Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

  Nnebron’s, definitely.

  Taking the cue, he folded his arms over his chest and said amicably, “We’d enjoy it more with something good to drink.”

  Just how much was the human willing to be the go-to guy?

  Apparently, a drink wasn’t over the line. Spender raised his hand and snapped his fingers, then pointed at Calix. “I’ve got just the thing. A case of something special I set aside. I’ll have it brought down.”

  “Very kind of you.” And smart of you, setting things like that aside. Calix filed a little note on that particular revelation. Spender, it seemed, wasn’t quite as straight-laced as he pretended to be.

  “See?” Spender said, clapping him on the shoulder. “No reason we can’t help one another out from time to time.”

  His shoulder did not move as much as Spender’s hand rebounded. “No reason at all,” Calix replied through what passed for a turian smile. Even he knew he’d done nothing to soften it.

  Subtly shaking out his hand, the human backed away with a cheerful swagger. “Just remember me when things get tight,” he called as he turned away. With that, Spender turned and left.

  Irida stepped up beside him as Spender vanished around the corner. “Well, that was pleasant.”

  “That was… awkward,” he corrected.

  “Maybe. But telling.”

  No kidding. The abrupt turn around once he’d understood Calix’s role as head of life support hadn’t exactly been subtle. He looked down at the asari, shrugging his ignorance. “Well, whatever that was, thanks for not tossing him head-first out the door.”

  The asari grinned up at him. “Thanks for standing up for us. Again.”

  Two of the crew bent behind the array of wires and burners to restart the open flame. Three more poked at the still which, now that Calix thought about it, probably used other supplies to make its contents. Perhaps Spender’s concerns weren’t just power-mad gesticulations. The thought left Calix with a new worry.

  Suppose Spender, all things considered, had a point? The man’s obvious stock-exchange aside, the concern about rations would eventually crop up. What if it had already started?

  He grimaced at the idea, but let it go. For now.

  Nnebron rolled his shoulders as he glowered at the door. “Pencil-necked politician,” he muttered. “Coming in here like he owns the place. Like he owns us.”

  “Relax,” Irida said. She patted him on the shoulder. “Politicians are paid to be that way. All of ’em.”

  “Still not right.”

  “Maybe not,” Calix said thoughtfully. He surveyed his team. His people. Hard workers, every one. Locked away with life-support systems day in and day out, conscious every moment of the hundred thousand lives that counted on them.

  First, they lost Garson.

  Then they lost the ability to work as a true team, divided instead into round-the-clock shifts. Now some middle-management politician wanted to ration supplies? Save them? For what?

  Maybe the leadership knew something the rest of the crew hadn’t been told yet. About the arks, or maybe this mysterious Scourge.

  Across the room, one of his team shouted, “Yes!” as the gas flame flickered to life. The mood in the room lightened palpably.

  Irida nudged him. “Something on your mind, boss?”

  Calix rolled his shoulders, but it didn’t ease his tension. “I’m just thinking,” he said slowly, “what purpose it serves for Spender to start fretting over supplies before any sort of orders come down from Operations.”

  Nnebron folded his arms, his black eyebrows knitted. “You think something’s up?”

  He hesitated. Then, with a shrug, he admitted, “I’m not sure. But maybe it’d be a good idea if we keep tabs on maintaining our own supplies.” And keep Spender on our good side, he added silently.

  The asari tipped her head, just as thoughtful and cautious as he.

  “You got it, sir.” Nnebron dropped his arms. “Now let’s get some grub before it runs out.”

  “Grubs?” Irida asked, appalled. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Figure of speech,” Calix told the horrified asari.

  “Right.” She grimaced again, nodded, then followed the kid through the crowd, all asari grace to his lanky gait. Calix watched them both and wondered if he should have said anything at all. He didn’t want to stir up trouble. He just wanted to make sure his crew was taken care of.

  He knew from experience how easy it was for untested leadership to forget about the crew in the unseen spaces—engineering, sanitation, all the things that just seemed to operate. Invisible to anyone who didn’t make it past deck three.

