Mass Effect: Andromeda — Nexus Uprising

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Tann paced, his steps so fierce Sloane thought it only a matter of minutes before he’d wear a visible path into the floor.

“Reports of looting are coming in from all over,” he said. “Fighting in the common areas. Hydroponics is ruined, and may never recover.” She let him rant, barely listening, her eyes cast upward to the ceiling.

“We need to get the doors closed,” Spender said. “This station is wide open right now, enabling all this behavior.”

“Agreed,” Tann said. “In fact I don’t understand why it hasn’t been done yet.” He aimed this at Sloane.

“Because Calix made sure it wouldn’t happen, not without a full reset of the configuration.”

“So do a full reset,” Tann said. “What are you waiting for?”

“A full reset takes time, and while it’s in progress a lot more than just open doors would be rendered insecure.”

“Shut them manually then.”

“A team would have to be sent to each door, and then it would need to be protected until the reset could be performed.”

Tann only grumbled at this, because this at least he understood. Manually closing all the doors would require a large workforce, which meant the krogan. As of yet, no one had been able to locate them. Or Kesh.

Or Addison, for that matter. She hadn’t been seen in hours. Probably found a dark corner to hide in, Sloane thought, but she didn’t say it aloud.

“Spender,” Tann said.

“Sir?”

“What assignment was the krogan workforce on when all this started? Where were they?”

Spender didn’t need to look it up. “Replacing ruptured electrical conduit between decks nine and ten.”

“And Kesh was with them?”

“Who knows. She’s got her big snout in everything.”

“Now, now,” Tann said, though without any real force. Spender barely tolerated Kesh, and the feeling was mutual, which was probably why their paths so rarely crossed. Some history there, but Sloane had yet to ask either of them about it. “Answer the question.”

“I have no idea if Kesh is with them,” Spender said bluntly.

Sloane saw where this was going. “I’ll head down there and find her.”

“Send a team,” Tann said. “A small team. I think you should remain here. You’re the face of security. You need to be seen… securing.”

Sloane glared at him. “With all due respect, I’ll make decisions about how best to make use of myself and my officers.”

Tann stopped, mid-step, and faced her. He said nothing.

Sloane went on. “Calix worked for Kesh. We don’t know yet what Kesh’s… attitude… toward this activity is.”

“Are you saying she’s in on it? That the krogan are part of it?”

“Do not go there,” Sloane said quickly. The last thing she needed now was for Tann’s natural distrust of the krogan to become a factor. A bigger factor than it already was, at least. “The krogan have been nothing but loyal from the moment they woke.”

“So had our life-support team.”

“I have no reason to believe they’ve turned on us. What I do fear is that Calix has already thought about this. That he chose his moment when he knew they would be far away, out of comms range.”

Tann nodded thoughtfully. “He might have even done something to sabotage them.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I would.”

Sloane sighed. “You know, no one has suggested the most obvious approach to this. I could try talking to Calix.”

The salarian looked at her as if she’d spoken in an alien tongue.

“You?” Spender’s eyebrows climbed halfway to his hairline. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“Got someone else in mind?”

Spender let out a smug laugh. “Someone with a bit more political finesse, perhaps. I’d be happy to deal with Calix—”

“Should we have a listen to the speech you wrote for Tann? As a masterclass in political finesse.”

“This is an irrelevant conversation,” Tann snapped. “We do not negotiate with terrorists.”

Sloane stepped up to him, got right in his face. “Done listening to your advisors, are you?” To his credit, Tann held her gaze. He did not step away.

“Forgive me,” he said carefully. “I assumed that you, of all people, would agree with such a policy.”

“Oh, I do, I do,” she replied. “I’m just not convinced yet that the term terrorist applies.”

“You may need to reexamine your definition of the word then,” Tann said, showing surprising backbone. “They assaulted the armory. Killed the guards you posted there! Burned hydroponics. I could go on, but really, isn’t that sufficient?”

Sloane found she couldn’t argue, yet didn’t want to admit he was right, either. She clenched her jaw and stared him back.

Tann held up his hands. “Look,” he said, “find Kesh. Maybe you could track down Addison while you’re at it, but the bulk of your team needs to remain up here, visible. We need to restore order as much as we need to stop Calix, whatever method we end up choosing to stop him.”

Sloane heard all this, agreed with it, even, but she shifted her gaze to Spender and glared wrathfully for a few seconds before speaking.

“When this is over,” she said, staring at the weasel, “there’s going to be some changes around here.”

