[IC] Omega Serenade

[McHaggis]

𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗗𝗔𝗬

𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗘𝗟𝗗𝗦 : 𝟬%
𝗦𝗨𝗜𝗧 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗚𝗥𝗜𝗧𝗬 : 𝟱𝟬%
𝗘𝗡𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗢𝗦𝗨𝗜𝗧 𝗙𝗔𝗜𝗟𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗜𝗠𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗡𝗧
𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 : 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠 𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗬 𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗥𝗦 𝗜𝗠𝗠𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗟𝗬
𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 : 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠 𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗬 𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗥𝗦 𝗜𝗠𝗠𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗟𝗬

Keelah, so much death. The impenetrable smoke bombs and the roar of assault rifles, the kickback from her shotgun and the buzz of an successful electrocution-by-drone––none of it could disguise the sights and sounds of bodies hitting the ground, never to rise again.

One of their number cried for a medic, and Daro began to crawl along the side of cover (lest she lose her head to the sniper on the rooftops opposite their last stand). Her previously-pristine suit was coated in all sorts of fluids. Flammable liquids leftover from the traps. Orange, blue, red blood all the same, lurid and horrid on the fabric. She steeled her nerve, and rolled into cover just before the storm of bullets overcame her position.

It would end here. Two injections of numbing agents and adrenaline for her ally later and after sealing a large rift in her own suit with omnigel, her certainty was reinvigorated that one way or another, it would end. The fear of running from mercenaries, of looking of her shoulder, it would be done after this. If the spirits were merciful, the Blue Suns would turn tail and run as soon as Bertram was dead.

𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 : 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠 𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗬 𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗥𝗦 𝗜𝗠𝗠𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗟𝗬

Or perhaps it was a beginning instead?

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𝗦𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗪𝗘𝗘𝗞𝗦 𝗔𝗚𝗢

"Your suit's in better shape now, but the circulatory capacitor is going to fail within the next two months. Then you'll only have your back-up, and given you were just shot, I wouldn't risk it."

Daro's omni-tool clicked off just as the volus, a taxation officer by the name of Batnor Cal, lit up the room with the light blue display of his own. "It is appreciated, Migrant-clan. My suits last much longer with your tune-ups." Privately, the quarian reckoned that he ought to by more expensive envirosuits, the hardier kind, like her own, but then again, given that a single high-velocity round could ruin so many internal mechanisms and let the ammonia escape –– or, in her own case, let bacteria in –– the actual cost-effectiveness may have been in Cal's favor. "How much do I owe you?"

"One thousand for the consultation and the meds." She should have become a mechanic instead for all the time she spent fixing up his outer shell of the years, but given it wasn't her specialty and more of a favour, Daro couldn't ever stomach the idea of overcharging him for a hobbyist's level of work. "I'll give you the patch-job on the suit 50% off out of sheer amazement at the bullet which somehow missed every vital system in it and only nicked your lung."

"A generous price." He scanned his credit chit and made the payment, and suddenly Daro could afford most of next month's supplies. In the dim light of the clinic, she could also see the volus waver, even though his mask, like her own, blocked all facial expression.

"Something on my face?" Daro joked as she began to walk him out of the building. She picked up a bag of clinical waste to take down with her to save herself a second trip.

"No," Batnor Cal said with a distinct lack of amusement that was not uncharacteristic, though the extent of the seriousness in his tone left the quarian uneasy. "But you may wish to sleep with one eye open in the near future. Or, more practically, take a look into home defense."

"Why?"

As if revealling such secrets was the equivalent of having his teeth pulled, the volus reluctantly answered, "Your information must have been sold on. Someone is asking old patients of yours from the old place if they've – we've – had any contact since the takeover. I would not patronise you by suggesting you don't know who is behind it, but..."

"No, I know it's them. It always is." Daro sighed, rubbing at her mask which did nothing to relieve the stress threatening to bubble over. "I'm sorry you were put in that situation. Thank you for letting me know."

As they stood ready to part ways at the back entrance to the housing block, the volus reached up to pat her elbow awkwardly. "Not everyone is willing to give up your location, and those that would are not worth treating."

Daro smiled mirthlessly behind her mask, but bit her tongue rather than respond until he was walking away, "Take care of yourself. Don't get shot!"

Patients were few and far between these days. She shook her head and hoisted up the bags to drag them forcefully towards the designated trash deposit. Hot steam billowed up from pipes that ran parallel to one another, stretching vertically as far as the eye could see. Daro's (new) clinic was situated on the sixth floor of a six-storey block, but the alleyway behind it was seldom used by the residents, despite being the drop-off point for utilities. She supposed that most of them just threw their refuse out the window and hoped for the best: that it didn't hit any skycars on its way down to the bottom of the asteroid. The quarian envied those able to do so, but running a clinic out of her home generated medical waste of the sort that identified the existence of a clinic being ran out of someone's home. It wouldn't be difficult to notice, and all it took was one person to let it slip to a friend of a friend, and then teh Blue Suns would be on her doorstep.

Though apparently, they already were.

There were only two people crazy enough for humanitarian projects on Omega, and the Salarian doctor who worked out of the slums recently left the station, or so the rumor mill informed her. That left Daro, an annoyance to someone important who paid the mercs protection money, hence the target on her back. Cutting up the medi-gel containers into tiny pieces and shredding identifying documents before sending them for incineration had worked so far, and Daro hoped that it would continue to do so, despite Batnor Cal's warning. Being run out of one clinic was bad enough; there was no need for a repeat of that in one lifetime.

As she shoved large sacks of wasted plastic into a garbage chute two sizes too small, she was reminded that some people in the galaxy could afford to pay people to do this. Not Quarians, of course, but Turians and Asari and Salarians... If she could pay her way on the Citadel, perhaps she could find work at Huerta Memorial.

Nah.

Her omnitool beeped in alarm, an automated response from one of the drones she kept at the entrances to the district. It caught most of the commuters, but it wasn't so sensitive as to tag them as a point of interest.

Other than the alleyway she was currently standing in, there was only one other possible route to reach the apartment building. A defensible position. It wasn't one she would have chosen herself while hunting for a new place to set up shop, if it hadn't been for a certain Turian friend's suggestion. (Though, in hindsight, the other option was eighteenth floor and had large windows made of stained glass instead of hard-wearing plastic –– not so practical.)

