Mass Effect: Andromeda — Nexus Uprising

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Eos loomed dead ahead, an eerie crescent against the veins of the Scourge and the starry backdrop far beyond.

“Anything yet?” the captain asked, voice aimed at his science officer.

The turian shook his head, saying nothing.

“How is this possible? We’re right on top of it, for fuck’s sake.”

The bridge of the tiny shuttle was crowded, even down two members who lay sedated in crash-bunks just aft. More victims of the Scourge, and not likely the last. Right now, though, it wasn’t the injuries Captain Marco cared about, it was the goddamned sensors. The Scourge could make the tiny shuttle flop about like a fish on dry land, sure, but it absolutely annihilated any chance for a reliable sensor reading. Every scan came back different, or not at all. Despite Eos, the closest habitable world to the Nexus’s current position, being right in front of them, the screens oscillated between empty space, several moons, an asteroid field, and even a sprawling fleet of quarian cruisers, depending on which second you happened to look.

His shuttle was as good as blind. The data couldn’t be trusted. Yet they could all see the planet, growing ever larger.

He had to make a decision, and soon. It took only one glance at his haggard crew to know what they’d vote for: Head for home. Enough’s enough.

Marco had no intention of doing that. Not yet. The Nexus couldn’t afford for them to return empty-handed, and his crew knew it. They were just scared, and who could blame them?

“Captain?” his navigator called out. “In sixteen seconds we won’t be able to escape the planet’s gravity. If we burn now we can slingshot around and make for the Nexus. Let them know our—”

“Negative,” he said. “We’re not going back empty-handed.”

No one spoke.

An eerie howling began somewhere at the nose of the ship and worked its way down her hull. Joints in the hull, grinding as the weird tendrils of the Scourge continued to toy with them.

“Nav, we’re going to burn, but not to pass the planet by.”

“You can’t actually intend to land without sensors?”

“No,” he admitted, “not land. But we’re going to dip into that atmosphere and see what we can see.”

Eos had a thick layer of high clouds, preventing a view of what bounty the surface might hold. Scans made, hell, centuries ago now, indicated plant life and plenty of water. A prime settlement candidate. Now, though, the sensors returned only gibberish. So they’d do it the old-fashioned way and take a look with their own eyes.

Again, no argument from his crew. They all knew what they were signing up for coming on this mission, but that didn’t take the sting out of it. This was a hell of a dangerous maneuver, especially relying on visuals alone, and perhaps the anguished groans of the hull plating.

The engines roared, right on cue. Ahead, Eos began to swivel as the small craft angled its thermally shielded side toward the green-gray clouds.

Marco didn’t need to order everyone to strap in. They hadn’t left their flight chairs since the first friendly love tap from the Scourge, about a million klicks out from the Nexus. By then the battered station had been too far behind them to hail, and the turbulence quieted down, as if daring them to go a little farther.

The planet blotted out the stars now, and the ropy blurred limbs of the Scourge. Sensors hadn’t learned anything new about the phenomenon, either. Readings were garbage, totally useless, not to be trusted.

“Comms,” Captain Marco said.

“Here,” the engineer replied. Not a trained comms officer, but the woman had handled the task admirably.

“Keep trying to raise the Nexus, and the arks. All bands, all frequencies.”

“I know,” she said, not impatiently. He’d given the order before, twice, and she’d always been on top of the task.

“Transmit everything we see, understood? I don’t care if it’s scrambled. Maybe they’ll figure out a way to decipher it. We have to try.”

“Understood,” she replied, a catch in her voice this time. There was more finality in his words than he’d intended, but nothing to be done about it now.

The shuttle began to rattle, and not from the Scourge this time. Eos’s atmosphere had begun to scrape their hull.

His view became a maelstrom as flames began to lick and curl around the bottom of the craft. The hull shuddered under the stresses. The black of space began to transform into the high, dusty brown clouds.

In seconds they were enveloped, visibility obliterated. Marco gripped the armrests until his knuckles went white.

All at once the violence ended. The clouds lifted. They were below it, and in danger now of dropping too far.

“Engines!” he shouted. “And roll us!”

