Mass Effect: Andromeda — Nexus Uprising

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Act casual,” Calix said to Lawrence Nnebron.

The man acted anything but. Fidgeting, staring at the two guards for long seconds, not looking away when they returned the stare. He’d taken Irida’s arrest worse than most, and was itching to get some payback. Not that he knew the true reason for her arrest, but this wasn’t the time or place to get into that. Calix grabbed his upper arm gently but with enough force to turn him away from the hallway entrance.

“Our goal is what’s inside,” he said.

“It’s not right what they did,” Nnebron muttered. His eyes were downcast though. He recognized his own pettiness, and that was a start.

“I agree,” Calix said, “but we don’t need to draw attention to ourselves. We’ll do so in ways that matter.”

Nnebron kicked at an invisible pebble, scuffing the floor.

Calix glanced at the others around him. Just a bunch of friends, enjoying a few minutes of R&R before they went back to the repair work. Only Nnebron had fallen out of character, and perhaps that wasn’t so bad, Calix thought. It gave him something to talk about with the two guards.

“The rest of you stay here, I’ll be back.” Before any of them could question him, Calix walked calmly over to the pair. He put on his best turian smile. “How are things, officers?”

“What’s the matter with your friend?” one of them asked, jerking his chin toward Nnebron. The stained uniform identified him as White. An older human, squat and powerfully built, with a rather awful-looking pencil mustache incongruously framed by bushy eyebrows and overgrown sideburns.

“Yeah,” the other guard said. “He doesn’t seem too happy with us.” Another human, her height and thin clean face an almost comical contrast to White. Her uniform read Blair.

“Don’t mind him,” Calix replied. “One of his friends was arrested, and he’s still a little sore about it. I just wanted to apologize if his, er, attitude bothered you.”

“If we bother him,” White said, “maybe you should take your group elsewhere.”

“We’ll be getting back to work in a few minutes, don’t worry. In the meantime, you both look like you’re at the far end of a long shift. Need anything? Food, water?”

Blair turned her focus to him, now. Her eyes were sharp, narrowed. “Rations have already been distributed for the week. If you’re suggesting that you can acquire—”

“No, no.” Calix held up his hands, palms out. “I saved a bit is all, and I’m happy to share.” He pulled a water bottle from his jacket and waved it in front of her. The clear fluid sloshed.

“I’m good, thanks.”

White sized him up as well. “Why don’t you rejoin your friends, sir. We’re on duty here.”

“Of course,” he said. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

Calix took one last glance at the bulkhead door behind the pair. Imprinted on the frame, in tiny lettering, a maintenance identifier had been stenciled. He walked back to his team. Nnebron eyed him with curiosity, and perhaps a little bit of suspicion.

“Why are you offering water to those assholes?”

With his back to the guards, Calix poured the bottle of water into a planter. The plant was fake. The soil, too, no doubt scheduled to be replaced with something from hydroponics in that alternate reality where the Nexus wasn’t a wreck.

“What the hell?” Nnebron asked. “I could have used that.”

“I doubt that.” He shook the last few drops out and returned the empty bottle to his jacket. “Unless you want to sleep for a week.”

Nnebron blinked, looking at Calix with renewed admiration. An expression matched by the others from his team, who’d gathered around. In truth the water was just water. Calix had only meant to distract the two guards for a moment while he learned the ID code for the bulkhead. He hadn’t anticipated what the gesture would look like to his own people.

They were already a little suspicious of him, ever since his lengthy talk with Sloane Kelly, and though that suspicion had remained unvoiced, he could tell they were looking for signs. From the looks on their faces, though, he’d not only dispelled the concern, but swung the pendulum in the other direction. Not only had he not offered the guards water, he’d tried to drug them.

If that was what they were made to believe, Calix saw no harm in it.

“We’ll have to take a different approach,” he said.

They all nodded. Just tell us what to do, their eager eyes said.

“They refused the water,” he continued, already feeling a bit trapped in the fiction he’d created, “so we’ll need some other way to get them to leave the door.”

“A diversion,” one of his crew said.

