Mass Effect: Andromeda — Nexus Uprising

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Hey, Reg? You better come quick, man.”

Reg cracked open a crusted eyelid, expecting to see the bunk he shared with his husband empty. That was the usual. Most times, Emory was gone by the time Reg woke up, and Reg was often up too late for Emory.

This time, in the shadows lit by a faint blue glow, he was very much aware of the weight pressed in against his side, and Emory’s breath on his shoulder.

That meant it was somewhere past his bedtime, and before Emory’s wake-up.

His surly glare lifted to the culprit. A roommate. One of several who swapped in and out per shift. What was his name? Aldrin. Alder. Something. “What is it?” he grumbled, careful not to shake his sleeping botanist awake.

The guy lifted his light, the better to outline the path to the door. “It’s your crew,” he said, whispering. “The asari. She’s tearing up the commons.”

Ah, shit.Irida, not again.

Exhaustion clung to his muscles, gritted up his eyes. Reg wanted nothing more than to nestle back in, arm around his husband, and go back to sleep for the few hours they got.

Instead, knowing he had no other choice, he carefully eased his arm out from under Emory’s motionless body. The cot creaked as he shifted over, then rolled off to land heavily on his feet.

Emory stirred. “Nn?”

Wincing, Reg reached up and smoothed back Emory’s pale brown hair. “Go back to sleep, babe,” he said, and dropped a kiss on his forehead. “I’ll be back.”

“Nn.”

With any luck, Emory wouldn’t even remember the exchange. The man was as ragged as Calix and his unit were. As Reg himself was.

And Irida, she’d taken Na’to’s death hard.

Muttering under his breath, Reg pulled the crumpled uniform on over his boxers and T-shirt, aware that all of them could use a good washing. Rations meant less wash, more wear. A fact he found skin-crawling, but necessary.

By the time he joined the human—Alden, for sure—out of the quiet dorm, he was a little more awake.

A lot more resigned. “Let me guess,” he said as he made his way to the commons. “She’s throwing things again?”

“Shields, mostly.”

Reg blinked at him. “What?”

Alden shook his head. “Just… man, you’ll see.”

And he did. It was hard to miss. A handful of people loitered outside the commons, in various stages of upset, while a few clustered around the door. From inside, Reg could hear shouting. Yelling. Swearing.

And crashes. Tables, he figured. Dishes. Hardy stuff, the things in commons, which made it easy to throw.

Heaving a sigh, he edged into the crowd, pushing them aside with a burly strength nobody wanted to contest. Reg had that going for him, at least. He was big. A brawny guy, with a head to keep it that way. It made for an unusual pairing, what with Emory’s slim nerd-build, but it made him happy to think he could protect his husband if it came to it.

Much as he wanted to protect his team.

Especially, he thought as he pushed his way fully into commons, the ones still reeling after Na’to’s loss.

Irida had, as Alden suggested, been playing with shields. Two people were held aloft in biotic balls of energy, both swearing up a storm, while another rolled across the floor. Irida sat on the table in the middle of a mess of them, many shoved aside or turned over, drinks pooling in a combined morass of sweet and sour and sharply alcoholic.

He cringed as he stepped over a brew that smelled krogan.

He ought to know. Wratch and Kaje had dragged him out to “celebrate” after Arvex and Na’to went up in Scourge smoke. He’d barely escaped with his intestines intact.

Two of the Nakmor grunts now sat in the corner, nursing their drinks without care. If they were at all bothered by the asari’s display, they didn’t seem to show it.

Irida glared at him. “Look! Pets.” A wave of her hand sent one biotic shield slamming into the other.

Reg winced as they yelped. Shouted.

Slowly, he lifted a hand, inserted his body between her sight and her playthings. The bottle in her other hand tipped toward her mouth.

“Irida,” he sighed. “Come on, you don’t drink well.”

“I drink,” she said curtly, “just fine.”

Crash! A table. One shield flickered, winked out. The human went rolling ass over elbows and lay stunned just in front of the door. “Call… Call security!”

“No, don’t,” Reg called over his shoulder. “She’s just…” Drunk. Hurting. Grieving. “She’s working through it. I got this.”

