Storm Front
Hazan and Serena
Virmire
Serena gave a nod, looking around miserably. She hated the jungle. It was like someone rang a dinner bell and every insect in a five hundred mile radius descended upon her and tried to eat her. Her biotic shield helped some, but somehow they seemed to wiggle past her defenses. The beste she could do was focus on fiddling with the equipment they had gotten and hope that they got the mission with over quickly. With an abject sigh she stood up.
"Del, Sarah, patrol protocols." The drones flew off, going on their set patrols.
Serena herself began connecting to the turrets that had been set up.
"There we go. Now I have two more pairs of eyes!" *Smack!* Serena glared at the crushed bug on her hand.
"If only I could manage to make myself less attractive to bugs. That'd be great." She glared up at the sky, as the rain begin to lash against the trees in the distance.
"Thank you Hazan. I couldn't tell from the raging storm not five feet away. Come on. We'd better secure everything not bolted down." "On my way." Hazan quicked his pace. He didn't want to leave Serena hanging, after all. A few minutes later and he was back at base camp, soaking wet but still in one piece. He gave Serena a weary and sheepish smile as he started tying down the turrets into the dirt, which was rapidly turning into mud.
"Jungle ops are fun, huh?" "Oh yes. They're 'fun'." Serena grunted as she put the final piece of equipment down and had it tied into the earth.
"I love being eaten alive by bugs, stuck here for probably days on end as we wait for the sabotage team to do their job or we find out they're caught." She paused.
"Well, I suppose we'd know if they got caught. It'd be a spectacularly loud affair. In anycase, it's really unlikely that they're even suspicious beyond the normal 'you're new around her' paranoia...I hope. Everyone we sent down there is smart enough to not talk about the actual mission in a public place like a bathroom, right?" She shook her head.
"Regardless, the only good thing about this mission is that we haven't been attacked by local wildlife. And I give us two days, tops, before that happens. The turrets are relatively silenced, right? I don't want them going off and attracting the attention of an entire base of smugglers because they saw a squirrel and panicked." "Yeah, and besides, even if they fired a shot, the people down there wouldn't hear it cause of the storm. I don't think a squirrel would set 'em off though. Don't think they have squirrels on Virmire." "Every planet has squirrels. They may look a little different than Earth squirrels, but they all have them. Annoying little bastards." He chuckled and sighed as he helped her tie down their last equipment case into the mud. The downpour was turning into a waterfall from the sky. Rivers of muddy water swirled around his feet and down the slope as he slogged back up to the observation point and sat down with a splash. He had his viewfinder out, studying the myriad of blips through the torrential rain. Visibility was pretty much zero, so he only had the moving blips to keep track of. A moment of silence later and he put down his scope, shaking his head with a chuckle.
"Heh... This feels way too much like home. Or, well, training. Foraging in the forests of Palaven for scraps while trying to find one measly landmark in the middle of a fucking storm. Yup, definitely feels like home." Hazan turned to Serena.
"Do you ever get homesick, Serena?" Serena snorted mock glaring at Haze through the rain..
"So it's the Turians I have to blame for that particular piece of training hell! I knew it had to be from some alien race we stole those ideas from. I hated those storms. 'Gotta be able to find your way no matter the weather!' I hated that phrase." She paused, smiling softly into the rain.
"Every time I have a moment to think about it. Omega was the closest thing I've had to home in years." She glanced out of the corner of her eye at him.
Weird, huh. It was the most crime infested place on Earth, but it was home. I even had friends among the gangsters that protected our shop for a fee." She chuckled. "These giant, hardened, scarred, life long criminals would just sit with a little girl and play tea with her and her make shift robots. Hide and seek, patty cake, the works. I was too young to realize who they really were, and when I found out I didn't care. They were my family, and everyone had to do hard things in that town. Even if they did scare off any potential suitors until I signed up with the Alliance." She eyed Haze.
"What about you? Ever miss Palavan? Or are you from a different world?" Hazan nodded.
"Palaven, born and raised. But Omega's also been my home for several years. After I finished my scout training on Palaven, I tried being a goody two shoes C-Sec officer for a while. Too much paperwork for my liking. So I upped stakes and went to Omega. Did my own solo work for a few years. Built up rep. Made people hate me. It's why I've got a bounty on me. People who got fed up with my work. Mainly the Blue Suns. Hehe, bastards." Serena rolled her eyes.
"You and Kasy I swear to God. 'Gotta kill the Blue Suns!' I get that you hate them but come on, we're not assassins...most of us at any rate." He chuckled and smiled. The happier memories of the station bubbled to the surface past the bad.
