Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

  “Director?” she said. Easily. A greeting, a little inquisitive. But behind her, she sensed as much as heard more security officers move into place. Damn it all. So she hadn’t been as careful as she’d hoped. Had the salarian seen her after all?

  Maybe she should have killed him when she had the chance. Just to be sure.

  Too late now. Sloane prowled closer. There was no other word for it—not that Irida could summon. She understood Calix’s respect for the woman, but this put both of them in a bad spot.

  “Irida Fadeer,” the director said. “You are under arrest for breaking and entering, destruction of Nexus property—”

  “To say nothing of asari, salarian, and turian property,” said a woman’s voice from behind Irida. She was trapped.

  Ugh, great. That meant Irida would have even less luck popping out of this one. She’d seen the sec-force asari at work.

  “Destruction of Nexus property…” Sloane repeated loudly, with a twitch under her eye that did more to cause Irida concern than anything else. She frowned, taking a half step back.

  “Wait a minute, Director, what am I supposed to have—”

  Sloane didn’t let her finish. With surprising speed and greater strength than Irida expected, the human pulled back a fist and rammed it hard, fast, and ugly into Irida’s face. She grunted at the impact, hit the corridor wall and rebounded into a wobbling pile at the security team’s feet. Stars swam in her eyes. Her cheek went from a strange tingle to sudden howling anguish.

  Irida shook her head. No use.

  She should have seen this coming. Hell, she should have planned on it, but for all Irida’s mercenary experience, she never would have expected a human Alliance officer to break protocols.

  “…and for assaulting one of my team and fourteen Nexus crew,” Sloane snarled, panting. Irida didn’t know much about the woman, but as the security team wrapped hard fingers around her upper arms and dragged her to her feet, she knew one thing for certain—no Alliance, not even Sloane Kelly, would attack someone without being absolutely certain of the facts.

  She’d been caught. A quiet rage welled in her, at herself more than anything.

  “Take her to the brig,” Sloane snapped. “Prep her for questioning. And search her goddamn bunk,” she added sharply as she turned on her heel and strode away. Irida sniffed hard. The blue splatter of her own blood left dark streaks down her shirt. Pain danced in her sinuses. Her cheek felt as if it were on fire.

  This was it. The end for her.

  “Got anything you want to say?” It was the human holding onto her. Irida’s gaze slid to the asari gripping her other arm. Nothing. No help, no sympathy there.

  Ah, well. Sisterhood only went so far.

  “No,” she said, and spit a wad of blue-tinged mucus to the floor. If nothing else, she’d be damned if she took anyone else down with her. That part at least she’d done right. Calix knew nothing of her actions, and could not—would not—be dragged into this.

  Mentally, Irida dug in. The Initiative wouldn’t execute her—they wouldn’t dare. Worst case, she’d be put back in cryo, like that bunch that had tried to steal a shuttle. And who was it who could override stasis pods?

  At least, she figured as her escort double-timed her to the lift, she’d get some much-needed sleep.

  The doors closed on her smile.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Eos loomed dead ahead, an eerie crescent against the veins of the Scourge and the starry backdrop far beyond.

  “Anything yet?” the captain asked, voice aimed at his science officer.

  The turian shook his head, saying nothing.

  “How is this possible? We’re right on top of it, for fuck’s sake.”

  The bridge of the tiny shuttle was crowded, even down two members who lay sedated in crash-bunks just aft. More victims of the Scourge, and not likely the last. Right now, though, it wasn’t the injuries Captain Marco cared about, it was the goddamned sensors. The Scourge could make the tiny shuttle flop about like a fish on dry land, sure, but it absolutely annihilated any chance for a reliable sensor reading. Every scan came back different, or not at all. Despite Eos, the closest habitable world to the Nexus’s current position, being right in front of them, the screens oscillated between empty space, several moons, an asteroid field, and even a sprawling fleet of quarian cruisers, depending on which second you happened to look.

