Mass Effect: Andromeda — Nexus Uprising

CHAPTER EIGHT

The trio stood in a half-circle, surrounding the oversized stasis pod. The room had a chill to it, and it wasn’t from the air.

Couldn’t be, Sloane thought. The ventilation systems are barely working. No, the frigid mood came from Nakmor Kesh, who stood facing the pod. She hadn’t moved or said anything for several minutes.

Best to wait, Sloane decided. Let the krogan mull this over, for it was her decision to make. Sloane glanced at the third person in the room, Calix, who leaned against a table across from her, arms folded across his chest, chin lowered. The turian appeared to be asleep on his feet, and who could blame him? His team had been fighting against the life-support systems for days, and as of yet couldn’t claim any kind of victory other than “it’s not completely broken,” which considering how much damage the station had suffered, was a hell of an accomplishment.

And then there was the news of Garson’s death, weighing on everyone. The Nexus had a shadow cast across it now, and Sloane wondered if it would ever lift.

Finally, the krogan stirred, swinging her large body around to weigh the gathering. “Let her sleep,” Kesh said.

Sloane studied her. “You sure?”

Kesh nodded, once. Decision made.

Clan leader Nakmor Morda would, for the time being, remain asleep. Sloane had never met the krogan clan leader, but she’d heard plenty. Bar stories. War stories. Stories of the kind of surly brutality you’d expect from a krogan who’d reached her level of rank and fame. Though Morda led the clan, she had deferred authority to Kesh in matters of station maintenance and care. That left Kesh the de facto leader while Morda slept.

Morda, it seemed, preferred not to deal with other races unless it was a combat scenario.

Well, maybe that was an unfair assumption. But Sloane could read between the lines when she had to. Officially Morda had designated Kesh as the Nakmor Clan’s ambassador to the rest of the Nexus. You didn’t delegate that sort of thing unless you wanted to stay far away from it.

Yet matters within the clan, as Kesh had explained, remained Morda’s to make.

As long as she was awake to do so.

“I am sure,” Kesh replied, but on a heavy gust of air. “She would not want to be bothered with all this. Too much collaboration required.”

Calix grunted a laugh, then tried unsuccessfully to turn it into a cough. Kesh didn’t seem to notice.

“If it turns out we face some new enemy out there,” she added, “well, that will be a different story. And one no doubt she will relish.”

“Okay then,” Sloane said, pushing up from the desk against which she’d been leaning. “I’m fine with it if you are. Let’s wake the others.”

The second chamber lay empty, its occupant already disgorged. The unit had failed due to a ruptured casing, resulting in the death of the krogan inside. One of several, and each one handled grimly by Kesh.

They all moved to the third, and Calix began the revival process. Since the biometrics database was offline, a special maintenance code was required; one Sloane did not know. For the time being, at least, only Calix and his supervisor, Kesh, could initiate a manual waking.

She liked it that way.

Calix tapped in the last few characters. He stepped back. “It takes several minutes.”

The pod began to warm as fluids pumped through the thousands of pipes and tubes hidden within its casing. Soon the crystals of frost on the inside of the window began to vibrate, then all at once they turned to water droplets.

More time passed.

“Vitals look good,” Calix said. Déjà vu.

“I will proceed to the next one,” Kesh said. She didn’t wait for confirmation, simply went about it in the same grim manner.

Calix glanced at Sloane. “That smart?”

Sloane lifted her shoulders. “According to the list we’ve got hundreds of crew to wake. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got better things I could be doing.”

“Don’t we all.” He moved to the next pod and began to manipulate the controls. “At least they get a gentler waking. Comparatively.”

Sloane glowered at the back of his spiky fringe. “Which reminds me, why the hell didn’t any of you brainiacs put an emergency eject on the inside?”

“We did.” He didn’t spare her a glance, but his tone brimmed with humor as he carefully tweaked the controls he worked on. “You just didn’t pay attention in class.”

“That’s—” She hesitated mid-protest. Thought about it. “Okay, that’s fair,” she admitted. She’d preferred training simulations and security logistics to what she’d figured would be a class on insignificant details for a device she’d only be sleeping in.

