Unnamed Asteroid, Uncharted System 614-QT-3841 | Gemini Sigma Cluster | 2180
"In law school, no one ever asks m-YAAAAA!"
Standing directly in Daniel's path and no longer perfectly matching the dim corridor behind her, is a very much naked, very much dripping wet asari. About his height, but juicy for an asari so young. Broader shoulders, broader hips, every inch of her powerful frame is used to hang springy curves that just need a little squeeze. A whole plate of creamy desserts, cheesecake and meringue and whipped cream, not just an appetizer of two honeyed blueberries.
Little sparkles all over her skin from the bathwater make her look fucking lickable, like a cinnamon sugar do-
"You interrupted my bath," she purrs and fuck. He's not sure how many sexy voices that was, but a choir echoes in her every word.
Her skin is pale blue from feet to calves to hips, up her legs and of course that's a bit darker, arousal increases blood flow and all-Still got it, Danny Boy!-but from navel up, she wears a triangular splash of turquoise, greener than any typical shade, outlined by a stripe of delicate looking scales sunk beneath the rest, separating the colours. Just below her breasts, another shift and a thinner valley of sunken scales. Continuing above the triangle of turquoise, the shape widens slowly to bloom like a starburst over her collarbone into scales of emerald, and that's his first warning. There are no greens in the crayon box of asari genetics. Laid one on top of the other with the furrows dividing them, the resemblance to the male drell's 'tuxedo' of torso scales is powerful. Her face is more 'handsome' than 'cute', featuring a broad jaw with a razor-sharp outline and strong, dimpled chin. Her lips are plump as if already half-puckered and her nose is proud and straight, but short, and her nostrils wide.
Her eyes are liquid and the 'eyelashes' that keep asari eyes clean in the water flicker temptingly as she pouts and bats her eyes. Large. Adorable forest-creature large, drawing attention like a magnet.
Also, he realizes, her eyes are numerous. The dark gray ring around her eyes isn't eyeshadow. The lower curve blends into raised, not-quite-opaque gray scales-or actual skin, because who knows with her-in swoops shaped like she'd dipped her thumb in ink and traced a curve from her eyelids out, curling back to and then running down her cheekbones.
Something makes her blink, and under the smoky gray cover, four pairs of eyes blink in unison. A string of yellow orbs with splotchy figure-eights of blue for pupils, separated by rings of protective muscle, filling a finger-wide channel in her skin. The size and color remind him of yellow grapes more than anything. At the tip of the swoop, crowning the sharp ridge of her cheekbones, are a pair of all black eyes that are unmistakably drell, but well-disguised by the same protective membrane. Given their location on her cheekbones, a passerby could decide that everything was obviously just tattoos or face jewelry and the drell eyes would merely seem like ostentatious obsidian.
Daniel would've thought she was an asari maiden with weird tastes in makeup and cosmetic surgery and scale-stain unless he got close enough to lick her, or unless he knew that it was possible that a drell-like asari was on the loose, and he was looking for camouflage skin, borrowed anatomy and differences that went beyond shorter or less curled crests, or clunkier, more bone-like scales on the top of the head.
Her crests are the largest difference. Rather than six obviously independent curls of cartilage, her crests fuse into a single backswept cap that broadens her skull and flares smoothly down into the sides of her head. Between the typical under-crest membranes of her cap are rows upon rows of tiny stripes of dark cherry and jet black-fucking gills, probably-in little diamonds surrounded by hard scale or bone. Her crests don't tangle at the back, they fuse and come to a single point. The underside-Christ it's soft-is made up of wet, hot, tender flesh and the little petals shake with the tiniest touch of his fingers-Wait, when did I start touching her?-makes her shiver and pant. Something like a purr rises between her ribs. Sharper, and more bony, like a snake's rattle, but combined with the slow close of all but her asari-type eyes, a lazy smile, and the gaze of those kind, bottomless violet irises...
"Shh," she murmurs, her voice shaking him from his ears to between his legs. Her meld flickers through his mind-he never even felt her come in-and she has some ideas about how she could finish her bath. "Keep stroking my folds, handsome. Don't I feel good?"
