TES FRIGATE PHOENIX
ENROUTE ILMNOS, IALESSA SYSTEM
NOVEMBER 2188
WINSTON BLACK stretched, feeling refreshed with a tense edge blunted he hadn't known he'd had. He watched the lithe nude form of Ilola Jamilah pad from the refresher. She looked well-scrubbed and shiny. Her intricate tattoos looked like a fine white lace on her smooth skin.
"Feeling better?" She asked.
"Much. This form of physiotherapy I heartily endorse." Black sat up, rolled his shoulders.
"The pleasure was mine." She told him with a grin. "Women have their drives too, you know."
"Believe me, those are things for which I am profoundly grateful."
Black rolled over and put his feet on the floor. She leaned against the doorjamb of the 'fresher, regarded him sitting there. He liked the way the light played across her figure. She wore that nudity well.
"This isn't something you'll regret, is it?"
"Why would I?"
Ilola shrugged. Black reached down to readjust the cast on his leg. All good. His leg twinged and he wriggled his toes until the pain went away.
"Just thought I detected some tension back there in the medbay, is all."
Black stood, searched for his clothing in the chaos of her floor and finally found his undergarments.
"Curious. I must have missed it."
"Just seemed like Shizuka had a thing."
"A 'thing'?"
She went to a small closet, pulled a pair of soft rust-coloured pants from a drawer therein and pulled them on.
"For you." He blinked as if the idea were a new one. She didn't buy it.
"It was more likely Flynn being present."
Jamilah gave him a small shrug and a slight roll of the eyes.
"Yeah, okay, if you'd rather."
"I'd rather."
"I'd just hate to end up in the middle of someone else's something."
"There is no 'something'.
"You're sure?"
Black eyed her for a moment and thought she must have been reading too much into it. He knew Akilah well enough to know she'd not wanted him, she still mired in the past mourning a man who had wanted her only to deny her to another. Could it have been him had Grimaldi not been in the picture? Akilah Shizuka had been and remained the most inexplicably capricious woman he'd ever encountered. Perhaps that had been part of her allure. Yet, those days were done. He sincerely hoped he didn't long for her simply because she'd been the one he couldn't have. Surely he wasn't that shallow.
"There's nothing."
"As long as you're sure."
Black looked skeptical as he sought his pants but could not see them. The floor was littered with clothes, weapon parts, PADs and paper.
"What did you think you saw?"
Jamilah simply shrugged.
"She wasn't a fan of my interest."
Jamilah admitted to herself that a part of her liked the idea. She'd been sure she'd seen jealousy – or something very like it – in Shizuka's eyes. She didn't need the mess, but she did get a kick out of being the cause.
Black chuckled.
"You're imagining things. I'm just not what she wants."
"So you know what women want."
"Uh… frankly, it is not something we need to discuss. If you wish to regret this bout, it's a little late."
Jamilah was about to retort then changed her mind.
"Consider you might be wrong."
Black sighed a sigh she couldn't hear, stepped away then seemed to be looking for something in particular.
"If I am, I'll bring you coffee every shift for the entirety of this mission."
"I like my coffee black, with asari bili sweetener, five grains – and one of Riley's club sandwiches would hit the spot, too."
Black eyed her with a half-smile.
"Good, are they?"
"Delicious."
"You'll go hungry, I'm afraid."
Ilola shrugged again as she hunted for her black T-shirt. Her hand encountered a solid object in a pile. She kneeled and shoved surrounding items away until it lay exposed, like a paleontologist exposing a bone. It turned out to be the hilt of a rather short bladed weapon. She watched him hunt for a moment.
"This it?" She asked and he turned, saw her pointing at her discovery.
"Ah, yes…" he replied, coming over with a few quick steps to snatch it from the floor. Jamilah stood and took a step back, pulling the object out of his reach. He felt an odd burr of irritation. Normally a woman like that standing there topless holding a weapon might have appealed to him, but that was no ordinary blade.
"We're in the age of eezo and FTL and you carry a knife? I don't doubt your skill, but it would seem to make fighting a tad more hazardous." She held it up. "Especially with this little thing."
"I don't do front lines." He replied, holding his hand out. She ignored it. Black gave a small wince at the metallic shush-shing of the blade being withdrawn. Ilola whistled softly at the blade as it telescoped out as she drew it, locking into one solid piece almost a meter long.
"Well, this is familiar." She said with a saucy smile.
"As you see, it's big enough." His smile was lopsided.
Jamilah eyed him from behind the blade, eyes glittering.
"It certainly is."
It had the aspect of an ancient samurai weapon, the blade black for stealth with only a straight silver line of the edge.
"Don't barriers get in the way?"
"No." He sniffed. "Not this blade."
"Well, how then?" She insisted, the professional interest. "What makes this one so special?"
She held up the sword for him, turned it in the light and watched his eyes tracing the blade the way another man's eyes might rove over a fine body. As he spoke he paced.
"That blade…" he paused as he remembered. His voice softened at the telling. "That blade is one of a kind. It was a gift from a krogan battlemaster."
Jamilah simply nodded, not wanting to interrupt. She was fascinated by the change in him as he reminisced.
"Where he got it… he never said. He called it the 'height of krogan weaponscraft', created when weapons took 'skill not just good eyesight'." Black shook his head. "I eventually killed him with it. His choice." He stopped pacing and pointed to the blade itself.
