Chapter 2: Surprising Outcomes
October 30th, 2185
"Captain, Helmsman Madeen has just docked. The current temperature in Vancouver is 47 º F. The current weather condition outside is rain."
"Thank you CAIT… It seems like it's always raining whenever I stop here. Just once I would like to arrive when it's sunny."
I was finishing getting dressed when the AI announced our arrival. I put on my knee high boots and headed to my closet. I stared at the variety of coats I had accumulated over the years, trying to figure out which one would be best. Finally deciding on my black duster, I stopped by my dresser and stuffed the pile of items into my pockets. Taking a quick glance at my crumpled pack of cigarettes, "Great, last one. I guess I need to pick up another carton."
The Dolus Bia seemed emptier than usual today. Typically someone stays behind but it appeared everyone was gone today. Whenever we hit a port most of the crew disappears into the crowds of the city, finding ways to satiate their guilty pleasures. I know my team a little too well if I could still pinpoint their location just by looking at a map. Kero can easily be found perusing the comic book stores while Tren usually hides in some dark strip bar. Josie typically spends her time in the local park reading the latest romance novel on her datapad, doubt she would do that today with this weather. I used to join Hal to the various ship repair shops but lately he's locked away in the engine room or updating his enviro-suit's immuno-boosters. Lyrik is the only one I wouldn't be able to track down immediately. I have absolutely no idea what he does when he's not running errands for me. Good thing he always returns. I don't know what I would do without him around.
The airlock opened and a volus stood on the other side waiting. He was constantly shifting his gaze between the datapad in his hands and the crate in front of him. The package was roughly the size of the alien. It was half black and half white with a yellow stripe going down the black side, unusual colors for a crate. Even more concerning was the additional security attachments. Donning advanced locks and sensitive trigger sensors, someone obviously wanted to keep its contents sealed.
"Greetings, Xora!" the volus called out when he saw me walking up.
"Dorian Agat? Is that you?"
"I know… it's hard to tell us apart… but yes."
"What are you doing here? You hardly ever leave the Citadel," I asked, putting my hands into my coat's pockets.
"Transferring this package… into your possession… they paid me handsomely… as I'm sure they did with you."
"You guessed it. Otherwise I wouldn't waste my time on it. Any idea what's inside?"
"No… but was advised by third party… that this package… may be originally… from a group called… Cerberus."
"Cerberus? I doubt that, they are a radical human group. They would never let any alien work for them in any sort of way, including package delivery. No offense," I smirked at him, bouncing on the balls of my feet as I tried to keep my body warm.
"None taken… either way… exercise caution Xora."
"I'm always careful or at least I attempt to be," I reassured him.
On my way back to the comforts of the Dolus Bia, I noticed a suspicious figure in the corner of my eye. I took out my pack of cigarettes, brought my last smoke to my lips, and "accidentally" dropped my lighter. As I bent down to retrieve it, I noticed how the shadow man was clearly watching my every move. Sneaking another glance at the individual, I immediately identified his outfit. He was dressed in a uniform that matched the colors on the package, bearing a very distinctive symbol on the top of his arm.
Cerberus… Maybe Dorian was right.
Even though the package barely measured the height of a volus, it was misleadingly heavy for its size. The twins had difficulty carrying it aboard without any gadgets. The unusual color scheme made it stick out like a sore thumb against the other crates in the cargo hold. Everything about this package seemed… different.
The more I stared at it, the more it became desirable. Whatever it was hiding seemed to be talking to me, begging me to open it. But I had a reputation to uphold. I always delivered packages without peeking into them… although there wasn't any harm in scanning it. Technically I'm not opening it, just finding out its secrets. I've scanned packages before… mostly as a precaution whenever someone didn't want to disclose the contents encased in their package. What could go wrong?
"Alrighty Hal, you know the drill. I don't like not knowing what's on my ship, so let's see what's in this bad boy."