"Uhuh," he grunts. He's feeling quite wobbly. And the overhead lights are spitting purple sparks, bright and loud and sweet tasting like strawberry-kiwi and oh no.
He remembers what happened when he tried to tell Mordin a drell sex joke.
"Sexual contact with drell is not advisable, Daniel. Fluids hallucinogenic. Recommend males. Can merely avoid swallowing. Female fluids more potent, avoiding contact with fluids...problematic."
"Isn't it fun?" she coos. "My bath is nice and warm. Right through there."
The choir of her voices singing a few notes lower, her breath mixing with his as she pulls him close. Saccharine poison wafting off her tongue and just-FUCK, everything about her-shaking his brain apart. "Relax...you won't know where you're tasting me, where you're touching me, just that we're having fun."
"Daniel!"
"Hmph," she huffs. "That humorless salarian. Didn't even like my square-root-of-four joke about kicking a krogan's testicles."
She lowers a hand to hover over his crotch-It's fine, just keep going, please-and a flicker of biotics passes through the inches between them, his pants and his skin.
"Workable," she chuckles. "Rain check."
Her skin fills with inky black, cold white silver, and dirty brown, and she blends into the shadows. She turns and walks away, a ghost on silent feet. Mordin waves his omni-tool in the general direction.
"Combination of drell skin, hanar color-signaling camouflage and asari biotics allows complete emissions recapture. Impressive. Daniel. Are you intact?"
"Huh? Yeah, yeah doc. She didn't touch me...er, not in a bad way...I...kinda got swept in."
"Excellent. Your response was expected. Your weaknes-"
"Hey!"
"Your susceptibility understandable. DRAG Zero likely redeployed traits from deviant asari. Pheromones. Secondary vocalizations in sub-conscious range. Short-range use of biotics to mimic pre-meld contact, influence potential victims. Implications of her crown's outline and optical cluster...unsettling. No intelligent species possesses such pupils. Yahg eyes black. Pupil-less. Passing resemblance...surely not. Certain ancient statuary on Thessia. Also, Collectors. Chance to examine teeth?"
Daniel turns and glares at Mordin.
"No, because first, weird and second, we were interru-"
"Safer. Gill-like structures appeared articulated. Likely combination of respiratory, sensory tissue, yahg threat membranes. Latter, likely venomous. One structure combining yahg, drell, hanar traits! Remarkable. Indicates her jaw is triangular. Partial separation."
The dimple on her chin.
"Fangs located behind canines, articulated. Double sets, likely quadruple by full maturity. Typical on alpha female yahg. Unlike socialization or pacification venom of drell, yahg venom, yahg venom...unpleasant. Administering an antipsychotic hypo. Hold still."
Something jams into his neck, forcing drugs right into his carotid, and seconds later they hit his brain. The fuzz fades. He can't taste the lights or smell the way his shoes scrape on the deck.
"Thanks doc."
"Must treat patients. Proceed to ship, Daniel. Omni-tool scans of that individual and the yahg-trait specimens indicates the project has reached terminus. Rapid laboratory hybridization. That specimen and yahg variant contained traits of all seven levo species present, plus asari. Curious. Not turians and quarians. Ah! Likely a dextro-related limitation. Second end-stage hybrid focusing on asari, turian, quarian traits likely."
Wait, what about her was krogan? The growl. No. Extranet says yahg do that too. She didn't punch me, so maybe her fist would've gone right through?
"Received proposition on Deck 4 from copulating yahg-asari with human and krogan females present. Observation of human-asari and hanar copulation on Deck 2 also indicates significant use of krogan erectile, phallo-skeletal tissue and hanar frond tissue for taste, scent, light receptor cells in adaptation to pre-existing asari organs. Enlargement significant and frond flexibility increased, but reshaping minimal. Clever. Reduces partner anxiety."
That answers that.
Mordin smiles.
"I was flattered. Size, angle, pace of thrusting preferred by human female partner likely problematic for salarian males. Organs remaining in current locations...preferable."
And that's one image I could've skipped.