“Yeaaaaaah,” the asari slurred, leaning forward. The bottle she cradled tipped its contents.

More krogan brew.

Damn.

Reg took a few steps closer. Reached out to encircle the bottle with gentle fingers. His hand engulfed most of it. “Come on, Violet. Let’s go walk this off.”

“No!” She jerked. A sharp scream and crash said the other shield had fizzled out, leaving its prisoner free to clamber unsteadily to freedom.

Reg’s heart ached for the girl. However old she was, whatever years she had on Reg, he didn’t need to be ancient to see how badly she was coping. The team had been together for years. Served together. Fought together.

He tried for logic. “Come on. You know we’re getting rationed, let’s not make it worse for the boozers, huh?”

“Rationed.” She spat the word. “What good?” She tugged at the bottle. Seemed confused when it didn’t so much as budge under Reg’s grip. “Rations won’t bring ’im back.”

His gut kicked. Sorrow plucked at his voice as he murmured. “I know, Violet. I know. But Na’to, he wouldn’t want you to wreck yourself—or the commons,” he added, looking around, “like this.”

“How’d you know?” She glared at him, with her pale purple eyes wide and wet. “How’d anyone know?”

“Shit,” murmured someone behind him. “She’s a mess.”

He glanced over his shoulder, saw Nnebron as he edged his way in. His smile, Reg knew, was sad. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Come on, let’s get her somewhere quiet.”

Wordless now, Nnebron approached on Reg’s left, popping out with a smile from behind the larger man. “Hey, Violet, you game to help me with something?”

She stared at him, bemused. Swaying. “Maybe.” She didn’t fight when Reg looped an arm around her shoulder. “Will I need my leathers?”

“Her what?”

“Commando leathers,” Reg muttered to Nnebron.

The kid stared at him.

“No,” Reg added for Irida’s sake. “Not tonight.”

She nodded, allowed herself to be helped off the table. “’Kay. Next time?”

“Next time,” Nnebron said firmly. “Right now, I got a powerful need for some help, uh…” A pause. “Uh, for…”

“Nnebron needs an escort,” Reg said quickly. “He’s struggling with some power conduits. You wanna help?”

Irida shrugged, and as they led her across the floor, her bleary, watery eyes focused on the crowd.

Her mouth twisted. “Cowards,” she spat.

“Whoa!” Nnebron put his arm around her waist, helping her while Reg moved forward to guide—and ultimately shove—a path through the staring, muttering crowd.

“They jus’… they jus’ sat… and watched…”

“Oh, girl.” Nnebron’s voice wavered. “Come on. Let’s go drink this off.”

“Gonna show them,” she said as they half-pulled, half-led her down the corridor. She turned over her shoulder, her features set in acid lines. “Gonna show you! You don’t understand… What happens when they start this!”

“Okay, Irida,” Reg murmured, exchanging a look with Nnebron.

“First people die,” she shouted, stumbling. Reg held her up. “Then rations! It won’t end!”

Nnebron and Reg, they knew. They’d been there.

Death. Starvation.

A leadership that would do anything to save their own asses.

“Not until we do something,” Irida said miserably.

Nnebron and Reg both laced an arm around her waist, all but carrying her between them as they strode away from the silent, staring commons. “Okay,” Nnebron said patiently. “Okay. But first, maybe we drink to the memory of the best damn salarian we’ve ever known.”

Reg nodded in exaggerated agreement, until Irida noticed and tipped her head in mimicry. “Sounds good, right? Let’s drink to Nacho.”

“To Nacho,” Irida repeated.

Nnebron’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “To Nacho.”

“They’ll see,” the asari whispered.

“We’ll be okay.”

Weeks. Goddamned weeks of watching her compatriots like a hawk, reconfiguring her security patrols and duties to cover the eight officers stolen from her, and dealing with more and more outbursts among the rationed. The reasons didn’t matter—they all varied, anyway. Tempers were short. Fears were high. Stomachs were empty. Water almost gone. One wrong word, a look, a gesture…

Hell, Sloane had been awake for less than fifteen minutes before she had to bust up a brawl between a krogan and some idiot who didn’t understand lethal differences in weight categories.

Her head hurt.

