"The Alliance was certainly eager to test out the results of their handiwork—pairing the remains of my organic mind with a synthetic analogue. A monumental breakthrough in cybernetic technology, one that they were so jealous in guarding to the outside galaxy. Unlike Cerberus, who only had designs on fully integrating the human brain with a programmable VI, the Alliance had been more resourceful and realistic in their modifications. My mind was still my own, but now had the additional processing power to compute calculations of cyclomatic complexity, at a McCabe Metric of up to 13.
I was therefore seen as a useful asset for cryptography. They quickly devised a test for me to conquer. The fourth section of Kryptos, still unsolved even after more than a century. A trial that even the greatest cryptographers of the current age had tried to tackle, without success.
A truth of cryptography to note is that the systems devised by organics always have a fatal flaw of some kind. Kryptos was no exception—the sculptor of which had admitted to multiple misspellings of the solutions he had encoded. Some on purpose and some on accident. But the solutions to his previous three sections were all based on classical cryptographic schemes: Transposition and the Vigenère Cipher. It only seemed sensible that another classical methodology would be utilized, to keep with the theme the sculptor had intended. Also, the puzzle itself had to be devised by a human mind. Anything other than that would render the code itself too impenetrable. But too simple and the code would have been broken long ago—this ruled out polyalphabetic ciphers such as Alberti's Disk, the tabula rasa scheme, and the Jefferson Cipher.
There were three decoded clues that led me to the solution, all had been revealed publicly by the creator: BERLIN, CLOCK, NORTHEAST. It had been long speculated that the words "CLOCK" and "BERLIN" were referring to the Mengenlehreuhr, the "Set Theory Clock" located in Berlin. What puzzled people was that the clock is located on the west side of Berlin, which made the clue of "NORTHEAST" all the more confusing. Yet there remains a part of history that many people have overlooked. In 1995, the clock was decommissioned and moved northeast to a new location where it currently stands. The original location, the focal point for the northeast direction, is now inhabited by a more unassuming four-sided clock—that mysteriously also includes multiple misspellings and symbols written on its faces. It is there that the typographic errors now become clear for their inclusion. In a certain order, they comprise an Enigma cipher for the misspelled Kryptos words. The sculptor had embedded a key into his own riddle. Upon realizing this, the solution was decoded in mere moments. The Alliance was pleased with their handiwork, though they could never advertise who solved the final Kryptos riddle as doing so would reveal their newest black-box asset."
Final Monograph: Transcriptions of an Augury
Unknown Author, (pg. 44)
Reprinted by permission of Purdue University
Menhir
XO's Cabin
Roahn could not sleep. Her eyelids felt like they weighed fifty pounds each, keeping them locked wide open. Laying upon the cushioned surface of the bed, she could feel the soft rumble of the Menhir as they spat towards the system's mass relay. She felt like her whole life was one gigantic haze of pain and sickness—she had taken a double dose of medi-gel to set her broken bones and to clot her cuts, stemming the worst of the damage that she had received from the Haxan. Even after ingesting enough medication to sedate a horse, her body was still throbbing.
The Haxan. One more of Aleph's cronies to deal with. How many did he have under his wing? But unlike Raucous, one of the examples that had come before, this cyborg had demonstrated a retention of their wits. Theirs had been a simmering anger, a quiet rage, one that they were all too eager to demonstrate through their actions alone. And unlike the Cardinal, there had been no subservient deference to a higher authority that she could perceive. No, the Haxan was something else. As primordial as the rest, but intelligent. Powerful. Almost as a reflection of its own creator.
"What are you?" had been her question to the gargantuan cyborg. "Another Legionnaire?"
"Better," had been the responding hiss.
Keelah. When is this going to end?
Currently the quarian was in a half-undressed state. Her short hair flowed free upon the blanket as she lay upward, the visor to her helmet teetertottering from side to side on the ground, having been deposited upside-down hours prior. Her enviro-suit was zipped down to her waist, exposing her skin from that point on up. Roahn was far past a state of caring towards her appearance, her fatigue taking a large amount of that responsibility. The thin matrix of scars that lightly crisscrossed her stomach and upper arms seemed to stand out in stark white ridges. Embedded lines of cybernetics just under her skin rose like engorged veins, an artificial web that segmented her body. She remained in her prone state, listening to the warped hum of the air recyclers. Feeling the softness of that air brush her skin. It mitigated some of the pain, at the very least.
It was as if she was afraid to go to sleep, that strange dreams about demons would come rising from the graves that they had been long buried in. She could easily imagine statues of metal and carbon sinew skulking in the shadows, waiting to seize her as soon as she dropped off into a tormented sleep. It felt like refusing to succumb to such rest would be an act of defiance all on its own. And Roahn was quite keen to defy.
Roahn soon got tired of doing nothing on her bed, simply waiting for her body to heal. She sat up, neck stiff, and headed over to the small cabinet that had been bolted on the wall next to the bathroom door. She grabbed a heatable food tube—some kind of soup in a thick metal cylinder. She twisted the bottom of the canister, which started the heating process with a solid click. In half a minute, Roahn felt the tube grow warm in her hand.
Soon, the quarian was drinking the soup out of a disposable cup, enviro-suit still dangling about her waist, her belly limply rising and falling while her lungs pressed against her corrugated ribs. It was a strange sensation, sipping. For most of her life she drank her liquids or foods through induction tubes if she was lucky—most of the time intestinal ports would be the method of introducing her daily dose of nutrients. As she ate, she spilled some of the soup at the corners of the mouth, which was why she always kept a napkin handy. She sat at the small rounded table in her cabin, half-naked, eating her food while she watched unfiltered war clips she could find while lurking on the deepweb.
She could not tear herself away from the chaos on the main feed. The settings on each page may have been different but they were showing the same things. PMCs and other security forces going off without supervision again. Committing atrocities. Murder. Rape. Subscreens along the border crowded the digital expanse, also projecting similar grim scenes. Raw footage like this lacked the sort of context and dry commentary from military talking heads that would otherwise try to tamper down on the emotional content. Here, the violence and pain was in living color, cinematographically poor, but possessing a hurtful realism that not even the most well-produced vids could hope to replicate. Feeds from personal displays, sensor arrays, and underground war journalists were flooding the darkest parts of the extranet with all the film they could upload, in part because the most popular social clip sites were controlled by the big media conglomerates, and their auto-filters were always on, always watching.
The clips were unbearable to watch, but Roahn felt that she needed to see them. She could not turn her head away, her soul yearning to feel the same hurt, to drag her down to the most piteous level so she could take that pain and transform it into righteous anger. To have it fuel her, keep her going.