Showed what she knew.

Sloane refocused on the pod in front of her. The process neared completion. Inside, the krogan began to stir. Her hand went reflexively to the pistol at her hip.

Kesh’s heavy step fell behind her. “Maybe I should handle this part,” she said. “The krogan part, I mean.”

“That smart?” Sloane asked. Her deliberate echo of Calix’s words earned another amused grunt from the turian.

Kesh waved her off. “No offense, Sloane, but if any of my clan wake up in a foul mood, it would only be worse if a human were the one to subdue them.”

Sloane affected wide eyes. “Oh. Then we should give Tann the code and let him do it.”

“Very funny.”

“I would pay good money to see that,” Calix called out.

This time Kesh really did laugh. A deep rumbling that shook her whole body. Sloane grinned, stepping away at the same time. It was good, she figured, to find the moments of levity in the slog.

“Fair enough, Kesh. Just make sure you explain to them our situation before, during or after your whole krogan thing.”

“Of course.”

“If any of them are suffering from—”

“I can handle it,” she said firmly. “Go wake your team, and get started on the rest.”

The pod cracked its seal, foul-smelling steam hissing out in a line around the door. It flew open with a whoosh, and a very wet and angry-looking krogan all but surged out, muscles engaged. “Who dares—” the male began.

Kesh slammed her forehead into his face, sending the krogan sprawling back into his stasis pod.

Sloane blinked.

“I have this,” Kesh said as the other krogan roared. Shock or pain or—

Sloane didn’t even want to consider what else.

“Yeah,” she said, backing up to the door. “Yeah, I guess you do.” Calix joined her, having initiated the warming sequence on the other four designated pods in this chamber.

Roughly half of the list consisted of krogan workers, all members of the Nakmor clan. The rest, Sloane hoped, would be easier to manage. She led Calix through the labyrinth of corridors to their next group, and with each step she felt a bit more confident. Having a krogan force on the brink of up and running meant lots more work to get done.

Security came next. That had been non-negotiable, despite Tann’s protests that the rest of the crew would be less likely to panic if they weren’t waking up to the barrel of a gun.

“No guns,” Sloane had assured him. “Just a reassurance that things are under control. Remember what these people sacrificed to join this mission, and what they went to sleep dreaming of finding when they arrived. We’re going to crush those dreams, Tann, so we need to be ready for any reaction.”

The salarian seemed utterly baffled by this, but Addison’s agreement ultimately swung the argument in Sloane’s favor.

She and Calix worked methodically. Eight veteran members of her team were woken. One’s vitals were suspect, so his warming was paused until a doctor could assess. While the security team acclimated, Sloane and Calix moved on, preparing to wake another group from his staff. Life-support technicians, who doubled as field medical staff. This time there were no malfunctions. Sloane gathered both groups and explained the predicament they were in and the plan, with some technical backup from Calix.

After that, the process took on a life of its own. Calix became less the technical expert and more of a runner, moving from pod to pod and entering his maintenance override. Sloane debated asking for that ability when they’d started. Things would go a lot quicker if more people had it.

And another part of her didn’t like the knowledge being held by just two people. It was risky, given the danger they were all in. Those concerns, however, lost out to the down side—if the override privs were disseminated, and people started waking whomever they wanted to without oversight, they could wind up with catastrophic overpopulation.

The list was already massive enough.

Eight teams followed Calix, a security officer and a life-support tech in each, to handle the health assessments and brief those who awakened. Doctors and nurses first, then the engineering teams responsible for all of the Nexus’s complex machinery and technology, then various assistants and other random crew either Tann or Addison had insisted be part of the effort.

By the end of it all, the operation had become self-sustaining. At least until the end of the list.

Then it was time to put them all to work.

That evening, dead on her feet, Sloane left the security duty in Kandros’s capable hands and found a couch to collapse on in one of the less-devastated common areas. Just as her eyes were sliding shut, Tann and Addison appeared.

Oh, come on…

“Ah, here she is,” Tann said, approaching.

Sloane sat up and propped herself against the cushion. “Now what?”

