“Dead,” Sloane announced.
“Well, best ready your weapon, the thaw is almost complete. Vitals look good.”
The pair stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the stasis pod. A full minute passed with no indication that anything had changed, except for the frost on the porthole condensing into fine droplets.
Then a hand slapped against the glass, smearing the water. Kesh leaned in and used the manual override to open the pod. There was a hiss of stagnant, foul-smelling air from around the seal of the two sections. Kesh lifted the top, rotating it upward and out of the way.
The turian lay still, eyes closed, wet stasis suit clinging to his avian-like frame. After a few seconds and with eyes still closed, he spoke.
“Why is it so quiet?”
Turians had a way of speaking, a kind of flanging effect that made it sound like two tonal voices in one throat. Kesh found the result to be pleasing to the ear, though she knew human counterparts who did not.
Rugged from his ungentle wake-up, Corvannis’s usual slow tones sounded thicker. Less confident.
Kesh glanced at Sloane. The security director studied the engineer. Whatever she saw, it seemed to reassure her. “We’re in trouble. We need your help.”
That earned the turian’s attention.
“You don’t say. What kind of trouble?” Calix blinked several times, his eyes a bit less bleary each time. Finally, he lifted his head a bit, winced, and laid it back, the bony crest pressing into the form-fit cushions. Somehow, he dredged up humor. “Given the method of wake-up, the warm weaponized welcome—” Sloane lowered her pistol a notch, but only just. “—and the lack of medical, I’m going to guess it’s the critical variety.”
“It is,” Sloane said. “We’ll explain on the way. You need to get up.”
Calix groaned. He managed to get his arms free, and rubbed his eyes with two fists. When he reached out, Kesh wrapped one hand around his thin, lean arm and helped pull him from the grip of the cushions. He needed her help to stand. “Nakmor Kesh,” he managed, once his joints unstuck. “Good to see you.”
“And you,” she replied. “Especially alive.”
“That why she bring a gun?” he asked, tilting his head toward Sloane.
“A precaution,” Sloane cut in. “In case you weren’t in a cooperative mood.”
“Expect that?”
“I’ve known a few turians,” she replied, but lowered the weapon entirely. Kesh couldn’t fault it. The species was known for many things, but blindly following just anybody wasn’t one. Calix, he had never pushed for the things others of his ilk had—glory, renown, position.
What he had demanded, and what Kesh had eventually facilitated, was trust. He knew his work, and he knew his crew.
Now, he unfurled his two fingers and thumb from Kesh’s supportive arm and gave Sloane a nod. “So I’ve heard,” he said simply, earning himself a glower. “Perhaps, then, you could give me a minute to get my mood—”
“Negative. Life support is going to fail in thirty-two minutes. You’re going to fix it, right now.”
Kesh felt his arm stiffen in her grip, even as he fought a yawn. “No other viable sections?”
“Life support for the entire Nexus.”
That did it. Calix finally seemed to focus. He fixed a quizzical gaze on the woman. “You’re joking.”
“Come and see for yourself,” Kesh said, shaking her head. “If it is, it’s the worst joke in the galaxy.”
“Right.” He couldn’t seem to look away from Sloane. Knowing turians—knowing him—he was trying to figure out her angle.
If only there was one.
Kesh chalked his lack of concern up to a mind still clawing its way out of six centuries of sleep. She pulled his arm over her shoulder and helped him through the room, past the exam couch where—in a normal wake-up from stasis—a subject would receive several hours of muscle-atrophy treatment, along with hundreds of tests and rejuvenating injections.
In the hall, faced with the devastation, Calix gasped with a mixture of pain and awe. “Looks like a krogan wedding came through.”
Kesh snorted. “We don’t have weddings.”
“I can see why,” he shot back, clearly getting his wits together.
Sloane wasn’t as amused. “This is no time for jokes,” she snapped.
Calix held up his one free hand, a conciliatory gesture.
Sloane scowled, turned and leapt up onto a buckled section of flooring.
“Where are we going?”
“Operations.”
Calix shook his head, causing Kesh to pause instead of following. “Waste of time. If the rest of the Nexus has been hit like this, you need to take me to the workshop. Besides, it’s closer.”
Sloane looked over his head at Kesh.
When she nodded, the Security Director wasted no breath arguing. “Fine. Lead the way.”
“Tell you what,” Calix replied with a grimaced kind of amusement. “You lead the way, I’ll shuffle along on Kesh’s arm and we can all pretend I’m slightly better than a sack of dead vorcha right now.”
It was like he couldn’t help himself, Kesh noted thoughtfully. Sloane cracked a smile, even if it was a hard one, and replied simply, “Deal.”
Maybe it was no time for jokes. But she couldn’t ignore the fact that despite all that, the human seemed far more at ease in the company of krogan and turians than her own kind.
Or salarians, for that matter.
Which seemed obvious to Kesh.
Together, they moved as fast as they could. Calix told them which turns to take, and remained unfazed when they had to double back due to an obstacle—namely, a hallway rent open to the vacuum of space. A whole chunk, three meters in diameter, had been torn from the hull, temporarily sealed just as Operations had been.
Kesh had tried to keep a running tally of all the things that would need to be fixed. By the time she reached shorn hull, lower corridor, she just gave up.
Everything would need to be fixed. Even the things that appeared undamaged would require testing and recertification. Months of work. Maybe years, and without supplemental work teams and the warehouses and hangars full of spare parts.
“You haven’t told me what actually happened here,” Calix said, breaking the silence. “Were we attacked?”
“Sensors are still offline, along with just about everything else, but it appears we hit something.”
“A ship? Or something natural?”
“Jury’s out,” Sloane replied curtly. “The sooner we can get this rolling, the sooner we can figure out what happened.”
Kesh could offer no better.
The turian was not one to waste time with empty words. He fell silent once more, content to focus on warming up his sleep-heavy limbs. Kesh found herself carrying less and less of his weight and balance as he slowly regained control. Then, when she felt confident enough that he could at least walk on his own, he cleared his throat. “In here,” Calix said, nodding toward a door. The signage on the wall read Life-Support Central Monitoring.
The panel didn’t work, so Kesh stepped in and heaved the two doors apart, allowing Calix through. Sloane started to follow, but stopped at Calix’s upheld hand. He wasn’t looking at her, but at the room.
Like everything else, it was a mess inside.
“How much time do we have?” Calix asked.
“Twenty-four minutes,” Sloane said instantly.
“I need to go wake the rest of my team.”
Sloane stiffened. “There’s not enough time—”
“I need them right now,” he said. “Or do you have thousands of those rebreathers on hand?”
Sloane cast a glance at Kesh, who could only shrug. The security director’s hesitation lasted only a second longer, and then Calix strode off the way they’d come. “Stay here,” he said over one shoulder, then he disappeared around a corner.