Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

“From nearby planets.” She raised her eyebrows. “Which is what my people were cultivated for. I overheard your discussion with your officer,” she added. “What was it, twenty-some-odd hours ago?”

  “Twenty-six,” Tann replied, but decided to round it when Sloane shot him an incredulous look. “And some minutes.”

  Thirty-seven minutes, to be precise. Not that he figured they’d appreciate a salarian’s photographic memory.

  “I know it’s a blow that we don’t have the Pathfinder scout ships,” Addison continued, “but I’ve been thinking. We can send shuttles, scout the nearest worlds. They could return with air and water, even food. We might even find help. Chances of that are low, I’ll admit, but non-zero.”

  “Shit, Addison, we can’t do that either.” Sloane scowled, locking her hands under her chin—a posture, Tann noted, that let her put her fatigued weight on her elbows, braced on her knees. She glowered at them both. “Saying no to you two puts me in the position of bad guy here, but fine. I’ll be the bad guy. You heard Kandros. We’re out of ships. If another event occurs, or life support takes a turn for the worse, we’re going to need those shuttles to evacuate the Nexus.”

  “What are the odds?” Addison queried, her brow furrowed.

  “Evacuation is still a very real possibility,” Sloane replied. “Especially since we still don’t know what caused the breach. If we should be talking about anything, it’s how we’re going to get thousands of stasis pods off this station in a hurry, and where we’d even send them if we could.”

  “We are aware of habitable planets—”

  “We don’t,” Sloane cut in grimly, “have the manpower to fight hostile native species.”

  Addison’s expression clouded. “We’re not here to fight, Sloane. Negotiations can be—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember the speech,” she retorted. “But unless we have a copy to forward whatever life forms exist in this galaxy, I’m not willing to bank on a peaceful welcoming committee.”

  Addison’s jaw set. Shoulders tight.

  Tann saw fit to intercede before it culminated into something much… louder. Granted, he hadn’t thought of the evacuation issue, but it wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle. “You raise a valid concern,” he began, only to pause pointedly when Sloane muttered something he thought sounded like, “Gee, thanks.”

  If sarcasm could be a weapon, the woman would be an assassin with no concept of collateral damage. Meanwhile, his validation of a legitimate concern seemed to have frayed Foster Addison’s trust in him. At least enough that she was now glaring at him, rather than her temporary opponent. He bit back a sigh.

  Mentally, he added at least one psychologist to the list of those who needed to be brought up from stasis. Perhaps a whole team, of diverse species, to help the crew deal with the shock. Yes, a good idea.

  Tann clasped his hands behind his back. “If there is no room for compromise, then we are at an impasse.” He started to pace. “The dilemma is that we do not have the staff to make repairs to the Nexus in any reasonable time frame. Our current skeleton crew can, at best, keep the station limping along, however I think we can all agree that such a scenario does not present a very bright future for us or our mission?”

  Addison nodded emphatically.

  Grudgingly, Sloane did too.

  Tann went on, still pacing. “Also, we cannot send our shuttles, because they are needed here in the event of station-wide system failure—a very real possibility, as Director Kelly—”

  “Sloane.”

  “—Sloane,” he amended, “has pointed out.” More nods. This time, though, it was Addison who hesitated and Sloane the strong affirmative.

  They all knew where they stood. Good.

  “Then,” he said firmly, “my original proposal is still best. We wake the crew needed to make repairs, instruct them to work quickly and efficiently within severe resource concerns. Addison’s ships will remain ready to evacuate all personnel, awake or otherwise, at a moment’s notice.”

  Sloane Kelly, to Tann’s surprise, was no longer frowning. Something had caused her mouth to stretch into a broad smile.

  He didn’t know what to make of that. “What is it?” he asked cautiously. “Have I accidentally made a joke?”

  “No,” Sloane replied. “It’s just that the crew we’ll need to pull off all these repairs are mostly from the labor force.” Her smile deepened. The bite, he realized too late, came with it. “Kesh’s people.” A beat. “You know. Krogan.”

