by HR Ringer
The waitress – K’ath – walked up to her, looked around nervously, then asked, “What may I do for you?”
Xiùlán looked up slightly as she tossed a couple of credits onto the table. “Batarian ale.” The look on K’ath’s face spoke volumes, especially when Xiùlán added, “Uncut, please.”
Din’sari nearly fell over her feet as she spun around and headed straight for the bar. After talking to the bartender for a few moments, he came out from behind the counter and stalked up to Yuán’s table. “We don’t like your kind in here.” He moved to grab the credits still on the table and gasped as the human’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist in a grip that would shame a krogan, pinning his hand flat on the table; all four of his eyes went wide with fear as her other hand produced a straight-blade knife seemingly from thin air, which she raised over her head and plunged into the table between his third and fourth fingers, right where they joined the hand.
“If you don’t want me to rip this arm from your shoulder and use it to beat some sense into your empty head,” she growled menacingly, “you’ll withdraw that hand and leave those creds on the table.”
Something in this human’s voice told the bartender she was nobody he wanted to tangle with; he nodded in agreement and gently exerted pressure against the hand gripping his wrist, pulling his arm back towards himself, away from her, the credits and the black knife sticking out of the table. He hadn’t realized how tightly she’d gripped his wrist until she abruptly released it – all the nerves that had been pinched began silently screaming a tingling chorus as they regained their freedom – he held and massaged the wrist with his other hand as he slowly backed away from the table. As far as he could tell, she had exerted no force whatsoever, either while holding his wrist or using the massive black knife.
“Now, I want a glass of uncut batarian ale,” she repeated in a caustic voice. “Do I need to get up and serve myself?”
“Go get her beer, K’ath. Make sure it’s the good stuff.” The bartender subtly tilted his head to his right as he looked back at her; she stared unblinkingly back into his lower eyes and responded in kind, causing him to curse. “Shit, human. I think you must have visited Khar’shan. My apologies. I did not mean to offend.”
Xiùlán straightened her head. “Oh, you meant to give offense, of that I have no doubt. You can thank whatever gods you worship that today I am in a mood to be forgiving.”
K’ath brought her a glass of foaming green liquid. Xiùlán passed her left hand over the glass as she shoved the credits at K’ath with her right; the waitress failed to notice the beer briefly foaming up as she took the creds off the table. She only looked back up in time to see the human downing the contents of the glass in one go. Yuán set the glass down, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and got up to leave.
K’ath and the bartender both stared at her in amazement as she effortlessly pulled her knife from the table, placed her boot in the chair she’d just vacated and shoved the straight blade back in its sheath. Gracefully planting her foot on the floor, she faced the pair of batarians, said, “Thanks for the drink,” and casually strode out of the tavern.
* * *
The mechanism of the door to her apartment groaned a bit as the segments retracted into their recesses, then groaned again as the process reversed. K’ath was tired, as was usually the case when she returned from work, and wanted nothing more than to crawl straight into her bed and sleep for the next ten hours. She had eaten dinner at the tavern before leaving, so needed nothing until breakfast. Padok Wiks had lined up a good job for her at Krieger’s Tavern, but she was still a waitress, on her feet for most of her shift. She believed everything was fine until the strange human female had entered and requested the one thing K’ath never wanted to hear of again – batarian ale, uncut. It was as if she had been followed from Omega by Ugrolya Rarfenak.
Worse, the human had shown no ill effects from drinking the half-liter glass of ale in one go. K’ath had spiked the ale as she was drawing the glass from the tap – no human alive could down that much batarian ale without showing some signs of impairment – that the low dose of poison she’d dropped in the glass had absolutely no effect was even more unsettling. She set her shoulder bag down by the door, rechecked that it was locked and turned on the dim overhead light. Turning towards her lounge area caused her to wish the door was still open as she backed up against the wall.
