Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

  Nakmor Kesh held a position within her species that was not, in a word, desirable. Liaison to others, a sort of cultural interpreter and ambassador all rolled into one. This wasn’t a role a krogan killed to achieve, it was a role they killed to get out of. The fact she seemed to enjoy the role only aggravated his sense of decency.

  Unfortunately for both of them, it was her job to interface with the leadership of the Nexus. Especially Jarun Tann, Director of the Nexus.

  Tread carefully, he reminded himself. Krogan or not, he needed something from Nakmor Kesh.

  So he would play her game. “And you?” He phrased it as politely as he could. “Why did you join the Initiative, Nakmor Kesh?”

  Kesh lay back and pushed herself under the desk beside the broken displays. She tore at scorched wires, tossing them into a pile by her knee. The display was not lost on Tann.

  Look how strong krogan are.

  Salarians did not roll their eyes. Well, not as a sign of disdain. Salarians could, and Tann had, but only in situations where the thin, protective membranes needed extra help in defending against dryness or irritants. Yet, in this moment, all he could imagine was what it might look like if he mirrored Sloane.

  “They invited us.”

  The krogan’s words, muffled somewhat by the desk, tore his focus entirely away from hybrid metaphors, pinned his gaze squarely on those bent krogan knees. Bulbous things, horrifyingly misshapen. Though densely packed with muscle.

  Like krogan skulls.

  Tann pasted on a pleasant look of interest. “Invited, you say?”

  She grunted. “The Nakmor clan put muscle and bone into this place. When it neared completion, we received an invite.”

  Tann knew all this. However, he found it a reasonable avenue to social compromise. “I was given to understand,” he said carefully, diplomatically as he could, “that the krogan were not the galaxy-hopping kind.”

  This time, her muffled grunt sounded like a laugh. “Who is?”

  A valid point. They were, after all, the first to travel so far, and for so long.

  “The Nakmor have a higher resistance to the genophage,” Kesh continued, tone much more flat now.

  Ah, the genophage. Tann took a wary step back. Conversations regarding the salarian-created, turian-delivered anti-reproductive disease afflicting the krogan species did not often end well.

  Kesh did not, however, let loose with the usual flurry of muscleheaded posturing. “Jien Garson thought that might mean we’re a hardier bunch.”

  “I see,” Tann said. He hadn’t known of the clan’s genetic resistance—did the Dalatrasses, he wondered, or was it a closely guarded secret among the Milky Way Nakmor? How had Jien Garson found out? Save perhaps by genetic investigation. All of the pioneers had undergone rigorous testing. Perhaps she had stumbled upon something the salarians had not.

  Perhaps the Nakmor clan had known all along.

  If so, that would have made the krogan clan among the first to keep such an important fact away from the salarian matriarchs and their most skilled intelligence operatives.

  Tann, of course, was neither. And even if he had been among the Dalatrasses’ informants, there was little he could do about it now. So he filed that little bit of genetic information away.

  It might, he reflected dourly, be a matter to correct in the future.

  Krogan, after all, had the evolutionary capacity to breed like varren, if left unchecked.

  A problem for another time. As Kesh appeared somewhat chatty, he thought to probe a bit more. “But that does not explain why you accepted. An invitation is not a reason.”

  This time, her laughter had a dark, graveled undertone to it. “That’s not like you, Tann,” she said, ripping an entire bundle of blackened gear from under the table and heaving it aside. “To miss the obvious.”

  He folded his arms, frowning at the krogan. Then it hit him. It wasn’t that he’d missed it. It was that he took the obvious path regarding the information. Not the path that credited the krogan with any agency at all.

  A hedge against another genophage. Or perhaps against any attempt to control the species as a whole.

  So they had thought themselves in a position to alter the course of the future. He could not fault her for that, nor the rest of her clan, who’d all joined with their clan leader. But he could remember it.

  “I see,” he replied, this time with a slow turn that revealed how much he truly did. Best to let her know that he had accepted the information, and allow her to believe it resolved.

