Nihlus didn’t do mornings. Unless, of course, he hadn’t slept the night before. Which he hadn’t.
The mist was still all around the campsite–it wouldn’t die down until around noon, at the earliest. But that was fine with him. Not being able to see three metres in front of himself also meant that nobody else could, either. He’d even caught breakfast that way. At least, he’d caught two amphibious critters that looked reasonably close to the ones pictured in the decade-old guidebook. A fire was okay, too, since everything was so wet that he couldn’t possibly cause an accident, and the mist would hide the smoke. He loved this dextro planet.
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Sometimes, years later, Nihlus would lie awake in his cot and stare into the gloom and think: damn, I could’ve saved her.
—
The room is false. All of it. The walls are a sterile white, easy to keep clean, just throw on some bleach every time. And varnished with some kind of plastic, so the vomit doesn’t stain. The smell of it hangs in the air, though; any krogan or trained soldier would be able to smell it. Not the natural vomit you heave up after being punched in the guts by the squad’s best hand-to-hand specialist. The long-suffering, sour, sticky-hot kind. The kind brought on by slow and methodical pain.
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No scuff marks. No dirt. No disturbance in the little patch of dust in the corner. No sound, when he turned the doorknob. Antiquated, this place; or at least the appearance of being so. Regardless, the lock was exactly as when he came in. Greased, quiet, unbroken. He examined the flap again. He’d be able to fit his guns through it, but no more. Certainly not the large, metal case at his feet.
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“You can’t do that!” The medic shouted.
“What do you mean I can’t do that?” He shouted right back. Spirits damn it, these humans were so thick. Maybe Saren was right for once. “It’s a perfectly good plan!”
“Look, you dumbass, you can’t put seventeen fucking incendiary bullets into someone and expect us to be able to fix him! He’s got one in his neck, for fuck’s sake! He’s got three in his lungs–“
“Four,” the female medic examining their contact added cooly.
“Four! Do you know what thermal paste does to alveoli? Do you? Well, it destroys them and they stay destroyed! Even goddamn krogan can’t regenerate that quickly!”
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“That wasn’t necessary.”
Saren looked at him with an expression of ‘seven months later and you’re still dumb as soup’. “To kill him?”
“Well, yeah, that part was necessary. But that wasn’t.” That ‘dumb as soup’ look again. He threw up his hands in despair, almost sending a boot flying. “You know what I mean. The thing you did with the tubular machine and the room with the steel hatch–“
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It’s a funny thing, a law.
A law is made to keep you in line. A law is made to be bent. A law is made to be broken. A law can keep the peace. A law can spur a war. Law-abiding citizens are good people. Law-abiding citizens surf the extranet in the comfort of their own studies and read up on how to build an explosive to destroy the hopes and dreams of those alien neighbours. Law-breaking citizens are bad people. Law-breaking citizens are Spectres.
Continue reading [02]