The images flashed by, one after another, like an abstract modern art photomontage. One clip displayed a rolling landscape of golden hills where a coniferous forest was on fire. Smoke and flames gushed into the air, producing a wall of black clouds so thick they almost seemed solid. At the base of the treeline, where trunks of the towering firs were outlined and rimmed red by the out-of-control blaze, dark shapes of armored men in the colors of the PMC Messerschmitt were dragging out humans in rags, one by one. The contractors looked pristine compared to the soot-streaked faces of the men and women and children they had just hauled out from the woods, which numbered around ten or twelve. There was no audio—subtitles at the bottom of the footage handled that aspect. The mercenaries talked among themselves as they lined the unarmed group up a couple dozen meters from where the blaze was raging. They did not reveal what world they were on, but Roahn could glean that the PMC was on assignment to round up people setting up illegal colonies (otherwise unauthorized) on what would seem to be a prime garden world whose lease was managed by a particularly influential corporation. The people they had pulled from the forest must be what the company had constituted to be "illegal" in this part of the planet. Thankfully, the clip did not focus on the faces of Messerschmitt's prisoners, but Roahn would intermittently pause the footage so that she would be able to see the soft branches of tear trails that had snaked paths through the dirt, blood, and grime that had plastered upon their faces. She took care to notice the bevy of bruises and cuts that lingered there too—on the women and children, as well. Messerschmitt clearly did not discriminate with their punishments.
The violent conclusion came to a head as the PMC watched the fire spread closer to their position. Once it had reached the forest's edge, they waved over two of their pyro units, bulbs of flames trembling like lit candles at the muzzles of their black hoses. Roahn slowly blinked as she watched all this unfold on the screen, hands clasped before her mouth, but she did not turn away. The flamethrowers hissed and finally roared, spewing their payload in bright wedges. The civilians' mouths all opened in horror, in agony, as they were doused with the fuel and finally the fire. They raised their arms to the heavens for a split second, perhaps a final plea for a celestial intervention, before they fell to the ground and writhed in their final throes, their skin already blackened and crackling, the hair on their heads vanishing into ash in mere seconds.
They're getting away with it. No one is doing a damn thing. The children, too. Keelah, the children…
Roahn switched to the next clip after the bodies of the civilians had finished moving and the PMC had begun egressing away to an awaiting shuttle. Something foul was starting to bubble in her gut.
She did not spend as long on the next sequence this time. The clip had begun in medias re, and it was not showing a particularly pretty sight. A group of krogan, huddled in a stone crevasse—a cave, most likely—with a string of light-wire throwing up harsh fields of illumination behind their rocky bodies. They were all crowded around something in the middle of their congregated pack. A turian woman, completely undressed, legs spread open with a krogan in between them. The audio had not been clipped out this time—Roahn had frantically hit the mute button the very second she had heard the woman's shrieks filter through the speakers.
She only watched the clip for five seconds, but it might as well have been five hours. There was no realistic way she was ever getting these images out of her head. It was like everything in this small shred of footage had been subjugated to a dark and pulsating red filter, like a myopia was wrapping around her neck, draining her of blood, of consciousness, that produced this sickly fever dream. Looking upon the fear on the turian's face, Roahn saw only the dulled slabs of stone that were her eyes, completely devoid of hope, no longer capable of imagining anything that was good. The only thing that remained was the vague notion that this all had to end at some point, whether that was a minute, a day, or a year from now. Sooner or later, she would be left alone.
I have to kill them all. They all need to fucking die.
The next vid feed was unedited police body camera footage—an oxymoron in of itself—from what looked like Sur'Kesh. The shaky footage showed a stout apartment building about six stories tall with shattered or boarded-up windows. Presumably this was a structure in the less economically fortunate part of a city. Making matters worse though, was the slow revelation that the building was completely surrounded on all sides by salarian security forces and armor, which included a good collection of hover-tanks and Mantis gunboats. From the rickety and grime-streaked main entrance, the cops were forming a corridor out of two rows as multiple people, mostly salarians, were slowly walking their way from the building, hands held high in the air while they walked between the ragged lines. One of the officers bent to a colleague as they watched the silent procession, muttering something regarding a "pseusozepherine lab", as the subtitles revealed, which Roahn knew was a popular lab-made drug that was particularly potent to salarians. Pseusozepherine, or Zeph, as it was known on the street, produced feelings of intense euphoria and was classified as a rather strong stimulant for salarians. On other species, the effect was negligible, as the metabolism of a salarian naturally heightens the effect of modern drugs on their system, but it was the only compound a salarian could effectively take without risking a sudden and lethal heart attack.
The single file line of lab cooks continued to seep out of the abandoned block. One of the police officers stepped through the steam-soaked street, momentarily interrupting the columns of high-powered spotlamps, and tapped the shoulder of a sergeant standing in the flanking column. He pointed out a perpetrator in the line, a gray-skinned salarian with orange flecks, and gave his head a subtle tilt. "—that's him. Bonus will be in your account by EOD," was all the subtitles managed to pick up. The sergeant immediately stepped forward, unhooking his pistol from his holster in a smooth motion. The victim never saw his killer approaching. The sergeant raised his weapon and for a fleeting moment, the captive salarian turned, perhaps noticing the gun but not registering it, like cattle poised before the hammer in a slaughterhouse. The pistol went off twice and the drug manufacturer's head snapped back, sickly green matter exploding from the other side of his skull. His brains splattered over the face of the woman standing next to him, an asari, who started flapping her hands and screaming as she started to realize what had just happened.
Giving a tired wave, Roahn cycled to the next feed, her gut continuing to cramp with a sour sensation. It was not due to the soup, she knew that much.
Everyone's now got an excuse to mindlessly kill all that don't meet their mold. Even the people that aren't necessarily good. It's like Aleph's given them all the right to murder.
Her prosthesis now gripped her right forearm, the metal of which was now warm to the touch after she had been tightly clenching her other hand upon it for the last hour, hot blood thundering against the polished surface.
Upon the screen, Roahn was now watching the feed from a home's security system. A human family of three was huddled in the corner of what appeared to be a ramshackle abode—the floor was roughened concrete with only a dusty and frayed rug barely covering it. The walls were pieces of metal that rattled in their foundations. Light the color of brass sloughed in from a nearby window—occasionally the camera could filter through the diffusing illumination to reveal quick hints of movement outside, but it was difficult to discern the absolute location of the house and its occupants. The only context that Roahn could use to determine the severity of the situation was the outside audio, which was distorted and scratchy, but still discernable. Trembling thuds could be heard, seemingly just behind the thin walls of the hut. Explosions—from the faint crackle that trailed after the initial boom, Roahn deduced that the detonations were plasma in nature. Sharp hisses and snaps rippled by the windows—bullets from rifles. The walls were pockmarked by tiny dots—bullet holes—that spewed thin columns of light into the room. There was even the metallic ka-chung of artillery rounds being fired nearby. Long, chugging clangs, like someone was explosively coughing through a metal pipe. Mortar rounds and cannon shells from emplacements or mobile weapons platforms boomed. The stuttering rumbling of tanks roaring just outside was hard to miss, as well. From the way the footage was rattling, it was apparent that a warzone was literally occurring just outside the house. Either that, or the world here was subjected to constant earthquakes. Veins of dust trickled from the ceiling from the unrelenting vibrations and the family huddled closer together.
"Let it be over!" the woman, the mother, screamed in the footage as a nearby explosion nearly shook the shack to rubble. "Oh… oh, god. When will it be over?!"
"I can't stay here!" the father, was yelling through a momentary lull in the fighting. "I have to go get help!"
"No!" the woman frantically grasped at her husband as he tried to stand. "No! They'll kill you! They're killing everyone out there!"
The man managed to free himself from his wife as he now stood tall in the center of the kitchen, light falling upon his face like he was an angelic figure. Another explosion turned one of the windows brown as a geyser of dirt erupted nearby—a couple panes of glass cracked as sharp stones were thrown against it.
