Mass Effect

A pause, and then: “Overwhelming relief: Yes, yes, absolutely. Enthusiastic cultural reference: A suit, a suit, my kingdom for an immuno-environmental suit. Uncertainty: But not if there is a quarian in it.”

“No, it is an adolescent suit, most likely waiting for our young friend Raya to grow into it while suit fabrication spins up in Andromeda. I don’t think she would mind if we borrowed it.”

“With sincere gratitude: I will replace all of her things that I am about to break.”

“Standby, medbay,” the drell said as they pushed their box of hope and backdoor science into the cargo elevator. Anax ran her hand over the young girl’s environmental suit. They did love their suits. More like a friend than a piece of clothing to a quarian. Therion’s eyelids slicked closed and she was back in the hold on packing day, surrounded by twenty thousand souls stowing their entire lives in chest-high crates, hoping to open them again on new lives.

She whispered: “Little bird hops along the steel, her mother’s gray fingers like fog in one hand, her plush toy keeper green as new life in the other. The song of the little bird drifts through the cavern like snow falling into shadow:

Oh, I love my mother who holds me tight

And I love my father taught me right

Oh, I love my ship sailing strong through the night

And I love the homeworld for which we fight

But what do I love like a lock loves a key?

What holds fast my heart, head, shoulders and knees?

I love my suit and my suit loves me.

“May Amonkira walk beside you in your quest and secure your prey with swiftness, friend elcor,” Anax said, and opened an access pad on the wall to return the elevator to medbay, key the directional lighting toward command and control, and make damn sure the infamous Queen of Smugglers didn’t see her command code as she entered it.

* * *

“Now we’re getting to the good stuff,” Borbala said, rubbing her arms to keep warm outside the bridge hatch. “Small arms locker. Whaddaya think they got in there? Reegar Carbine? Terminator Assault Rifle? Maybe a Banshee or Hurricane IV?”

“Those are hardly small,” Anax answered evenly, turning her body to shield her command code again as she opened the hatch for them. She didn’t trust batarians and she certainly didn’t trust this one. Yes, they were in this together, but that was no reason to get sloppy. “How can you be so cheerful?”

“Should I not be?”

“People have died. Many people. My people. The hanar. Maybe yours next. And I will tell you that while the commander says he believes the crisis will turn out to be minor, he does not really believe that at all. Neither do I.”

“Many people always die. All the time. Every day. Do you know how many times I have personally witnessed the souls leaving the eyes of my own offspring? How many of those I helped along myself? I have no phobia of death, and anyone in my household who did I would invite to cure it by the only effective means: exposure therapy. If Borbala Ferank meets her en

d out here in the black, so be it. I will have no regrets, except that I did not drown my youngest nephew Ignac at birth. Death is the greatest pirate of us all. He will raid even our best ships, drag us off by the hair, and he will ransom not a single one of us. The only defeat is to let him enslave you before his cannons even begin to fire on your starboard flank. So I will not tremble like the hanar up there. I will not exhaust myself tracking the mystery of the thing like that old elcor war beast put out to pasture. I will drink old Mummy Quarian’s turian Horosk on the bridge of the most magnificent ship I’ve ever met, and tell a dirty joke about that time a vorcha and a pyjak walked into a bar. You can do as you like.”

The hatch irised open. The sleek, almost untouched bridge spread out before them, gleaming black and blue, and the whole of space outside the observation window, stretching on into nothing and everything. The drell headed straight for the small arms locker. Her fingers flew over the security panel. Calibrating. More casual. More contractions. Flattery. She wouldn’t make a speech like that if she didn’t think it made her look good.

“That was a really excellent bit of bravado, Bala. I imagine I’ll be quoting it in the future.” She pulled an Arc Pistol, an M-3 Predator pistol, a Reegar Carbine shotgun, and a Lancer III rifle out of the canister, along with a modest bandolier of ammunition. She held one pistol out reluctantly to the batarian, strapping on the rest.

“You did say you were retired, didn’t you?” Therion said.

“Oh, just give me the weapon, you great racist iguana.” Borbala snatched the Arc Pistol out of Anax’s hand.

“All I ask is that you try not to shoot me in the back. I know it’ll be hard to resist the temptation, but just… see how it feels.”

“Oh, it’s to be stereotypes, is it? I’ll tell you what. I’ll try to overcome my inherent batarian nature and not shoot you in the back if you promise to keep the spoken-word poetry fugue-state stuff to a minimum. Metaphors give me a headache. And maybe don’t sigh too hard and keel over and die when those lacy lungs of yours give out, you fancy, fainting princess from a race of fainting princesses.”

Any other time, Anax would have laughed. She knew she should laugh. It was the most advisable response to incite feelings of camaraderie in the target. Batarians were criminals; drell died young. It was all in a good day’s space prejudice. But there were four hundred drell down there in the hold, and they had fainted dead away. And if you were already smuggling fish across galaxies, what else might you sneak on board? She wouldn’t ask, of course. Borbala would just say she had nothing to do with it, and the batarian would have gained a reason to be on guard, while Anax gained nothing. Asking was pointless. It was blunt-force trauma. Real, usable information rarely came from a direct hit.

“Too far,” the drell said quietly.

“No such thing,” Borbala answered, but, in the interests of an efficient working relationship, the grizzled batarian softened her voice. Very slightly.

Borbala Ferank cleared her throat and walked up the ramp to the navigator’s station, frowning. “You know, I don’t think we need to walk all the way back to the security hub. I think I can port the vid footage to the bridge. Put it up on the big screen. Save us some time.”