Going beyond the call (4eyes interview CITADEL)

In a shady part of the docks at zakeera stands a tall ex-marine looking around nervously.

Gestran wasn't sure how he'd gotten persuaded into this. When he sent out some feelers through the extranet for volunteers to interview he REALLY hadn't expected someone like the person he was about to meet. But the chance was to good to pass up. Judging from his sources this batarian was the real deal. The bees knees. His golden opportunity.

"That is if people don't lynch me when they read the interview."

Oh well that problem was still a hypothetical. Right now he was trying to avoid a fate he considered even worse than death and he thought he was prepared. He'd requisitioned some combat gear from the templars. Full body armour, sidearm and assault rifle as well as carrying permits. He was as ready as he could be to write the best book OF ALL TIME!

Now if only the creep would show up! He wasn't sure which ship he was looking for

After quite some time, Gestran got greeted by another human wearing a nice suit and a bright smile, offering his hand.

"Mister Gestran? Real pleasure to meet you! My name's Eric, I'm from S4U, and I'm here to guide you to the Unexpected Opportunity!"

Considering for a second to light the suited man up like a christmass tree, he eventually replied:

"Fair enough."

and followed suit.

The way Eric reacted, you would have thought Gestran just announced an early Christmas Day.
"All right! That is great! It'll be a lot of fun! So just follow me to the skycar, we're not actually leaving from theses docks. Sorry about the mix-up, it was for security reasons. Please get in."

He opened the back door of the rather luxurious car, Batarian design, the equivalent of human limousines. Gestran could see that the windows were tinted both ways, and that the back of the car was separated from the cockpit. From inside, he wouldn't see the street.

Gestran reluctantly got in the skycar, placing one hand on his side arm just to make him calm down. He had his panic button and tracer. These guys couldn't possibly be stupid enough to try anything.

The inside of the skycar was luxurious as well, containing a minibar well stocked in various Batarian, Human and Asaris drinks. A cursory examination showed Gestran that his omnitool, tracer and panic button didn't emit anymore. The car was well shielded.
He was physically isolated from the driver, but he could communicate with him anyway.
"Please sir, enjoy a drink! Hey, we want you happy with us for when you ask questions right? Ha ha ha! It's like I said to my wife..."

"Just great, Ok whatever, let's just get this over with. Do you got smoked salmon on this ride?"

"Sorry, but we do have Maltritt eggs. It's a Batarian equivalent of caviar, pretty good."

It was indeed pretty good. After around 20 minutes of transit, full of Eric's stories and self-laughed jokes, the skycar came to a stop. The door opened and Gestran noticed they arrived inside of a transport ship. The cargo door was closing behind the car.

"Welcome to the Unexpected Opportunity. She doesn't look like much, but she does the job. And yeah, everyone say that about every ship, ha ha ha! If you will follow me sir, I'll take you to Mr Ranak. You won't be bored with him, he's a hoot!"

They walked to the elevator. Gestran could see what he assumed were slaves walking around, picking up cargo and doing maintenance on the ship. They were in good shape, and no submission collar was visible. But their eyes showed the lack of freedom they all suffered.

The elevator opened on what seemed an office level of the ship. People of various races in business suit were exchanging datapads and omnitool data.

Eric walked Gestran to a sumptuous lounge. A batarian equivalent of a pool table was visible, many comfortable sofas, drinks, and very good looking paintings. He saw Bintar, just as he looked from his CDN avatar, pouring two drinks from a tray carried by a slave. When he saw Gestran, his face lit up.

"Hello, hello fellow CDN member! It's a pleasure to see you! Please, have a drink, make yourself comfortable! I really thank you for the opportunity you're giving me and Slaves4Us! Thank you very much Eric!"

"You're welcome mister Ranak. Mister Gestran I live you with more capable hands than mine, lovely chatting with you! Have a super day!"

With that Eric left the room, leaving Gestran alone with Bintar and a slave, carrying him his drink.

Gestran considers his position for a second, then just thinks: "To hell with it," and forgets everything but the subject at hand. Trying to ignore the glaringly obvious in the situation. Switching his recorder on he dives into it.

"Well mr Ranak". "As you know I'm planning to write a book about individual experiences from the war from a spectrum as wide as possible." "I myself was a footsoldier in the conflict and had my own very unique story to tell, as I'm sure you can imagine." "with that in mind what did you do before the war?"

"First of all, thank you for defending our galaxy.
Before the war, I was already working at Slaves4Us, but business wasn't that good for us. Our business model was based on healthy and competent slaves, and most of our consumer base preferred cheaper slaves, no matter their condition, from any thug. Me made a profit, but barely."

"hmm, Interesting. So you weren't in charge of the organization before the reapers attacked. What were your duties at the time of the attack then? Specifically? Sorry I'f I'm getting personal, but context is important."

Well like now I was the executive in charge of this ship, but with a smaller sized team. We didn't do construction jobs then, the market just wasn't there, it was mostly carrying around slaves to sell to the clients who could actually afford us.

"So where were you at the time the attack struck batarian space and what was your immediate reaction?" "Did you have any family threatned? Were you in personal danger? Did you flee or fight?"

The question seems to hit a nerve on Bintar, as it does most people. One set of eyes look on the right, the other on the left, showing that he's thinking about it. After he while he resumes talking.

"When it happened I was in Terminus space on this very ship. We just delivered a batch of slaves and I contacted HQ to inform them I was coming back to Erszbat. They didn't answer. I contacted the other ships, and they were also having trouble reaching Slaves4Us center. Then we tried the omni-tools of friends there, then the authority, then any number we could think of... And yeah I had my family there. The crazy thing is that my sister was supposed to be with me, as an intership, but declined because she said slavery was not really what she saw herself doing. She had stayed on Erszbat to find something else..."

