Mass Effect: Andromeda — Nexus Uprising

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sloane expected something of a rollercoaster ride, but the highs and lows of the recent weeks were wearing on her.

On the upside, work got done. Progress was made, and quite a lot of it. Kesh’s krogan were efficient and basically tireless. If they grumbled, it was indiscernible from the usual krogan surliness, and so didn’t require security to monitor. Not even the loss of one of their grunts put a dent in their work ethic.

Cold, maybe. Sloane couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just the krogan way. Krogan died. That was kind of what they did, right? Lived big, full, bloody lives and invariably bit the big one.

So they kept working.

In the interim since the collision with the Scourge, no one had tried to steal another ship, or take more hostages, or go on a murderous rampage. Even if they had, the hidden cameras she’d ordered info-sec to install were in place and functional. Had they been needed, they existed.

And if they were never used? Even better.

Tann hadn’t asked for specifics, and Sloane didn’t offer them. Somehow, she didn’t think the salarian would go for what he’d call spying, but which Sloane called common-freaking-sense.

On the downside…

Calix.

The set of his features when she’d sat through a painful meeting about power draws and energy reserves made her chest hurt. She had seen turians pull through more than their fair share of pain and loss. Kaetus had once explained to her, in his usual surly way, that turians learned to process loss like factors in one’s life. Every victory was achieved on the back of those who didn’t make it.

It made the victory somehow better. Mean more.

Sloane understood. You didn’t strive for success without losing something along the way. But it was her job to keep that to a minimum, dammit.

Not that she could do much against this Scourge. She’d had her hands full with the mass panic inside the commons, and more than a few injuries thanks to that. The Scourge hadn’t rolled all the way through, thank whatever god still hung out on this floating wreck, but the aftershocks had left the whole populace looking panicked for days.

Calix, he didn’t do panic. Weeks after he’d lost Rantan Na’to, his face still bore the sign of his mourning. His whole team felt it. Shock, mostly. Two of his crew had been given temporary leave—she didn’t know where they’d gone off to, but if it was her, she’d guess somewhere the booze still flowed.

But he pressed on. So did she.

They all did. And according to Calix, life support was that much safer. Thanks to his salarian teammate.

And the krogan who’d tried to protect him. Nakmor Arvex.

A salarian and a krogan step out for repairs…

The joke wasn’t supposed to end in death. How was anyone supposed to guess that they’d blindsided right into a Scourge patch? Without sensors, they were all blind.

But the damned things refused to work. And there was only so much she could do.

The only thing they had going for them was confirmation. The Scourge blew. Also, it blew things up. Namely, the Nexus. And anything that got in its path. How, why, was a mystery for scientists to unravel.

Her job was to make sure nobody panicked. This was getting to be something of a crapshoot.

With some semblance of routine came time to think, and with time to think came a sudden abundance of opinions. Everyone she talked to lately seemed to know exactly what the crew’s priorities should be. Who just had to be woken.

They should abandon the station and set up a colony on one of the planets. All in or bust.

They should disperse everyone to the farthest corners of the station, in case the core experienced another catastrophe.

They should test weaponry on the Scourge.

They had to turn around and go back to the Milky Way.

They needed to put a billiards table in Commons 4.

Sloane agreed with that one. The rest, though… not so much.

She sat in one of the intended parks, borrowing a little peace and quiet while everyone else busied themselves with, well, staying busy. The days had proven one thing for sure: No matter the to-do list on everybody’s plate, any effort at relaxation seemed to turn into panic. The Scourge, the lack of the Pathfinders, the loss of life, the next collision…

And when the opinions turned to panic, to fear, to anger, it seemed as if people sought her out specifically. To yell. To plead. To demand.

She’d wanted to lead. To make a difference. Here on the Nexus, people looked at her, spoke to her, with certain expectations. She could see fear in their faces if she had a scowl on her own, whether it might be due to a reactor failure, or gastrointestinal issues. One wrong twitch on her part and the effects rolled out like ripples.