The craft punched forward and, in the same instant, began to overturn.

Marco leaned forward, breath held tight in his chest.

Eos should have been a garden world. Lush, with long winding rivers and two shallow seas. So the scans had said, long before the Nexus even reached Andromeda.

He couldn’t see well enough. Against his better judgment, Marco unlatched his harness and leaned as far as he could to press his face to the window.

The captain did not see gardens. Or forests. No jungles or vast canopies of giant trees.

He saw barren desert. Desolation. Dust.

And something else, too. A massive monolith that towered over all around, punching upward like a crystal shard. “What… is… that?” he asked aloud, each word a struggle.

“A wasteland,” someone whispered, and Marco wondered if they meant Eos, or Andromeda itself.

Movement caught his eye, above. A snaking black tendril roiling with thousands of tiny explosions. It tore through the atmosphere, twisting and bending as if searching for something. As if—

The long finger of the Scourge bent and then slammed into the shuttle with the force of a hurricane. The ship heaved violently. Someone screamed. Marco thought maybe it was him. There came a smack as his skull slammed into the frame of the window, and everything went black.

Marco remembered falling, and pain, and words that sounded incredibly distant.

“Get us out of here,” someone was saying. “Get us out!”

“She’s ready for questioning.”

Sloane took the tablet Talini gave her, scanned it briefly. All the usual red tape was in order. After her brief and annoying conversation with Tann, she at least had that going for her.

Tann had demanded that she “handle it,” which Sloane had every intention of doing, but she’d do it her way, not his. He thought throwing Fadeer into stasis would suffice. After all, it had made for a tidy end to the hostage-takers. A punishment that required no trial. Sloane had other ideas. Ones that included questions about Fadeer’s motives. Her intentions. Her support.

The asari had a good record, she noted. Excellent references. Calix himself had vouched for her, including a sterling letter of reference for her service in his previous deployment on the Warsaw. Sloane pondered that. All of his team, at least the core group, had served with him there. And they’d all followed him here.

Interesting.

Whatever caused Irida to sabotage the Nexus and injure personnel along the way, it couldn’t be anything as simple as Tann clearly hoped. Sloane needed to know for certain, though. She handed the datapad back.

“Has she said anything?”

“She asked for water. I got the sense it was meant to be ironic.”

“How very clever.” Sloane shook her head. “Anything else?”

“She says she’ll be pressing charges for the assault.”

Sloane snorted.

The asari took that as the answer it was. “I should also warn you that we’re getting heat from the network techs injured in the sabotage.”

“What do they want?”

“Answers, I’d suspect.” She spread her long blue fingers in the universal gesture of who knows. “Retribution for some, compensation for others.”

Sloane’s lip curled. “Tough. We’re not Omega.” She rolled her shoulders, heard both of them pop from the tension. “Give them the usual line. If I hear of a single outburst, I’ll lock them up, too.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The asari would deal with the administrative bullshit, so Sloane’s full focus was on Irida Fadeer. She’d walked the corridors until most of her anger burned off, yet plenty still simmered in her gut. The guard outside Fadeer’s cell saw her coming, and opened it.

“Ma’am,” he murmured.

The prisoner sat primly on the narrow bunk, her hands in her lap—and still in the biotic-proof full-hand shackles. Fadeer looked cool and calm. Blood was still smeared on her cheek, ruining the impression a touch. Just enough to make Sloane grimace. Okay, so maybe she’d get some censure for that one. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“Director,” Fadeer said in greeting. No fake smile this time. Just that mysterious air asari all seemed so fucking good at. Sloane stopped just inside the door. It closed behind her with a solid thump.

The asari didn’t flinch.

That alone made Sloane want to start hitting things.

“Start. Talking.”

“Without a lawyer? I think there’s one in stasis,” she added pointedly.

“This is an unofficial chat.”

Fadeer’s nose wrinkled. “Then maybe we can both get some answers. You seem sure I was the perpetrator. How do you know?”

“You tell me, smartass.” Sloane tucked her hands behind her, military at ease—even if nothing in her body felt at ease. Not her muscles, not her gut, not her stewing anger.