  The fact that Spender came all this way…

  Calix didn’t like it. Something was brewing up there in Operations. Something they knew, maybe, that the rest of the Nexus didn’t.

  Would Kesh know? Probably not. Tann wouldn’t allow that.

  Sloane, then? He’d have to ask. Find some excuse to talk to her without Spender or any of the others around. Until then, his first priority was the well-being of everyone in this room.

  “Hero of the hour gets first dibs!”

  With a firm shake of his head, Calix put his everything’s all right face on again and joined Nnebron at the modified grill. “Okay, okay. What is this stuff, anyway?”

  “No idea,” one of his team said with glee. Andria lifted a plate filled with still-smoking things that looked like twists of some kind of meat-like substance, piled high with dark red sauce.

  It smelled acrid and sharp, vinegary and… amazing, Calix decided. But he knew immediately his gut would reject it. “Smells wonderful,” he said tactfully. “But if it ain’t dextro—”

  They all paused.

  Looked at each other.

  Then rolled into a riot of laughter. “Gotcha,” Nnebron shouted. Na’to, grinning, pulled out a plate of something that smelled almost as good, but didn’t cause his gut to cramp in anticipation.

  This was shoved into Calix’s hands, leaving him laughing with his team. “Who won the bet?”

  “Whether you’d be dumb enough to play nice and eat it?” Irida asked, snickering as she handed him another bottle. One labeled for turians, some kind of sauce.

  “I bet you would,” Nnebron added.

  A red-haired human with her hair pulled high up her head raised a hand. “I bet you’d be too smart!”

  Calix raised the bottle of sauce to her. “Thank you, Andria. At least someone has faith in me.”

  The team melted into relief, into relaxation and—what he most wanted for them—recreation. Most didn’t even hear the clang from the door, but Calix turned in time to see Spender walking away, waving over his shoulder. He’d left a box just inside the room.

  “Hey, go grab that, would you?” he said, tipping his head at Nnebron.

  The young man crossed to the package and opened it. “Oh, shit! Barbecue sauce from Earth!” Well, now. “The suit wasn’t kidding.”

  “I wonder where he got it,” Calix mused, impressed despite himself.

  “Don’t ask,” Nnebron warned him, already dragging the box to the gathering. “Don’t jinx it. Don’t even think about how many years it’s been lying around. Just shut up and eat!”

  Calix chuckled. “Have at it, team.” He raised the plate in his other hand. “Don’t let it go to waste.”

  While they still could.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The krogan didn’t get rest. They kept working. They worked, and they worked, and even when some of the softer crew got days to rest, the Nakmor were still working. Why?

  Because that is what Clan Nakmor did.

  But did they get thanks for it?

  No. Because that’s what everyone else didn’t do.

  Same shit. Different galaxy.

  Arvex picked up a curved panel of welded steel with one hand, tossed it up into the air to seize it at a better angle, and casually flung it at the farthest wall. It did not fly as fast or as hard as he’d hoped, b
ut this was the problem with the area—not with Arvex’s strength.

  Gravity on this side of the station was set at minimal. Saved on power, apparently. Nevertheless, despite the almost graceful arc of the plate’s trajectory, it hit the far wall with a strident clang.

  His two krogan companions, huddled over a tangled nest of bent and mangled piping, jerked upright with mingled growls and grunts of surprise. The plate rebounded off the wall and caught the closest, Kaje, across the temple, earning a pained shout.

  “What’s the idea?” Wratch bellowed, stepping in front of the howling grunt.

  Arvex growled right back, dropping one foot heavily to the deck plating as if digging in to charge. Arteries leading from every organ pounded and pulsed under his tough krogan hide. “I am sick of the wait,” he roared, hands splayed in fist-crushing fury. “Nakmor did not sign onto this floating wreck to be janitors.”

  An old argument. A common one. Impatience and frustration and sheer centuries of fighting instinct. Another day in the structure mines. Another hour spent waiting for the technicians supposedly coming to fix the failing conduits outside.

  Another brawl between clan brothers.

