Chapter 21. Tortuga

"Perhaps you'll still take Shiala with you?" Benezia asked again.

-But Mom! Don't embarrass me in front of my future classmates," Liara was quite plausibly indignant. - There will be security there anyway. Plus, Ivon will fly with me, and Shiala herself said that he will no longer yield to an experienced asari commando.—.

"And that would even be an understatement," confirmed the above-mentioned asari.

"It's that Ivon will be with you that worries me," Benezia continued calmly. —Your brother has a phenomenal ability to get into all sorts of trouble.—.

And yet, sighing and hugging goodbye, my mother finally let us go to the ship with the crew who had been waiting for us.

For half a year, I came to terms with a completely fair assessment of my character and developed a plan of action. If you didn't succeed in becoming a SPECTER, you'll have to take a roundabout route and acquire the necessary contacts and connections in other ways. But first, I would need a ship, and not just any ship, but a combat-built one. You can get one either for really big money, which cannot be withdrawn from my accounts unnoticed, and besides, you need connections with not entirely legal individuals. Or join the army and advance in rank to at least captain, while remaining fully accountable to the armed forces. Fortunately, I have a third option and it so happened that I was going to check out one of the shipyard worlds anyway.

That's how this plan was conceived. It wasn't difficult to forge an invitation in the name of Liara T'Soni to an archaeological expedition; I have experience. True, if previously such expeditions lasted a maximum of a month, now we will go for a year. The journey to the shipyard world alone will take four months. This is where difficulties arose, Benezia didn't want to let Liara go for so long, and when I imposed myself, saying I'd make sure everything was in order, she completely refused. In addition, they still had to deal with the school, register the expedition retroactively at the university by bypassing the security system and penetrating their internal systems, secretly rent a small research ship, calculate and purchase the required amount of food and oxygen supply, and in the end hire people, which they will without any questions asked, portray an expeditionary group of archaeologists in front of Benezia... I felt like a real, damn, secret agent while I was doing all this.

"Wow, so exciting." I heard Liara's barely audible whisper nearby when we had already entered the captain's bridge of the Tungsten Fin.

—Deceive mom?—.

"He'll go on an independent journey!" Liara immediately became indignant.

- Relax, I'm joking. Go and settle down in the cabin." He finally pinched his little sister's butt and went to the pilot's seat.

The xenos who appeared before Benezia as a group of archeology students consisting of six asari and two turians were actually young representatives of their species who wanted to break out of Thessia. Of course, none of them were students, much less a pilot, engineer, helmsman, first mate... In general, they only pretended to be a team at my request, and in return I agreed to take them to the Citadel for free. Although I myself have never controlled a ship, except in a simulation. Well, my assistant was a complex VI written by Ultron to track and control the ship's secondary systems and redesigned by me specifically for this vessel. Well, and most importantly, the installed neural interface, which allowed me to directly connect to the ship's systems and, in essence, mentally control it. An ordinary organic would have had their brains boiling from such a connection, but I got away with slight disorientation due to being unaccustomed to the abundance of incoming information. But having pulled himself together and received permission to take off, he disconnected from the keel block slipways and soared upward, gradually accelerating the SSD engines. And then jump through the repeater and free flight.

***

Termina systems, Nemean Abyss, planet Tortuga.

The flight to the Citadel did not take a day; the relays from the Citadel to Thessia were conveniently located, so we quickly got rid of the strangers and found ourselves with Liara and only the two of us. But I couldn't really relax, someone had to steer the ship, and I didn't have any replacements. So I stubbornly continued to fly for several days across the expanses of space, simultaneously entertaining myself with the design of my future flagship and studying the design of the secondary repeater, until Liara insisted that I needed to rest. It's just that it's dangerous to just stay hanging in space, and landing on planets suitable for discharging and discharging heat in this region is doubly dangerous; there's a high risk of getting caught by pirates. So we had to fly to the nearest more or less decent port, which, ironically, turned out to be one of the largest gathering places for pirates, smugglers, slave traders and other galactic riffraff. On the other hand, if you set up security on the ship in the form of a dozen furs, taken just in case, no one will be able to steal it quietly, and the local bigwigs will no longer allow making noise, uproar and shootings, here they strictly monitor this.