"Well, what is it? Is it a threat? Blue Suns?" she asked the drone as the data transfer plodded along then critically failed in the last moments. "Oh, that's not normal. I'll have to check your camera out." Motion detected, but no footage. She tutted. "I bet it's Hazan either way, though it is quite late for him to show up out of the blue."

I wonder if something's happened.

[DJAtomika]

Present Day

Hazan ducked behind a low wall, bullets and slugs pinging off the plas-steel as he changed position. He and the rest of his crew were pinned down by massive gun positions on the other side of a bridge. Even with smoke grenades and their own explosives people returning fire, they were still in a world of hurt. His shields were down, he'd gotten a bullet in his left side, and their medic was stuck on the other side of a veritable no-mans-land. As the slender turian moved around his cover and kept low to avoid the machine gun fire above his head, he searched his visor for the one green diamond amidst the sea of friendly blue squares, hissing softly in paid as he held a talon to his side to try and stop the bleeding, even as he looked around desperately for the quarian medic.

"I'm not going to make it much longer like this..."

He slumped up against a wall and pumped his last charge of medi-gel into his side, groaning as he gritted his teeth and tried to power through the pain, even as the cooling gel numbed his injury. But as a rocket tore open a wall next to him, he grabbed his sniper rifle and made sure the clip was a fresh one before he swung out of cover, sighted a machine gun post and blew open the gunner's head like a melon.

"Spirits guide my hand..."

Without waiting, he swung his scope to the left and popped another man trying to rush to a new piece of cover. Almost immediately his fire was returned by another set of troopers to his right, forcing him back into cover with an angry hiss. Hazan racked the slide of his rifle, popping the heat sink, as he slapped a new one in and chambered it.

"The things I do for you, Daro..."

---

A few weeks ago...

Counting the credit chits in his talons, Hazan walked down the steps to the Lower Wards. His armour still on him in case of an ambush, with his sidearm clipped to his thigh, the mercenary was quite content with himself. Another contract finished with minimal damage to himself and another substantial payout. Enough to get his medi-gel restocked and his old wounds looked over at his favourite clinic on Omega. And, of course, a chance to talk to Daro. One of the few friends he had on Omega, the clinic's only nurse and doctor, all in one quarian package.

Unfortunately for Hazan, there were no elevators at Daro's block so he climbed the several flights of stairs to the top floor, where her clinic was. In doing so, he did a quick scan of the area with his omnitool, idly noting the single friendly signature on his HUD; that of Daro herself, who was at the bottom of the building, quaintly marked by a blue square.

Huh. Must be running an errand. Or taking out the trash.

He also noted, as his omnitool connected to hers via private network, that her vitals were normal. So no real danger. However, the banging noise coming from her floor drew his attention and he powered down his omnitool while he went into danger mode. He crouched and kept to the sides of the metal staircase, easing his footsteps and progress up to the sixth floor as he peeked round the corner. Sure enough, there stood a gaggle of men, dirty looking mercenaries probably hired by some third-rate scoundrel looking for an extra credit chit. One of them was pounding on the clinic door with enough force to rattle the metal security grate.

"Hey! Open up in there! Daro'Shuris nar Konesh! Your boss wants to talk to you! If you don't open up and come quietly, I'm going to blow open this door!"

Hazan took stock of the situation. There was one man, a burly human, at the door itself. Flanking him were a turian and another human, both armed with heavy pistols and behind them stood one more merc, a batarian, armed with a shotgun. In the relative darkness of the stairwell, he knew that even ol' four-eyes over there wouldn't see him, much less if he had his tactical cloak on. He tapped a talon onto his omnitool and waited for the short moment it took for his cloaking software to engage. His shields bent and refracted the light around himself, effectively turning the slender turian invisible. Then he searched the ground for something to distract the guards with, found a small pebble, and then chucked it at the back of the second human's head. The man with a pistol yelped and swung around.

" 'Ey man! What the hell?!"

The batarian turned around and gave the man a glance, unsure if he was being referred to or not, and shrugged his shoulders.

"What? What the hell did I do?"

Hazan crept forward, keeping low as he attempted to get near the batarian without getting caught. As the two argued, Hazan stood and turned off his cloak.

"Boo."

The slender turian shoved the batarian forwards, making sure he was between himself and the other armed men, even as the guards balked and tried to ready their weapons. Hazan moved forward behind his makeshift meat shield, running with enough force to sandwich all four goons between himself and the metal security grate covering the door. All the confusion and chaos elicited many noises of pain from the mercs in front of him, but the turian guard was smart enough to raise his pistol at him. Hazan responded by blocking the action with his left hand, grabbing onto both the pistol and the other turian's hand as he raised it up above his head. A deafening gunshot tore through the cramped hallway, the slug burying itself in the ceiling and leaving him with a ringing in his ears.

Undeterred, Hazan pressed forward, roughly shoving the batarian against his two companions as he twisted the turian's wrist just slightly upwards and then snapped his elbow with a palm strike to the hyper-extended joint. As the other turian screamed in pain, Hazan kept his grip tight on his pistol as the human extricated his gun arm and swung his pistol up at him. The grey turian responded by spinning around counterclockwise, taking the other turian's broken arm with him and causing more pain by bending it round the broken joint around his right side as he turned around.

His back now to the goons, he pushed his weight against the pile, keeping them pinned as he brought the guard's pistol to bear against the one that was being raised at him, their barrels almost touching as Hazan shoved a talon into the trigger guard of the pistol he was holding onto and squeezed. Another round bellowed from the heavy pistol, shearing into the raised gun at close range and knocking it out of the hand of the human guard. He shouted in surprised as he recoiled back from the impact while Hazan let go of the gun and swung around briefly to bury his right elbow into the other turian's face, feeling cartilage break from the impact.

The batarian whose back was against his struggled to get free as Hazan slapped the pistol from the turian's grip. The slender turian responded by swinging his left elbow into the back of his head, followed by him briefly moving away as he spun on his left foot and punched his lower back, making him grunt in pain. He followed it up by grabbing onto the back collar of his jacket and pulled, tripping the bigger man over his outstretched right foot and sending him away through his momentum.