"They'll kill all of us if we continue to stay put! Damn these corporate bastards—we're deep in the lines of the Alliance. I can go to the nearest checkpoint and come back with a rescue squad. After that, we're—"
The mass accelerator round that killed the man was initially soundless as it passed through one wall of the shack before exiting out the other. The projectile's arc just so happened to intersect with the man's head, whose mass was not enough to stop the 155mm round from exploding right there in the kitchen. It was over in an instant, like the flick of a switch. The man's body collapsed to the ground, the stump of his neck oozing blood in a quickly growing pool around him, almost as if it was straining to reach the clustered feet of his remaining family, whose eyes were growing wider and wider, mouths swallowing air in large gulps as the weight of what had just happened only started to make itself apparent upon them.
That was all Roahn could finally take. Something lurched in the lowest recesses of her stomach—a twisting knot. She doubled over in her seat as a wave of nausea hammered the back of her eyeballs, momentarily blinding her vision with white spots like cigarette burns. As she stood, she gave a firm swipe to send the screen back to the home page, away from all the grief and misery. But that was too little, too late. Another wave threatened to overtake her. There was no choice but to commit to it.
She dashed to the bathroom and threw on the light. Roahn only had time to appraise the blue metal of the toilet, dim and mauve from the artificial lamps, before she dropped to her knees and stuck her head into it, closing her eyes as she vomited copiously into the bowl. Colors like peeling spectra slithered across the back of her eyelids. Her body felt like it was orienting 180 degrees over itself. She remained hovering and coughing over the toilet, her hand grasping at the flushing mechanism so that she would not have to look at whatever she had just deposited. There was a foul taste in her mouth and her throat felt dry and burned. Her stomach felt tight against her diaphragm and she dry heaved once or twice more before the sensation passed. Taking it easy, Roahn kept herself where she was, refusing to lift herself back up until she was sure that she had thrown up all that she could right now.
The quarian later walked back out, grimacing with her hand at her stomach, looking very much disheveled. She reached underneath her bed and withdrew a bottle of dextro whisky she had previously swiped from a cache the team had come across a few weeks ago. There was nothing else in her room that would wash the taste of vomit from her mouth—this would simply have to do. Grabbing a nearby disposable cup, Roahn poured a generous amount of the liquor and quickly consumed it in a single gulp. She spluttered as the bite of the alcohol seemed to embed itself into her gums. Safe to say that this was a particularly young whisky—it had more burn than flavor.
"Agh…" she spluttered, making a face. "Oh… that's awful."
Regardless, she was soon pouring herself another dram. The soothing caress of drunkenness hinted at cures previously thought unobtainable. Medicine for a darkened mind. Roahn was all too eager for a vaccine and was soon downing swallow after swallow, the burn lessening with each intake.
In rapid fashion, Roahn's vision turned watery, as if she had stepped directly underneath a running showerhead. She still had most of her wits about her, for the time being, and she staggered her way back over to the table, where the home screen of her console was still patiently glowing, as if it had anticipated her subsequent return.
Her limbs tingling with numbness, Roahn languidly blinked as she keyed the cursor to open up one of the ship's ONet trawling program—she had previously written a program upon returning from Earth to comb as many corners of the extranet as possible, even including connections to classified databases that they had access to, for any reference to the "Outpost 99" that she had uncovered from the medical base. She remembered what Korridon had told her about the likelihood of the moniker being fictitious, but Roahn had not yet succumbed to that kind of defeatist attitude yet. She needed to see the results for herself before the desperation would set in.
"Outpost… 99…" she slurred, emphasizing each syllable for an unusually longer than normal amount of time. "Need to… find… wherever this… this… ah, shit." She gave up on trying to voice her sentence.
Her programmatic search was still running, but Roahn was lucid enough to see the big fat "0" where it said "DEFINITIVE KEYWORD MATCH." The program had flagged a few secondary results in case they contained any clues to the whereabouts of Outpost 99, but they were all pretty much useless, from what she could tell. At the moment, all the program had been able to find was the name of a similarly titled RPG franchise, unrelated singles from hardcore stel-grind bands, social media handles, a self-published online book, and a poorly rated bar on Illium. Nothing that would otherwise denote the existence of a top-secret Alliance base.
Shifting in her seat, Roahn's frow deepened as she reached out for the bottle of whisky once more. So, this Outpost 99 was playing hard to get, eh? Well, she was not one to back down from a challenge like this. She would obtain the results she wanted soon enough. All this would take was perseverance.
Scratching at an itch near her hip, the bare-chested quarian scowled as she realized it had grown quite warm in the room. Fortunately, that was also something that could be easily remedied.
Korridon wandered out of the Menhir's bathroom with a yawn, having sought a mirror for which to utilize while he reapplied his orange faceplate to his carapace. He rolled his neck, producing a few solid crackles from stressed vertebrae. He had just woken up from a short nap not fifteen minutes ago and was currently in the midst of staving off any encroaching fatigue. His next shift was not until a few hours from now, so he had some time to kill.
He was actually looking to reserve some server time in preparation for his upcoming shift—there were a few propulsion calculations that needed to be performed, nothing quite so strenuous on the ship's database—but what intrigued him, when he opened the corresponding program, was that a significant portion of the Menhir's servers were currently all concentrated on an individual process registered underneath a singular ident code. It was of no surprise to Korridon to realize that the ID was Roahn's.
She's getting a head start on the data. Wonder if she's made any progress with it yet.
He very well could have messaged her to get her take on the possible results, but for some reason the turian could only think of talking to her in person. At this moment, Sam came around the corner, bleary-eyed, holding a stale bagel in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
"Sam," Korridon asked as the human passed him by, "you know where Roahn's gone to?"
"If she's smart, Vegas," the human muttered quite unhelpfully. He continued to walk past Korridon without stopping to hypothesize a legitimate answer, leaving the turian dumbstruck and alone in the hallway as he headed towards the med bay.
"Unbelievable," he shook his head. Seeing as he was zero for one in making direct inquires, Korridon gave up on the idea of asking anyone else and instead headed for Roahn's room, the most logical place to start.
He knocked twice and announced his name towards the shut threshold, almost as if it was a password.
"Roahn? You inside?"
Much like the last few times he had been in this exact position, no voice from the other side uttered back. Ordinarily, Korridon would have taken this as a sign that the quarian was elsewhere on the ship and have left to look for her. The door was unlocked—also an indication of her absence from her room. But for some reason, the turian persisted in remaining, a funny feeling overcoming him.
He did not announce his intrusion as he palmed the door lock, causing it to split apart and allow him access. Korridon blinked as his eyes fought to get used to the darkness of the room. He got the sensation that he was trespassing in a place he was not supposed to be, but he fought through that uncomfortable perception as he treaded further inside, the door sliding shut behind him and dousing him further into blackness.
There was a rattle as his foot hit something heavy. Korridon bent down to retrieve it. It was an empty whisky bottle, a turian brand. Korridon turned the container over, the glass mutilating the warm light of a nearby desk lamp, and he noted the miniscule droplets of liquid amber creeping around the bottom, having evaded being drunk. But through the thick and refracted curvature of the drained decanter, he could see the shift of shadows, making him jump where he stood. Someone had been sitting at the desk next to the lamp the entire time he had been here. From their chair, they raised their head up off the desk, hair falling around their eyes, having been using their arms as pillows. They tried and failed to stifle a yawn, squinting at Korridon as they fought to regain focus in their vision.