  Her grunt seemed to indicate she did.

  Kesh dragged herself out from under the brutalized counter and lumbered to her feet. She walked in his direction, rubbed two sooty hands in great swaths along her uniform as she went. Each step taken with unwavering purpose.

  Not to him. At the last instant, he realized she meant to walk through him if he didn’t move. Tann stepped aside, sweeping an arm as if allowing her to exit.

  Message received, all right.

  She passed without a word, and he fell in just behind her. For lack of any further discussion on the topic, he volunteered his purpose. “I actually came up here looking for you.”

  “Oh? Well, here I am.”

  This, at least, Tann had rehearsed. “I am assembling a database. In case of further emergencies, I mean, seeing as the central systems are all still offline and their integrity is not yet known.”

  “A database of what?”

  “Critical information. Things which, as of this moment, only exist in some of our heads. Were there to be further, well, sudden departures from the ‘living’ portion of the crew, we risk considerable loss of knowledge.”

  “Are you asking for my life story or something?” Kesh asked. She ducked under a decorative tree that had been tossed nearly twenty meters across a greeting space and become embedded in the wall paneling. The large hump of her back nearly jostled it.

  Tann ducked from habit, but as tall as salarians were by nature, krogan bulk dwarfed them in comparison. He jogged to catch up. “No, nothing like that. What I’m specifically looking to preserve is certain maintenance codes. The technique by which you and your subordinate—”

  “Calix.”

  “Yes, Calix. The tech—”

  “Corvannis,” she added succinctly.

  Tann bit off a sharp answer. “Calix Corvannis, yes. The turian. In specific, it seems prudent to record the technique by which you were able to manually draw crew members from cryostasis. If nothing else, for—”

  “No.” One word. A single syllable, delivered in Kesh’s graveled voice.

  Tann had anticipated this, and had already decided on an appeal to her sense of duty. “Nakmor Kesh, I’m sure you realize that if something were to happen to you and Calix Corvannis, we would have no method for reviving others. There are still several thousands of individuals in their pods. Our chances of success here would be doomed.”

  The krogan gave a heavy shrug. “The only other party that should have that is security, and Director Kelly already declined.”

  That surprised him. “On what grounds?”

  “Ask her.”

  “I am asking you.”

  Kesh came to a door, which appeared to be her destination. She turned to Tann and looked him up and down. From the sweep of his, if Tann thought so himself, pleasantly shaped horns to the very tips of his Nexus standard, efficiently maintained boots.

  She, however, did not appear impressed by either. “Sloane doesn’t want the responsibility,” she finally said. “You don’t either.”

  Tann drew himself up, all the many and appropriately stern centimeters of him. “You have no right to assume such.”

  She was already shaking her head. She braced one hand against the drop frame and bent, so her face appeared very close in Tann’s vision. “You misunderstand. Not thirty minutes go by without someone asking me, begging me, ordering me, to revive a friend, a loved one, or some other person they’ve decided is critical to the effor
t.”

  “I would be happy to manage—”

  The krogan’s wide mouth twisted. “Tch. Of course you would. A lot of power to place in someone’s hands, letting them decide who lives and who doesn’t.”

  “They all live,” he countered, waving that away. “Nor is that my intent—”

  “I’m sure it never crossed your mind.”

  Well, then. Tann’s chin rose. This turn in the conversation he had also anticipated, but he’d rated the chances low that Kesh would leap to such conclusions so quickly. “I am beginning to feel,” he said tactfully, “as if you and I have gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  Kesh’s twisted grin showed teeth. “History is a bitch, isn’t it?” She turned away. Paused, and then swung her shoulders back around to peer at Tann. “I’ll ask Calix to place the maintenance overrides in a secure file, coded for Sloane Kelly. That’s the best you’ll get.”