The human guard yelled as he drew a knife from his belt and lunged at Hazan, the intent clear in his eyes. He countered the lunge by moving two steps back and bending his body into a C shape, bringing both his hands in towards his gut to grab onto the man's wrist. As he backed up, he twisted his body to the right, letting the blade pass him by. His left hand thumped into the crook of his elbow and his right hand, still gripped firmly onto the man's hand and the knife, pushed and redirected the lunge back into his chest. The serrated blade sunk deep into him and he screamed in pain, blood seeping from around the blade buried inside his front.

Hazan's attention turned lastly to the batarian, who was struggling to get up. He heard the telltale racking of his shotgun's slide and responded in kind by pulling his buddy's knife, once lodged in his chest, from its resting place and flung it at his last opponent. The blade flew through the air and embedded itself in the batarian's shoulder and, with a shout of pain, he went down too. As he made sure his last opponent was down for the count, he could feel the human guard sag in his grip, the life fading from his body as he bled all over himself and the floor.

The turian let go of the bleeding human, watching him crumple to the floor as blood now gushed from the open wound, creating a dark puddle on the plas-steel floor. Next to him, his turian buddy laid on the floor, groaning in pain as he held his arm, now broken in two places and at an awkward angle. Their boss, presumably, stood against the door to Daro's clinic, arms and hands up in a gesture of surrender. Hazan walked slowly towards him, a familiar glint in his eye as he drew his own knife and pressed the blade against the goon's neck.

"Heard something about a boss. Who's he? Quick now, I'm pretty sure you want to get out of here alive, rather than in a body bag."

"I- I- I don't know! All I know is that he's some big shot who works with the Blue Suns! He's just paying for this, I don't know what's going on, I swear!"

"Huh. Interesting. Well you go back to your boss and you tell him that unless he wants to be haunted by a Ghost, he lays off the quarian and her clinic, got it?"

"O- okay! Just let me leave! Please!"

Hazan withdrew the knife blade from the man's neck and watched as he ran, gibbering, away from the scene, leaving his men behind. He just shrugged and walked over to the batarian, who was out cold but still alive on the floor. Without removing the knife, he took his shotgun from him and stowed it on a piece of spare rigging strap on his armour. No room for extras, but he didn't want him to wake up and shoot at them while their guards were down. As for the turian with the broken arm...well he was in too much pain to do anything, but Hazan kicked his pistol away just in case. There was no saving the other human; he'd long since stopped moving, his blood creating a big, messy halo around his chest and head.

The turian sighed as he got up against the door to Daro's clinic and hailed her privately on their secure omnitool comms channel.

"Daro? Hazan here, listen: I found some thugs trying to cause a ruckus at your clinic. I sent 'em packing, but you might want to come up here quick before more of 'em show up."

[McHaggis]

It was after she had finished the unfortunate task of garbage disposal that her omnitool began to play a tinny tune in an attempt to get her attention –– the first few lines of a song from Fleet and Flotilla, sans all the lyrics about pining. "Aha! I was right after all," Daro crowed triumphantly to an audience solely consisting of her drone. It didn't phase her, but perhaps it should have. She had been right in that it was Hazan who had turned up in her neck of the Lower Wards, as the melody was attached to his signal moving into reach of their short-range communications. The cameras going dark over the main entrance was probably just a mistake, a momentary blip on the radar.

Then she heard the first gunshot from the direction of her clinic. Daro held her breath as she counted them. One. Pause. Two. As the seconds ticked on without a further incident, at least none that was audible from outside the building, she summoned one of her security drones to her, activating its defensive protocols. It was better safe than sorry. Anyone who lived in the Lower Wards, no, anyone who lived on Omega grew accustomed to the gunshots over time, and it was easy to just ignore them right up until it was a bullet with her own name on it.

Giving her volus patient's earlier warning, Daro didn't think for a second it was for some other sad soul. But it wasn't until Hazan's message came through that she had those fears confirmed.

"Daro? Hazan here, listen: I found some thugs trying to cause a ruckus at your clinic. I sent 'em packing, but you might want to come up here quick before more of 'em show up."

Suspecting was different from knowing, and knowing that she was going to have to run away from mercenaries again did not make the prospect any less daunting. With a wary glance at the upper floors of the building, she replied to Hazan's message. "Thugs? Batnor Cal said I was on the Blue Suns' radar again, but I didn't think they'd be after me so soon." She sighed, wiping at her mask with the back of her hand, but it was relief that filled her rather than all-consuming fear of having to escape out the back window. "Thank you for letting me know – and for handling it. I'm on my way up."

It didn't take Daro long to reach her floor, given that it was a borderline emergency, an amber alert if not a red one. Still, the welcome arrival of one of her few friends on this rotten hunk of an asteroid, just in time to alleviate her little merc problem, left her comfortable enough to dismiss her drone beck to its usual station.

She turned the corner after leaving the stairwell to survey the destruction the turian had caused in her absence. Three bodies: one writhing, one breathing, one all too still. A lump formed in her throat at the sight, but she persevered through it with forced lightheartedness. "Aw, Hazan, I just got back from taking out the garbage," Daro chimed, gaze settling upon the cooling corpse that was, quite literally, left on her doorstep. Even without closer inspection, the human's vitals were nil, according to the internal HUD of her mask. Common sense could have also led to that conclusion, as no human had that much blood left in them.

She swallowed, but that lump (what was it––fear? disappointment? horror at her own apathy?) remained. At least she didn't have to clean up the body or the blood, given she intended to break her lease tonight. It wasn't like she could stay there.

The turian cradling his brutally snapped limb was no threat yet, but his mumbling and groaning was unhelpful. Daro reached to her utility belt for a thin syringe, the contents of which were sheathed in a metal casing. Ignoring the mercenary's protests and frantic attempts to flee through the crippling pain, she slipped it in through a gap in his plates, piercing through the leathery hide. Turians were a pain to work with, medically, if only because their whole biology was tough: a radiation-resistant carapace that made surgery... problematic.

But she didn't intend to perform surgery to fix this turian's arm, though it sorely needed it if he was ever to retain full functionality (without cybernetics). In fact, Daro was avoiding doing anything more than the bare minimum, which in this case amounted to shutting him up. He'd live either way.