Bintar cleared his throat, took a minute and smiled to Gestran before continuing.

"We didn't fight. We had a few guns to our name and a cargo ship. We usually relied on Blue Suns for protection, but they were busy as you can guess. So at first we just flew to other terminus planet and decided to keep Slaves4us going. Most of the manpower was in space, including a good part of the administrative council. We started thinking : How could we help our home planet with our skillset? The opportunity to do so came later."

Gestran took a deep breath, he wanted nothing more than grab his Assault rife an kill his way out of this place.

"I.. I can understand how that would have been difficult sir."

Yeah thats right, go witht that tangent. Sympathize.

"I had to flee from earth during the battle of earth witht the 7th fleet myself." "Now, what do you mean by using your skillset to help the cause?"

He regretted the question but he had a feelinging he'd have to go through it anyway, might as well get it over with.

"Thank you. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for you to leave your homeworld to fight another day.

Well I'm happy you ask me that question. You see we had this big brainstorm. We knew we couldn't be much help on a military fashion, most of us being executives and such. But while the various galactic militaries were rounding up people and organizing them, the civilian market was a mess, especially in the terminus, where a huge part of the fighting was taking place. It was a problem because a military needs infrastructure, logistics, support.
We decide to enter an agreement with a blue sun legion. We would use our slaves and infrastructure to support their logistic. in return they would offer protection and return us a fraction of the civilians they would save thanks to us. Said civilians would be trained to help the war effort. I must say I organized much of the construction jobs. It worked you see! Slaves4Us flourished, the blue suns advance was considerably helped, many lives were served, some of them re purposed.
We did our part!

Bintar concluded that last part with a large smile, evidently very proud of himself, waiting for Gestran's reaction.

"screw the war story project." gestran thought to himself. "I should just write a book about this fucker."

"But that still does not explain how you rose as the head of the organization." "Could you elaborate how you personally..." "Don't say exploited" "Proved yourself during the conflict?"

Again, sorry if I'm prying, but this is after all about the personal perspective."

Bintar chuckled.

I wouldn't say at the heart of the organization yet, I'm not on the board of directors. But I'm happy to say I answer directly to them. I got there by being the one who suggested and implemented the construction jobs. It was a big departure from slave selling you see, but it was also the right move. And now in rebuilding time, my program is bringing a huge part of Slaves4Us's benefits. Since it is a much needed service to a lot of colonies, it also helps improve slavery's tarnished image.
The fact that most of our thuggish competition is gone, or can't operate anymore, helps immensely.

During the war well... I wish I could tell you an epic story where me and my guys used our awesome construction job to keep a Reaper capital ship at bay, but the truth was slightly less impressive. We were usually on the scene before the Reapers arrived, or after they'd been pushed back. But our help was very much bolstering the Blue Suns' effort. I think it is no coincidence that before the Catalyst firing a bunch of reapers were hunting us down.

Ho and please, ask all the questions you want! It is my pleasure, really! Another drink perhaps? Ho, and I sent someone fetch some of that salmon you asked about, I think he's coming back now.

Indeed someone put some fresh salmon on the slave girl's tray, and she bought it to Gestran, still with a very expressionless face, never making eye contact.

"Well, if you don't mind..."

Gestran had never felt so guilty about eating anything in his entire life. However it was fraking smoked salmon....

"Oh what the hell" he thought. "If I'm going there I might as well enjoy it."

He made himself a big sandwich with mustard, salmon and fish eggs, they even had butter!

He took a big bite out of it, It was canned but he didn't care. He hadn't had anything like it in months.

"with that being said, where were you when the big blue wave thing hit? I mean, *munch* *munch* *gulp* I was down on earth right underneath us right now myself, but I've yet to hear more elaborate stories about it from someone outside Sol."

Bintar seemed genuinely happy to see Gestran enjoying himself.

"Well as I told you near the end of the war the local reapers were apparently a bit fed up with our operation. With the suns we came to evacuate a Salarian colony who was under manageable attack... You know I never tried this salmon delicacy, I'll have some too if you don't mind. So usually we reinforced the colony, built defenses, mounted turrets, then the suns came and wiped the few husks, marauders, and the occasional brute that was attacking the colonists. Then we would evacuate them if it seems the Reapers were coming back.

This time was different, the first wave of husks arrived before we expected it and the enemy forces far superior to what recon told us. I even saw many of those Asari monsters.
To this day I still suspect it really was a trap. So for once we all had to carry weapons, although I didn't get an occasion to fire mine, probably best for all. The suns fought like lions, and we managed evacuated the colony, around 200 survivors in the Unexpected Opportunity, around a thousand for the suns.
Usually when we flee the Reapers let us go, they had a lot of work to do in the Terminus, but this time even a Destroyer appeared before we went into PRL, and pursued this ship. The Suns were followed by hundreds of harvesters and another Destroyer. They had many loss as I learned later.

We made it to the relay however, and I wanted to go to a very remote location for the time being, until the reapers lost our scent. I remembered this article on CDN about an Asari doctor marooned on a planet for 50 years. It sounded great, so we went there. When we landed the wave struck, which was good because a bogey was on passive radar, behind us. Never saw what it was, but it left in PRL just then.

Not much more to say. We were marooned 4 months on this planet, lucky for us we had very few dextro crew members, and enough food for them, and there was game and fruits on the planet."

While taking Bintar was trying to do a sandwitch like Gestran did, but without much success. He seemed dismayed at the sorry state of his mismatch of ingredients.