Vendrix whistled at the two turians. Grinning as the pair pried their lids off several crates, revealing the polished metal of guns, grenade canisters and body armor. All low-grade, surplus gear. 'This is just supposed to be a trial after all,' Thomas reminded himself. Regardless, it was the most weaponry he had seen in his life, and apparently they were on track to get even more should they prove themselves.
"We've been waiting for our pilot," Vendrix purred, the noticeable impatience in his voice tempered by his delight in finally getting things underway. Thomas needed no further instruction as he began to walk back into the garage. As the lights of the garage threw the room into a harsh, sterile light, the sleek profile of a red skycar was revealed. Thomas grinned as he ran his hand over the hood. It was a back alley chop-job, but it was still his new baby. The mechanics had removed about half a dozen safety restraints, everything from hydraulics to suspension to the force exertion on the antigravitic field projector. Everything was now at Thomas' complete control.
It wasn't long before Clyde and the turian twins climbed into Thomas' new chariot, loaded with their lethal goods, and the skycar tore off towards the dirty Omega skyline. The first two deliveries, along with everything else visible outside the skycar's darkened windows, were a blur. Thomas grinned like a child as he deftly wove his way across the station, the skycar all but kissing the curves of the towering apartment complexes as he zoomed past. The turian twins squawked whenever he took a hard turn. Clyde just let out a long continuous 'WOOOOOO...' whenever Thomas pulled off a particularly reckless maneuver.
As they neared their third and final sale, he cut the daredevil antics and brought the skycar in for a smooth hover before landing it back in the alley of an asari-controlled block. They kept their neighborhoods looking relatively clean, but that was just to maintain appearances. "Asari are the beauty and the beast," was a common saying across Omega.
"Welp, let's get this done and get paid," Clyde exclaimed. The crew grabbed the last crate of weapons and disappeared into a nearby apartment's back entrance while Thomas remained in the skycar.
The next minutes were quiet and Thomas took the chance to play some music. He reclined in the driver's seat as he beat on the wheel in tune with the rhythm for a few minutes before the faint sound of gunfire put the hairs on the back of his neck on end. Thomas immediately sat up in his seat and turned the music down. Brief flashes of light in the windows confirmed the pops of small arms fire were coming from one of the apartment's rooms. The signature purple glow of biotics tinted the windows for a moment before a violent torrent of dark energy shot out through one. Moments later, Clyde and the two turians were running to him like their lives depended on it. One of the turian twins were limping, supported by his brother.
The trio threw themselves into the skycar. Clyde's eyes were wild and his breathing spotty as he clutched his chest. The turian twin's brother hastily smeared medigel onto his sibling's thigh, now a messy sack of shattered plating and useless flesh. The color drained from the injured turian's face as his talons clutched at his brother's sleeve.
"What in God's name happened back there!?" Thomas demanded as he drove away from the building, hoping the approaching engines he heard were just passing traffic.
"TheDealWentSourOrWasASetUp," Clyde blurted out, his hands shaking as they clutched at the dashboard. "ThereWasTheBiggestKroganEverAndTheAsariWereAllDeadOhGod...".
"Clyde! It's ok! Calm down, dude. It's alright!" Thomas exclaimed, trying as much to keep the other human's panic from spreading to him.
"...ThereWasSoMuchBloodSoMuchOhMyGodOhMyGod," Clyde sobbed.
The engines behind them grew louder.
"Shut the fuck up, human! Or by the Spirits I'll give you something to REALLY cry over," the uninjured turian snarled as he finished sealing his brother's wound. "The buyers were already dead when we got there. Somebody figured out the deal was going to happen. A krogan and two vorcha ambushed us..." He paused for a moment. "The asari were in pieces. It wasn't pretty."
Thomas pressed down on the accelerator, realizing they were being followed. He veered off the route he was taking back to the hideout. He didn't want to lead the pursuers there. "But, I saw biotics." he told the turian.
"There was a girl at the door. She let us in. Wasn't in on the ambush, though. The krogan blew her head off the second after she fired that warp."
"And the guns?" Thomas asked.
