Work Text:
Variety
“Dubiously; I have a bad feeling about this.”
“My dear friend, you are a walking bad feeling.”
“Occupational hazard,” Rath intoned, not bothering to qualify it.
The door finally hissed open, the runners emitting an unpleasant squeal. A cascade of foggy air boiled out, pooling on the floor around Rath’s feet. It was frigid.
Gan hooked his thumbs in his broad belt. “Vol’s tits, they didn’t even clean up yet.”
The elcor leaned in slightly, just enough to get a clear view over Gan’s head. The room beyond was dark, but in the light from the gravway behind them, he could make out the shape of a body lying on the floor, a dark stain spreading out from beneath it. It appeared to be human.
“Annoyed; I told you we should have waited.”
“Three days!” The volus huffed irritably. “More than enough time for C-Sec to get these poor sods cleared out!”
“C-Sec subcontracted the cleanup job.” Rath eyed the purchase notes listed on his omni tool. ‘As-is’ had never seemed more ominous. Why he had ever let Gan talk him into going anywhere near a fire-sale auction was beyond him.
“And they’re dragging their feet. Of course. I suppose we should be grateful they at least lowered the temperature,” Gan declared, stepping across the threshold.
With his own omni-tool lit, the volus made his way deeper into the room, skirting the unfortunate corpse by the door. Puffs of air steamed from the small vents in the back of his pressure suit. A few seconds later, he made a satisfied sound, and the bar’s lights flickered hesitantly to life. Those that were intact, anyway. Rath moved past the fractured holo of a stylized gyrating asari, eyeing the mass of divots scattered along the walls. Lines from assault weapons, single high impact shots, and a lot of scattered impact clusters. Shotguns. The booth closest to him was marred with carbon scorching and bits of glinting metal embedded in the seats. Grenade. It had been quite a fight.
Gan planted his hands on his round waist and peered down at another corpse. “Humans. So violent. Do they just kill everything they see?”
“Chiding; you know that isn’t right.”
“They started a war before they even arrived at the Citadel!”
“Correction; the turians started the 314 incident.”
“Well now, they’re not much better, are they?” He spread his arms, encompassing the entire bar. “Look at this. So much waste. People have value! A proper takeover, indenture contracts for, oh, a few years at most, and the problem is solved! Instead, they opt for shooting. All this sunk cost. It’s barbarism! And now one of them is a Spectre. Vol preserve us!”
He continued to mutter to himself as he made his way around the central bar, pausing here and there to prod the various furnishings, materials and damage. Rath followed. Gan finally stopped around the back where the bar opened. Peering upward, he fiddled around with his omni tool, leafing through several menus and trying controls until suddenly, the large circular platform above their heads ground to life and began to rotate slowly. Rath realized the poles up there were not in fact keeping the platform up, but rotated with it. As the turntable continued its slow course, a dangling arm came into view. They both watched as it made its way past and vanished around the far side of the bar.
“Well now. I suppose we’ll have to get some use out of that thing,” Gan commented. “Too expensive to waste gathering dust.”
“Dancers.”
“No asari,” Gan huffed. “Everyone has seen asari. There are a thousand bars on the Citadel with dancing asari. Ugh, so gangly. Exciting as a bowl of noodles. How many vol houri have you seen? Now there’s a dance that’ll knock your boots off- That’s it!” He waved his stumpy arms. “We could seal and pressurize this entire place!”
“Skeptically; not profitable. Not enough ammonia-breathers on the station, small market share.”
The volus regarded him for a moment, the tilt of his head speaking of annoyance. “Well, fine. Perhaps you’re right. But no asari, everyone has asari. There’s no...” he rolled his hand around in a circle, “cachet.”
“Amused; you just learned that word, didn’t you.”
“You wound me.”
It was just as well, Rath wasn’t particularly fond of asari either. Of all the species on the station, they stank the worst, their various oils and noisome pheromones cluttering up the air everywhere one went. Every species here was impossibly loud, a cacophony of uncontrolled chemical volatiles in endlessly recycled air. Except the volus, enclosed as they were in their suits. Gan was vociferous, but at least he didn’t continuously exude so much olfactory nonsense.
Rath peered down at a twisted, white-faced corpse slumped between the bar stools to his right. It had lain here long enough in the cold that it looked as if it had never been alive in the first place, something the elcor found altogether more comforting. It also wasn’t stinking up the place anymore. He reached out and lifted one arm, but the limb sagged unnaturally. The bones within were shattered. “Curiously; there were biotics here.”
“Well, isn’t that Commander Shepard one of them? I thought all Spectres were biotics.”
“Annoyed; you watch too many of those adventure vids. They aren’t all biotics.”
“I could care less. I don’t intend to attract their attention, thank you very much.”
“Pragmatically; we’re going to have to attract some kind of attention.” It was true, this place was poorly situated. With the gravway right outside, calling it the armpit of the Ward, as some did, had a certain unfortunate truth to it.
