Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

  Gambling time, she said to herself. Give in now to get close. She would just have to hope that these frontline grunts wouldn’t act without their leader’s okay. And she doubted Calix had given any specific instructions about her, as opposed to just anyone who showed up, which meant they’d have to ask before they could rough her up—or worse.

  So she set her weapon on the floor, and placed her hands at the small of her back, and waited.

  They weren’t gentle, but despite the vengeance they unjustly wanted for their incarcerated friend, they didn’t hurt her, either. Sloane soon found herself being marched, prodded, and pushed through the narrow twisted passage that led, after nearly twenty minutes of walking, to join the corridor she and the Nakmor clan had cleared months ago.

  The hallway, one of the Nexus’s main arteries, was clear in only the loosest application of the word. Debris and jumbled equipment still littered its length, but it had all been piled to one side to allow reasonably easy passage. Sloane regretted that decision, now. It had been the easiest way to open the corridor, but now all that piled junk served as cover for Calix’s makeshift army. Every discarded crate or torn-out hunk of air processor she passed had one or two rebels crouched behind it, all of them well-armed thanks to their score.

  Any regrets she felt about coming here alone, however, vanished at the sight of them. If she’d come here by force with an entire squad at her back, it would have been a bloodbath no matter which side emerged victorious. These assholes might be untrained, but there were a surprising number of them, and they had the advantage that they could wait and remain behind cover as long as it took.

  “Looks like you’ve made yourselves at home,” Sloane said to the brute in front of her.

  “No talking,” he grunted back.

  So original. Sloane sighed and went on counting the enemy, creating a little database in her mind of their positions, weapons, and any other details that might be of use. She hoped she’d never need it, but it beat trying to talk to the walking barricade.

  He led her into a fabrication room where massive machines lay under protective coverings, dormant and cold. Surrounding these were untidy rows of shelving and workspaces, twisted and jumbled together by the Scourge. More cover, and plenty of room for the rabble. Beyond, if Sloane’s memory served, lay one of the empty ark hangars.

  From there Calix and his people would have access to nine tenths of the station’s real estate, not to mention the access and expertise required to wake whomever they felt they needed—people they could tell any story they wanted. Sloane could no longer deny how brilliant this action was. Calix was no mild-mannered supervisor. Far from it.

  “Director Kelly.” His voice filtered in from the adjoining small office at the side of the factory floor. Sloane turned and saw him step out, to stand amid a core group of life-support techs. His trusted inner circle, no doubt. These things always took on the same characteristics.

  She nodded to him. “Calix,” she said. “Not sure what title to give you, actually. Sorry.”

  He jerked his chin at the brute, his wishes implied in the gesture. A few seconds later Sloane felt her wrists being freed. She immediately went to work flexing the numbness from her hands and rubbing the ache from her wrists.

  “I don’t need a title,” he said. “I just need better decision making.”

  “Tann’s doing the best he can. We all are.”

  He chuckled, dryly. His cronies picked up on it and echoed the reaction. All a bit forced, Sloane thought. Typical.

  “Can we talk?” she asked him. “In private?”

  “Depends,” he said. “Is this just a diversion? Get me away from the front when the attack comes?”

  “No one’s coming to attack, Calix. We need you—all of you—back at your stations.”

  “You need us in stasis,” he said. “And before that, you need us to put everyone else back in stasis. But that’s not going to happen.” He said this for his own gathered cronies, not her. A tactic she knew well.

  “No one is coming to attack,” she repeated. “I just came to talk. I want to understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “All of it.” She swept her arm across the room, indicating the band of wild-eyed miscreants this turian had somehow rallied to his cause, whatever it may be. “Why you did this. People are dead, Calix. Many more are injured. What little supplies remain to us have been looted or destroyed.”

  For several seconds he just stared at her, as if still trying to decide if he could trust her. If he felt any remorse over the loss of life, he managed to keep it off of his sharp features.