"Korr…" they mumbled through fumbling lips. "That… you?"
Now able to see a bit better, Korridon nearly dropped the bottle as he realized what he was looking at.
"Oh… crap," he uttered in a strangled half-whisper.
Roahn staggered to her feet, legs wobbling in defiance. The first thing that Korridon was able to tell right off the bat was that the quarian was heavily inebriated, both from how torturously slurred her words were and from the fact that her balance was shot to hell.
The second thing he noticed was that she was completely naked.
The glow from the lamp hurled tasteful shadows across the quarian's body, drenching one side of her in soft rays, almost as if that part of her had caught fire. The muscles of her thighs and abdomen were clearly outlined, a dark abyss where her navel was. Korridon dared not let his gaze linger forwardly upon Roahn, his efforts putting such a strain on him that he felt his back was about to give out. But she was slender and powerful—exactly as he imagined. Her previously suited form had allowed his imagination to make no wild guesses. Even intoxicated, Roahn's slanted smile oozed confidence, a brashness that was in no way sexual, for a primordial urge had seemed to have taken hold of her, gripped her in its clutches to perhaps make a gaping idiot out of her newest guest.
It took Korridon longer than he would have liked to have come to a decision, but once he got his wits back, he was proud at how perfunctorily he whirled on a heel, now facing back toward the doors with his eyes open as wide as they could go.
"I'll leave," was all he said as he reached toward the door controls, already in the process of mentally chastising himself for being so hasty in entering the room.
"No… s'all right…" he heard her call behind him. "Nothin' to be… to be 'fraid about."
He stopped just before the door. "I can't look at you."
"Why not?"
"You're drunk and you're naked. On top of that, you're my commander."
He heard Roahn make a soft groan behind him.
"I need to… talk to… someone. Please stay."
"It isn't right."
"Don't care… what you think," she slurred.
Korridon's rear teeth ground together in frustration. He slowly turned around, despite the alarm bells going off in his head. "That part certainly hasn't changed," he said. After a moment of dreadful silence, he gave a pithy shrug, having the gentle curved form of Roahn exist in the corner of his eye. "You, uh… going to mention why you don't have any clothes on?"
"Wasn't comfortable. Suit made everything too hot."
"And the drinking?" he raised the bottle in his hand.
Roahn unleashed a rather girlish giggle, which had the effect of unnerving the turian. "Not like… I had this all planned, Korr. Had to do something… to wipe it away."
"Wipe what away? Roahn?"
"The failures. My failures. For every life I could not save. To show them why I was so helpless. For them to understand that I tried. That I did my best. They need to see that I haven't forgotten them… that I feel them every single day… with every breath that I take… their failures become my failures. As if I have to remind myself of what I could not do… what I could never do—"
The quarian was rambling, not making any sense. Korridon timidly looked Roahn's way, his efforts to look only upon her face an exercise in sheer willpower. There was something starkly free in the way she stared back at him. It was as if she was a sculpted simulacrum whose previously invisible imperfections were now becoming all the more apparent. Her eyes dripped sadness and swollen memories, sensations that shredded the turian right down to the bone. Right there, he realized he was looking at more than one of Roahn's vulnerabilities—secrets that he was now implicitly beholden to keep.
The quarian trilled a roughened laugh. "I look at them all. How they cry for help. How they just want to see an end to all this. They've lost everything… and they'll never get it back. They're all dying… and I can't do a thing about it—"
"Stop it," Korridon cut in and walked over so he could place his hands on Roahn's bare shoulders after he set the empty whisky bottle down, preventing her from rambling further. His chest was so close to the naked quarian, but he let that aspect leave his mind without fanfare. Now he was firmly concentrated on the topography of the quarian's face, but there was an underlying energy in his studies, an intimacy he never would have anticipated. He watched the wobble of her aquamarine irises, which were fighting to stay still. Finally, they locked eyes and her own gaze seemed to sense the calmness that emanated from his own expression, siphoning it and taking it within herself. Korridon felt Roahn's body relax in his grip.
"I just wanted—" Roahn tried to say.
"Just stop," was his firm rebuttal. "You don't need to say any more."
The turian's eyes then flicked over to the screen that Roahn had just left unattended. He noted the words "Outpost 99" typed into one of the keyword boxes for the ONet search he now realized was being run, but said nothing of it to Roahn.
"Was that bottle full when you started on it?"
The quarian lurched heavily to the side, still smiling lopsidedly. "Why? 'S not like it's gonna last very long. Suit'll have the… the alcohol flushed out annnny minute now."
Korridon looked down and nudged the crumpled clothing with a foot. "You wouldn't happen to be talking about this suit, would you?"
For the first time, confusion fluttered across the young quarian's face. She looked down to where her enviro-suit had puddled like a shed chrysalis and back up to Korridon, lips pursing together as though as she was just starting to comprehend her own nakedness. Her hand then felt along her abdomen towards a trapezoidal-shaped metal port just above her hip bone, one which would ordinarily be connected to her suit had she still been donning it.
"Toxin filter should be… here," she muttered slowly, with determination, still not yet convinced that its absence was definite.
"Well… it isn't. I really don't know what else I can say."
Her face slid towards a grimace. "This is starting to make sense."
"How long you think you've been drunk?"
Roahn's head now swayed back and forth like she was a blade of grass caught in the wind.
"Hour… maybe two."
"Damn it, Roahn…"
Before he could chastise her further, Roahn's eyes suddenly bulged as well as her cheeks. Hands clasped to her mouth, the groaning quarian sprinted towards the bathroom. Retching sounds crept around the corner seconds later. Korridon quickly followed to find Roahn hunched over the toilet in perhaps the most demeaning and compromising position he could ever imagine her being in. The bones of her spine were ridged knobs against the skin of her back like that of an archaic apex predator. Her nudity was now a non-factor for him—he walked over and knelt by the stricken woman and gently pulled some of the strands of hair from her face, holding them away from her mouth as she continued to fill the bowl with vomit.
After one of her spasms passed, Roahn's ridged back shuddered—Korridon realized that she was laughing.
"Can't believe it…" she said around crazed peals. "You're actually holding my hair. Thought that only happened in vids—"
Another lurching wave of nausea took her as Korridon rolled his eyes, not knowing what to say. Roahn ducked her head back in and there was the sickening splash of something heavy against the metal of the toilet. The quarian's hands were now holding on for dear life on both sides of the latrine, hard enough that the knuckles in her right hand turned white and the dimensions of the seat where her left hand was grasping were starting to indent out of their proportions.
As he kept one particular tuft from intruding its way into the stream of sick from Roahn's mouth, Korridon reached down a little bit towards her upper back. His palm hovered over her body for a second, trying to gauge whether this was the time or place for such a move to be considered necessary. In the end, he conceded to his gut reaction and placed his hand down, patting her between her shoulder blades—a seemingly paltry gesture, but one that unknowingly produced radiating waves of calmness throughout the stricken quarian.
