Carbon Life

by HR Ringer

  Buchanan grimaced as he shook his head. “We’ll have to go in individually… arrive on three different ships, on different schedules, maybe even different days. Humans are in the distinct minority on that station, so three arriving together would surely be noticed.” He paused, then added, “Xiùlán’s facial features are sure to be remarked on.”

  “Perhaps, but if batarians remain true to form, the only thing they’ll pay attention to on either of us will be our chests,” Sam snarked. “Not even the C-Pat members would be able to identify us in a lineup.”

  Griff chuckled before finishing his coffee. “Surprised you didn’t say anything about my face, Traynor.”

  “Aw hell, Service Chief… dress you down in some dirty ol’ laborer clothing, you look like an older merc that decided to change vocations,” Traynor said with a smirk. “That facial scar is a perfect disguise for you.”

  Griff laughed as he finished eating and drinking. “I guess you’re right. Anyway, we should get going before your asari friends send out a search party for us.”

  Traynor finished her tea, smiled at Buchanan and stood up. “Grab your gear bags – I’ll take us back to the Ionsaí.”

  * * *

  * ILLIUM – TASALE SYSTEM, CRESCENT NEBULA *

  Operations Chief Buchanan had been dropped off on Zorya in the Ismar Frontier, there to book passage to Omega via Cartagena Station as a cargo handler on a commercial freighter. After ferrying the big man to the colony capital of Thun, Samantha had returned to the Ionsaí so she and Xiùlán could get ready to depart the corvette aboard an asari shuttlecraft when they arrived in the Tasale system. Captain Agana T’Lori and her executive officer Traeria Shoni both cautioned that a pair of human females disembarking from an asari warship in the crown jewel of asari controlled colonies would be noticed by a great many people, not all of them friendly, particularly the Eclipse.

  Eshela T'Saida flew the shuttle from the vicinity of the Tasalean Mass Relay to Illium and dropped Samantha and Xiùlán off near the commercial spaceport. Samantha would book a flight to Cartagena Station to leave the day after the flight Xiùlán would take, thus insuring the women would arrive a day apart; additionally, Xiùlán would arrive a few hours after Griff’s scheduled arrival from Zorya, with Traynor arriving a day afterwards.

  Xiùlán booked a flight on the MSV Celestial Challenger, a small freight hauler with modest passenger quarters; Traynor would be traveling on a similar ship, the MSV Ornate Quasar, scheduled to depart the day following Yuán’s flight.

  Traynor and Yuán met for one final dinner before Sam’s scheduled departure. “You have everything you need, Luv?”

  Xiùlán sighed as she used her chop sticks to shove some noodles into her mouth, held up a finger as she chewed and swallowed, then replied, “It’s a bit late to ask that, don’t you think? I brought everything I think I’ll need there, but realistically? I doubt I could bring enough weapons to make me feel comfortable. Since Griff will be flying as a cargo handler on a dedicated freighter, we have to trust that he can get all of our specialized gear onto that miserable excuse of a station without it being tagged as contraband.”

  Traynor took a sip of beer. “I really don’t like this, Lin. We’re going in blind, and we’ll have to live off the land, so to speak. XO Shoni gave me a small frequency generator and booster that I can tie into the station’s communications array; once triggered, it’ll send an emergency extraction request on an SHF band that will be specifically monitored by the Ionsaí. They’ll be standing by near the Tasale relay, so should be able to get to the Cartagena station in under half a day.” Traynor took another sip from her glass as she thought about what they were about to do.

  Xiùlán finished her bowl of noodles and remarked, “Probably the last good meal we’ll be able to have for a while. Let’s get out of here, get some rest. I have a feeling we’ll be wishing for a nice bed before this little operation is over.”

  * * *

  * CARTAGENA STATION, NEMEAN ABYSS *

  A small freighter with passenger quarters, the MSV Celestial Challenger docked at one of three upper entrances to Cartagena Station. In addition to a very tall human female, several turians, a salarian and a krogan exited the ship as soon as docking clamps and seals were secure. After checking through a rudimentary customs inspection, the human pulled the hood of her knee length, black leather duster over her head, gathered her packs and strode briskly to the closest bar.