  Kaje shouldered past Wratch to stomp, slowly and with effort in the low-grav environment, toward the sealed door. “Can we get back to welding or not?” he demanded.

  He already knew the answer.

  Arvex glared at him anyway. “Not until the life-support grunts get here. Now stop your whining and get back to peeling off those scored plates.”

  They were in one of the warehouses, sorting through the twisted mess of ground vehicles tossed like pyjaks in a box. Those that survived, anyway. Not three meters away, the warehouse—and the vehicles still on this side of it—abruptly vanished on a ragged edge of shorn-off metal, hanging wires, drifting junk.

  Beyond the emergency bulkhead, only the endless black and blue and whatever other fancy colors other species liked to look at glittered.

  Arvex didn’t care. Space was space. He was Nakmor born, Tuchanka forged, and mercenary hardened. Whether in this galaxy or the Milky Way, he didn’t give a varren’s wet turd what it looked like.

  What he cared about—what he wanted—was the same thing all of Nakmor wanted.

  New territory, carved by strength and glory, and made worth protecting by the first of the krogan females to give birth to a new generation.

  For all their posturing, Kaje and Wratch felt the same.

  Arvex would stake his life on it.

  No more losses. No more dead. The genophage had claimed enough krogan spirit. With the genetic prodding the clan leader had subjected them all to, there was a chance—a possibility—that any one of the krogan here could be fertile.

  Could bypass the damned salarian-designed plague meant to cow them.

  Arvex crouched at the verge of the sheared edge, glowering into the vast emptiness of space. Not even the ripped-off wreckage of the Nexus remained in view anymore. Whatever had torn it off, nothing had gotten in its way to halt its drift.

  Except maybe the weird tangle of energy out there.

  “Scourge, huh?” The words rumbled from his chest. As close to musing as Arvex ever bothered with.

  Wratch heard. He dropped a large structural beam into a pile with others, each twisted as if superheated to some ungodly degree and bent beneath its own weight. It bounced a bit. Clanged every time. Before it even settled, he pitched his voice to carry. “Heard someone say it broke the sensors.”

  “That’s what you get for listening to garbage,” Kaje shot back, pushing away from the door. “Sensors can’t see it. It’s different.”

  “Yeah,” Wratch grunted. “Like your ugly face.”

  “Suck on a hanar, Wratch.”

  “None around.”

  The krogan snapped his teeth in reply.

  Arvex’s lip curled with his grunt, but he didn’t bother shouting them down. Whatever this ship-twisting, station-wrecking star-pocked web of destruction was, it wasn’t something the krogan could shoot at, wrestle, or burn.

  His eyes narrowed as spots of color gleamed from inside the tendrils.

  The sounds of work continued behind him. Arvex held his position, trying to figure out if the damn stuff moved or if staring out into the dimensional cavern of space just made his eyes think it moved. It didn’t help that enough junk floated around, debris and bits of once-functional station, to make the whole scene a bloody eye-boggler.

  When the comm in his helmet pinged, he grunted into it. “Arvex.”

  A smooth voice filled the line. “Calix Corvannis here. I understand you need a few of my crew?”

  Irritation had Arvex surging to his feet. But he didn’t yell. Kesh had at least pounded that much into him. Into most of them, at this point.

  Hardest bloody head this side of Nakmor Morda. Or maybe Drack.

  Damned female earned her blood by way of one hell of a grandfather.

  So, instead of risking another meeting with Kesh, Arvex growled, “You’re late.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” the male voice said. Flanged. Turian. Ugh. “Three of mine are available now. Have you prepared the site?”

  Arvex looked down at the ragged ribbon of torn-off hull.

  He didn’t care if his laughter sounded like a challenge. “Oh, yeah,” he said, folding his arms over his wide chest. “It’s ready.”

  The turian hesitated. Then, with a directness Arvex recognized, said, “My engineers are in your hands, Nakmor Arvex.”

  Yeah, yeah. He almost shut off the comm link without a reply, then thought better of it. A little respect from a turian seemed a decent way to keep Kesh off his back. “We’ll make sure they keep their delicate feet on the deck plates.”