  “Take her omni-tool, Reg,” Calix said to the brute. He waited in silence while the device was removed, then took it when it was offered to him. Calix powered it off and tossed it aside. He cast an accusing glance at the brute, and Sloane understood that they’d made a mistake by not taking it from her in the first place. She filed that. She hadn’t taken the time to have it auto-transmit her location back to anyone, but she could always say she had.

  “All right,” Calix said. “Let’s talk.” With that he turned and went back into the room.

  The brute, Reg, nudged Sloane toward the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The hours ticked away with no word from Addison, Kesh or Sloane.

  Tann waited, watching the feeds as rebels barreled through the hallways on looting sprees that left injured in their wake. The longer he did so, the more he began to suspect malfeasance from his would-be council partners. The more he suspected, the angrier he became, with one person as his focus.

  He understood the urge to go against the grain—even if that grain represented the fundamental basics of law and order. Every being, whatever the species, eventually strayed. It was only natural. Biological, even. An imperative that appeared in every sentient lifeform.

  Tann wasn’t unfeeling. He did understand. With anything else—anything less weighty than the future of the Nexus mission at stake—he might have entertained Sloane’s efforts at rebellion. After all, opportunity could be found in all things, even this.

  But in that moment, as the Nexus crew rose up in mutiny around them, Tann couldn’t take the chance. Too much was at stake. The timepiece on his omni-tool moved inexorably toward too long. He started making plans.

  Contingencies, backups, failsafes.

  Somebody had to take charge of this clusterfuck, as Sloane would so colorfully describe it.

  “Spender.”

  “Yes, sir.” The human unbent from his near-permanent hunch over the feeds he monitored, turning his full attention to Tann. Smart man. Easy to get along with, Tann felt, especially when it came to getting things done—and right now, Tann needed something done.

  “Leave us,” he said over his shoulder to the few other people who occupied Operations. The pair, assigned to watch the erratic sensors for any signs of the missing arks, looked at one another. “But what if a signal—”

  “Have there been any signals at all?”

  “Negative.”

  “Then you can afford a break. Now, go.”

  “Uh… where, sir?”

  Tann’s large eyes squinted across the room at them. “Find somewhere,” he said tersely. “You are intelligent beings, by all accounts.”

  They retreated without further argument, murmuring as they went. Good. At least somebody around besides Spender would do as he asked. Once they had moved far enough away that he could expect some semblance of privacy, Tann turned back to his assistant and braced both long hands against the dash. For emphasis, not because he needed to lean.

  “This has gone on long enough. First Addison and Kesh, now Sloane, all incommunicado. We’re on our own. We need to act before everything is lost.”

  “Act, as in what, exactly?” Spender asked. Then, as realization dawned, he added knowingly, “Arms.”

  Tann nodded. “If nothing else, the feeds have shown us that these rebels are only going to respond to one thing. The time has come
to nip this in the bud.”

  “Not without us.”

  The voice came from behind. Spender’s eyebrows furrowed, his glance darting so quickly over Tann’s shoulder that the salarian had no problems guessing what he saw. He turned to stare at both Addison and Kesh as they strode into Operations. The faces of the crew that had let them in projected a conflicted apology.

  “Where have you been?” Tann snapped. The best defense, after all.

  Addison’s eyes glinted dangerously from between narrowed lashes, but it was Kesh’s pronounced limp that had his attention.

  “Ran into a bottleneck,” the krogan said simply, and left it at that. Given the state of the station, Tann didn’t bother to pursue. More fighting. More bloodshed.

  Enough was enough.

  “I’m glad you are safe,” he said. Kesh inclined her head, content to take his sentiment at face value, apparently. Good.

  Addison regarded Tann coolly. “Making decisions alone again?”

  “I thought I was alone,” he returned mildly. A pulse thumped high on Addison’s forehead. She had walked out, after all. “Speaking of which, where’s Sloane? She left specifically to find you and Kesh.”

  “We haven’t seen her. Some of her people found us, said Sloane left them to take care of something else.”