All this because what? The slim hope that their scouts would find some nearby garden of bountiful delights? That the Pathfinders wouldn’t run into the Scourge themselves and wind up torn to shreds before anyone even woke to know about it?

A grim thought, even for Sloane.

The tension in the Nexus was palpable, a sort of stretched hope and rising desperation. She felt it in the corridors, in the galley and mess hall, in the training rooms her sec forces used to release whatever stress they could.

Rations were getting tight. Tighter by the day. Even so, Addison’s faith in the scout ships remained unwavering—a slim beacon of hope slowly bleeding those who held onto it. Faith, determination, was strained.

Along with everyone’s tempers.

Definitely Sloane’s.

She paced hydroponics because at least the budding green hope of future food felt more peaceful than the bare, stark metal and busted plating of the Nexus halls. The krogan were everywhere, handling emergencies, rebuilding hydropod frames, shoring up tattered bulkheads. Sloane hated to admit it—if only because of the prejudices they couldn’t seem to shed—but Kesh’s krogan workforce was a goddamn lifesaver.

Literally.

They were also big, and a unit, for all intents and purposes. So far willing to work under rationed sanctions, but for how long? They didn’t eat light.

Yet another concern among the many Sloane had vying for top priority in her head. The krogan. Tann’s increasing willingness to ignore her advice, if he even sought it in the first place. The near constant stream of scraps, arguments, and quibbles. Those could turn big, fast—and then what?

Sloane paused in front of one of the shattered hydroponic frames, staring blankly at it while she chewed on that question. Across from her, a krogan grunted as another brought him—her?—a panel to weld onto the frame.

The hiss of the seared metal and the wicked orange flare of the krogan’s omni-tool lit them both to a wild hue, flickering in and out like a demented strobe light.

Sloane frowned. She imagined what would happen if Kesh’s workforce decided enough was enough, that their labors weren’t to be taken for granted, or that their bellies needed to be full if they were going to keep up this frenetic pace. She tried to picture her security force standing up to a horde of angry krogan, and shuddered. If things tipped too far, she’d have no choice but to turn her forces on them.

The very idea of it made her queasy.

She tucked a fist against her sternum. Heartburn that had been simmering there for the past week, and she made a face as it gurgled.

Addison said she stressed too much. That she needed a break. Maybe she did. Maybe she stressed just enough. Either way, it didn’t matter. This was Sloane’s job—and despite what snide data-pushers thought about her straightforward way of getting things done, Sloane Kelly didn’t enjoy using her officers as a threat mechanism.

None of this could be blamed on the crew. They were hungry, scared people. That still couldn’t be an excuse to let them go wild. Somehow, morale needed to be raised.

But, shit, how?

Sloane growled under her breath as she spun and paced the distance back to the farthest hydroponics bay. This one gave off a warm glow, nurtured by the light designed to stimulate ecologically sound plant growth. All the hopes in the galaxy rested on these fragile little green blots. Well, on them, and on the scouts Addison had sent out.

Prognosis? Not good—and for the first time in her life she couldn’t blame the leadership, because she was the goddamn leadership.

“Shit,” she hissed, reflexively clenching her fist. She wanted to punch something. Anything. And how would that look? Who knew how people would react. Sloane didn’t want to be the flame that lit the damn fuse. No matter how good a brawl might feel right now.

Fortunately for her unraveling temper, Talini interrupted her brooding with a well-timed comm chime.

“What?” Sloane snapped, barely giving the asari time to register the visuals much less offer a greeting. Less fortunately for Sloane’s unraveling temper, the asari didn’t look like she had good news.

“We need you in maintenance, deck eight.” Flat. Grim. “There’s been an accident.” Behind the digitized tension in Talini’s voice, Sloane heard shouting. Pain. Anger.

The fucking fuse already?

“On my way,” Sloane said abruptly as she spun on her heel. The krogan watched her go, only the briefest pause in the clanging accompaniment to their work.

The first indication of trouble met Sloane the moment the elevator doors hissed wide. Darkness hid half of the corridor, the other half illuminated in stuttering pulses by lights struggling to maintain connectivity to the grid. Emergency lights bloomed red where they worked, flickered weakly where they didn’t.

