Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

Which meant screw the soft touch.

  Sloane sprinted to a pile of bent metal bars and shattered bits of things she didn’t recognize. Soot and oily residue coated most of it, but some had been torn free by pure shearing force. Something big had hit them.

  As sweat poured in rivulets down her face, she grabbed a heavy girder and dragged it back to the lifepod.

  “Hang on,” she croaked again, jamming the shattered, sheared end under the opening seam. Somewhere behind her, someone screamed. Raw. Brutal. She flinched, even as she threw her weight against the improvised pry bar.

  The metal groaned.

  Hairline fissures spread like frost across the viewport, but it didn’t budge.

  “Damn it, come on,” she snarled, curling her bare hands around the scarred metal and shoving with everything she had.

  From inside the pod, three-fingered claw-tipped hands splayed against the dusted pane. Another unintelligible shout, but Sloane got the idea. Amazing, she reflected in a grimly amused little corner of her mind, what an emergency can do for language barriers.

  “Now,” she shouted, for her own sake if nothing else. She threw everything against the bar just as the turian forced his weight up against the lid.

  When the seal cracked, it did so suddenly, sending Sloane to her knees amid the debris and forcing the lid to crack in half. The broken end whirled out into the chaos as Kandros all but fell out of the pod and landed beside her in a clatter of narrow limbs. He gasped for breath, looking rattled but no worse than she felt, at least.

  No real improvement, she’d bet.

  “No time for celebration,” she said to him, her voice barely more than a croak. Sloane grabbed the edge of the broken pod and gestured with the bar. “Save who you can.” It was an order, flat and simple. Tenderness wasn’t her way. The security team knew that, were used to it.

  Smoke whirled as Kandros managed, “Yes, ma’am,” and staggered to his feet. Like Sloane, all he had going for him was the Nexus uniform. Protective and comfortable for a centuries-long nap, but not much good against serious threats.

  By unspoken agreement they took opposite sides.

  Every step filled Sloane with more and more concern. Had they been attacked? Boarded? Had they even made it out of the galaxy?

  Had Cerberus attacked them? Pirates?

  And if so, what had happened to their Milky Way escort?

  Desperate as that thought was, she had to put it aside for now.

  She took her impromptu can-opener to every pod in sight, working them over with furious intensity. Metal groaned, accompanied by the gasps of surprise, of effort, the swearing and questions she couldn’t take the time to answer.

  “Get ’em out first,” she told Talini, one of her more experienced officers. The asari stumbled away, swaying wildly on still-numb feet.

  Save who you can.

  It became a silent mantra, a thing Sloane said to herself with every face pulled from crackling wreckage. Beyond the small chamber, a larger one held civilians and other random staff. Whether or not it was safe, she couldn’t tell. Everything was chaos. Across the way, sparks rained down on the asari as she helped a hobbling human away from the worst, two personnel following. One nursed an arm bent at an unnatural angle.

  Sloane couldn’t keep track of it all. Trusting her team, she focused on the pods she could reach. Fourteen stasis pods gave way under her efforts in as many minutes.

  Only eight occupants crawled out.

  She let the lid close on the mangled remains of Cillian, one of her own unit. Whatever had taken out the Nexus like this, it’d thrown a massive energy surge back into the systems. Burst wires and smoking, charred power converters were everywhere. Many of the stasis pods had fried the poor souls inside of them.

  Fury jammed a pounding tic in Sloane’s jaw. Soot-smeared, hands blistered from searing metal; none of it even came close to the horror and rage welling inside her. She clambered over Cillian’s grim coffin to reach whoever else she could, choking on the unfairness—the fucking tragedy of it all.

  There weren’t many left. Kandros passed her with a slumped human braced against his shoulder. A grim-faced salarian she didn’t recognize shepherded two terrified teenagers away from the chaos.

  A group of frightened civilians huddled away from the billowing smoke, covering their mouths, noses and breathing orifices with whatever they could. Hands, arms. Strips of their uniforms.