  Tann stopped pacing.

  “We should make a list,” she continued, too brightly for the environment, “of all the krogan workers we’re going to need.”

  “I—” Tann swallowed, his mind painting pictures of a Nexus full of krogan. He shuddered at the thought. Too late now. All he could do was try to keep it in check. “I have some ideas on who we will need. Perhaps some additional security staff would be wise…”

  Sloane’s grin only widened. Clearly the difficult human woman found joy in his discomfort.

  “There’s a few people I will need, too,” Addison said. “My assistant, William Spender, for starters, plus a select few members of the colonial team to inspect the surviving shuttles. For all we know, they were also damaged in this calamity.”

  “Like I said, make a list. I’ll review it for security concerns.” Sloane glanced at each of them in turn, making sure they were paying attention. “What happens, by the way, if we wake a bunch of people and find we can’t support them?”

  “They return to their stasis pods,” Tann said simply. The obvious answer, yet Sloane looked dubious. This time, though, she didn’t press. Instead she stood and moved past him, headed for the door. As she went by she clapped him on the back.

  Hard.

  Tann swayed, wincing in mingled annoyance and surprise.

  “We’re all in agreement,” she said briskly. “I’ll let Kesh know. Meeting adjourned.” Just like her arrival, she left at her own cognizance. His shoulder still stung when the doors closed behind her.

  Even so, Tann felt a smile creep over his face, and it felt surprisingly good. He’d accomplished something here. Not much, granted, but it was a start.

  An if was so much more likely to become a when with a start.

  * * *

  In the hall outside, Sloane went to the nearest comm panel and punched in her first officer’s ID. Thank all hell they’d managed to lock down the comm systems while she’d worked her ass off with Kesh. She didn’t want this one blared over every speaker. Then thrown in her face when the salarian wanted something later.

  “Kandros here,” his reply came, a minute later.

  “It’s Sloane,” she said. “Can you talk?”

  A shuffling sound, then the click of a door closing. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  She considered her words carefully, and made doubly sure Tann and Addison had not joined her in the hall. Satisfied, she angled herself to the best possible surveillance vantage and kept her voice low. “Put together a team of officers, led by Talini. Trustworthy people.”

  “How many?”

  “Enough to guard the supply rooms that are actually accessible.” Supplies were cached all over the Nexus, but the bulk of the station remained cold and airless, inaccessible due to damage. Sloane saw no need to put soldiers in front of those doors. Not yet, at least.

  “Have we got a problem?” Kandros asked.

  “Negative,” she said, “but it’s only Tuesday, if you follow.”

  “Heh. Yeah. I follow.”

  “Good. Sloane, out.” She killed the link, and went off in search of Nakmor Kesh.

  Her path wound through one debris-strewn hall after another. She passed a series of apartments that overlooked one of the great arms. Their doors, less robust than those on the cryostasis rooms, had all torn off and now lay in an oddly neat row on the opposite side of the hallway, as if a construction crew had placed them there in preparation for installation.

  On a whim she paused at one room and step
ped inside. One of the smaller layouts, barely more than a bed, table and chair. No personal belongings; those would all be in deep storage until whoever had been assigned this room came to get them.

  If they were even still alive.

  Hell, Sloane hadn’t even seen her quarters since before they launched. All shiny and new. Who even knew if that section of the station had survived?

  The thought left a wistful pang in her chest. So much for her own office, right? Much less bed.

  Sloane sighed, turning her back on the lonely room, and left. She reached the end of the hall, turned, and pushed on, past the shuttered Transportation Office, then Immigrations.

  The chances that either would ever be staffed and actually used seemed so remote that she wondered if they might be better off turning them into shelters.

  A soft noise, behind. Sloane drew her sidearm, whirled, aimed.

  “Just me, just me,” Jarun Tann said hastily, hands up.

  Sloane narrowed her eyes. “Are you following me?”