"Located cooperative specimens. They indicate that the matriarch resides on Deck 1. Stairs..."
Mordin looks down at his omni and then points to the absolute darkest corner. Under a dripping pipe with water that doesn't look particularly clean but isn't sewage, either. Mystery leak. Because of course it is.
"Fourteen meters."
"This...Waters, that hurts."
He opens his armor's thoracic compartment for another medi-gel bottle or painkiller hypo but his fingers scrape across nothing but an empty cylinder.
"This is...Director Vint to all personnel. Please respond. Communications, respond. Subject containment, respond. Dalatrass Vint...please, he croaks. "Respond."
"Station..."
He coughs, orange blood spattering the deck. His left hand is mangled. The dextro-amino prototypes are the smallest-not even two meters-but she tore a finger off without effort, flinging it over her shoulder to the hulking yahg-asari at the door scanner, who promptly used it to unlock the cells. All the cells except the ones for the deviant asari captured fifty years ago. There's no override code for those cells. The elite religious warriors they were found with were, as their autopsies discovered, biotics on a level salarians had not believed possible. And the deviants killed them, seemingly with ease. Even the matriarch he hired-well respected, in the circle she moved in-seemed uneasy about their presence, pestering him about whether he had enough samples yet. The hybrids are resistant-even generation one was-but still unsettled. Instinctive response, the lab techs thought.
That's why there's no override on their cell doors. Welded shut. Food and waste on opposite one-way chutes that automatically incinerate anything going the other way. Specimens strapped into manipulator frames when in use. Blood, skin, nerve and reproductive tissue samples robot-gathered.
"Station has been compromised," he pants. "All DRAG Zero personnel Ratings E1-4, transmit final reports and program your suicide implants for ten minutes. Ratings E5-10, prepare and transmit reports, scrub databanks and ensure subordinate suicide implants are armed. Transmit your all-clear to me and set yours for twenty minutes."
"We have done...the unthinkable. The experiment is gone, but the science survives. Be proud of that."
The white barrel of a scorpion pistol-standard issue, with the Special Task Group badges replaced by an aftermarket scope and a targeting beam-appears in the dark hallway, millimeters from his face. One of the human-trait asari fades into view, pigment sacs contracting, pulling back under deep red scales so tiny they could easily be mistaken for mammalian skin.
Of all their variants, he is by far proudest of what one tech dubbed 'humari'. Asarioid and humanoid bodies were already nearly identical. Her crests are compact, clinging to the skull so closely that the outline remains human, more domed on the top and longer in the back of the skull than is typical, but not so much as to imply disease. Her enlarged eyes combine human, krogan, and yahg visual receptors. In a fantastic stroke of luck, both the drell-trait and human-trait hybrids that expressed any of Collector and Corpse 27's DNA in a form of sensory receptors on the palms, soles of the feet, lips, tongue and other membranes are unlike anything they'd ever seen. The extra eyes from the hox genes of the Collector and yahg formed a ring of tiny organs hidden within the irises like a string of jewels. Golden-brown eye colors occur naturally in human populations. A microscope would be needed to discern them. Human mates and casual conversation partners find large eyes 'cute', and human females vary widely in treatment of body hair: a total lack of it means little. A cover story about an enthusiasm for high-detail adaptive ink body art could explain away the grooves of the sunken crests and the folds and fronds between. The simplest hat would disguise them.
Give the Union a couple of those for agents, and the right payload for them to spread, and the wildcard variable of humanity could be smothered within two salarian generations. Let one loose in a station with malfunctioning lights, and she defeats security sensors, scanning, and the three layers of early warning he'd programmed into his omni-tool.
She presses the barrel gently into the membrane of his left eye and raises a finger to her lips.
"Shh."
He mutes his communicator.
"Eleven."
"Elle," she replies. "Matriarch suggested it. I think I like it..." she murmurs, gathering biotic energy between her fingers like strands of tar. Each hybrid came out with a different shade of waste light. The biotic aura of human-asari came out such deep reds and purples that in this light, they're black.