“Nothing, we just wanted an update.” Tann grinned. It was probably supposed to be sympathetic, perhaps even encouraging, but to Sloane he just looked smug. “But we can let you sleep.”

And risk getting called out on that, too? “No, it’s fine.” Sloane ran a hand over her face and blinked. She was too tired to point out that they couldn’t “let” her do anything. A cup of water appeared in her hand and she gulped it down. Only after did she realize Addison had handed it to her. Sloane muttered thanks.

Now, the summary. “Team leaders from every critical systems group are up, plus some of their crews,” she said. “About a hundred and fifty in all. Sadly, fourteen from the list were dead in their pods, which had failed because of… well, you know. We left them that way, no need to add more to the morgue if they’re already contained.”

“How awful.”

“Terrible,” Tann agreed. “Still, it is a better ratio than I’d expected.”

Sloane could only nod. With some sleep and a meal, she might rip into him for how callous he sounded, but right now she just wanted to get this over with and lay down. “Kesh woke a similar number of krogan, so we’re about halfway through the list.”

“Any casualties from their ranks?” Tann asked.

“A few. They fared a little better.”

“That’s… good,” Addison said, but awkwardly.

“Yes,” Tann agreed. “Excellent news, indeed. However, I thought you’d be through the entire list by now.”

Right. Like he could do better. Sloane eyed him. “Each person we awaken needs some handling, diagnosis, and a briefing.”

“Still, our capability to do that should multiply, yes?”

“Doesn’t matter. Only Kesh and her chief life-support tech, Calix, have the maintenance override code needed to open the pods.” She held up a hand. “And before you ask, we’re not handing that code out, because we don’t want mistakes, or more people up than we can handle. Even I don’t have it.”

He didn’t seem impressed. By the lack of sharing or the numbers, she couldn’t tell. “Fair enough,” Tann said, though his tone carried a lot of skepticism.

She changed the subject, trading her successes for his. “Any news about what caused all this?”

Tann folded his hands, looked at Addison.

She shook her head, frustration evident. “We’re still blind. Sensor logs are a mess of garbage and false alarms.”

“The sensors were, in fact, damaged during flight, but not to the level the logs seem to indicate,” Tann added. Sloane didn’t fail to note that he left the admission of failure to someone else, while swooping in with his own version of silver lining.

Bureaucrats. They were all the same, weren’t they?

Sloane barely even cared enough to nod, then yawned. “Okay. Let me know what you learn. Can I sleep now?”

“Of course,” Tann said hurriedly, just as Addison patted her shoulder and said, “Rest while you can.”

She fell onto the cushions, closed her eyes, and was asleep in seconds.

Her dreams were of Elysium, horrors witnessed and committed during the Skyllian Blitz. Pirate assaults had never been a joyride, but the Blitz was something else entirely. The tiny contingent of Alliance uniforms in the far-flung outpost had no reason to assume they’d end up braced against a whole fleet, much less one with a cause.

The conflict had made some soldiers’ careers. Made them heroes, earned them choice placement. Blooded men and women with the char of real battle in their eyes.

But it broke others.

Sloane didn’t know where she’d fallen in—somewhere between blooded and broken—but she’d never forgotten those long days. The worst days of her life, no matter what battles she fought after, or what pirates came through the Traverse later.

It was the kind of thing she’d joined the Initiative to get away from.

But if nothing else, it was also something that left a permanent scar. An instinct, honed there and in a dozen other combat theaters. That instinct brought her instantly awake, pistol drawn and aimed at the intruder.

It took a few seconds for Sloane to remember where she was. The couch in the common area. Several dozen others were sleeping around her, wherever they could find space. Still others remained awake, tucking into rations or talking in hushed tones. A few were crying, or shell-shocked, or both.

On the couch opposite her, a human man she did not know sat, waiting. He stared at her wide-eyed, and slowly brought his hands up to signal surrender. Sloane realized then she had her pistol aimed right between his eyes. She lowered it.

“Who are you?”

“William Spender.”

“I know that name,” Sloane said, trying hard to shove the groggy fatigue from her head. “Why do I know that name?”

