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“With grim fatalism: twenty-two to twenty-six”
None of the then What could be said? Yorrik watched the frost slowly fade fro was co back on Finally He alens fared in hot cli
“Why in the hell do you want to call it Fortinbras?” he said finally, his teeth chattering “That’s a stupid name I can barely pronounce it It sounds human”
“With great sorrow: Because, no matter what you do to save your family, Fortinbras always swarms in at the end and destroys it all”
Jalosk Dal’Virra began to swell ten hours after entering the iso-cha his tear ducts and coating his eyelids with angry, fouled scabs The flesh around theed His throat and chest filled with fluid, likely an edema—fluid where there should be no fluid The batarian was drowning in his own skin He screahts to be shut off, screah the hter than it had been for hours, a place ofWhen this passed, he began to stare at the lights in awe,his hands over them as if in a trance
“They’re so beautiful,” he whispered, and began to laugh softly A giggle, really A batarian Giggling “So beautiful Like sapphires s?”
Yorrik turned to Ysses for help, but the hanar still snoozed away How long could a jellyfish sleep? The swelling see pressure on Jalosk’s already taxed brain “Worried correction: They are running lights, and they do not have feelings”
Jalosk rolled onto his back on the narrow cot, staring, dazzled “I thought it would be different in Andromeda, Yorrik I really did”
“Perplexed query: You thought the lights in the Andros?”
“No I thought… everything would be different Why would it be the same? It’s not a new planet It’s not even a new systealaxy Why should it still be the Council races on top, and the rest of us scrabbling for scraps? Why should it not be all of everyone, equal, eating the same size slices of the same size pie? Why should people still hate batarians? Everyone gets a new slate Me I get a new slate Grozik and Zofi get a new slate Maybe in Androhtened, wise, sexually desirable ones, and asari are hideous and stupid andbe the same? Why should the old castes hold?”
“There are no castes in the greater galactic society, Jalosk That is the batarian obsession”
The captain paced slowly back and forth, working so over in her brain When she spoke, she see out of her own mouth “You think? Then why did the elcor never have a place on the Council? Why do the batarians and the volus not have their own Pathfinders? Why did quarians get turned away at so ood elcor, Yorrik Too good to understand anything about the world There are always castes, Doctor At least batarians have the decency to naht All systems tend toward their worst possible conditions”
“It will be the same in Andromeda,” Jalosk mumbled “Humans, asari, salarians and turians up here, then drell, elcor and hanar in the middle, batarians and volus on the bottom, and quarians where everyone else sees fit to stick thele one of their own needs” He began to giggle again The giggle turned into panting, then wheezing “And blue running lights full of feel… feel… feelings to enslave us all”
The sores on his neck burst in a spray of fine, dry dust that hit the iso-field, sizzled, and vanished
The captain knelt next to the glass, as close as she could to Jalosk’s iso-chaainst the cool barrier