If they were even still alive.
Hell, Sloane hadn’t even seen her quarters since before they launched. All shiny and new. Who even knew if that section of the station had survived?
The thought left a wistful pang in her chest. So much for her own office, right? Much less bed.
Sloane sighed, turning her back on the lonely room, and left. She reached the end of the hall, turned, and pushed on, past the shuttered Transportation Office, then Immigrations.
The chances that either would ever be staffed and actually used seemed so remote that she wondered if they might be better off turning them into shelters.
A soft noise, behind. Sloane drew her sidearm, whirled, aimed.
“Just me, just me,” Jarun Tann said hastily, hands up.
Sloane narrowed her eyes. “Are you following me?”
“Of course,” he replied. Then appeared to think better of what he meant. “I mean, not in that sense.”
“What other sense is there?”
He stepped out of the shadows. “In the awkward sense of two people who have finished a conversation but also need to travel in the same direction.”
She eyed him, but she’d be damned if she’d ever taken to salarian expressions. Turian faces were one thing, but there wasn’t enough… I don’t know, she thought distantly. Not enough lines, not enough distinct features on the amphibious faces of the salarian species. The horns were easy enough to recognize, large oval eyes, sure. But they all had those.
Whatever the reason, she wasn’t sure she believed him.
Tann took her silence as a lack of understanding.
“I was returning to Operations, and thought I’d let you get well ahead of me to avoid any… any of the aforementioned awkwardness. And then you stepped out of an apartment only meters in front of me. It felt odd to stand there and wait, so I—”
“It’s okay, Tann. I get it.”
“Then perhaps you could lower the weapon?”
Sloane did so, doing her best to hide a grin. She’d scared the hell out of him, she realized, and found she didn’t mind so much. A little fear could be healthy.
“So, Ops, huh? What’s on your agenda next? And get the hell over here, I don’t bite.”
The salarian did his best to look casual as he crossed the rest of the gap and fell in beside her. They walked in silence for a bit.
Not for lack of words, Sloane realized as the salarian hummed one of his thoughtful noises. He was a thinker, this revenue wonk. The kind that weighed every word.
Which didn’t make him any more trustworthy, all things considered.
“It is so hard to prioritize,” he finally said, “with so many problems facing us.”
“Yep. No argument here.”
He nodded. “I felt, after our meeting, that I finally had a free minute. I thought I might check on something that’s been bothering me.”
“Just one thing?”
The salarian paused, sliding Sloane a thoughtful, cautiously amused look. At least, she thought it was that. “No,” he said, and that caution gave birth to a weak smile. “No, but let us focus on this one thing in particular.”
“Which thing?”
“Specifically, the thing,” he said, stressing the word as if pleased by the byplay that led to it, “that we ran into. Whatever it is, it is foreign to us, or the sensors would have noticed it and alerted someone.”
“The sensor arrays had been damaged,” she pointed out.
“Were they?” He laced his thin hands together, tucking them into the sleeves of his attire. “Or did the technicians believe they were, based on the inability to parse the data?”
Her eyebrows raised. “Okay, so? Doesn’t change anything.”
“No,” he allowed. “But I am worried it was not a singular event.”
“Ah.” She’d thought about this, too, especially whenever she tried to sleep. With so many known problems, worrying about unknown ones seemed pointless. But now that he’d brought it up, she worked it over. “When we located Ops the first time,” she said thoughtfully, “there was a violent quake. The whole ship lurched, and it sounded like the hull peeled back somewhere.”
“Weakened structure failing, perhaps?” He cocked his head. “Or another meeting of station and whatever we had run into?”
“If it was a run-in,” she pointed out, “I saw no ships—” Her words went dead. So did her pace, frozen in the middle of the corridor.
Tann’s brow moved in what she took for inquiry. “You saw something?”
“Maybe.” She frowned, pinching the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Everything was one large adrenaline rush.”
“Ah.” Tann patted her arm cautiously, in what passed for sympathy. “Understood. Human evolution is predicated on the rise of prey to predator, but it never truly evolved redundant systems to effective process—”
“Tann.”
He stopped. Cleared his throat. “Adrenaline,” he said, way more succinctly, “can play havoc with logical thought.”
That she would buy. Sloane picked up her pace again, once more flanked by the salarian. “The clearest thing I remember is that nebula out there. Or some kind of energy wave? I saw it hovering near the part of the station that… I don’t know, that ripped off.” She was reaching, and she knew it. She raised her hands. “I’m not an astrophysicist, so take your pick. But I can’t shake that there’s something there. Something we haven’t seen yet.” Or missed.
Tann glanced at her. “Without sensors, it is impossible to find out. However, I thought perhaps if we studied the data gathered before we impacted this… You believe the unusual nebula to be the key?”
“It’s the only thing I saw,” she said, shrugging once more. “And given how close it is, I’d be really pissed off if we ignored it, only to run into it later.”
“A fair assessment. We shall earmark that theory as among the first to investigate,” Tann said, with so little argument Sloane found herself eyeing him sidelong as they walked. “In fact, I rather relish the idea of learning something new about our new galaxy.”
“You?”
“Well, of course,” he replied, gathering himself up. “Who else is available to decipher the logs? There can be a great deal of information buried in even partial records.”
“I guess the devil’s in the details.”
To her surprise, he gave a little chuckle. “One of my favorite human idioms. Yes, exactly. Even if our systems did not recognize the coming assault as a threat, it may still have a record of it.”
“And you’ll be able to figure this out?” she asked. It seemed the least she could do to try for sincere. All things considered, sensor data tech seemed less intrusive than acting director.“I thought revenue was your area of expertise.”
At this, his slender shoulders straightened. It was hard to tell, but she thought his skinny salarian chest may have even puffed up some. “Math is my expertise,” he declared. “Sensor logs are not so different from cost-basis figures.”
Heh. “If you say so.” They walked a bit farther, passing one of the huge common areas. It should have been filled with excited pioneers holding flutes of champagne. Instead it resembled a dumping ground for unwanted furniture. A disaster, like everything else. “Still,” she mused. “What happens if it’s, you know… actually in our way? We can’t move, we can’t shoot at an invisible target.”
“Hence my comment about priorities,” he said. “Do we fix hydroponics first, so that we can eat in the weeks or even months to come, or do we get the maneuvering engines back online so that we can avoid another collision? Plus, there is the possibility that this is widespread. We may need to alert the Pathfinders.”