“That’s easy,” Nnebron said. “I know just the thing.” There was something in his voice Calix wasn’t sure he liked. A malice, yet the enthusiasm couldn’t be denied.

“Maybe another barbecue,” he suggested thoughtfully. “Open flames are sure to draw a response.”

“Count on it,” Nnebron said. With a simple gesture he recruited two others from the group, and the trio strode away, talking in hushed tones as they went. Calix watched them go, and wondered how wise that assignment had been. Nnebron was a hothead, and the arrest of his friend Irida hadn’t exactly helped matters.

Oh, well, he mused. Nothing to be done about it now. He could see it in the faces of the six who remained. They were looking to him to lead the way, but they were going to do something, whether or not he accepted the role. They needed a change. They needed to know that life wasn’t going to be like this forever, working themselves to death on a station that should have been abandoned months ago, for an unqualified trio of leaders who made questionable decisions at every turn. Leaders still mired in the prejudices and politics the rest of the crew had wanted to leave behind.

They’d come here for a new beginning, not to prop up old, outdated bigotry.

The PA crackled, and the voice of Foster Addison began to fill the station. “As many of you know, ten weeks ago Colonial Affairs sent out a fleet of vessels to scout the nearest worlds…”

Calix and his little band of admirers listened without a word. The two guards, Calix noted, shifted uneasily, eyes scanning the few people in the common room. He wondered if they knew what this was about.

Activating his omni-tool, he dove into the endless menus and elaborate maze of files and folders he’d created to hide the thing he needed. The true prize in Irida’s stolen data.

Addison’s words continued to echo around the room and down the long hallways.

“I am sad to announce that these missions have failed,” she said. Gasps from those who had gathered.

“I can’t believe they sat on this for weeks,” one of Calix’s team said. It was Ulrich, a burly human whose gruff bruiser appearance often led others to underestimate him. The man was one of the finest engineers Calix had ever met. He’d been part of the team since the beginning—one of the first to join the Nexus mission.

“Stay calm, stay calm,” Calix said, getting the tone just right. He’d had no idea Addison would announce this just as he and his team were going to act. It presented an opportunity, however, that he couldn’t resist. Let them think he’d planned the timing.

Got it! Calix found the hidden file. The override codes Irida had stolen. He still couldn’t quite say why he’d kept them, or why he’d lied about it to Sloane, the only member of the hierarchy “worth her salt,” as the saying went.

“Here’s the plan…” he said.

An alarm rang out.

Someone shouted, “Fire!”

It came from a connecting hallway. The same hall Nnebron and his friends had taken. Then another shout.

“Fire in Hydroponics!”

A message blipped on Calix’s screen.

This should get their attention.

Oh hell, Nnebron—what did you do?

The two guards raced from the room, shouldering Calix aside as they abandoned their post in front of the bulkhead door. As diversions went, a fire in Hydroponics was about the best he could have wished for—only he hadn’t wished for it. Not at all. If Nnebron damaged the food supply…

Calix didn’t want to think about that. He had to act, now, while the guards were gone. They’d left the bulkhead unguarded, that much he had predicted. It was a bulkhead, after all, and only security could override those.

He scanned Irida’s stolen list, found the ID code he’d spotted on the frame, and tapped in the override. A dull thud from inside the wall, and then the massive doors opened.

“Come on,” Calix said to his team. “We won’t have much time.”

“What’s in there?” Ulrich asked, suddenly dubious.

“The armory,” Calix answered.

No further convincing required.

William Spender watched from afar as Calix and his little gang moved on the armory. He watched the door open for them as if it were welcoming old friends, too.

“Isn’t that interesting,” he said to himself, and glanced around to make sure he wasn’t being watched.

He should report this to security. Probably be in a lot of trouble if he didn’t.

But William Spender had little love for Sloane Kelly, and even less for a political landscape with only one side to play.

So, yes, he’d contact security. But first he’d give Calix a full minute inside the weapons vault.

Maybe even two.