The asari’s nose unwrinkled into a faint smile. “I’m positive the salarian security guard didn’t see me. None of the network technicians noticed me. So that leaves security footage.” Her head tipped, the light glinting over her purple frill. “Except I avoided the cameras.”

Sloane didn’t like this tack, not at all. She took a step forward. “What were you looking for in the data core? What’d you take?”

Fadeer chewed on her lip for a moment, thoughtfully studying the security director. The urge to punch her—again—practically drilled a hole through Sloane’s fraying temper, doubled when understanding dawned in the asari’s gaze.

“You’ve tightened security, haven’t you? What is it?” She smiled. “Hidden cameras? Automatic image capture when a network is accessed?”

Shit. Sloane said nothing, not aloud, but her scowl spoke volumes. It seemed to be all the answer Irida needed. A dark brow lifted.

“Director,” the asari said coolly, “I don’t believe the general populace agreed to secret surveillance, nor were we informed.”

“Yeah, well, the general populace is what you assaulted with your stunt,” Sloane snapped. She flung a hand out, her gesture taking in the entire Nexus beyond the small cell. “That extra security caught you in the act. The general populace can knock on my door and scream all day, as long as I’m putting criminals like you away.”

“Tsk.” The asari just spread her hands, wrist shackles clanking at the jointed center, and said musingly, “Well, that will be interesting to watch unfold.” She turned her face forward, settling her hands back into her lap. “Good luck.”

Sloane glared at the asari. An assault in the heat of the moment was one thing—it wasn’t her first, and wouldn’t be her last. She couldn’t kick in Irida Fadeer’s teeth, though, and get away without repercussions.

“The data, Fadeer. What did you access?”

Nothing.

“Is Calix Corvannis in on this? Does he know?”

There. A twitch. A bit of a frown.

“No.”

“Then why? And who helped you?”

“I acted alone.”

“Bullshit.”

As if she had all the time in the world, the prisoner looked steadily ahead and said nothing else. That was that. She was done talking, which meant Sloane had two problems. She still didn’t understand the motives of a saboteur, and the asari knew about the extra security.

She hadn’t even told Tann or Addison.

Damn it.

Sloane turned and rapped on the door. The guard opened it and shut it hastily behind her. He even managed not to jump when Sloane turned and punched the door as it locked in place. Only the briefest flash of satisfaction crossed her features when the so-cool asari flinched on the other side.

“Orders, ma’am?” the guard asked. Sloane shot him a look that had him bracing for impact.

“Tell Talini I’m going to see a turian about a traitor.”

“Er…”

“She’ll figure it out,” Sloane said curtly, and she strode away from the scene of her own bloody frustration. Maybe Fadeer’s boss would have insight. Maybe he’d have the answers.

Maybe she’d have to arrest him, and the whole damn life-support crew.

Fucking great.

Calix preferred the comfort of his engineering surroundings first—obvious by how often she found him there—and the comfort of the Consort’s chambers second. That one came by his own admission, and Sloane couldn’t blame him. The asari Consort’s chambers used to be a favorite of many Citadel visitors. Since there was no such thing here on the Nexus, and he wasn’t to be found in engineering, she made her way to the commons.

It was late. Late enough that the only people in the area were quietly unwinding for sleep, using whatever was available. Books, some quieter music, dim lights, or in Calix’s case, a glass of what was probably turian whiskey. He didn’t seem the type to risk anything else. Dextro-amino acids had been carefully stocked and prepared for the turians on board, which provided an extra pinch to rations, yet they couldn’t eat what the humans did.

He saw her enter, raised his glass in one hand. The dim light threw a sheen over his metallic carapace.

“Director Sloane. Come have a drink.”

“I think I will, but not that stuff,” she said as she approached. “I’ve got enough shit to deal with without adding literal—”

“I understand,” he cut in dryly. His eyes gleamed. “You look like you’ve had a hell of a day.” Calix watched her as she snagged a bottle of beer from behind the commons counter. His head tipped. It was faintly avian, she thought, which also made him seem harmless.

