Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

  “And that is?”

  “Cryostasis. Which was all we were asking in the first place. Of course, a punishment hearing would await them at the other end of that, but at least it would occur under less pressing circumstances. Cooler heads, as it were.”

  She caught on immediately. “We can get everything settled, an infrastructure in place, and resources steadied.” Her gaze sharpened on him. “In short, put this whole mess in a drawer for now and come back to it later.”

  “Crudely put, but apt enough,” he acknowledged. “We have neither the time nor the capability to devote resources to a bunch of criminals who have proven they cannot be trusted to maintain order.” He gestured in a vague way. “They can either leave, or sleep. Nobody in their right mind would leave, not with the Scourge out there. Not after what happened to the others.”

  “And after prison time, what, we reintegrate them?”

  “Did you miss the part where they attempted to seize control of the Nexus?” Tann asked. He tapped on the desk. “No, once they have had a taste of mutiny, there is no returning. Not,” he added, “without more resources than we currently have.”

  She chewed on that for a bit. He could see the thoughts working past her eyes—she was probably weighing the pros and cons of his plan. Good. Tann knew she would reach the same conclusion, because it was the correct one. He’d thought this through to the last contingency. Nobody was suicidal enough to launch themselves into the Scourge-ridden void of exile.

  Getting the populace back into stasis was the best option the Nexus had to offer. Had they listened the first time—no thanks to Sloane’s polarizing arguments—none of this would have happened in the first place.

  It was ironic, it was right, and it should have been done long ago.

  Finally, Addison nodded. “All right. Let me contact Kesh and—”

  “I’m sorry, but no. We don’t need any additional krogan involvement,” Tann interrupted smoothly. “They’ve done their jobs. Now it’s time for us,” he said, emphasizing the word, “to do our jobs, don’t you agree?”

  She didn’t argue this time. Not, Tann knew, that there was anything with which she could argue. This was a sound plan. He liked to think even Sloane would have gotten behind it, even if she’d likely pepper it with more scare tactics. Threaten to throw them to the Scourge or something sufficiently brutal.

  Tann relished the fact that this time, Sloane was on the opposite end of the decision-making process—where, he felt, she belonged.

  And he wasn’t a brute.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “One wrong move or angry outburst,” Sloane told the group as the guards approached the cell door, “and I’ll feed you your teeth myself, am I clear?” Her voice was quiet enough, but there was nothing joking in her tone.

  They all nodded grimly. Even Nnebron, whose dark skin looked sallow around the edges. Nerves, she figured. They all felt it—that crushing realization that nothing stood between them and whatever punishments the council would levy.

  Nothing except her, Sloane reminded herself, and she would fight like hell to keep these people alive and striving for the future. Anything less would be worse than abandoning them. It’d be adding to the council’s belief that these people had no cause to act, had no reason to fight.

  Sloane knew they did.

  If nothing else, Calix had let them fly too far off the handle. For them to make it through the next few moments, they’d need to shut up and let her do the talking.

  They had all discussed it already. Sloane would go to bat for them, but only if they did what she said. Anything else was a waste, and Sloane didn’t have the patience to arm-wrestle people into doing what was best.

  The door opened. Talini stepped inside, flanked by two of Sloane’s officers—her ex-officers. The prisoners shuffled in discomfort, unwilling to look at their captors, or at Sloane herself.

  “Exit one at a time,” Talini ordered. “Hands on your heads. No talking, not one step out of line.”

  Sloane nodded at the crew. “Go on.”

  Grim-faced, tight-lipped, they each stepped through the door, hands on their heads. The security team, assault rifles gripped tightly, lined them up two by two. When it was just Sloane left in the room, she paused just inside the door. Talini looked at her silently, a world of unspoken concern in her features.

  “How bad?” Sloane asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” the asari replied, shaking her head. “They’ve been very close-mouthed.”

  “Probably afraid you’re loyal to me,” Sloane said with bitter humor. “I guess I get that much.”

  Talini’s mouth twisted. “I’m sorry, Sloane.”

