Mass Effect: Andromeda — Nexus Uprising

CHAPTER FIVE

Kesh followed the others back to Operations, then waited in silence as Jarun Tann studied the display listing him as the temporary commander of the Nexus.

Sloane stood beside him, arms folded across her chest. Addison sulked a short distance away. No, sulked wasn’t quite right. The human fumed. She clearly had expected, though certainly not hoped, to be the next in line for command in this situation. Instead, for reasons none could fathom, this middle-management finance officer had been higher on the list.

The salarian stood there, scratching idly at the back of his neck, reading his name on the screen over and over as if it might provide some hidden explanation.

Kesh remained by the door, arms hanging at her sides. The fact of his ascension grated. Deeply. The salarian species had, after all, developed the genophage that neutered the krogan clans. Even now, centuries later, it was the salarian species who lorded it over the struggling krogan. Every last one seemed inclined to bring it up.

To look down their stubby noses at the krogan.

Kesh had hoped to step away from all that. To work with cooperative folk, species more inclined to respect what the krogan brought to this new table.

And maybe in part, the sting she felt was the lack of recognition. The tint of betrayal to her indignation. But she knew herself well enough to recognize that at heart, she was an engineer. The station’s situation wasn’t getting any better the longer he waited, and Kesh was already running a list of necessary repairs in her head.

Whatever else the salarian expected, Kesh knew her job.

As if aware of it, aware of the others, Tann, without ceremony, finally acknowledged the display. He stated his name and woefully unimpressive title to clear the security. The screen winked out, and then more information began to flow across its surface. Kesh couldn’t help herself, crossing the room to stand behind the three others.

Emergency ECS (end of cryostasis) protocol, the screen read, above Tann’s name.

Two more names were displayed, along with their status and, more importantly, their purpose: Directors Foster Addison and Sloane Kelly, advisors to the temporary commander.

Kesh was not listed. Nor any of the other two dozen or so known to be awake.

It shouldn’t have surprised her. Shouldn’t have stung. All this data did was confirm what Kesh had suspected. She had not been awoken for a sudden and absolute need for leadership. She wasn’t among those designated for such responsibility.

A krogan wasn’t meant for that. Not even here, where everyone had touted the words fresh start as if they knew what it meant.

They didn’t. Not the way she and her clan did.

Nakmor Kesh, one of the greatest contributors to the very station now falling apart around them and who knew the Nexus better than most, had been woken to clean up the mess. She stared at the back of the salarian’s head and tried to imagine why anyone would have put him in charge. Discounting her own contributions, Kesh figured at worst, Director Sloane Kelly should have been leading in this scenario.

But then, Kesh knew the reason. Politics. Council politics, anti-krogan politics, red tape. Call it what they would, it had to be the source.

A fresh start born out of old, destructive habits.

This truth bit deep. She’d hoped—indeed, based her decision to come on this mission in the first place—that they were leaving, truly leaving, the Milky Way behind. All the prejudices, all the old scores. A chance, in other words, for the krogan race to begin anew as equals to the peoples around them. Not just because they said so, but because they’d show those same peoples exactly why they were every bit as competent, industrious, and determined as they were.

At the departure celebration, she’d admitted as much to Nakmor Morda. The veteran warrior had roared with laughter, and drank deep to the folly of idealism. The memory left Kesh embarrassed… and angry. She had the right to hope for a better way of life. Stronger integration.

She was nobody’s naïve youth. But Morda, she was a different entity entirely. Harder, brutal when necessary, and Clan Leader for a reason.

Kesh did not relish the day the leader would wake to this so-called new galaxy.

“Hold on,” Sloane said, gesturing at the screen. “Everyone in my chamber was woken up, and the one adjacent. How do you know I was part of this… protocol or whatever?”

Kesh grunted something impatient. “The logs don’t lie,” she said flatly. Without being asked, she stepped forward—muscling the salarian out of the way simply by getting close enough—and brought up the screen now that terminal access had been unlocked. “The other pods were genuinely damaged, but not yours. See here? That group, and these three. Pod damage. Otherwise they would still be asleep now, or worse. But yours, that was protocol.”

