Chapter four

Rizok spat out an unhealthy amount of mucus and orange blood onto the catwalk in front of his ship. He had landed at Omega's spaceport roughly four hours ago and trading goods for fuel wasn't going as swimmingly as he had previously hoped. He wanted to make his transactions speedy, the meeting with Keene was less than an hour away and waiting for the elcor merchant to finalize his slow and monotonous bartering was making the krogan increasingly furious by the second.

"Genuinely concerned, I'm afraid that the goods fail to meet my standards." The elcor warbled. "Apologetic refusal, these food supplies are not fresh enough to sell on my market store."

"Maybe if you had bought them as soon as I disembarked, they wouldn't be fermenting right now in the dockyard." Rizok snapped, emphasizing his point by giving one of the crates a sharp, short kick.

"Modest proposal, I can give you 800 credits for both crates," The elcor seemed unhinged by the krogan's temperament. "Absolute resolution, I cannot offer you more."

Rizok gave both crates a sharp shove towards the elcor and simply nodded "Take them, I don't have time for this nonsense."

The elcor gave a slight gesture with his hand in acceptance and slowly sauntered off away from the krogan. A few moments later, Rizok heard a beep from his omni-tool that confirmed the credits had been dispatched into his account. He sighed in annoyance; eight hundred simply wasn't enough to buy the required amount of fuel needed to get to the Attican Beta. He always liked to have an alternative plan just in case the original plan didn't pay enough. He didn't have time to worry about refueling at the moment, he had to be at his rendezvous point in twenty minutes and he was more than sure he could wrangle some credits from his contact if need be. Hell, he could even pull a few unsuspecting victims into a side-alleyway and mug them if he needed to. That idea bought a sick and twisted smile to his face, credits were the least of his problems right now and they were most certainly not the last.

As he turned out of the dockyards and into the industrial area of the city, he paused momentarily to cough up some more dark-coloured phlegm. His chest had been giving him trouble since Amaranthine; someone had laid out a bunch of proximity mines just outside the entrance of the Blue Savannah syndicate's hideout. The absurd part was that it wasn't he who had triggered the mines, he remembered that a misfired shot from a sniper rifle had made him instinctively leap around to the side of the building, safely shielding him away from any other shots that may of caught him. He heard a louder shot ring off the corner of the hideout, a distinctive sound that came from a high-caliber rifle closer to where he was standing. Then a split second later, the unmistakable boom of exploding mines ricocheted around his ears, he was fast enough to dodge the blast but the resulting chemical fumes had already began to fumigate the area. The resulting fallout had left his throat and lungs slightly charred but thankfully, he wasn't within range long enough for the paralyzing agent to take effect on him. The strong winds on Amaranthine worked to his advantage and the gaseous smoke had cleared within a few minutes, he concluded to himself that making his journey back towards his ship was the hardest task but the oncoming blizzards made it quite difficult for anyone else to follow his tracks once out of their range of vision.

Rizok continued walking down the crowded bustle of the city, his lumbering and threatening gait made most of the city dwellers move out of his way as he barged through the winding streets. Keene had suggested meeting up in a bar that lay between the outskirts of the markets and business areas. Much to his distaste, the bar was a turian establishment ran by a rather erratic hanar as he last recalled. The hanar paid monthly deposits to the local turian mobsters in exchange for their protection and for use of their facilities. Still, the hanar was a religious zealot with a tendency to read out psalms of the Enkindlers at the most inappropriate times, usually when important business deals were being made. This was the cause of many bar fights which strangely enough were accompanied impromptu by the establishment's piano player. Rizok snorted laughter as he rounded another corner; he recalled that the same piano player always was the last person in the joint to be harmed by any of the resulting chaos.

The krogan could see the broken neon light of the establishment within range now but nothing else seemed out of place about it. A salarian named Noek who was a regular customer had damaged the sign earlier that year when some wise guy thought it would be hilarious to slip the poor guy a caffeinated beverage when he wasn't looking. The krogan wasn't aware of the details of what happened next but word came back to him a week later that the salarian had butted the neon sign so hard that the heat had branded a huge letter "L" into the middle of his forehead. Rizok grunted to himself sardonically, the bar sign suffered lightly in comparison to Noek which now simply read "THE FU KARD" instead of "THE FULL TANKARD".

Rizok didn't see the attraction in unnecessary cruelty; he was a strong believer in efficiency and quick and painless terminations were his expertise. If his contact had any intentions of pulling a fast one on him, he would be more than happy to demonstrate how well he could express his form of art in action.