Now, the batarian, though––there was a patient who needed immediate medical attention. Daro was feeling unsympathetic, but it was a well-known fact that Omega's quarian doctor of dubious morality didn't like death. She could count on one hand the amount of people she had actively, purposefully killed, and didn't require the extra digits that humans had to do so, either. A quick reading under the dim orange glow of her omnitool predicted his chances of survival without treatment at 50% and dropping by the minute.

That would be the fault of the knife stuck in him. A real knife. Considering everyone and their mothers used cheap omniblades these days, Daro was relatively impressed. (But of course Hazan would have a knife. He was ever-prepared for any eventuality.)

With little care, she pulled it out, careful not to twist the blade and deepen the wound no matter how satisfying it might have been. As his lifeblood began to pour out, a quick tap with the side of her glove caused an omnigel seal to form over it that would, by her best estimations, hold for a few hours. More than long enough for him to wake up and get to a clinic––well, a different clinic––and for her to decide on the next course of action.

Daro pressed her hand against the console next to the door (scratched up, probably by the mercs), which unlocked the security mesh and allowed them entrance, although she turned back to Hazan as soon as they were in the door. The inside of Daro's clinic-slash-home was drab, and save for some lace curtains and soft, pastel-coloured lights and a Blasto poster (that came free with the flat and practically affixed to the wall), it was still marked by an impersonal, steely tone. A cold metal operating table, a frozen box of medigel hooked up to the wall and numerous scattered mechanical bits and bobs filled the main living area.

"One last patient in this old place. Fess up, it was three-on-one. You've got to be a little bit injured." she said cheerfully, a level more genuine than it had been previously. She winked, albeit behind the safety of her mask, and in a flash, she was running diagnostics to ensure there were no hidden knife wounds, or anything more serious than a bruise. There was a secret stash of good stuff hidden in one of her cupboards, and pain relief for the bonafide action-hero that was Hazan Volintis with it seemed to be as good a use as any. Thankfully, he didn't need it, or so her omnitool seemed to say.

"I don't think there's an apartment in the city that will take me while the Blue Suns after me." The Blood Pack might have, but for various reasons, primarily the lack of proper sanitation, Daro vetoed that option before it was more than an errant thought. The salarian that was her former employer, with his exorbitant prices and unethical business practices, would just buy them all out. He had that luxury. Short of leaving the station, which Daro was not willing to do while her heart still remained with the good (or mostly good) people of Omega, there was nothing left to do.

"...which of course means, I'm out of options. If you've got any outside-of-the-box suggestions, Haze, I could really use them right now. How do I get mercs off my back?"

[DJAtomika]

"Well I mean, inventing a new identity for yourself is an option. And if that's too expensive, well, have you ever considered trying to cap off the problem at the source? I mean, if your boss is hiring mercs to come after you, then I'm betting he's not a good boss to work for."

Hazan followed Daro into her clinic and sat down on one of the many chairs in her rudimentary waiting room. He'd been in here several times over the few months that he'd spent on Omega, one of Daro's regular customers filled with either bullet holes, stab wounds or anything of the sort that demanded pretty much the only honest doctor on the station that didn't overcharge him. Her boss, Perix Jonike, was a scoundrel though. A thorough asshole through and through, putting his genius-level intellect to control a healthcare and medical resource racket so huge that the only person that was bigger than him was Aria T'loak herself. Many had crossed his path; lots of third party mercenaries on Omega had worked for him in one way or another, and he had a few private wings of the real big merc groups like the Blue Suns and Eclipse in his pocket. His clinics and pharmacies overcharged for even the simplest of things like medi-gel or even bandages, his doctors gave cut-price remedies for twice the selling price and a lot of his customers eventually wound up dead from the things his doctors supposedly treated successfully. Daro was one of the doctors on his payroll that, thankfully, didn't subscribe to that whole dumb idea, but he didn't know what she'd done to earn his ire. Regardless, the monopoly on medicine in Omega had to end, one way or another. The station was a shithole, but people deserved to have affordable healthcare without the threat of mercs breathing down their necks if they didn't pay protection fees or overpriced band-aids.

With his background in intelligence and gathering information in the turian Navy, Hazan already had reasonably large dossiers on all the major players on Omega, if and when he returned to the waking world instead of bumming around the ass end of the galaxy. He knew, in general, what Perix's organisation was like, how it was structured and the handful of major players within. However, what information he did have was probably outdated by now; changes in the playing field happened on an almost day-to-day basis and without fresh intel, the thought of some kind of misguided revenge plot would fizzle and die before it could even begin. They had to start small, pick at the bottom feeders before moving up to the big guns. And he had just the idea.

"A salarian like Perix would have a lot of Omega's mercs under his thumb, wouldn't he? Through some sort of third party employer? I bet that's how he got those thugs to harass your clinic. I think we should start with them, see how he's hiring his mercs. If we can dismantle Perix's operation piece by piece, sooner or later he's going to have no where to run when we eventually out this monopoly of his to Aria. Then we can leave him and get out of this shithole while Aria has her way with his guts. Sound good?"

[McHaggis]

A new identity sounded wrong to her ears. She was Daro'Shuris nar Konesh, and given that the Konesh didn't exist anymore, she was determined to keep that sliver of history in her name. The second option, however, had potential. "This clinic is not officially associated with Perix anymore. It was the reason his mercs were sent after me in the first place, in fact. His prices were a rip-off, and they kept going up to force us out of business, so..." Daro shrugged. There was really no good way to admit that she had stolen a not insignificant stock of medical supplies from him, albeit for what she perceived was a good cause. "I would not shed a tear if anything happened to him, so yes, it sounds good."

If it was even possible. Still, assuming the plan would go ahead (and she had little reason to doubt Hazan's proficiency at this point), they would need information. Information that she, in theory, had.

"So, a third-party employer? I don't remember seeing anything like that while I was working under him..." Daro said, wracking her brains through every interaction she had ever had with Perix's associates, before she cut contact with the salarian and his monopoly not too long after founding her own clinic. Way back then, she had been just one of many underpaid medical technicians, but the mercenary guards who worked in the same facility were hired with no direct interaction with Perix himself.

My only stipulation is that we do not hire the Blood Pack except in the direst of circumstances. It would be hard to trust a medical practice who keeps filth around.

