Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

  “All that time,” he said, not an answer or a greeting, but it was all he had. “All those plans and dreams and hopes. A masterpiece, and it was ours to create.” In his peripheral, Addison climbed the steps to the large window and took up a similar position a short distance away.

  “Jien Garson had a way of making it sound like an adventure.”

  “An adventure,” Tann repeated sourly. “A grand new galaxy with innumerable fertile landscapes to provide us with all that we needed.” He closed his eyes, let his head fall forward until his brow thumped against the solid pane. His breath fogged it on a shaky exhale. “I don’t know, Foster. I don’t know that I made the right choice.”

  “Which one?”

  “Any,” he admitted, his voice very small. “All I wanted was for the Nexus to blossom, to fulfill its role from the start. I swear to you, I made every choice with this in mind…”

  Addison, in perhaps the most damning reaction, said nothing.

  Tann laughed, and it felt weak, even to him. “Sacrifice,” he said bitterly. “Jien Garson spoke of sacrifice. She said that by undertaking the journey, we made the greatest sacrifice we would ever make.”

  “Something tells me,” Addison said quietly, “that was optimistic at best.”

  “At worst, a lie.” Tann opened his eyes, lifted his head as a ship’s exhaust flared at the docks. Wavering spots of color. He rested the tips of his spindly fingers on the pane. “Did she know, do you think?”

  “Know what?”

  “That what she said was probably a lie? Or, at best, marketing?”

  Addison’s chuckle was little more than a short exhale. “I think Jien Garson felt what we all felt.” She straightened, made her way to Tann’s side to watch the ships prepare. “Hope is a powerful thing, Tann. For a brilliant, ambitious woman like Jien, for governments willing to fund them. For normal everyday people.” A faint trace of humor edged into her voice. “Even for logical salarians.”

  “Perhaps.” Tann couldn’t bring himself to smile, not even when Addison’s hand curved over his shoulder. Sympathy or support, he didn’t know. He’d take both, maybe just this once. “May I ask you something?”

  The lines of her features were very pale in the cool light streaming in through the viewport. It made it easier to watch her eyebrows raise, her chin drop in a nod.

  Tann didn’t know why it felt as if his heart had taken up residence in his throat. Or why his insides felt so hollow. All he could say for certain was that for once, doubt consumed him. He looked away, back to the busy docks.

  “Do you think she would have made the same decisions?” he asked. “Jien, I mean?”

  Addison took a slow breath. “I don’t know,” she said on an equally as slow exhale. Tann nodded, expecting that.

  “I think,” she continued quietly, staring out over the cold and pitted station, “that Jien Garson would never have allowed us to get into this situation in the first place. I hate to admit it, Tann, but we—all of us—we were out of our element from the start. Hopelessly so.”

  Tann couldn’t disagree.

  “We did our best,” she added. “Even Sloane. I believe that.”

  “Perhaps.”

  But they would never know. The mission had claimed the founder of this dream before she could leave any mark at all in the galaxy that was to be their masterpiece.

  Sacrifice, she’d said. Tann had thought that he’d been prepared.

  Perhaps Jien Garson had been wrong, after all.

  “I think,” he said again, much quieter than before, “the greatest sacrifice we will ever make wasn’t coming here.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head, but didn’t give his thoughts any more words. He couldn’t. To admit he’d probably been wrong was hard enough.

  Addison squeezed his shoulder. In silence, she left him to the sparkling lights of the operations consoles, the busy preparation of the docks, and the lurid, hovering threat of the Scourge beyond.

  To know, somehow just know, that none of this would have happened with Garson in charge… It stung. And it proved to him what he’d subconsciously been dreading since the moment he’d woken up to fire and fear.

  See you on the other side.

  The greatest sacrifice wasn’t in leaving, he thought. It was her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  In the cold vacuum of space, ships drifted through the web of the Scourge, toward unfamiliar stars. Like a pack, they traveled together at first. Then, as if saying goodbye in silent harmony, they split into two groups.

  Blue and white engine plumes flared as the exiles and the krogan truly set off, out of comms and sensor range now. They had officially departed the Nexus, perhaps never to return.

  Kesh hadn’t realized that she’d pressed a callused hand to the window until it fisted against the smooth pane. Knuckles aching, she watched the exhaust of her people’s ships. Already, she missed the heavy, abrasive sound of krogan footfalls in the empty corridors. She missed the loud, often savage laughter.

  The fights, the jeers.

  The camaraderie.