A wizened salarian with a cracked horn strides up beside her. He wears a dented and insignia-scrubbed set of STG armor, and a matching scorpion to the one wielded by Generation Five, Product Eleven, which he levels at Vint.
"Please, close comm channel."
"All personnel, intru-AGH!"
Voltage leaps from the ex-STG's omni-tool into the stump of his finger, knifing up his arm into his omni, which goes up in a shower of sparks and flecks of melted ceramic. The escaped subject fires her weapon at near zero-velocity, leaving a spherical lump of high-explosive gel stuck to his eyeball.
"Your dedication to unit goals commendable, will be noted. Her weapon programmed for ten minutes. Same as your men. Fairness...important."
One of the yahg-asari drops off a nearby ladder, cushioning her impact biotically. Rather than ducking her nine-foot frame under a cracked conduit, she glances at it, softens it with a warp, and walks through it. Her thick-scaled crests spread the metal around them without slowing her down.
"Reactor's set up," she tells the salarian-who is he?-before casting a glare at Vint. "We can pop the coolant pipes anytime."
The ex-STG taps on his omni-tool and opens a channel.
"The Vint clan's egg caches?"
Two of the dextro-prototypes appear projected above it. One appears short of breath.
"First one's loaded up and..." she grunts. "Ah...needed that. Second one's seasoned."
Waters. Did they...We never checked whether their zygotes could fertilize salarian eggs. Surely they couldn't bring them to term?
"Excellent. Will locate and bribe human hospital with appropriate womb simulators!"
...Unless these embryos are also viable inside human females.
Another channel on the salarian's omni lights up. The matriarch Vint had hired to train the agents is a foul-mouthed outcast that behaves more like a semi-sober krogan than an asari. Loss of blood makes it hard to remember. Not Amal. A...a...Aethyta? Aethyta T'Vasir.
"I got the..." She coughs. "Fuck it. No polite way to say it. I got the empty ones loaded on the first freighter. How in Athame's blessed ass you got it here so fast, I don't know. But thanks. The ones with a round in the chamber will go with us, we can sort it out when they give birth."
Her projection frowns.
"A couple of the breeder subjects wanted to stay. Said they'd rather die with the place than live with the memories. Wasn't inclined to argue. You ready to go? I stay on this shitball much longer and my azure will turn inside out."
"Anatomically impossible, matriarch."
"Well, you're no fucking fun."
Her holo projection turns away from the STG to face him.
"Director Vint, a pleasure doing business..."
The audio feed reverbs, making all present wince.
A massive biotic field lifts him off his feet and pulls him down the corridor before spinning him around. The matriarch's dark gray dress from this morning has been replaced with ornate, customized commando leathers of purple, red and orange-the colors of a Thessian sunset on a day when the eezo clouds are chokingly thick-that fade downwards from neck to boots. Her leathers are several layers thicker than is usual and segmented hard-plates protect key parts of her body.
A long warpsword that hums faintly in the quiet and sizzles with teal light is gripped in her left hand. The slight curve of the blade and the angle of the handle means that she could cut ten throats with a pirouette. A shorter and straighter blade is sheathed diagonally across her midsection, to be drawn in a flash if she needs to parry. Clipped to her shoulder is a hand-chiseled mask of smoky crystal with an armored inner lining.
He remembers that blade. It came up in the do-not-engage lists of possible alien combatants. Blackfin. A blade that only asari holding the office of Will of Sunset may wield. The assassin and thief sworn only to the needs of The Thirty and by extension, their plans for the asari.
"The asari thank you for your service."
"You...Thirty..." he rasps, spitting blood at her feet. "Figures."
"Don't feel bad, kid. Of course I tricked you: I've once had a bruise on my ass live longer than your kind do. Your diligent work on our behalf, and innovations regarding our reproductive health and the Ardat-Yakshi condition will be the talk of our universities, I'm sure. Publish or perish, you know how it is. And now that you've seen the armor and seen my face, we should wrap it up."
A noose of invisible force closes around his throat. Satisfied that he's silenced, she raises her omni to speak into it.
"Cover your ears, kids. You too, Dr. Solus. I'll tell you when you're older."