With that she turned, and left. In the hall outside her team waited, arrayed as if expecting an invading army to come at Operations. They all looked at her expectantly. Sloane steeled herself.

“Talini,” she said.

The asari lifted her chin.

“Take three volunteers. You’re to track down Foster Addison and bring her back here safely. Try the CA offices, or the hangar.”

“Understood.”

Sloane looked at the others. “I’ll need three of you with me. Kesh and the krogan workforce are out of comms range, and we need them in order to secure the doors.” There was no shortage of raised hands to pick from, so Sloane pointed at three randomly.

“Two stay here, the rest of you spread out,” she said. “We can’t defend Operations at the expense of the rest of the station. Start with the areas adjacent to here, make your presence known, restore order.” She paused, then added, “Try not to shoot anyone, understand? These people are scared, they’re on edge, and they have every right to be. If we’re acting the same way, that only amplifies, understand? We need to be the reasonable ones.”

Nods all around.

“Good,” Sloane said. “Let’s move.”

She marched back through the common area outside of Operations, bolstered by the flow of her officer core around her. They spread outward to the left and right, the formation bringing a mixture of emotions to the faces in the crowd that had followed them here in the first place. Some looked soothed, others as if they were about to be beaten down.

“Stay in your rooms,” Sloane said to them. “Or here in the commons. Anyone looting or causing a disturbance will be dealt with according to the laws of the Nexus.” She said this loudly, for her own troops to hear more than anything. They needed to know the right things to say. Those exact words would be repeated as her officers spread from section to section.

With each area she entered, a few more soldiers peeled off to put down in-progress thefts or angry altercations. Sloane tried not to flinch when a bit of rotten food slapped against her neck, thrown by one of the malcontents. She ignored it, resolving to brush it away when they left the area.

But not before.

They passed back through the row of shops cleared earlier of Calix’s left-behinds. Sloane saw shadows in those stores once again, only this time she knew they were citizens, taking anything they could find. She gestured for her last few extra officers to get in there.

“Careful,” she said as they jogged away. “You’re outnumbered.” They nodded, fear obvious in some of their eyes, though they did not break stride.

People moved in the shadows, scurrying like rats as Sloane approached, hiding until she passed. At her back they shouted for new leadership, or simply the mantra that seemed to be catching.

“No Cryo! No Cryo!”

“Faster,” Sloane said. They were only four, now, and still had seven levels to go before they’d find Kesh. “From here on we do not engage, we do not let ourselves be seen any more than we have to.”

“Understood,” her trio replied in unison.

Sloane avoided the next hall. Too many silhouettes lurking there. She led her group across the promenade fronting the shops and to the railing at the edge. There was a small gap in the section of ceiling that had collapsed across it. The space overlooked one of the Nexus’s long arms, and the wall leading up to it was slanted. Sloane hopped over the railing, holding on as her body came to rest against the outer-sloped wall. She started to move along the length, looking for her spot, when a shout went up from the citizens in the shadowed hallway.

“Stop ’em before they freeze us!”

Cries of agreement, encouragement.

The crowds, Sloane realized, had already stratified. Those still loyal to the mission, and those who’d been broken by fear and encouraged by Calix’s success. They rushed out. She watched them through the railing, considered lifting her other arm over it and firing off a few rounds to give them pause.

No, she thought. Don’t engage, it only delays us. She let go of the railing and started to slide. Her team followed suit. As a group they slid, ran and sometimes tumbled their way down the incline to the next level, spilling over on to an unused balcony still coated in the residue of the fire suppression systems. No one had yet been here.

Sloane grunted as she landed, rolling with the impact to little effect. It hurt like hell. The rest of her group fared just as poorly, but within a few seconds they were up and, while in pain, ready to follow. The angry group above seemed content to celebrate the fact that they’d scared off some security officers, and did not pursue.

Enjoy your victory, bastards. She glanced at her team. “We keep moving, but not that way anymore. I can’t take another landing like that.”

The relief in their eyes matched her own. Sloane led them from balcony to balcony, hopping the low walls in between each, heading inward toward the main connected spoke of the Nexus. None of the lifts had yet been cleared for use, but thanks to Calix all their doors would be wide open, and the tubes had ladders built into the walls for maintenance and emergency access.

At the last apartment on the row Sloane slipped in through the open balcony door. Darkness waited within, along with the smell of dust. She flipped her weapon’s lamp on and moved through the dim rooms at a jog, swinging her weapon before her as she went, finding no one.

