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One
It was unusual that Wrex would contact Aleena like this, sending a transmission with a time and place for them to meet. Their meetings tended to be more impromptu, and it was always a toss up on how they would cross paths again: would they meet on the same trail of the same job, or during a celebration at some local shit hole in the middle of an unknown star system?
His message was brusque, like him in every way and perfectly unremarkable: WE NEED TO TALK. I’LL BUY THE FIRST ROUND.
She wasn’t opposed to seeing him more regularly, but she was also aware that she and Wrex would never see each more regularly. At least not like this. Mercenary work encouraged friendly rivalry on the best days, friendly fire on the worst. The two of them were better when they kept their distance. Their reunions were sweeter when the credits were high and their blood was half liquor.
Something about it all wasn’t right. The only saving grace was the location, a subtle hint that whatever was going to happen, they could speak safely over their first round.
Though, Chora’s Den had seen it’s share of fights and blows exchanged over old debts come calling was the common currency. Wrex’s head was as thick as the crust on Thessia, but he wouldn’t risk a fire fight on the Citadel.
At least that’s what she was counting on.
“You’re late.” He didn’t stand as she approached the table, didn’t even look up from the cup he held clutched in between two meaty hands.
She sized him up as she approached, searching for any new scars while taking comfort in the familiarity of his hunched form and sour features. Settling across from him, she motioned with two fingers for the bartender.
“I’ll have the same,” she said.
The bartender, a salarian with twisted nubbins and one eye lost behind a mass of scaring, looked between the krogan and the asari.
“That’s ryncol,” he stated. Krogan liquor was never for the faint of heart. Or lightweights. Or anyone who wanted to live out the night.
“Thanks, you’re a doll.” Aleena nodded her dismissal but didn’t look up, her eyes trained across the table at Wrex.
The bartender stayed rooted in place, hovering, his spindly hands clenching and unclenching by his side. “I only serve ryncol to krogan.”
“You won’t be sweeping this one out tomorrow morning,” Wrex said, rousing himself enough to look at the salarian. “Get her the drink.”
Aleena waited, watching Wrex as he watched the bartender scamper off to fetch her drink. When was the last time she had seen him? A few months ago, back in the Terminus System. She had just cashed in on a contract, a mouthy human who had run off with trade secrets and thought he could hide some place too dangerous for others to follow him. Three drinks into her celebration she had turned around to see Wrex, the sombre giant two hours too late.
“You were quicker this time,” he said.
“And next time,” she had replied.
He looked back across the table, the slump of his shoulders exaggerated as he leaned towards her. That’s new, she thought, noticing the scar just above his lip. It was small and fresh, still the angry pink that meant it had to be hurting. Once healed it would blend in with the mess of scars that already ruled his face, each one an embellishment to his sordid mercenary life.
“I’ve got a contract,” he said.
“What a poor mercenary you would be if you didn’t.”
“It’s you.”
Aleena laughed. The doubt that had been curled up inside her, nestled just beneath her ribs, fueled the laughter. It was too loud. A turian from another table was looking over at the two of them, and what a strange sight they made. A grizzled krogan who looked as sad as any krogan could ever look, hunched forward with his head low. A cackling asari.
“You pissed off the wrong volus.” He took a deep breath with a slug of ryncol for a chaser.
A pause, their eyes locking. Maybe this is where someone else would slide in an apology. Wrex took another drink.
It was nearly dark at their table, the dance floor just far enough away that the rotating and strobing lights were dim and distant. Much of the remaining light was blocked by his shoulders and she was sitting in the path of his eclipse.
She would never ask him to turn down a contract. There was no one better to hunt her down.
“Admit that you’ve always wanted to see what I was like in a real fire fight.”
“Hell, I’ve seen you in a fire fight.”
“You’ve seen me shooting your target seconds before you were about to make the kill yourself and earn the bounty.” She leaned across the table and knocked with a closed fist at the elbow that he had propped in front of him. He stayed rooted in place but his drink sloshed over the side. Droplets pooled at his elbow, a multi colored reflection of the light just over his shoulder.