  Family. Above all things, krogan clans meant family—perhaps more so than any other of the species. After all, for so long, the krogan had only each other.

  The other side, Kesh thought sadly, seemed to be one of loneliness. Of prejudices only half-forgotten, and conflicts given open ground to run free.

  Had Garson expected that?

  Kesh was not idealistic. She’d worked to the bone for this station, this Initiative, and she would die for it if she had to.

  Or, as it turned out, leave her clan for the betterment of it.

  With the resolution of conflicts, this mission had promised a new beginning, a chance at peace… yet the cost had been blood. Fire. Loss. What ground they’d all gained, what bonds they’d forged between disparate species as settlers of Andromeda, had begun to erode the moment Garson and her council died.

  Maybe the krogan would find a new path on this side, maybe they’d survive—even thrive. Kesh believed in her clan leader. She believed in the genuine efforts of the Nexus leadership to guide and guide well. In the spirit of that hope, she remained behind as the seeds of the Initiative, watered by blood and toughened by flame, scattered through Andromeda.

  What they became, what they chose to take from this, would be up to them. Kesh would remain here, with the station she’d helped engineer, waiting for the day they came back.

  But first, there were so many to mourn. Survivors, bereaved and angry, to comfort. The work of a gentler touch than her own. Hers was to rebuild.

  Preparing the Nexus, she thought as she turned away from the last glimmers of her only people, for the eventuality of peace.

  * * *

  Sloane watched the pitted lines of the scarred station as they drifted away. When—no, if—the Nexus finally came together, when all the damage was fixed and the elements were in place, it would be a remarkable place.

  A place she would never get to see.

  That was her one regret. Staring out into the eerie glow cast by the distant filaments of the Scourge, Sloane studied the way the curves of the station distorted everything around it.

  Nnebron, his back to the window, huddled over his knees in exhaustion. And fear, Sloane figured. There was a lot of that going around. They all knew what was out here—or rather, what wasn’t. No planets. No food.

  No hope.

  Well, Garson be damned. This was the other side, and the idealistic woman’s masterpiece turned out to be painted in blood. In old hatreds.

  In the stupid pride of a few.

  Sloane touched the viewing pane in silent goodbye. Then turned her back on the Nexus once and for all.

  “Okay,” she said briskly, clapping her hands hard. More than a few of the exiles jumped. Nnebron muttered something she didn’t bother asking him to repeat. Ignoring him, she strode away from the last vestiges of hope and cranked her compass to where it should have been from the start—survival. Hers,
and the people who had been relying on her since the moment they’d woken.

  She should have done that, just that, from the start.

  “Maybe we don’t have a station,” she said, her tone firm. Her gaze level as she studied her new crew. “Maybe we don’t have a mission, but what we do have,” she continued as she made her way across the floor, “is one another. And the strength and determination to survive this.”

  Irida, leaning against a panel, shrugged around her folded arms. “It’s a death trap out there. What do you think we can do?”

  “Starve to death,” Nnebron said grimly.

  “Come on—”

  He cut the red-haired woman off, shrugged out from under her reassuring hand. “It’s true, Andria. Two weeks of rations, and we’re expected to find somewhere when seasoned scouts didn’t?” He laughed bitterly. “May as well just shoot ourselves now.”

  The fear in the ship ramped up a notch.

  Sloane eyed Irida. Then Nnebron. Even the one called Andria curled up on herself. She saw only gloom there.

  So it was going to be like that, was it? She weighed her options. A good security director would crouch down. Sit eye to eye with her subordinates and hear them out. Reassure them.

  Play the game.

  Well. Fuck that. The game had landed them all here.

  Sloane went for Irida. The asari raised her chin, but she wasn’t expecting the hand that went for her throat. Sloane spun, Irida’s collar in one fist, and slammed the asari hard enough into the ship wall that crewmates down the length of it yelped when it vibrated.

  “What the hell are you—!”

  “Shut up,” Sloane said tightly, shoving her face close enough to Irida’s that she could see herself in the asari’s irises. “You think that because everyone signed up for the Initiative all formal-like, that you’re safe to say whatever you want. Do whatever you want.”

  Irida grabbed at her wrist, and Sloane responded by shoving her harder against the wall. Fist in her throat.

  Nnebron leapt to his feet. “Hey—!”

  “Be quiet,” Sloane snapped, turning her head to glare at him. At all of them. “This isn’t the Nexus anymore, and your inability to control your shit is why every one of you is out here.”

  Why Calix is dead.

  Irida managed bared teeth and a strained, “What are you going to do? Space us?”