“Colonial Affairs. I’m Foster Addison’s second-in-command.” A beat. “Assistant Director Spender.”

“Ah.” Another wonk. Fantastic. She holstered the weapon and rubbed her eyes. The man, Spender, lifted a mug from the table and held it out to her. Steam rose from within.

Maybe not so much a wonk after all.

Sloane’s mood brightened. “Coffee?”

He paused. Looked down into the mug. Winced. “Oatmeal,” he admitted.

“I hate you.” Mood souring just as fast, Sloane took it anyway. There was no spoon, so she gulped it. The warm sludge hadn’t been sweetened, but even she could admit that it tasted surprisingly good.

Spender looked around. “I could try to find some coffee.”

“Forget it,” she said around a mouthful, “I don’t hate you.”

The man smiled. “You just love coffee?”

She didn’t answer. Just shrugged amiably.

William Spender, Assistant Director, had the most punchable of faces—that of a politician’s over eager intern. Brown hair he’d somehow found the time to comb, clean teeth, and big too-sincere-to-be-sincere eyes that all but telegraphed intent. Please let me help you so that I may appear helpful. Sloane held her amusement in check and finished the food.

By the end, he hadn’t moved.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re still here. Which means the oatmeal comes with a price, I’m guessing?” she asked.

Spender shrugged. “A security matter, actually.”

The fog of sleep vanished. “What’s happened?”

“Oh, no, no!” He held out his hands, placating. “Nothing. I just… Foster has put me in charge of consolidating our supplies. Cataloging what survived the, er, incident. That sort of thing. We should collaborate on locations to store it all.”

Sloane’s other eyebrow joined the first. “Okay. Question: Why do I care?”

“Because,” Spender replied patiently, “it needs to be somewhere secure.”

“Ah.” Sloane set her cup on the nearest stand. Paused, and frowned at him. “Wait. Addison’s worried about theft?”

“Director Tann suggested some might not appreciate the need to conserve, given our circumstances.” Again, that smile. “Foster and I agree.”

Oh, hell, Sloane thought. She knew exactly what some Tann worried about, and she wanted to throttle him for holding on to such backward thinking. Still, in a roundabout way, he brought up a generally broader point. Weapons and life-saving necessities, to be safe, probably needed to be stored somewhere safe. “Doesn’t the station have a warehousing district?”

“Several, actually. The only one nearby, however, is inaccessible.”

Not surprising. “How about one of the hangars, then? Only one has ships in it, the rest are all to be filled once there’s traffic.”

That had him brightening, like he hadn’t thought of it. Maybe he hadn’t. Sloane had no idea how he operated. But even the way he nodded, like one part encouraging and one part settled, made her feel like he overplayed his efforts. “That might work,” he mused. “Yes, I think that would be perfect.”

“Glad to help,” she said wearily. “Talk to Sergeant Talini. She can make sure everyone appreciates the need to conserve.”

Again Spender nodded, this time with a knowing half-smile. “I’ll run it by the other directors, just to make sure everyone’s on board with our plan.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Suddenly it’s “our” plan, she thought, irritated. What a weasel. Sloane waved him off. “If you need me to tell them to be on board, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll get a couple of my people to check out the auxiliary hangars and pick one that’s suitable.”

The man stood. At least he knew when a conversation was over. Sloane lay back on the couch and threw an arm over her eyes. Her body demanded more sleep. Or coffee. What it didn’t want was another day of putting out fires.

She could guess just which of those she’d get.

But since he was here?

“If you find some coffee, Spender…” Sloane called out to the diminishing sound of Spender’s footsteps. She let the sentence trail off, pointing a finger at her mouth instead.

From somewhere toward the door, she heard him chuckle. “Understood,” he replied.

Just the idea of it seemed to quell her body’s state of fatigue. And her mind wouldn’t shut up. Every possible gap in her thoughts, those places where true rest lurked, was filled instead with concerns. How many were awake now? Had there been any problems? Did Kesh need help?

It was the idea that Tann might be guiding the priorities of the workforce that finally drove her to swing her legs off the couch and stand up with a groan. She felt stiff, thirsty, and she was hungry again. Her limbs felt like a drunk volus clung to each one, dragging her down.