It must have been a small agency he hired them through. Daro could not recall its name, but she knew that she had heard it before, and that it definitely existed. It had no brands or logos, just a contact name and number. Even before the theft, her clinic hadn't been profitable enough for even a token security force, and Daro managed with automated defenses and a few ornery regulars. But, it was in her contract that all mercenaries hired as guards had to be organised through a single name.

"Actually, maybe I do know something about this." Daro brought up her omnitool in a flash, scanning back through saved correspondence, staff newsletters and the like. Anything to do with the operation's security, how to report problems with the hired mercenaries and such. The name was on the tip of her tongue now, D-something. "Perix is a paranoid snake: he hates working with lowlifes. Any third-party would have to be at least a recognised name on Omega for him to trust them to handle his mercenary out-reach, and the less opportunity for spies, the better. I'm certain that it was only one single middle-man. And the name is..."

Please contact Tenus Domititus for more information on hiring security.

After showing Hazan the name on her omnitool, Daro slumped back in her chair. "I don't know how to find him, though. And I guarantee an upstart like him has his own private guards. He can probably afford it, though I doubt it's as many as Perix."

[DJAtomika]

"Tenus Domititus...hmm, don't have much information on him, other than what you already mentioned. I'm pretty sure his operation isn't too hard to get a handle for. Give me a little bit of time to dig up a little more and observe his work. I'll get back to you and we'll have something solid to go on."

---

"Tenus Domititus. Turian, ex-Fleet guy, used to be a lieutenant in the 43rd Scout Battalion, nicknamed 'Riskrunners'. He went AWOL a while back after a mission in the Terminus systems went awry and showed up here. Last I saw from Fleet comms, he was tagged as KIA for that mission. Some skirmish against some slavers, who knows. He's put his talent with people to good use though, strong-armed a lot of smaller merc companies into being in Perix's payroll. Even got himself his own retinue of soldiers, mostly turian, all ex-Fleet or ex-army. Dangerous sorts. I spent the last few days observing his routine, and he's a pretty simple guy."

Seated on a bench in one of Omega's many public spaces (a "park", if you could even call it that), Hazan idly observed his surroundings as he communicated with Daro over their private comms channel. From the outside, it seemed like the casually dressed turian was talking with someone over his omni-tool, synced with his visor, and on a station like this, no one paid casual conversation any mind. But the topic was anything except casual. In his talons was his datapad, a foldable device that fit into the back rigging of his armour or a pocket of his pants, and he scrolled through various documents he'd pulled up on their target during the time he'd spent studying him. With each piece of data he scrolled through, he flung it seamlessly to Daro's omni-tool to let her have a brief read.

"So here's what I know: his operation is contained within a big storage facility, some sort of abandoned warehouse, down by the eastern section of the Lower Slums, converted into a makeshift base. That's where his goons have set up shop. The man himself stays in an apartment complex nearby and is always escorted by two of his guard retinue. The other two are stationed at his base, and the four of them regularly swap shifts, either standing guard for Tenus or coordinating his operations in his base. The base itself is lightly guarded; no one would pay a warehouse that size any mind normally, so they don't have it under lock and key. One guard on the roof, two at the front door, one at the back, one on the side. Lightly armed, the most I've seen out of them are heavy pistols. No outside patrols and, thankfully, no drones. They do, however, have biometric scanners, handheld devices that match a person's genetic footprint to what they've got saved on a database. If you're registered as one of Tenus' goons, you gain access. If not, the scanner blares an alarm and the guards chase you out."

"As for his routine, being ex-military means a pretty readable schedule. He always rises early and leaves his apartment after spending exactly one hour in there doing who knows what. The route he takes to the warehouse changes every day but he seems to alternate between one of four different pre-planned routes through the district. After which, he arrives at his base and stays there for most of the day, leaving late in the evening to return to his apartment. His guard retinue switch duties every two days and shuffle at the end of the week. During the week, Tenus apparently sends out runners to coordinate his affairs with Perix twice a week. Today is one of the runner days, and he sends them out when he leaves the warehouse in the evening."

"Now, opportunities. I assume our goal here is to remove Tenus as Perix's middle man. The salarian loses a vital source of manpower recruitment and a chunk of his property out in the Slums. Without hired guns to harass his businesses, maybe they'll be a bit looser with their tongues for information about his other operations."

"So here's what I have in mind: we need to make sure that Tenus is no longer a threat to us, either by eliminating him, or by dismantling his own operation from the bottom up."

"To do the former, all we have to do is learn his pattern of travel to and from work. You tail him, distract his guards and I'll ambush him when he's vulnerable. Bit to-the-point and up to random chance if we get the right route, but it'll cut the head off the snake and we can topple over the rest of the pieces from there."

"To do the latter... I say we intercept his runner on one of his travel days. We tail the courier, drop him once he's a good distance away from Tenus' place and grab whatever data and funds he's carrying. We'll get access to his troop movements, recruitment rosters, hell maybe even a few credit chits. We can leak those onto the information black market, specifically to other organisations that are currently opposing Perix's gig, and then watch the ensuing fireworks. I'm willing to bet Perix will breathe down Tenus' neck a lot harder if he suffers an info leak, which will make him paranoid and more vulnerable to making mistakes of his own. Once that's done, we can strike. Use blackmail or even violence and Tenus will back off, maybe disappear. Or, and if this happens it'll be a miracle, we can get Tenus onto our side. But as long as Tenus stops being a middle man for Perix, our main goal will have been accomplished."

Hazan sat back in the bench and smiled to himself. As he looked up from his datapad, he watched Tenus and two of his guards cut through the plaza. Their target turian was a big man, taller than Hazan was, with a gun-metal gray carapace and all-too familiar blue face paint that tagged him as a Palaven turian of significant military rank. The two guards flanking him were armed and armoured; Avenger assault rifles sat in their talons and he could spy grenades hooked to the fronts of their armour. Tenus' pace was quick, and within the span of a few moments, he and his two guards vanished down a side street. Hazan closed his datapad and gave his talons a stretch.

"So, what'll it be, Daro? I've laid out the groundwork but I think it's more fitting that you choose our approach."

[McHaggis]

Daro paced across the overhanging bridge, glancing occasionally down at the open space where Hazan was, blocked by various obstacles but still within range. This part of Omega was mostly safe for her to show her face, if only because she could not imagine any snitches getting to either the salarian himself or one of his cronies on time. Still, as she had spent most of the last few months in relative seclusion, leaving only in the quiet hours of Omega, seeing so many shadows moving about their daily business on the asteroid unsettled her.

