Andromeda

by Jason M. Hough

  Sloane’s smile was as toothy as Morda’s. Ignoring her team, ignoring Talini’s sudden hiss of her name, Sloane closed the gap and let loose a right hook that she’d been dying to deliver for weeks.

  Salarian bones were fine, but tough. The impact jarred her arm to the shoulder, but only because it caused Tann to spin with the momentum. The salarian squawked in a mixed-up bag of pain and alarm, and lost his breath when his ribs collided with the edge of the console.

  Kesh’s broad palm slapped her own face. It was almost as loud as the cheers and jeers from the rebels.

  Miraculously, not one security member opened fire.

  Addison swore fluently—an act that earned a bit of Sloane’s grudging respect—and bent to keep Tann from falling over entirely.

  “Fuck you,” Sloane growled from between gritted teeth. She shook out her hand. “And fuck this station and fuck your classist bullshit. You get the grim little hell you’ve turned this into. We choose exile.”

  There was a moment of silence. A breath held.

  Tann’s fingers cradled his jaw, eyes wide and furious and—yes, Sloane noted, a little afraid. Good. But it was Addison who made the final call.

  “Fine.” She glared up at Sloane. “You’ll have your shuttles. Spender will see to the supplies.” The briefest pause. A beat. “I wish you the best. I really do.”

  “Yeah. Well…” Sloane turned, caught Talini’s eye and tipped her head in thanks. “Bet we’ll find somewhere to shack up long before you all get your heads out of somebody’s cloaca.”

  Nobody had anything to say as she stormed for the door, the rebels—no, the exiles—following without hesitation. Enough was enough. She’d take her chances with the ones who believed in this new galaxy. Believed enough to shed blood for it.

  When she met Calix in hell one day, she’d be damned if she’d tell him she’d abandoned them all.

  Talini and her security flanked them on the way out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Things had barely settled when trouble sought Tann out in hydroponics. The salarian wanted someplace warm and isolated to sit and nurse his wounded pride without something requiring his attention. Watching the determined seeds, struggling to grow, was soothing in a way.

  Four krogan, led by the clan leader, thundered their way into the chamber. Tann stood, unwilling to be caught sitting by the much taller grunt force. Morda’s stare fixed on him with such intensity that Tann knew something was brewing. It didn’t help when his omni-tool flashed, porting Spender’s image.

  “Sir, the Nakmor leader is searching for you.”

  “She found me,” Tann said, keeping his gaze on the oncoming storm. “Send Kesh to hydroponics. Do it quickly.”

  The comm went dark. Tann’s head tilted when the crusty-hided brutes came to a wedge standstill in front of him. He decided diplomacy wouldn’t hurt.

  Or at least it will hurt less than another punch.

  “Clan leader. If you wish to discuss something we can convene in—”

  Morda glared down at him. “Now that you have laid judgment on the exiles, are things proceeding to whatever passes for normal on this station?” Her thick, heavily muscled arms folded across her chest.

  Blinking, he managed a surprised, “Why, yes. Yes, they are. The shuttles are being outfitted as we speak, and the exiles and sympathizers are gathered for departure. We expect them to leave in a few hours.”

  “And Kesh?”

  Tann hesitated. “And Kesh what?”

  “Is she serving her function as expected of her experience?”

  This seemed oddly formal for a krogan. Doubly so coming from Morda. Tann felt a queer sense of unbalance. Something wasn’t right here.

  “Yes,” he said carefully. “She and her crew have been serving capably, save the recent betrayal by one of her teams.”

  Morda’s eyes narrowed. “That’s between you and her. I have no sway in the discipline of your officers. But,” she added dourly, “Kesh should have not been so trusting.”

  “I agree,” Tann said, surprised again. Still. Where was this going? “However, what is done is done, and—” He glanced beyond the formation of krogan as Kesh strode through the same doors. An ancient krogan followed behind her. Nakmor Drack, Tann recalled. Kesh’s grandfather, woken with Morda. The old one seemed entirely unimpressed with the state of things, but as of yet had spoken little.

