Her grunt seemed to indicate she did.
Kesh dragged herself out from under the brutalized counter and lumbered to her feet. She walked in his direction, rubbed two sooty hands in great swaths along her uniform as she went. Each step taken with unwavering purpose.
Not to him. At the last instant, he realized she meant to walk through him if he didn’t move. Tann stepped aside, sweeping an arm as if allowing her to exit.
Message received, all right.
She passed without a word, and he fell in just behind her. For lack of any further discussion on the topic, he volunteered his purpose. “I actually came up here looking for you.”
“Oh? Well, here I am.”
This, at least, Tann had rehearsed. “I am assembling a database. In case of further emergencies, I mean, seeing as the central systems are all still offline and their integrity is not yet known.”
“A database of what?”
“Critical information. Things which, as of this moment, only exist in some of our heads. Were there to be further, well, sudden departures from the ‘living’ portion of the crew, we risk considerable loss of knowledge.”
“Are you asking for my life story or something?” Kesh asked. She ducked under a decorative tree that had been tossed nearly twenty meters across a greeting space and become embedded in the wall paneling. The large hump of her back nearly jostled it.
Tann ducked from habit, but as tall as salarians were by nature, krogan bulk dwarfed them in comparison. He jogged to catch up. “No, nothing like that. What I’m specifically looking to preserve is certain maintenance codes. The technique by which you and your subordinate—”
“Calix.”
“Yes, Calix. The tech—”
“Corvannis,” she added succinctly.
Tann bit off a sharp answer. “Calix Corvannis, yes. The turian. In specific, it seems prudent to record the technique by which you were able to manually draw crew members from cryostasis. If nothing else, for—”
“No.” One word. A single syllable, delivered in Kesh’s graveled voice.
Tann had anticipated this, and had already decided on an appeal to her sense of duty. “Nakmor Kesh, I’m sure you realize that if something were to happen to you and Calix Corvannis, we would have no method for reviving others. There are still several thousands of individuals in their pods. Our chances of success here would be doomed.”
The krogan gave a heavy shrug. “The only other party that should have that is security, and Director Kelly already declined.”
That surprised him. “On what grounds?”
“Ask her.”
“I am asking you.”
Kesh came to a door, which appeared to be her destination. She turned to Tann and looked him up and down. From the sweep of his, if Tann thought so himself, pleasantly shaped horns to the very tips of his Nexus standard, efficiently maintained boots.
She, however, did not appear impressed by either. “Sloane doesn’t want the responsibility,” she finally said. “You don’t either.”
Tann drew himself up, all the many and appropriately stern centimeters of him. “You have no right to assume such.”
She was already shaking her head. She braced one hand against the drop frame and bent, so her face appeared very close in Tann’s vision. “You misunderstand. Not thirty minutes go by without someone asking me, begging me, ordering me, to revive a friend, a loved one, or some other person they’ve decided is critical to the effort.”
“I would be happy to manage—”
The krogan’s wide mouth twisted. “Tch. Of course you would. A lot of power to place in someone’s hands, letting them decide who lives and who doesn’t.”
“They all live,” he countered, waving that away. “Nor is that my intent—”
“I’m sure it never crossed your mind.”
Well, then. Tann’s chin rose. This turn in the conversation he had also anticipated, but he’d rated the chances low that Kesh would leap to such conclusions so quickly. “I am beginning to feel,” he said tactfully, “as if you and I have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
Kesh’s twisted grin showed teeth. “History is a bitch, isn’t it?” She turned away. Paused, and then swung her shoulders back around to peer at Tann. “I’ll ask Calix to place the maintenance overrides in a secure file, coded for Sloane Kelly. That’s the best you’ll get.”
“But—”
“Excuse me.” An avalanche would sound less final. She picked up her stride and the door slid open, revealing a room full of krogan workers, all being supervised by a handful of other crew. They were laboring over one of the Nexus’s massive engines—critically important should they encounter the Scourge again.
He beat a hasty, politically appropriate retreat.
All in all, he considered the outcome of their chat a minor victory. All it really meant was, should the situation call for hard decisions to be made regarding the revived population, he would have one more person he could negotiate with. Sloane Kelly. She, so far, had proved something of a wildcard. It might be easier to predict her position on a given matter via a roll of the dice, and that he found most frustrating.
However, there was the third person in this equation, someone to whom he had not yet spoken beyond the briefest of introductions. Tann decided a small, diceless gamble was in order.
He settled on a more official approach. Tann found an unused but relatively tidy office near Operations, settled into a chair, and waited.
Thirty minutes passed before there came a knock at the door—the chime was broken. Tann called out, “Enter!”
He would have preferred to appear busy. Some papers to shuffle through, or a terminal screen to study intently. He had to settle for fiddling with his omni-tool, pointedly turning it off the moment the turian entered.
“Ah, Calix Corvannis. Please, sit.”
The turian glanced around, as if expecting to see someone else. Kesh, probably. An unusual alliance, to say the least. Krogan and salarians did not, as a rule, mesh, but the krogan had not forgotten the turians’ role in, as it were, the widespread emasculation of their clans.
Calix folded his arms, talons turned in. “I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind.”
“I understand, you’re busy.”
He shook his head, chitinous features reflecting a mild sheen as he did. Metals. Some blend of whatever environment his people had evolved in, to be somewhat less than precise. All turian exoskeletons displayed some version of it or another. A relic of the metal-poor core of their home planet.
“Busy, yes,” the turian replied, “but also sick of sitting. I’ve just come off a long-term calibration and I could use a stretch.”
“Oh, I see.” Tann, like most, had not really mastered the art of turian facial tics. Calix seemed reasonable enough. He would have to assume it true, for now. “May I get you anything?”
“Not unless you have some Tupari stocked away somewhere.” Before Tann could reply in any form, Calix added, “No, thank you. It would be nice if you could make this quick, however. There’s more critical work to do.” He paused. Glanced around again. “What is this, exactly?”
Tann allowed himself a few seconds to process this. He leaned back into his chair and studied the turian. Calix’s uniform was stained, unkempt. Not unusual given the situation, but remarkably for it, he still seemed to hold an air of… not superiority, not exactly. Tann had dealt, at least on the fringe, with Primarchs. That was superiority.
Calix Corvallis displayed confidence. Everything about Calix’s tone and posture implied a total sense of ease. Very interesting. Tann wondered if the turian always enjoyed such a comfortable air around people of importance, or if perhaps instead he didn’t consider Tann to be important.