“Are we there?” it panted. “Is this Andromeda?”
A batarian male stumbled directly into their line of fire. He looked around at the weapons trained on him. The man smelled strange. Sweet, soft, like perfume. It wasn’t right. Nobody sweating like that could smell so good.
“Jalosk?” Borbala Ferank whispered, lowering her weapon. “Jalosk Dal’Virra?”
His eyes seemed to focus when he heard his name. Jalosk rolled his head blearily toward her voice, then took in the whole of Sleepwalker Team Blue-7. The batarian went ashen, turned, and explosively vomited reeking bile, blood, and the blackened remains of his own intestinal lining against the clean medbay glass like a river of hell.
7. CONTROL
Yorrik watched them all helplessly through the quarantine glass. It was painful. For a creature whose language was mostly scent and microgesture, watching a mob of aliens turn on each other while pungent vomit slid down the wall in front of him was like being bombarded with a deafening crash of sound. The newcomer had collapsed in a trembling heap against the sealed door of the medbay.
“I knew it. I knew it was a batarian!” Irit Non seethed.
“Dal’Virra. Don’t listen to them,” barked Borbala Ferank, not lowering her pistol. No one, in fact, had lowered their weapon. They’d only leapt backward to avoid the splatter of his insides against the glass. “Don’t say anything. You know how they are.” She turned on the rest of them, the scar tissue in her ruined eye socket throbbing. “Can’t you stow your provincial pitchforks for half a second? Can’t you see he’s sick?”
“Increasing concern: Perhaps it is unwise to get too close,” Yorrik said. No cryopod hangover was this bad. No matter how many times you froze and thawed, you didn’t sick up anything that color. And so much of it.
No one listened to him.
The man glared malevolently at her out of all four eyes. “Stay away from me, mother of worms,” he snarled. Saliva pooled on one side of his mouth and spilled out. One side of his face wasn’t moving quite right.
“K, identify the batarian bosh’tet on the med deck!” shouted Senna’Nir.
There are no batarian males currently present on the med deck.
“God dammit,” the commander said. He leveled his weapon at the man’s head. “What’s your cryopod number, sir?” The batarian groaned and stared listlessly out of his four eyes. “Sir!” Senna barked.
“BT566,” he moaned.
“I told you, that’s Jalosk Dal’Virra,” insisted Borbala Ferank.
“K, what is the status of cryopod BT566?”
Cryopod BT566 contains the batarian male Jalosk Dal’Virra, forty-six years of age. Homeworld: Camala. Berth type: Family. Guardian of Zofi Dal’Virra, age nine, and Grozik Dal’Virra, age four.
“What did I say?” Borbala rolled her eyes.
Senna waved his hand at her. “Forget about that part, K. Who authorized a revival cascade for cryopod BT566? Are any other pods open?”
Cryopod BT566 has not undergone a revival cascade since transit day 164,250. It is currently in active stasis mode, temperature seventy-seven degrees Kelvin. Occupant’s life signs are optimal. No cryopod breaches reported. All passengers in stasis with the exception of Commander Senna’Nir nar—
“Enough!” Senna cut the ship’s interface off. Yorrik had never seen him so upset, even on the day he’d left Ekuna to end his Pilgrimage. Even when Yorrik had told him what happened to New Elfaas all those years ago. He wanted to comfort his friend. But quarantine made no exception for emotion. On the other hand, Yorrik thought, looking down at the putrid slime that covered the hallway, was there any use left for quarantine protocols now?
The former occupant of cryopod BT566 dry heaved onto the floor of the corridor. He clawed at his neck, grunting. In the shadows cast by the worklights inside medbay, the dark circles under all four of his eyes looked ghostly.
“Thank you, K, that’s just… just fantastic.” Senna’Nir shook his head.
The volus was livid. “All that talk about damned Yoqtan, trying to pin this on us, and it’s the same old monsters it always is. There’s your stowaway, Anax. Not some fanciful asari or krogan. Didn’t you say they’d be in terrible shape by now? Just look at him!”
“Look at him?” Senna’Nir bellowed. “I’m looking right at him, and he’s obviously got whatever the others had!”
“Probably,” Anax said calmly, adjusting the scope of her weapon. “I said probably.”
Jalosk had begun to scratch his arms viciously. His fingernails were useless against his black leather sleeves, so he tried to tear them off. This would normally be no trouble for a batarian. Yorrik himself had seen one tear a Quasar machine apart with his bare hands. Jalosk must be very weak indeed to be sitting there clumsily pulling at the fabric of his clothes like a child. The medbay glass was thick by design. Scent particles would not pass through. But his slats flared anyway, trying to catch the smell of the man, of the horrifying fluids that had burst out of him.
“It’s your right to dispose of him as you wish, Anax Therion,” Non wheezed solemnly. “His crime was against Rakhana-clan. Rakhana-clan should determine his punishment.”
“What an astonishing number of assumptions,” Anax answered softly.