Even deep in the weapons locker, Calix could hear Foster Addison’s speech. She spoke of the mission, and the need to support its aims no matter the cost. That was her mistake, really. The continued and irrational belief in a dead dream. They were going to get everyone killed, except perhaps for themselves, and all because they couldn’t see the truth.

Jien Garson was dead, and her vision died with her.

Calix found it slightly amusing, and more than a little frustrating, that their leaders just assumed the life-support team would go along with the plan. That he and his people would participate in this misguided effort. No one had asked him, of course.

He wondered if anyone had asked Kesh, but considering a salarian was in charge, probably not.

Around him, they were stealing every gun they could get their hands on.

“Bag it all,” he said to them.

No one needed to hear it, though. They were on autopilot now. A veritable feeding frenzy of weaponry. His plan had been to take the weapons and relocate them to some hidden, out-of-the-way chamber. That would even the odds a bit, and give him a bargaining chip. Leverage to demand new leadership, and a more diverse security force. A new plan. And, of course, a full pardon for his team. Only then would he tell them where the weapons were.

Yet standing there, watching his angry crew stuff the tools of violence into tactical bags so heavy they could barely lift their prizes, he knew they’d never agree to return them. He’d been crazy to think it himself.

“That’s enough,” he said. “Security will be back soon, and we need to be gone.”

“Where to next?” someone asked.

Calix had to think fast. He hadn’t expected this to happen so quickly, or to go like this. For a moment he felt adrift on a swift current, the one person with a raft to which everyone else had decided, inexplicably, to cling.

“After what Addison just said,” he replied, “I think we’d better get our hands on as many supplies as we can before the council barricades them.”

If they haven’t already, he amended silently.

“Even if they do, they won’t be able to stop us,” another said with a wolfish grin.

“Maybe so,” Calix admitted, “but I’d rather be the ones defending it.”

“Smart play.”

Agreement all around. Again. Calix wished they’d think for themselves a bit, but this wasn’t the time to encourage them. Far from it. No, he’d started something here, and there would be no walking away. In Andromeda, there was nowhere else to go, after all.

As they slipped out of the armory, each of them carrying two full bags and most with a third slung over their shoulders, Calix tried to picture this moment from the perspective of the bystanders. The few crew members milling about in the common room had backed up to the walls, hands outstretched, mouths agape as they watched this random group of techs walk out of security with so much gear.

Barrels of weapons poked out of the bags they strained to carry. Despite Addison’s words that still echoed off the walls, they saw only theft. He needed to do something about that, and soon. The label of terrorism would be slapped on them, and quickly.

As they moved toward their destination, Calix’s omni-tool squawked relentlessly. Sloane, Sloane, Kesh, Sloane. He wondered if they were trying to discover his location—he’d disabled that function an hour ago. Security might have a way around that, though, but he still needed the device to override the bulkheads.

Override the bulkheads.

Of course! Calix dropped the bags of weapons and knelt. His band of thieves silently gathered around, knowing something was up. He rushed through the menus again, from rote memory this time, and found the option he wanted.

“We’re going to have to hurry after this,” he said. With that he selected a command and entered it. Then he used his credentials to do one of the few things his chief’s status would allow. He activated the station-wide public address.

“This is Calix Corvannis, and I am here to tell you all to say no.” His words echoed where Addison’s had just a few moments ago. “Say no. Resist the order to return to stasis.”

The message was loud and clear. He thought he’d pulled it off, too. Stern and yet rational, collected. As he finished, the command he’d entered took effect. Every sealed bulkhead door in the inhabited zone of the Nexus began to open.

Calix moved at a brisk walk, forcing a look of concerned focus onto his face, not meeting the eyes of any they passed.

Smoke billowed from Hydroponics. He walked on by without even glancing into the room. He didn’t want security to see him, but more than that, he didn’t want to know. Nnebron may have doomed them all by starting that fire, rendering all of this moot. They’d just have to hope the damage was superficial, or quickly contained.

A distraction, not abject sabotage.

He turned down a long hallway, his team following close behind like a gang of hired thugs. What have I started? he thought, then he pushed the question aside. All that really mattered was how it would end.