"Ivon, are you going to war or just to clear your head?" Liara was indignant at my appearance.

And this time I wore the Praetor-1 armor, the first combat suit I designed. It is more massive than my previous armor, has more capacitive shields, more protection made of carbon-based polymer material that perfectly conducts heat and transfers this heat to internal radiators and replaceable thermal charges, which allows it to be under direct fire much longer without any problems. The heat dissipation system made it possible to get rid of replaceable ceramic plates and replace them with normal polymer armor, and the main highlight of the armor was a small jump pack - my first attempt at air conquest as an infantry fighter. The backpack is an additional armor module and is removable, but when connected, it connects to the neural interface of the armor and allows you to mentally use it, lightening the weight for a higher jump or increasing this weight to speed up the landing, and the repulsors of the backpack allow you to rise up to twenty-five meters with the standard for the races Council of the Citadel of gravity and limited maneuvering in the air. By the way, I wasn't the only one who tried to conquer the air as a foot fighter, many races had their own attempts on this path, but any fighter would be much more maneuverable than such a "flyer"; all the flight systems of personal armor were in fact too heavy and unreasonably expensive for ordinary infantrymen. The infantrymen in the air turned out to be too easy targets and... a lot of things and, so it was decided to abandon such an initiative. And although repulsors made it possible to make the jump pack smaller and lighter, even so it is a very situational thing. However, even though I had to give up tactical camouflage and the flight system didn't turn out quite the way I expected, this is now my favorite armor, and I have quite a lot of them on the ship, I probably took a quarter of the arsenal with me to the ship from Ultron's base.

- That's it, just to get some air. Get some air in a place full of all sorts of marginalized people. And I would be calmer if you stayed here." He himself expressed dissatisfaction and, taking off his helmet, pulled the blue beauty towards him. —Well, or at least put on more reliable equipment.—.

"Seriously?" Liara arched an eyebrow, or rather a pigment pattern resembling an eyebrow, and slipped out of my hands, holding the singularity ball in her fingers. —I may not be as strong a biotic as you or Shiala yet, but I am an asari and still a strong biotic. Darling, don't underestimate me.—.

-Well okay. But please, stay close, I'll be calmer that way." I gave in under the pressure of my beloved asari and, activating the mechs, headed out.

I left three mechs inside the ship, placed the rest around the perimeter and, having paid for parking, refueling and service to a slippery-looking salarian, guarded by two armed batards, I headed in the company of Liara, who was looking around with curiosity, along the dirty streets, full of neon colors of advertising, to the nearest bar called Tortuga.

In general, Tortuga has become so popular in Termina because of its location: you can get to Tortuga only in one way through a chain of repeaters unconnected with others, and therefore it is extremely convenient to defend the path to Tortuga and the pirate planet itself.

Previously, pirates used Tortuga as a transit point after robberies and a quiet harbor where they could lie low, but the cunning pirates decided that catching any merchants in outer space who still needed to be found, risking running into a patrol of the armed forces of the Citadel races, was too fussy and dangerous. It is much better to rob your "colleagues," especially if they returned battered from a successful raid. Other pirates were outraged by such treachery and, after waiting for the moment, they staged a massacre near Tortuga. Naturally, it came to the completely left-wing guys, word for word, bullet for bullet, blood for blood, and in the pirate environment, three hundred years ago, a war of extermination almost happened. But the heads of the pirate gangs, those of them who have brains and know how to use them, did not like this and, having arranged a meeting, they came to an agreement and declared Tortuga neutral territory. Time has passed, some groups have become smaller, many have disappeared altogether, the rest have been pushed into the background by younger and more powerful formations like the Bloody Pack and the Eclipse, but still no one dares to cause chaos in Tortuga.

At the entrance to the bar, we were scanned with a tooltron, apparently there was some kind of specialized program there, and not finding a weapon, we were let through. Or rather, there were weapons: Liara had a submachine gun and I had a submachine gun with a large-caliber pistol, but this was the permissible maximum, and without weapons I would not have entered such a place.

