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Silence returned to the Radial As they all thought it over, several red usharet petals fell froement to the clean floor of the ship
The drell leaned carefully against one wall of her alcove Her pale interior eyelids slid closed Senna heard her whisper through the glass: “In a steel cavern, a shipment of shadows Chests of treasure stand everywhere like lonely walls on a battlefield Like a school of bright fish people ray, violet A little bird calls to itsHer suit the color of storo to sleep without my friends! They’re stuck in there!’ Mother bird swoops down Her fingers ht on water over the surface of one treasure chest araven on its flank: NN1469P/R Out of the darkness within, the mother plucks two soft dolls, beloved, worn as reen keeper with plastic claws A toy volus with glowing eyes ‘Pick one, Raya’Zufi vas Keelah Si’yah,’ says the s, clutches her keeper to her chest The volus vanishes back into the chest Curious: Mother bird ignores what lies beneath But the volus hides the true treasure: a black statue with a heart of silver and glass”
Anax Therion’s eyes cleared She raised her green three-fingered hand “I think I saw a kid’s toy o hold when I came on board Crate NN1469P/R Does that help?”
4 SUSCEPTIBILITY
Yorrik and Ysses stood side by side in the freezing, shadowy medbay The dead hanar on the slab before thehts that glowed all along the floor and out of the wall recesses Scabbed, frosted blisters ringed the upper third of its tentacles, where the ar pink jellyfish hanging in the air next to Yorrik smelled like seawater and ozone with a touch of nervous herbal greenery somewhere deep within the waves of personal scent The elcor inhaled deeply, trying not to look like he was inhaling deeply, hoping to get a sense of who his new lab partner was beneath all those tentacles and softly shifting lights playing over its slick skin He had never really kn
own a hanar Perhaps he was ent plants in its body odor Perhaps that’s how a hanar smelled when they were fully at peace
Senna had pro protocols as soon as he and the volus could ie the ship’s run state at the time of the initial malfunction Yorrik wasn’t a tech He didn’t knohat that hts were out when everything went sour on theer No different than any other autopsy, he supposed It only did any good if the poor bastard was in more or less the same condition they had been in when they died Not that it mattered much An elcor’s sense of sether As for the hanar, they co with elaborate patterns of biolu able to see the slightest flicker in the dark The lights were not the problem
The problem was, Yorrik wasn’t much of a doctor, and this wasn’t much of a medbay In the end, no matter how prepared the quarians wanted to be, the Keelah Si’yah was never alactic tra more Frozen people didn’t need co with a Sleepwalker, standard operating procedure was simply to put them back to sleep and wake theo There had simply been no need to waste tiel, a couple of bandages, and a few vials of vitamin and calcium supplements After all, the quarians the around inside of a fashionably cut medbay all your own And in Yorrik’s experience, the quarians were not a thoughtful people when it came to races other than their own Except Senna But then, Senna was an exception to so reed with the decision if he were not currently being punished by it Why splash out for state-of-the-art? The medbays on the Nexus would have every luxury They’d be able to sort all this out in half a er The lab was spacious enough, but Yorrik had seen better-stocked field hospitals After the battle Everything was glea and clean and brand new, the hypodermic injectors and readout displays still factory-sealed But of course, they couldn’t use the readout displays And without one measly scan online, essentially, this medbay was a very fancy closet with one shoe left inside it And that shoe was a very poor fit for an elcor allergist
Yorrik had never wanted to be a doctor in the first place His father had been one, and his grandfather He’d done as expected, when he was a young elcor Served honorably in the military as a medic in this war and that But he’d wanted sodown stuffed-up slats and infected olfactory canals his whole life He wanted excitement, adventure, artistic fulfill toward soalaxy To escape a tedious lifetihtened little elcor, “Say ahhhh” Yet here he was Back in a oddamned sore throat
These particular sore throats were, ad than any young calf with a cough
Three corpses were laid out neatly and ready to go in the operating area They were still frozen beneath a hard, clear environmental control hob that would keep the order Frost glittered on the drells’ swollen black tongues A male, a female, and whichever or both or neither of the two a hanar was Anax Therion and Borbala Ferank had hauled theo hold and crate NN1469P/R to retrieve, hopefully, Baby’s First Electron Microscope Leaving them to wait Alone In the dark, with three dead bodies Yorrik looked out the observationat the stars beyond, then down at the horrible death popsicles before hihed “Glumly: I was almost Polonius, you know,” he said flatly
The hanar hung in the air, shining faintly After a long, aard moment, it murmured: “This one cannot formulate a socially appropriate response to that statement”
“Melancholy nostalgia: They auditioned hundreds of elcor I h the auditions, callback after callback Seeking praise: I look the part, don’t I? I’, old but not frail, warot it all Mr Francis Kitt ith a younger actor in the end Jaded bitterness: Don’t they always? But I was assured by the studio that I was absolutely their second choice With defiant certainty: He er, but he didn’t love Hamlet more No one does Conspiratorially: I do not believe that Shakespeare wrote it I do not believe any hu or thinking this quickly An elcor’s life was large and long They could afford to consider And reconsider And reconsider their reconsiderations They did not share with outsiders They did not s, Yorrik’s intellect moved at the speed of an overstimulated salarian He could not stop himself “With disdain: I have met many humans They move fast, shoot quickly, speak carelessly Withheld revelation: Hamlet has the soul of an elcor He cannot decide Hetime With excitement: Do you not think the fa without sight, ears without hands or eyes, sans of my people? We have four feet but no hands,” Yorrik lifted one ray three-fingered toes to demonstrate, “and our eyes are weak in comparison to our sense of smell Why else would Ha: You shall nose hio up the stairs?’ Humans cannot even tell their mothers from a batarian war beast with their puny noses Additionally, Dennmaark sounds far more elcor than human Some have theorized it is a bastardized form of Dekuuna Bashful admission: By some, I mean me I have theorized that With deep spiritual certainty: There is no possibility that it ritten on Earth Thoughtful speculation: Perhaps, if Hamlet had had an elcor combat VI system, he could have run a simulation, and been more confident of the correct choice Confidential whisper: Yorrik is not my real name I was born Naumm, in New Elfaas on the planet of Ekuna, a very respectable, very serviceable, very plain nareatest play ever written Quiet desperation: To remind myself of my dreaer elcor There will be Yorrik, and many people thirsty for entertainment With fierce a elcor Macbeth, which is not quite as good as Ha the dra The Nexus will love it, I am certain”
“Yorrik is your soul nareedin the elcor’s story, anything at all “This one also possesses a soul naly suggests that it is unseeer”
The elcor snorted “With great annoyance: It is unsee to do and not make conversation”