Maybe there was no coffee. Yet. Sloane, out of options, defaulted to the only thing that could help.

Stretching her legs, she made her way out of the commons, through the larger weave of people beginning to fill it, and lurched off into a brisk morning jog.

It would do. Until coffee.

An hour later, still desperate for that coffee, a sharp headache pressing at the back of her eyes, Sloane stood atop a desk and faced more than six hundred Nexus crew. The area wasn’t meant for an assembly. It should have been a tranquil office space for the administration staff.

Woulda, shoulda. If wishes were packets of Earth-grown brew, they’d all have coffee for days.

Most of the assembly stood. Some were sitting on tables or in oversized chairs. Many were on the floor, still getting over the fog of a crash-awakening from stasis. “Cryo-funk,” she’d heard a few of them calling it. The term seemed to be spreading as fast as news of the loss of their leadership.

Nervous chatter filled the room. Sloane picked out phrases here and there.

“What will happen to the mission?”

“Can we go back? Is that even possible?”

“The Pathfinders will save us.”

“It has to have been an attack. What aren’t they telling us?”

“So many krogan…”

She didn’t even bother trying to ignore it all. Better to let it all wash over her, absorb it. Because this was better than mass panic, which at least for now remained comfortably below the surface.

“Let’s get started,” she said as loudly as she could. She had to force the words out of her mouth. Then she raised her arms above her head, willing quiet. Some noticed. Many more did not. Sloane laced her hands atop her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Don’t make me yell,” she said, more of a sigh than anything else.

She didn’t have to. Kesh slammed one heavy fist into the nearest table. The boom tore through the vast space, and by the time it echoed back, Sloane had everyone’s full attention.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

The krogan shot her an unrepentant smile. Mimicked by each krogan around her.

“This isn’t a speech,” Sloane said to them. “It’s not a pep talk. We don’t have time for that shit. What this is, is a battle plan.”

A murmur swept through the gathered crew. She let it settle, using the time to will a fresh spike of pain to retreat in her skull.

“Most of you are aware of what’s happened,” Jarun Tann said loudly, interrupting her.

Sloane glanced right, mouth twisting. She hadn’t noticed that he’d stepped up onto the desk beside her. Great. He seemed to have plenty of time for this shit.

He went on, a bit louder. “Even so, let me explain it once so there is no confusion, or rumors.” Even though what they mostly had was just that. Rumors, conjectured between the directors. Great. “As far as we can tell this was not an attack. Once the sensors are back and the science team can investigate, we’ll know with absolute certainty, but what I can tell you is that upon arriving here the Nexus collided with what appears to be a natural phenomenon.”

Wait a second. They’d only just speculated on this.

“Long tendrils of densely packed particles,” he went on. “This… this scourge, whatever it is, has done a staggering amount of damage to the station.”

Shit. It was too late to retract now. Even if their hunch was right, the only thing she could do was focus them inward, not outward. People didn’t always need all the intel.

Fuming, she cut in. “Which is why you’re all awake.” Annoyance laced her tone, and she didn’t really care if he knew it. “You’re all experts in the Nexus’s various systems. We need you to do what you do best—analyze, stabilize, repair. The goal right now is to keep the station functional enough to support us. Secondary to that is making sure we can evacuate if further damage occurs.”

“Evacuate?” someone called out, and they sounded alarmed. “Are we still in danger?”

“Why not evac now?” another crew member near the back shouted.

“We’re not evacuating,” Sloane snapped. “Have you already forgotten why we came here?” Several of the crowd looked away. “Did you forget the risks? It was all fun and games when you signed up, a bright shiny dream, but now here we are. And the first sign of trouble, you want to call it quits?” The crowd stirred. She glared at them. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

Tann placed a calming hand on her arm, and interrupted again.

“What Security Director Kelly means is that we do not know if the Nexus is out of danger yet. Until we do, we must remain vigilant, and do everything we can to right our ship. The mission has not changed, and we all have a duty—”

“Who the hell are you?” someone shouted. Sloane couldn’t see for sure, but she thought it was a turian near the center of the room, wearing the uniform of the hydroponics team.