  “Yeah.” She rolled her shoulders, then laced her hands behind her head, looking straight ahead. “So am I.”

  Sloane exited the cell. In the hall, the other prisoners stood in two long, erratic lines, and hardly anyone spoke. Well over a hundred rebels, she guessed, the fight in them tempered by the knowledge that next would be their punishment.

  “March,” Talini said, and took the lead.

  That was the last anybody said during the long, tense walk to Operations. Along the way they were joined by more prisoners—ones whose wounds hadn’t been severe enough to keep them under medical care. Upon arrival they were shown through the doors, and Sloane was utterly unsurprised to find the area ringed with her own security forces. At the center sat Addison and Tann.

  Kesh stood a little farther away, engaged in a low, tense conversation with Morda, Wratch, and another krogan—one paler than the rest, gray where the others showed more color in thick krogan hides. His was scarred, brutalized by wefts and ridges, and he very clearly looked older than the others. Ancient, given krogan lifespans.

  Morda barely spared her a glance, save to acknowledge Sloane’s presence with a grunt and lift of her broad head.

  Kesh looked up, her gaze earnestly serious. Morda thumped her on the shoulder with a hard fist and said something low and rumbly. Sloane didn’t know what passed between them, but Kesh’s sigh rolled through Operations like a warning of distant thunder.

  Tann slanted the krogan a startled, wary glance, which let Addison speak first.

  “Thank you, you may all put your hands down.”

  Tann’s mouth dropped open. “Didn’t we—”

  “We can at least afford them some respect,” Addison said, an aside everyone heard.

  “Respect? These people—”

  “Cut the bullshit,” Sloane interrupted, dropping her hands and pushing her way to the front of the group. “We all know what we’re doing here.”

  Tann’s gaze narrowed on her. “That’s far enough.”

  “Yeah, like I’m going to risk getting shot just to wring your scrawny neck,” Sloane responded, but she didn’t push it. These two had unleashed Morda and her krogan warriors on Nexus civilians, and given the order for a sniper to take Calix out. One of Sloane’s own officers had pulled the trigger. That stung, almost more than any of it.

  “What’s your stunningly brilliant plan this time, Tann?” she finished flatly.

  Addison’s glare sharpened. “How about you shut up for once and listen?”

  “How about you look at the facts here?” Sloane shot back. She jerked a thumb at the group behind her. “You think they deserve everything he thinks they should get?”

  Voices murmured behind her. Nnebron muttered, “It’s his fault we were hungry anyway.” Not quiet enough to go unheard. Not loud enough to grab center stage. But she saw the rims tighten on Tann’s wide, round eyes.

  “You’re all here because you took part in a rebellion that put the future of the Nexus in jeopardy,” he said firmly, clearing his throat in a bid for authority.

  “Please,” Nnebron snapped. Sloane shot him a fulminating glance over her shoulder, but he didn’t look at her. His eyes pinned on Tann, hatred simmering under all that fury. “You made the choice to hide the truth from us! You were going to let us starve because of your inde
cision.”

  Anger and agreement rippled through Calix’s crew. Sloane held out an arm, as if that single barrier would hold them back.

  “As you can see, Tann,” she said over the gathering noise, “you aren’t exactly off the blame train either. None of us are,” she added tersely, and if her stare pinned too long on Morda, the clan leader knew why. The Nakmor’s toothy smile wasn’t exactly friendly, but at the same time, Sloane didn’t think the krogan held grudges. After all, they’d won.

  Thanks to Sloane’s surrender.

  Tann bristled. “That is entirely unfair.”

  “She’s right,” Kesh said abruptly. She folded her arms over her chest, frowning at Tann and Addison where they stood by the central dash.

  The salarian rounded on Kesh. “That is quite enough out of the third parties, if you please. The krogan have done more than enough, and—”

  “They killed Calix,” someone in the back shouted. Irida. Shit. Sloane hadn’t considered the asari’s habit of sticking a finger in metaphorically infected wounds. She reached back, grabbed the closest person—a turian with a blackened eye swollen shut and new scars appearing across her cheek—and jerked her close.