"We take out the runner, then. Non-lethally, of course. Cold-blooded murder doesn't sit quite right with me unless it's Perix," she decided, moving to lean up against the window. "I do know an information broker who might be interested, depending on what's on the menu. She is as trustworthy as an information broker can be, I suppose. And injury-prone." All of Daro's friends and acquaintances and Omega, even Hazan, had the bad habit of showing up at her door with something to fix. Anyone else might have been concerned, but Daro reasoned that if medicine was her hobby, it was no surprise that her entire network was made up of patients. "I just worry that there won't be sufficient information on the courier to take Domititus down in one swoop."

The results of Hazan's reconnaissance mission, particularly those detailing the security around the warehouse, caught the quarian's attention. "If that is the case, then we may need to head directly to the source."

She lazily circled one of the clunky biometric scanners (with the annotation 'point and laugh') and saved the image for later reference. That was a Delumcore 1600. Or a 1666––there was little difference between them, and either way, they were only a few steps above facial recognition software. Fallible, given the right preparation, and adequate information. It was something to mull over. All it would take was a little bit of DNA and an automatic bypass system... With any luck it would be a turian employee.

She'd keep that thought to herself for now, and wait until they had dealt with the runner. Baby steps.

"Let's get this done as soon as possible, on the next run." Daro shut down her omnitool, though left the connection open as she stared down into the open area. "Oh, and Hazan? I don't think I've said thank you yet, but thank you, truly," she said quietly. "You didn't need to help me out of a mess of my own making, and I appreciate it."

---

Twenty-one hours later, Daro was settled in a shadowy alcove in an alleyway for what was not the first time in her life. A combat drone hastily erected in the dead hours between their last meeting and the current mission hovered overhead, programmed for non-lethal combat. Regardless, if things turned sticky –– she could always flip the switch to turn him from stun to kill.

And she had a shotgun.

"He's on his way in," she muttered to Hazan as an alert pinged her omnitool: an early warning system of a sort. The runner had tripped the first of them, and was within reach. A great weight was lifted off her shoulders. "Could you imagine how difficult this would be for us if he changed up his route? Idiot."

[DJAtomika]

"It would be extremely difficult. I can run but not that fast. Alright. Time for me to grab him."

Hazan watched as the runner appeared on his visor HUD as a red triangle, mildly satisfied with how their plan had turned out. At least their mark had stuck to the planned route. He drew his hood on over his head and lifted the scarf around his neck to conceal the lower half of his face. In his ragged hoodie, scuffed jeans and work boots, Hazan looked like any other bottom feeder or beggar that populated the slums. But underneath those dirty clothes were elements of his combat armour, and his pistol laid snug in his back holster. He stuffed his talons into his pockets and made his way down the alley towards the runner, idly noting his position on his visor. As he approached the man, he powered off his visor and coughed into his hands. The runner, a slightly taller man, wrinkled his nose as Hazan bumped into him seemingly by accident.

It was no mere coincidence though. Almost immediately, Hazan's arm shot out and wrapped around the man's neck, pulling him into a choke as he pulled him against the wall and out of sight. His other hand whipped out his Predator and jammed the barrel against his back.

"Quiet now, don't want any of your tails to hear you. Now a little bird told me you're running some errands for Tenus Domititus, carrying some important stuff on your person. I want it. Where d'you keep it?"

The man struggled in his grip but that only made Hazan squeeze tighter. He kicked the back of one of his knees and lowered the man to the floor, shifting his grip so that, instead of having an arm around his neck, his talons were entangled in his hair, pulling the man's head backwards as he kept a foot on his legs, arching his back rather painfully as he moved his pistol's barrel to his face.

"I'll give you to the count of three. If you don't tell me where it is, I'm going to turn your face into a bowl for my fruit. One."

The runner struggled and yelped in pain but said nothing. He could feel him shivering in his grasp even as he waited.

"Two."

Hazan waited and still nothing. He clicked the safety off his pistol and sighed.

"Three."

"W-w-wait-"

His shot buried itself in the plas-steel floor, the gunshot echoing down the alley. Hazan smirked as the man audibly whimpered as he recoiled from the pistol that sat next to his ear, instead of in his face. The turian let the red-hot gun barrel sit dangerously close to his cheek as he leaned in and whispered in his ear.

"That was just a warning shot. Now hand over the goods and make it snappy."

The runner reached into his jacket and pulled out a small envelope that rattled with several small objects in it as he pushed it into Hazan's waiting talons.

"H-h-here, I-I'm just a courier, I swear I don't know anything!"

"Oh I know that. Thanks for the hot tip."

He took the envelope, stuffed it into his pocket, and then swung his pistol at the back of the man's head, knocking him unconscious. Hazan dragged his limp body to the side of the alley and propped it up against the wall. Then he took off his hoodie and scarf, draping the spare clothes over the man's body like he was a hobo. Underneath he was clad in a simple t-shirt that made him look like just someone passing through. With the envelope safely in his pocket, he powered up his omnitool and hailed Daro.

"It's done. I've got his stuff. Now let's clear out of here before someone checks in on him."

[McHaggis]

It was over as easily as that, huh? Daro shook her head in exasperation to an audience of none as Hazan came in over her omnitool, as if she hadn't been listening in during the operation. Well, it wasn't much of an operation. More of a snatch-and-grab.

At least, she thought those were the kind of criminal terms that she ought to be using nowadays, now that she was planning ambushes on couriers.

"I'm renting out a place in the Kima District. Let me send you the address," Daro said, hopping down from her perch and dispelling the combat drone now that the danger had passed. Still, she checked her six before exiting the alleyway. "And maybe the coords, too. It's a little out of the way, but I did buy some dextro-brandy."

It was all very cloak and dagger, leaving the scene of the crime in separate directions only to meet up in a safehouse. Not that Daro's clinics –– plural –– could ever be considered safe. This mission was to solve that issue in the first place.