  “If you people would just remain in Operations we would not have these problems,” Tann interrupted, too pointedly for it to be anything other than a cut. “Let’s review our failings later. Right now, it’s time to act. Primarily, we need to put down this uprising.”

  “They aren’t dogs, Tann.” Addison planted both hands on the console, glaring at him and Spender in equal measure. “They’re people. Our people, and they’re scared.”

  “That might have worked a few weeks ago,” he replied, “but you heard Corvannis. We are no longer dealing with scared protesters. Blood has been spilled, and we keep underestimating them. We can no longer afford to give these people the benefit of the doubt.”

  “I simply meant—”

  “The way I see it,” Tann said over her frustrated protest, “we have two options.”

  Kesh leaned against the console next to Addison, favoring her side. The blackened edges of battle scarred her uniform, and hasty bandages peeked out from the torn fabric. Tann paused, surprised. To make a krogan bleed, that implied some serious weight.

  Even more reason for him to push.

  He met Addison’s eyes first. “Either we send our entire security force into a battle to crush every last mutineer, in a bloody foray that will cost us hundreds of lives—”

  “Unacceptable,” Addison said sharply, her eyes still narrow.

  Exactly. He let his gaze turn to Kesh. “—or we wake up Nakmor Morda.”

  For a long, long second nobody said a word. He waited.

  “Morda,” Kesh repeated slowly. Her broad face, always so serious to his eyes, didn’t so much as shift. He couldn’t read her. Never could with krogan. Damned big-headed, thick-skinned floaters.

  Yet it was those big heads and that thick skin that would end this once and for all. Tann nodded with all the gravitas the situation warranted.

  “We send Morda against Calix Corvannis,” he acknowledged. “We end this quickly and decisively. Overwhelmingly so.”

  “Then what?” the krogan asked shrewdly. She didn’t fill in any options, though—that fell to Tann.

  He smiled. “Then we hold a meeting—”

  “Great,” Addison muttered. “That’s been working so well.”

  “—where we include everyone, and hear their grievances,” Tann continued firmly, earning a startled look from the human woman.

  Spender nodded enthusiastically. “And we pitch to them our plan for the future, knowing what we know about the state of the galaxy.”

  “Precisely,” Tann said.

  “What plan?” Kesh asked.

  “The plan,” Tann replied, “that we will formulate when we are not spilling each other’s blood in the corridors.” He raised his brows at them all. “I believe there is a great deal of room in which to maneuver, don’t you?” Then he waited.

  When all three nodded with various degrees of enthusiasm and belief, Tann knew he’d made the right choice. The key was the future. There would be no future if they didn’t get this handled. Tann turned back to Spender.

  “And that’s why I would like you to go wake up Nakmor Morda, and request her help with Corvannis.”

  “Him?!” Practically a salted snort, Kesh thought so little of the choice.

  Spender blinked. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Glanced at Kesh.

  “Not that I’m unwilling, but why me?”

  Tread carefully, Tann told himself. This must be played just right, because the true best option was Kesh, but the last thing he wanted to do was give Morda the impression of a krogan power position here.

  He gestured at himself ruefully.

  “I am inclined to believe that direct negotiations between a salarian of my standing and a krogan of—such as it is—hers would not go well. No offense intended, Kesh.”

  “None taken,” Kesh replied seriously. “It makes far more sense to send me, though.”

  “All due respect, Kesh, but I gather that a powerful clan leader such as Nakmor Morda will not react well to the fact she’s been left asleep when the labor force was revived.”

  Kesh’s mouth sealed into a grim line.

  Got her. He continued. “By sending my aide—”

  “My aide,” Addison said sharply. She frowned at Spender. “For all he seems to have forgotten it.”

  “I’ve only been trying to help,” Spender shot back, equally sharp. “Wherever my help is needed.”

  Tann inclined his head. “Mr. Spender has been incredibly helpful and, more importantly, extremely flexible with his time. For this reason, he has earned something of a reputation for speaking on my behalf.”