  “If I have to.”

  Her even answer had Irida scoffing at first. And then, as Sloane’s fingers tightened, she choked on her own realization—Sloane Kelly meant every fucking word.

  “We get one shot at this,” Sloane said flatly. Screw reassurance. “One life. We mess this up, we die. Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but I will survive. I will make this work.” Sloane’s grip eased. “With,” she finished in the same level tone, “or without you.”

  Irida sucked in air, her purple skin pale around the edges. She rubbed at the back of her head, eyeing Sloane cautiously.

  “Goddess, fine,” she rasped.

  It was as good a concession as she was going to get.

  Nnebron backed up a step when Sloane turned the full force of her impatience on him. Throwing up both hands, he spoke quickly.

  “Relax. I’m with you.”

  “So am I,” Andria said quietly. She closed her eyes, head hanging. “For Na’to, and Reg. For, hell, I don’t know. Because I want to live.”

  It was a good enough reason for Sloane. As she turned, studying each of her newfound crew and gaining nods, shrugs, or even an occasional smile and thumbs-up, she nodded back.

  “Good.” Then, louder, “Good. They think we’ll die out here? Let them.” She left Irida still leaning against the wall, aware of the woman’s venomous glare boring into the back of her head. Ignored it. If Irida ever made her move, she’d become an example. “This is a new life, now. New rules. We’re not the idealistic adventurers they said we were.” Not any more. Maybe, she thought as she made for the cockpit, they never were.

  “Exiles, get some rest.”

  “What’s the plan, boss?”

  She paused, bracing a hand on the wall, and looked back over her shoulder. Nnebron gestured at the others—tired, scared. Some still wounded.

  All of them hungry.

  “Treat the injured,” she said. “Catalogue the supplies. I’ll meet with you in an hour to discuss logistics.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sloane wanted to laugh. Instead, as she turned back to the cockpit, she said casually, “Oh, and anyone caught stealing supplies is going to wish they’d died on the Nexus.”

  In her peripheral, she saw mostly nods. Agreement.

  No more idealists. Good.

  Making her way to the cockpit seating, she slid in beside the only exile with piloting experience. A salarian, in fact. He gave her a nod, and said nothing.

  A thousand times better than Tann already.

  “All right,” she said as she leaned back into the seat. The open vastness of space, the alien stars and eerily pretty ribbons of the Scourge stretched out before the ship. New galaxy. New rules.

  New lives. Their own.

  She watched the vaporous glimmer and smiled, wide and toothy.

  “Let’s see about taming this other side.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We’d like to thank Nick Landau, Vivian Cheung, Laura Price, Becky Peacock, Julia Lloyd, Sara Marchington, Steve Saffel, and everyone on the team at Titan Books for all their hard work in bringing this book to life. Huge thanks also to the Mass Effect gang at Bioware, especially Chris Bain, Joanna Berry, John Dombrow, Ben Gelinas, Amanda Klesko, Mac Walters, and Courtney Woods. Their help and collaboration was extremely welcome. Thanks to our literary agents Sara Megibow and Lisa Rodgers for their constant support. Lastly, thanks to all the readers, and the Mass Effect player community!

  * * *

  Jason wishes to thank, in no particular order: Nancy Hough, Jerry Kalajian, Wayne Alexander, Jake “Odd Job” Gillen, Teddy Lindsey, Felicia Day, the Seattle Mass Effect Cosplay group, and my co-author Kace who rocked this party.

  * * *

  K. C. sends thanks to Ali O’Brien, Stephen Blackmoore, Jason M. Hough (shhh, don’t tell him), and to Jordan Neuhauser, the best filthy assistant there is. To everyone who made Mass Effect a living, breathing entity: you rock.

  Jason M. Hough (pronounced ‘Huff’) is the New York Times bestselling author of the The Darwin Elevator and the near-future spy thriller Zero World. In a former life he was a 3D artist, animator, and game designer (Metal Fatigue, Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction, and many others). He has worked in the fields of high-performance cluster computing and machine learning, and is a patent-awarded inventor. Find him online at jasonhough.com.

  * * *

  K. C. Alexander is the author of Necrotech—a transhumanist sci-fi called “a speed freak rush” by New York Times bestseller Richard Kadrey and “a violent thrillride” by award-nominated Stephen Blackmoore. She writes sci-fi, epic fantasy, and speculative fiction of all kinds, including short stories and personal essays about mental health and equality. Specialties include voice-driven prose and imperfect characters. Also, profanity. More at kcalexander.com.