Lyrik leaned against the frame of the door and shook his head, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Just because I told you what Dorian said doesn't mean you should take it seriously. We've done this before so stop worrying."
Hal put his omni-tool to the crate and began scanning. Everything seemed like usual but then something odd occurred… his tool was doing a countdown.
"Why is it going that?"
"I don't know. It's never done this before."
When the countdown reached zero, an EMP blasted from the package. Slowly everything in my ship powered down. The hums of my engines could no longer be heard, the only light in the room was coming from Hal's omni-tool, and there was a definite chill already apparent in the air as the vents stopped blowing. The silence was deafening. Never has my ship been this quiet.
"What the fuck just happened?"
"I… I don't know, Xora."
"CAIT?" I cried out but received no response. "CAIT please tell me you're online."
"Nothing is responding, even my omni-tool is acting up, it's trying to shut down," Hal said, pressing every button he could and receiving error beeps.
Kero and Tren came storming into the cargo hold, "The power is out!"
"I KNOW!" I threw my hands up in the air, screaming, "FUCK! Just my fucking luck! Fuck fucking fuck!"
Lyrik confronted me, placing his claws firmly on my shoulders and staring deeply into my eyes, "Xora… concentrate… what do we need to do?"
I averted my gaze, studying everything around the dim room. My mind flipped through the mental rolodex of every protocol action I learned. "Um," I took a deep breath, prying away from Lyrik's grip, "First off, I want everyone to have a weapon on hand, we are sitting ducks right now and this would be the opportune time for anyone to attack us. We have enough oxygen on board to last us about 3 days. So Hal, head to the engine room and see what you can do about getting the power back online. Once it's back, we'll figure out what needs to be fixed from there. Kero and Tren… grab any kind of flashlights you can find. Also grab some blankets because it's going to get cold in here. Lyrik, I'm going to need you to go grab Josie and make sure everyone gets back here to the cargo hold. I want everyone to stay close… as much as possible."
The twins headed towards the living quarters while Hal went straight to the engine room. Once I noticed the others were gone, I grabbed Lyrik's arm just as he was turning away, "Don't go yet."
I let go and walked over to the mysterious box, slowly sitting down on the floor and leaning my back against it. Lyrik came up and sat down directly on the lid of the package, dangling his legs right next to me.
"You're right. I shouldn't have done it. I should have listened…" I hated admitting when I was wrong but this time I really fucked up.
"Hindsight. This is just a hiccup. We'll be fine."
"I fucking hate my life… Why can't things ever be easy for me?"
"It can't be that bad, Xora. I can list a bunch of great things in your life."
"Oh really? Do tell."
"Well… you have me."
"I do have a great crew."
"I was just talking about myself," he boasted.
"Smartass!" I sneered, elbowing his leg.
"On that note," he hopped off the box and gave a bow, "I better get to my assigned duty."
"Lyrik, can you do one more thing?"
"Anything."
"Hide this stupid box somewhere… anywhere… just out of my sight."
"You got it."
As soon as Lyrik left, I paced around the cargo hold waiting for everyone's return. Most of it was spent looking out the large observation pane at the sun in the Sol system. Judging by the distance it appeared we were somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn. We were drifting in a highly trafficked area so eventually someone would discover us. Hopefully it wouldn't be pirates. I hate pirates… it's the main reason I always keep my Carnifex pistol holstered on me at all times, an old habit from the Alliance.
Slowly everyone made it back, bringing supplies to keep us safe and warm. Since we had nothing better to do, we decided to crack out the poker table and play a few rounds.
One of the twins, don't ask me which one though, brought the cardboard box filled with our "necessities." It contained all of our different alcoholic beverages, the monetary chips, and a few decks of cards. The crew immediately grabbed their respective bottles, leaving two sitting quietly in the box… Hal's and mine.
"You're not drinking?" one of the krogans asked.