“Once.”
“My credit chit would disagree,” she baited, her teeth exposed in a gummy smile.
The bartender slammed her drink on the table, the liquor served in a tall silver glass that hid the color but did nothing to mask the scent. Strong. Like the krogan.
“It’s your funeral,” he said as he walked away, one last flippant look cast over his shoulder at the asari who was about to drink what might as well have been crushed glass and jet fuel blended into a slurry.
They had one night, one last night, to spend with one another. It was inevitable and yet distant enough that she couldn’t let it sour the mood. She raised the glass and lifted her chin.
“To my funeral,” she said as a toast. “I’ll be gone before you wake up. 10 hours and then I’ll send you my location. You’ll give me that at least, won’t you? A head start?”
Wrex leaned back in his chair, his drink held close to his chest. It was unlikely that he had called her here to kill her before her first drink, but she had shocked him.
“Where are you headed?” he finally asked.
“I have a place in mind. Busy. A real shit hole. The damage will be well deserved.”
“Heh.” Wrex nodded and lifted his drink in the air. “You always had a soft spot.”
Their glasses clinked, the two friends become foes starring back at one another.
“To my funeral,” Wrex finished.
Two
The old station was the same dirty hunk of metal that Aleena had been counting on. Not two minutes out of the docking bay and she had been approached by a shakedown squad. Garbage littered the halls, both fresh and rotted, covered mounds stacked in doorways. The stink of warm bodies, piss and recycled air was thick enough to taste.
It would be the perfect battle ground.
Typically, she had avoided places like this except on jobs. Sometimes she pulled a contract for an unsuspecting nobody in a colony planet side who had stepped on the wrong toes. Once she had somehow been scooped up in an assassination plot that involved a human dignity and her turian mistress. But more times than she could count, her contract led her to someplace like this: a lawless zone of floating refuse that pulled into its orbit the kind of people who had a difficult time making a home anywhere more civilized.
And now she was here to join them, on the run herself.
She looked around the station, the small intricacies of what had been pulled together washing over her for the first time. Sure, she had been here before, but always with her eyes forward, an itch in her trigger finger, and one body between her and the next round of drinks. Maybe it was because she was here to hide, or maybe it was because she had the time to stop and look, but there was something almost sweet in the community that had been built on the outer fringes of charted star space.
“What are you looking for?”
Aleena shifted her weight between feet but stayed where she was, her hands concealed behind her back. She swiveled her head to track the batarian walking towards her. There was time to play it friendly, at least for now, and she smiled, a modest upturn of her lips.
He had broken away from a group that stood still huddled behind him, an empty space in their ranks where the batarian had pulled away. It was an eclectic mix of races, six bodies in total, a variety of scavenged and dented armor shared between them. All the pieces had been tinted yellow, though at separate times and probably through home brewed methods. One had a chest piece still fresh, a bright and buttery yellow that looked even more vibrant next to the faded and dirty grey-yellow of his gauntlets.
“I’m looking for you,” she said, her head titled to the side as she took in the most ostentatious decoration. A white diamond, of varying sizes and thickness, painted across all their chests with a shaky hand. If the smudges and remnant white marks across their gloves and shoulders were to be believed, none of them had waited long enough for the paint to dry before suiting back up.
“Oh yeah?” The batarian lazed to a stop a thumb’s width away from her. His gun was out, held loosely in one hand like he had forgotten it was there and that he should be pointing it at her.
“I have 500,000 credits.”
The air in the room changed instantly, the amount of credits unpalatably high. A human in the group took a step back like he had been struck and a salarian began blinking rapidly, the moist pop of his eyelids audible in the silence.
Only the batarian looked unfazed. “Not many people would admit something like that on a place like this.”
“Let me clarify then.” Aleena smiled more boldly now, showing off her row of perfect teeth and the false dimples that her freckled face markings gave off. “I have 500,000 credits I want to give to you to do something for me. You are part of the Eternals, right? I’ve heard that you’re the best.”