“But I remember it damaged.”

“After protocols had begun.” Kesh’s thick finger stabbed the line.

Sloane opened her mouth, seemed to think better of it, and said nothing.

“It appears,” Tann said to the two human women standing on either side of him, “that the three of us will be spending a lot of time together.”

“Until Garson is found,” Kesh added pointedly.

It was as if she were not even in the room. Part of her, the undiplomatic part—the krogan part, steeped in lifetimes of conflict—wanted to ram her fist in the salarian’s flat, ugly face.

The security director saved her the effort.

Sloane shook her head, her features grim. “Yeah. Not happening.”

“What?”

“Advisory, my ass. Until this situation is under control I’ll be calling the shots.” She forged right over Addison’s breath for words, over Tann’s blinking onslaught of speechlessness. “This is an emergency, a possibly deadly one, and until we’re out of this damned mess, the last thing I want to do is argue costs with a revenue officer, no disrespect.”

Kesh fought a vicious thread of humor.

The salarian met her gaze, mouth tightening, and then focused squarely on the Security Director. “I understand your concern, but the mission protocol—”

“Fuck protocol. Look around us, Tann. We’re going to be lucky to survive the next hour. And you know what? Fuck the mission, too.” Addison’s eyes flared, surprise and anger. “I’ll worry about the mission when the last fire has been stamped out.”

The salarian drew back, but froze when Kesh lumbered to her feet. “Security Director Kelly is right.” Simple words. Simple tone. She wasn’t the placating kind.

The woman frowned. “Call me Sloane, will you? Titles give me a headache.”

Kesh could respect that. “Sloane,” she amended, “is right.”

Tann’s eyes narrowed. “Your opinion is noted.”

She may as well have suggested they repaint the Nexus Tuchanka-gas pink for all the consideration he gave it.

It took more energy than Kesh had to keep the irritation from her voice.

“Fact. Not opinion.” She gestured toward the screen. “Life support is failing. Everything from core power to ventilation is taxed beyond spec as the ship tries to compensate for all this damage.”

They all stared at her. Various degrees of inquiry and bemusement. Or, in the salarian’s case, outright impatience. There was no time for this.

She growled, raising her voice. “The Nexus is dying.”

Sometimes only bluntness worked.

All three snapped to a different kind of attention. One that processed this new data with, in Kesh’s opinion, not nearly enough fire.

Tann looked at Addison. Addison looked at Sloane. Sloane just narrowed her eyes, staring at the lone functioning screen, lost in thought. Kesh could almost see the wheels turning in there.

The salarian dusted off his sleeve. “Well then. I suggest—”

Sloane cut him off with an upheld hand. She looked to Kesh. “Who’s in charge of life support, and are they still alive?”

Kesh knew the name already. The turian reported to her directly. She poked and swiped at the screen.

“Calix Corvannis. Competent, if a bit… you know, turian.” She noted Sloane’s lips quirk, just enough. The human understood. Adding a turian’s casual arrogance to this party would be a fascinating new thorn in Jarun Tann’s side, to say nothing of the species’ unique devotion to the meritocracy. One foolish move, and they’d all hear about it.

In various degrees of respect, depending on said turian.

Calix was a good officer, but he had a way of holding his cards close. Kesh had learned to respect his space, and he to respect her orders. How that would hold up in this new environment, only time would tell. “He is still in stasis,” she observed. “Status… at-risk, but nominally. Like everyone else.”

“Wake him.”

Tann frowned. “What?”

“And his crew,” Sloane added, ignoring him.

“Wait just a moment,” Tann said, raising his voice. He held out his hands, though whether to get Sloane’s attention or make Kesh belie the order, she didn’t know. “That does not seem wise at this stage.”

Sloane whirled on him. “Are you telling me that it’s not wise to fix our failing life-support systems? Really?”

Give credit where it’s due, Kesh thought grudgingly. The salarian held his ground.