  His shuttle was as good as blind. The data couldn’t be trusted. Yet they could all see the planet, growing ever larger.

  He had to make a decision, and soon. It took only one glance at his haggard crew to know what they’d vote for: Head for home. Enough’s enough.

  Marco had no intention of doing that. Not yet. The Nexus couldn’t afford for them to return empty-handed, and his crew knew it. They were just scared, and who could blame them?

  “Captain?” his navigator called out. “In sixteen seconds we won’t be able to escape the planet’s gravity. If we burn now we can slingshot around and make for the Nexus. Let them know our—”

  “Negative,” he said. “We’re not going back empty-handed.”

  No one spoke.

  An eerie howling began somewhere at the nose of the ship and worked its way down her hull. Joints in the hull, grinding as the weird tendrils of the Scourge continued to toy with them.

  “Nav, we’re going to burn, but not to pass the planet by.”

  “You can’t actually intend to land without sensors?”

  “No,” he admitted, “not land. But we’re going to dip into that atmosphere and see what we can see.”

  Eos had a thick layer of high clouds, preventing a view of what bounty the surface might hold. Scans made, hell, centuries ago now, indicated plant life and plenty of water. A prime settlement candidate. Now, though, the sensors returned only gibberish. So they’d do it the old-fashioned way and take a look with their own eyes.

  Again, no argument from his crew. They all knew what they were signing up for coming on this mission, but that didn’t take the sting out of it. This was a hell of a dangerous maneuver, especially relying on visuals alone, and perhaps the anguished groans of the hull plating.

  The engines roared, right on cue. Ahead, Eos began to swivel as the small craft angled its thermally shielded side toward the green-gray clouds.

  Marco didn’t need to order everyone to strap in. They hadn’t left their flight chairs since the first friendly love tap from the Scourge, about a million klicks out from the Nexus. By then the battered station had been too far behind them to hail, and the turbulence quieted down, as if daring them to go a little farther.

  The planet blotted out the stars now, and the ropy blurred limbs of the Scourge. Sensors hadn’t learned anything new about the phenomenon, either. Readings were garbage, totally useless, not to be trusted.

  “Comms,” Captain Marco said.

  “Here,” the engineer replied. Not a trained comms officer, but the woman had handled the task admirably.

  “Keep trying to raise the Nexus, and the arks. All bands, all frequencies.”

  “I know,” she said, not impatiently. He’d given the order before, twice, and she’d always been on top of the task.

  “Transmit everything we see, understood? I don’t care if it’s scrambled. Maybe they’ll figure out a way to decipher it. We have to try.”

  “Understood,” she replied, a catch in her voice this time. There was more finality in his words than he’d intended, but nothing to be done about it now.

  The shuttle began to rattle, and not from the Scourge this time. Eos’s atmosphere had begun to scrape their hull.

  His view became a maelstrom as flames began to lick and curl around the bottom of the craft. The hull shuddered under the stresses. The black of space began to transform into the high, dusty brown clouds.

  In seconds they were enveloped, visibility obliterated. Marco gripped the armrests until his knuckles went white.

  All at once the violence ended. The clouds lifted. The
y were below it, and in danger now of dropping too far.

  “Engines!” he shouted. “And roll us!”

  The craft punched forward and, in the same instant, began to overturn.

  Marco leaned forward, breath held tight in his chest.

  Eos should have been a garden world. Lush, with long winding rivers and two shallow seas. So the scans had said, long before the Nexus even reached Andromeda.

  He couldn’t see well enough. Against his better judgment, Marco unlatched his harness and leaned as far as he could to press his face to the window.

  The captain did not see gardens. Or forests. No jungles or vast canopies of giant trees.

  He saw barren desert. Desolation. Dust.

  And something else, too. A massive monolith that towered over all around, punching upward like a crystal shard. “What… is… that?” he asked aloud, each word a struggle.

  “A wasteland,” someone whispered, and Marco wondered if they meant Eos, or Andromeda itself.