“Quite right, quite right...” Gan mused.
Rath trailed along behind the volus as he made his way to the doors at the back of the bar area. They were standing open, one set clearly knocked off its runners by some kind of impact. Gan stopped rather abruptly at at the threshold.
“I’ve been thinking-”
“Nervously; oh dear.”
“Hush. What if... what if we just had all kinds of different dancers? And staff for that matter? A resplendent variety. Yes!”
“Dubiously; what are you talking about?”
“Well, look, you’ve heard that theory of the extranet, right? All the various sentient species in the galaxy, and the one thing we all have in common? We’re all terribly interested in sex.”
“Male salarians aren’t.”
“Well... they...” He waved his hands. “Technicalities! They’re not completely without concern for... You’re derailing my point!”
“Amused; your point.”
“IS. There wouldn’t be that vast quantity of... material on the extranet if it weren’t for the things we can’t quite get out of our heads. The kinks! Because deep down, we’re all so terribly curious! And some people go further than curiosity, yes? So what if we were to cater to it?”
“Confused; you want to run an alien petting zoo?”
“No touching!” Gan retorted shrilly. “I am not running a brothel! No. There will be standards. Protections. We won’t get any quality performers if we’re known as one of those places that uses up and discards its staff. This will be an establishment for titillation. Looking! Curiosity! The forbidden fruit, my large and obtuse friend. That’s... the cachet!”
Rath examined his diminutive partner for several seconds, but with mild dismay, saw no evidence in his body language that the volus was anything but utterly sincere.
“Dubiously; I don’t know.”
“Well I wouldn’t expect you to, Rath. I like you because you think like a soldier. Practical. But this is a situation that requires some creative thinking. Risks! We’re saddled with this place now, so we have to do something with it. Something that stands out.”
“Resigned; so long as I can stand out in the back office, with a good air filter.”
“I wouldn’t make you perform, my friend. Well...” he tapped his mouthpiece. “Probably not.”
Rath peered down at him. “Ominously; I would like to see you try to make me do something.”
The volus just laughed. “You wouldn’t make any money anyway.”
“Wistfully; I was considered quite dexterous in my youth.”
“Oh yes, I’m sure you were.”
There were more corpses in the back hallways. The charred remains of a pair of defense turrets still stood poised in what Rath assumed had once been the office of the human known as Fist. A wall panel had been yanked free, exposing an empty safe.
“Pensively; we would need a way to advertise,” Rath mused. “Get the name out beyond the usual population of soldiers, lonely businesspeople and washed-up barflies. Establish a brand.”
Gan looked at him with a hopeful enthusiasm quite obvious despite his masked face. “Yes, quite true.”
“Speculatively; a publication using the bar’s name. Use the same distribution avenues as the... materials you spoke of, but keep it classy. Still photography. A different species spotlight every edition.”
“And then...”
“The bar is where the show is live.”
Gan clapped his hands in delight. “Oh, my dear Rath. You missed your calling tramping around all those years with a railgun on your back. That’s brilliant! Whet their appetites with pictures, maybe a few vids, then dangle the prospect of the real thing! I love it!”
“Resigned; if we cast as many lines as possible, maybe we can catch enough people with these kinks you’re talking about to make this place turn a profit.”
“Of course we will! We’ll need a new name of course. Chora’s Den? Ugh! Sounds like a hole in a cliffside populated by spiders.”
“Sarcastically; alien zoo.”
“Well, honestly. Your sense of humor lacks a certain finesse.”
“It’s not my fault you can’t smell a good qualifier.”
Gan dismissed him with a wave of his hand as he walked around the room, muttering words to himself and trying several of them out loud. He stopped in front of the large recumbent form of a blue-armored krogan. There were several holes punched in the front of his armor, and orange stains curdled the floor.
“Forni... Fornax... Hmm, Fornax-”
The krogan moved.
Gan yelped and danced back. “Goodness gracious me, it’s still alive!”
Rath approached. “Bemused; he. C-Sec really didn’t put any real effort into this one, did they?”
The krogan groaned, eyes rolling in his head. Rath recognized the soporific signs of a krogan’s regenerative coma. With several organs gravely wounded, his body had shut down to let healing take place. His armor must have had sufficient power to keep his body temperature stable. Whatever else Rath thought of the brutes and how they smelled, they lived up to their reputation for raw toughness.
“Uh, hello?” Gan said brightly, staying out of arm’s reach.
It took another half minute of effort for the krogan to finally fix the volus with a somewhat steady stare. “Who’re you?” he slurred.
“Your new proprietors.”
Rath rumbled warningly.
Gan huffed. “Yes yes, fine, the proprietors of this bar. Did you have a current service contract with mister, ah, Fist?”
“... contract?”
“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to need a new job. You see, our purchase price didn’t include continuation of existing contracts, as we were unaware any of the previous employees were still... breathing.”
The krogan blinked slowly.
Gan glanced at Rath, then looked back and steepled his fingers. “I don’t suppose you can dance?”