smile. He stopped a few steps away, still flanked on either side by the four mercenaries.
“My name is Skarr,” he growled, his voice so deep it sent thrumming vibrations across the floor. “I am Edan Had’dah,” the batarian replied, giving a slight tilt of his head to the left, a gesture of
admiration and respect among his species. Skarr tilted his own head in response, but he leaned to the
right: a greeting usually directed at inferiors.
Edan bristled involuntarily. Either Skarr was insulting him, or the krogan didn’t understand the significance of the gesture. He chose to proceed as if it was the latter explanation, though from what he knew of Skarr there was a good chance it was the former.
“I don’t normally agree to meet with the people I hire,” he explained, “but in your case I chose to make an exception. Based on your reputation, your skills are worth bending the rules for.”
Skarr dismissed the compliment with a derisive snort. “Based on your reputation I thought you’d be
better dressed. You sure you can afford me?”
There were some shocked murmurs from the other batarians in the room. Casting aspersions on the monetary worth of a social better was a grave insult among their culture. Again, Edan wondered if Skarr had done this on purpose. Fortunately, he was used to dealing with the less-cultured species of the galaxy, and he wasn’t hiring Skarr because of his renowned etiquette.
“Rest assured, I have sufficient funds to pay you,” he replied, his voice calm and even. “It is a simple job.”
“This have anything to do with the Sidon base?”
Edan’s inner eyes blinked once, registering his surprise. Negotiation was a subtle dance of deception and misinformation, each party holding secrets from the other in an effort to gain the upper hand. And Edan had just slipped up. His involuntary reaction had revealed a fact he’d meant to keep hidden… if the krogan was smart enough to pick up on it.
“Sidon? Why would you think that?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral. Skarr shrugged his massive shoulders. “Just a hunch. And my price just went up.”
“Your involvement only requires you to find and eliminate your target,” Edan countered. His voice gave nothing away, but inside he was silently cursing himself for losing the first round of bargaining.
“Target? Just one?”
“Just one. A female human.”
The krogan turned his head from side to side, scanning the dozen or so Blue Sun mercs scattered about the warehouse. “You’ve got a lot of men here. Why don’t you make them do your dirty work?”
Edan hesitated. He preferred to ask the questions; he didn’t like answering them. He was wary of making another mistake in their negotiation. But even his reluctance gave away more than he intended.
Skarr barked out a laugh. “These hrakhors screwed it up, didn’t they?”
Every merc in the warehouse tensed up at his words, confirming them as fact. Not that it mattered. Somehow Edan knew Skarr would see through any false denials, so he simply nodded, conceding another point to his opponent.
“What happened?” the krogan wanted to know.
“I hired the Blue Suns to find her and bring her in for interrogation,” Edan admitted. “One of them spotted her on Elysium. They found him several hours later crawling around a side street, looking for his teeth.”
“That’s what happens when you’re too cheap to hire a real professional.” One insult too many.
The man with the tattoo whipped his pistol out and slammed the butt against the side of the krogan’s skull. The force of the blow rocked Skarr’s head to the side, but it did not knock him off his feet. He wheeled around with a deafening roar, catching his attacker with a vicious backhand that broke the young man’s neck.
The other three mercs fell on Skarr before their comrade’s body hit the ground, their combined weight dragging the big alien to the floor. Before the meeting, Edan had given them strict orders not to kill Skarr unless absolutely necessary… he needed him to track down the missing woman. So instead of shooting the bounty hunter all three were piled on top of him, pinning him to the ground as they tried to pistol whip him into unconsciousness.
Unfortunately, nobody had told Skarr he couldn’t kill them. A long, jagged blade appeared in his hand, materializing from some secret hiding place in a boot, belt, or glove. Edan jumped back from the fray as the blade gashed open the throat of one merc. The return arc sliced through the vulnerable joint between the knee and thigh in the body armor of a second, severing his femoral artery. As he instinctively clutched at the gushing wound with both hands Skarr drove the blade into his chest, piercing his protective vest and puncturing his heart.
The blade momentarily stuck in the rib cage as the krogan tried to pull it out, giving the last surviving merc, another human, the chance to roll away from the pile and scramble to his feet, safely out of the knife’s range. The human whipped out his pistol and pointed it at the gore-covered bounty hunter, who was still on the floor.
“Don’t move!” the man screamed, his voice cracking with fear.
Skarr’s head snapped from side to side, ignoring the enemy in front of him as he took stock of the eight other mercs in the warehouse. Every single one of them had their assault rifles trained on him, ready to fire. The knife dropped to the floor and Skarr raised his empty hands above his head as he slowly stood up. He turned to face Edan as the merc with the pistol took a few steps farther back, just to be safe.
“So what happens now, batarian?”
Edan finally had the upper hand in their negotiations, and he was eager to press his advantage. “Maybe I
should just order them to kill you where you stand.” He kept his inner eyes focused on Skarr, but let the other pair glance around the room to draw attention to the fact that the bounty hunter was surrounded.
The krogan merely laughed at the empty threat. “If you wanted me dead, they’d have shot me before I had a chance to pull my knife. But they didn’t. You must have given them orders not to take me out, so I figure I’m worth more to you than a handful of dead mercs. My price just went up again.”
Even with a warehouse full of armed mercenaries pointing their weapons at him, the krogan was perceptive enough to turn the situation to his profit. Underestimating Skarr’s intelligence was a mistake Edan vowed he wouldn’t make again. He wondered how many other people had underestimated Skarr in the past… and what it had cost them.
“You could’ve made a lot of money in my line of work, Skarr.” He made no attempt to hide his grudging respect.
“I make a lot of money in this line of work. And I get to kill people as one of my perks. So let’s stop screwing around and make a deal.”
Edan gave a slight nod and blinked all four of his eyes at once, signaling the mercs to lower their weapons. They weren’t happy that Skarr had killed three of their comrades, but loyalty meant less to them than money. And with the three dead, their cut just got larger.
Only the young human closest to the krogan, the one with the pistol, didn’t comply. He looked around in disbelief at the others, his weapon still aimed directly at Skarr.
“What are you doing?” he shouted to the others. “We can’t just let him get away with this!”
“Don’t be stupid, boy,” Skarr spat out. “Killing me won’t bring your dead friends back. It’s just bad business.”
“You shut up!” he snapped back, focusing all his attention on Skarr.
The krogan’s voice dropped to a menacing whisper. “Think hard about your next move, human. Nobody else is going to step in. It’s just you and me.”
The merc was trembling now, but he managed to keep the pistol aimed at his target. Skarr didn’t seem concerned.
“You’ve got to the count of three to drop that gun.”
“Or what?” the merc screamed. “You make one move and you’re dead!”
“One.”
Edan noticed the krogan was suddenly surrounded by a faint aura, barely visible even with the benefit of two pairs of eyes. There was a subtle waver around the bounty hunter, as if the light in the room were being ever so slightly distorted as it passed through the surrounding air.
Skarr was a biotic! The krogan was one of those rare individuals capable of manipulating dark energy, the imperceptible quantum force that pervaded all the so-called empty space in the universe. Normally too weak to