Sloane wondered just how true that was. She threw a leg over the closest chair and settled into a not quite easy comfort.

“Got a moment to talk shop?”

The turian blinked. “You want to… talk commerce? I don’t mind, but it seems somewhat premature.” It took Sloane a second to remember that turians, like salarians who didn’t care to read up on human culture, tended to miss the metaphors.

“I mean,” she stressed, a smile tugging at her lips despite her simmering frustration, “do you have time to talk about Nexus business?”

His expression cleared, mandibles moving as he chuckled. “Oh, that. Sure, Sloane. Or should I stick with director?”

She grimaced. “Sloane.”

“Got it.” He tipped his drink into his mouth in that unique way turians did, and Sloane took the opportunity to study him as she took a pull of her beer. There was a one-drink limit at the commons. Sloane had to make the best of it.

Calix didn’t look like a turian managing a criminal enterprise. He was as relaxed as she’d ever seen him, though still as weary as ever. They all were. She watched him carefully as she, well, metaphorically ripped out the tooth.

“Irida Fadeer is in custody.”

“Irida?” Another blink. “For what?”

“Sabotage, illegal access to secure networks, classified data theft.” She ticked them off with raised fingers. “Causing a lot of collateral damage and casualties.”

“Any deaths?”

“Not for the lack of trying,” Sloane replied bitterly. “Half a shift is out of commission for a few days, and we’ve got a salarian in medical who’s critical. Might be that by morning we’ll be adding murder to the charges, instead of just attempted.”

“Hell, I’m sorry.” He rubbed at his crest with his free hand, looking up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Were you involved?”

He went rigid at the accusation. She watched him, studied every line of his features. Some said turian faces were hard to read, but it wasn’t so. Sloane spent enough time with them to get the gist. He was upset—though at the question, the casualties, or disappointment in Irida? She couldn’t be sure. But he met her gaze with a forthrightness that somehow managed to reassure her.

“I had nothing to do with it. Nor,” he added calmly, “did anyone else in my crew. I’ll stake my job on it.”

Sloane let out a relieved breath. She couldn’t say why she believed him, but she did. He didn’t prevaricate, didn’t dodge the question or her stare. Her body relaxed a fraction more, and she took another swig from her bottle. The frothy beer fizzed going down.

“What did she take?” he asked. “You said classified.”

Sloane tipped her beer, frowning down into the dark neck of it. Buying time, really. Deciding how much to say. Sloane decided to enfold him in her trust, get him on her side of this, lest his loyalty to Irida become a barrier.

“A database. Full of maintenance data, equipment placement, that sort of thing. I can’t figure out why.”

“Can’t you?”

That got her attention. Sloane’s gaze lifted to meet his. “Explain.”

The turian let out a long, gusty sigh. He shifted in his chair, set the whiskey on his leg and cradled it there. “Think about it,” he said slowly. “You’ve felt the tension in the air, right? People are worried.”

“I know.” She pulled a face. “It just adds to the real problems.”

“It is a real problem,” he corrected. “First we woke up in chaos, then we found our leadership dead.” He gestured at her. “Suddenly, there were three people in charge nobody really knew. No offense to you or Addison, and okay, maybe a bit to Tann, but Garson was the heart and soul of this mission.”

“Thanks for pointing out my lack of heart and soul,” she cut in wryly. His eyes twinkled with returned humor, but he didn’t stop to address it.

“You wake up a lot of people to get things back in order, they see the mess and lack of stores of food, not to mention this mysterious and downright dangerous Scourge looming all around us, and then you ask them to go back to cryo on faith that things will be okay. When they don’t agree, they start getting rationed. Rations are inevitably cut, and people start getting hungry. They want answers. Hope. Will the scout ships return? Will the Pathfinders ever arrive? Will the Scourge finish us off? Patience dwindles by the day, Sloane.”

The list annoyed her, mostly because he was right. She leaned forward, cradling her beer between both hands, braced her elbows on her knees, and scowled.

“Justification isn’t what I’m interested in, it’s motive.”

“You humans have a saying for it,” he said, unfazed by the irritation she didn’t bother hiding. “Waiting for the shoe to fall?”