She never thought being a politician would be such a hard job. It had always seemed to her like strutting around, smiling all the time, slinging bullshit and platitudes like rice at a wedding.

It was goddamn hard, though. She could admit that to herself now. No point in letting Tann know she’d reached that particular epiphany, however.

And yet, like a demon summoned by name, her omni-tool chimed.

Was it Tann? Of course it was. Luck wasn’t her game. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked.

“We need to meet,” he said flatly. “If you can spare a few minutes.” He knew she could. Knew exactly where she was, and what she was doing, thanks to the device on her wrist, which now functioned more or less as intended—albeit with limited range.

Sloane inhaled a long breath of recirculated air. “Is it important?”

Tann’s irritation snapped with—and she could sympathize—fatigue. “It always is.”

All right. Fine. She rolled her aching shoulders. “On my way.”

The three of them gathered in a conference room just off Operations. Tann and Addison were already there when Sloane arrived, but that was normal. She seemed perpetually doomed to make them wait, and at this point neither of her fellow leaders even mentioned it.

“It’s been a while,” Addison said. “Tann and I thought this might be a good time to assess where we’re at.”

“Okay,” Sloane said, flipping a chair around so she could straddle it. She rested her arms across the back and laced her fingers together. “Assess.”

“Do you want to start?” Tann asked her.

“Nope.”

“Are you ever in a good mood?”

Sloane barked a laugh. “Usually about twenty seconds before my omni-tool goes off.”

“I’m sorry if I ruined your day,” he said dourly.

“It’s not you, Tann,” Sloane said. “It’s meetings.” She stared at the center of the table. “I really hate meetings.”

“Then think of this as more of a chat,” Addison put in, not quite able to keep the annoyance out of her tone.

“The only thing worse than a meeting,” Sloane said, “is a meeting with no agenda. AKA, a chat. But okay, I’ll try. Promise. Let’s chat.”

Addison and Tann exchanged that look. It was a look that had been exchanged when the first meeting of the cave clan was held around a fire, to decide what to do about the spear tribe from the next valley over. The do you want to start or shall I look. Sloane forced herself to relax. It had been four weeks, after all. Maybe a little progress update couldn’t hurt.

Tann went first.

“There is one thing I would like to discuss,” he said in a vague, casual tone. “Supplies.”

“Supplies,” Sloane repeated. “I feel like that’s all we ever talk about.”

“Only in the immediate sense. The micro, not the macro. We need to discuss the long-term prognosis.”

This, Sloane reluctantly agreed, probably merited a chat. Maybe even an honest-to-God meeting. Supplies were a problem that loomed like an overdue planetquake, just distant enough that everyone knew it was coming, yet no one wanted to do anything about it. Except Tann, of course. Truthfully she found little fault in his thinking.

“Hydroponics,” Tann said, taking their silence as permission to continue, “is behind schedule. It will be another four months, I’m now told, before we get our first edible crop, and meanwhile the effort is a massive drain on our available resources.”

“Four months?” Sloane repeated. Last she’d checked they were claiming three to four weeks. A single month at most. “First I’ve heard that.”

She regretted the words the moment she’d said them. It amounted to an admission that she hadn’t been paying attention, which was largely true.

“I asked Spender to do some calculations,” Tann said. “At our current burn rate, we will run out of our reserve caches in eight weeks or so.”

“So soon?” Addison asked.

Well, at least I wasn’t the only one tuned out, Sloane thought. That, or Addison’s own advisor had left her out of the loop, which seemed equally likely.

“That isn’t the worst of it,” Tann went on, gaining steam. “Water will run out sooner. Reclamation and filtration are woefully behind schedule. There was far more damage down there than anyone realized. And this assumes we’re out of the woods regarding the Scourge, which is so far wishful thinking.”

Sloane looked at Addison, saw the same surprise she felt. “How is it you know all this and we don’t?” she asked Tann. She feared the answer, but had to know. Sloane braced herself, ready to learn that she’d been oblivious to reports or blowing off meetings. She expected some kind of condescending answer about how, as acting director, it was his job to know. The reply took her by surprise.