  Movement caught his eye, above. A snaking black tendril roiling with thousands of tiny explosions. It tore through the atmosphere, twisting and bending as if searching for something. As if—

  The long finger of the Scourge bent and then slammed into the shuttle with the force of a hurricane. The ship heaved violently. Someone screamed. Marco thought maybe it was him. There came a smack as his skull slammed into the frame of the window, and everything went black.

  Marco remembered falling, and pain, and words that sounded incredibly distant.

  “Get us out of here,” someone was saying. “Get us out!”

  * * *

  “She’s ready for questioning.”

  Sloane took the tablet Talini gave her, scanned it briefly. All the usual red tape was in order. After her brief and annoying conversation with Tann, she at least had that going for her.

  Tann had demanded that she “handle it,” which Sloane had every intention of doing, but she’d do it her way, not his. He thought throwing Fadeer into stasis would suffice. After all, it had made for a tidy end to the hostage-takers. A punishment that required no trial. Sloane had other ideas. Ones that included questions about Fadeer’s motives. Her intentions. Her support.

  The asari had a good record, she noted. Excellent references. Calix himself had vouched for her, including a sterling letter of reference for her service in his previous deployment on the Warsaw. Sloane pondered that. All of his team, at least the core group, had served with him there. And they’d all followed him here.

  Interesting.

  Whatever caused Irida to sabotage the Nexus and injure personnel along the way, it couldn’t be anything as simple as Tann clearly hoped. Sloane needed to know for certain, though. She handed the datapad back.

  “Has she said anything?”

  “She asked for water. I got the sense it was meant to be ironic.”

  “How very clever.” Sloane shook her head. “Anything else?”

  “She says she’ll be pressing charges for the assault.”

  Sloane snorted.

  The asari took that as the answer it was. “I should also warn you that we’re getting heat from the network techs injured in the sabotage.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Answers, I’d suspect.” She spread her long blue fingers in the universal gesture of who knows. “Retribution for some, compensation for others.”

  Sloane’s lip curled. “Tough. We’re not Omega.” She rolled her shoulders, heard both of them pop from the tension. “Give them the usual line. If I hear of a single outburst, I’ll lock them up, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The asari would deal with the administrative bullshit, so Sloane’s full focus was on Irida Fadeer. She’d walked the corridors until most of her anger burned off, yet plenty still simmered in her gut. The guard outside Fadeer’s cell saw her coming, and opened it.

  “Ma’am,” he murmured.

  The prisoner sat primly on the narrow bunk, her hands in her lap—and still in the biotic-proof full-hand shackles. Fadeer looked cool and calm. Blood was still smeared on her cheek, ruining the impression a touch. Just enough to make Sloane grimace. Okay, so maybe she’d get some censure for that one. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  “Director,” Fadeer said in greeting. No fake smile this time. Just that mysterious air asari all seemed so fucking good at. Sloane stopped just inside the door. It closed behind her with a solid thump.

  The asari didn’t flinch.

  That alone made Sloane want to start hitting things.

  “Start. Talking.”

  “Without a lawyer? I think there’s one in stasis,” she added pointedly.

  “This is an unofficial chat.”

  Fadeer’s nose wrinkled. “Then maybe we can both get some answers. You seem sure I was the perpetrator. How do you know?”

  “You tell me, smartass.” Sloane tucked her hands behind her, military at ease—even if nothing in her body felt at ease. Not her muscles, not her gut, not her stewing anger.

  The asari’s nose unwrinkled into a faint smile. “I’m positive the salarian security guard didn’t see me. None of the network technicians noticed me. So that leaves security footage.” Her head tipped, the light glinting over her purple frill. “Except I avoided the cameras.”

  Sloane didn’t like this tack, not at all. She took a step forward. “What were you looking for in the data core? What’d you take?”

  Fadeer chewed on her lip for a moment, thoughtfully studying the security director. The urge to punch her—again—practically drilled a hole through Sloane’s fraying temper, doubled when understanding dawned in the asari’s gaze.