“Close enough.”

“The pioneers aboard the Nexus have hit obstacle after obstacle.” He gestured at the commons around them, which was deceptively quiet given the nature of their discussion. “Tensions are running high. Every emergency, accident, and failure leaves them feeling more exposed. Less safe. Leadership treats them like babies you can put down to bed—”

She couldn’t help but snort. “You aren’t a parent, are you?”

He laughed outright, shaking his head. “All right, perhaps that was a bad analogy. Point is, to them, leadership seems to want them to perform like VIs—on command, when necessary, power down when done. Like good little machines.” He shrugged. “They’re scared, Sloane. They think no one will protect them when that shoe falls. They don’t want to be in cryo, helpless, when it happens.”

She could see it now.

“By stealing that information,” Sloane said slowly, thinking it through, “Irida could be ready when the shoe drops—she’d know where everything is, and perhaps how to get to it. But for what? A siege? A threat?”

“No,” Calix said quietly. “Think about it the other way around. It’s a ticket to some freedom. Maybe she just wants to make sure there’s a place where she and others like her might feel safe.”

“Great.” Sloane rubbed at her forehead, then pinched the bridge of her nose between two tense fingers. “Meanwhile this presents a threat to everyone else on board. What are the odds she passed the data off to someone else?”

“Only she and whomever she may have talked to know for sure. The real question here, I think, is how do we stop the shoe?”

That was an excellent, excellent question. How did you reassure hungry, scared people that everything was going to be okay? Hold out hope for the Pathfinders? The scouts? Talk up hydroponics? Would an “everything is going to be okay” cover it?

Hell if Sloane knew.

Maybe Addison would. Maybe even Tann would have ideas that didn’t involve forcing people back to sleep.

“If you don’t mind me saying,” Calix offered cautiously, “it may start with how you treat Irida.” She scowled. “I know, I know, she’s on my team and of course I want her treated well, but if she winds up out the airlock, if her punishment is perceived as a warning to others…”

She squinted at Calix, and thought of the way she’d carried herself during the arrest. The punch she’d thrown, and what she’d said. But more than that, the punishment Sloane herself had advocated back when those terrorists had tried to steal a shuttle.

“Do you think I’d space somebody over a dissenting opinion?”

His crack of laughter forced him to put a long hand over his drink to keep it from spilling.

“You? Nah. You’re a hard woman, Sloane, but you’re not completely heartless.” At her grimace, he cocked his head again. “Why, is our ‘acting director’ spreading rumors?”

“If it helps his position.” Now she grimaced. “Ugh, I shouldn’t say that. I have no proof.”

“Probably don’t need any.” He hummed a low note of wry humor. “He’s a real piece of work, isn’t he?”

Sloane’s chuckle felt sharp in her chest. “And then some.”

“Well, stands to reason.”

“Because he’s salarian?”

“Just an observation.” Calix leaned forward, fingers curved around his glass so he could swirl its contents at her. “He’s a numbers type. An ‘at all costs’ sort, right? It’s important to him to keep the upper hand in a power play. After all, power is money.”

It should have been money is power, but in this case, the turian was dead right. Tann, she admitted silently, would much rather have the power. “Whatever that’d net him on this floating wreck,” she said aloud.

The turian’s index finger uncurled from around the glass to point at her. “It’d net him plenty. Including full say over operations. I bet he wants a finger in everything.”

Sloane grunted a laugh, uncomfortable at how cozy this conversation had become, but unwilling to draw a line. It felt good to talk to someone who understood the clusterfuck the council had become. Calix seemed to understand.

“Sorry I don’t have better news, Sloane. Things are tough.”

“Things are out of control,” she replied.

“Why did you come here?”

“Fadeer. And the drink.” She lifted her bottle in salute.

He studied her, slowly shaking his head. “I mean why did you, Sloane Kelly, security director, come to Andromeda?”

“A fresh start,” she said automatically. Calix was too clever by far for this pat answer, though. And she didn’t have any reason not to say. “Because I didn’t have anything to leave behind. Because it was a chance to do things right, for once. To be better.”