This continued for five more minutes, with Roahn's bouts slowly growing weaker and weaker as she purged the last of the undigested liquor in her body. There was a subtle gyration that seemed to generate from her legs on upward. She finally lifted her head, her chin streaked with foulness. Exhausted, she rested her forearms against the toilet seat as she tried and failed to prop her body further upward. Korridon craned his head and was shocked to see the deluge of tears storming their way down the quarian's face. For how long Roahn had been sobbing, he could not say. Nor could he hope to hazard a guess as to why she was crying. Her state right now, he figured, had been brought on by an emotion completely untranslatable to him. As foreign as the language she spoke in her mother tongue. An unprocessed stream of pure feeling, as exposed in her thoughts as she was currently with her body. Raw and overwhelming, paralytic in its sensation.
He gently took her by the shoulders once more. "You're a mess," he whispered to her as he helped her to her feet. "Come. Into the shower."
Korridon hit the button to start the flow of water from the nozzled head. He positioned Roahn right underneath the stream, but made sure not to step in with her. The quarian's tears mingled with the water as she continued to bawl, her face losing more and more of its composure as she slowly transitioned into an inconsolable grief. Her hands were hooked into claws, grasping at only thin air while they wildly shook from the effect of the alcohol wearing off.
"S-S-So-S…" he could hear her try to fumble through staccato lips.
The turian leaned forward to hear her better over the hiss of the shower, the slight spattering of water against skin, and the thunderous drum of his own frantic heart.
"S-Sorry…" Roahn finally moaned, her eyes clamped shut, runoff from the shower sluicing all around her body while a fitful cloud of steam began to rise up in earnest. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry…"
Peace had finally seemed to befall Roahn as Korridon stood up from the bed, having firmly tucked the quarian in once the last vestiges of her energy had fully expired not long ago. The woman's black hair was still sleek from the shower, nested in large clumps, but she looked very restful with her head on her pillow, her mouth partially open, as her tired and tender breaths sounded in a soothing and even tempo. Korridon bent to pull the sheets of the bed tighter around the quarian, not wanting to resort to half-measures in ensuring that she was completely comfortable where she was lying.
Korridon had helped the quarian dry off from the shower to the best of his ability as soon as she had been thoroughly cleaned. She had still been drunk at the moment, her coordination not even close to a hundred percent at that point. Dressing Roahn back in her enviro-suit was going to be a challenge that would offer nothing but frustration for the both of him, therefore the turian had made the executive decision to put Roahn into her bed as is so she could sleep off her fugue and wake up in a more sober state of mind.
Knowing Roahn, she was going to look upon tonight with a regret that spanned the limits of imagination once she was able to piece together the events that had occurred. No doubt she would never look at him the same way again.
He backed away from the bed, forlornly looking upon the draped form of the quarian, serenely lost in her slumber. Korridon let out a quiet sigh of relief, more for Roahn's sake, knowing that this particular ordeal was over and done with for now. He switched the lights all the way down and made to leave, but not before he leaned over Roahn's terminal, engaged the screen, and swiped right upon the edges of the border of the hovering quadrangle, casting the data on the commander's previous work over to his own omni-tool. A glowing icon above his palm flashed green, indicating the receipt of the program.
Korridon made sure to lock the door behind him as he left. The more privacy that sleeping woman got, the better. He then proceeded to open up his tool and take a look through what Roahn had been trying to analyze before he had so unfortunately intruded upon her. He was not surprised to see all the references to Outpost 99 so blatantly slathered all over Roahn's history pages—she had been agonizing over this particular quandary for hours, it seemed, having resorted to drinking in the process. Trying without success to decipher the location—and thus the existence—of the facility that Aleph had been transferred to after Colombia.
I think she wore herself completely out trying to figure this out, he thought. Probably a bit too strenuously. Or she had withdrawn too much of herself, leaving her unable to venture elsewhere for help. That woman… I don't know what else I can do.
What he did know he could do, for the moment at least, was to take his own crack at the morass of unfiltered and encrypted data that had been stolen from the Site Nevada base. No sense in trying to duplicate Roahn's efforts by trawling the Alliance databases from her late father's access—Outpost 99 was just as secret as Aleph had been, so it was highly unlikely that there would be any direct reference to it on a simple EGR connection channel.
But as soon as he opened the first few files, Korridon realized that he was probably going to have just as much success as Roahn did. He was able to uncover a few blockchain diagrams of what appeared to be menial processes, but the further he dug, the more sprawling the diagrams became as they evolved into massive webs of bits and bits of encrypted files. Clicking on one of these files produced tomes and tomes of incomprehensible lines made up of esoteric symbols—the same result repeated itself with each successful file Korridon selected. It was enough to nearly send him into palpitations. At the very least, he was getting a headache at the problem this was turning out to be. He was in no way an expert at data retrieval, so it was virtually impossible that he was capable of writing a program that would decode all the information in these files, and that was not even knowing that what they sought was in the database clone to begin with. To that matter, he was starting to even doubt there would be an organic mind out there even capable of writing such a program.
Then Korridon realized something. Why bother trying to make an organic part of this equation at all?
He headed for the elevator and took it up to the CIC. The turian fast-walked his way through the curve of tac-consoles and life support controls as he stepped up the small staircase that led to the neck of the ship. Korridon arrived on the bridge and, right where he knew he would be, Sagan turned in his chair to face him, blue optic lenses shrinking and rotating towards his guest in interest.
"Sidonis-Corporal," the geth's flaps around his head twitched once in greeting.
"Hello Sagan," Korridon said. "You don't happen to have a free moment, do you? Had something that I wanted you to take a look at."
"Per your interpretation of 'free', I am able to offer assistance."
A dry chuckle nearly wormed its way through Korridon's throat—not yet decided if the geth had been speaking earnestly or if he was evolved enough to make a light attempt at humor.
"And per your interpretation?"
"Subroutines and various platform runtimes require constant processing power," the geth explained. "Overseeing the navigation of a frigate in the Menhir's class demands a significant divestment of processer utilization at all times. The term you would use, in this case, would be 'multitasking.' However, I do reserve ample partitions for any new problems that might arise. What did you require assistance for?"
Korridon opened his omni-tool and sent the encrypted database clone over to Sagan's workstation. The geth swiveled around in his seat, his hands already in motion on two separate keyboards like hyperactive arachnids as six different screens popped up in quick succession. Scrolling through the petabytes of uncompressed digital gibberish, it was difficult to tell what emotion was being replicated in the geth, but from what the turian could surmise by noticing how the rest of Sagan's body was absolutely rapt with stillness, he imagined that this had caught a large amount of his attention.
"A lattice-based VRTU encryption algorithm," the geth said after a few seconds of scanning the columns of data. "Security of this system appears to be performed using simple polynomial multiplication. This would allow for more rapid operations to be performed compared to other asymmetric encryption systems."
"Only simple polynomial multiplication?" Korridon sarcastically rasped. "Think it's able to be cracked?"
"Such a setup would be classified as post-quantum, dependent on decrypting two keys that would allow the encryption to be performed: a public key and a private key. This will require Euclidean algorithms to be computed."
"Pardon the… uh, brusqueness from an ignorant organic, but is that answer a yes or a no?"
Now the geth looked up in a rather plaintive manner, as though even asking such a thing of the geth was moronic.