The turian grew silent, then exhaled. "I couldn't get the crate. I shot at it, though. Hope I messed up the goods beyond repair." The deflated tone of turian's voice betrayed that he did not really believe this.
"Vendrix is going to be so pissed," Clyde cried, holding his head in his hands. Thomas was just about to speak before the torrent of pops behind their skycar told them that Vendrix was the least of their concerns.
The turian instinctively hunched over to hide his head and protect his brother. Clyde burst into a loud string of curses, his voice wavering from whispered lows to near-screams. Thomas' world shrank down to the path in front of him, the sounds of the outside world dim echoes as adrenaline pumped through his veins. "Strap in," he announced as he banked hard to the right. The skycar lurched as its inertial systems struggled to compensate for the high-g turn. The neon lights of the shops and kiosks at a local bazaar became a single blur of color as the skycar rocketed through the street. Gunfire sprayed against the skycar's exterior. The tungsten rounds sounded deceptively close to raindrops.
Thomas swerved back and forth through the marketplace, other skycars scattering like schools of disturbed metal fish. He spotted a hovering billboard and instinctively decided to use it as cover. He made a hard turn, roughly decelerating and banking to the left to shield the skycar from sight. The pursuers passed and Thomas dropped the skycar's anti-grav. The car fell like a rock. Clyde and the turians screamed. Even with inertial compensators cranked up to maximum, the intense g-force took its toll on Thomas. But as he kicked the thrusters back on he felt himself flooded with a strange calmness. He drove the skycar into a nearby parking garage.
He began to count. If he got to a minute without any signs that their pursuer had tracked them down, he knew it would be safe to return home. He mouthed out the numbers as his hands gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles went white. One, Two, Three…
Clyde stuck his head out the window and retched before yanking his head back inside and sinking into his chair with a glassy-eyed look, his chest rapidly rising and falling. The turians' faces had the same look of frozen panic. They dug their talons into their seats, puncturing the leather and digging into the cushions underneath.
"I didn't know you could fly like that, human…" the injured twin finally wheezed. "If I wasn't on medi-gel right now. I'm pretty sure the pain would be so bad I'd be begging you to kill me." He let out a weak laugh before falling onto his brother, who turned to look at Thomas.
"We need to get back to the hideout, Now," he growled.
"Forty-Nine, Fifty, Fifty-One…"
"Hey! THOMAS!" the uninjured turian shouted. Thomas continued to ignore him.
"Fifty-Eight, Fifty-Nine, Sixty." Thomas sighed when he reached the last number. Turning his head to the side, he finally addressed the turian. "Ok, we can go now." He reignited the skycar's engines, pulling them up and out of the garage.
They rode the rest of the way in silence. Once inside the shaded cover of the warehouse garage Clyde helped the turians stagger out of the skycar, despite being just as, if not more, shaken as they were. Ushnak and Vendrix met them at the door leading deeper into the warehouse. The burly batarian snarled at the realization that he had missed a gunfight.
Thomas remained in the driver's seat. Vendrix walked up to him with the grace of a ballet dancer, then poked his angular, raptor-like head through the driver's side window. "Good thing we had you around, eh?" he said, giving the human a smile that was flush with genuine appreciation.
"They're my friends, it's my job to get them away from danger," Thomas replied, surprised by his own words. Friends? Maybe that was the adrenaline talking.
"That's good to hear. Now, we may have lost the third crate, but when I tell Mrs. Quinnus of your daring show of piloting skills, she will be quite eager to meet you," he said in an elated tone. Thomas had assumed he would be more upset over the lost weapons.
He leaned his face uncomfortably close to Thomas. "I do absolutely adore competence, Thomas." He rapped his fingers against the door. "Keep up the good work," he purred, then opened the skycar door. The human followed his boss into the warehouse's main room. The injured twin rested on a cot while his brother checked his wounds. Clyde sat near the pair, handing the brother items from a first aid kit. Ushnak stood nearby watching all three.
"You're not going to help?" Thomas asked the batarian.