“You could have been better back home.”

“This is home.”

“You know what I mean.”

Sloane looked away, gathering her thoughts. “It’s hard to make things better,” she said, “when you have so much momentum in a certain direction. Thousands of years of ingrained biases, time-tested laws that no one even remembers why they were written. Regs in place because that’s the way it’s always been done.”

Calix inclined his head, agreeing, and also encouraging her to go on.

“That sort of cruft drives me insane,” she continued, though she couldn’t quite say why. “No, the problem with ‘back home’ is that even if you could be a catalyst for change, you can’t hope to do more than get the process moving. And hope that, well after you’re dead and gone, something works.”

“You could have requested a post at some colony, far from the Citadel. Surely there’s no shortage of out-of-the-way places where you’d have the rank needed to be in charge.”

Sloane found herself nodding. “True. I thought about it, but that’s a fresh start only for me. And eventually the colony would be drawn back into the fold, the day it’s no longer considered irrelevant.”

He chuckled dryly. “I’d say you’re jaded, but that would be an understatement.”

“Yeah, well,” Sloane said, then trailed off. “Thanks for the drink, Calix.”

“You got it.”

Sloane downed the rest of her beer, then pitched it toward the receptacle. Calix watched it arc through the air. It clinked as it rebounded off the inner edge, then sank into the bin.

“A fraction to the left,” he murmured, “and you’d be cleaning up glass.”

“Story of my life, friend.” Her smile showed teeth as she forced her weary body up from the chair. “Story of my fucking life.”

The turian lifted his glass in solidarity—sympathy, acknowledgement, and good luck all in the tip of dark amber liquid.

She’d need it all before this ended.

Sloane went back to the security offices, dragging ass and she knew it. As she threw herself down into the nearest chair she wrestled with the truth—that Calix hadn’t offered any answers. Just more questions, and the metaphorical shoe.

Had Irida Fadeer been working alone? Was she after something specific? Rations, or other resources?

Were other Nexus personnel involved? If so, how many?

Talini looked up from her temporary desk, setting her tablet down gently. “Did you get anything from Corvannis?”

“Yes… and no.”

The asari cupped her chin in her hand, elbow planted. “Let me guess. More questions?”

“How the hell do you do that?” Sloane muttered. “It’s like you know.”

“I just figured. There hasn’t been much interaction on the feeds to indicate the existence of co-conspirators. Chatter between members of her team, of course, but we haven’t found anything damning. They’re just concerned for her, and angry with us. Typical. Judging from the surveillance, she acted alone, for what it’s worth.”

“Is it too much to hope that she’s an independent?”

Talini shrugged. “There’s a case for every scenario.”

“Including the one that justifies sedition?” The asari’s rueful smile told Sloane the answer. She cursed vividly. Cursed some more, and when Talini only shook her head, Sloane added a few in turian. For color.

When she finished Sloane leaned back in her chair and glowered at the ceiling, her mind furiously grinding on the facts. Calix had told her more than she’d asked. Made it clear and to her face that people were scared. It was one thing to feel it yourself, and something else entirely to hear it from someone else.

She rubbed at the back of her sore neck, wondering why she’d said as much as she had. An instinct, she supposed. An innate ability to spot the trustworthy, the loyal. The turian had shown her over and over that he’d work to the bone for this station. His team had, too.

So what set Irida Fadeer off?

A small cup of dark, steaming liquid clicked against the desk next to her elbow. Sloane glanced over, then sighed in unashamed ecstasy when the rich aroma of coffee filled her nose.

“I dipped into supplies,” Talini confessed, nudging the cup closer. “You look like you need it.”

Hell. Sloane wouldn’t deny it. “Thanks.” She picked up the cup and held it between her callused hands, absorbing its warmth, its fragrance. Talini rested a hand on Sloane’s shoulder, in a brief moment of understanding.

“Hang in there.”

“Best as we can.” She glowered into the dark brew.

Six-hundred-year-old coffee. Fucking tragic, really. The coffee had aged better than all of them.

Sloane sighed. “All right. Let’s get to work.”