  Relieved to have backup, he continued more confidently, “—and we are looking forward to putting this behind us. Forging the Nexus into a brilliant symbol of cross-species friendship and cooperation.”

  “Good to hear,” Morda grunted. “Kesh.” A greeting. “Stand witness as the Nakmor Clan’s Nexus representative.”

  Kesh shot Tann a quizzical glance, but nodded once. “As you say.”

  Wherever this was leading, it was starting to churn acid in the back of Tann’s throat. Before he could say anything more, however, Morda took a step forward and bent.

  She bent. At the waist.

  Like a bow.

  Tann’s eyes widened so far, the secondary eyelids strained.

  “Then the Nakmor Clan has acted as agreed, and now officially accepts the offer of a seat on the leadership council of the Nexus.”

  For a long moment, not a sound filled the hydroponics chamber. Morda, perhaps uncomfortable in so uncharacteristic a position, looked up.

  “What is she doing?” Tann demanded.

  Kesh’s frown deepened. “I don’t know.” She looked at Morda. “What are you doing?”

  The clan leader growled, rolling her shoulders. Humility didn’t sit well on her. “I’m claiming the council seat offered in return for our service in putting down the rebellion.”

  Kesh’s eyes turned to Tann.

  He blinked again. “The… what?”

  Morda’s frustration mounted, evident in her toothy sneer. “The council seat!” she repeated loudly, as if he were dimwitted. “Your sand-rat ambassador offered us—on your behalf—a seat at the official Nexus leadership council, in exchange for our loyalty and service and for ending the uprising.”

  “Spender.” It was the only word Tann could form through the chaos of his thoughts. William Spender had gone to the krogan, and Tann had assumed the terms were clear. Taken aback, he shook his head and moved closer—hoping it wasn’t too close. “This is impossible,” he managed. “I did not authorize him to offer that. It was never even mentioned.”

  Behind her, one of the meaty-faced brutes slammed his fist into a hand.

  “Wrong,” he roared.

  Kesh looked back and forth between them. “Spender said you’d get a seat at the council if you put down the rebellion?”

  “Did I not just say that?” Morda growled. “There were witnesses.” She jerked a gesture toward the krogan behind her. “And some humans, as well. I made certain of it.”

  Tann continued to shake his head. “I’m afraid there’s been some sort of mistake,” he said firmly. “No one species should be arbitrarily guaranteed a place on the council, much less by an unauthorized individual. It’s ridiculous, and goes against everything the Initiative set out to achieve.”

  Morda became as still as a statue, glaring at him. Utterly intimidating. All the more reason the krogan would never occupy a council seat. Too much of a penchant for conflict. Despite the fear in his gut, Tann had to break the silence. He raised his hands slightly, appealing for calm.

  “That offer should never have been made,” he said. “I’m sorry, Morda, but there is nothing we can do. Spender will be reprimanded for this error.” Error, his hydrodynamic head. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll speak with my aides and see if we can’t draft plans for a more appropriate reward for your service.”

  Before the clan leader could reply Kesh stepped between them, and Tann made good his escape. Slipping through the door, he could still hear Morda shouting, her followers echoing her fury, and Kesh’s loud efforts to get them to settle down. The sounds followed him all the way to t
he lift.

  A fury unlike any Tann had harbored before roiled within him, aimed at William Spender and made all the more intense by his fear of Nakmor Morda. The intensity of the emotion left him barely able to think, his rationalizations spinning.

  He paced in a tight square as the lift descended. Spender… how to deal with Spender. The man got results, but his methods were unscrupulous and, honestly, quite insane. Offering a council seat to Nakmor Morda, what the hell had he been thinking?

  Tann supposed a little of the blame for that fell on him. He’d sent the human to handle that task, after all, and instructed him to win the clan’s support at all costs. Tann should have chosen his words more carefully, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

  He could not honor Spender’s offer. That, above all else, was clear. The question was, how to avoid Morda’s wrath at a faithless deal broken. Security certainly wasn’t up to the task if the krogan became… uncooperative.

  “Hmm,” Tann muttered, still pacing his tight squares as the lift hummed along.