  Enough. She shifted focus, eyes scanning ruined walls obscured by smoke, looking for the switch she needed. Manual fire-suppression switch. She saw it, saw the occasional burst of sparks trickling out like water from behind the panel, but below it, in a cabinet she’d forgotten they’d put here, a fire extinguisher sat gleaming behind tinted glass.

  Sloane rushed to it, kicked the glass hard only to remember, the hard way, that her usual protective boots weren’t part of the cryostasis uniform. Her toe exploded in pain even as the quick-shatter covering broke into a clattering mess on the floor.

  Broken toes? At least one. Great. Just great. Sloane ignored the pain, wrenched the extinguisher free, and set to work.

  A short blast to each flame. The compressed mixture roiled out and over the fires and sparks, and the room dimmed more and more each time, but that was okay. She could live with that. All around her people coughed, cried out. Someone screamed. Another crashed to hands and knees, vomiting.

  Yet with each blast from the extinguisher, Sloane heard less pain. The sounds became those of worry, of people who could assist the ones who’d taken the worst of it. Each little shift in tone gave her that much more resolve.

  Somehow, amid the groaning chaos of straining metal and crackling fire, they all convened in roughly the same place. Sloane tossed her spent extinguisher aside.

  “Everybody stay together,” she ordered. She forced the malfunctioning doors open, shoving her shoulder against the creaking panel until it slid wide enough to let everyone through. When the last staggering survivor passed, she let the door slam closed behind her.

  Sweat plastered her hair and uniform to her skin, soot made her eyes sting. Body aching, she slumped against the door. A quick catalog confirmed her injuries—broken, throbbing toe, minor burns, bruises and scrapes—but nothing that would impede her progress. Good. She shoved herself off and surveyed the antechamber. It was quieter, as if the hell on the other side of the door had been just a bad dream.

  Beyond the next door lay the way out. And likely more danger.

  As she took in the char-smeared, horrified faces around her, she realized less than half had made it. So many pods.

  But there was nothing they could do about it. Nothing Sloane could do except get the survivors somewhere safe and lock this shit down.

  They’d have to mourn later.

  Kandros dragged the torn sleeve of his uniform under his chin, leaning on his improvised lifepod hacker. The metal bar had seen better days. So had the turian. “So,” he said, pitching his voice over the shrill alarms. “What happened?”

  The group looked at each other, then at Sloane.

  She wished she had answers.

  “Don’t know,” she said, but that wouldn’t fix anything, so she jerked a thumb toward the exit. “Let’s find the hell out.”

  “Yeah.” The turian pulled the bar up onto his shoulder. “I figured you’d say that.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The hall outside had fared worse.

  A bundle of severed wires hung from a bent ceiling panel, the tips spitting blue-white sparks that left black pockmarks on the floor. Smoke flowed along the ceiling, growing thicker, pushing downward. As far as Sloane could see, the damage ran the length of the corridor.

  “Ventilation’s offline,” Sloane noted. She struggled for matter-of-fact, barely managed curt. “Fire suppression, too. My guess is comms took a hit.”

  “Thorough,” Kandros noted.

  They exchanged a look. She could see her own assessment reflected in her officer’s eyes. The damage extended well
beyond their sleep chamber, which meant one of two things: either a very bad accident, or an attack. Perhaps even from within.

  The sheer panic that would cause…

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Sloane said, pitching it louder so they could all hear. “Kandros, take these people with you. Somewhere safe.”

  “Like where?”

  Sloane considered it, then lowered her voice. “Colonial Affairs. Not their offices, but the hangar where they keep the shuttles. At least you’ll be ready to bug out if it comes to that, and if not, the life-support systems on those ships might be more stable.”

  “Good call. Where will you be?”

  Sloane glanced to their right, in the direction of Operations. “I’ll be trying to figure out what happened. Whatever’s going on here, it’s big. Stay safe, hear me?” She eyed his hands, where a pistol should have been. Not that she had anything better to offer. They both claimed bent, battered pipes and metal beams. Just great.

  He narrowed his eyes, well aware of her thoughts, and nodded briefly.