“I walk,” Tann said.

“Huh?”

“I walk. I roam the halls. Well, usually I just pace in my lab, but sometimes a change of scenery helps me think, so I wander. And when I wander, I see things. I hear things. Later today,” he added ruefully, “I have no doubt that we will be officially told by Nakmor Kesh that these two critical projects are not going well.”

“It’s not Kesh’s fault,” Addison quickly said.

“Did I imply as much?” he asked blandly. “I did not. But that you leap to it does make one wonder.” Whatever Addison wanted to say—and all the swearing Sloane didn’t have the heart to throw in—was halted by a dismissive wave of his hand. “This type of news tends to take its time filtering up to us, and occasionally as I walk, I catch on sooner. I gather hints. I connect the dots… but this is not the issue. The issue is supplies. We should focus on that.”

“I really don’t like where this is going,” Sloane said.

“Oh?” Tann fixed his gaze on her.

Sloane inhaled, puffed herself up. “The solution to a supply problem isn’t exactly a security officer’s dream scenario. Fed people are content people. Showers are generally appreciated and really damn useful for morale.”

“Understood,” Tann said, but then he added, “We will begin by discussing rationing.”

“Is there another alternative?”

“I believe there is, but let’s start with this.” He glanced at each of them. “We made a mistake by allowing free rations. At first, our shared sense of purpose led people to naturally be aware of their draw on our resources.”

“Yeah,” Sloane said. “Not so much now, though.”

“Precisely,” he agreed. “The crew has become accustomed to taking whatever they need, when they need it. Over time, as routine set in and our immediate dangers were mitigated, the lack of worry has led to… I won’t call it gluttony, but certainly people are behaving like, what’s the word?”

“Assholes?”

“No.”

“Selfish pricks?”

“No.”

“Inconsiderate cunts?”

“What is a—?”

Addison cut in hurriedly. “Short-sighted!”

Tann snapped his fingers. “Yes! That’s what I was looking for, thank you. Also, thank you, Sloane for the colorful commentary. It is always, er, linguistically fascinating. I shall have to consult the database on some of these terms.”

“Knock yourself out,” she said. “But we got hit by the Scourge not that long ago, if you recall. Has there been a dip in ration use?”

Tann shook his head grimly. “The reverse, in fact. As if once aware that rations bore no restriction, desperate times seemed to create further draw.”

“Well.” Addison gestured, indicating all things outside the room. “If people are losing sight of the mission, what their duty is, then let’s remind them.”

Tann rested his chin in one hand and tapped at his jaw with one long finger. “What do you have in mind?”

“A few ideas,” she replied. “Maybe at meal time tonight we should put Jien Garson’s departure speech on the vid screens. She can—pardon, could—motivate better than any of us, I think, and it could be passed off as a memorial. Since,” she added pointedly, “we haven’t actually stopped to mourn yet.”

“Hmm.” Tann continued tapping away at his jaw, his gaze unfocused. “That’s not bad. Perhaps it is time.”

“Yeah,” Sloane said. “Then, the instant the video is over, we tell them dinner’s off and that they should all stop gorging themselves.”

Addison shot her a glare.

Sloane couldn’t help herself. She went on. “I’ll have my security team on hand to quell the riot you’ll have started.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Tann said.

“Doesn’t it?” Sloane’s mouth twisted as she sat forward, elbows on her knees. “Look, like you said, we haven’t been rationing—and yeah, that was stupid of us. But it means that when we start, people are going to be upset. Finger pointing, accusations of hoarding or unfair ratios, the full gamut. Trust me. I’ve seen it before.”

“I know you have,” Tann said.

“Really?”

“I read your dossier.”

“No shit?”

“No sh—, er, correct.” A beat. “This is a surprise? I’ve read almost everyone’s by now. Those who are awake, I mean. Especially after the Falarn incident.”