“Hello, K’ath Din’sari. You’re a difficult person to track down.” The strange human was sitting in one of her chairs, one incredibly long leg crossed over the other at the knee, ebony armor gleaming faintly in the low light. The hood of her leather coat, itself unfastened across her chest, was thrown back, allowing K’ath to see the human’s face. Short, tousled hair, midnight black as her armor, framed an oval face with eyes of the deepest ebony, a small nose sprinkled with freckles, full mouth with corners turned up in a slight smile. Her complexion was tawny… a warm, medium shade of yellowish brown, slightly darker than most of the humans she had encountered since leaving her home world.
“You… you… should be dead! Or incapacitated, at the least.”
Xiùlán smiled as she chuckled. “You did a good job of poisoning Ugrolya Rarfenak on Omega. I didn’t want to wind up in the same shape, or worse, so I applied a counter-agent before I drank that pint of ale. The expression on your bartender’s face?” Xiùlán chuckled again. “Absolutely priceless.”
K’ath turned and attempted to get out through a door over which she no longer could control; Xiùlán had reprogrammed the lock to prevent it from responding to anyone until she herself chose to leave. K’ath leaned against the unresponsive door and started weeping silently before turning around. “What… what do you want from me, Ms…” K’ath stammered. “I have nothing of value, certainly nothing that could be of any interest to you.”
“Name’s Yuán, Ms Din’sari, and if you don’t mind, I would like to be the judge of what you may have that’s of interest to me.” Motioning to the other chair, she added, “Sit please… go on, sit… you have nothing to fear from me, I promise. Oh, and just so you know, your apartment was being monitored, until I disabled the listening devices. Looked like the work of the STG,” Yuán said with a smirk. “You can speak freely… no one will overhear what you say to me.”
K’ath looked closely at this strange human, realizing that she held her head tilted ever so slightly to her left – a sign of respect among batarians. She knew exactly what she was doing in the bar today!’ K’ath thought as she continued to watch Xiùlán for any sign of hostility. She slowly moved to the other chair, already set at an angle so her visitor would be facing her when she sat down.
“I’ll get right to it, Ms Din’sari. I’ve been hired to look for a relic, a carving of an ancient asari deity. Shortly before you were transported here from Omega by the Salarian STG agent…” K’ath gasped that this human knew that information; “…you encountered a broker of rare artifacts… a certain Ugrolya Rarfenak, yes? As I said before, you plied him with drugged batarian ale, as you attempted to do to me today.” K’ath put her face in her hands as Xiùlán spoke. “He was going to cut you in for a percentage of his profits, or so he led you to believe.”
Din’sari finally found her voice. “He didn’t pay me a single credit! I helped set him up with a buyer for that carving, and got nothing but threats on my life from the Blue Suns!”
“Hhhmmm… I have it on good authority the turian member of that organization… the one that threatened your life?… is now a semi-permanent but extremely unattractive decoration in you former apartment.” Xiùlán smiled at the mixed look of consternation and relief that crossed Din’sari’s face. “And I am also aware that you turned to an agent of the Shadow Broker for a solution.”
“He promised he’d have credits for me in no time,” K’ath protested.
“And yet, here you are, no closer to an illegitimate payday than when you served drugged beer to Rarfenak. It’s against council edict to
trade in ancient artifacts, no matter their origin, Ms Din’sari. And I am also aware there is no law on Omega except that which is decreed by Aria T’Loak. I do have to wonder if Rarfenak paid Aria’s transaction tax.”
K’ath brightened slightly at this. “It was all under the table. The pirate…”
“…Kryllê Ghydgryz.”
“Him! I didn’t get involved in this mess until after he’d left the bar.” K’ath looked down as she added, almost to herself, “Wish now I’d kept out of it completely.”
Xiùlán nodded. “My sources tell me Ghydgryz was paid sixty-five million for that figurine. Once he had confirmation of payment to his account, he simply disappeared, left Omega, probably for Khar’shan. And the actual selling price would have been more, as Rarfenak’s commission for brokering the deal was additional to Ghydgryz’s payment, by just under two percent.”