  Whatever Calix Corvannis might have said, Arvex didn’t care to hear it. Promise made, link cut.

  “Wratch!”

  A huffed sound of acknowledgement.

  “Kaje!”

  “What?”

  Arvex’s wide, thick lips peeled back into a toothy grin. “Lay out the welcome mat, boys. We got squishies incoming.”

  * * *

  “Are you sure about this?” Na’to’s nervousness translated easily over the comm link, and visibly in the set of his narrow salarian shoulders.

  Reg laughed heartily, tinny through the faceplate of his helmet but nevertheless loud. “Relax, Nacho. What’s a few krogan?”

  “Intimidating,” he muttered back. They approached the sealed dock doors in a wedge formation, and somehow, Na’to had ended up in front. Not sure how that happened. Reg, with his overdeveloped human physique and thick skull, should have been first to face the krogan on the other side.

  To his right and behind him, he heard Andria muffle a laugh.

  A nervous laugh, he noted. He wasn’t the only one worried.

  But they all seemed intent on behaving as if this were well within regular patterns. Whether it was for him, or for their own nerves, he didn’t know. But he could play along. “And,” he added in clipped tones, “it’s Na’to.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Na’to adjusted the tools strapped to his waist, firming his resolve. Nothing had quite unfolded as expected, but in many ways, this hadn’t come as a surprise to the salarian. Things rarely did; or at least, people who planned would do best to plan for multiple contingencies.

  Failing to do so, he reflected grimly as a heavy, wide silhouette passed in front of the viewport, was how they got krogan.

  He paused outside the doors, keyed in comm frequencies and waited for them to acknowledge. They did. Well, one did. Mostly by a growled, “Yeah, yeah, hold your soft—” Whatever it was they were supposed to hold went unsaid, as the comm abruptly winked out again.

  Na’to turned back to look at his other teammates, hoping the I told you so look on his face could be seen through the faceplate of his helmet.

  All he got back were reflections. And a shrug.

  “Well, this is off to an excellent start,” he said do
urly.

  “Men,” Andria muttered.

  With a strained groan and lengthy creak, the doors opened. A quick survey inside showed much of what he had expected: stark, bare, broken, and—

  “Good god.” Andria’s voice. Horrified.

  “Yeah.” The krogan manually operating the door sounded entirely too gleeful for the moment. He peered not at them, but at the sight spread before them. Space. So much space, millions and billions of stars and gases and black in between. “Ain’t it something?”

  It was something all right. It was a deathtrap. The debris alone would present something of a problem, if no shield was in place—which he knew was not.

  “Mostly,” Na’to said briskly as he strode into the room with exaggerated care, “it’s something to deal with on task. I’m—”

  “Unless the next words out of your mouth are ‘here to do my job’,” came the deep, guttural voice of another krogan, “we don’t care.” The big meathead gestured to the edge of the crevice, where space met the corner of the emergency bulkhead. “Arvex is waiting.”

  “Well, then.” Na’to turned back to Reg and Andria, shrugging at them with exaggerated emphasis. “Guess we’d better get to it.”

  Andria, much smaller than Reg or the krogan, didn’t stomp so much as stride with pointed effort toward that brink. The minimal gravity didn’t allow for much by way of heavy tread. Her shoulder clipped one of the krogan’s thick wrists, which didn’t really move.

  The krogan, his features much more visible in krogan-specific protective glass, leered at her as she passed. “Ooh, this one has attitude.”

  Reg and Na’to followed the piqued engineer, ignoring the toothy smile behind them. “A hull-walk,” Reg grumbled. “Awesome.”

  “I don’t know why you’re complaining,” Andria replied back, slinging her large pack to the metal flooring. “Na’to’s taking the walk.”

  A fact he was well aware of. Na’to eyed the fascinating ribbons of unknown energy as his companions finalized last checks for the gear that would see him over this remarkable ledge and into all those stars and black. The energy hovered in bothersome layers of black and gray, shifts of yellow and orange. Not so close that he had to worry about brushing through the stuff. Not so far that it wasn’t on his mind.