  Surreptitiously looking around the dark confines as she entered The Whiskey Blue Alehouse, she mentally noted exits (there were three others in addition to the main door), and number and species of the patrons (a salarian, two turians and a lone asari matriarch,) amongst all the batarians seated at the several small tables scattered around the room. No one spared her even a glance as she flitted like a shadow in the dimly lit room; checking sightlines as she moved, she dropped her packs in an adjacent chair and settled with her back to the wall at a corner table, close by one of the rear exits, and waited.

  A bored looking asari sauntered over and asked if she wanted a drink. “Scotch and soda,” she responded, using the fingertip of her left hand to slide two credit chits across the table. The asari picked up the chits and walked off, returning in a few minutes with a tumbler full of bubbly amber liquid. “Not many humans come through here these days,” she said in a conversational tone as she set the glass in the center of the table. “Batarians have scared ‘em all off, I guess.”

  The woman picked the glass up with a black gloved hand, tentatively sipped and set the glass on the table.

  Seeing that the human wasn’t interested in casual conversation, she sauntered around the room to check on the other customers before ending up leaning on the bar, talking to the turian bartender.

  The woman surreptitiously inspected everyone scattered around at the various tables. She continued to sip her drink, mentally noting the lack of alcoholic kick. Quickly polishing it off, she set the tumbler upside down in the middle of the table and motioned to the waitress. As she came up to the table, the human growled, “I want a refill, and this time don’t water down the fucking scotch.”

  The asari was immediately on the defensive. “Ma’am, I can assure you…”

  The woman held the empty glass up between thumb and two fingers as she spoke in a voice full of dark menace, “Don’t try to bullshit me. You’re watering down the booze so you can increase your percentage.” The woman’s head tilted up ever so slightly. “Now get your sweet little blue ass back to that bar and get me a proper drink.”

  The asari quickly left and speedily brought a second full glass and set it in the center of the table.

  After taking a sip, the human nodded acceptance before turning slightly towards the waitress and saying, “So, not many humans here? I’m looking for one human in particular. Big bastard, slanted eyes – greenish gray, dark hair, knife scar forehead to ear. Seen anyone like that?”

  Wiping the table with a towel, she answered, “Kind of hard to miss, that one. Came through couple of hours ago off the MSV Platinum Lance, small freight hauler. Stopped in for a drink before moving on.”

  “Any idea which way… same level?… down?... up?”

  “Actually said he was looking to meet someone.” Pausing to think, she continued, “I believe he was heading to one of the freight transfer storage areas.” Answering the unvoiced question, she continued with, “Sub-level three, section fourteen.”

  The gloved hand set another credit chit on the table before picking up the tumbler. She took another sip and said, “Thanks.”

  The asari picked up the credit chit and walked back towards the bar. The woman studied her from under her hood as the asari stopped to talk to the bartender; he in turn glanced in her direction before pushing back from the bar and disappearing behind the forward liquor storage cabinets. The asari glanced nervously at the entrance, then back in her direction before moving casually to the other end of the bar. Downing the rest of her drink, the hooded figure pl
aced her upper teeth on her lower lip as she sucked air through them. ‘Warning enough…,’ she reasoned to herself.

  In a matter of minutes, a batarian and a turian ambled through the main entrance, each dressed in the uniform of the Cartagena Patrol… C-Pat in local parlance... and walked up to the bar. After speaking to the bartender for a few seconds, they split up and began an approach to the corner table from either side.

  With hands on the M-3 Predators clipped to their armor hardpoints, they stopped opposite each other at the table’s edge, finding only an empty glass upside down in the center of the table. Yuán Xiùlán had already left through a rear exit…

  * * *

  …the young woman in the black cloak had slipped out the nearest exit and walked purposefully down a dimly lit hallway as she listened for any noise behind her. Batarians eyesight made any attempt to use her cloaking device futile… their upper eyes were highly sensitive to heat signatures; something no personal cloak in existence could hide.