He turned on the PA again, before they removed his authority to access it. He spoke into it as he walked.

“Do not enter your pods,” he said. “We are not robots who can just be switched off when our existence here becomes inconvenient. This station is ours, all of ours, and it’s not going to be fixed by anyone but us.

“No one is coming to our rescue. No planets wait to harbor us. Addison got that part right. What she didn’t tell you is that our leaders have known this for two weeks. Two weeks! The Nexus doesn’t need all of you asleep. What it needs is all of you at your stations, doing what you came here to do. A great push to right this ship! A great—”

His access to the PA vanished.

His omni still worked, but the channel had been cut.

“Well,” he said, “I guess someone didn’t like what I was saying.” That elicited laughs from his “gang.” He looked at them over his shoulder. The resistance, they were. The uprising.

Calix couldn’t quite pinpoint how he’d managed to be at the head of this, but he suspected it went all the way back to the Milky Way. The stand he’d taken against the captain of the Warsaw. Something anyone in his position would have done, as far as he was concerned. Yet the action had grown in that case, too, becoming an unstoppable thing that made him out to be some kind of legend. A role, evidently, that fate had found for him.

So be it.

He hoped Kesh would understand. He thought she might. After all, if a krogan couldn’t understand rising up against oppressors, who could?

Calix stopped in an alcove one turn away from the hangar Spender had designated the station’s temporary warehouse.

“Arm yourselves,” he said to those around him. He dropped his bags and selected the first weapon his fist wrapped around. A Mattock assault rifle, at least he thought so. Not exactly his area of expertise. Whatever the specs, however, it would do.

“Once we secure the room,” he said, “I’ll need three of you to ferry these bags inside. Then we’ll use the lev-carts to move everything toward the ark docking bays.” The location just tumbled out, as if he’d worked it out weeks ago. In truth it had simply popped into his head, only because he’d heard a krogan say that they had cleared a path there recently. The space remained, as of yet, empty of any equipment, and Calix had a strong feeling that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

His team all nodded as if this were sage wisdom. Only in that moment did he realize they were right. That he’d picked the perfect place. If only they could get there, and secure it…

“What lev-carts?” Andria asked.

Uh-oh…

“There’s bound to be a whole bunch of them inside,” Calix replied. He hoped it was true, otherwise this little rebellion would end in a very short siege.

Once everyone had selected a weapon, he nodded and took up the lead once again. He walked more slowly now, battling a voice in his head that kept shouting at him to stop here, to turn back. Rounding the next corner was the point of no return. Ahead lay a future as a traitor, an outlaw. Behind lay six heavily armed, overworked and underfed wrenchers with blood in their ears.

Right here, right now, he feared them more than what might lay ahead. With any luck, they’d take the supplies and be in a position to negotiate with the council. Find a way to keep the crew out of cryo. Scavenge the rest of the station if they had to. There had to be something. It just required a different way of thinking.

He rounded the corner.

Three guards were huddled in front of the open bulkhead, engaged in conversation with Spender.

“Going to need you to step aside,” Calix said. “And keep your hands—”

One of the guards dove to the side, pistol drawn in a flash.

Gunfire erupted from Calix’s group, ending any semblance of control he might have.

“Focus fire!” someone shouted.

The guard who’d dived, still airborne, began to shudder as rounds slammed against his kinetic shield. Energies rippled across its surfaces and then, when it had taken all it could, the flaring stopped. The next round took him square in the forehead. His leap ended in a lifeless thud.

Spender made eye contact with Calix, then. A single glance. Then the bureaucrat broke and ran, arms clasped over his ears. He crossed in front of the two guards, elbowing one as he went, disrupting her aim. An accident? Calix wondered. Filed that. Soon enough the politician was clear and still running, out of the line of fire. Calix ignored him. He found he had his own weapon raised, his finger squeezed tight on the trigger. The weapon chattered, bursts of fire that nearly blinded him, the sound of it buffeting his ears and sending them ringing. On instinct he crouched and moved sideways, not that there was any cover.