The group exchanged flagrant smirks and brow bone waggles. No doubt this was the first time someone believed that they actually held a place in the bloody archives of the mercenary group. Or the operation was new and they hadn’t yet had a chance to test the con out. Doubtless it wouldn’t last long. Once word got out to the real Eternals, anyone wearing the color yellow on the station would be shown the view from the airlock.
It was all perfect timing for her. She didn’t need a group that would last long or anyone with real experience. All she needed was a handful of people desperate for credits and guns.
“We are the best,” the salarian confirmed for her.
The batarian took a step to the side, all four of his eyes narrowing as they swept over her. Unarmed and smiling, she appeared the perfect mark of compliance. An easy hit for easy credits.
“Let’s talk business,” he finally said.
A few hours distraction to buy her time, that was all she needed. 500,000 credits worth of distractions.
Three
Aleena looked herself over in the smudged mirror, her fingers digging into her cheeks, pulling the skin beneath her eyes taut. For the last few hundred years, this had been the face that had looked back at her. Dark dots, one on each check, and a smattering beneath each eye. The V shape just above her brows that a human once told her made her look angry. Maybe she had been, she couldn’t remember what had made him say it. She had been the only one to walk away smiling after that, though.
It would all have to go. She had been Aleena for a long time, had looked like Ajestra for even longer. Now she would need a new name, a new face, and probably a new line of business.
Wrex was fierce, a good mercenary and an even better hunter. No matter how much she admired his skills, she had to admire her own even more. She made no concession to die on this station and she would need a plan once she escaped. One escaped bounty meant nothing. They would just keep coming and she was over the feeling of being hunted so her head could get someone a paycheck. It would cost the rest of her credits, but a credit chit wouldn’t do her any good if it was clasped against her shredded chest.
One of her newly acquired “bodyguards,” the salarian with a nervous blinking habit, knocked against the washroom door.
“We just got word from our eyes at the docking bay,” he said, the soft timbre of his voice muffled through the closed door.
“Are you sure I’m safe here?” she asked, her voice quavering with forced falsetto worry.
“I’ll be just outside.”
A do not disturb sign would be more effective against Wrex than an armed gun for hire. She tried not to laugh and managed a breathy, “thank you.”
She waited until she heard the door open and hiss close again, the lock clicking into place behind him, before she exited the washroom.
The batarian had assured his this was the safest and most secure place on the station, and whether it was a lie or not, it appeared to be the most well equipped. Crates laden with munition lined the walls, half hidden behind the bed rolls and blankets that had hastily been thrown over their goods.
Aleena pulled one of the crates free and selected a pistol, something small and light weight that she could fall back on.
The salarian would die protecting this room, but she wouldn’t be waiting on the other side. And neither, she thought, pulling the weapons out with her biotics and crushing them between blue fists of charged energy, will there be anything worth while.
She kicked the bed rolls and blankets back over the crates, concealing the mangled scrap she left behind, and headed for an air vent.
Four
Wrex had the first shot and, to his credit, it took her by surprise. Big guy like Wrex, it was hard to imagine him rounding corners on silent feet. Maybe he didn’t deserve all the credit; in the hours since he had landed, Aleena had worked herself in enough of a frenzy that she was getting sloppy before the fun had even begun.
Another round popped to her left, the bullet singing by her shoulder and embedding itself into the wall. Flames spurted from the puncture, suffocated before they had a chance to heat up. She ducked to the right, rolling her back over the jut of an upcoming bend.
“You were right, this place is a real shit hole.”
“I knew it’d charm you.”
Aleena risked a peak outside of her cover. He had stopped halfway down the hall, half hidden by and half overshadowing a stack of crates.
Always, she reflected, there is always a fucking stack of crates.
She took a moment, the fall of her chest as she exhaled, to look over at her friend. They’d had a good run.