Two medical personnel flanked a stretcher in the hallway. It held a salarian security tech. Green blood stained the emergency bandaging wrapped around his neck, shoulder, and chest. He gave her a weak grin and an even weaker salute, cringing with the effort.

“Be still, Jorgat,” one of the medical crew said crisply. “Ma’am,” he added to Sloane.

“How is he?”

“Lucky,” he replied with a bluntness that told her more about her teammate’s condition than anything else.

“I’ll be fine,” Jorgat wheezed. Behind the words came a gurgle Sloane didn’t like. She put a hand on the stretcher to stop it, halfway onto the lift. The doors binged unhappily at the interference.

The medics frowned at her.

“Who did this?” she asked, ignoring them in favor of the watery-eyed salarian. She bent over the stretcher to keep him from having to speak up. “What happened?”

He coughed, and flecks of green speckled her uniform. He managed, at least, a brittle laugh, even if it bubbled.

“Was a fool,” he wheezed. “Let myself get distracted.”

“An accident?” Sloane asked, her voice low to keep the rumors from spreading. She needed to put a lid on this, whatever this was, and fast.

Jorgat shook his head weakly. She understood.

Sabotage.

One of the technicians tugged at her arm. “Ma’am—”

“Go ahead.” Sloane let the stretcher continue, stepping entirely out of the way. The salarian’s large eyes closed in pain. “Take care of him,” she added.

“We will,” the woman at the front said.

The doors closed on Jorgat’s coughing fit.

Did salarian lungs collapse like humans’ did? If so, it would explain the sounds. Nothing time and care and proper medical technology couldn’t fix, but as a spike of anger jammed into the back of her brain, Sloane’s fists clenched. That didn’t matter.

He shouldn’t even have to be in this position.

Sabotage. Someone had hurt one of her crew.

Someone had hurt more than just Jorgat, Sloane realized as she strode down the corridor. The hollow feeling in her gut grew with each step. Bodies hunkered against the plating in the uncertain light, cradling various wounded limbs and digits. Burns, mostly. Electrical? Chemical?

Talini waited by a large door, a datapad in her hand. She used it to emphatically wave Sloane down. A deep furrow creased her brow, but a once-over told Sloane the asari hadn’t been part of whatever had gone down. No wounds, unbloodied uniform.

Sloane dragged a hand over her face, pushing strands of hair from her eyes. “Speak to me,” she said. The asari gestured at the knot of uniformed technicians filing in and out of the half-open doors.

“A pipe carrying coolant to one of the server rooms burst. It burst about fifteen minutes ago.”

Sloane looked back at the array of injured crew. “That’s a lot of damage for a busted pipe.”

“High pressure,” Talini replied. She flipped the datapad in her hands and pulled up the information she’d been busily recording. “This is one of the main processor hubs. Kept cooler than others for obvious reasons, but high-pressure conduits were used because they’re—”

“Cost effective,” Sloane finished dryly. “Yeah, I’ve heard the pitch.” The asari handed her the data. It didn’t mean much to her, but she got the gist—at the critical moment in the timeline, the pressure sensors went off the chart.

“There were some concerns about the amount of pressure it’d take to keep the coolant flowing, but eventually it was cleared.”

“Except?”

“Except,” Talini replied with a sigh, “in case of manual override.”

Sloane’s half-smile felt brittle. “Right. Jorgat says he was distracted?”

She nodded. “He says that the shift change for server maintenance had just begun. He knows almost all of them by face, at least, since he’s been stationed down here for a while.”

Sloane looked down the corridor, where lights peppered on and off in mimicry of the ones behind her. “Did he see an unfamiliar face then?”

“No.” Talini gestured back, moved toward the server room, and beckoned Sloane to follow. “In the middle of the shift-change, while a few of the techs were swapping the usual greetings, Jorgat says he heard something strange from inside. He came in to look—”

Sloane gasped when she stepped inside. Her breath immediately fogged, and ice crystals shuddered precariously from panels, plating, and dashboards. Although the physical damage looked minimal, Sloane picked out immediately where the worst of it had occurred. A solid spread of scratched, bent, scarred material.

“As you can see,” Talini continued grimly, “the paneling didn’t stand a chance.”