One of his gang took a round to the gut and doubled over, howling in pain, rifle skittering across the floor. Armed maybe, but they lacked the armor Sloane’s officers wore.

The two remaining guards backed up into the hangar, firing as they moved. One began to writhe under another salvo of concentrated fire. She shrieked and fell to the side as the shield gave out, her knee exploding. Calix had done that. Fired the round that wounded her. He only realized it a second later.

He’d shot someone. Ruined their leg. Ruined their—

Another shot hit the guard he’d felled, this one in the throat. The howling turned into a strained wet gurgle.

The lone remaining guard dove behind cover, a random crate, popping up a second later to spray bullets across the attacking force. Calix stood in the open, numb at what he’d just seen. He knew the danger, the bullets flying past him. One grazed his pant leg, a tug he barely felt. Then a member of his group tackled him.

He fell to the floor, a body landing heavily on top of him.

They’ve turned on me already, he thought. Then Calix felt a warmth at his side, reached down and saw the blood on his hand. The blood of the person who lay on top of him. He was dead.

A round pinged off the floor a hand’s-width from his face. Sparks flew into his eyes. Calix had no time to mourn the body that lay over him, to honor the sacrifice this person had made. He couldn’t even tell who it was yet. Instead he rolled toward the battle, causing the body to flop onto the floor in front of him, providing a barricade.

He saw then. It was Ulrich. He looked into the man’s eyes and saw life still there. Ulrich blinked at him.

“I…” he said, blood in his mouth, and then bullets tore into his back. Three wet thuds, each leaving a little less life in those eyes until, finally, mercifully, they became glassy and still.

Calix felt the last warm breath on his face, and then nothing. Ulrich had saved his life, and in return Calix had just used the still-living man to further shield himself. That had been Ulrich’s payment for years of loyalty and camaraderie.

“I’m sorry, friend,” Calix said under his breath.

The corpse made no reply.

Anger welled up in him. The circumstances didn’t matter. This death was a result of the poor decisions made by the Nexus’s leadership. Not just those currently in command, but going all the way back to the planning days, when a fucking bureaucrat had decided on some asinine rules of succession that failed to take into account who might be put in charge. The system would pick whoever happened to be of highest seniority, as if that were all that mattered.

As a result, an inept moron bean counter and a depressed ambassador were making life-and-death decisions for thousands of souls. Sloane, at least, had her shit together, but as far as he was concerned her presence among that group could be attributed to luck, not design.

It culminated here, in the death of a hard-working innocent man, loyal both to the mission and to Calix Corvannis. He pushed himself to his feet and began to walk toward the hangar, his rifle raised. The security officer hadn’t moved from behind the crate. Calix walked right around the side of the box and shot the surprised security officer point blank. A barrage that sapped her kinetic shield in seconds.

The woman convulsed under the onslaught, her mouth in an ‘O’ of surprise even as the life went out in her eyes.

“Grab everything,” he said, to everyone and yet no one. “Carts are there.” He pointed to a row of the levitating platforms all parked in a line along one wall.

Then he went after William Spender.

The man had made his home in a closet near the vast hangar, just a few meters down the hall. He’d locked himself inside. Calix tried his omni-tool, then remembered that his access had been yanked. So he knocked, hard. “Are you in there, Spender? It’s Calix. Open the door.”

A voice inside. Muffled. “I can’t be seen talking to you.”

“Why’d you help us back there?”

“Did I?”

Calix chewed on that, but only for a second. He wanted to hear the man’s words, however calculated they might be. He needed to know if he had a leadership insider sympathetic to his cause. “If you’re with us, just say so. I can protect you.”

“I’m not with anyone,” Spender snapped.

“Spender—”

“You might want to run along now, Calix. I have a duty to report this event.”

Calix puffed out a breath. “We’ll discuss this later.”

A muffled, single laugh from inside. “Yeah. Who knows, maybe I’ll see you on the other side.”

And then Calix heard Spender’s hushed voice, reporting the very attack he’d just helped Calix win.

Calix Corvannis could only shake his head, and hurry away.