"That is a unique thing you hold. Trichrolesium-bonded folded Mustak steel with a magnetically-sealed molecular edge." He looked faintly smug. "I can assure you no one has one like it, anywhere."
Ilola lifted it a little higher and turned it as she did so.
"It is a thing of beauty, I must agree."
Black just nodded once, drew a finger through the air as if he drew it down the sword itself.
"The edge has a nanometer-wide NF-field that bonds along that magnetic seal."
Ilola bit her lip, nodding along and appearing thoughtful. The weapon tech in her found it kind of sexy.
"This weapon has been a true companion through many campaigns. She's ended the arrogance of many who thought themselves invincible. She never leaves my side."
His voice definitely had that pride in it, the pride pilots had for their ships, soldiers for a reliable gun, engineers for a smooth running engine.
"So they may as well not be wearing anything at all, huh?" She leaned forward with an open gesture over the sword and saw that it had drawn his eye. The sword went to her shoulder as she straightened. "Nothing at all. Curious."
Black stepped to her, directly opposite, eyes on hers as he approached. He stopped only when they were touching. She pressed herself into him, just a little, one small act of defiance at his invasion of her space.
"It makes no difference to this blade or any like her." She felt his hand brush hers on the sword hilt and she only resisted a little when he pulled it from her grasp.
"I can see why she's so special." She purred. "Null force generators are certainly not common tech by any stretch."
"You are a very observant gunnery chief, Gunnery Chief."
"My curiosity is boundless." He stepped closer and she took a step back. He followed, maintaining the close contact. "Both your weapons and that NFG box defied my scans."
"And you can't stand defiance?" Ilola pursed her lips and shook her head. She stopped only when she encountered the edge of her desk. He took one more step. She could feel the heat radiating from him.
"It being obvious proprietary technology? It's frustrating." She pushed him back, slightly. He didn't budge. "Damn 'black tech', all that special custom-made OPS stuff. The mind wanders."
His eyes never wavered from hers. They were very dark, all pupil.
"Mine doesn't."
Ilola reached up and gently traced the jagged scar on his chin.
"Secret N7 gear? Likely on some Council list of censured tech."
Without looking away, Black drew her free hand to his lips and lightly kissed the inside of her wrist, sending a tingle up her arm. She shivered.
"Null force generators use dark energy encapsulate to encase an object in a field with which biotics can't interact." He told her with a husky whisper, kissed her wrist again, held his lips there for a long moment.
"Damn. Sweet talker." She breathed, her hands sliding down his side to stop at his hips.
"As you know, asari are notorious for making sure no one ever gets much of an advantage over them." He added leaning in to breathe on her neck. She felt her pulse vibrate as he did it.
"A sword with NF-bonded tech can kill anything." She murmured and he agreed…
…just as a shipwide call for him blared into her cabin.
The mood shattered, Black huffed and snapped the sword in his hand as if he flicked blood off it, it returning to its original length. Ilola shoved herself from the desk, stomped to the comm by the door and slammed a finger against the keypad.
"Whoever did that – dies!"
Black sheathed the blade and wordlessly collected the rest of his possessions. He finished dressing as Jamilah's ire ebbed off and she flopped heavily into a chair, puffing out a frustrated breath as she did. Finally assembled, Black hopped on his good leg once, then adjusted the boot over his cast. With a loud and dramatic sigh, Ilola rose to move around him, climbing back into her bed.
"I have duty in five fucking hours." She punched a pillow.
He nodded, merely watched her. She frowned.
"You can let yourself out. Get the lights as you go."
Black simply bowed slightly and headed to the door. A tap on the light panel plunged the room into a soft darkness.
"Hey," he heard her murmur from the shadows. "I'm available later. No strings."
Black halted in the doorway, bowed slightly and stepped out.
The door shushed shut behind him and he stepped into the corridor, put his back to the door and ground his teeth with a growl. After a moment, he acquiesced to what couldn't be helped and managed to make it to the end of the corridor just as a voice called his name. He stopped, ground his teeth again, turned to see Kassidi Vas Raven's Fist approaching.
"There you are! I've been looking for you. You don't have a personal communicator, so I had you paged." She said as a greeting. Black closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he'd finished, she'd made it to his position.
"I do have a personal communicator. It was just shut off."
Her silvery eyes blinked behind her faceplate.
"Why would you do that?"
Black bit his tongue and turned to continue up the corridor. Kassidi fell in beside him, blithely unaware of his mood.
"No worse for the wear, from the looks of you."
"Mileages vary," he told her, biting down on the words. "Depending on the exercise one gets." He stopped and looked at her. "Why did you call me?"
"Do you know where we're going? We're going to see the Shadow Broker."
"The Shadow Broker."
"You're not concerned?"
"Not until this moment."
"Something is brewing on this ship. Hoshiko said there was going to be some kind of conference in a while. We're going to meet with the Shadow Broker." Her voice held nothing but disbelief. "It's unprecedented."
"You did not need to page me for that."
A moment later, Juneau, the ship's AI, announced a meeting at 18:00 hours. Black sighed to himself.
"We've barely begun and I'm associating with mercenaries, clandestine organizations and now one of the most notorious criminals in known space." She ran out of breath, threw up her hands. "I should have stayed home".
At this point, Black was thinking precisely the same thing.