  Hearing no sounds behind her, she paused long enough to drop her gear bags and bring up a station map on her omni-tool. Its use had to be kept to a bare minimum, as C-Pat would detect any extensive access of the station’s VI. Finding the needed coordinates, she plugged them into her omni’s memory, disconnected from the station’s server, then activated the tracker that would take her unerringly to wherever Buchanan was located. She wasn’t surprised to learn he was not in Sub-level three, section fourteen as the waitress had suggested. ‘Bet the lying little bitch is on C-Pat’s payroll.’ Slinging her bags over her shoulder, she continued down the passageway to its end, where a locked and sealed hatch to an elevator barred her way. Once more, she activated her omni-tool, taking mere seconds to gain access to the car, which she boarded and rode to sub-level one.

  Exiting the car, she strode into the passageway; it was only a few dozen steps before she encountered a nearby branching access passageway, which she took. Walking up to the door, she easily defeated the lock after a few moments; engaging her cloak, she slowly slid the door open and waited. The small office area was dark, with the first of several medium sized cargo areas just past another door set in the far wall. She moved only her eyes as she carefully inspected the walls and corners of the room. As expected, there was no sign of detection equipment; she eased her way past the threshold and towards the door on the opposite wall as she kept watching the windows on both sides for any sign of movement or discovery. Reaching the door without incident, she crouched beside it and tried releasing the latch; the door opened inward as she tugged at the release. Probably only locked from the outside. She made ready to stand and enter the first cargo area…

  The hooded and cloaked human female had carefully moved through two of the three cargo areas after leaving the small office behind. There were few lights in these compartments, something that certainly worked in her favor as she silently moved past the exposed frames that formed each compartment’s sub-structure. The man she was looking for was, despite being told something entirely different in the Whiskey Blue Alehouse, actually in the next compartment ahead… sub-level one, section four. She peered around a stack of containers into the next area. ‘Dammit Griff, where the hell are you?’ she thought. Deciding she needed a better viewing angle, she activated her omni-tool and touched two controls. Her micro mass-field generator came online, lowering her personal mass to that of a bird. While she wasn’t floating, her lack of apparent mass made it infinitely easier to jump unseen to the top of a seven meter stack of shipping containers. Once on top, she cut the power-hungry mass-field generator, as she didn’t know when she’d be able to recharge its cells. Flattening herself to the top of the container, she crawled to the far side for a look into the next area.

  Systems Alliance Operations Chief Griffen ‘Griff’ Buchanan was crouched outside the main entrance to the offices at the far side of the third freight storage area. He had been working his way through the warehouses, searching for containers from the Aquila System and had found five, all in this area of the three-section cargo warehouse; the item he was looking for was most likely in one of them. He was in the process of hacking the lock on the door when his omni-tool clicked once. He took a quick look at the text and smiled.

  Finishing with the lock, he sent a one-word answer to the text just received, then closed the tool and silently slid the door open as he engaged his personal cloak and waited.

  One of the shadows at the end of this office block began to move slowly in his direction, seeming to ripple the air as the slight amount of ambient light distorted and reflected around the shadow. As the shadow drew near, it whispered a curse and his name, asking, “Dammit, Griff, when are you going to get some surgery to eliminate that scar?” The shadow stopped at the far side of the door and crouched. “It’s the only thing I have to mention in order to jog people’s memories.”

  Buchanan chuckled softly. “Made finding me easier, right? Besides, I’m told women find facial scars on men attractive. You don’t agree?”

  “I’m not a krogan, and men haven’t been my thing for some time,” she said in as snarky a tone as she could muster while whispering. “And I was misdirected. Little asari bitch in the Whiskey Blue Alehouse wanted me to go to sub-level three, section fourteen… long way down and halfway across the station from here. Makes me a bit suspicious.” Looking around, she said, “Let’s get inside.”

  “Hold on. Need to look for cameras or other bugs.”