  She liked that about him. Her time with turians, her friendship with one in particular, had given her a hell of a lot of insight into turian tics. Kandros appreciated that insight, and Sloane appreciated his trust.

  It made for a solid team.

  “I’ll head for Operations,” she added. “Find and stay near a comm. I’ll get in touch with you somehow once I know what’s going on.”

  “Ma’am.”

  One of the good ones. She knew better than most how invaluable that kind of dedication was. Sloane clapped him on the narrow width of his carapace, and was off.

  She kept to the wall, ignoring the doors she passed. Each remained closed, and for the moment that was fine. It would keep any fires from spreading. She checked the status panels next to each, though. They all said the same thing. A single glowing red word: offline.

  That bothered her as much as anything. The Nexus, engineering marvel that it was, had been designed by more committees than Sloane had thought possible. And fuck did they love redundancy. Each one of these panels should have three, maybe even four, links into the station-wide systems array. To be offline served only to confirm her growing fear—something either very bad or very surgical had happened here.

  She needed information, and she needed it fast.

  Sloane loped along the hallway to the next intersection. An emergency bulkhead door had attempted to seal it off, only to get blocked half-open, rotaries spitting sparks. A glance confirmed the blockage: a corpse, caught in between the doors as they opened, closed, caught on brutalized flesh, opened again. Closed. Repeat.

  The body was burned beyond recognition, laying under a pile of debris—bits of machinery and cabling that had fallen from the ceiling. The smell made Sloane want to retch. Sweet and disgusting all at once, rancid flesh and charred bone.

  But she’d done this before. Swallowing her bile, she knelt and checked the uniform, rolling the body slightly to see. Fire or maybe some chemical reaction had rendered the name tag illegible. A salarian, from the shape of the head. Hell of a way to go. Sloane let the body gently down. She stepped over it as best she could and squeezed herself through the gap.

  She had to leave the poor bastard there. The door would seal without it, trapping her on this side—and who the hell knew what with her.

  Heat warmed her cheek and forced her to squint. Opposite her, an open flame erupted from a pipe that had punched right through the wall tiles and been ignited by a sparking cable. The air reeked of gases her lungs weren’t meant to breathe.

  But flames meant oxygen, and that meant this hallway had been pressurized. It wouldn’t have been that way for the long, cold flight between galaxies. So they either hadn’t made it out of the Milky Way, or they had arrived in Andromeda.

  There was small comfort to be found in either of those options. At least they weren’t stranded in the vast emptiness between the two.

  A figure pushed through the thickening smoky haze. Sloane, weaponless, automatically dropped into a fighter’s stance. Not that it would do much good against armed intruders—

  The uniform pronounced him one of the station’s own. The man staggered forward, sweeping one arm back and forth in front of his downcast face, trying in vain to wave away the choking fumes.

  But a uniform, tattered as it was, didn’t mean jack right now.

  “That’s far enough,” Sloane barked. “Name and rank, now.”

  He stopped, shaking hands held up in instant surrender. The paler skin of his palms oozed angry fluid, raised burns criss-crossing both hands. She sympathized. But then, anything could have caused those wounds—opening searing-hot cryopods, or a little sabotage gone wrong. She needed to know which one.

  That was her job. The man visibly trembled. “What’s happened? Are we under attack?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” she replied flatly. “Now who the hell are you?”

  “Chen. I’m… I’m just a junior regulator,” he added, but coughed violently on the heels of it.

  Sloane didn’t recognize the name. “What department? Medical? Please say medical.”

  “Sanitation.”

  “Perfect. Just fucking perfect.” She shook her head. “Look, it’s not safe out here. Go back to your stasis pod.”

  “N-No!” His recoil was as physical as it was visceral. “I can’t!” Visible tremors coursed through the man’s narrow build. “It’s awful. Everyone’s dead. I think. I just ran. There was fire, and—pods were just… just—”

  Yeah. She got it. She reached out, caught his shoulder and ignored the crackling pain it caused her hand. “Listen,” she said, steadying him. “I’m Security Director Sloane Kelly.”