"I don't know if I should. I'm the one in command and I feel it is my duty to be as coherent as possible in case of an emergency."
"Oh come on, Xora. Have a few with us. Its tradition!" the other one added.
"Twist my arm! Takes a lot to get me drunk anyway," I said grabbing my bottle.
As soon as we were all seated around the table, I started dealing the first round. We always played Texas Hold'em. At first we tried Skyllian-Five but because I was winning too much, the twins demanded we play another game. We tried a few different card games but when I finally taught them how to play the popular Earth variation of poker, they were all hooked. We play with chips and whoever has the most at the end has complete bragging rights until the next game. But recently we made it interesting. Anytime someone won they had the ability to ask anyone anything. We all swore to answer truthfully no matter what. I've learned some pretty crazy things about my crew, which of course I enjoy using against them later.
The cargo bay's temperature was slowly dropping. Within three hours the Dolus Bia dropped from a comfortable 75 º F to cooler 63 º F. Most of my team was relying on the booze to keep them warm while I had a blanket wrapped my torso and another one wrapped around my legs. I hate being cold. Thankfully my ship was well insulated or this would have been much worse.
Since I won the last hand, I asked everyone, "Alrighty guys and gals, name the most rebellious thing you've ever done."
"That's not fair! You've never done anything dirty," Tren commented.
His brother added, "Yeah, you follow the book so hard that you have internal bleeding from paper cuts."
"On the contrary, I've done my fair share of prohibited activities. In fact," taking a quick shot of my drink, "I did something that if word ever got out… I would be forced to go back under the knife."
They all looked at Lyrik, hoping he would have the answer since he knew everything about their Captain. He just shrugged, he didn't know either. Since they knew the only way to get it out of me was to answer my question, one by one shared their most crooked tale. Nothing extravagant from Josie… of course, since she was straight out of the Academy. The twins explained a few shoplifting experiences… again small time. Lyrik was nearing the complexity of my secret, sharing something even I didn't know about from his days back in the turian military. Apparently he disagreed against one of his commanding officers, which is extremely unusual for a turian, and ended up punching him in front of the whole squadron. Landing him in suspension for a few months and forcing him to attend anger management.
"Alright Xora, we all mentioned our dirty deeds, now it's your turn," Josie commented.
"Do you want the short story or the whole thing?"
"I think I speak for everyone when I say we want all the details," the turian sitting directly on the opposite side from me replied, resting his elbows on the table and patiently waited for my tale.
I leaned back in my chair, kicking up my heels to rest on the edge of the poker table. After folding my arms across my stomach, I began, "Of course this happened when I was still with the INA. I was investigating an officer dealing in the black market, simple catch and arrest. But it wasn't easy… as things never are with me. I followed him to an abandoned laboratory and found out he was working with this scientist. Apparently they were developing a device humans could embed surgically into their bodies that would reject biotic powers from being used on them."
Kero looked surprised, "How does it do that?"
"Honestly, I cannot tell you. All I know is that it's not like some function on an omni-tool where it disables biotics from using their powers temporarily… this thing actually makes any biotic ability being attempted against you completely useless. Anyway, I went in to finish the crackdown. I had both of them in cuffs and was about to report into the Alliance when I had an idea. I decided that I would release them if they agreed to implant one of their devices into my arm."
The look on Josie's face was priceless, "What? Are you crazy?"
"Maybe a little," I said using my fingers to give a measurement, "The surgery was successful. I know there was a lot of risk going into it… that they could turn on me, the prototype might malfunction, or something could have gone wrong while I was under. But it worked. When I woke up, the scientist stayed briefly to make sure I would make a full recovery and then they both disappeared, never to be seen again. I actually spent an afternoon going through the laboratory destroying anything to link their whereabouts and my operation. When I went back to my commanding officer, I advised her that they got away and left no evidence to track them down."
"I have to admit, Captain," Tren commented with a shocked look, "I didn't think you had it in you. You blew my mind right out of the water."