  “We need to hunker down somewhere closeby until Sammy arrives.” Xiùlán checked her chrono and added, “Another eighteen hours, anyway. It’ll give us time to get our weapons and other equipment from the cases you brought along. I’ll feel a bit more comfortable with a shotgun docked at my back.”

  “None in the office I came through,” she responded. “We do need to watch out for C-Pat, though… I believe they’re totally owned by the Blue Suns.”

  Buchanan grunted in acknowledgement, then slowly moved just enough to look into the corners and ceiling visible from his side of the door opening; pulling back slightly, he waited for Yuán to inspect the side observable from her position.

  “Camera,” she whispered, “top center, left wall. Standby.” Still in a crouched position, she rolled around to her left, presenting her back to the door in order to shield the ultraviolet glow of her customized Savant manufactured omni-tool. She entered several commands, the last of which set the camera to show a continuous display of this office as it was the minute before the chief slid the door open. To anyone in the C-Pat security office, the time stamp on the monitors would continue to increment, but that would be the only accurate portion of the picture, as the monitored area would appear dark and empty. “Go,” she hissed.

  Griff slid into the room and took a combat stance as he waited for Yuán.

  Sensing her presence behind him, he relaxed slightly and decloaked, turning around in time to see Yuán reappear as well. “Here’s a terminal. Just have to…” she trailed off as she activated her omni-tool and hacked the terminal, instructing it to sever its ties to the station’s server. “…now I can access the database for this warehouse area without alerting every four-eyed asshole on the station. What am I looking for?”

  As a freight handler on the MSV Platinum Lance, Griff had monitored the shipping container full of equipment the three of them needed in support of this mission. If they couldn’t retrieve the asari artifact from this station, seven months of work and thousands of credits invested by Asari High Command would be for nothing. “Container number is RFm-ǾAzKn-751 – should be in this warehouse, out towards the main cargo entry.”

  “Okay… let me…” Xiùlán terminated the program she was using, allowing the terminal to return to its ‘Cartagena Freight Forwarding’ logo. Engaging her cloak, she said, “Let’s go get our stuff.”

  Of the three connected areas of this freight holding/forwarding warehouses, the one Xiùlán and Griff found themselves in was of moderate size; 14m. wide by 10m. deep, with a clear-
span height of ten meters, temporarily home to thirty-three 3 meter long by 2 meter wide by 2.5 meter high standard shipping containers, each stacked three high. A kinetic barrier at the rear of the section in which they found themselves formed an invisible wall, behind which another twenty-four containers were stacked in long-term storage in two warehouses – these would not be of any interest to the Alliance agents.

  A double kinetic barrier at the main entry kept the warehouse pressurized against the vacuum outside – it was between this barrier and the stacks of thirty-three containers where they expected to find their weapons pod in a container 180 by 100cm – there were fifteen or sixteen of these scattered haphazardly on the decking, all within sight of the office they had just vacated.

  With both of them inspecting the small pods, it took only a few moments to find RFm-ǾAzKn-751. Griff’s plan was to retrieve their pod from inside the container and stash it on top of one of the twenty-four container stacks in long-term storage at the very rear. As a practical matter, neither of them could move through the mid-warehouse barrier without injury, so Griff energized his own ME generator along with the tiny ME generator for the pod. Moving to the top of the first stack, Buchanan waited as Xiùlán tossed the near weightless container up to him; he then moved the container towards the rearmost stack.

  In the meantime, Xiùlán had run between the containers and warehouse wall to the control console, where she dropped the barrier just as Buchanan jumped over to the first container. Once inside warehouse one, Griff pushed the container to the very rear as Xiùlán set a five-second delay and re-energized the kinetic barrier before energizing her own ME generator and quickly joining him atop the container stack.

  After taking a quick inventory of their equipment, Xiùlán elected to leave her shotgun behind, fearing being caught with it before Sammy joined them. “Don’t want it confiscated by C-Pat before we get started here. I have my shuāng dāo [雙 刀 – double knife] strapped to my boots and a Liǔyè dāo on my back.” With a grim smile, she continued, “You hear of any sliced-up batarians being discovered, you’ll know who to blame.”