Exiting through the font door, she peeled around one corner, taking the left, trusting the officer behind her to peel right. The man did. The other two came out after him, crossing to the far side. Sloane motioned for them to follow her lead. Somewhere nearby a bark of laughter echoed through the halls. Then, more distant, the sound of someone crying out in pain.

“What a nightmare,” the officer behind her whispered.

“Quiet,” she snapped, as much as she agreed with the sentiment.

They bypassed the next common area. Sloane glanced toward it. This was where Calix and his core group had fled behind that bulkhead. The space languished in darkness now, lights turned off or perhaps deliberately destroyed. The beam from her weapon played across shapes in the darkness. Bodies strewn about the floor. Her gut twisted at the sight. Calix could never have wanted this. Advocated it. Ordered it. No way. That wasn’t the turian she’d interviewed after Irida’s arrest, or worked beside all these months.

The Irida interrogation, though… Sloane might not have seen any of this in Calix, but Irida had. Which meant Calix had completely and cleverly hidden a large part of his personality from her, or he’d underestimated the power he had over people. She wondered what had happened on that prior posting, that it had given rise to such loyalty among his team.

They reached the lift without incident. Sloane hesitated. Glanced back at the dark common-room-turned-graveyard.

“Kesh and her team are six levels below,” she whispered. “You three meet up with her and explain what’s happened.”

“You’re not coming?” one of them asked.

“Negative,” Sloane said. “I’ve got something else I need to take care of.”

Hesitation radiated off them.

“Look,” she added. “I doubt anyone else went down there. Kesh is reasonable, and on our side.” I hope. She left that unsaid, and went on. “Explain what’s happened and bring her up here to within omni-tool range. Let her talk to Tann.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have to find someone.”

They glanced at each other, dubious.

“Need-to-know, understood?” She sharpened her tone. “I’m giving you three an order and I expect you to follow it.”

“And if Kesh is being unreasonable? Or they’ve been… I don’t know, sabotaged by the terrorists in some way?”

“Then don’t engage, just come right back up here and report. I’ll be in range.” She didn’t actually know if that last part was true, but it had to be said. She couldn’t ask any of these three to go where she was going. “Move out, officers.”

Grudgingly they complied, stepping onto the ladder and starting their descent into the depths of the Nexus. Sloane waited until they were three levels down before she boarded the ladder herself. She slid quickly, past ten steps, then sidled off onto the cool tile floor of the level below. There she took a knee and flicked on her rifle light. The beam found only empty corners in the shadows it chased away. Deserted, though some footprints had been made in the dusty surfaces.

She pressed into the darkness, ears pricked, every sense on high-alert. Sloane had been here a few months ago, scouting a possible way around the blocked tunnel she’d helped the Nakmor workers clear. An hour spent probing the ravaged, seemingly endless labyrinth and just when she’d found a promising route—though narrow as hell and almost inaccessible—Kesh had called her back, saying the way forward had been discovered already.

Sloane’s inferior path was more convoluted and thus abandoned in favor of the other, but she remembered the way. At least she thought so. This lab seemed right, but there were so many. She recalled a dented door. Yes, there it was. And the pile of desks and counters that had formed a sort of odd pyramid in one corner, with a crack in the wall at the top that led where she needed to go.

Hmm, she thought, not seeing them now.

“Where the hell are you?” she asked the darkness.

To her surprise, the darkness answered.

“State your business here.” A gruff voice, heavily accented. Sloane didn’t recognize it. No surprise, she knew only a fraction of the people on the Nexus.

“I’d ask you the same.”

“We’ll be the one asking questions.” Movement, to her left and her right. Shadows within shadows. Sloane forced herself to remain calm. It would hurt her cause to enter this place with the tip of her rifle.

“I’m not here to fight,” she said.

“What are you here for?” the voice asked.

“I want to talk to Calix Corvannis.”

“Never heard of him.”

Sloane shook her head. “So the three of you just happen to be down here, in the dark, guarding an unused, yet-to-be-repaired lab that just happens to have a hole in the wall back there leading to the section of the Nexus where Calix Corvannis has set up the headquarters of his uprising. Pure coincidence, that it?”

A lot of guesses, but their silence made her grin.

“Now,” she went on, “why don’t we cut the macho guard-the-door bullshit and get on with this. Either you go let Calix know that Security Director Sloane Kelly is here, alone, to speak with him, or I repaint the walls of this room with your innards and go meet him in person. What’s it going to be?”

The shadow in front of her materialized as the man stepped into the beam of her light. A tall, hulking figure that looked like he spent every off-hour he had lifting krogan for sport.

