Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

  “Succession protocol.”

  “Ah.” Kesh looked back again, that frown carving deeper lines in. The search pairs moved off into the dark corners of the room, picking through debris with trepidation. So much death, Sloane couldn’t blame them.

  “Hey, Addison?”

  The woman looked up.

  Sloane’s frown, crooked and grim, telegraphed more than just words. “Keep a list of who—” She paused, then managed carefully, “of the names here.”

  Addison nodded, just as grim, and turned back to the grisly task.

  Sloane shifted closer to the krogan woman. “We’re in a lot of trouble here, aren’t we?” Sloane asked, loud enough for only Kesh to hear.

  She met Sloane’s gaze with a directness only a krogan could levy. “Welcome to Andromeda,” she muttered in graveled quiet. “The other side, indeed.” Kesh dusted off her hands as if she’d just finished diagnosing a coolant overflow. “I’d rather know facts. Do any of these terminals work?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” Sloane admitted, feeling suddenly useless. A security officer in the midst of an engineering nightmare.

  “Fine.” She rolled her wide shoulders. “Let’s see if we can fix one.”

  She began to move through the room, a strange echo of Addison’s search party’s movements, ignoring the biological casualties as she poked and prodded at the mechanical ones. Sloane helped her for a time, but in truth was only slowing the krogan down. After a while, she left Kesh to it and joined Addison near the spot where the commander of the Nexus would normally sit, overseeing the vast station with a cup of tea in one hand.

  The grand commander’s chair was overturned, pushed back several meters from its dais, the corners of its fabric charred away.

  “Any sign of Garson?” Sloane asked, though she could see the answer written plain across Addison’s face. “Any survivors at all?”

  The woman shook her head, too numb to even speak. She sniffed hard, ran the back of her hand across one eye, and blinked. Tears or dust, and Sloane would bet the woman would claim the latter. She didn’t ask.

  Addison held out a datapad for Sloane to view. Names had been hastily entered into its flickering screen. “That’s everyone who woke for the arrival ceremony.”

  Sloane’s mouth dropped open. It required a force of will to clap shut. She swallowed. Only two names were not crossed off: Addison’s, and Jien Garson.

  “I feel so damned useless,” Addison said, voice far away. She wasn’t looking at Sloane anymore. Or the bodies. Sloane couldn’t tell for sure, but the woman had the thousand-light-year stare of somebody about to roll headlong into emotional shut-down.

  Sloane clapped her on the shoulder, earning a jarred breath and snapped-back attention. “Don’t sweat it. There’s plenty to do. We need to find somewhere to store the bodies. Help me—”

  “I mean here,” Addison cut in, emphatic. She laughed, dry and ironic. “In Andromeda. Director of Colonial Affairs. What a joke. We’ll be lucky if we can colonize the room next door.”

  “Hey,” Sloane said, frowning. “That’s enough.”

  “What, you’re going to tell me everything will be okay? That this is just a setback? Look around you. There’s no recovering from this. It’s over. Without Jien, without our leaders—”

  “This one,” Kesh barked from across the room. She was kneeling in front of a terminal with a cracked screen and more than a few signs of charring, but otherwise the device looked intact. “I think.” Another pause. She squinted. “Maybe.”

  Hell, Sloane would take a maybe at this point, gladly. She patted Addison on the same shoulder, the way she would any of her own. “We’ll discuss it later, but I wasn’t going to spew some bullshit happy-gas, okay? I was going to say that you can still help.”

  “How?”

  “How were you planning to colonize the worlds around us?”

  “That’s the arks’ job. But we have shuttles. We—”

  “Ships, exactly, and if we need to evacuate the Nexus…” she trailed off as comprehension dawned in Addison’s eyes. She knew those ships, their capabilities, their capacities, better than anyone.

  “Come on, let’s see what Kesh found.”

  The woman nodded, followed her back across the room. At least she seemed more focused now.

  With a series of impatient grunts and snarls of frustration, the krogan performed surgery on the innards of the one computer that wasn’t totally destroyed. For all her bravado, Sloane stood aside and just watched. Numbness spread like ice through her core, overwhelmed by the extent of the disaster.

  Yet if all she could do was keep the others on task, it was something, right?

