Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

  That… was acceptable. Tann knew when to take a deal. “That will do.”

  “Good. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’ve got a station to save.” He did not wait for Tann to dismiss him.

  Nobody ever did.

  After the door closed, Jarun Tann sat for several long minutes behind the desk. Not moving, his gaze unfocused. A casual observer might think him in a trance, or just asleep. His mind was quite busy, though.

  Certain assumptions and expectations had to be changed. Much else he had been able to predict with reasonable accuracy, and account for. But Calix Corvannis, a mere pawn on the chessboard, had just proven himself quite a bit more astute than that. A turian who made easy friends with a krogan. Who did not jump at the chance to rise.

  An interesting wildcard. But yet another wildcard all the same.

  Eventually Tann shook his head. He needed sleep, he decided. Almost as much, he needed a friendly conversation.

  He found he rather disliked always being made to feel like the bad guy.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sloane slumped back in her desk chair, rubbing both hands down her face. Every bone in her body cried out for rest. Every strand of hair, every cell. How many days had it been since she’d had anything approaching a good night’s sleep?

  Her laugh sounded saltier than even she’d expected. “Not a chance,” she told her open palms. Pressing them against her eyes didn’t help, either.

  At least now she had some downtime. Until the next meeting. Or emergency. Or whatever else. It’d come. Sloane didn’t understand everything about the Nexus’s many technical issues, but she knew a floating fixer-upper when she saw it. If nothing else, there’d be another glitch, another fire, more supplies growing legs, another thing breaking.

  Another strand of that deadly Scourge thing to avoid.

  And here they were—Sloane, Tann, Addison, even Kesh; playing house with thousands of lives. The refrain stuck in her head.

  What matters is what we do when we arrive…

  It was enough to drive a woman to drink.

  She’d settle for a nap.

  Sloane let her hands drop to her sides, tilting back until the chair supported the weight of her head. Her temporary quarters were guest accommodations in the Cultural Exchange, far enough from the chaos that she could take a breather away from the constant pressure. It beat the common room.

  Foster Addison had assigned the place to Sloane without asking for input. Privately, she figured Addison wanted her to have somewhere she could go to swear when things got too much. A nice gesture, all things considered.

  The past two weeks had thrown down progress and obstacles in equal measure. Some Sloane could handle without any oversight from the acting director—even if Tann always gave her the eye afterward.

  Other things required dialogue. Debates.

  She didn’t get a lot of private time, either. She was always with her team, going over basic security, with groups of krogan engineers, or with Tann and Addison. And the addition of Addison’s sleaze-bag assistant… Ugh, data pushers got on her nerves.

  Sloane spent most of her time dealing with something or someone. Scores of people, each focused on a task, each task part of a net that wove through the Nexus.

  Each success bolstered the odds of getting the station into shape, of becoming the central location the Pathfinders would need them to be. But every failure dragged down the net, too. Systems fried and took down others nearby, corridors crumbled and sealed the way to necessary installations. More and more it looked like they’d need the Pathfinders to support them, not the other way around.

  People worked tirelessly. Anxiety pressed in on all of them from every direction. Those off-shift or in noncritical systems bunked down in the shuttles locked in at the Colonial Affairs hangars. CA had a whole fleet of shuttles, just waiting for something to do. Right now, acting as glorified bunks made the most sense.

  In critical sectors, the workers racked out in temporary cots near the worksites. Nobody was ever where they were supposed to be.

  Even the krogan hadn’t started any fights. Not real ones. The usual dominance stuff krogan always pulled, yelling and headbutts—or maybe it was just their way of showing affection.

  Sloane opened her eyes to blink away the tired spots that fuzzed there. Just in time for the comm tone to drill through her hard-earned silence.

  “Director Sloane, are you available?”

  She dug both index fingers into the bridge of her nose, rubbing the tired out. “I am now. What do you need, Spender?”

  He caught the irritated note in her voice. “Hey, sorry to bother you during downtime,” he said, “but I came across some information and I thought, ‘Wow, Director Kelly should—’”

  “Get your lips off my ass and get to the point.”

  “Of course,” he replied, but with a conciliatory addition she recognized as learned from Tann. A bit of affronted dignity. Almost a sneer he couldn’t quite hide. The man spent as much time at Tann’s side as he did Addison’s, juggling administrative tasks for both with—she could admit—a surprising amount of skill.

  That didn’t mean she trusted him. Not even close. To Sloane, he was just another bureaucratic voice arguing against the things she needed to be handling.

  Of course, it might be her own bias talking.

  “I was preparing the post-stasis report for the staff that was awakened early,” he said, the comm crackling only once. Much better than it used to be. Tann had done good there. Kesh and her technicians were a marvel of ingenuity. “One in particular caught my attention.”

  “Go on.”

  As he spoke, she booted up her own terminal and logged into the security access. Much of it was still locked up behind firewalls. Only Garson had all the access privileges. Just in case.

  With the original leadership now gone, Sloane and a few others had access to some of the data, but nobody alive had all of it. She wasn’t sure Spender should have been among those with access, but as close as he was working with Tann and Addison, she couldn’t be sure that he didn’t need it, either.

