Carbon Life

by HR Ringer

  The booster’s function was to supplement the stability of the S/T-C for its entire distance; there was no provision for exiting the S/T-C at its location, as it would be impossible to reenter the path in order to continue traveling to the intended destination – or so everyone had been led to believe. The physicists, having collaborated with experts in navigational programming, discovered there was a way to exit the S/T-C at the booster’s location while enroute; furthermore, the interrupted journey could be completed at any time afterwards, as the relays used each ships unique identifier – its transponder – to keep track of their progress to their destination. It was a simple matter to add encoding to each ship’s navicomputer to enable a mid-transit exit. Reentry was accomplished by ‘contacting’ the relay and approaching as if it were the originating relay. It would spawn a Space/Time-Corridor and send the ship either towards its original destination as if there had been no interruption in the journey, or back to its point of origin.

  The Alliance had immediately classified everything concerning this discovery in the erroneous belief that humanity was the only race to have discovered this in all the centuries the turians, asari and salarians had been space faring races. Modified exploration ships were clandestinely sent out solely to investigate the phenomenon, their mission was to locate and map as many of these ‘booster’ relays as possible. The arrogantly flawed assumption that humanity was the only race to discover and utilize a booster relay was rapidly proven wrong; an Alliance corvette dropped out in the Nemean Abyss and took up a position 80,000 clicks away.

  An amazing amount of traffic dropped out of the relay and disappeared into local FTL; these same ships usually reappeared within a day or so to resume their interrupted journey to their original destination. When the corvette followed the destination vector of these vessels, it discovered an heretofore unknown space station a light year from the booster relay – Cartagena Station – in the void orbiting a lone gas giant, itself in orbit around a brown dwarf. The small station turned out to be a transfer point for smugglers of all stripes; the majority of the traffic consisted of batarian pirate craft, Blue Suns smugglers and a few scattered Cerberus flagged vessels, docking at the station for varying amounts of time. Now that the Systems Alliance knew of the station, it would continue monitoring traffic through the relays.

  * * *

  * 2180/LATE OCTOBER — MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER *

  Yuán, Traynor and Buchanan found themselves trailing a Blue Suns shipment of stolen, turian owned lithium dimethylamide condensers along with containers of monomethyl-hydrazine through the lower levels of Omega Station. The Suns were transferring the cargo from a pair of Kowloon freighters they had hijacked after murdering and spacing their crews – pilots and navigators had been replaced with humans working for the Blue Suns.

  Ordinarily, the Alliance would not have gotten involved with a pair of hijacked turian freighters, but as their cargos were destined for military use on the volus world of Irune, the volus ambassador had requested assistance from the Alliance in recovering the cargo.

  Buchanan and Traynor had ‘inserted’ themselves into the ground crew in order to enable the placement of trackers amongst the cargo containers; no one ever asked questions of station-based cargo handlers, as they were all hired on a temporary basis. The unlikely pair had changed into ordinary, nearly worn out clothes, with holes in knees and ragged cuffs on the pants; their faces and hands were dirty as well. Sam’s hair looked unkempt and greasy, as did Griff’s, and he had stopped shaving three weeks prior to the mission. Neither had bathed in a number of days, a situation Sam found completely repugnant; she could actually smell her own body, enough so she didn’t want to raise her arms. And Buchanan! She hadn’t been around too many men for any length of time, but the few she had worked with weren’t usually so grossly offensive; Griff gave new meaning to the words.

  No one paid either of them any attention, with the exception of moving away if they got too close, so Sam and Griff were free to place trackers on, in and under the cargo containers they moved between the two smaller vessels and the heavy freighter that was receiving the entire load. The trackers were a basic Alliance design that Sam had modified – instead of continuously pinging their location, they only emitted once every 70 minutes; a central processor within several of them synchronized all of them, preventing them from all pinging together.

  When the job was done, they grabbed their pay and left by separate routes. Sam went into an alcove next to a building and risked using her omni-tool to check the status of the trackers. Satisfied that all were operating to specs, she looked around quickly, shut down her tool and made for the closest elevator.

  After a three week journey through the relays from Omega, The MSV Ocean’s Skull arrived at a freight forwarding dock on the Citadel, having called first at Korlus, then at Aequitas. When C-Sec boarded the craft they promptly arrested the batarian captain and his first officer for smuggling stolen cargo and selling a portion of it while enroute. The Ocean’s Skull was confiscated from its owners, who would have to reimburse the turian shipping company for the missing containers; the freighter would be sold at auction, with the proceeds being divided among the family members of the murdered crews of the two vessels originally hauling the cargos.

  A number of the monomethylhydrazine containers had found their way to Cartagena Station; discovered in a trans-shipment hanger waiting for pickup by an elcor buyer, an Alliance team led by Yuán Xiùlán had recovered all of the valuable cargo by tracking the signals the previously installed tracers were emitting. The combination of the alphanumeric codes on each container, matched to the original manifests from Palavan and the covertly installed tracers confirmed without a doubt the ownership of the chemical cargo. The Alliance's successful completion of the recovery mission enhanced their reputation with the Volus and the Turians; unfortunately, relations with the batarians were now even more strained then they had been before. Somehow, the batarians simply failed to realize the few bad pœ'mojn (batarian fruit, similar to a Terran apple) in their midst ‘tainted' them all in the same smell.