  Addison’s face pulled into something Tann couldn’t distinguish between a grimace and a flinch. Both, maybe? Human faces, so malleable.

  * * *

  “Is Sloane on board with this Morda plan?” Addison asked.

  “If she hadn’t vanished I would have consulted her.”

  Addison squinted at him. “Maybe we should wait for her. Whatever she went off to do, it must be important.”

  Tann wondered what that could have been, but decided it did not matter. “We must hope she is safe,” he said, “but there is no time to wait.” Privately, he wasn’t convinced that Sloane would approve of his current plan. She rarely approved of any of them.

  Besides, this really could not wait.

  Tann cleared his throat delicately. “As I was saying, by sending Mr. Spender, we are showing Morda the respect that she is due.”

  “By sending a puppet?” Kesh asked bluntly. Then, to Spender, with zero feeling, “No offense.”

  “None taken,” he replied, echoing Kesh’s earlier words, but Tann saw his mouth twist.

  Kesh made a deep grunt. “Only I can initiate the stasis override.”

  Tann felt as if he were suddenly at the edge of a cliff. He’d forgotten this little detail, and now, for the first time since she’d entered the room, he really looked at Kesh. “Will you do it?” he asked. “For Spender? I realize there’s little love between the two of you, but you must see that I’m right, Kesh.”

  “I… reluctantly agree it is a good plan.”

  “And Morda? Will she listen to Spender?”

  Spender opened his mouth to say something, but Tann waved him quickly to remain silent. Let this be Kesh’s idea, he tried to say with his eyes.

  Kesh shifted her weight from one foot to the other, thinking. She said, “By sending a representative that is far beneath her in standing but above me in the political hierarchy, you will show her the importance of the request.” She flattened a hand over the blackened tears in the clothing at her side, as if it pained her. “Morda will be pleased by this, and also enjoy the opportunity to intimidate a pup
pet.” Her smile showed a lot of fang, and she aimed it squarely at Spender. “Treat her like just any krogan, little man, and she’ll be picking your bones out of her teeth.”

  Spender smiled back. It was strained. No love lost between these two.

  “Good,” Tann said loudly, and he clapped his hands. “It’s decided. Spender will go negotiate with the Nakmor leader for krogan assistance in this unpleasant matter. The mutiny’s ringleader will soon be taken care of, and we,” he stressed, gesturing at Addison and Kesh, “can begin working on ways to address the people’s concerns.”

  Spender was already nodding.

  “What of Sloane?” Kesh studied Tann in that slow way she had.

  Easily decided. “We tell the krogan to look out for her,” Tann replied readily. “And if possible, escort her safely back to Operations so we can include her in the discussions.”

  “All right.” Addison’s brow was a red tangle of eyebrows and frown lines, but she nodded in a slow, uncertain rhythm. “I’d rather this get solved before anyone else dies on our watch.” She rested her fingertips on the edge of the console, pinning Spender with a hard stare. “Don’t aggravate the krogan, Spender. Morda is… well, you know.”

  “Believe me,” Spender said as he straightened his uniform jacket. As earnest as Tann had ever seen the man. “Pissing off a krogan war band is the last thing I want to do.”

  Tann gave him a pat on the back and guided him to the door. “Listen,” he said under his breath. “I realize we’re asking a lot of you here. I appreciate—”

  “Chief of Staff,” Spender said.

  “What?”

  “Make me Chief of Staff. If Morda agrees, I want to work directly for you, and not as a damned gopher.”

  Tann looked him square in the eye and saw a hunger not present in Addison’s gaze, or Sloane’s. “I believe that can be arranged,” Tann replied. “If Morda agrees…”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Spender’s hands were damp with nervous sweat by the time he received word that Morda had unfrozen. Kesh had initiated the process ten minutes before, and left once the vitals all showed green. She’d chuckled as she passed him, a sound that still echoed in his ears.