K’ath’s mouth fell open in surprise. “That stinking pile of stropharia! I didn’t get paid because it would have come out of his commission?! And he made, what, a million creds!? For brokering a deal with a buyer I hooked him up with? That miserable bastard!”
“Looks that way, Ms Din’sari. So, Blue Suns wound up with the figurine, Ghydgryz got paid 65 million credits, Rarfenak received a so-called ‘finder’s fee’, making him a miserably rich bastard, by the way, and you, my dear K’ath, received nothing but more trouble for your trouble.” Xiùlán frowned as she stood up, prompting K’ath to stand as well. Without the disguise of her hooded duster, this human female was still strikingly tall – certainly as tall as any male she’d known.
“So, what now? Sounds like a dead end, for both of us,” K’ath said in a despondent voice. “Only difference, you don’t have to worry about having your throat slit one night on the walk home from work. And that figurine will probably never be seen again.”
Xiùlán grimaced. “That figurine will surface again, soon… Blue Suns cannot afford to hold it indefinitely. As for you, you should be safe enough here, as long as you maintain a low profile. Being in this enclave of your people should help…” Xiùlán smiled wryly. “Other races really stick out here, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Xiùlán brought up her arm; activating her omni-tool, she entered several commands into its deep purple interface. “The source for the transfer I just made has already vanished, Ms Din’sari. I don’t know what the extravagant Mr Rarfenak was going to share with you, but I just transferred 750 credits from a small, discretionary budget to your personal account. I hope it helps you get better established here. You planned on studying, which is why you left Khar’shan, yes?”
“How did you?… Well, yes, that is true. I wanted to get a degree in cryogenic preservation. Fascinating field of work. I need to look at the schools here on the Citadel, since it appears I’ll be here for the foreseeable future.”
Xiùlán studied her omni-tool for a few moments, the deep purple glow lending an otherworldly appearance to her distinctive facial features. With the tool still active, Xiùlán walked right up to K’ath and waved her wrist past the young female’s upper body before stopping near her left shoulder. “And finally…” Xiùlán took a step back while leaving her tool active, “…would you mind baring your left shoulder for me?”
K’ath found she had to tilt her head back to look this human in the eyes. “What?… Why?… I mean, I don’t…”
Xiùlán held her hand up to stop K’ath’s babbling. “Sudden sharp pain recently… while you were still on Omega, like an insect bite?” She produced a small med-kit from a pocket in her duster and waited, hand on hip.
K’ath nodded slowly as she unfastened the top part of her dress just enough to slide the collar down past her left shoulder as she stammered, “How… how did you know that? Just before the salarian helped me get off the station. He brought me here, set me up in this apartment, helped me get a job…” she clamped her right hand over her mouth as she realized what she was saying.
“That’ll do. Arm loose at your side, please.” Xiùlán waved her omni-tool over both of the young female’s shoulders to be sure. “Yínán zá zhèng!” [疑難雜症 – Gotcha] she murmured to herself before directing quiet words at K’ath. “This might sting a bit, so hold still. I need to…” Xiùlán used her omni-tool to place an intense beam of light on K’ath’s left shoulder. “Feel like something’s still there every once in a while?” Xiùlán asked, as she placed a small auto-targeting extractor on top of the tiny healed wound she’d discovered. Understanding dawned on the batarian as Xiùlán activated the tiny device. “Why… yes, now that you mention… YEEeeeOuch! Damn, that really hurt!”
“My apologies… should feel better in a few moments,” Yuán said as she placed a dab of medigel and a dressing over the minor wound she’d created. Holding a small, silver colored object about the size and shape of a large grain of rice, she handed it to K’ath. “Tracker… most likely no longer active, but I’ll take it with me just to be sure… let it track me for a while, if it’s still active… maybe scare whomever was tracking you. I may even be able to find out who planted it on you… possibly the salarian that spirited you away from Omega. Regardless, your life will be better off without it.”