  * * *

  * OMEGA STATION – MIDDLE LEVELS *

  K’ath Din’sari left the nondescript building by a side door, not wishing to be seen leaving from the same door she’d entered less than an hour before. She had come here to play her final card in a dangerous game – she had met with an agent for the Shadow Broker in order to sell information about an ancient asari figurine that had already changed hands several times just since she’d learned of its existence.

  Ugrolya Rarfenak had reneged on his promised payment to her, and a turian enforcer for the Blue Suns had threatened her life if she continued to stick her nose into places it was not welcome. Involving the Shadow Broker was her final chance to make a few credits for all her hard work, but she knew her life was forfeit if the Suns got wind of her actions. She took a round-about route to the transit stand a short distance from the building, keeping a careful watch on the dark alleys and walkways around her.

  She finally walked up to an aircar taxi that could take her to the lower levels where she lived and worked; taking a last look around, she activated the hatch and was about to lower herself into the rear seat when she felt a slight pain in her left shoulder. Looking around revealed nothing – she rolled her shoulders a bit and felt nothing amiss, so continued, getting into the aircar and making herself comfortable in the rear seat, where she entered her destination and used her palm to press the ‘start’ control. The tiny eezo powered engine came to life under her – the car rose straight up a meter, rotated on its axis and headed for her destination.

  She tried and failed to relax during the short flight – she was still worried that her actions had, despite her attempts to stay beneath notice, drawn attention from the Blue Suns. ‘Should have just ignored Rarfenak and Ghydgryz when I had the chance,’ she thought as the aircar completed its descent to the lower habitat section of the station and gently came to a stop on the pavement. K’a
th swung her legs out of the car and stood as the side door opened; after a furtive glance around her, she started walking, intending to stop by her apartment for a change of clothes before going to the bar for another boring shift of serving drinks to guys who apparently thought what they paid for their beverages entitled them to rub or grab her ass as she walked by their tables. ‘Hope that’s the worst that happens for the next few weeks. Wonder if going to the Shadow Broker was a smart thing to do…’ The agent had said she’d be contacted soon…

  K’ath quickly looked around after entering her apartment. Her gut was telling her something was ‘off’, but she couldn’t see anything out of place, and there was no one here but herself. She closed and locked the entry door and moved into her tiny bedroom to change into a fresh bar uniform. She was pulling her shirt off over her head as she moved back into her living/dining room. Feeling a twinge in her left shoulder, she paused long enough to grab her arm with her right hand and take a good look at the area bothering her – nothing visible – still feeling a slight twinge when she rotated the shoulder or moved her arm around.

  Shaking her head, K’ath decided it was nothing and finished getting undressed. Moving about in just her underpants normally didn’t bother her – not having the continuously swollen breasts of, say, human females, batarian females did not appear that much different from males, at least until their pants were removed. Without the hormones her body would be generating if she had a small mouth to nurse, her breasts would remain virtually flat, with just enough fat and undeveloped milk glands behind the nipples to mark her as a female. At this moment, K’ath felt distinctly uncomfortable and hastily grabbed her uniform. She still did not see anything in the apartment that could explain her feelings, but she’d always trusted her gut, and right now, it was churning with an undeniable apprehension.

  She quickly donned her tights and pulled her dress on. Having her chest covered again calmed the butterflies in her stomach. As she finished getting dressed, she continued to look around the small apartment. Finally giving up the apparently fruitless search for… something… she pulled on a jacket and left for the bar, locking her door securely behind her.

  ‘That young woman is very smart, and quite sensitive to her environment,’ Padok Wiks thought to himself as he deactivated his cloaking generator and moved from his hiding place between the wall and the back of a chair. ‘I will need to be a bit more careful in future… can’t afford to be seen just yet…’ The salarian STG operative moved to the door and waited as he listened for movement outside. ‘…damn lucky I wasn’t in the open. Secondary eyes sensitive to infrared… can see my body heat when cloaked, even if quite cool compared to her own.’ Wiks reactivated his cloaking generator as he opened the door; once outside, he carefully locked the door as she had done, then added a sub-routine that would alert his omni-tool next time it was unlocked… ‘only reason I had time to hide before she entered.’ With that thought, Padok Wiks left the habitat area for the seedy bar where K’ath Din’sari was employed.

  K’ath had been working about two hours when the turian strolled through the door and took a seat at one of the tables. She didn’t like the look of him, but then, she felt that way about the majority of the people she had to serve. He placed an appropriate amount of credits on the small table and ordered a drink – a Horosk. K’ath moved towards the bar to fill the order and nearly collided with another customer, a salarian, who apologized profusely as he took a seat at the bar. He watched her clandestinely as she mixed the turian’s drink and delivered it to his table.