  “Of course,” he replied. Then appeared to think better of what he meant. “I mean, not in that sense.”

  “What other sense is there?”

  He stepped out of the shadows. “In the awkward sense of two people who have finished a conversation but also need to travel in the same direction.”

  She eyed him, but she’d be damned if she’d ever taken to salarian expressions. Turian faces were one thing, but there wasn’t enough… I don’t know, she thought distantly. Not enough lines, not enough distinct features on the amphibious faces of the salarian species. The horns were easy enough to recognize, large oval eyes, sure. But they all had those.

  Whatever the reason, she wasn’t sure she believed him.

  Tann took her silence as a lack of understanding.

  “I was returning to Operations, and thought I’d let you get well ahead of me to avoid any… any of the aforementioned awkwardness. And then you stepped out of an apartment only meters in front of me. It felt odd to stand there and wait, so I—”

  “It’s okay, Tann. I get it.”

  “Then perhaps you could lower the weapon?”

  Sloane did so, doing her best to hide a grin. She’d scared the hell out of him, she realized, and found she didn’t mind so much. A little fear could be healthy.

  “So, Ops, huh? What’s on your agenda next? And get the hell over here, I don’t bite.”

  The salarian did his best to look casual as he crossed the rest of the gap and fell in beside her. They walked in silence for a bit.

  Not for lack of words, Sloane realized as the salarian hummed one of his thoughtful noises. He was a thinker, this revenue wonk. The kind that weighed every word.

  Which didn’t make him any more trustworthy, all things considered.

  “It is so hard to prioritize,” he finally said, “with so many problems facing us.”

  “Yep. No argument here.”

  He nodded. “I felt, after our meeting, that I finally had a free minute. I thought I might check on something that’s been bothering me.”

  “Just one thing?”

  The salarian paused, sliding Sloane a thoughtful, cautiously amused look. At least, she thought it was that. “No,” he said, and that caution gave birth to a weak smile. “No, but let us focus on this one thing in particular.”

  “Which thing?”

  “Specifically, the thing,” he said, stressing the word as if pleased by the byplay that led to it, “that we ran into. Whatever it is, it is foreign to us, or the sensors would have noticed it and alerted someone.”

  “The sensor arrays had been damaged,” she pointed out.

  “Were they?” He laced his thin hands together, tucking them into the sleeves of his attire. “Or did the technicians believe they were, based on the inability to parse the data?”

  Her eyebrows raised. “Okay, so? Doesn’t change anything.”

  “No,” he allowed. “But I am worried it was not a singular event.”

  “Ah.” She’d thought about this, too, especially whenever she tried to sleep. With so many known problems, worrying about unknown ones seemed pointless. But now that he’d brought it up, she worked it over. “When we located Ops the first time,” she said thoughtfully, “there was a violent quake. The whole ship lurched, and it sounded like the hull peeled back somewhere.”

  “Weakened structure failing, perhaps?” He cocked his head. “Or another meeting of station and whatever we had run into?”

  “If it was a run-in,” she pointed out, “I saw no ships—” Her words went dead. So did her pace, frozen in the middle of the corridor.

  Tann’s brow moved in what she took for inquiry. “You saw something?”

  “Maybe.” She frowned, pinching the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Everything was one large adrenaline rush.”

  “Ah.” Tann patted her arm cautiously, in what passed for sympathy. “Understood. Human evolution is predicated on the rise of prey to predator, but it never truly evolved redundant systems to effective process—”

  “Tann.”

  He stopped. Cleared his throat. “Adrenaline,” he said, way more succinctly, “can play havoc with logical thought.”

  That she would buy. Sloane picked up her pace again, once more flanked by the salarian. “The clearest thing I remember is that nebula out there. Or some kind of energy wave? I saw it hovering near the part of the station that… I don’t know, that ripped off.” She was reaching, and she knew it. She raised her hands. “I’m not an astrophysicist, so take your pick. But I can’t shake that there’s something there. Something we haven’t seen yet.” Or missed.