She took another deep breath, leaned out from the corner and threw her arm up in the air, her fingers cupped like she was throwing a ball. The floor buckled, stiff peaks rising and falling, then rushed forward likes waves thrown by a great wind.
She was running before the shockwave hit, her boots leaving scuff marks on the floor as she skidded around corners. No matter how fast she ran, or how many corners she took, there was no outrunning Wrex. There was no outrunning anything or anyone for long on a space station.
Not that she intended to outrun Wrex.
The state of the station, the dozen or so lawless bands that battled for dominance over the barely functioning scrap metal, hadn’t been the only reason she had asked to take their final battle here. Her familiarity with it was only half the truth. She’d had time to become familiar with many stations and colonies similar to this one in her decades as a mercenary. There was one thing that made this the perfect place to be hunted.
She had discovered it half a dozen bounties ago. It had been like tracking a ghost, nothing but the foggy memories of others to suggest that parts of her mark still remained. It had taken her hours, even the better part of the day, to finally understand. There were miles of station that she hadn’t checked yet, all running parallel to the worn paths she had already scoured: the air vents.
They had been another world, another layer to shear away. Dead ends were marked with meager belongings, slumped and huddled forms dotting the most lucrative rental space on the station.
It had been easy from there, and though the details of the chase had been lost over time, she had never forgotten the trails that lay hidden just out of sight.
Aleena ducked into a room. This door, like many on the station, had been opened with enough brute force that it would likely never function as anything more than a privacy screen. She closed it behind her nonetheless, if not to keep her trail obscured than out of old habits.
The air lock in this room was far off the floor, the grates nearly lost in the darkness. She worked quickly, using her biotics to remove the cover and lift herself until she could grasp the edge and pull herself up the rest of the way. It was a tight fit, she would need to crawl on her hands and knees through this section.
She stuck one hand back into the room and motioned a beckoning for the cover to come back. Like all other things in Aleena’s life, the slatted metal did as she bid, and disappeared into the blackness.
Five
The explosion was more than a dozen feet away, but the only thing the distance ate up was the heat from the fire. Aleena was tossed backwards, piercing hot shrapnel and chunks of metal from the walls raining down on her exposed face and arms. She felt each piece as it burrowed into her skin, her blue flesh parting, purple rivers of blood flowing into her eyes and mouth.
She pulled herself forward, her hips dragging as she dug her elbows into the floor. There was no way to get traction and her elbows slid out from beneath her, her palms slapping against the ground too late to keep her nose from breaking against the ground.
It wasn’t just puddles of blood that made it impossible to move. The bodies that had been there long enough to stop bleeding had started to sweat pus and fat.
It had taken Wrex 37 hours to figure out where Aleena had been hiding. In that time she had managed a few successful ambushes. He gained a limp from the last of her attacks, his foot mangled enough that he couldn’t put much weight on it. It had slowed down his progress in some ways, but his goal still remained the same.
There had been an explosion then, too, but distant enough that she had barely jumped. What came after, the silence as all the fans whirred to a gentle stop, had been the real attack.
The air became hot and fetid and the tunnels that had kept her hidden grew damp. She had lasted another five hours before she had been forced to come back into the main hallway, her breathing labored and her skin damp with perspiration.
There was no contest who the winner was in a battle of heat acclimatization.
Aleena pulled herself free from the debris of the explosion. The smoke from the latest grenade mingled in the air with the smoke of countless encounters between the two. The station had been thick with smoke and blaring with the sound of alarms for a day.
She could hear Wrex coughing as he made his way through the smoldering remains of the lobby and gritted her teeth until her jaw popped. One knee, then the other. On all fours she made a more successful push forward. She kept her shoulders and hips wide, pressing down gently like she was walking on snow and trying not to break the surface.
Just ahead she could see the green light that marked a working door. A real door. She kept forward, her knees painting her escape across the bloodied canvas of the floor.
The door hissed open and she didn’t care that he would see it. She had just enough strength to push herself up with her hands and lock the door behind her. Exhausted and blooded and in a world of pain, she dropped to her stomach and rolled away from the door just as something crashed against it.