  Upon her return, Padok Wiks asked for a Tupari, a sports drink he was particularly fond of drinking. Unfortunately, K’ath could only offer him Paragade as a substitute, since Tupari was a rare find this far down in the station. The salarian expressed a bit of disappointment, but agreed to the replacement as he engaged the pretty batarian waitress in small talk. It took a while, but Wiks charm and his apparent consideration for her gradually broke through her natural reticence concerning bar customers.

  After a couple of hours, the turian stood and left, a bit unsteady on his feet after drinking several Horosks. He appeared to be a bit unhappy that Wiks had monopolized most of Din’sari’s time when she wasn’t waiting tables or making drinks. As for K’ath, the evening had been quite profitable for her, making her wish for more such as this. She pulled on her jacket and left for her apartment, unaware the turian she had waited on in the bar was shadowing her rather closely.

  K’ath was getting close to making the final turn to walk down the narrow alley where her apartment was located when she heard a commotion behind her. Flattening herself against a wall, she watched in horrified fascination as the turian that had been following her without her knowledge was pinned to a bollard guarding the entrance to a store. The attacker was, to her eyes, visible as a shadowy, black and white image outlined in electronic interference that quickly disappeared from view, leaving just the turian lying on the concrete. K’ath didn’t need to be told that what happened behind her was none of her business – she turned the corner and ran the rest of the way to her apartment.

  She was on the ragged edge of hysteria by the time she reached her door – she couldn’t get the lock released soon enough to get inside where she felt she’d be safe. Just as the door segments parted and slid into their recesses, a hand clamped over her mouth and part of her nose; her attempt to scream was to no avail. The body behind her shoved her into her apartment even as she flailed uselessly at her unseen assailant. She quickly spun about as the hand came off her mouth, only to find the muzzle of some kind of large bore handgun centimeters from her face. All thoughts of screaming died as she sank to her knees and whimpered, “Please don’t kill me… please don’t kill me… please don’t…”

  A hand reached down, caught her under her arm and gently pulled. “Please get up, Ms Din’sari. I am not here to hurt you.” A form emerged from an electronic field, a cloaking device. It was the salarian she’d recently served and talked with at the bar. “I need to ask you a few questions, Ms Din’sari, and I’ll be on my way.”

  K'ath backed away from the salarian; as she couldn't go far in such a small room, she ended up abruptly sitting in a chair. "What do you want? I don't have any money, or drugs. Is it sex? What?…”

  “Please calm down, Ms Din’sari. I am Padok Wiks… employed by Salarian Special Tasks Group. My sincere apologies for frightening you so badly. Needed to make sure you arrived here unharmed, after dealing with turian in alley. Why do you suppose he was following you? Never mind, unimportant now. He was Blue Suns member. I have to wonder what is their interest in a poor tavern waitress from lower levels of Omega. You stumbled onto something that has put your life in jeopardy, Ms Din’sari. I am here to fix that if I can.”

  “I’m… stumbled onto… what? What turian? What do you want, Mr… Wiks?”

  The salarian smiled. “Turian you served earlier this evening… Blue Suns member. I believe he was assigned to shut you up… permanently.” Wiks began pacing the small area in front of the chair being occupied by K’ath. “You spoke with a Shadow Broker agent earlier today. That kind of information does not stay hidden, Ms Din’sari, no it doesn’t. You have knowledge of a… recent transaction… between a Terminus based pirate captain and the Blue Suns, brokered by a Mr… ahh, Ugrolya Rarfenak, is that correct?”

  K’ath was stunned – she didn’t think anyone had paid any attention to her. Wiks chuckled. “Humans have a saying for the expression that just crossed your face, Ms Din’sari, but I don’t have time to explain the concept well enough for you to understand. Next time you browse the Extranet, look up the words ‘deer’ and ‘headlights’ – human terms – that’s the look I just saw.”

  Wiks had ceased his pacing to stand in front of her. “A salarian freighter destroyed, its crew slaughtered; the pirate captain you recently saw talking to Rarfenak responsible. Object obtained by Blue Suns a historical relic of great importance, incalculable value to the asari people. As
a favor to their ruling council, STG is looking at every lead, every scrap of evidence available in order to determine the location of that artifact. You were closest to the two people involved in original transfer. What can you tell me about them? What did you overhear?”

  “I ahh… nothing, really.” K’ath was beyond being nervous by now, but continued on in a halting voice. “I spiked Rarfenak’s ale, learned he needed to broker a deal for a rare piece of asari art. I set up a meeting with a Blue Suns rep, a turian, is all… gave him the ID chip Rarfenak gave me and got stiffed for my troubles.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Apparently, it’s okay to ignore the batarian female as long as she’s out of the way… that’s why I went to the Shadow Broker.” She looked up at Wiks, her fear obvious as she stammered, “And now you tell me… the Blue Suns want me dead?” Leaning forward slightly, she placed her head in her hands as she leaned her elbows on her legs. “What’s going to happen to me now? I don’t have enough creds to buy passage off this station… even if I could, where would I go? There’s no place safe from them… they’re everywhere, and they employ members of all the dominant races, including salarians.”