  “But—”

  “Excuse me.” An avalanche would sound less final. She picked up her stride and the door slid open, revealing a room full of krogan workers, all being supervised by a handful of other crew. They were laboring over one of the Nexus’s massive engines—critically important should they encounter the Scourge again.

  He beat a hasty, politically appropriate retreat.

  All in all, he considered the outcome of their chat a minor victory. All it really meant was, should the situation call for hard decisions to be made regarding the revived population, he would have one more person he could negotiate with. Sloane Kelly. She, so far, had proved something of a wildcard. It might be easier to predict her position on a given matter via a roll of the dice, and that he found most frustrating.

  However, there was the third person in this equation, someone to whom he had not yet spoken beyond the briefest of introductions. Tann decided a small, diceless gamble was in order.

  * * *

  He settled on a more official approach. Tann found an unused but relatively tidy office near Operations, settled into a chair, and waited.

  Thirty minutes passed before there came a knock at the door—the chime was broken. Tann called out, “Enter!”

  He would have preferred to appear busy. Some papers to shuffle through, or a terminal screen to study intently. He had to settle for fiddling with his omni-tool, pointedly turning it off the moment the turian entered.

  “Ah, Calix Corvannis. Please, sit.”

  The turian glanced around, as if expecting to see someone else. Kesh, probably. An unusual alliance, to say the least. Krogan and salarians did not, as a rule, mesh, but the krogan had not forgotten the turians’ role in, as it were, the widespread emasculation of their clans.

  Calix folded his arms, talons turned in. “I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind.”

  “I understand, you’re busy.”

  He shook his head, chitinous features reflecting a mild sheen as he did. Metals. Some blend of whatever environment his people had evolved in, to be somewhat less than precise. All turian exoskeletons displayed some version of it or another. A relic of the metal-poor core of their home planet.

  “Busy, yes,” the turian replied, “but also sick of sitting. I’ve just come off a long-term calibration and I could use a stretch.”

  “Oh, I see.” Tann, like most, had not really mastered the art of turian facial tics. Calix seemed reasonable enough. He would have to assume it true, for now. “May I get you anything?”

  “Not unless you have some Tupari stocked away somewhere.” Before Tann could reply in any form, Calix added, “No, thank you. It would be nice if you could make this quick, however. There’s more critical work to do.” He paused. Glanced around again. “What is this, exactly?”

  Tann allowed himself a few seconds to process this. He leaned back into his chair and studied the turian. Calix’s uniform was stained, unkempt. Not unusual given the situation, but remarkably for it, he still seemed to hold an air of… not superiority, not exactly. Tann had dealt, at least on the fringe, with Primarchs. That was superiority.

  Calix Corvallis displayed confidence. Everything about Calix’s tone and posture implied a total sense of ease. Very interesting. Tann wondered if the turian always enjoyed such a comfortable air around people of importance, or if perhaps instead he didn’t consider Tann to be important.

  Perhaps both.

  He’d also noticed the lack of Sloane and Addison. An astute observation from a simple life-support technician.

  “It is a minor matter, actually, and yes, I will be brief. I do not,” he added dryly, “have any Tupari on hand, and I believe it best for everyone this way.”

  Calix smiled—Tann thought he did, anyway. The mandibles moved. The… fringe-y teeth-like exoskeleton of his mouth seemed to shift. But mostly, he simply waited, hands clasped behind his back as if this were some kind of military meeting. When he shook his head, Tann felt it less a dismissal and more a gesture of boredom.

  Jarun Tann began to feel an unease he did not care for. It was one thing to have entered into a conversation for which he had not truly prepared. To do so knowing little about the other participant made things considerably worse.

  Well, it was time he gave it his best. Sparing little, he gave the same speech he’d given to Kesh. Entirely true, if not necessarily for the justifications given. Critical information, in the hands of so few, was dangerous under normal circumstances. With the Nexus in its current state, biometrics offline, the main database damaged and the state of its backups unknown, keeping the stasis maintenance overrides in the heads of just two people bordered on the criminally negligent.

