Mass Effect: Andromeda — Nexus Uprising

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, but 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 dourly.

“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.

“You good, Nacho?”

“Mm,” Na’to said, looking out again into the black. A word that wasn’t one, he realized when he glanced back at his team. “It doesn’t seem close enough, and barring any unforeseen alterations in trajectory or force, it should remain so.”

The krogan looked at each other, then shrugged in unison. “It’s weird,” one said.

“Yeah,” the other added. “Like a thresher maw pet.”

“What?”

“I think,” Na’to translated slowly, “they mean it’s unpredictable.”

“All right, then. Let’s get this conduit scoped in record time.”

Without further ado, Na’to coiled enough slack to keep Reg on his toes and made his way to the emergency hatch that had, miraculously, survived the devastation. “Well,” he said, testing the comms with false cheer while the air hissed out around him and the small hatch pressurized, “it could be worse.”

“Oh, yeah?” Andria’s voice sounded younger in comms than it did in person. A fact he had pointed out once to unfortunate consequences. “How so?”

Once settled, the exterior hatch opened to reveal little but space. And the occasional projectile, albeit none so large as to block the breath-taking view. Na’to’s smile tipped up behind his mask. “I could be stuck down there smelling krogan.”

One of the krogan grunted something Na’to thought might be a laugh. “Don’t worry,” he graveled through deep chuckles. “It could be worse in here, too.”

“Yeah?” asked Reg, thoughtful but focused. Na’to knew the slack of his secure cord was in good hands. “How do you figure?”

A large, bulky shape blocked out the stars in Na’to’s peripheral. “Because,” came a voice deeper, meaner than the others. He turned slowly, grav boots locking with each step, to stare into the faceplate of a krogan whose hump towered well over Na’to’s head. Despite the sizable mass, all he could catalog for sure was a row of ragged, sharp teeth. “They could be stuck with me.”

“Ah.” Na’to went still, swaying faintly as his coordination struggled to get used to zero gravity and the singularly difficult boots meant to counter it. Na’to nodded his head. “You must be Arvex.”

“And you’re the tech-head sent in to secure this piece of crap so I can get back to work.” Arvex bent to peer at him. “Funny. I didn’t think they’d send in a salarian.”

Na’to sighed, sending up a small prayer to the Dalatrass that had birthed him. “Funny,” he responded in kind. “I didn’t expect a krogan to think.”

The comms were dead silent. The only sound coming back to him was his own breath, and the illusionary hum of tension as it filled the vacuum between them.

Arvex rapped out a burst of laughter. “Come on.”

He turned and led the slow, methodical way across the hull. Each step thunked in force felt more than heard, while the delicate sea of mysterious tendrils seemed to drift without form or reason. So close, he felt like all he had to do was stretch a hand to touch it.

A fallacy, of course. Distance between what his eyes could perceive and the depth of dimension provided by the Scourge, the space it occupied, the pattern of light refracted off of the quietly floating Nexus, and his own fascination provided inaccurate perceptions.

The hatch, though. Now that was something a salarian could dig his hands into. To start, anyway. Arvex stopped first, folded his arms and glared at the brightly lit interior. “Here’s the thing. Do what you came to do and then let’s get the hell off this hull.”

Under the light, wires and connectors gleamed in pristine condition.

Well, nearly so.

“Ah,” he muttered to himself, climbing the last steps up the station’s hull with eyes fixed on the hardware. “Definite auxiliary,” he reported, tenderly lifting a bundle of wires to the side. “Can’t see the source of the problem, not yet. But this… and this…”

“What’s this?” A question Reg asked, but not to him. To Andria.

She had visuals through his feed. “It feeds life support, all right. An auxiliary power source, and one that I would guess wasn’t meant to provide as much power as it currently is.”

A grunt from the krogan beside him. Na’to didn’t pay much attention.

“Andria?” Reg asked.

“Yeah. I’m worried, too,” Andria replied quietly.

“Listen, Na’to, that Scourge is giving me the creeps out there. It’s closer on this side than on the populated side.”

Na’to made a thoughtful sound, but most of his mind was already entangled with power draw and mathematic values.

“He ain’t hearing you,” Arvex cut in. “Typical salarian.”

“Typical Nacho, anyway,” Reg replied with a sigh. “Let’s keep an eye on the stuff and see if it shifts. Mumbo! Jumbo! Go stand watch on either side of the bulkhead.”

“Who do you think—”

A foot clanged against the edge of the hatch. “Do it,” Arvex growled. Then he felt the weight of the krogan’s stare, heard him shift to crouch down on his haunches. “You hear that, appetizer? Get this old shit running like new before it all goes sideways.”

Old? No, no. New. Cutting edge. Failing, perhaps—fuses were beginning to show char. Overheating, maybe. Stress, decidedly. The salarian ignored the krogan, bent and thrust his face almost fully into the hatch. He wished he could take the helmet off, really use all his senses on the receptors and the connectors and just… just know what the tech was doing.

Why it struggled.

But that would be too easy. The sound of chatter faded into the background as Na’to focused on what was, ultimately, his one and only love.

“I don’t get it,” muttered Arvex.

“We don’t either,” replied Andria, “but we let him do his thing.”

A pause.

Then, as the krogan’s metal-shod feet clunked against the hull, he shifted stance to keep a stern watch over Na’to’s head and said flatly, “His thing is weird.”

The salarian smiled faintly to himself. They didn’t have to understand. They just had to let him work his incredible intellect.

