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His throat was dry His suit immediately increased the humidity of his air supply, but it didn’t help at all He took in fluid fro in It would not ier
The hanar apothecary Ysses drifted up into its alcove, its huge wedge-shaped head nodding gracefully, long pink tentacles floating above the deck Slowly, the squat, round volus design engineer called Irit Non trundled up and leaned against the glass for support The eyes of her brown-and-white environ of their zone A confused batarian felass barrier She was old, but wiry Three of her enor effects of cryosleep The fourth, her lower right, had been gouged out and badly healed Her chartreuse skin had a sour teal slick to it in the diry But then, batarians always looked angry, and Borbala Ferank was the most perfect specimen of her species who ever lived The ship’s manifest listed her as a former security officer She was not, Senna knew, but it amused her to be listed as such The irony was as endless as the voyage to Androreatest crilers, the Knife in the Dark She was now, theoretically, retired Though that ruined eye made it a bit more than theoretical
Sleepwalker Teaer quiet in the Radial
A buzz of annoyed bewilder through the emotions Senna, Anax, and Yorrik had already processed They were not due to arrive for another thirty years The viewports conspicuously failed to show the cool white docking terminals of the Nexus, thefor thealaxy Yet here they were Senna found himself unreasonably irritated by their slowness Yes, ye
s, corowling or sneering, in various ways and co levels of profanity, was: What the hell is going on? And Senna had no time for a repeat performance of this particular pantomime
“Good , everyone,” announced Commander Senna’Nir
“Still not hed
The quarian conored her “I hope you all slept well”
“Wry rejoinder: It is not the sleeping but the waking up that is hard,” Yorrik droned
On a ship of strangers, they were old friends Senna had e on Ekuna, learning the elcor coreat creatures carried sophisticated, backhump-mounted mobile VI systems into battle that ran constant simulations of every possible action-reaction-outcoht a thousand times As his final test, Senna’Nir had built one from scratch Compared to the top-of-the-line e hat, but it worked Yorrik had taken him to see a live performance of their favorite play to celebrate, and afterwards, they’d gone on a bar crawl through New Elfaas City that would go down in the annals of interspecies history He’d taken immuno-supplements and antivirals for weeks beforehand to prepare for just what exactly a shot of krogan ryncol would do to his insides Senna had rather liked what it did to his insides in the end Made hilass
When Qetsi’Olam had told Senna about Andromeda and the Keelah Si’yah, he’d contacted Yorrik at once and made the offer Coalaxies Yorrik had always had a sadness about hi trip into the as just what his elephantine friend needed
Ysses pointed its soft triangular head toward the flower arrangeenderless jellyfish-like creature whose light hoht without levitation packs, seeenta tentacles quivered slightly
“This one does not feel good,” said Ysses shakily, in the peculiar musical voice coant as to refer to itself as I or me They believed that an ancient race called the Protheans had created all things, and would one day return to lead thelory Beside the Protheans, all species were as simple bacteria, and bacteria were not worthy of personal pronouns “This one’s filter glands proclais”
The elcor ical effects of cryosleep vary in severity and duration individually as well as from species to species Rueful amusement: Some patience may be necessary”
“I feel fine,” snorted Borbala Ferank She crossed one black leather-wrapped leg over the other and leaned back, scratching the coers “Only the poor get hangovers”