“I am asking if it’s wise to add more oxygen-consuming, waste-producing bodies to this situation,” he replied stiffly. “Life support may be failing, but it’s already struggling to provide us a breathable atmosphere, is it not, Nakmor Kesh?”

Kesh glanced at the display. “The air will become toxic to the humans first, in about… forty-three minutes.”

“There,” Tann declared, as if handed a victory. “You see? Wake this Calix Corvannis and whoever else, and it might cause the very system you wish them to fix to instead fail.”

Sloane Kelly closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples. “So what’s the alternative?” she asked. “That we let life support fail slowly because trying to fix it might cause it to fail faster?”

Tann smiled. “I haven’t suggested anything yet because you interrupted me.”

Sloane’s lips curled into a genuine snarl.

“Both of you relax, please,” Foster Addison said, stepping between them. “Speak your mind, Tann. Just be quick.”

The salarian gathered himself, straightening his sleeves. “Wake only this Calix fellow and let him decide if the situation calls for additional help. He is, presumably, an expert. Perhaps he can recruit some of us who are already awake to assist, instead of increasing the non-stasial population.”

The red-haired woman didn’t hesitate. “Agreed.” She looked at Kesh, as if it were decided.

Sloane let her furious glare bore into Tann for a few more seconds, then turned to Kesh as well. “Wake Calix, then. You and I will meet him at his pod, appraise him of the situation and help, if needed.” She infused more bile into the word “help” than Kesh would have thought possible of a human, but it was a petty gesture. Even Kesh could see that the salarian had a valid point.

She nodded to Sloane and marched toward the exit, stepping over smashed equipment and lifeless bodies as she went. Sloane followed, saying nothing else.

“What should we do while you’re gone?” Addison called after them.

“Find Garson, before I go insane,” the security director muttered.

Kesh said nothing.

Louder and over her shoulder, Sloane called out, “Try to keep the reactors from going critical. Barring that, if you can get communications working, that would make things a hell of a lot easier. Do you agree, Deputy Director of Revenue Management Tann?”

“It seems a prudent—”

“Good.”

Kesh led Sloane Kelly out of the room and into the fractured hallways of the dying Nexus, glad that no one could see the gallows humor she could feel cramping her facial muscles. Every krogan liked a good fight, whether it be against the elements or some living being. Whatever lay ahead, it wouldn’t be boring.

She accelerated to a full run, Sloane limping slightly but still right on her flank. They were at war against that old and tenacious enemy: the clock.

The clock, Kesh noted, was winning.

“Sure you know where you’re going?” Sloane asked.

Kesh rolled under a support beam fallen diagonally across a hall. She came to her feet, leapt over a bed, and powered on. Some of their route was dark, and a small emergency light on her uniform provided just enough illumination.

The mess didn’t faze her. Finding a bed all the way out here? Now that took some incredible physics.

“I all but built this place,” Kesh said between strides. “I know the Nexus ‘like the back of my hand,’ as you humans say.” She thought about that for a moment. “I’ve never met a human who really knew the back of his hand, though.”

Sloane grunted, dodging the same obstacles. Impressively enough, she’d fallen back only a few meters. At a particular junction, Kesh skidded to a stop and darted off to the left.

“It’s right up here.”

“Hold on,” Sloane called after her.

Kesh turned in time to see the human tapping away at a small keypad on the wall, one of the few still functioning. A panel beside it had the markings of security.

The panel slid open, revealing a small cache of emergency supplies. Sloane reached past a bank of medical kits and selected a pristine Kessler pistol. She checked the load-out and activated the weapon.

“You believe we will need it?”

“A precaution.” Sloane shrugged. “Comfort.”

“You can’t shoot space, Sloane.”

“I don’t intend to,” Sloane replied with a half-smile. She was remarkably less edgy away from the others. More focused. “But some civilians came out of stasis when I did. They were panicked and barely manageable. We don’t have time for that kind of crap now. If this Calix wakes up and loses his shit, we’re all dead.”

“Point taken. Still, do me a favor?”