  Morda was entirely unfit to sit on the Nexus leadership council. Kesh, perhaps, after an extensive trial period and a majority vote, but Morda? Impossible. She couldn’t handle the troubles, the tough decisions, even—yes, even the boredom. Rulings upon rulings, the mind-numbing maze of regulations.

  No, what the council needed were cool, calm heads and councilors ready—even eager—to handle the day-to-day minutiae of station control. It had nothing to do with prejudices. This was just common sense.

  By the time he made it to Operations, he’d almost convinced himself.

  * * *

  Morda hadn’t become clan leader by being soft. She pushed against Kesh with a roar, forcing the krogan to stumble back a few steps.

  “You can’t attack just anyone,” Kesh shouted, nose to Morda’s nose.

  Morda’s snarl drowned Kesh out. “I demand satisfaction,” she growled. “I demand that they treat us with the respect we have earned here!”

  “I understand, clan leader.” Kesh glared at her, arms spread. Engineer though she was, that didn’t make her any less of a krogan. Morda respected her enough to know that any conflict would end in blood and bruises, and both would lose teeth. And Kesh wouldn’t back down. She turned her glare on them all.

  “The human aide made a mistake,” Kesh pressed. “He is an idiot—he overstepped!”

  “An aide,” Morda spat. “He presented himself as… what was it, chief of staff?”

  Behind her, Kaje snorted his agreement.

  “He played too hard,” Kesh said flatly, “but that is not a reason to tear the salarian apart. Would you war with all of the Nexus now?”

  Morda drew herself up. “I am Nakmor Morda, leader of the Nakmor krogan, I do not bend at the threat of war.”

  “But it will destroy us all nonetheless,” Kesh replied. She fisted both hands, held them wide. “We are in a new galaxy, surrounded by a Scourge that tears our ships apart. Like it or not, we must work together. Will we drown this dream—this masterpiece—in the blood of our own?”

  “They deserve blood,” Wratch shouted.

  Kaje huffed. “After all our work.”

  “We should just wreck the Nexus,” Wratch added, nodding fiercely. “After all, we built it. Rebuilt it, too.”

  Drack reached out a casual, enormous fist and punched Wratch in the chest. “Watch your tongue, runt.” With his craggy, scarred stare he forced the other to look away. “To destroy this station is a waste.”

  “Better to take it over,” Kaje added, “and claim it for all krogan.”

  “My krogan,” Morda corrected, her gaze pinned on Kesh. “Does that or does it not include you, Kesh?”

  Kesh blew out a hard breath. “Clan leader, if we take over this station, we will enjoy the victory of a single battle, yes, but also doom our species to the same hatreds as those left in Tuchanka. We need allies. We need the other species.”

  Morda stared at her. The engineer had nerve. She’d always been smart—too smart—and Morda wasn’t pleased about her divided loyalties. Kesh belonged to the Nakmor.

  Even so. She wasn’t wrong.

  Morda stared down the shadowed corridor that had swallowed the salarian. He’d sent some lowly rat to speak for him, to promise things—no, to outright lie—in order to win her support. The clan had been used as a weapon. That’s how they were seen and treated. They’d shed blood for this farce.

  But to shed more…

  Morda’s head turned. The krogan that flanked her met her stare. Even Wratch, the dumb pyjak, had stopped grinning his bloodthirsty grin.

  Kesh pressed her hands together. “Clan leader,” she said, her voice low. “Are you willing to let this go?”

  Morda looked back, teeth gritted. “No,” she said. “It is one too many, more of the same when we had been promised a new life.”

  Kesh nodded solemnly. “Then I have an alternative, if you’ll hear me.”

  Morda hesitated, but then the wizened Drack spoke, all the gravitas his thousand-some-odd years had earned him resonant in his voice. “Listen to her, Morda. She’s more familiar with these two-faced councilors.”

  Fair enough an observation. She nodded once.

  “Krogan are not new to tough environments,” Kesh said. She gestured toward one of the large viewports—and the caustic, vaporous tendrils of death that tangled beyond. “We tamed Tuchanka and we will tame Andromeda, but perhaps…” She shrugged expansively. “Perhaps, clan leader, the krogan must find their own way, beholden to no one. Maybe,” she said, drawing it out, “the krogan deserve to find what suits us on this so-called other side.”

