Qua Nilus II

Omar Saint Croix descended a long flight of concrete steps into a heavily fortified bunker beneath the Last City. Two armed Redjacks flanked the bottom of the stairway. A hard, wiry man with a scraggly beard perched on a stool behind a glass case filled with knives.

"Whaddaya looking for?" he asked.

Omar glanced around. The walls of the bunker were lined top to bottom with hundreds of weapons: a beat-up Rat King sidearm, an immaculately refurbished Sweet Business auto, and an original-issue Two-Tailed Fox rocket launcher. Even a Telesto, with a big Do Not Touch sign hung over it.

"Uh, an SMG," Omar replied in a street drawl honed by years of undercover ops. "Something nasty-lookin'."

"Trying to make an impression?"

"Gotta let 'em know I mean business."

The arms dealer nodded. He pulled a compact submachine gun off a nearby rack, checked the chamber, and handed it to Omar.

"Don't recognize it," Omar said mildly.

"Brand new. The alien-lovers in the Tower just got 'em," the dealer smirked. "Piggies always trying to keep power out of the hands of the people. You know how it is. But we got our ways."

"They're not so bad," Omar said, pretending to examine the shotgun. "Took down Ghaul, didn't they?"

"And why was he here in the first place? Trying to steal that piece of junk Traveler. The only reason they stopped him was to protect their own asses. Their immortality," the dealer sneered.

Omar decided not to press. "I guess you got a point. No Traveler, no Ghaul."

"No Pyramids, no damn Vex sieges," the peddler ranted. "Hell, even the Fallen would be back wherever the hell they came from. Filthy parasites. We gotta be ready."

"Ready for what?"

"For us regular people to take this damn City back. The Tower thinks they own us. But I'll tell ya something: they got a hard lesson coming."