"I miss home, sometimes. The one thing I had back then was stability. And a family who loved me for who I was. Not who I was trying to be. On Omega... Everyone I've known to date has either gone missing or ended up in the morgue. Honestly this crew's been the closest to a real... Thing for the first time in years." Serena rubbed the back of her neck, pushing back flashes of memories.
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Before Vellios...before Vellios was rough." The slender turian stood and picked up his soggy camouflage cloak, shaking water off it before he folded it into a square.
"Nowadays I try to see what's happening back home. But seeing since home's so far away... Y'know, it's hard to catch up. But I try, y'know? Better to try." Hazan sat back down and sighed into the rain.
"Last I heard, my folks were considering signing me off as dead. I haven't been able to drop a line to them in the past two years. Being on the run and all that hasn't helped much. When I joined up with you guys, I managed to get through once. But I don't think they got my mail packet." Serena looked over at Hazan, slight confusion on her face.
"Mail packet? Why would you send a mail packet? Why don't you send them an email or a call? If you're worried about it being traced to them, Dex and I could make it untraceable. Besides, after Drono's back and Tanya's memorial, we're going to delete your files at the Bounty Hunter base, remember? Dex and I are good at making files never have existed." "Yes, I didn't want them finding out I was...a bounty hunter. My family were bodyguards, private security on the Citadel. I didn't want to follow in their footsteps, plus they'd probably set straight off to the Terminus Systems to find me. And yeah, maybe once that's done, I'll get something back to them." Serena's confusion didn't faze him. But as much as he hated to admit it, she was right. If he was this homesick, a short call home wouldn't hurt.
It had to wait though. Not until he was sure he was clean. No more lives had to end because of his stupidity.
"Who knows. We could even change up your dating profile. Attract some females with...large crests? Is that what Turians go for?" The tension broke like a bubble, and he laughed as she wiggled her eyebrows.
"Maybe? I don't quite know. Dex should have a better answer for that, she's bedded way more people than I can count, plus she's your required gender." "Oh come on. What do you drool over when you look at a Turian female. Or male, whatever tickles your fancy. Do you go 'Spirits above, look at the crest size on her!' or 'Dear Lord, I'd like to cop a feel of that carpace.' Maybe 'Daaamn, look at how she handles that carbine! I'd like to be the calibrations she's in the middle of.' Serena snorted.
"I could ask Dex. But then I'd get to much information and what she looks for in a partner, which I'm beginning to suspect is a very short list." "Hehe, that would be one: male, and two: has the equipment to match." He chuckled and smiled. This was getting silly.
"Well, I, um, I just look for...uh... The crests, I guess. If they're elegant, I kinda get real wobbly inside." Hazan tried to hide his embarrassment, though he wasn't sure if Serena could see through the downpour.
"And, um, what about you? What do you look for in a potential partner, Serena?" "Ooooh I seee. So you get wobbly whenever you see a finely groomed female Turian's crest. I'll have to tell Vellios he has some competition. You all are gonna tucker poor Dex out." Serena teased, keeping an eye on her readings around camp. She didn't want any nasty surprises while they were shooting shit.
"Hmm. Not sure. Haven't had any time or interest in a long time, so my tastes, requirements, wobble-initatiors, or whatever you want to call them are relatively unknown. I appreciate pretty or handsome things, but haven't really drooled over someone yet. Make sense?" "Yup, makes sense." Hazan leaned back and tried to get a clearer picture through his viewfinder, but the storm made it like looking through a metal bulkhead. He sighed and sat back down next to Serena.
"Well so much for the rest of our surveillance. Storm's thicker than a vorcha brain on creeper. Can't see anything through it." The slender turian crossed his legs and draped his camo cloak over himself.
"I wonder how the rest are doing down there. Thankfully there's no time limit on this mission. Sad for us, not so much for them." "Don't think it's good for them too. You can only bullshit about why you're sticking around for so long before they start getting suspicous." Serena replied. She briefly examined the thick wall of rain between them and the smuggler's base camp, trying to see anything that would indicate the state of affairs, before giving up with a shrug.
"Yeah, true. Hope they're doing fine down there though. Not much we can do from up here except high powered rifles and rockets." Hazan sighed again and drew his cloak tighter around himself and looked up.
The rain wasn't going to let up any time soon. And a burst of thunder only reinforced that notion.
"Not yet, you blood thirsty maniac. We have to be sublte and can only go loud when the shit hits the fa-" Serena's teasing reprimand was cut of by a loud
crack of lighting smashing into the forest behind them. Serena whirled around to see a tree shifting in the wind, groaning as it eventually went down with a thunderous crash.
Both turrets went dark.
"Fuck!" Serena spat.
"I think the damn tree fell on the turrets! Come on. We have to see if there's at least one we can salvage." She cursed as she made her way over to the downed tree, a useless hand held up against the rain.
"Fucking Jungle Ops."
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Konan375