“No promises.”

Kesh spread her hands. “Calix is the only person on board who really knows the life-support systems inside and out.”

“You don’t?”

She didn’t rise to the bait. “I do, but I have my exceptionally skilled hands full. So if you need to shoot him,” she continued mildly, “aim for the leg.”

Sloane laughed, a full sound that told Kesh everything she needed to know about the human’s sense of humor. Much more like a krogan’s, or a turian’s, than not. “Deal,” she chuckled. “But I don’t plan on shooting anyone. Call it an attention-getter.” She pocketed a few clips of ammunition and a first-aid kit, then slung an emergency rebreather over one shoulder. Kesh grabbed one as well, and they were off once again.

Halfway along the next hall, a series of red emergency lights embedded between floor and wall flickered, then bloomed to dim life. Overhead, a useless alarm began to wail, only to be silenced a few seconds later.

Kesh rested her hand on one wall. The faintest of tremors rippled under the thick skin of her palm. “She’s coming back from the brink.”

This earned an amused snort from Sloane Kelly, and no more. Instead, she ran on, taking the lead.

“Left here,” Kesh urged at the next junction. “Chamber D-14, on the right.”

This corridor looked as if it had taken the brunt of the station’s damage. An illusion, for Kesh knew other sections had fared worse, but she’d yet to traverse devastation like this. The floor had buckled upward, a bundle of wrapped conduits and pipes poking through the bent metal tiles. Like a broken bone through weak human skin.

Steaming orange liquid dribbled from the sheared pipes, spilling down the raised section like volcanic discharge. A bank of lights, still dark, swung from the cables that should have connected them to the ceiling.

“What a fucking mess,” Sloane muttered. “You sure the terminal said Calix was in stasis?”

“As of ten minutes ago, yes.”

They scaled the little mountain of floor tiles, stepping over the orange river of foul-smelling fluid.

Miraculously, the door to D-14 was undamaged. With emergency power holding, Sloane tapped in a code on the crooked panel beside it and stepped back as the door whisked open.

A silent, pristine chamber awaited, cast in dim red by lights around the perimeter of the floor. Like coffins in an ancient tomb, eight stasis pods faced in toward a central examination couch on a rotating dais. Frost still clung to the window of each pod.

Kesh’s gaze swept across them all, finding a green light on each. Finally. Something going right. She shouldered her way past Sloane, bent over Calix’s pod. A swift check over the control terminal brought even more relief.

“Integrity confirmed. He’s okay.”

“Finally,” Sloane said, mirroring her own thoughts. “Wake him. And not the gentle way, there’s no time for it.”

While Kesh input the commands, Sloane wandered over to the terminal beside the examination couch, trying to activate it. Judging from her curse, it didn’t respond.

“Try the comm,” Kesh suggested. Sloane moved to the small device mounted beside the door. Slapped a button. Poked it. In her peripheral, Kesh watched her make a fist and punch it—more of a love-tap, really. Well, it wasn’t the human’s gift.

“Dead,” Sloane announced.

“Well, best ready your weapon, the thaw is almost complete. Vitals look good.”

The pair stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the stasis pod. A full minute passed with no indication that anything had changed, except for the frost on the porthole condensing into fine droplets.

Then a hand slapped against the glass, smearing the water. Kesh leaned in and used the manual override to open the pod. There was a hiss of stagnant, foul-smelling air from around the seal of the two sections. Kesh lifted the top, rotating it upward and out of the way.

The turian lay still, eyes closed, wet stasis suit clinging to his avian-like frame. After a few seconds and with eyes still closed, he spoke.

“Why is it so quiet?”

Turians had a way of speaking, a kind of flanging effect that made it sound like two tonal voices in one throat. Kesh found the result to be pleasing to the ear, though she knew human counterparts who did not.

Rugged from his ungentle wake-up, Corvannis’s usual slow tones sounded thicker. Less confident.

Kesh glanced at Sloane. The security director studied the engineer. Whatever she saw, it seemed to reassure her. “We’re in trouble. We need your help.”