  Clever, Morda mused. Clever and bold. She may not have always agreed with Kesh when it came to matters regarding the krogan and the Nexus together, but separately…

  Kaje rumbled a thoughtful noise. “Sounds interesting.”

  Wratch’s grin came right back. “Sounds fun.” A beat. “Less turians.” They both snorted.

  Morda ignored them all. “And you?”

  Kesh held her gaze. “I will stay.”

  Morda kept her gaze on Kesh. “Why?”

  “I don’t support what was done to the Nakmor clan,” Kesh said flatly, “but I have put the blood of both hearts into this station. Someone from the clan must stay and ensure the krogan are not entirely without allies. I choose to be that someone.”

  Morda rolled her shoulder, even as she rolled the ideas in her mind. She wouldn’t lie—the thought of taming this deadly galaxy, that so frightened the salarian and his council, pleased her perversely. And Kesh, for all her refusal to take sides, had a point.

  Morda took a step forward, seizing Kesh by the collar. She jerked the krogan forward, but rather than the spike of foreheads that might have followed, Morda stopped and stared at her, eye to eye.

  “You will not forget your allegiances, Nakmor Kesh.”

  “Never,” Kesh replied.

  Morda held that stare for another moment longer. Then, with a grunt, she pushed the engineer away, turning her back. On Kesh. On that prejudiced, stuffed-head salarian.

  On the Nexus.

  “Make the necessary preparations,” she roared as she strode away, footsteps pounding like a batarian war beast on the hunt. “We leave when the exiles do.”

  Behind her, she heard Kesh exhale a hard, stilted breath. Morda decided to end the conversation there, to let Kesh stew no matter how cold it made her seem. Kesh knew what her suggestion had cost the krogan, and what it cost Morda to accept.

  The Nakmor Clan would be victorious, with or without the Nexus.

  It seemed that some things on this so-called “other side” would not be so different after all.

  * * *

  Generations to produce a dream.

  Hours to shatter it.

  Tann leaned against the solid metal frame of the viewport. The long hangar spread out before him, bustling with activity. Ranks of krogan filing into the small armada of shuttles being provided the
m, Nakmor Morda at the head of the group, arms folded in defiance and resolve, overseeing the exodus. Now and then she would lift her gaze toward him, and her stare would bore into him before he’d look away.

  The krogan were matched in the distance by the exiles. Sloane Kelly and her band of criminals, and the sympathizers that had chosen a slow death in Scourge space than life on the station. Hard to think of them that way, but Tann couldn’t get around the truth.

  They were less organized, but just as fearless. Surrounded by security, their groups formed, and soon enough they began to head for their assigned ships, too. Bags slung over their shoulders, pushing lev-carts of bundled supplies. Two weeks of food and water, Spender had said.

  Tann lowered his head.

  Easy to see all this as misfits and malcontents taking their leave, and good riddance. Harder to admit the truth. The people out there represented a sizable number of the Nexus’s population. His construction crew, and the better part of the life-support team, chief among them.

  Tann might have won against the mutiny, but the cost was truly terrible. No getting around that.

  A mess, he thought, and shook his head as Sloane boarded her shuttle without so much as a glance back toward him.

  So many had given their knowledge, their time, their bodies, and various forms of exertion to make the Nexus happen. So many had pinned their hopes and their dreams on this, their foray into Andromeda.

  He looked up, farther than the docks and the folded hubs of sectors waiting for repair, saw the eerie colors of the Scourge, floating beyond. Waiting. Drifting. Somewhere in there drifted devastated planets.

  The bones of dead civilizations, too, according to some of the scouts.

  He folded his arms over his chest, trying not to notice that it felt more like trying to protect his aching insides, and less like casual posturing. A soft knock behind him alerted him to another guest, but it was too late to pull on his usual mask of logical calm now. At least it would be Addison. Something about her way of moving. She had a distinctive tread.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Tann didn’t look behind him. He didn’t need to, and she didn’t need him to. Foster Addison was a perceptive human. And he didn’t know how to hide his uncertainties now.