“Evacuate?” someone called out, and they sounded alarmed. “Are we still in danger?”
“Why not evac now?” another crew member near the back shouted.
“We’re not evacuating,” Sloane snapped. “Have you already forgotten why we came here?” Several of the crowd looked away. “Did you forget the risks? It was all fun and games when you signed up, a bright shiny dream, but now here we are. And the first sign of trouble, you want to call it quits?” The crowd stirred. She glared at them. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Tann placed a calming hand on her arm, and interrupted again.
“What Security Director Kelly means is that we do not know if the Nexus is out of danger yet. Until we do, we must remain vigilant, and do everything we can to right our ship. The mission has not changed, and we all have a duty—”
“Who the hell are you?” someone shouted. Sloane couldn’t see for sure, but she thought it was a turian near the center of the room, wearing the uniform of the hydroponics team.
The salarian flinched. Even through her irritation, Sloane felt that one.
Who the hell, indeed.
But Tann wasn’t one to lose face in a crowd. “I recognize your confusion,” he said, keeping his hand on Sloane’s arm. Probably as some kind of solidarity act. “I am Acting Director Jarun Tann. Per emergency protocols, I’ve been—”
Sloane shook her head, cutting him off. “Wrong touch,” she muttered, and faced the crowd directly. “We’re in a world of shit here, and that means changes. Here’s what you need to know: Tann’s filling in for Garson. I’m handling security.” She gestured for the third member of their little council to step up onto a third desk. “That is Foster Addison, Colonial Affairs—”
“And advising our acting director,” Addison said for herself, more curtly than Sloane thought necessary.
All right. Fine. If everyone wanted to carve out a bit of the turf, they may as well do it here. Sloane inclined her head at Addison, and looked back to the crowd. “We’re the three most senior people aboard. You’re awake because this station needs help. That’s it. That’s the situation. Now let’s get to work, because I want to live. And like all of you, I want our mission to succeed.”
Dead silence.
Sloane clenched her fists, waiting for Jarun Tann to once again lamely try to contribute his bullshit. For once his instincts were in line with hers, though. He said nothing. The turian who’d asked the question held Sloane’s gaze for a moment, then started to nod, slowly.
With that, others began to murmur. Not the tone of argument, to Sloane’s ears. One, multiple, of consideration. Things to do. Checkboxes to tick.
Good.
Addison surveyed them all. And of them all, maybe it’s best the soft touch came from her. “We all remember Alec Ryder’s words,” she said, earning more nods. “Making our way here was one thing, but we all knew what came next.”
With sudden widened eyes—the salarian version of a lightbulb moment, Sloane guessed—Tann snapped his longer fingers. “Now,” he said with far more flourish than it required, “is where the real work starts.”
This resulted in more than a few chuckles. A few snorts. A lot of more firm acknowledgement.
Even better. This? This worked out a lot better than she’d imagined.
“You all know your systems,” Sloane said, raising her voice over the drone of collaborating voices. “Do whatever it takes, just get them stable. We’re only focusing on this section of the station for now. The rest is unpopulated and unpressurized, anyway.” Small knots of like-minded professionals began to gather together. Sloane had to speak even louder as the crowd began to naturally shift into gear. “If you need help, need a hallway cleared or a bent door removed, Nakmor Kesh has a few hundred of her construction team available to assist. Make use of them.”
The few krogan flanking Kesh let loose a thunderous, and entirely unnecessary, rattle of graveled roars and cheers.
It did not, as Tann jerked in surprise and Sloane hid a grin, result in a stampede of panicked bipedals.
Enough was enough. They all knew their tasks. The supervisors among them would maintain order.
She stepped backward off the desk. The crowd immediately began to disperse, a thousand conversations erupting all across the room.
“Good luck to you all,” Tann said, voice raised for all the good that did. He was a breeze against the storm. He turned then and stepped down.
Sloane offered a hand to Addison, who took it with thanks as she hopped down. “There,” she muttered.
Sloane shot her a quizzical half-smile.
The woman shrugged. “Whatever comes of Colonial Affairs,” she replied quietly, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Pessimistic, maybe. Sloane couldn’t blame her. Right now, settling colonies felt like light years away. And maybe that was what was eating Foster Addison. Her job. Her role.
Was she content with advisor to the acting director?
Sloane wouldn’t be. But then, she had plenty to do in security. She gave Addison’s arm a reassuring squeeze and let her go. They turned, Tann falling in beside them. “I think that was a fine moment,” the salarian said, his tone as accomplished as if he’d planned the whole thing. “Now, if we can continue this momentous unification into the future, we shall all be just fine.”
What little silver lining Sloane had gleaned soured.
Spender waited nearby, his omni-screen already up and notes made. “Well,” he said brightly. “That went well.”
Sloane brushed past him. “Find me coffee,” she all but growled. “Then we’ll talk about ‘well.’”
He got out of her way.
CHAPTER NINE
With most of the private quarters under vacuum lock, Jarun Tann had taken up residence in a research lab. He doubted it would ever see any actual research. Not for a long time, at least.
The lab was adjacent to the outer hull, of which a giant section had been ripped away by “the Scourge.” He had taken note of the term’s popularity after his impromptu words during the briefing. A week of use and one unfortunate brush with a drifting tendril of the stuff had seemed, he was pleased to note, to cement its use among the populace.
Although he would have preferred that it did not scar its purpose so completely into the crippled station to do so. A term was all well and good, but the lingering effects this Scourge had left among the woken workforce lingered.
Another reason why Tann needed to take a moment, exist somewhere quiet and isolated. Away from what he thought of as the collective weight of the masses. Worry, focus, effort… frustration.
Here, in this abandoned lab, he had room. He had, if he’d pardon himself the pun, space. Most of the gear in this room had been sucked away at hull breach, leaving a long, narrow area devoid of furniture or really anything at all. As in Operations, the temporary barrier covering the gap offered an exceptional view. Of the stars. The ragged edges of the station.
The energetic tendrils of the Scourge, with its colorful, fiery array of pinprick lights.
A perfect place, in other words, for Jarun Tann to pace, and to think. It was quiet, far from the commons where much of the crew had taken to sleeping. They found solace in numbers, comfort in the presence of others. Quiet conversation, or even just the sounds proving that others existed.
In any normal situation, he’d feel the same, but this situation—this calamity—was very much in the abnormal category. It required focus. Careful, deliberate thought. Tann knew himself, his limitations. All his life he’d battled an inability to filter out distractions.
When he needed to think, really think, he required absolute silence. A lack of motion other than the steady footfalls of his own two feet, and perhaps a nice tiled floor beneath that glided under him at a steady, flawlessly maintained pace.