  “The name is Falarn,” Spender told her. “Priote Falarn. I’m sending you the records now.” It took no time at all. Within the space of her mm-hm, the records showed up in her mail terminal.

  “A salarian,” she said aloud. “One of our contracted Sur’Kesh specialists.” Her whistle was low as she scanned the list of recommendations attached to his file. “Highly trained in communications and arrays. Your team, right? Colonial Affairs. What about him?”

  “I’ll be blunt. He stinks.”

  “You should call medical.”

  “What I mean is I have reason to suspect him.”

  Great. Now Spender was starting to sound like Tann. Sloane grimaced, reaching over to flick the video array on.

  The advisor’s haughty features filled the screen. His eyes briefly widened, as if he hadn’t expected a face to face, but settled again with a half-apologetic smile and nod.

  She nodded back out of habit. “Okay. Talk to me.”

  “Before we launched, a few of our staff were undergoing some last-minute checks. Most were officially cleared.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously, and he continued hastily. “Including Falarn.”

  “So?”

  “So I thought it was a mistake, and I wasn’t the only one,” he replied. “The classification division was on to something, started building a case. Before we could take it to Director Addison, though, something strange happened.”

  “Short version, Spender.”

  His eyebrows knitted. “Most of the digital evidence was gone. Not destroyed, just…” His fingers popped into the air like a firework. “Poof. Never existed. I tried to backtrack the lead, but—”

  Sloane’s patience wasn’t made to hold up to this shit. Her elbows hit the table. “Hit the bottom line in the next thirty seconds,” she growled.

  “Someone on the inside destroyed the case, and Falarn was the most likely candidate.”
/>
  “Spender,” Sloane said slowly, drawing out his name as if he were a toddler, “has this salarian done something wrong, or not?”

  He hesitated. “I’ve seen him in places he has no business being in. Records show him accessing terminals he has no need to access. Yeah, it’s a hunch, I admit it. But given the concerns before departure, and the fact that supplies have been reported missing, I thought… call it ‘suspicious activity.’”

  Sloane didn’t drop her forehead to the desk. She’d give herself that much of a victory.

  “Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll check this guy out. Where’s he stationed now?”

  Spender tapped a few keys, eyes flicking side to side as he pulled up the data. “In and out of Operations, according to the logs. And down in Central Comms.”

  “Wonderful. Fucking perfect.” To his credit, Spender didn’t flinch. If anything, his smile got a little less conciliatory and a little more wry at her salt. “I’ll go see what I can find.”

  “Thank you, Director Sloane.” The title still annoyed her, but at least he used her first name, and actually thanked her when he sent her on a wild goose chase.

  Sloane signed off and gave a long hard look at the wall. “I really,” she said, at first slow and level, and graduating to a shout with every word, “really need some fucking coffee!”

  The wall did not comply.

  * * *

  Somebody had managed to salvage some… Sloane wouldn’t call it music, per se, but it passed the time in the temporary workspace. If she had to guess, they’d ripped some mixed techno beat from the Citadel’s Flux and brought it along for nostalgia.

  Six centuries old nostalgia, to be sure, and of the sort best left behind. Why would anyone want to remember anything that had gone on inside the walls of Flux?

  It’s not like the techs were partying to it. Inside the still-gutted room, the heavy bass beat thudded in tandem to the focused silence of the Nexus crew working there. Only one looked up when she stepped inside. A human she didn’t know. Sloane sliced through niceties with a brusque nod and a gesture.

  “Hate to interrupt but I need a minute of your time.”

  The man hurried over, running a broad hand over the tired lines of his dusky features. “What can I help you with, Director?” He pitched his deep voice low. The music oontz’ed.

  An unapologetic yawn followed his question, but as a few techs looked up behind him, Sloane noted they seemed a touch more settled than they were even a week ago. They’d found a groove.

  “Falarn,” she said crisply. “He here?”

  The tech shook his head. “He’s off shift right now. Last I heard, he was going to sleep until the next emergency.”

  “Must be nice. Where?”

  “Wherever he can find a space,” the tech said with a shrug. “Like most of us.”

  Yeah, take a number. “In commons? Maybe one of the hangars?”

  He thought about it. Glanced back at his team, who also shrugged. “Most of us just crash under one of the desks in HQ2.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just a room across the hall.” He became defensive when she raised an eyebrow. “No one else was using it, and we were sick of walking all the way back to our temp quarters in the hangar.”

  “Whoa, slow down. It’s fine.” Sloane jerked a thumb back to the hall. “And Falarn, that’s where he sleeps? You’ve seen him?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. Sorry.”

  Figured. “Thanks. As you were.”

  “Ma’am,” he replied, and returned to his team. She didn’t miss the subtle shrug he gave one of the other techs.

  Sloane left, already writing the script in her head. Yes, I know you were sleeping, sorry for waking you, I just have a few questions about…

  About what, exactly? Suspicious activity. Sloane grimaced, trying to recall why she’d agreed to this.

  Maybe to do some actual security work for once. Not that it was going to amount to anything. People of all departments were accessing terminals. If anything she should investigate Spender for wasting her damned time.