  “Get her to shut up,” she muttered.

  The engineer nodded and pushed her way back through the prisoners.

  “All sides in this,” Kesh continued, utterly unfazed by the minor scuffle, “tasted death. Made mistakes. If we’re holding them to theirs—and we should,” she added sternly, “—then we should admit to our own.”

  Beside her, Morda snorted. It sounded almost as if she’d spoken. Said something like “soft”. Then the larger krogan added, clearly and sourly, “You have your own missteps to account for, Kesh.”

  Sloane raised an eyebrow as Kesh turned toward her clan leader. The pair started to square on one another, but then the ancient krogan, a male, stepped between them. “One target at a time,” he said, every word rolling from his mouth like rusted railway spikes. A simple step, a casual comment, and both krogan paused.

  Abruptly Addison raised a hand, frowning. “Sloane Kelly, as the security director, what do you have to say for yourself?” A hush fell over the rebels. Even Irida quit muttering.

  Oh hell. Sloane didn’t even need to think this one through. Ignoring the security—her security—she took three steps forward to stand squarely between the Operations council and Calix’s crew. She wasn’t stupid, though. She knew as well as anyone that several members of her team had a line on her as she moved. Would they shoot if she forced the situation?

  They’d damn well better. She didn’t train them to hesitate.

  “I have a lot to say for myself,” Sloane answered. She clasped her hands behind her back, settled her stance, and looked Tann dead in the eye. “Unlike some people here, I have a lot to say for others, as well.”

  “Now, you—”

  “I speak for the people behind me,” she continued, cutting him off. “They were hungry and terrified already, before learning their leadership had lied to them.” Loud. Deliberate. “I speak for Calix Corvannis, who saw a bad situation getting worse, and did what he thought was best to bring hope to this failing station.”

  Tann’s eyes narrowed to vicious slits.

  “I speak for Jien Garson and the real leadership this station expected.”

  Addison’s lips whitened.

  Kesh’s brief exhale mirrored the tension her words sent lancing through Operations.

  “But most of all?” Sloane thumped herself on the chest. “I speak for the common fucking sense that said we don’t lie to our people, we don’t play the ruthless game of ‘who can live and who can die,’ just because we’re too chickenshit to own up to our mistakes when we make them.” She shot a glare not at Morda—who had earned her share of Sloane’s fury—but at Tann. “We don’t,” she said, stressing every level word, “send our own against our own.”

  The salarian straightened, hand flattening on the panel beside him. “What would you have done?” he snapped. His voice trembled. “What could you, oh great security director, have done different that would have brought back order?”

  Sloane shook her head. “I was already there, Tann. Talking it through, trying to bring Calix to… who knows. We’ll never know, will we?” The finger she jabbed at Tann could have been a razor blade for the way he flinched. “Somebody sicced the krogan army on us before we’d gotten that far.”

  Addison shook her head. “They weren’t supposed to go in shooting.”

  “Untrue,” Morda cut in, a sudden surge of danger in her growled interruption. “We were told to go, and I quote the skinny sand-rat, ‘whatever it takes to secure the mission.’ Do not dare to cast the blame for this on us.”

  Tann sighed loudly. “Of course a krogan would assume that means ‘kill everyone.’”

  Kesh threw out a hand so fast that it collided with Morda’s armored chest and sent an echoed thud through the rest of the crowd. Sloane tensed. While every security person reached quickly for his or her weapon, the clan leader let Kesh’s hand stop her knee-jerk forward momentum.

  “We will have words,” she promised. “Rest assured on that.” But Tann just shook his head in that way that suggested he had better things to think about. Smug bastard. The full force of his attention shifted once again to Sloane.

  “Regardless, you broke all the regulations of your office,” he said. “You killed members of the Nakmor clan—”

  “They came at us guns blazing!”

  “That you were there to witness it speaks volumes concerning your own loyalties, does it not?”