  Tann glanced at her. “Without sensors, it is impossible to find out. However, I thought perhaps if we studied the data gathered before we impacted this… You believe the unusual nebula to be the key?”

  “It’s the only thing I saw,” she said, shrugging once more. “And given how close it is, I’d be really pissed off if we ignored it, only to run into it later.”

  “A fair assessment. We shall earmark that theory as among the first to investigate,” Tann said, with so little argument Sloane found herself eyeing him sidelong as they walked. “In fact, I rather relish the idea of learning something new about our new galaxy.”

  “You?”

  “Well, of course,” he replied, gathering himself up. “Who else is available to decipher the logs? There can be a great deal of information buried in even partial records.”

  “I guess the devil’s in the details.”

  To her surprise, he gave a little chuckle. “One of my favorite human idioms. Yes, exactly. Even if our systems did not recognize the coming assault as a threat, it may still have a record of it.”

  “And you’ll be able to figure this out?” she asked. It seemed the least she could do to try for sincere. All things considered, sensor data tech seemed less intrusive than acting director.“I thought revenue was your area of expertise.”

  At this, his slender shoulders straightened. It was hard to tell, but she thought his skinny salarian chest may have even puffed up some. “Math is my expertise,” he declared. “Sensor logs are not so different from cost-basis figures.”

  Heh. “If you say so.” They walked a bit farther, passing one of the huge common areas. It should have been filled with excited pioneers holding flutes of champagne. Instead it resembled a dumping ground for unwanted furniture. A disaster, like everything else. “Still,” she mused. “What happens if it’s, you know… actually in our way? We can’t move, we can’t shoot at an invisible target.”

  “Hence my comment about priorities,” he said. “Do we fix hydroponics first, so that we can eat in the weeks or even months to come, or do we get the maneuvering engines back online so that we can avoid another collision? Plus, there is the possibility that this is widespread. We may need to alert the Pathfinders.”

  Of all the things weighing on her mind, preying on her sleep, the Pathfinders had been firmly shunted aside. At lea
st until now.

  If they, still in stasis, coasted into this mess…

  She rubbed at the bridge of her nose with one finger. “Tann, you’re giving me a headache.”

  “It is a difference between us, I think,” Tann said. “Forgive my presumption, but you prefer narrowly defined problems. Whatever is pressing at the moment gets all of your attention, and when that is fixed, you turn to whatever waits just behind.”

  “And you’re a big-picture kinda guy, is that what you mean?”

  “Another lovely phrase.”

  She stopped. They were at the door to Operations, and he hadn’t seemed to notice. “Where are you going with all this, Tann?”

  “Just making conversation,” he said, already large eyes wide.

  “Right.”

  He sighed. “Okay, your sharp investigation skills have seen through my sinister plan.”

  Sloane’s turn to laugh. Even for him, that was too patently false a surrender. She gestured for him to go on.

  “What I’m trying to say, Secur—Sloane, is that if, for example, I do discover that we will need maneuvering capability straight away, and I suggest as much to you and Addison, I ask that you keep in mind my methodology. In other words, if I ask for engines, it’s because the math says we need them more urgently than we need seeds.”

  “It’s more than just math, though.” Sloane frowned down the length of the empty corridor. “People are hurt. People are dead. Are you saying that if you come to me claiming we should fix engines instead of, I don’t know, life support, I should just accept the goddamn math and not question you?”

  “I’m asking for a little trust. If the data says that fixing life support now might save ten lives, but fixing engines would kill the ten, yet save thousands later, then we should fix the engines.”

  “Damn. That’s cold. Even for a salarian, that’s cold.”

  “So is the universe, on average. However,” he continued, as if ordering some kind of extra, “I can promise you that while I am busily applying mathematical value to the immediacy of any situation, other parts of my vast intellect are experimenting with other options.” He gave her what she imagined he thought a friendly grin was.