Sloane stared at him for a moment, then shook her head. “All I’m saying is, rationing is going to kill the mood around here, right as everyone’s just starting to settle from the last Scourge hit. My team is going to have to start spending all their time defending what supplies we do have before things start magically disappearing.”

“That,” Addison said, “is already happening.”

Tann and Sloane both turned to her.

“I was going to bring it up next. It’s all in Spender’s latest report. Certain items have been growing legs.”

Tann went rigid, his eyes impossibly wide. “Some kind of biological agent? An alien meta-molecule infection?”

“No, no,” Addison said hurriedly. “It’s an expression. Things have been vanishing as if they’d walked away on their own.”

“Oh,” the salarian said. “I see.” He sounded almost disappointed.

“No one thought to inform Security about this?” Sloane asked her.

“Like I said, I was going to bring it up next. Spender only mentioned it in his report this morning.”

“I’d prefer to learn about criminal activity the moment it happens, not in a fucking report.”

Addison waved off the terse rebuke. “It’s not like that. He called it a vague concern. A ‘rounding error,’ perhaps, but he suspects there may be a problem.”

Sloane forced herself to ease off. “Fair enough. I’ll talk to him, get someone to investigate.”

“Good,” Addison said.

Sloane swung her focus back to Tann. “You said there was another option, other than rationing.”

“Well, yes. I should think it’s obvious.” When neither woman took that bait, he went on. “The time has come, I believe, to have the majority of our workforce return to cryostasis.”

Addison stared at him.

Sloane spent a good ten seconds laughing.

Jarun Tann endured this like the calm professional he clearly thought he was. When Sloane’s amusement finally abated, he continued.

“They were woken to help us overcome the immediate danger, and that has been accomplished. We’re all in agreement on that. It is perfectly reasonable to return them to stasis now, until we have our first crop from Hydroponics.” He shot Sloane a look. “I fail to see what’s so amusing about the idea.”

“Last time we put people in stasis it was a punishment. For a severe crime.”

“I fail to see the relevance to this situation.”

“Tann,” she said, “despite the relative calm, we’re still in a world of shit here. Trust me, the last thing anyone’s going to want to do is be ordered back into their pod, and hope they’ll wake up again. They’re awake now. They’re going to want to stay that way. If we want to return them to stasis, it’ll have to be by force.”

“So we ask for volunteers.”

“If you get ten out of the thousand currently awake, I’d be shocked.”

This caused him to get up and pace. No easy feat in the small conference room.

“Perhaps Addison’s suggestion applies here, too. Garson’s speech may remind them of the sacrifice they made to come here. They’ve already been placed in stasis once and survived, I might add.”

“Well, sure,” Sloane said sarcastically. “A hundred percent of the survivors survived.”

“You know what I mean.”

A brief silence, broken by Addison.

“It can’t hurt to ask, can it?”

Sloane stood. “Yes. Hell yes it can hurt. Trust me, it’s not going to go well. And with the implied threat of rationing looming behind that request, the self-preservation instinct is going to kick in.”

For a time no one spoke. Tann even stopped pacing and leaned against the wall.

“I guess,” Sloane said with abundant reluctance, “the alternative is to go straight to rationing, and that’s just not going to work.” She rubbed her temple. “At least asking for volunteers eases us into it.”

Tann nodded. “Agreed. I’ve made my decision. This evening we will let Jien Garson herself remind everyone of why we’re here, and of the sacrifices we all made. Then I will put out the call for volunteers.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

Tann blinked. “Perhaps we could all do with a little reminder of why we’re here, don’t you think?”

Sloane made an appearance in one of the common areas, eating and drinking with a random group of crew, rather than her usual place with the security staff. Her dining companions were a lively bunch at first. Two members of the Nakmor work crew, a sanitation systems expert, and a soft-spoken asari who only poked at her food.

When pressed, the asari, a Dr. Aridana, admitted that she’d been trying to fix the main sensor array, and felt it wouldn’t be resolved until one of the arks arrived with spare parts. “Assuming they are not in the same, or worse, shape as us.”

