The trio stood in a half-circle, surrounding the oversized stasis pod. The room had a chill to it, and it wasn’t from the air.
Couldn’t be, Sloane thought. The ventilation systems are barely working. No, the frigid mood came from Nakmor Kesh, who stood facing the pod. She hadn’t moved or said anything for several minutes.
Best to wait, Sloane decided. Let the krogan mull this over, for it was her decision to make. Sloane glanced at the third person in the room, Calix, who leaned against a table across from her, arms folded across his chest, chin lowered. The turian appeared to be asleep on his feet, and who could blame him? His team had been fighting against the life-support systems for days, and as of yet couldn’t claim any kind of victory other than “it’s not completely broken,” which considering how much damage the station had suffered, was a hell of an accomplishment.
And then there was the news of Garson’s death, weighing on everyone. The Nexus had a shadow cast across it now, and Sloane wondered if it would ever lift.
Finally, the krogan stirred, swinging her large body around to weigh the gathering. “Let her sleep,” Kesh said.
Sloane studied her. “You sure?”
Kesh nodded, once. Decision made.
Clan leader Nakmor Morda would, for the time being, remain asleep. Sloane had never met the krogan clan leader, but she’d heard plenty. Bar stories. War stories. Stories of the kind of surly brutality you’d expect from a krogan who’d reached her level of rank and fame. Though Morda led the clan, she had deferred authority to Kesh in matters of station maintenance and care. That left Kesh the de facto leader while Morda slept.
Morda, it seemed, preferred not to deal with other races unless it was a combat scenario.
Well, maybe that was an unfair assumption. But Sloane could read between the lines when she had to. Officially Morda had designated Kesh as the Nakmor Clan’s ambassador to the rest of the Nexus. You didn’t delegate that sort of thing unless you wanted to stay far away from it.
Yet matters within the clan, as Kesh had explained, remained Morda’s to make.
As long as she was awake to do so.
“I am sure,” Kesh replied, but on a heavy gust of air. “She would not want to be bothered with all this. Too much collaboration required.”
Calix grunted a laugh, then tried unsuccessfully to turn it into a cough. Kesh didn’t seem to notice.
“If it turns out we face some new enemy out there,” she added, “well, that will be a different story. And one no doubt she will relish.”
“Okay then,” Sloane said, pushing up from the desk against which she’d been leaning. “I’m fine with it if you are. Let’s wake the others.”
The second chamber lay empty, its occupant already disgorged. The unit had failed due to a ruptured casing, resulting in the death of the krogan inside. One of several, and each one handled grimly by Kesh.
They all moved to the third, and Calix began the revival process. Since the biometrics database was offline, a special maintenance code was required; one Sloane did not know. For the time being, at least, only Calix and his supervisor, Kesh, could initiate a manual waking.
She liked it that way.
Calix tapped in the last few characters. He stepped back. “It takes several minutes.”
The pod began to warm as fluids pumped through the thousands of pipes and tubes hidden within its casing. Soon the crystals of frost on the inside of the window began to vibrate, then all at once they turned to water droplets.
More time passed.
“Vitals look good,” Calix said. Déjà vu.
“I will proceed to the next one,” Kesh said. She didn’t wait for confirmation, simply went about it in the same grim manner.
Calix glanced at Sloane. “That smart?”
Sloane lifted her shoulders. “According to the list we’ve got hundreds of crew to wake. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got better things I could be doing.”
“Don’t we all.” He moved to the next pod and began to manipulate the controls. “At least they get a gentler waking. Comparatively.”
Sloane glowered at the back of his spiky fringe. “Which reminds me, why the hell didn’t any of you brainiacs put an emergency eject on the inside?”
“We did.” He didn’t spare her a glance, but his tone brimmed with humor as he carefully tweaked the controls he worked on. “You just didn’t pay attention in class.”
“That’s—” She hesitated mid-protest. Thought about it. “Okay, that’s fair,” she admitted. She’d preferred training simulations and security logistics to what she’d figured would be a class on insignificant details for a device she’d only be sleeping in.
Showed what she knew.
Sloane refocused on the pod in front of her. The process neared completion. Inside, the krogan began to stir. Her hand went reflexively to the pistol at her hip.
Kesh’s heavy step fell behind her. “Maybe I should handle this part,” she said. “The krogan part, I mean.”
“That smart?” Sloane asked. Her deliberate echo of Calix’s words earned another amused grunt from the turian.
Kesh waved her off. “No offense, Sloane, but if any of my clan wake up in a foul mood, it would only be worse if a human were the one to subdue them.”
Sloane affected wide eyes. “Oh. Then we should give Tann the code and let him do it.”
“Very funny.”
“I would pay good money to see that,” Calix called out.
This time Kesh really did laugh. A deep rumbling that shook her whole body. Sloane grinned, stepping away at the same time. It was good, she figured, to find the moments of levity in the slog.
“Fair enough, Kesh. Just make sure you explain to them our situation before, during or after your whole krogan thing.”
“Of course.”
“If any of them are suffering from—”
“I can handle it,” she said firmly. “Go wake your team, and get started on the rest.”
The pod cracked its seal, foul-smelling steam hissing out in a line around the door. It flew open with a whoosh, and a very wet and angry-looking krogan all but surged out, muscles engaged. “Who dares—” the male began.
Kesh slammed her forehead into his face, sending the krogan sprawling back into his stasis pod.
Sloane blinked.
“I have this,” Kesh said as the other krogan roared. Shock or pain or—
Sloane didn’t even want to consider what else.
“Yeah,” she said, backing up to the door. “Yeah, I guess you do.” Calix joined her, having initiated the warming sequence on the other four designated pods in this chamber.
Roughly half of the list consisted of krogan workers, all members of the Nakmor clan. The rest, Sloane hoped, would be easier to manage. She led Calix through the labyrinth of corridors to their next group, and with each step she felt a bit more confident. Having a krogan force on the brink of up and running meant lots more work to get done.
Security came next. That had been non-negotiable, despite Tann’s protests that the rest of the crew would be less likely to panic if they weren’t waking up to the barrel of a gun.
“No guns,” Sloane had assured him. “Just a reassurance that things are under control. Remember what these people sacrificed to join this mission, and what they went to sleep dreaming of finding when they arrived. We’re going to crush those dreams, Tann, so we need to be ready for any reaction.”
The salarian seemed utterly baffled by this, but Addison’s agreement ultimately swung the argument in Sloane’s favor.
She and Calix worked methodically. Eight veteran members of her team were woken. One’s vitals were suspect, so his warming was paused until a doctor could assess. While the security team acclimated, Sloane and Calix moved on, preparing to wake another group from his staff. Life-support technicians, who doubled as field medical staff. This time there were no malfunctions. Sloane gathered both groups and explained the predicament they were in and the plan, with some technical backup from Calix.