"They look fine as is," he grunted, curling up his lip to expose rows of pointed, needle-like teeth. "Besides, you don't want to see me work a scalpel. I'm better at making holes, not plugging them up."
Thomas is about to respond before Vendrix banged the hilt of his long knife against the table. "Attention please, attention!" he called out. "Oh, my friends, my merry band. Through your blood and sweat we may just earn the favor of our beloved matriarch. I can scarcely think of another crew of runners with such dedication and such bravery. And Thomas, oh you soft, brilliant hellion with your driving." The turian grinned, letting the praise sink in. "However, there is still the matter of the krogan and the loss of our third package. I have been privy to the rumors concerning our little community and it seems an upstart warlord has been making life...unpleasant. Conflict will most certainly flare up, but... where this is conflict, there is opportunity. And, I must say...I have never had more confidence in your abilities than I do now. I will inform Mrs. Quinnus of all your performances."
Vendrix told them to go home and get some rest but to keep their omni-tools on in case he needed to reach them. After the heart-stopping blur of the pursuit, Thomas' ride back to his block through the monorail felt like moving in slow motion. Along the way he had received a text from Vendrix. It read, "She says we're 'promising.' Expect a call later tonight. -V".
Thomas' heart soared. He had made the cut and was moving up in Omega. He daydreamed about owning a vehicle, getting a half-decent apartment, money, prestige. A place at his boss' side. So much promise was held in just a single sentence.
He returned to his apartment. A scruffy looking calico cat sat by the fire escape. Thomas gently pet and fed the stray animal before turning in for bed. He hadn't received the call from the enigmatic turian matriarch yet, but it was getting late and with the adrenaline now drained away, he felt tired. His slumber was dark and dreamless.
Thomas was roused by the insistent beeping of his omni-tool. Whoever had the nerve to call him at this hour could screw themselves, he thought, but when he saw it was a vid call the realization struck him like a bolt of electricity. The human hastily threw himself out of bed and scrambled for something to wear.
The call connected and Thomas Larsen found himself looking into the pointed, focused eyes of Mrs. Quinnus.
The first thing Thomas noticed was the same unnatural symmetry and sharpness in the turian matriarch's features that he had seen in Vendrix, only more so. Her features vaguely suggested an eagle or some other bird of prey. Alabaster-white facial plates accentuated the charcoal-black markings that cut across them. She held her taloned hands together, each pointy digit interwoven with the other as gray-green eyes studied Thomas.
His head swam with possible opening lines. Should he acknowledge her? Compliment her? Brag on his own driving skills?
"Thomas..." the woman began, her tone soft and strong all at once. Her voice carried a sophistication he hadn't heard on Omega before. The closest comparison he could draw, once again, was Vendrix's own strange timbre. Even then it still sounded corrupted or disturbed. But then he turned his attention to something more important: she knew his name.
"Yes, ma'am!" he exclaimed, trying to keep his voice professional.
"I've heard about you. You have a bit of a reputation. Good at staying calm under pressure, an effective driver and you know the lower levels like the back of your hand. I need someone like that," she declared. "The disagreement between the batarians and this krogan upstart have dragged on far too long, cost too many lives, and cut too deeply into the bottom line. The batarians are crass, and they are scum, but they understand the necessity of cooperation. They honor their deals. Krogan are much more inclined to simply take whatever they can, damn the consequences. Good business cannot have that. I cannot have that. And, as I result, I have been forced to take a more direct involvement with their territorial conflicts."
Thomas widened his eyes, already reaching the logical conclusion of Mrs. Quinnus' statement. She meant the neighborhood adjacent to his, where the rattle of fighting was ever-present.
"We're selling weapons to the batarians to help them win their war," he announced.
A small, satisfied smile creeped across the matriarch's face. "Exactly," she replied. "Tomorrow I expect you and the rest of Vendrix's crew to oversee an arms deal with the batarian mob in the district. Be quick and be discreet." She paused for a moment before continuing. "This is important, Thomas. Very Important. I expect the best of you. And if you succeed, I assure you that your future on this station will look very bright."
With that, she disconnected, leaving Thomas grinning in the dark.