  “I hope,” he finished tactfully, “to avoid consequences of either.”

  Calix watched him. “So you want me to give them to you?” the turian asked.

  Tann leaned forward. A touch of the conspiratorial, a signal that they were, after all, on the same side. “I merely want to catalog this knowledge—”

  “Why not ask Kesh?”

  And there, the interruption. Tann was beginning to see it as a sign that others found him not worth hearing out. It grated. But he answered. “I did.”

  “And?” he asked.

  Tann suspected the turian already knew the answer, and only wanted to hear him say it.

  Fine. Let the turian score a point. “She declined.”

  Again, that sense of a smile. The mandibles, a bit of a crinkle at the less rigid skin around the eyes. He glanced around at the room again. “The very definition of backroom politics.”

  Perhaps, but he needed the turian to understand why. “Look, Calix, you must understand the natural mistrust Nakmor Kesh has for me. For all salarians.”

  “Your people earned that.”

  “So,” he pointed out, “did yours.”

  That earned him a slow, thoughtful stare from the engineer.

  Tann continued. “Neither point requires debate. The fact remains, however, that sometimes in such a, er, leadership dynamic, approaches must be taken that avoid bringing such prejudices into the equation.”

  Calix rubbed at his jaw. “And you think I’d be willing to risk going against my direct superior.”

  “As opposed to going against the Initiative director?” Tann delivered it as a counter, but a thoughtful one. Something for the engineer to chew on.

  Did turians chew? Calix didn’t seem to take the time. “You do realize I work directly for Kesh, right?”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “And if I go to her, tell her about this meeting?”

  Tann spread his hands. “You would merely reinforce what she already thinks of me. I would be no closer to my goal, but at least I would have tried. You, on the other hand, would no longer be the engineer I choose to confer with in station matters.” He paused briefly. Put on a show of thought. “Perhaps the other turian engineer. What was his name?”

  “Her.” A short, curt correction, and then Calix put his hands on the desk. Positively loomed. “What is that goal of yours, really? Don’t give me any more of that cr
ap about cataloging critical knowledge.”

  Tann stared into the turian’s intense eyes. Was it the mention of another turian? The loss of leadership? He weighed his words carefully. “It occurs to me that in the very near future, we may find ourselves in a situation where hard decisions must be made.”

  “Go on.”

  Jarun Tann leaned back, forcing an air of comfort rather than withdrawal. He kept one hand on the arm of the chair, the other on the desk. Open to attack. Not that he expected attack; he merely wanted the turian to see how little defenses Tann put between them. “I worry that other prominent figures aboard the Nexus are incapable of making such decisions.”

  Very slowly, Calix nodded. “I agree that time may come,” he said, also slowly. For a moment, Tann thought he’d won. Broken through.

  And then the turian pushed away from the desk and took a step for the door. “Sorry, Director, can’t help you. Not in the way you want.”

  Blast. Tann stood, one hand flat on the table. “Why?”

  The turian shot him a look Tann would swear was almost pitying. His skin tightened, body tensing with the fury that roiled under Tann’s careful veneer. “Because,” the turian said simply, “I believe in that old Earth phrase: ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’”

  That was it? Calix Corvannis refused to share information because of some fear? “You must understand that there are Dalatrasses, Primarchs,” he added, to reflect the turian’s own society, “who retain possession of so much more.”

  “Yeah. That’s why.” Calix’s words were sharp, practically a slap across the face. “So here’s what I’m prepared to do. I will keep this conversation between us, and take your altruistic motives at face value. If you require a stasis pod override, and the situation is too sensitive to gather consensus, go ahead and come to me.”

  Tann sat back into his chair, the springs creaking. “So you can tell me to go ask Kesh?” he asked bitterly.

  The turian shook his head. “I won’t. As much as I might want to, I actually do understand what you mean about the complex nature of inter-species dynamics. If your reasons are sound, I’ll handle the override process myself. Good enough?”