  “Security?” His eyes, streaming in the smoke, crinkled with effort. “We’re under attack, then. We must be!”

  Because the alternative was so much worse.

  Sloane made a face. Her mouth tasted like ash. Her throat stung. She felt like she hadn’t eaten or drank anything in centuries, which might be the case. But he wasn’t any better off than she was, and given the look of him, he was no saboteur. Not unless he’d cherry-bombed the operation restrooms for a laugh.

  She wanted to sigh. She didn’t. “I don’t know what’s going on, okay? I’m trying to figure it out. Show me where your stasis pod—”

  “I’m not going back there. I can’t.” He gestured back the way he’d come. “If you want to go stare at it, be my guest, but you won’t…” A sob thickened his voice. He ducked his head, swiped the back of his hands against his face. “The whole thing sealed off. I barely made it out. I don’t know… I still can’t…” The shoulder under her hand shook violently.

  Sloane sized him up. Sanitation, huh? Her gut said he’d fold at anything uglier than a backed-up drain. “Okay. Okay. Listen, you need to make your way to the CA hangar, understand?”

  “Can’t I stay with you?” Pleading. Scared.

  She barely held back a grim smile. He wouldn’t like it. “Sure, Chen. I’m going to check your stasis room.”

  He reversed stance so fast, she found herself holding air as he slipped by her. “Actually, the hangar sounds pretty good,” he said quickly. “You said it’s clear?”

  Thought so. “Watch out for stray wires,” she said instead. “Now get going. Others are gathering there, you’ll be safe.”

  “Thanks. Thank you.” A pause. He swung back her way, then back the way she’d come. Then, with a manic kind of helpless smile, added, “You be careful. Director. Ma’am.” A final, wobbly gesture, then Chen stumbled off. Vaguely in the right direction.

  Sloane watched him go. He’d make it. Probably. The damage looked worse her way, not his. “Careful doesn’t get the work done,” she muttered.

  * * *

  The janitor had not exaggerated.

  She found the door first, across the hall from where it should’ve been attached, laying on one side. The room itself looked like a war zone. Stasis pods lay jumb
led like so much garbage, and many were open. Sloane had seen a lot of death in her life, but could not keep her own hand from covering her mouth at this sight.

  The bodies lay everywhere. Dozens of them. Many were burned, others had just been heaved from sleep and lay crumpled against the walls and furniture. One lay splayed under an overturned pod, only the hand and foot visible from underneath.

  Everything was still, silent but for the hiss and crackle of busted tech and sparking wires.

  “Anyone in here?” she called out. Not because she had any hope there would be, but because she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t. But there were no replies. Not even a desperate cough.

  Bodies splayed out, casualties of some big stupid mistake or somebody else’s pride… Yeah, these were images she thought she’d left behind.

  Sloane turned away, battling down a growing sense of gut-wrenching dread. Adjacent to the pod chamber was a reception room. Her recollection of the Nexus’s layout gradually came back to her. Cryostasis chambers were sprinkled throughout the vast ship, and bundles of them were connected to special rooms where newly awakened crew members could relax and acclimate while they waited for their superior officers to come and welcome them to wondrous Andromeda.

  Meanwhile someone from medical would evaluate their health, psych would make sure they hadn’t lost their marbles while asleep. A representative from Sloane’s team would be on hand in case they had lost their marbles and, as a result, their cooperative spirit.

  That was how it was supposed to go, anyway.

  They’d all drilled for disaster scenarios, yet no one had imagined a total failure of… everything.

  The room would’ve been nice, if not for the large support beam that had fallen right down the middle of it, smashing couches and tables beneath its weight. Sloane could picture this place, crowded with personnel milling about and talking excitedly, all buzzing with the ambitions Garson had fanned. It was a small mercy, Sloane figured, that this calamity had happened while the vast rooms, halls, plazas, and parks were still empty.

  A long, shuddering groan echoed through the entire ship. Sloane frowned.