"To satisfy all theoretic models," Sagan answered, "the variance for the precise moment results will be obtained is perhaps too wide to certify with a high confidence interval. But… results will be obtained. It is in the nature of all systems to be undone. Was there a key phrase within the database that you wanted to search for?"
"Anything regarding an 'Outpost 99'," Korridon said. He then took the empty copilot's chair and sat with his elbows on his thighs while propping up his head, his thoughts about Roahn slowly fading from mind as he eyed the geth. "Why don't you tell me what makes this system so difficult to decrypt?"
Sagan turned back to his matrix of screens, his optics firmly focused on the task at hand.
"VRTU is dependent on the interlinking of the available keys, the method of which to create them is more difficult than that of traditional systems. Data is obscured through a series of formulas, polynomials, and coefficients between -1 and 1. If you will observe—"
As Sagan was speaking, another screen popped up between him and Korridon, this one a blank rectangle with a singular cursor bar on it. But as the geth continued to explain, text began to appear on it, very much as if Sagan was teaching a class, with the turian his singular pupil.
"—the encrypted message, e, can be computed using the following:"
e = r * h + m
"—where r is a blinding value, with h being the computation for the public key, and m being a polynomial with coefficients in [-p/2, p/2]. P, in this case, is a modulo generated using one of the aforementioned Euclidean algorithms. Standard construction of these variables usually reads as follows:"
r = -1 + X2 + X3 + X4 – X5 – X7
h = pfq * g (f and g being polynomials with degrees, at most, N – 1)
m = -1 + X3 – X4 – X8 + X9 + X10
"As you can imagine, the ciphertext that is represented by e has the ability to grow quite complex, ensuring that attempts to cryptographically deconstruct the keys to their base values will require an inordinate amount of computational power. Therefore, anyone who knows the value of the blinding variable, r, is able to compute the message, which is represented by m, by evaluating e – rh. Let me know if I have lost your attention."
Korridon's mouth had fallen open long ago from being overwhelmed with the sheer deluge of information. The turian could not stop the memories of his math studies from cropping up in his head, reminding him of how much he hated the theoretical nature of the subject and appreciated it a whole lot more in its more practical iterations. Right now, all the stuff that Sagan had been saying was just as much interpretable as the database they were currently trying to encrypt!
Holding his head in his hands, Korridon gave it a sturdy shake. "I regret asking you to narrate your process," he said.
There was a slight dip in the geth's shoulders. Sagan seemed crestfallen.
"It had been my intention to simplify the directions."
"Sounds like a roundabout way of insulting my intelligence," Korridon tersely laughed.
Sagan turned to face the turian. Dead seriousness in his posture. "It was also not my intention to cause offence."
But Korridon gave a wave of his hand. "Just a jape at my own expense, Sagan. Continue with the… education. I'll try to keep up as best as I can, but I can't guarantee this is going to stick with me after today."
"Acknowledged," the geth said as he went back to his work. He continued to point out aspects of the systems, but Korridon was half-listening at this point. "I will attempt to pare down on multi-variable statements. To assuage you, this system is not without its weaknesses. Common lattice reduction attacks that try to break encryption on par with this database would utilize the Lenstra-Lenstra-Lovász algorithm, but such attacks become more ineffective if the VRTU parameters are too secure. Therefore, it is most likely that a chosen ciphertext attack will be the operation that will recover f, the equation's secret key. There is a way to manipulate the unknown variables down to a few coefficients—essentially this ensures that if we manage to align those variables at those coefficients that they manage to return the same values at the same factors, we will ensure that other variables will have relatively few non-zero coefficients, narrowing them down to smaller values. It is then that we will be able to retrieve f, therefore resulting in a successful decryption."
"Great," Korridon said somewhat tonelessly. "Any idea when—or if—you'll be able to complete that?"
Sagan raised his arms and pushed down a few of the screens, merging them now into only two panels. He then looked at Korridon.
"You misunderstand. This operation has just been completed."
The turian sat up straighter, eyes widening, hands a foot apart as if he was about to throttle something.
"You mean you just finished it right this second?" he spoke rapidly to the point where he was nearly mumbling.
"The log marks a successful decryption as of forty-five point six seconds ago," the geth said evenly.
Korridon made a giddy sound and looked like he was about to hop out of his seat in joy.
The geth smoothly plucked one of the screens from his workstation and "tossed" it over to Korridon, whose tool then managed to "catch" it. "Analysis indicates 49 mentions of keyword 'Outpost 99' in the acquired files. Related keyword searches have yielded no additional results. Would you like me to provide my analysis of the data?"
There was so much that Sagan had revealed in the past minute that Korridon could hardly keep track of all the revelations in such short order. He had to hold up his arms to halt the geth, allowing him a moment to breathe.
"Wait… wait… wait. You're saying that, not only have you decrypted everything, you've already determined the location and nature of this so-called Outpost 99?"
Sagan's reply was abridged, curtailed, and quintessentially geth.
"Yes."
Reaching over to one of the holographic keypads, Sagan engaged one of the holoprojectors to form an image between him and the turian. With the overhead crystals warming, the representation of the Milky Way suddenly flared to life, a pool of stars bathing light back upon the two, a cosmic discus. A pronged crosshair was now trained upon the lower-left hand quadrant of the galaxy. Korridon leaned forward, recognizing the area that was being highlighted.
"That… doesn't look correct, Sagan," he said. "Zoom in."
Sagan complied and soon the two were able to observe a brilliant splash of periwinkle and white upon the display. Embedded hot stars flickering their fluorescence in waves of brutal radiation and clouded debris. The formation of the nebula was not significant to Korridon, but it was the fact that he recognized which nebula he was looking at that was important.
"The Serpent Nebula," Korridon said before looking back up at Sagan. "The original location of the Citadel."
"Correct."
"You're saying that… Outpost 99 is here?"
"That is the deduction that the data revealed."
Korridon squinted his eyes. "There are no other celestial objects in that nebula, Sagan. The Citadel, to my knowledge, was the only thing lightyears from any other body. Well, with the exception of newly born stars." A thought came to him. "I really hope you're not about to say that Outpost 99 is on the Citadel. That's going to create some problems if true."
The geth shook his head, a gesture he had picked up from being around organics for a long while. He then splayed his hands, a round and rocky orb hovering just over his fingertips, one that was riddled with craters and had large swaths of volcanic strata and pools of basaltic lava as delicate and painterly as brush strokes.
"Your logic towards the nonexistence of celestial objects in the Serpent Nebula is an assumption made in error, Sidonis-Corporal. While it is true that the system does not contain a centralized gravitational point for which to support orbiting objects, such accountings to not take foreign objects into consideration. Objects such as rogue planets, for example."
Korridon leaned back in his chair. "So, you're telling me that, somewhere in the Serpent Nebula, there's a rogue planet just hiding in the cloud? A rogue planet that happens to house a secret Alliance base that had, at one point, been in such close proximity to the Citadel and no one found out?"
"Even with nanolens observation," Sagan pointed out, "it is quite difficult to spot wandering bodies unless their trajectory happens to intersect directly upon occupied points. This rogue planet, 71 Orr as it is designated, could simply have been chanced upon by an Alliance patrol. As we can see on the gravitational diagram of the system, the trajectory of 71 Orr is irregular, but it ventures close enough to several new stars that its path makes a uniquely shaped orbit around the nebula. Therefore, there is no central point upon which the planet makes its revolution, but by a one out of two point eight trillion chance, 71 Orr has managed to fixate itself as a permanent object of the Serpent Nebula."
