As Saren’s eyes travelled down the screen, Nihlus’ spirits seemed to sink in proportion. It was coming. He could feel it in his guts.
To be completely unbiased, the young turian was an excellent shot and an exemplary strategist. He could take out enemy snipers before they can say “look over th–“, as had been proven on a recent excursion to a mercenary-riddled backwater planet. He could stay three steps ahead of a salarian. A salarian.
However, there were some things that he, well, wasn’t trained to do. Such as drive, cook, and, much to Saren’s annoyance, write.
He had been genuinely surprised that eloquence was important (“don’t they have the fancy hologram projectors on the Citadel?”), and tremendously disappointed when he realised that, yes, he would have to send in part of the reports. Various attempts to wriggle out of this (“we should just get a VI to do this crap”) were swiftly stopped (“what do you mean I have to read all of this before dinner?”).
So it was with much trepidation that he watched Saren proof-read, resisting the urge to gnaw on something to ease his nerves. The Spectre’s expression was as inscrutable as always, but he could picture the murderous glint already forming at the corner of his eye, already imagine what kind of cruel and unusual punishment could be dealt out. If he had to read one more chapter on the proper juxtaposition of glyphs, he swore he would…
But wait, Saren had apparently finished reading. He was frowning. Oh, bugger. This is not–
“This is really well written so far.”
–good. Wait, what did he just say?
“Well done. You can finish the other half.” As he tossed Nihlus the datapad and left for his cabin.
Nihlus grinned as broadly as he dared–until his brain processed the part about the “other half”. Fuck.