That earned the turian’s attention.

“You don’t say. What kind of trouble?” Calix blinked several times, his eyes a bit less bleary each time. Finally, he lifted his head a bit, winced, and laid it back, the bony crest pressing into the form-fit cushions. Somehow, he dredged up humor. “Given the method of wake-up, the warm weaponized welcome—” Sloane lowered her pistol a notch, but only just. “—and the lack of medical, I’m going to guess it’s the critical variety.”

“It is,” Sloane said. “We’ll explain on the way. You need to get up.”

Calix groaned. He managed to get his arms free, and rubbed his eyes with two fists. When he reached out, Kesh wrapped one hand around his thin, lean arm and helped pull him from the grip of the cushions. He needed her help to stand. “Nakmor Kesh,” he managed, once his joints unstuck. “Good to see you.”

“And you,” she replied. “Especially alive.”

“That why she bring a gun?” he asked, tilting his head toward Sloane.

“A precaution,” Sloane cut in. “In case you weren’t in a cooperative mood.”

“Expect that?”

“I’ve known a few turians,” she replied, but lowered the weapon entirely. Kesh couldn’t fault it. The species was known for many things, but blindly following just anybody wasn’t one. Calix, he had never pushed for the things others of his ilk had—glory, renown, position.

What he had demanded, and what Kesh had eventually facilitated, was trust. He knew his work, and he knew his crew.

Now, he unfurled his two fingers and thumb from Kesh’s supportive arm and gave Sloane a nod. “So I’ve heard,” he said simply, earning himself a glower. “Perhaps, then, you could give me a minute to get my mood—”

“Negative. Life support is going to fail in thirty-two minutes. You’re going to fix it, right now.”

Kesh felt his arm stiffen in her grip, even as he fought a yawn. “No other viable sections?”

“Life support for the entire Nexus.”

That did it. Calix finally seemed to focus. He fixed a quizzical gaze on the woman. “You’re joking.”

“Come and see for yourself,” Kesh said, shaking her head. “If it is, it’s the worst joke in the galaxy.”

“Right.” He couldn’t seem to look away from Sloane. Knowing turians—knowing him—he was trying to figure out her angle.

If only there was one.

Kesh chalked his lack of concern up to a mind still clawing its way out of six centuries of sleep. She pulled his arm over her shoulder and helped him through the room, past the exam couch where—in a normal wake-up from stasis—a subject would receive several hours of muscle-atrophy treatment, along with hundreds of tests and rejuvenating injections.

In the hall, faced with the devastation, Calix gasped with a mixture of pain and awe. “Looks like a krogan wedding came through.”

Kesh snorted. “We don’t have weddings.”

“I can see why,” he shot back, clearly getting his wits together.

Sloane wasn’t as amused. “This is no time for jokes,” she snapped.

Calix held up his one free hand, a conciliatory gesture.

Sloane scowled, turned and leapt up onto a buckled section of flooring.

“Where are we going?”

“Operations.”

Calix shook his head, causing Kesh to pause instead of following. “Waste of time. If the rest of the Nexus has been hit like this, you need to take me to the workshop. Besides, it’s closer.”

Sloane looked over his head at Kesh.

When she nodded, the Security Director wasted no breath arguing. “Fine. Lead the way.”

“Tell you what,” Calix replied with a grimaced kind of amusement. “You lead the way, I’ll shuffle along on Kesh’s arm and we can all pretend I’m slightly better than a sack of dead vorcha right now.”

It was like he couldn’t help himself, Kesh noted thoughtfully. Sloane cracked a smile, even if it was a hard one, and replied simply, “Deal.”

Maybe it was no time for jokes. But she couldn’t ignore the fact that despite all that, the human seemed far more at ease in the company of krogan and turians than her own kind.

Or salarians, for that matter.

Which seemed obvious to Kesh.

Together, they moved as fast as they could. Calix told them which turns to take, and remained unfazed when they had to double back due to an obstacle—namely, a hallway rent open to the vacuum of space. A whole chunk, three meters in diameter, had been torn from the hull, temporarily sealed just as Operations had been.