“I think we’ll go for a third option,” he said. “The one where you put down that rifle, and we haul you to see Calix in cuffs. Just so you can know what Irida felt like, Director.”

Gambling time, she said to herself. Give in now to get close. She would just have to hope that these frontline grunts wouldn’t act without their leader’s okay. And she doubted Calix had given any specific instructions about her, as opposed to just anyone who showed up, which meant they’d have to ask before they could rough her up—or worse.

So she set her weapon on the floor, and placed her hands at the small of her back, and waited.

They weren’t gentle, but despite the vengeance they unjustly wanted for their incarcerated friend, they didn’t hurt her, either. Sloane soon found herself being marched, prodded, and pushed through the narrow twisted passage that led, after nearly twenty minutes of walking, to join the corridor she and the Nakmor clan had cleared months ago.

The hallway, one of the Nexus’s main arteries, was clear in only the loosest application of the word. Debris and jumbled equipment still littered its length, but it had all been piled to one side to allow reasonably easy passage. Sloane regretted that decision, now. It had been the easiest way to open the corridor, but now all that piled junk served as cover for Calix’s makeshift army. Every discarded crate or torn-out hunk of air processor she passed had one or two rebels crouched behind it, all of them well-armed thanks to their score.

Any regrets she felt about coming here alone, however, vanished at the sight of them. If she’d come here by force with an entire squad at her back, it would have been a bloodbath no matter which side emerged victorious. These assholes might be untrained, but there were a surprising number of them, and they had the advantage that they could wait and remain behind cover as long as it took.

“Looks like you’ve made yourselves at home,” Sloane said to the brute in front of her.

“No talking,” he grunted back.

So original. Sloane sighed and went on counting the enemy, creating a little database in her mind of their positions, weapons, and any other details that might be of use. She hoped she’d never need it, but it beat trying to talk to the walking barricade.

He led her into a fabrication room where massive machines lay under protective coverings, dormant and cold. Surrounding these were untidy rows of shelving and workspaces, twisted and jumbled together by the Scourge. More cover, and plenty of room for the rabble. Beyond, if Sloane’s memory served, lay one of the empty ark hangars.

From there Calix and his people would have access to nine tenths of the station’s real estate, not to mention the access and expertise required to wake whomever they felt they needed—people they could tell any story they wanted. Sloane could no longer deny how brilliant this action was. Calix was no mild-mannered supervisor. Far from it.

“Director Kelly.” His voice filtered in from the adjoining small office at the side of the factory floor. Sloane turned and saw him step out, to stand amid a core group of life-support techs. His trusted inner circle, no doubt. These things always took on the same characteristics.

She nodded to him. “Calix,” she said. “Not sure what title to give you, actually. Sorry.”

He jerked his chin at the brute, his wishes implied in the gesture. A few seconds later Sloane felt her wrists being freed. She immediately went to work flexing the numbness from her hands and rubbing the ache from her wrists.

“I don’t need a title,” he said. “I just need better decision making.”

“Tann’s doing the best he can. We all are.”

He chuckled, dryly. His cronies picked up on it and echoed the reaction. All a bit forced, Sloane thought. Typical.

“Can we talk?” she asked him. “In private?”

“Depends,” he said. “Is this just a diversion? Get me away from the front when the attack comes?”

“No one’s coming to attack, Calix. We need you—all of you—back at your stations.”

“You need us in stasis,” he said. “And before that, you need us to put everyone else back in stasis. But that’s not going to happen.” He said this for his own gathered cronies, not her. A tactic she knew well.

“No one is coming to attack,” she repeated. “I just came to talk. I want to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“All of it.” She swept her arm across the room, indicating the band of wild-eyed miscreants this turian had somehow rallied to his cause, whatever it may be. “Why you did this. People are dead, Calix. Many more are injured. What little supplies remain to us have been looted or destroyed.”

For several seconds he just stared at her, as if still trying to decide if he could trust her. If he felt any remorse over the loss of life, he managed to keep it off of his sharp features.

“Take her omni-tool, Reg,” Calix said to the brute. He waited in silence while the device was removed, then took it when it was offered to him. Calix powered it off and tossed it aside. He cast an accusing glance at the brute, and Sloane understood that they’d made a mistake by not taking it from her in the first place. She filed that. She hadn’t taken the time to have it auto-transmit her location back to anyone, but she could always say she had.

“All right,” Calix said. “Let’s talk.” With that he turned and went back into the room.

The brute, Reg, nudged Sloane toward the door.