Ch. 23
Sidonis hit the ground hard, and for a moment all he could see was popping white bubbles against a flat grey background. His eyes blinked furiously, forehead plate resting against the cold, filthy ground. It wasn't caked with dirt. It was covered in old dry blood, every color of the rainbow from every race in the galaxy. He inhaled deeply, trying to catch his breath, and flakes of blood got caught in his nostrils, forcing him to sneeze.
"Keep your eyes in," Tarak said politely. Seemed every race had a phrase to say to a sneezing person. Keep your eyes in, God bless you, Goddess catch you, better health, one to praise. Another strange little common link across the galaxy.
Not unlike weapons. Every civilized race had weapons. Sort of like the shotgun Sidonis could feel pressed against the back of his head. He coughed then sucked in another breath. "Thank you," he answered automatically.
"You're welcome." Tarak began to circle Sidonis as he remained on his hands and knees. "Cuff him. Hands and feet."
Sidonis was suddenly crushed under the weight of two men, and let out a cry of pain. How many were here? His arms were twisted back at uncomfortable angles, his legs pulled out from under him. His chin cracked against the ground, teeth sinking into his tongue and filling his mouth with blood.
"Gently, boys. Just a precautionary measure, you understand." He smiled. "Now, if you play your cards right, that sneeze is going to be the worst thing to happen to you today. And you could walk out of here a very wealthy man." Tarak crouched into Sidonis' eyeline. "You know what we want, don't you?"
Sidonis' nose wrinkled as he felt the cuffs close tightly on his wrists and ankles. He coughed again, spitting blood at Tarak's feet. "You want Archangel," he said, and was surprised to hear his own voice trembling. His body was starting to react to fear before his brain could even fully process it.
Tarak leapt back at the spit blood as if it were acid. Jumpy son of a bitch. The batarian growled and threw a kick into Sidonis' face. His head snapped back, and he felt his two front teeth loosen. He groaned and rolled onto his back. Garrus would have quipped something clever here. Wrong answer? That's what he would have said.
Sidonis was not Garrus. He felt his whole body shaking as he looked up at his captors. Batarians. They were all batarians. Six in all. Sidonis shut his eyes tightly. He wasn't here. This was a dream. He was safe at home. In bed with his wife and his kids sleeping peacefully in the next room.
"Where is his base? Start talking." There was a blow to his ribs this time, from the butt of a shotgun.
He was going to die. He was going to die on this god damned floor on this fucking rock.
There was a sudden explosion next to his ear, chunks of the floor hitting his cheek, ears throbbing painfully. Tarak sounded a lot farther away. They shot the ground right next to his head. Sidonis cried out in pain, rolling onto his side.
He was going to die. He was going to die on this god damned ship. Everyone was dead. Jortia. And they took his kids.
"Sidonis, you need to fucking focus. I asked you a damn question, you don't get to drift off and think about it."
He blinked his eyes open, the vision in one obscured by a dark blue smear. Blood. Shotgun must have cut up his face. He was numb. "Don't kill me…"
They took his kids.
Tarak scowled, stepping back, crossing his arms. "I don't want to kill you. Not if I don't have to. But you have to tell me what I want to hear."
Fucking slavers disappeared into the Veil with his kids.
"Don't kill me," he said again.
The batarian leader looked back at his gang, and then leaned over the turian. "Deal. Where is the base?"
His kids were dead, who the hell was he kidding. He'd talked about it with Garrus once. Only once. Three turian kids as slaves would be a trophy. A status symbol. But three turians getting close to puberty, well. That's just stupid to hang onto. Those you take out back and dispose of.
He should just die. He should lay here and die. Fucking worthless.
"You seem to think I have patience."
Sidonis felt another blow, this time to the back of his neck with the butt of a gun. Once again his vision swam as he rolled over onto his face.
Four weeks he was on that ship all by himself. They took all the children. They killed everyone else. Sidonis didn't know how he survived. He was shot repeatedly, just like everyone else. He awoke under a pile of bodies. They overlooked him. He lived. He was lucky.
And the disabled ship drifted for four weeks. Full of corpses. Batarian slavers had taken all the children and left everyone else to rot. The smell…
"The Council thought it was a good idea. For interspecies relations," Jortia told him. Ever the diplomat. Standing silhouetted and beautiful against the window. "Share the planet with the humans, help build the Colony. There's even a new ship being built for the Alliance navy. Turian design." She smiled at him and touched his arm, "The yard is huge. Wait until you see it."
"I don't want to die…" The smell.
"Yeah," Tarak said, "You mentioned that. You need to start saying something else."
They might not be dead. They might be out there somewhere. Waiting for their father to come and save them.
"Give me a map…" he wheezed.
Stop kidding yourself.
Tarak grinned, straightening and motioning for one of his men to give him a datapad. It clattered on the floor beside Sidonis. He felt hands grab him and sit him upright. Tarak crouched beside him, picking up the datapad. "Where?"
What, you want me to point it out with my dick? Uncuff me. Garrus would have said that. He was not Garrus. Sidonis opened and closed the hands cuffed behind his back, "I can't… my hands…"
"Then use your words. Where?"
She was beside herself with excitement. "The yard is huge. Wait until you see it." No one could get big yards on Pavalen. Kania was annoyed having left all her friends behind and spent much of the trip brooding, but the boys were easily swayed with promises of a tackleball field a block away from the new house. They were more enthusiastic, noses pressed up against the glass, watching Pavalen slowly disappear from view.
"Epsilon sector," Sidonis croaked.
Tarak nodded, tapping the screen, zooming in on the edge of Omega. "What level?"
Jortia was dead. He'd found her dead when he woke up. It wasn't the peaceful kind of death you see in the vids. She didn't look like she'd suddenly fallen asleep at some odd, uncomfortable angle, eyes closed. She died fighting and screaming at the slavers. The batarian blood pool next to her showed she'd hurt him bad before she was shot in the side of the face. Half of it was just gone, but her remaining eye was open and still looked full of fury.
So many bodies. Over the next few days he had to move them. One at a time. To the airlock. The smell was getting to be too much. His left arm was shattered from the slavers blasts and he had to move them all by himself. The corpses. He'd hook his good arm around their torsos and drag them, staggering under the weight. One at a time. Thirty six times. He'd drop them unceremoniously in the small airlock chamber, then retreat back into the ship, peer out the window, and press the control to open the outside doors with the flat of his palm. Thirty six men and women soon comprised a long morbid tail behind the dead, drifting ship.
"Five," Sidonis said robotically.
"Where on five?"
Jortia was released into space last. He sat with her for hours in the airlock and cursed the inability to open the door out into the void from there.
He was rescued by the turian military. Months later it became apparent that it was never really a slaver attack. It was an assassination. The target was Jortia's employer, a turian ambassador who pissed the wrong people off. Everyone else was collateral. The kids were taken to make it look like a slaver raid and cover their tracks.
"You don't want to hear it, Sidonis, but they're dead," Garrus had told him in a soft, sympathetic voice. "They wouldn't hang onto them. Not if it was just a hit job."
Sidonis heard a crack and felt blinding pain again. Someone hit him again, this time at the small of the back. "You're drifting again," Tarak said in a strange, sing song way. "Keep talking. You'll walk out of here with a pocket full of chits and a ticket off Omega. Where on five?"
The turian cried out in pain, lying on the floor. They were dead. He couldn't take the pain anymore. It hurt to breathe, but he sucked in a weak breath and muttered, "The old Morrison Company building."
That was it. Archangel was dead. Everyone was dead. And Sidonis felt dead all over.