  Sloane’s fists clenched. “I was trying to negotiate, you puffed-up fish-bait.”

  “Against orders,” Tann reminded her, and Sloane didn’t have a counter for that. She had gone against his request to wait. But then, had she waited, would the krogan have murdered them all?

  Her lip curled. “I regret none of my choices.” “And you will be held accountable for them,” he assured her. “Consequences.”

  Sloane didn’t expect anything less. The real question was, what did he have planned?

  “First, however,” he continued, shifting his attention to the rest, “we handle Calix Corvannis’s accomplices.”

  Nnebron’s jaw tightened. “You can—”

  “Shut it,” Sloane snapped.

  The man’s fists clenched, but he jerked his chin and amended whatever he was going to say. “We fought. We lost. What now?”

  Well, he wouldn’t win any diplomatic awards, but Sloane appreciated the brevity.

  Tann and Addison exchanged a glance.

  Never good.

  “You have two options,” Addison said.

  Tann nodded. “Option one grants you something of your initial desire. The urge to do things your way,” he continued. Nnebron’s dark eyebrows lifted.

  One of Sloane’s did the same.

  “We are prepared to offer you a fleet of shuttles.” Addison folded her arms, studying the crew. “Fueled and stocked with supplies. You can take your unsatisfied crew and set out on your own.”

  “Are you serious?” Nnebron asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Exile?” Irida said, forcing her way to the front. Sloane bit back a sharp curse as more weapons primed, focused now on the asari.

  “Fadeer, don’t be so quick to get killed.” She turned to Tann, eyeing him warily. “It’s a non-offer.”

  Irida shot her a sneer. “Meaning what?”

  Sloane could see it in Tann’s face. The game he was playing. “Meaning he knows we won’t agree,” she said, never taking her eyes off his. “It makes him look generous and fair, all the while knowing we won’t go.”

  “Why not?” Irida asked, still too consumed with anger to see it.

  “Because it will be no small thing,” Kesh interjected, “to be exiled to the wastes of the Scourge. You heard it already. The nearest planets are inhospitable.”

  That quieted things.

  “There is a secon
d option,” Tann added.

  “Spit it out.” Sloane was losing patience. Fast. Tann, for all his smug superiority, seemed to know his time was limited. He clapped his long, knobbly hands and spoke with a bit of a flourish.

  “Return to cryostasis,” he said, “until the Nexus is repaired and fully operational.”

  “What?”

  “No way…”

  Some of the rebels stirred, forcing firearms to lift with renewed aim in the hands of the security team. Sloane shot Talini a hard look. The asari’s reassuring nod was so slight, she wasn’t sure it meant anything at all. But nobody opened fire, and that was something.

  “There’s no way,” Nnebron said, his voice rising an octave. He took a step forward that put him within reach of Sloane. She braced, just in case. “You’ve been trying to get us to sleep since you first decided we were too much trouble!”

  “How do we know you’d even let us out,” Irida added hotly. “We’re easier to handle cold, right?”

  “He won’t,” a woman said. “They’ll never let us out.”

  “No way.”

  Sloane let out a long, slow breath. It didn’t do anything to ease the thunder of her heartbeat in her chest.

  Tann studied them all. “So,” he said slowly, drawing the word out. “You’re choosing exile?”

  “Hell, yes!” Nnebron shouted, fist in the air.

  Sloane closed her eyes.

  “It’s better than a frozen eternity, forgotten in the Nexus’s logs,” Irida added.

  “We can take care of ourselves!”

  “At least we can trust each other.”

  Addison’s gaze sought Sloane. She couldn’t avoid the other woman’s stare when she opened her eyes, and in that stare, she found apology. Worry.

  Anger.

  Yeah, well… Sloane only had to deal with one of those.

  The salarian shrugged, and turned his attention to her. “Amazing,” he said, sounding genuinely bemused. “You’re going to lose everything for a bunch of exiles.”

  “Tann!” Addison’s shocked cry of warning came just a hair too late.