"Hiding in those clouds for all those years," Korridon mused, tapping his chin, "that would give the Alliance a strategic advantage at… what, exactly? Spying on their allies? Were they not trusting the other species?"
"Those are hypothesis that would be more reliably answered on-station. But if 71 Orr operated as you might have supposed, the procedures to do so would not be difficult. Radiation burst transmissions performed in its abnormal orbit would operate on a delay, decreasing its ability to be detected by prowling vessels. It would not be inconceivable for such an outpost to exist for this very reason."
The turian scratched at a mandible. "The more we discover, the stupider I feel. Nowhere else to go but forward, though. Send this over to Garrus, Sagan. I'd imagine he'd want to change course rather soon."
"Acknowledged, Sidonis-Corporal. I would also anticipate a similar conclusion."
Terminal Threnody
For a good portion of his career, Admiral Huston was proud to admit that there were few moments that he could recall that involved him having to kowtow to a higher power like a submissive chump. Even when he had begun his ascent from the lower ranks, he had never been seen as someone who was an ass-kisser or as one who would relinquish enough of his personal stances to embody the mouthpiece of someone else, very much like a lapdog would.
This meant that, when he had received an encrypted message ordering him to make a return trip to the Terminal Threnody, he had spent the entire voyage over fuming under a dark cloud.
Huston very much rued the fact that Aleph felt he could summon him like he was an obedient pet. He also rued the fact that he practically had no power to disobey Aleph otherwise. And he certainly rued the fact that there was virtually no advantage in taking up a differing position for the purposes of embarking on a spat of morals. Therefore, he had no choice but to accept the order, though as a precaution, he had brought along Lieutenant Colonel Goro with him, both as backup and for having someone to bounce his own opinions of Aleph's forwardness off of.
When his shuttle finally arrived at Terminal Threnody, Huston was somewhat surprised to see ladar profiles of other shuttles registered to Admirals Erext and Corinthus locked upon neighboring docking tubes. Huston had initially assumed that his invitation had been hinting towards a more private meeting. Apparently, that was not to be.
The salarian and the turian were, surprisingly, waiting in the tubular junction almost immediately after Huston stepped off his own shuttle. The other two admirals were glowering and Huston had to reign in his urge to give a morose look towards Goro, suspecting that he was not going to like where this was heading.
"Theatrics, sir?" Goro said out of earshot of the other admirals.
"Almost certainly," he murmured back as he approached.
"We're being refused permission to board," Erext explained sourly as Huston joined the group, his arms crossed over his chest. "We were told to keep put until you arrived."
Another case of Aleph rattling his saber, then, Huston determined. "Know if we're expecting anyone else to join us?"
"Far as we know, this is it," Corinthus said.
Huston looked around the tight and circular confines. On this part of the ship, appearances were not necessary, as demonstrated by the exposed structural engineering of the walls and the fact that there was quite the intrusion of outside noise due to the absence of sound dampening equipment.
Then again, it was not like Huston was quite keen to head over to Terminal Threnody's conference room. After the massive fight the Haxan had with Urdnot Shepard, one would imagine that the room would still be in shambles after the combatants had thoroughly destroyed nearly all the furniture fixtures in sight.
He was about to say something that would vaguely resemble an insult towards their host, when in the next moment, the door at the far end opened and something tall and skeletal walked through the opening. The Aeronaut had to duck and tuck in his spindly wings as his reverse-hinged knees made hissing noises, noxious vapors wisping from his respirator as his breath surged through the large tubes that connected to the front of his helmet and trailed around his neck and finally down his back. The bars of light from the constructive tubing wound upon the floor were reflected back up and bent along the Aeronaut's curved glass optical assembly, but every so often, a dark glimmer of copper rectangular light would flicker past the charcoal recesses, reminding Huston of a deep cave fire burning so far into the ground that only the faintest of embers could surface their way up.
"Brought along an additional meatbag, have we, Admiral?" the Aeronaut hissed as he approached, referring to Goro. "Not that I'm complaining. Out of all of you, she's certainly the most fuckable. Wouldn't you agree?"
Huston did not arise to the bait, nor did Goro, to his satisfaction. A lesser person would let themselves get rattled by the Aeronaut's postulating, but Goro had so much self-control on her end that Huston firmly believed the cyborg would grow tired of posturing before she would even break a sweat.
"Our time is valuable, Aeronaut," Huston said evenly. "Take us to where Aleph is so that we may conclude our business accordingly. The hospitality we've been shown is not at all conducive to our patience, I might add."
"I'm very sorry to hear that," the Aeronaut said in a manner that clearly indicated he was not sorry. The cyborg then straightened within the hallway, flares of light scourging off the swaths of gold accents and polished armor plating, demonizing his appearance into a metal reptilian aviator. "But what makes you think that Aleph will be taking an audience with you now?"
This exchange was making Huston even more irritable. "Aleph went through all this trouble to have us invited here. Don't try to wring any unnecessary deference out of us."
The Aeronaut just laughed. "Oh, don't try to flatter yourself, Admiral. The only trouble Aleph went to was by accepting the uncomfortable knowledge that he has to deal with you at all. Two things that you've miscalculated. One: you were all ordered to come here, not invited. Two: Aleph is not even on board this ship, meaning I am going to be your only point of contact going forward."
"You're out of your mind," Corinthus said.
"I figured you'd react like that," the Aeronaut waggled a slender finger in the direction of the turian, as though he was scolding a disobedient pet. "Which means that none of you are going to like this next part."
"There's more?" Huston drawled.
"The entire reason why we're here, actually. Aleph feels that there is a certain level of mistrust in some areas of our confederacy, despite the ratification of the accords that your signatures adorn. While he may understand the reason for there to be a lack of trust, its very existence has proven to be an irritability. To rectify that, he has entrusted me to be the prime overseer to your operations and to provide reports on your cooperation."
There was a muted uproar to this news amongst the admirals. Scatterings of mumbled exclamations whistled through clenched lips. The Aeronaut did note that a particular vein at Huston's temple was now standing out, to his satisfaction.
"And if we refuse?" Huston gritted.
The Aeronaut took a menacing step forward. Huston was an impressive specimen of a human, for his age, but the cyborg was half a foot taller. The admiral looked practically diminutive in comparison.
"Go right ahead," the Aeronaut dared. "Please… try."
For a brief moment, Huston nearly took the Aeronaut up on that offer. What stopped him from doing so was common sense—the Aeronaut was heavily armored and had access to powerful weaponry that he could unfold from his hidden holsters and unleash in less than a second. Huston was pitifully reminded of the fact that he was woefully unimportant in the grand scheme of things—if he died, Aleph would just rope in someone else to replace him. This animosity may not have been personal, but it surely felt like it.
Erext then edged his way forward, playing the part of peacemaker. "I'm sure you can understand the reason for our frustrations. This level of scrutiny you're placing upon us is quite unlike any of our previous situations. This feels like we're being placed under direct surveillance."