Inside, the music was blasting with all its might, the small dance floors were filled with writhing bodies, the dark purple tones evoked a feeling of some kind of unreality of what was happening, and invitingly dancing asari on the podiums and the knees of some lucky ones directed thoughts in a certain direction, from which my hand automatically wrapped itself around Liara, grabbing for her juicy butt, and the second one held the helmet, allowing me to unhinderedly enjoy the kiss with my girlfriend.

However, the obsession did not last long and although I liked everything, I broke away from my confused and excited sister and went to the bar counter. Apparently I really need a rest since I can no longer keep my impulses in check, so I'll find out about the state of affairs in the traverse, the term, and go look for a normal apartment to sleep.

"A turian shotgun and something non-alcoholic for the lady," I asked the turian standing behind the counter from the batarian sitting next to us. -I look calm here. In Terminus I mean.—.

"Yeah." the Turian assented sluggishly, starting to pour the drinks and slowly sharing the information.

Hmmm, some kind of bad bartender here, well, at least I'll cheer up. Because of my metabolism and physiology, it is extremely difficult for me to get drunk normally, but this turian cocktail really gives me the head start. The effect wears off almost immediately, but it's still fun and allows you to cheer up.

"Hey baby, how about leaving this boy and meeting a real man?" the characteristic hoarse, guttural sound of a batarian voice was heard to the right, very close.

And as I thought, a batarian, who had recently been sitting to my left, appeared next to Liara and tried to roll his balls towards my girlfriend. Maybe rip his yellow skin off him alive? Well, Shiala's colleagues said that they acted this way when catching pirates. If you tear off the skin of a still living slave trader with biotics, his friends, interrupting each other, hurried to share: where the slaves were taken, where their base was, who the buyer was, where the hiding places were, and anything to avoid being next. I think if I try, I might succeed.

-Listen, four-eyed freak. Don't you need your balls or are you hitting your eyes? So I'll rip out your balls and put them in place of your eyes, maybe then you'll understand that the girl is busy? - He got up and came close to the battery, becoming covered in biotics.

"Oh, you fucking Varren," the xenos growled, reaching for the pistol.

The batars have a belief that after death the soul leaves through the eyes, which means that if the eyes are gouged out, the soul will remain in the body forever. Of course, in the era of high technology, no one believes in mysticism, but even so, such a threat is a terrible insult, so if no one stops us, murder will happen.

"Shakrik, are you bullying the newcomers again?" a heavy male voice interrupted us.

As it turned out, while we were preparing to kill each other, a healthy krogan managed to get close to us, towering several heads above us, in powerful gray armor and a scar crossing his right eye, starting with a gray forehead plate and ending on his chin.

"Shiagur," the batar mumbled, even somehow shrinking.

-Sdrisni Shakrik, now. Otherwise I will feed your head to my warren and replace it with the crap he shits. Anything is better than it will be now," the krogan growled to the laughter of the surrounding outcasts.

Sitting at the feet of this krogan, the varren, a scaly, four-legged omnivore from Tuchanka, whose fangs were as long and wide as my finger, only growled impatiently, letting me know that he was always ready to kill the batara.

As soon as Shakrik left, the krogan moved towards us while looking at Liara. —Baby, it's dangerous for such cute asari to appear in such a dangerous place.—.

Before Shiagur got to my asari, I blocked his path and when he turned his attention to me, he spoke. "I don't know who you are, but if you go near my girlfriend, I'll rip your balls off." All four.—.

After these words, the krogan clearly frowned, and those around him took the most convenient positions for shooting, and I began to become covered in biotics, but before I finally lost it, Shiagur burst out laughing.

"Ha-ha-ha!" the xenos slapped me on the shoulder with his powerful paw, knocking me off balance. -You have courage, baby, always protect your baby. Bartender, rinkola for us!—.

While the turian quickly opened bottles of Krogan drink, he managed to chat a little with Shiagur and for the local authority, and he could not be anyone else, Shiagur turned out to be a nice guy, a family xenos, married to an asari and having a daughter from her.

"Ugh-h, ha-kha, Goddess have mercy, this is rubbish," I burst out after tasting this rocket fuel, mistakenly called a drink.