The salarian flinched. Even through her irritation, Sloane felt that one.

Who the hell, indeed.

But Tann wasn’t one to lose face in a crowd. “I recognize your confusion,” he said, keeping his hand on Sloane’s arm. Probably as some kind of solidarity act. “I am Acting Director Jarun Tann. Per emergency protocols, I’ve been—”

Sloane shook her head, cutting him off. “Wrong touch,” she muttered, and faced the crowd directly. “We’re in a world of shit here, and that means changes. Here’s what you need to know: Tann’s filling in for Garson. I’m handling security.” She gestured for the third member of their little council to step up onto a third desk. “That is Foster Addison, Colonial Affairs—”

“And advising our acting director,” Addison said for herself, more curtly than Sloane thought necessary.

All right. Fine. If everyone wanted to carve out a bit of the turf, they may as well do it here. Sloane inclined her head at Addison, and looked back to the crowd. “We’re the three most senior people aboard. You’re awake because this station needs help. That’s it. That’s the situation. Now let’s get to work, because I want to live. And like all of you, I want our mission to succeed.”

Dead silence.

Sloane clenched her fists, waiting for Jarun Tann to once again lamely try to contribute his bullshit. For once his instincts were in line with hers, though. He said nothing. The turian who’d asked the question held Sloane’s gaze for a moment, then started to nod, slowly.

With that, others began to murmur. Not the tone of argument, to Sloane’s ears. One, multiple, of consideration. Things to do. Checkboxes to tick.

Good.

Addison surveyed them all. And of them all, maybe it’s best the soft touch came from her. “We all remember Alec Ryder’s words,” she said, earning more nods. “Making our way here was one thing, but we all knew what came next.”

With sudden widened eyes—the salarian version of a lightbulb moment, Sloane guessed—Tann snapped his longer fingers. “Now,” he said with far more flourish than it required, “is where the real work starts.”

This resulted in more than a few chuckles. A few snorts. A lot of more firm acknowledgement.

Even better. This? This worked out a lot better than she’d imagined.

“You all know your systems,” Sloane said, raising her voice over the drone of collaborating voices. “Do whatever it takes, just get them stable. We’re only focusing on this section of the station for now. The rest is unpopulated and unpressurized, anyway.” Small knots of like-minded professionals began to gather together. Sloane had to speak even louder as the crowd began to naturally shift into gear. “If you need help, need a hallway cleared or a bent door removed, Nakmor Kesh has a few hundred of her construction team available to assist. Make use of them.”

The few krogan flanking Kesh let loose a thunderous, and entirely unnecessary, rattle of graveled roars and cheers.

It did not, as Tann jerked in surprise and Sloane hid a grin, result in a stampede of panicked bipedals.

Enough was enough. They all knew their tasks. The supervisors among them would maintain order.

She stepped backward off the desk. The crowd immediately began to disperse, a thousand conversations erupting all across the room.

“Good luck to you all,” Tann said, voice raised for all the good that did. He was a breeze against the storm. He turned then and stepped down.

Sloane offered a hand to Addison, who took it with thanks as she hopped down. “There,” she muttered.

Sloane shot her a quizzical half-smile.

The woman shrugged. “Whatever comes of Colonial Affairs,” she replied quietly, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Pessimistic, maybe. Sloane couldn’t blame her. Right now, settling colonies felt like light years away. And maybe that was what was eating Foster Addison. Her job. Her role.

Was she content with advisor to the acting director?

Sloane wouldn’t be. But then, she had plenty to do in security. She gave Addison’s arm a reassuring squeeze and let her go. They turned, Tann falling in beside them. “I think that was a fine moment,” the salarian said, his tone as accomplished as if he’d planned the whole thing. “Now, if we can continue this momentous unification into the future, we shall all be just fine.”

What little silver lining Sloane had gleaned soured.

Spender waited nearby, his omni-screen already up and notes made. “Well,” he said brightly. “That went well.”

Sloane brushed past him. “Find me coffee,” she all but growled. “Then we’ll talk about ‘well.’”

He got out of her way.