Sloane finished eating and drifted toward the door, ready to leave and summon security at the first sign of trouble. As she walked, the few functional screens around the commons bloomed to life, displaying Jien Garson’s face.

A hush fell across the crowd, and in that solemn quiet their fallen leader’s words were heard by all. It was one of history’s great speeches, Sloane mused. Inspiring, thoughtful, and yet somehow “blowing happy gas up yer ass,” as her old station chief used to say. Regardless, every word in Garson’s speech rang true.

And then came Tann’s.

“Wise words from our fearless leader,” he began awkwardly. “How about a round of applause?” And then he clapped. No one else joined, but Tann had no way of knowing that. The poor bastard clapped for a full minute, then resumed. “I’d ask Jien Garson to address you all now, but alas, she is dead.”

Oh crap. An awkward silence followed.

“And if we are not careful, a lot more of us will die,” Tann went on.

“Oh, Tann, what the hell…” Sloane muttered, burying her head in her hands.

“A lot more of us will be dead if we run out of supplies.” Tann stared into the camera for a moment. “We have made some incredible progress these last few weeks, and I am happy to report the state of emergency has ended. In recognition of that, and because of our rapidly depleting reserves, your interim leadership is asking for volunteers to return to cryostasis.” He paused, then added, “You deserve a little rest, don’t you?”

That’s it. I can’t listen to any more of this. Even worded well, Sloane doubted many would take Tann up on his request. Delivered like this, though, he’d be ignored at best and ridiculed at worst. Already Sloane could hear snickering from a few places across the room. She grabbed a bottle of something from their “rapidly depleting reserves” and took the straightest path she could to her room.

Showered, meds kicking in, she slipped on a cleanish uniform and pulled the omni-tool onto her forearm. Sloane had checked out and checked out hard last night, drank until she thought she’d drowned the horrifyingly awkward moment she’d witnessed.

It had only sort of worked. Now, as sixteen messages lit up her screen, she could only imagine what she’d missed.

She ignored them all and tapped in a link request to Tann. Might as well get this over with. She wondered how many had spotted the island of logic hiding in his ocean of poorly chosen words.

“Good morning,” Tann said, his voice telling her everything.

Sloane asked anyway. “That bad, huh?”

“That bad.”

“How many volunteers?”

A second of silence. “None.”

“None?”

“As you predicted, no one volunteered to return to stasis. None whatsoever.”

“Damn.”

“Well, there was one.”

“Oh?”

“She claimed to have selected the option in error, and changed it.”

Sloane could think of nothing to say.

“Go ahead and gloat,” Tann said.

“No, no,” Sloane replied. “Not going to do that. I had a feeling this would be the result, but I’m not going to hold your feet to the fire. Next time, though, you might want to get some help on your speech. That was… not great.” She took her first sip of coffee.

“Spender wrote it.”

Sloane spat out her first sip of coffee. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all. I thought it was fine.”

“Tann, that speech was… I think the technical term is ‘a turd sandwich.’ Seriously, put Spender out the airlock for that one, and then follow him out for not realizing it yourself.”

His eyes went wide. “I hardly think such a punishment—”

“I’m joking, Tann. But—gah, never mind. Next time let Addison give the speech, okay?”

“The crew seems to listen to you.”

“Yeah but I have to buy into an idea before I go asking others to swallow it.”

The salarian let out a frustrated sigh. “Well, we’re right back to where we started.”

“No,” Sloane corrected, “we’re worse than that. You’ve planted the seed now, the ‘supplies are running out’ seed.”

“Yes. Well, about that,” he said. “We need to draw up a plan for rationing.”

“That we do.”

“Are you available now?”

Sloane glanced at the clock, then felt the pang from her stomach. “Let me find breakfast first.”

A big meal, she decided. As much as she could stomach, before the belt had to be tightened.

And then she’d crack some skulls, if needed, yell some obscenities, if confronted, and all around wait for the station to explode.

Or maybe everyone would just cope.

Nah. She still didn’t feel that lucky.