-Hah, you're stronger than you think! I thought you'd collapse from the smell alone, but you were able to take a sip," the lizard grinned and, taking a sip from the bottle, continued. —Usually the intestines of non-krogan people who drink rinkol are eaten away.—.

Well, I don't know about the intestines, but this rubbish overcame my metabolism, giving me intoxication, and this is quite a feat.

"And this is my Sadri, isn't she lovely?" Shiagur, who was pretty drunk, began showing family photos with his daughter.

"Indeed, she's a beauty." I couldn't help but agree, but noticing the threatening look of the lizard, he pulled the silent Liara to his lap and continued. "But I have my own charm and all the treasures in the world are not worth even the tip of her finger."

-Hah, well said baby! Here's to the beautiful ladies!" the krogan once again took a sip from his bottle, drinking it to the bottom. -Always appreciate your girlfriend, take care of her and don't let her go. Believe my experience, it is very difficult to return what is once lost, and most often it is completely impossible. But you are still very young, how old are you? A hundred years old, I suppose, no more, just children like my Sadri. There is nothing in my head except wind and hormones.—.

Another round of complaints about young people from a drunken krogan was interrupted by a notification on my instrument and a salarian who ran up to Shiagur a little later complaining about the unrest in the port.

"These are naughty creatures," he cursed after reading a message from Sky, whom Liara took with her, about an attempt to hack the ship.

- Okay baby, it was nice to chat, but there's no waiting for business, I need to go to the port. Some suicide bombers decided to shoot in Tortuga." The krogan strained to stand up, leaning on the creaking bar counter.

"Yes, it looks like I need to go to the port myself, some idiots decided to hijack my ship." I also stood up, leaning slightly to the left, but Liara, who supported me, did not allow me to fall, and having slightly accelerated my metabolism a second later I was able to get rid of the fog in my head.

Having blinked his eyes a little, the krogan said, "Come on, I'll give you a ride," and headed to the exit, where a transport was waiting for him: a non-civilian line of aircar with a powerful kinetic shield, bulletproof glass and armor-reinforced doors.

Without traffic jams along an organized corridor, we got to the port in a matter of minutes, but the fact that we were heading straight to the keel block with our ship made us suspect something was wrong, and when we got to the "Tungsten Fin" we found an unpleasant picture: my mechs were standing opposite the local forces law and order and both groups keep each other at gunpoint. And in the middle lay the salarian who met us upon arrival, who now decided to "spread his brains."

"What kind of warren happened here?" the lizard that jumped out of the car growled menacingly, hovering over one of the batars, who was clearly the commander of the group.

"During maintenance, the mech suddenly attacked Sol and now they won't let anyone closer than seven meters," the xenos nodded towards the frozen robots.

—Umm, Shiagur.—.

"Not now, baby," the krogan waved me off and was about to reach for his trunk, but I grabbed his paw. -What?!-. 

—This is my ship, my mechs, and they have a certain protocol of actions. He nodded towards the dead xenos. —tried to break into the security system of my ship, for which he paid. There could be no mistake, I only ordered standard service and he certainly couldn't have accidentally tampered with the ship's security systems while working.—.

For some time, Shiagur froze in thought, but finally coming to some conclusion, he turned to his soldiers. -Lower your weapons, return to your seats and send someone to clean up here and carry out maintenance on the vessel. And you, baby, calm down your furs. I knew that this idiot would jump someday, but there's no need to irritate people once again.—.

Actually, having canceled the high alert mode and guarding the position of the mechs, I actually allowed the turian who came to replace him to continue discharging the ship's radiators, and then Shiagur, at my request, recommended a good hotel with the highest service and level of security.

At this point we parted, the krogan went to the bar, and Liara and I went to the hotel, although before leaving, for my own peace of mind, I took a couple of furs with me for protection.

The Turquoise Flame Hotel turned out to be a very decent place with very polite and professional staff. We checked in very quickly and within twenty minutes I got rid of my armor and was finishing my evening exercise.

"So I'm your treasure," I heard Liara's inviting voice as she left the bath.

Correction, completely naked Liara, whose sensual curves were partially hidden in the twilight, only further inflaming desires. The evening promises to be languid. A perfect end to a very eventful day.