“Be safe.”
She could practically hear his long-suffered smirk. “Always. Kandros out.”
Sloane dropped her hand from the screen. “There, now I know the status of the other half of my team, and soon you’ll have the info you’re looking for. Everybody wins.”
“Thank you, Sloane Kelly.” A grave thing, given the seriousness of her tone.
Sloane waved the krogan’s gratitude off. “We each got something we needed. No need for thanks.”
Kesh regarded her. “But you need something else.” Not a question. Observant, Sloane thought. By far.
And right. “I do,” she confirmed.
“Which is?”
“Nothing much.” She just couldn’t help but yank the krogan’s chain. Just a little. “Only a power core in the first stage of meltdown. Noticed the alert when we left Operations, decided it best not to panic everyone just yet.”
Kesh growled, and if krogan could have hackles, Sloane had no doubt they’d be bristling. “And you wait until now to tell me?”
Sloane made no excuses. Darkly amusing as it was, her choices weren’t great then. They were better now, thanks to Calix’s team. “Now that I know we’re not going to suffocate? Yeah.”
The krogan stood there, immovable as a wall. Staring at her.
Goading krogan, Sloane understood, was the subject of a violent betting pool for a reason. “I’m hoping this is where you tell me how we’re going to fix it,” she suggested.
Kesh shook her head. “You can’t fix a core in stage one of meltdown,” she bit out. “You jettison it and move very far away.”
Sloane opened her mouth. Paused. Cast her future to fate and said helpfully, “But engines aren’t—”
“One thing at a time!” Kesh roared, hands thrown to the ceiling in frustration.
Sloane worked side by side with Kesh for twenty-six hours.
Through sweat and blood and the power of multicultural profanity, the failed core was manually jettisoned and, in a moment of inspired genius on Addison’s part, tugged out to a safe distance by a semi-functional cargo drone. Everyone now awake had to hunker as deep as possible in the bowels of the mangled space station in order to weather the resulting blast, but it worked.
Three times during the already insane day, she was contacted by Tann, or Addison, or both, each requesting that she find her way to Operations so they could have a meeting. A damn meeting, while the Nexus went up in flames all around them.
Not likely.
One emergency fixed only led to the next, and all the while life support remained stuck at 10%. No capacity for waking additional help. Sloane and Kesh rushed from one section to another, until Sloane finally collapsed, exhausted, on a half-burned couch in the lobby of an embassy that now seemed so comically unnecessary that she snorted in laughter before drifting into restless sleep.
The fourth comm blast came just as sleep had fully embraced Sloane Kelly. She’d curled up, one folded arm serving as pillow, when the annoying chime yanked her back to consciousness. She bolted upright, ready to tell that salarian where he could stuff his “discussion.”
Before she could, his words stopped her cold.
“You’re needed in hydroponics,” Tann said. “I’m afraid there’s more bad news.”
“Is it Garson? You’ve found her?”
“Would that we had,” he said, a grim note to his voice. “This is something else. I’m sorry, Director. But you need to see this.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Kesh and I will be there as soon as we can.”
Jarun Tann glanced at his companion. Addison’s features betrayed nothing. Well, then. “No need to pull Nakmor Kesh away from her tasks,” Tann said. “It’s not a, er, technical problem.”
As expected, the Security Director did not take well to subtlety. “I’ll take that under advisement.” As usual when dealing with Sloane Kelly, the link abruptly ended.
Tann stood silently for a moment, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Then, thoughtfully, “I should have been more emphatic.”
“It’ll be fine,” Addison said. She sat on a bench, knees together, hands clasped in her lap. The bench itself sat askew, the bolts that held it in place having been sheared in the disaster. It straddled the common area and the area of spongy, synthetic soil it was supposed to face. A fine patch of bright green grass should have been growing there by the time Tann awoke, had everything gone as planned.
“If Kesh is with her, we’ll manage. It may even be a good thing. Her knowledge of this station is—”
“Unrivaled,” Tann finished, locking the hint of acid welling up behind a determined smile. “Yes, I know. But the protocol was clear. You and Director Kelly are to advise—”
“The protocol.” Addison sighed the words. “Really. Take a look at this place, Tann. Protocol should be the least of our concerns.”
Perhaps. In part. He began to pace. Rubble skipped away from his feet, clattering across the floor. The hydroponics section, like everything else, resembled some ancient abandoned place, a shadow of the idealized and perfectly engineered marvel it should have been. Quieter, maybe, but no less devastated.
That made this moment so important.
No. He was right about this. “I disagree,” he said. “A lot of very intelligent people spent vast amounts of time working through every situation we might face, planning for every contingency. We’d be making a huge mistake if we threw all that out and started relying on snap decisions made by whomever happened to be standing around.”
He reached the wall, turned.
“That is no way to govern,” he added, before proceeding on another circuit of his route.
Addison remained silent.
So much so that he paused mid-circuit, stopped in front of her. “You agree, surely?”
“I suppose…”
It trailed off, leaving Tann humming. Not quite the fervor he’d been hoping for, but at least she was listening. He continued to pace. Each step brought a new line of thinking, another possibility to account for. Yet it all came back to the same thing.
Jien Garson, truly a brilliant mind, had overseen the protocol encoded into the Nexus’s systems, which had led to his awakening. His presence here, his role, was essentially due to her direct order, and he intended to respect that by fulfilling that role to the best of his ability. Director Addison may feel bitterness that she was not chosen for the role, but that was not Tann’s fault. Nor his responsibility. Only Jien Garson would be able to explain the reasoning there. If she turned up.
Another turn, more walking, more thought.
Jien Garson could never have guessed that a calamity on this kind of scale would befall her mission. In truth, the leadership protocol could have just as easily wound up with two human janitors and a krogan dental hygienist—easily the worst job in the known universe—as its new leadership, had they happened to be the three most senior surviving crew. More power to them, had that been the case!
Turn. Walk.
Think.
That worst-case scenario had not happened, of course. The protocol had whittled down the list and found him, a full seven rungs below Administrator Garson on the leadership ladder. Addison and Sloane would advise him just as they would have advised her. He hadn’t asked for this. He’d staged no coup. Jarun Tann was here to do a job, whatever was required of him, and if this was it, then he would do his duty. The mission mattered, above all else.
Turn. Step.
Freeze.
Boots before him. How long had they been there? He glanced up, met the tired, bleary eyes of Sloane Kelly.
“Make this quick,” she said, without even a courteous attempt at preamble. “I’m busy.”