Emory got off the comm with a sigh of irritation, mingled with resignation. He’d known what it meant to marry an engineer, but it still wreaked havoc on every effort to create something like a normal schedule.

Not that there was anything normal about this.

The Nexus was a wreck, hydroponics wasn’t responding, and he was positive that the next step would be some serious rations. Nothing else made sense.

Dr. Emory Wilde was, of course, a scientist. A botanist, to be precise, with awards in astrobiology, xenobotany, and, as it turned out, husband-wrangling.

Only two of those things would help the Nexus.

The third helped Reggie, but only when the stubborn mule allowed it.

Emory realized he’d been hunched over the microscope so long that his back was starting to curve naturally into it. Worthless, given he was currently sitting in one of the organized mess halls and not the lab he shared with the other hydroponics team.

There was nothing to stare at under a microscope here, unless one counted the porridge they’d taken to pulling together.

Given the look of the bland sludge, Emory didn’t care to do so.

The chair across from him squeaked, announcing a table guest with no preamble. Emory lifted tired eyes, summoning a smile when he recognized William Spender, aide to the directors. “Good morning. Or…”

“Good evening,” Spender replied good-naturedly. He was a thin man, with the look of one who never really settled into place. Like a cat, or even some kind of rodent, always checking the corners.

It was, Emory reflected gravely, not a singular affectation. He’d noticed that look on a few more of the Nexus’s personnel lately. Uncertainty. Anxiety.

Borderline haunted.

He’d seen it on Reggie’s face more times than not. At least when the team’s supervisor allowed him to get some rest.

Emory’s smile faded to something more empathetic. Xenobotanist he may be, but he was still human. He still understood the toll. “You look spent.”

The man allowed his forearms to rest on the table, hands tucked wearily within. “I feel spent,” he admitted. “It seems there is always some emergency or another.”

Emory could only guess at the veracity of his statement. “In hydroponics,” he replied with what he hoped was suitable sympathy, “we are kept busy on the singular task of growing food. I can understand that you must have so much more to manage.”

Spender’s eyes crinkled, but it wasn’t so much a smile as it was weary resignation. “Put out one fire, and another starts.”

“Metaphorically and otherwise.”

“You aren’t kidding, friend.”

Emory nodded at that, then, with a rueful smile, pushed his porridge toward the man. “Here, if you’d like.”

Spender looked at it as if he’d rather eat anything but the soppy beige stuff, but when he looked up, the look had faded to one of remorse. “No, I couldn’t. You must know how the food situation is looking.”

Ah. He did. Most certainly, he did. His husband spoke often of feeling the weight of the lives still in stasis upon him, but Emory felt the weight of the lives he saw every day. Good men and women of every species.

They all needed food.

And the irradiated remains of their stock was not cooperating.

Emory laced his hands together. Squeezed them until the knuckles turned white. “I do,” he confirmed when Spender said nothing else. “I am worried, Assistant Director. The progress with the seeds—”

“Yes, the progress.” Spender leaned forward, weight on his elbows. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Tell me, do you think you’ll see a breakthrough soon?”

Around them, the usual hub of diners trying to make the best of their third meal buzzed and hummed. Few enough seemed to take note of them, and even less seemed to care.

Emory thought about it. “If by ‘soon,’ you mean within the next two weeks? Unlikely. Samples need time to incubate, and we are investigating the genetic damage—”

Again, Spender interrupted him. “I see, I see. Good progress,” he said with a smile, a reassuring nod. “How’s the team?”

Another pause. Emory studied William Spender’s face, searching for the motive in the questions. Admittedly, people were less his forte than plants. The man appeared little more than interested.

As assistant to Directors Tann and Addison, of course he would be.

Emory spread his hands, forcing his fingers to unlock before he hurt himself in his anxiousness. “They struggle,” he admitted. “We are not so deep into the station that we aren’t aware every moment of the Scourge.” Spender nodded encouragingly. “We are all overworked, and rightfully so,” he added, “but exhaustion and fear make for poor bedfellows.”

“Of course, of course.” Spender looked down again at the gruel offered him. With one finger, he slid it back up the table at Emory. “You better eat this,” he said ruefully. “I have a suspicion that it’s all we’re going to get for a while.”

“Rations?” A pause, then Emory clarified, “I mean, is our food to be fully rationed?”

“Rationed?” Spender shook his head, smiling dismissively as he rose to his feet. “Not yet, friend. Not yet.” A pause, and then as if he thought better of it, he only reached over to shake Emory’s hand and repeated, “Not yet.”

With that, William Spender made his farewells and left the mess hall.

Emory watched him go, with doubt churning in an already knotted gut.

He missed home. He missed his old lab, to be sure, but he missed the comforts he and Reggie had carved for themselves. A home Reggie could return to between outposts. A place to let go of the weight of the worlds upon them.

Here, weight was all they seemed to have.

First, the weight of the thousands still in stasis.

Now the weight of men and women about to be very hungry.

Not yet, Spender had said. Rueful. As if it were inevitable.

Emory folded his hands together and rested his forehead against them.

Most of all? He missed his husband. More than ever, he wanted Reggie to take a break, come and see him so that he could share these new worries. Talk it over.

Face it together.

But for now, all he could do was gather himself, his courage and his failing strength, and shake off the miasma of fatigue for one more effort at hydroponics.

An effort that would turn into two. Then three. Then days.

One breakthrough. That was all they needed.

Because rumors were already starting to spread: Supplies are running low.

Spender knew. Emory had to trust that this meant the directors did too.

They’d all come up with something.