“Neither did that pipe.” Sloane frowned, tracing the signs of damage back to the wall that had buckled under the coolant pressure. It had been shut off already, which she imagined would strain the servers for now, but that wasn’t her immediate problem. The fact that ice still clung to every surface, and the number of coolant-burned limbs in the corridor behind them, made it obvious how cold it really had been.

She raised a hand to the hole in the wall, testing the edge of the metal. It was still bitterly cold. The edges of the rift peeled outward like a blooming flower. The busted pipe and various other innards had launched shrapnel out into the room.

Sloane looked back over her shoulder, mentally mapping the spread. Jorgat would have been standing right where Talini stood now. Dead on in that path.

Damn, the medic had been right. Jorgat had been very lucky. Sloane frowned, angry and frustrated in a tidy bundle called pissed off.

“What was the sound he heard?” she asked over her shoulder.

The asari tilted her head, then scanned her data again. “He said, and I quote, ‘Something like a reverse explosion, a kind of whoomp, but backward.’ End quote.”

“Mm-hm.” She leveled a look on the asari that she hoped didn’t reveal the seething anger roiling up in her chest. “Do me a favor, Sergeant. Pop up one of those circular vortex things of yours.” She gestured. “Toward the ceiling.”

Talini wasn’t anybody’s idea of a dumb broad. Sloane’s smile showed teeth as comprehension dawned on the asari’s pale blue features.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, and gathered her biotic energy, however biotics did it. Sloane didn’t know. She’d gratefully never been a biotic. The humans who were, in her experience, had some killer side effects—at least back in the day. Time and technology had apparently gotten better, but Sloane was old school.

Asari, on the other hand, all seemed naturally inclined. Talini pulled a singularity out from, well, wherever, forcing a rift in reality that sort of… reverse-popped.

Sloane nodded.

“That sound like a backward explosion to you?”

The purple and blue strains of biotic energy whirled, and even from this distance Sloane could feel strands of her hair lifting. They were too far away to succumb to the wonked-up gravity, but it disoriented her all the same.

“That could do it.” Talini turned her frown on the rift. “Given the pressure and the chemicals inside, mixing it up via biotics could produce a bottleneck large enough to cause this.”

“A biotic, then. Asari?”

“It could be an implanted human,” Talini murmured.

“I don’t remember anyone cleared on the wake-up roster, do you?”

“No. At least not anyone with that strong a grasp on the ability,” she admitted.

“We should go over crew logs,” Sloane said. “Just to be sure.”

“But you think it was an asari.”

“Any krogan throwing biotics around you know?” Sloane asked dryly.

Talini thought about it. Seriously. “No battlemasters around here. Only one I ever heard of was of the Urdnot clan.”

She was serious. Sloane stared at her, then gave up the thread entirely and said instead, “Let’s investigate the rosters anyway.”

Talini nodded again, keying in a few items to her datapad. The screen glowed as she lowered it to study the large network room. “This begs the question—why here?”

Sloane wondered the same thing. The answer, unfortunately, wasn’t too difficult to assume. “Server room, right? Information.” She jerked a thumb at the hole in the wall as she strode back toward the doors. “That’s a distraction. Like Jorgat said. Find some techs capable of going over entry logs. I want this place examined from every angle. You sit down with one of our info-sec crew and access the visual registries. Quietly, Talini. Rumors of espionage or sabotage are the last thing we need right now.”

“Yes, Director,” Talini responded smartly. She turned and followed Sloane out. The door hydraulics whirred, shuddered, but couldn’t close. Jorgat’s impact had jammed one side off its track.

Whoever did this, whoever put one of her own in the medical ward and put the lives of these techs in jeopardy… Sloane’s hands clenched again. Her teeth locked down on a series of words Talini didn’t deserve hearing.

She’d find them.

No more crew members would die on the Nexus. No more civilians, no more techs, no more. This was her station. She’d go down protecting the people in it.

Especially from themselves.

Irida Fadeer might have swapped her commando leathers for an engineer’s uniform, but that didn’t mean she’d lost her touch. Breaking and entering wasn’t the hard part. A few decades ago she might have relied on brute strength to get the job done, but technical expertise plus experience made it simpler than that.