---

"And if you look over there, that's Archangel's last stand." Daro gestured to the large window of her new apartment. Across the street, on the other end of the district, the charred remains of a building that hadn't been touched by refurbishment efforts stood proudly against Omega's dim lighting. "I think that's why this place was so affordable: the mercenaries are a superstitious bunch. As soon as he was gone, most of them left this district. Well, except a vorcha problem in the sewers..."

This new place was furnished with only a sofa and a metal table that looked like it might once have been an operating table and would be again in the future. For now, it was a place to put glasses and decent collection of liquor for someone who only started drinking a year ago.

But the pressing matter of the courier's information made this––at least partially––a business meeting. It couldn't always be the mindless pursuit of pleasure, otherwise they'd be hitting the bar at Afterlife, she supposed. "I mentioned before that I had a broker who might be interested in this, an associate of Aria's, but I don't want to call her up with nothing to show for it."

Daro reached out for the envelope and unsealed it with little ceremony. Data held on physical drives, with no encryption to speak of... it wasn't sloppy, if one had no competition, or had more than a single courier delivering it to its destination. She separated what appeared to be credit chits and slid them over the table to Hazan, a small grin behind her mask. "These are all yours. I don't even want to know how much are on them, or who they belong to." Then, in a conspiratory whisper, she continued, "But I'm also very nosy, so I kind of do."

The other contents of the envelope were compatible with her omnitool, and she had it broadcast against the window. It was just as Hazan predicted, at least for the first one: rosters, personnel files and where they were to be distributed for the near future. Reading between the lines, that was more than just troop movements: that was supply movements. Why send guards to a depot on the other side of Omega if they weren't carting precious cargo?

[DJAtomika]

"Eh, it's just a bit of vorcha, really. Sooner or later Blood Pack's gonna sweep 'em up and leave us be."

Hazan was lounging on one side of the sofa, datapad in hand- er, talon as he sifted through what data they'd gotten. The safehouse Daro had gotten was pretty adequate, considering she was a doctor and not a mercenary. With a bit more money, they could really turn this place into a comfortable haven, but as it stood they were here for secrecy, not to live. And this was an upgrade from the dump he'd been living in.

"I've got a guy in the Upper Slums who can launder those credits. Give him a bit of time and he'll return 'em clean as a whistle, in case whatever IT specialists Perix has can trace where those chits have been. Oh, minus a little bit off the top as a fee, of course."

The credit chits, he took and stuffed into his pocket. Inwardly he also wanted to know how much they'd snagged as a haul. A good finder's fee could set them up well for the rest of the operation, maybe even be able to hire some mercs off of it for backup. Hazan sat up as Daro projected the imagery off of the info dockets in the envelope and watched as she scrolled through them. What caught his eye was the guard routines for another section of Omega, on the complete opposite side of the station from them. And supplies? Apparently Perix had more than just couriers running payments and information across Omega. More leverage for them to use.

"You seeing what I'm seeing? Perix is hiding something on the other end of the station and he's got Tenus in charge of it. I wonder if we should do a little recon on that warehouse?"

[McHaggis]

"Sounds like a fun and exciting daytrip to squat in another murder-alley for a few hours," Daro said teasingly, crossing her legs on the couch. "I'm bringing a novel to read if it gets boring."

Joking distracted her from a multitude of doubts which swam into view one at a time, or sometimes all at once, taunting her with memories of other poorly thought-out decisions from her past. Some were doubts over whether or not she was doing the right, moral thing; others whether she was becoming too much of an imposition on Hazan, asking him (without really asking him) to help her out of a bind which involved attracting the ire of dangerous people.

The question of, 'Shouldn't we get some help?' was bitten back in favour of a light-hearted night in. Archangel had a team, but it was common knowledge that during his last stand, he'd been all alone. Taking on the gangs did not do wonders for one's life-expectancy, nor the life-expectancy of one's friends.

That was a grim thought. She sipped her dextro-brandy through a straw. "Warehouse aside, how far do you want to take this, Hazan? In the long run." The conversation had been avoided for long enough now, and given that the pressing danger of being hunted down while she moved out of her clinic had passed, and they had enough dirt on Perix to sell on to his competitors, it was time. "I owe you, a lot, actually, but we're edging into territory that's less, 'Let me fix you up after a fight gone wrong,' and more, 'Let's see if we can break into this potential merc hideout as a squad of two without dying in a number of horrific ways.' And, maybe it's the brandy speaking––" Or the company, a traitorous voice reminded her before she managed to squash it down, "but I'm not exactly against it. The side-effect of making Omega better in the process of stopping those after me is... appealing."

It was why she was a doctor on Omega and not a mechanic on one of the Fleet's liveships, safely sequestered away after a completed Pilgrimage. It was also why she was a doctor with a shotgun and a heavy pistol and a few combat drones ready to go. Her voice was higher, the translation tinnier, as she hastily continued, "Just a thought. A stupid one that would get us killed, probably. Maybe our curiosity will be sated after recon and we go back to business as usual."

Or maybe it won't be. Maybe we see an opening and we take it.

[DJAtomika]

As he shot off an email to his contact to help him launder their ill-gotten gains, Hazan glanced at Daro and sighed in a mock gesture of exasperation.

"Young folk these don't appreciate the fine details of performing surveillance. It's all about patience, hehe."

The jokes were a welcome change of pace. The apartment Daro had chosen was a nice place, overlooking a rather sordid piece of Omega's history, something he'd admired about the mysterious Archangel. Holding off three mercenary companies by himself, now that was Spectre material, right there. No one even knew who he was. All Hazan knew was that he'd been spirited away before the mercs came crashing down onto him. Safe and sound. It felt the same way here, except that he wasn't alone.

"In the long run? I don't really know. All I do know is that I want to make a name for myself. Do something good for this station, like Archangel did. Maybe make it slightly less of a shithole. I left the Navy to go make a name for myself, not to spend the rest of my life stuck in bureaucracy. A turian my age only gets into the command life after his ten years of active service, sitting behind a desk doing paperwork. That's just not my thing. S'why I'm here. We started this, we should commit all the way to the end."

Hazan sat up and stretched, laying his datapad on the table while he grabbed his glass of brandy and took a good, long swig. It felt good to take a break, especially since he'd been on back-to-back contracts almost the entire time he'd stayed on Omega. The peace was welcome.