  “You’ve tightened security, haven’t you? What is it?” She smiled. “Hidden cameras? Automatic image capture when a network is accessed?”

  Shit. Sloane said nothing, not aloud, but her scowl spoke volumes. It seemed to be all the answer Irida needed. A dark brow lifted.

  “Director,” the asari said coolly, “I don’t believe the general populace agreed to secret surveillance, nor were we informed.”

  “Yeah, well, the general populace is what you assaulted with your stunt,” Sloane snapped. She flung a hand out, her gesture taking in the entire Nexus beyond the small cell. “That extra security caught you in the act. The general populace can knock on my door and scream all day, as long as I’m putting criminals like you away.”

  “Tsk.” The asari just spread her hands, wrist shackles clanking at the jointed center, and said musingly, “Well, that will be interesting to watch unfold.” She turned her face forward, settling her hands back into her lap. “Good luck.”

  Sloane glared at the asari. An assault in the heat of the moment was one thing—it wasn’t her first, and wouldn’t be her last. She couldn’t kick in Irida Fadeer’s teeth, though, and get away without repercussions.

  “The data, Fadeer. What did you access?”

  Nothing.

  “Is Calix Corvannis in on this? Does he know?”

  There. A twitch. A bit of a frown.

  “No.”

  “Then why? And who helped you?”

  “I acted alone.”

  “Bullshit.”

  As if she had all the time in the world, the prisoner looked steadily ahead and said nothing else. That was that. She was done talking, which meant Sloane had two problems. She still didn’t understand the motives of a saboteur, and the asari knew about the extra security.

  She hadn’t even told Tann or Addison.

  Damn it.

  Sloane turned and rapped on the door. The guard opened it and shut it hastily behind her. He even managed not to jump when Sloane turned and punched the door as it locked in place. Only the briefest flash of satisfaction crossed her features when the so-cool asari flinched on the other side.

  “Orders, ma’am?” the guard asked. Sloane shot him a look that had him bracing for impact.

  “Tell Talini I’m going to see a turian about a traitor.”

  “Er…�
�

  “She’ll figure it out,” Sloane said curtly, and she strode away from the scene of her own bloody frustration. Maybe Fadeer’s boss would have insight. Maybe he’d have the answers.

  Maybe she’d have to arrest him, and the whole damn life-support crew.

  Fucking great.

  * * *

  Calix preferred the comfort of his engineering surroundings first—obvious by how often she found him there—and the comfort of the Consort’s chambers second. That one came by his own admission, and Sloane couldn’t blame him. The asari Consort’s chambers used to be a favorite of many Citadel visitors. Since there was no such thing here on the Nexus, and he wasn’t to be found in engineering, she made her way to the commons.

  It was late. Late enough that the only people in the area were quietly unwinding for sleep, using whatever was available. Books, some quieter music, dim lights, or in Calix’s case, a glass of what was probably turian whiskey. He didn’t seem the type to risk anything else. Dextro-amino acids had been carefully stocked and prepared for the turians on board, which provided an extra pinch to rations, yet they couldn’t eat what the humans did.

  He saw her enter, raised his glass in one hand. The dim light threw a sheen over his metallic carapace.

  “Director Sloane. Come have a drink.”

  “I think I will, but not that stuff,” she said as she approached. “I’ve got enough shit to deal with without adding literal—”

  “I understand,” he cut in dryly. His eyes gleamed. “You look like you’ve had a hell of a day.” Calix watched her as she snagged a bottle of beer from behind the commons counter. His head tipped. It was faintly avian, she thought, which also made him seem harmless.

  Sloane wondered just how true that was. She threw a leg over the closest chair and settled into a not quite easy comfort.

  “Got a moment to talk shop?”

  The turian blinked. “You want to… talk commerce? I don’t mind, but it seems somewhat premature.” It took Sloane a second to remember that turians, like salarians who didn’t care to read up on human culture, tended to miss the metaphors.