Omni-tool: 470 credits.
Nihlus chewed a piece of nickel-copper conductive rubber thoughtfully. He tapped at the keys lightly, almost unconscious of the fact, creating a string of random glyphs on the holoscreen. The piece of code glared deep orange at him.
“Dx/Dt = “
“Situations move on without you, Nihlus,” his mentor intoned from the shadows. Nihlus didn’t have to look back to know that he would probably have his arms crossed, and would definitely be scowling.
“Yeah, just give me five more minutes.” He pulled out his omni-tool.
Yearly subscription to “Introductory Fluid Dynamics for Aeronautical Studies”: 600 credits.
“You only have five more minutes.” Of course.
The loading bar was being extremely uncooperative today. But then again, they were several lightyears deep into nowhereland. He stared at it, willing it to grow faster, talons tapping to the snare of a popular human song he was streaming into his earpiece. Just went live, that one. Wait, it was probably taking up precious bandwidth. He shut it off.
“Four.”
Music’s gone now. “Oh, be quiet. I’m trying to concentrate.” Damned loading bar.
“Then you should have already realised that no buoy transmits to omni-tools this far into the Traverse.”
Security bypass chip for deep-space extranet buoy connection: 1232 credits.
A-ha. Quickly, scroll down the login page–he did not want to meet single scientist salarians, stupid sketchy database–find the bookmarks–
“Total derivative…” he typed quickly, matching the code segments on the five adjacent screens and muttering somewhat loudly to himself. “Take this partial here and this …erm, vector here…” He would have loved to see the expression on Saren’s face, but compiling came first.
Cheating under your mentor’s nose: Priceless.