I sat back up and began dealing the next round. Lyrik was eyeing me silently. It was difficult to read his expression, especially since he didn't budge once during my confession. He picked up his cards but didn't look at them, he was still watching me. I tilted my head at him in an attempt of getting a reaction but received nothing. So I just shrugged it off and turned my attention back to the game. It wasn't until I dealt the flop that he returned back to normal.
Since Joselynn won the next hand, she asked, "Does anyone have someone important in their life?" Immediately she shot a glance to Lyrik, waiting for his response.
"Hold on! Before we answer that Josie, I think we ALL know who your 'special someone' is."
"I doubt that…"
I looked at the rest of us at the table and in sync we said, "Qwentin."
"It's that obvious?"
"Oh come on! Whenever he visits, the spare room we have is spotless… which knowing how my brother is, that's impossible. You literally have to spend all afternoon just making the bed. So somebody has been spending time with a certain individual. It can't be me, it's certainly not any of the guys on the crew… so that leaves you."
"Fine, you caught me. Yes, I have something going on with your brother! Now Lyrik, you're up."
We all stared at my quartermaster, waiting for him to reply. He shifted in his seat nervously like he was attempting to avoid the question. His eyes darted all over the table. I have never seen him this anxious before.
"We're waiting on you, Lyrik," I commented.
His eyes locked onto mine, freezing the fidgety turian in place. He stuttered, "Well, I…"
He was immediately interrupted by the hum of the engines rumbling through the cargo bay. The lights flickered back into their bright iridescence and all the relieving sounds of the Dolus Bia returned.
"Let there be light!" I cried out, noticing our mechanic walking out of the engine room. "You are amazing, Hal!"
He playfully took a bow. He knew he saved the day and had more bragging rights than any of us sitting at the table.
"Alright everyone, let's go check every room and make sure we are back to our full potential. Once that's done, we can come back here and celebrate with a few more rounds."
Everyone got up and headed their separate ways. Lyrik oddly left the room without any hesitation.
"CAIT? Are you back online?"
"Yes, Captain."
"Thank you!" I praised the intercom. "Give me a status report."
Apart from a few circuits being fired, the ship was functional again. We returned to the table but started a new game, since Hal was joining us. The more the night progressed, the more went to bed. Lyrik was the first to leave, followed by the twins, and then Hal. Since it was just Josie and I, we stopped playing cards and started matching each other's shots.
"Do you know what today is?" I ask pouring the next round.
She looked at her watch and responded, "It's October 31st."
"Yeah, but do you know what that means?"
She shook her head no. We slammed down our shots and watched each other cringe as the alcohol burned our throats.
"It's Halloween."
"Oh yeah! I never got to celebrate it as a kid. We lived on space stations, making it difficult to import pumpkins."
"You missed out. I love Halloween. My grandfather would make a special trip out just to celebrate it with us. He and I would spend the entire month of October pulling pranks. By the time the 31st came around, my parents were so sick of me that they threatened to send me to live with him. I actually wanted that! Mostly because they were never really home to begin with…"
"I'm sorry."
"Not your fault, don't worry about it," I shrugged and poured another shot, accidentally overfilling it. "Anyway, I kind of miss the feeling I got every October, especially when it was Halloween. Come to think of it, I haven't pulled a prank on anyone since my parents died."
"Why haven't you pranked one of us?" she asked, slurring.
"I honestly don't know."
"You know what I think?"
"That you're drunk?"
"No! Well, yeah I'm drunk, but I think that you don't have what it takes to prank anyone anymore. That you just don't have it in you."
"You're treading on dangerous soil, kiddo."
"Well, prove me wrong!" she exclaimed, throwing her floppy arms up in the air.
"Fine! I'll even let you pick the target. So who's it gonna be?"
"Tren, he seems like the toughest one on board."
"You're on!"
Famous last words…