"Additionally," Corinthus added, "it would have been easier if Aleph had been the one to tell us this himself."
The Aeronaut looked to each admiral in incredulity. "Easier, perhaps, but Aleph has placed more weight on his own work than your precious feelings. Make no mistake, I'm not at all pleased at the prospect of babysitting all of you, but the matter, as far as I'm concerned, is settled."
"This is not a good start to our partnership, Aeronaut," Huston warned.
"Hrrm," the cyborg rumbled as he swept his featureless face over the human's way, probing every singular movement of his features in as invasive of a manner as he could convey. "It still has failed to resonate upon you. Once again, you overstep with your presumptions."
The Aeronaut surveyed the sullen crowd, deriving a twisted pleasure out of the fact that the previously rebellious individuals before him had been thoroughly muzzled. He let his finger tips brush the handles of his twin submachine guns at his hips, letting the clink of his artificial fingers mingle together in a percussive tic before he resumed speaking again.
"But there is no use in bringing you out here without sending you back sans something for your troubles. We may be working a whole lot closer in the near future, but that does not mean that this is a zero-sum outcome, a fact that Aleph predicted and thus took steps to ensure that you would not leave here today empty-handed."
Huston blew air through his nose. "What, is he going to give us a gift card? Bottle of scotch, maybe?"
The cyborg was unimpressed at the quip. "That sort of wisecracking will need rectifying. No, he's giving you something you can use. A ship."
"A ship?"
"I just said that, didn't I?"
"What's the catch?"
"No catch," the Aeronaut said. "It is a warship of its time, but one that can very much still prove its effectiveness. For you to utilize as you please. You will be undoubtedly content with the capabilities of the vessel."
"That judgment will come once I see the ship," Huston said. "Where is it?"
"Right outside the window."
Peering past the Aeronaut's outstretched hand, Huston headed to the nearest rectangular viewport and bent his knees so he could take a proper look through it. He honestly had no idea what to expect, but was surprised anyway when he took a glimpse at the vessel that was perched upon another docking tube several floors down. So many questions ran through his head, but the amount of possibilities quickly overtook them as he found himself, much to his chagrin, very much satisfied with this offering.
"For the first time today, we are in agreement," Huston looked at the Aeronaut. "It looks like we're not leaving empty-handed."
Menhir
Korridon was not especially big on wandering aimlessly to distract him from his innermost thoughts, yet he somehow happened to slip into the habit after he had summarily exited the elevator back on the level below in an unconscious act. He had passed by a couple of the crew, Grunt and Liara, having exchanged pleasant nods with them both (though Grunt's habitual growl of greeting was still faintly unnerving to the turian), and he eventually realized that he had come full circle again, right back in front of Roahn's door.
Once again, he stood in front of the threshold, with nothing but the soft vibrations of the Menhir sludging from below his feet. That, and the constant drone of air recyclers embedded into the tops of the hallways. When he was a grunt in the Hierarchy's army, Korridon was exposed to less wasteful junctures of open space—back then, if he wanted some quiet time off his feet, he would have to jockey with his crewmates to slip into one of the far-too-few grav-chairs so that he could buckle himself in amongst crowded corridors. Here, space was plentiful. He could afford to be a little more languid, a little more deliberate in his actions. Hesitation did not pay so quite a hefty price, yet it still grew in weight upon his neck like a noose.
It had been a couple of hours since he had last left Roahn to rest, but Korridon kept still for a few more moments. It would be hard for him to forget how he looked upon the drunken quarian bawling in the shower, utterly bare and helpless in a moment where she had been bolstering herself day in and day out. The one moment where she had finally dropped her innermost guards and he had seen it, a shred of her true persona so private it was almost terrifying to glimpse.
Unable to control the pounding of his heart, he lifted his hand and knocked three times on the door.
There was a faint stirring sound on the other side.
"Korr?" he heard Roahn's voice ask. Had she been expecting him?
"Yeah," he rasped after coughing to clear his throat.
The door locks cycled and the turian was allowed inside. Korridon had performed this action so many times already that it almost felt like he was returning home.
Having learned his lesson, Korridon kept his eyes trained to the floor as he entered, not wanting another embarrassing repeat of the last time he had been in Roahn's cabin. He need not have bothered—Roahn was sitting on the edge of her bed, once again back in her enviro-suit, though with her visor nestled in her lap as she looked up at him. It was hard to read the quarian's thoughts—surely she had not been so intoxicated to have suffered retrograde amnesia from the event just a few hours ago. She was keeping herself guarded, the desire to state something about that debacle clearly on the tip of her tongue, but she was keeping it all locked back, having no desire to reference it. The turian understood her faltering averseness. He also had no inclination to bring back up bad memories. That was not why he was here, in any case.
Roahn's eyes glanced down towards the spot beside her at the edge of the bed. An invitation. There was no downside to this, as far as Korridon could see. He complied, holding back a small groan as the cybernetics in his knees gave faint twinges from bending.
The two of them said nothing more as they sat there for several minutes, not moving. Korridon studied Roahn's face, observing the faint hints of tiredness that continued to tug at the corners of the quarian's eyes. Lucidity was warring amidst the circles of aquamarine, beating back the lingering vestiges of intoxication. There was an uncomfortable soberness that inhabited her soft features, an underlying fragility.
Whatever list of regrets that the quarian had been silently compiling in her head, Korridon was not interested in nosing his way into them. He was unsure of how to break the silence, though, so he came up with a solution that would work with his newfound introversion.
Raising his hand, the turian ignited his omni-tool and quickly brimmed to life a small projection of 71 Orr in his hand, having shrunk it down to the size of a grapefruit. Roahn's attention was automatically gripped at the sight of the mounded planet, and was piqued even more when she saw the subtitle of "Outpost 99" displayed underneath the official name. Her lips parted slightly and she now graced Korridon with a direct stare, flicking her eyes towards the hologram, her only attempt to confirm the findings that he had uncovered. He merely gave her a nod, solemn though it might have been, there was a determinedness in his efforts that made any further suppositions unnecessary.
The quarian slowly took in a deep breath. She then lifted her right hand and slowly placed it into Korridon's left one, slotting her suited fingers between his. The glow from the omni-tool wrapped around their entangled hands, like they had both been placed into a fire. Korridon was almost surprised by the strength of Roahn's grip. Almost.
Still he said nothing, preferring instead to look at her. Roahn returned the same intensity, the muscles of her fingers subtly shifting against his smoothly carapaced hands.
A tiny but grateful smile finally cracked the quarian's features. They both started to breathe just a little easier.
A/N: Well, it goes without saying that 2020 was an incredibly crappy year for everyone. Hopefully everyone's holiday break meant that you all got a chance to rest and recharge, knowing that there's a light at the end at the tunnel. For my fellow U.S. readers, that light might be just a bit further away than those on the other sides of the world, due to political shenanigans. Let me know what you think of the story thus far - and be sure to stay safe out there!
Playlist:
Violent Videos
"BETRAYAL"
Ludwig Goransson
Tenet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Shower
"Helmet On"
Hans Zimmer, Jasha Klebe, and Martin Tillman
Rush (Complete Motion Picture Score) [UNRELEASED]
Bedside (A Start)
"Something Good"
Clinton Shorter
The Expanse [Season 4] (Music from the Amazon Series)