Mordin Solus. Of cou-
A flicker of teal in the dark.
Daniel looks up from the datapad where he'd been ticking off names and counting passengers. An asari matriarch carrying a krogan-style duffel bag half Daniel's size is standing on the loading ramp, robes rolled down and bare from the waist up. Something old in him, deep inside, deeper than his bones, older than civilization, wants to look at her. Touch her, if she would let him, merely be present where she is. Kneel and listen to her wisdom until his last breath.
The way she carries herself, the soft sounds of her breathing-even after jogging across the station, she's breathing fast-the way that when she flicks a droplet of water off, her free hand curls from fingertip, to wrist, to...
He can't blame it on drell venom. He wouldn't blame it on her biotics or his own proclivities, either.
Experience and practice. She's been alive, been feminine, walked and talked and charmed as a feminine being, for a thousand years. Of course his first thought is: "You're why we painted cave walls."
"Towel."
"Huh?"
"Lucen's crack, kid." Her language breaks the spell, and he realizes that her face, neck, and breasts are spattered in greasy orange something, with little flakes of metal...oh. "Towel me. Smartypants didn't warn me that the director already had that bomb goop in his eye. Went off before I was halfway done with him. I've got sadistic asshole all over my face."
"Towel. Yes. Good plan. Uh, one moment!"
He heads back towards the living quarters.
"If you're jacking off rather than fetching me a towel, you'll wake up getting a blowjob from a thresher maw!" She hollers after him.
The men's room on the freighter is huge-it was built by batarians-and well stocked. The current owner is a drell, and she doesn't want to have anything to do with a room that humid-who puts a sauna and lagoon-style shower on a ship?-so she sealed it off. He has to power the lock up with his omni to open it. He grabs three towels at random and hurries back.
"Here's your towel. I'm Daniel."
"Smartypants mentioned he had an assistant. Aethyta. Aethyta Vasir. Matriarch if you want. Call me Matriarch T'Vasir only if you're sick of being on speaking terms."
She snags the smallest towel, wipes the worst of it off her cheeks and crests and flings it towards the laundry chute, where it splats! unpleasantly into the opening. As she scrapes the rest off, he can't help but wonder. She's making very sure to keep any leakage out of membranes or the handful of nicks in her neck and breasts.
"You've done this before, haven't you? Wiped..." he waves a hand at the general mess. "...that off."
"Yeah. Don't think because I'm this old I had a charmed life, kid. Unless you're stupid, or I luck out for a couple more centuries, you'll probably end up with more good years than I do."
"Oh. I'm...that's sad."
She shrugs.
"Had a few great years every century. Hundred and four were with the most amazing person I've ever met. Century of easy living, great sex and staying in on the rainy days, watching her tap her stylus on her crests while she wrote until I had to break her concentration," Aethyta recalls, a smile spreading as she does. "Got a daughter out of the deal. Somewhere out there is the smartest and stubbornest maiden alive, if I had to guess. I can keep up, but Nezzy? Yikes."
Satisfied with her corpse removal, she rolls her robes back up and clasps them shut. On her way past, she claps her hand on his shoulder.
"You aren't a killer, kid. I can tell. So you should know: You did great today. Most couldn't do what Smartypants did, or what I did. You did what you could to help these fucked up asari kids and you helped the...fuck. No better word for it yet. The breeders. The hybrids you met today?"
"Yeah?"
"Generation five. Some fuckery the first three times around to grow them to adult size, knock up the aliens, and just not worry about the tumors from the growth hormones. Generation one were moaning lumps. Wheeled in, lined up, shocked to inseminate the breeders. Generation two, hard to even tell they were asari. Generation three could talk. Generation four was the first that were close to normal. That was thirty...thirty-one years back. Smart, too. Couple killed themselves as they got an idea of what it was about. Some escaped. Director shot the rest when I was off station on an errand. The first couple rounds of the project were rough on the hybrids and the salarians cared even less about the breeders. They've been through a lot. I saw you helping the krogan. You're a good kid."
"Thanks."
"Gotta have doctors that aren't like Smartypants, too. So stick with it."