Kesh had tried to keep a running tally of all the things that would need to be fixed. By the time she reached shorn hull, lower corridor, she just gave up.

Everything would need to be fixed. Even the things that appeared undamaged would require testing and recertification. Months of work. Maybe years, and without supplemental work teams and the warehouses and hangars full of spare parts.

“You haven’t told me what actually happened here,” Calix said, breaking the silence. “Were we attacked?”

“Sensors are still offline, along with just about everything else, but it appears we hit something.”

“A ship? Or something natural?”

“Jury’s out,” Sloane replied curtly. “The sooner we can get this rolling, the sooner we can figure out what happened.”

Kesh could offer no better.

The turian was not one to waste time with empty words. He fell silent once more, content to focus on warming up his sleep-heavy limbs. Kesh found herself carrying less and less of his weight and balance as he slowly regained control. Then, when she felt confident enough that he could at least walk on his own, he cleared his throat. “In here,” Calix said, nodding toward a door. The signage on the wall read Life-Support Central Monitoring.

The panel didn’t work, so Kesh stepped in and heaved the two doors apart, allowing Calix through. Sloane started to follow, but stopped at Calix’s upheld hand. He wasn’t looking at her, but at the room.

Like everything else, it was a mess inside.

“How much time do we have?” Calix asked.

“Twenty-four minutes,” Sloane said instantly.

“I need to go wake the rest of my team.”

Sloane stiffened. “There’s not enough time—”

“I need them right now,” he said. “Or do you have thousands of those rebreathers on hand?”

Sloane cast a glance at Kesh, who could only shrug. The security director’s hesitation lasted only a second longer, and then Calix strode off the way they’d come. “Stay here,” he said over one shoulder, then he disappeared around a corner.

The human stared after him for a moment. “Is he always like that?”

Kesh’s snorted laughter echoed in the tumbled chamber. “Calix Corvannis is like many of his kind,” she said. “Except it’s for neither glory nor position that he seizes control of moments like this.”

“Not big on the meritocracy, then?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know his history, Director Sloane. Not entirely. I never saw the need to ask. What I can tell you is that he is an extremely talented engineer, slow to anger and protective of his own. A concept,” she added, “that includes that which he oversees. Systems or staff.”

Sloane raised an eyebrow. “And you let him just make decisions like that?”

Again, Kesh lifted her broad shoulders. “Unlike most, I don’t feel the need to second-guess my crew. When Calix operates on his own terms, he does so for good reason. And to success,” she finished pointedly.

“You trust him.”

“Enough to let him implement the entire cryostasis system.”

Sloane whistled, low and under her breath. “Will he need help collecting his crew?”

That, Kesh didn’t know. “You have spent more than your fair share with turians,” she said instead. “What do you think?”

Whatever she did think, Sloane wasn’t about to share it with Kesh, that much was clear. Back in the Milky Way, rumor had placed the human in very close proximity to another turian. Kaetus, if memory served—and it usually did. Surprising no one, Kaetus had boarded the Natanus, the turian ark destined to dock with the Nexus soon enough.

Whether it was friendship that had him following Sloane into Andromeda or, as gossip suggested, something more, didn’t concern Kesh. Nor did the existence of said turian. What mattered to her was that Sloane was familiar enough with turian ways that she’d be willing to let her engineer do what he did best.

Something she appeared to allow, for now.

Kesh would take what she could get. Calix and she would both earn the trust needed to operate unfettered in this failing system. The fact Sloane appeared to prefer their species would only help. “Now,” Kesh said briskly, clapping her hands together hard. “We might as well keep busy.”

“I guess so,” the woman sighed. She stretched hard, rolled her shoulders, and bent to work.

With Sloane’s help, fallen equipment was righted, debris cleared from a bank of control screens.

In record time, Calix Corvannis returned with a bleary-eyed group of seven engineers of junior rank. Junior, Kesh knew, only because they refused to surpass their supervisor in rank. They leapt right to work, as if they didn’t need instructions. Not that Calix was silent. He barked the occasional order, using terms and abbreviations Kesh did not recognize.