Not without some casualties, she admitted silently as she left the engineering bunkroom. She’d done her best, but humans had this saying about breaking eggs to create meals, right? Fortunately, no one had died.

A big plus in her ledger.

The other plus being the database she’d acquired. Calix had told them to keep an eye on their supplies, but it wasn’t enough. Between the rations and the rising tension that filled the station, Irida knew something would break soon. They all knew. Calix was ahead of the game, at least, but worst-case scenario? They’d have supplies, but no information. Information made all the difference in situations like this. Especially the kind she’d taken. The protected stuff. The things they didn’t want anyone to have.

The contents were too much for her to fully digest. She skimmed enough to know it was a true prize, though. Patrol routes. Camera placements. Plenty more, no doubt. Calix could do a lot with that kind of knowledge. Protect themselves, their supplies, and the people still in stasis.

She couldn’t help her smile. It felt good to do something to ensure the safety of her unit, her crew. Calix deserved that, and so much more. He’d stood up for her, for all of them, before. He’d do it again, and this time she’d have his back, too.

“Feeling proud of yourself?”

Irida froze as the security director’s nonchalant voice rolled out from the corridor ahead of her. Sloane Kelly stepped around the corner, her hands empty, gaze sharp as a vorcha smile. Irida blinked. Her insides lurched, but she simply widened her grin and nodded respectfully.

“Director?” she said. Easily. A greeting, a little inquisitive. But behind her, she sensed as much as heard more security officers move into place. Damn it all. So she hadn’t been as careful as she’d hoped. Had the salarian seen her after all?

Maybe she should have killed him when she had the chance. Just to be sure.

Too late now. Sloane prowled closer. There was no other word for it—not that Irida could summon. She understood Calix’s respect for the woman, but this put both of them in a bad spot.

“Irida Fadeer,” the director said. “You are under arrest for breaking and entering, destruction of Nexus property—”

“To say nothing of asari, salarian, and turian property,” said a woman’s voice from behind Irida. She was trapped.

Ugh, great. That meant Irida would have even less luck popping out of this one. She’d seen the sec-force asari at work.

“Destruction of Nexus property…” Sloane repeated loudly, with a twitch under her eye that did more to cause Irida concern than anything else. She frowned, taking a half step back.

“Wait a minute, Director, what am I supposed to have—”

Sloane didn’t let her finish. With surprising speed and greater strength than Irida expected, the human pulled back a fist and rammed it hard, fast, and ugly into Irida’s face. She grunted at the impact, hit the corridor wall and rebounded into a wobbling pile at the security team’s feet. Stars swam in her eyes. Her cheek went from a strange tingle to sudden howling anguish.

Irida shook her head. No use.

She should have seen this coming. Hell, she should have planned on it, but for all Irida’s mercenary experience, she never would have expected a human Alliance officer to break protocols.

“…and for assaulting one of my team and fourteen Nexus crew,” Sloane snarled, panting. Irida didn’t know much about the woman, but as the security team wrapped hard fingers around her upper arms and dragged her to her feet, she knew one thing for certain—no Alliance, not even Sloane Kelly, would attack someone without being absolutely certain of the facts.

She’d been caught. A quiet rage welled in her, at herself more than anything.

“Take her to the brig,” Sloane snapped. “Prep her for questioning. And search her goddamn bunk,” she added sharply as she turned on her heel and strode away. Irida sniffed hard. The blue splatter of her own blood left dark streaks down her shirt. Pain danced in her sinuses. Her cheek felt as if it were on fire.

This was it. The end for her.

“Got anything you want to say?” It was the human holding onto her. Irida’s gaze slid to the asari gripping her other arm. Nothing. No help, no sympathy there.

Ah, well. Sisterhood only went so far.

“No,” she said, and spit a wad of blue-tinged mucus to the floor. If nothing else, she’d be damned if she took anyone else down with her. That part at least she’d done right. Calix knew nothing of her actions, and could not—would not—be dragged into this.

Mentally, Irida dug in. The Initiative wouldn’t execute her—they wouldn’t dare. Worst case, she’d be put back in cryo, like that bunch that had tried to steal a shuttle. And who was it who could override stasis pods?

At least, she figured as her escort double-timed her to the lift, she’d get some much-needed sleep.

The doors closed on her smile.