts/ suggestions/ comments/ constructive criticisms are welcome both in the reviews below, and in my PM's! Thanks so much for your awesome support throughout this story! You all are the best!
EE-RAH!
-Tusken1602