He knew these people very well. They’d worked together for a long time. In fact, they’d all volunteered for the Nexus as a group, Kesh recalled. Something had happened on Calix’s previous post, a labor dispute during which—the notes attached to the report she was given had explained—he had gone against orders for the well-being of his team.

She didn’t know the details because he was too humble to talk about it.

Whatever the case, they were loyal after that, “to a fault,” in his words.

“They said they’d follow me anywhere,” Calix had said dryly, “so I thought I’d test them on that with Andromeda. Turns out they were serious.”

She’d asked if he was satisfied with that.

“I don’t hold anybody to anything they don’t want to do,” he’d told her, nodding in the direction of his team as they’d worked. “They want to leave, they can. But they saw the Initiative specs, heard the speeches, same as me. They’re here because they want to be, Kesh. They’ll work hard.”

She had never been given any reason to doubt that.

And thank the stars for it. Now they needed every last one of them honed and ready.

At a tersely shouted order from the turian, two of his team raced off in unison to fix a stuck valve, one deck below and three over.

Kesh stood back, resisting the urge to check the clock. Not that there was any need. Sloane saw fit to call out the remaining time as each minute ticked away. Fifteen. Soon enough it was only ten. Then five. The engineers worked furiously, but with the kind of calm usually reserved for a drill.

“Two minutes,” Sloane called, with less fervor than prior. Her voice sounded breathy, her tone weakened. The air now tasted of burned chemicals. It smelled even worse, and that was to a krogan. Kesh could only imagine what the humans were experiencing. Indeed, after uttering those words, the security director pulled her rebreather mask over her face and sat down.

Kesh didn’t ask if she was okay. She wasn’t, obviously. Only time could tell now.

And time was exactly what Calix called. “That should do it. Confirm?”

Sloane and Kesh waited as the engineering team verified the surgery they’d just performed.

“Oxygen levels stabilizing,” one said.

“Filtration at eleven percent,” another, an asari, said. “Now ten… nine. No, wait. Hovering between nine and ten percent.” The tension drained from the room. They smiled at one another.

“Success?” Sloane asked, her voice muffled by the full-face mask.

Calix let out a breath, reaching his long arms up in a stretch. “Let’s just say we’ve bought ourselves twenty-four hours. Maybe more.”

Sloane let out something that might have been one of her profane phrases that were meant to suggest gratitude. Kesh couldn’t hear her. She reached for the mask, only to pause when Calix waved at her.

“You’d better keep that mask handy. The air in here is still poisonous, and will be for a while.”

Visibly short on breath, Sloane let her hand fall and said loudly, “We can’t fix all this damage to the Nexus if no one can breathe.”

“Sir?” the asari engineer said.

Calix turned to her. “Go ahead, Irida.”

“If we returned unnecessary portions of the Nexus to a state of vacuum, and used the sorting membrane—”

“—we could create a pocket of custom atmosphere. Good thinking, engineer.” The asari, Irida, grinned at the praise.

Sloane rubbed her temples again. “Explain that?”

“Bring the good air here, shift the bad elsewhere, and leave most of the Nexus with nothing at all.”

“Sounds like a shell game,” Sloane said. Calix recognized the archaic reference.

“That’s because it is.” The turian raised a hand to stave off Sloane’s next objection. “It leaves us with a section, maybe two, containing perfectly safe air. With some clever rerouting we can move that air wherever it’s needed.”

Kesh pulled Sloane aside. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “We still do not know where Jien Garson is. If she’s wandered—”

“She can’t have gone that far.”

“It’s a risk.”

“We don’t have much of a choice here, Kesh.” Then, louder, to Calix. “Do it.”

Kesh studied the human. “You don’t want to run that by Tann, first?”

“Tann can bite—” She cut herself off. An improvement, Kesh noted. The narrow victory had settled the human some. “He’ll understand. Besides, better to ask forgiveness, isn’t it?”