The sirens blared on, enough smoke curling under the door to make her eyes water. Wrex threw himself at the door again and again.
Her joints popped as she pulled herself to her feet. She took a look around and could have fallen back to her knees again when she realized what she had stumbled into.
It must have been gutted a long time ago, but had since been maintained in a similar, if poorly equipped, manner. There was a shelf with a handful of medi-gel and a smattering of other equipment: an unwound pool of gauze, a scalpel and portable body scanner. There was even an ancient med pod, cracked with age and dusty with neglect. A small hint, Aleena reflected, that suggests what this station had been so many decades ago.
Gun fire rang against the door, the ping of bullets echoing through the room. The red light on the door’s lock wavered but held.
She swerved towards the shelf. There were only four vials of medi-gel. Not enough to heal her, but enough to keep her alive. Maybe stem the bleeding and stabilize the quiver that made her knees knock together.
“WARNING: CORE DESTABILIZED.”
The warning sounded over station wide speakers just as the floor bucked beneath Aleena’s feet and the room went dark. The door’s lock gave. Red lights spun and flashed against the ceiling and strips of white light illuminated a path along the floor.
“WARNING: CORE DESTABILIZED.”
Despite the repeated warning, she stayed rooted in place, her eyes fixed on the door. Even as the walls trembled around her and the floor rolled beneath her feet, she kept her attention focused on the door.
Two seconds went by. Then five.
“WARNING: CORE DESTABILIZED.”
He wasn’t coming for her.
She grabbed the medi-gel and stumbled towards the med pod. Even when they had been top of the line and still used for surgery, med pods had never been luxurious. With the hatch pried open by her biotics, a collection of dulled and rusted cutting instruments arranged around the interior on thin, robotic arms, it looked more like a torture pod than anything that was used to save lives.
“WARNING: CORE DESTABILIZED.”
Not that she had a lot of options.
She pressed herself into the crinkly lining, her shoulders hunched up by her ears as she tried to avoid touching the sides. She closed her eyes, let her lungs fill with a deep breath. The hatch was pulled back into place with a pulse of blue energy. Another deep breath and the pod was surrounded, the undulating pulse of biotics pressing against the aged exterior with enough force that she heard it groan around her.
Careful, she thought, her eyes still wrenched close, careful now.
“WARNING: CORE DEST — ”
A sound louder than anything she had ever heard ripped through the programmed warning and jostled her within the pod. Pieces of out dated medial equipment cut into her bicep and neck. Her ears were a poor buffer as her head ricocheted against the interior.
Despite the pain, she had to stay conscious. The ringing in her ears was loud enough to make her wince, but she kept her focus. Her biotics pulled at her, pulled from her. It felt like her ribs were expanding, being peeled out and away from her lungs and heart. She braced her knees against her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. The pod cracked again, the hatch pushed against her until she felt pinned.
In her mind’s eye, she imagined the way the station must look, scattered all around her. Big and small, a whirling vortex of pieces splintering our from a core reactor that didn’t exist any longer. She wondered what pattern they all made swirling around and together.
There were no more sounds, the siren’s call lost in the void of space. A cold seeped into the pod, her stomach clenching and her shoulder trembling in an effort to warm up.
She counted to ten before opening her eyes, though she stayed folded over herself. She wondered briefly if Wrex could claim her head if she had technically killed herself by trying to escape a station melt down by lodging herself in an old med pod.
Part of her wanted Wrex to move on, to get his money and remember her fondly. Another part of her wanted him to know that he was good, but not as good as she was.
She closed her eyes and counted to ten again, measuring her breathing as she did. She opened her omni tool, her eyes straining against the orange glow so close to her face.
There were a lot of things she could write and there were a lot of things she needed to say. She owed him a thank you and a drink. The pod creaked again and she felt a sharp pain just behind her eye. She couldn’t hold out forever and there was enough time for her to make at least one thing right.
“BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME,” she wrote to Wrex.