"Business as usual for me involves stuff like this, unfortunately. One of these days someone's going to make a contract on Perix, and I'd rather it be sooner than later. And it feels like you'd like to be the one who pulls the trigger."

The slender turian glanced at Daro and shrugged.

"Plus, I could use the company. Being a solo act for so long makes a guy lonely, y'know? Feels good to have someone to talk to. And we do make a good team; I get to do all your dirty work in exchange for healthcare."

[McHaggis]

"Well," Daro said, at first struggling to find adequate words to make light of the serious topic at hand, "It's not like there's any other doctors on Omega you could go to, excluding those in Perix's pocket. It seems you're stuck with me either way."

But with grim finality, she nodded once and returned to the matter at hand to conclude it. There was no need to waste a perfectly good night in with drawn out discussion when it seemed clear they were on the same page. "So it's sorted. We reach him, starting with that warehouse, and put a stop to his operations. After he's out of the way as a competitor, we can see what happens. And, whatever extra we find––credit chits, contraband––it's all yours." It was certainly the least that Haze deserved.

The quarian paused and took another sip of her drink through the emergency induction port. She held up the half-empty glass in cheers, teasingly adding, "Now I sound like a proper mercenary, discussing terms. It's only a matter of time before I turn mad with power and start my own gang. Give it a few weeks."

---

---

Daro accompanied Hazan on reconnaissance this time, no longer burdened by the strain of finding a new cubby-hole clinic to move into and without the distraction of being hunted. Granted, the respite was temporary. The mercs were still there, still looking –– just because she could not see them did not erase them from existence. One of her human patients (who described themselves as a 'frequent flyer' at her clinic and enjoyed introducing her to other such nonsensical idioms from Earth) had a phrase for such an occasion: out of sight, out of mind.

Tenus's mysterious warehouse was an enigma. She had taken a few shifts watching the front entrance in the past few days to very little activity. Far less than what was suggested by the routes in the courier's convenient information packet. Two turian guards, and an occasional intake of raw materials that Daro sincerely doubted was a front for anything sinister. However, there were no exports in all the hours she was present, or in footage from her drone. Nothing ever came out.

Nothing came out the front.

"These are such unsociable hours," Daro said when she was in position at the rear of the building, nestled in shadow and steam from the nearby takeaway. It was her usual surveillance spot. Low priority. The clatter of round-the-clock industry cluttered up the comms whenever she spoke and made it impossible to focus on the words of a novella even if she tried. "I'm already regretting the mercenary life."

There was a single guard posted at the rear door, and every hour, when he thought nobody was looking, he would skim something interesting on his omnitool. Checking his messages, or the news, perhaps. Daro didn't like to think of them having lives outside of Domititus's orders. There was a minute chance they might die as a result of her actions in the future.

Daro was tapping out a message to the broker who expressed an interest in buying the rest of the information when there was sudden movement in her peripheral vision. The air grew thick and heavy with exhaust fumes, and a clamor resounded in the alleyway from the direction of the warehouse. "Finally, there's life. It looks like they're moving something?"

A large transport vehicle lowered itself into a tight space, half-concealing her view. Daro's drone continued to record through it all. Like a well-oiled machine, the back door opened to a sea of new faces in sterile grey civilian gear. Mostly batarians, but with a few scattered salarian faces, they rolled out large white crates devoid of any recognizable logos, not even Perix's personal brand. "I don't think this warehouse is for storage," she mused quietly. Now there were an appropriate number of guards, matching what was mentioned in Tenus's irregular supply routes. "At least, not just storage. It looks like there's manufacturing going on. No reason to do it at this hour unless they're trying to hide something, right?"

[DJAtomika]

"Well you can't blame 'em for running an airtight operation. And yes, there must be something big going on here for that kind of security. There's nothing going on out front but I can hear what's going on behind the warehouse."

Hazan was seated in a small eatery just in front of the warehouse, idly slurping down some dextro-levo noodles while he watched the guards shift at their posts and be very, very bored. Everything suggested by the courier's logs, but the activity at the rear was new. Something off their "public" books, a courier probably wouldn't have any information on this operation unless he was in on it too. Most citizens in this part of the station weren't too curious about why an unmarked warehouse in the middle of nowhere had guards that rotated their shifts every eight hours. They knew not to poke their nose into that sort of business. But for the turian? Well he had other plans. He stole a glance at the guard post and checked his omnitool. If his observations were right, and they usually were, there was going to be a change of guards in about ten minutes. While the delivery was underway, no less. An opportunity for him to sneak in.

The turian pulled his hoodie tight around himself and zipped it up fully, finishing up the last of his noodles and tossing the vendor a tiny credit chit as payment. He pulled up the hood over his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets, before standing and walking away. He didn't make a direct bee-line for the warehouse, rather he ambled around it in a slow circle, giving it a wide berth as he cut into the apartments nearby. On his omnitool was a map that displayed the general area around the warehouse and marked on it was a side door that the guards used whenever they were switching duties around. He made his way towards that door, cutting back out of the slums as he approached an alley facing it. With a timer displayed on his omnitool, Hazan made himself scarce, pressing himself into a doorway in the alley that was close to the warehouse and dimming the brightness of his device. Right on time, he saw the door open and two guards filed out. Hazan tapped his omnitool and engaged his tactical cloak as he zipped out of the alley and caught the door before it closed. He slipped inside quietly, not minding the confused looks of the two guards he'd passed by (no doubt hearing phantom footsteps) and closed the door behind him before disengaging his cloak to let it charge for a few moments.

"Daro? I'm in. Risky decision but I got myself inside. Gonna poke around, see what I can find."

He keyed off his comms and reengaged his cloak, following the rough map he had of the area to make his way to the back of the warehouse. The interior seemed a whole lot bigger than what it looked like outside, yet it also was a lot more claustrophobic and cramped. The turian found a ladder leading up to a set of catwalks above the warehouse floor and advanced along them slowly, taking in everything he could see while staying quiet. From up above, the operation he was witnessing was massive and, more importantly, incriminating. He keyed his comms and spoke in a harsh whisper, while recording a video on his visor that was saved to his omnitool, streaming it to Daro's omnitool at the same time.

"Daro? They're manufacturing red sand here! Spirits, if word gets out to Aria about this, Perix has got to pack it in. She isn't going to appreciate someone else muscling in on her turf."