  There was a pop, a shower of sparks. Kesh swore.

  Another failure. Another thing to fix.

  “Would it help if I punched it?” Sloane asked bitterly.

  Kesh glanced at her, a flat stare that had even Addison flinching. Then, wordlessly, the krogan balled one large hand and popped the terminal sharp and hard.

  The screen flickered to life. Information began to pour across the surface.

  “The hell that worked,” Sloane said doubtfully.

  The krogan grinned, and smacked her on the shoulder. “Let’s see what we can find out!” Everyone huddled around as Nakmor Kesh manipulated the screens, impatiently shoving obvious alerts aside. “Hmm.”

  “What is it?” Addison asked.

  “Won’t let me in.”

  “Do you know how to use it?”

  Kesh made a deep, annoyed grunt. She did not turn from the screen. “Emergency protocols are in full effect.” Now the krogan did swing her massive head around, turning to face Addison and Sloane. “That requires Garson to acknowledge and clear, and that has not happened.”

  “She’s missing,” Addison said, defensively.

  “The system doesn’t know that.”

  “What are you getting at, Kesh?” Sloane asked.

  The krogan gestured at the display. When she spoke next it was as if she was quoting from the procedures manual, which Sloane guessed was exactly the case.

  “In the event of station-wide emergency, if the commander does not acknowledge this state within a certain time period, a lockdown is initiated until the appropriate individual, as identified by preprogrammed succession protocols, can be summoned to stand in their place.”

  “Okay,” Sloane said. “That’s Addison then, isn’t it? Let her do it.”

  “Possibly.” Kesh studied the panel. “But the procedure is very specific. We need to go down the list, marking off those… incapable… of filling in until Garson is located.”

  Addison passed her datapad over, a bit reluctantly Sloane thought. They waited as Kesh manipulated the interface, striking six names in rapid succession from the chain-of-command list. Well before Addison’s name was reached, however, the protocol produced a listing that wasn’t on the datapad, or part of the arrival ceremony group.

  Addison squinted at the display. “Wait.” She pointed at the text. “Who the hell is Jarun Tann?”

  * * *

  “Jarun Tann,” the salarian said. “Deputy director of revenue management.”

  “Perfect,” Sloane muttered, shaking her head. “Just fucking perfect.”

  The chamber which housed his stasis pod had seen only minimal damage in the “event,” as Addison had taken to calling the disaster. Tann, along with everyone else in here, had remained asleep, and woke now only because Kesh had the maintenance override in her repertoire of tech miracles. The only one, it turned out, who did. At least still alive and accounted for.

  The salarian had sat right up, almost chipper, probably assuming this was the expected revival from the long sleep and that he could get to work counting beans or whatever the hell it was his job was supposed to entail.

  At Sloane’s tone his expression changed. He studied her, then Addison, and then Nakmor Kesh. The sight of the krogan looming over him made the salarian recoil involuntarily. “What’s going on her
e? You’re not the revival team.”

  “I’m Sloane Kelly, security director.”

  “We’re under attack?”

  She shook her head. “There’s been a terrible accident. The station is in trouble. Which is why we’ve woken…” she could barely say the words without emitting a terrible bewildered laugh. Deep breath, deep breath. She steadied herself. “Which is why we woke you.”

  “An accident? Related to revenue?” His eyes drifted in Kesh’s direction and then whipped back to Sloane. The tax wonk squirmed in his stasis pod. “If this is some kind of prank—”

  “No prank,” Sloane said. “I wish it was, believe me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Addison let out a long sigh. “At the moment, you’re the most senior crew member present and accounted for.”

  Silence descended among them. Tann stared at her.

  Addison’s smile was brittle. “According to emergency command protocol, the Nexus is yours.”

  That sunk in. “What?!”

  The word hadn’t even finished echoing before Kesh said slowly, “Until, that is, we locate Jien Garson.”

  A tricky situation made slippery. Jarun Tann was an unknown, a newcomer to the leadership gathered, and as acting director, they knew nothing about him. To have a salarian and a krogan in close proximity…

  Sloane did not miss the thick note of menace in the krogan’s voice.

  Neither, she noted as Tann’s already large eyes got larger, did he.

  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.”