K’ath stared at the tiny object in wonder, momentarily forgetting she was partially undressed in front of this stranger. The human placed the opening of a small vial against the palm of K’ath’s hand, allowing her to tip her hand and drop the object in so Xiùlán could seal it. “You can refasten your dress,” Xiùlán said softly. As K’ath watched the human, she repositioned her collar and refastened her top. There were a lot of questions to which she wanted answers, but she waited silently for Yuán to speak.
In answer to the questioning look on the young batarian’s face, Xiùlán explained, “Transmitter sends out a signal every eight to twelve hours or so. Not a very precise way to keep track of someone’s whereabouts, unless the person using it doesn’t expect the objective’s location to change radically over a short period of time. As I said, I should be able to use this to get to whoever is keeping track of your whereabouts.”
Xiùlán placed the sealed vial in a utility pocket in her under armor pant leg. “I’ve kept you from your rest long enough, K’ath Din’sari. You should go to bed, get some sleep. I’ll let myself out.”
K’ath looked down for a moment before looking back up at Xiùlán. “The door?…”
“…Will work just fine once I’ve left. You’ve been most helpful, Ms Din’sari. Thank you.” Xiùlán pulled on her leather coat and pulled the hood over her head, turned and unlatched the door lock with a command from her omni tool. Just as she was ready to go through the door, K’ath whispered, “Paddok Wiks.”
Xiùlán turned back at this and asked, “Your salarian?”
K’ath nodded her head, almost afraid to repeat the name, just in case he was somehow listening to them, despite assurances from this human.
“Thank you, Ms Din’sari.” Xiùlán almost turned to leave, then paused. “Oh… by the way… your co-worker back on Omega?… Sy’Efetin? She asked a good friend of mine about you. Wanted us to tell you she hoped you were safe.”
K’ath smiled for the first time since she’d met this human. “Thank you for telling me… Yuán. Sy’Efetin was my only friend on that gods-forsaken rock. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to her.”
Xiùlán smiled. “If an opportunity arises, one of us will let her know you’re okay.” Nodding once, she turned and disappeared from view as she engaged her cloak. With the door open, K’ath was sure she saw the human as a multi-hued grey-white image when she paused outside; she looked both ways before turning and walking away towards the elevator. K’ath’s door closed automatically with its characteristic groan, the haptic lock remaining green. The tired batarian walked up to the door, palmed the interface and watched it change from green to red. As interesting a day as this had been, K'ath hoped to never have another like it.
* * *
Xiùlán took a taxi to the Alliance dock
s, there to see if she could hitch a ride back to Arcturus. While she waited in the operations center, she uploaded and sent Traynor all the information she’d learned concerning the STG agent’s relocation of K’ath Din’sari, including information about the tracking chip surreptitiously implanted in K’ath’s shoulder. Leaning back in a chair, she closed her eyes in order to think. Even with the small amount of information Xiùlán had been able to learn, she expected the figurine would next appear in Illium, unless the Suns…
“Service Chief Yuán?” Xiùlán stood and turned to see who was calling her; a Marine Sergeant stood just outside the entrance door to the inner offices. “Yes, Sergeant?”
“I found a ride to Arcturus for you, but it’s leaving in fifteen. Docking Bay Delta one-four.
Yuán grinned as she picked up her gear. “Thanks, Sergeant. Which way?”
Indicating a starting direction with his arm, he responded, “Just follow the signs, Chief. You can just see the ship’s nose from here… SSV Sirocco… heavy corvette. Captain Ballard knows you’re coming. Fly safe.”
Xiùlán took off at a comfortable trot, fast enough to cover ground quickly, not so fast she’d be out of breath by the time she reached the ship. She made it to the entrance airlock in less than ten minutes and was cleared to board by the XO, who escorted her to the ship’s guest quarters, which turned out to be an officer’s stateroom. Once there, he left for the CIC to supervise the ship’s departure from the Citadel docks and the jump through the relay for Arcturus, saying the ETA to Arcturus would be no more than ninety-five minutes.