  The temporary quarters were indeed just across the corridor, in a room that had been earmarked for some other purpose. Sloane wasn’t sure what—something more technical and undoubtedly more redundant than necessary.

  She manually keyed in the access code. The sensors still flaked out from time to time, leaving the doors stuck wide open or stubbornly closed. Manual remained the most reliable method of entry without risking bruised pride and a nosebleed.

  Sloane cursed her tired brain. How was she supposed to run an investigation like this? Not that it was entirely Spender’s fault. She’d made it abundantly clear that she wanted to vet anything suspicious, anyone skirting that line. He’d been right to flag it.

  But she didn’t like running blind, either.

  The converted room was dark, lights dimmed to a level acceptable to sleep in. It was also, she noted from inside the open frame of the door, empty. Cots had been set up in rows, blankets folded neatly, pillows in place for those species who wanted or needed them.

  No sleeping salarian.

  No one at all.

  She tilted her head. All right. So, maybe he’d be at the residency hangar. With each shuttle having its own life-support system, they made for good emergency housing. Finding which one Farlarn had been assigned would be a hassle, but nothing she couldn’t manage.

  Except nobody she contacted could find him. His bunkmate thought he was back in Ops. The guy she spoke to there suggested he could be at the common area. Nobody had actually seen him.

  Maybe he was having a tryst, and they were all covering for him. Did salarians tryst?

  “I guess with an asari,” she muttered, earning a sideways look from a human she passed on the way to the next locale. By the time Sloane’s instincts had caught up with her, she’d walked several laps of the operational bits of the Nexus. Even her sec team hadn’t located him.

  Great.

  When her comm crackled to life, she had just enough civility left in her to growl, “This better be good news.”

  “No promises.” Calix’s now-familiar voice drawled the words across the channel. “Did you authorize some info-sec goon to access my systems?”

  “Access, as in…?”

  “As in, did somebody in security drop a forged stasis authorization into my queue? Maybe someone was testing procedures and protocols?”

  “Hell no—” She stopped herself short, pausing in the hallway to activate the display on her omni-tool. “Shit. Give me a sec.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Shut up,” she muttered, earning one of the turian’s dry chuckles. Calix understood the mess caused by red tape, especially when it involved Addison and Tann. That didn’t protect her from his good-natured bullshit, though.

  She scrolled rapidly through the latest communications. “No,” she said slowly. “Nothing even remotely like that. The fact that you’re asking this isn’t making my gut happy, Calix.”

  “Wonderful.” Dry as Tuchanka dust. “Then you should know that I’ve had about nine pods unsealed under a false work order. Sending you the list now.”

  “Who unsealed them?”

  “I did, because they had Director Addison’s approval.”

  Sloane grit her teeth. “But she didn’t actually approve them.”

  “No. A confirmation made its way back to her and, luckily, she caught it.”

  “And you checked with Kesh? Is it possible she—”

  “She didn’t.”

  She grimaced. “I had to make sure.” She scanned the list Calix sent. “Commerce? Customs? None of these people are critical.”

  “My thinking exactly,” Calix replied. “I’ve got log-time about two standard hours back.”

  “Just enough time to acclimate,” she noted. “How convenient.”

  “Yeah.” She could hear the turian’s shrug in his voice. “And time enough to be anywhere by now. Whatever their purpose, I just
thought you might like to know. I’m leaving this in your capable hands, Sloane.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” She quickly turned around to half-jog through the corridor. The first things people needed coming out of stasis were food and warmth.

  She dialed up Kandros. “Find me every recent access log from Priote Falarn and Foster Addison,” she said before he even had a chance to greet her.

  “Who the hell is Priote Falarn?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied smartly.

  She signed off to contact Addison. The faces she jogged past followed her trail, but she ignored their idle curiosity in favor of dodging the occasional construction tangle.

  The comm link connected. “I was just trying to reach you,” Addison said. Hurried words, very tense.

  “We have a problem,” Sloane said.

  “We have more than one,” the woman replied, and for the first time in a long time, Sloane heard a bit of steel in her voice. But there was something else, too. Something focused. Worried.

  Sloane frowned. “Let me guess. You know who falsified approval documents in your name to wake up some non-critical personnel.”

  “Salarian by name of Falarn.”

  Sloane nodded. “And?”

  “And,” Addison sighed, “the bastard and about ten of his friends just stormed the hangar and surrounded a shuttle. They’re demanding that we let them board it and then clear the hangar, or they’ll start shooting.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Kandros met her at the hangar door accompanied by four of the team, including Talini. Good. Her biotics would no doubt come in handy.

  All of them had come prepared as she’d directed, wearing Initiative-certified Elanus Risk Control Services gear and carrying just enough firepower to put down the problem without risking casualties.

  “Did you talk to info-sec?” Sloane asked Talini.

  The asari saluted. “Yes ma’am.”

  “And?”

  “They’re on it.”

  Sloane nodded her thanks. What she was asking info-sec to do would probably seriously piss off Tann, to say nothing of Addison and all the others, but security was her job. For now, until everything settled, every access to secure networks would be recorded. Visuals and all. If nothing came of it, great. But if something did…