Another strand of that deadly Scourge thing to avoid.
And here they were—Sloane, Tann, Addison, even Kesh; playing house with thousands of lives. The refrain stuck in her head.
What matters is what we do when we arrive…
It was enough to drive a woman to drink.
She’d settle for a nap.
Sloane let her hands drop to her sides, tilting back until the chair supported the weight of her head. Her temporary quarters were guest accommodations in the Cultural Exchange, far enough from the chaos that she could take a breather away from the constant pressure. It beat the common room.
Foster Addison had assigned the place to Sloane without asking for input. Privately, she figured Addison wanted her to have somewhere she could go to swear when things got too much. A nice gesture, all things considered.
The past two weeks had thrown down progress and obstacles in equal measure. Some Sloane could handle without any oversight from the acting director—even if Tann always gave her the eye afterward.
Other things required dialogue. Debates.
She didn’t get a lot of private time, either. She was always with her team, going over basic security, with groups of krogan engineers, or with Tann and Addison. And the addition of Addison’s sleaze-bag assistant… Ugh, data pushers got on her nerves.
Sloane spent most of her time dealing with something or someone. Scores of people, each focused on a task, each task part of a net that wove through the Nexus.
Each success bolstered the odds of getting the station into shape, of becoming the central location the Pathfinders would need them to be. But every failure dragged down the net, too. Systems fried and took down others nearby, corridors crumbled and sealed the way to necessary installations. More and more it looked like they’d need the Pathfinders to support them, not the other way around.
People worked tirelessly. Anxiety pressed in on all of them from every direction. Those off-shift or in noncritical systems bunked down in the shuttles locked in at the Colonial Affairs hangars. CA had a whole fleet of shuttles, just waiting for something to do. Right now, acting as glorified bunks made the most sense.
In critical sectors, the workers racked out in temporary cots near the worksites. Nobody was ever where they were supposed to be.
Even the krogan hadn’t started any fights. Not real ones. The usual dominance stuff krogan always pulled, yelling and headbutts—or maybe it was just their way of showing affection.
Sloane opened her eyes to blink away the tired spots that fuzzed there. Just in time for the comm tone to drill through her hard-earned silence.
“Director Sloane, are you available?”
She dug both index fingers into the bridge of her nose, rubbing the tired out. “I am now. What do you need, Spender?”
He caught the irritated note in her voice. “Hey, sorry to bother you during downtime,” he said, “but I came across some information and I thought, ‘Wow, Director Kelly should—’”
“Get your lips off my ass and get to the point.”
“Of course,” he replied, but with a conciliatory addition she recognized as learned from Tann. A bit of affronted dignity. Almost a sneer he couldn’t quite hide. The man spent as much time at Tann’s side as he did Addison’s, juggling administrative tasks for both with—she could admit—a surprising amount of skill.
That didn’t mean she trusted him. Not even close. To Sloane, he was just another bureaucratic voice arguing against the things she needed to be handling.
Of course, it might be her own bias talking.
“I was preparing the post-stasis report for the staff that was awakened early,” he said, the comm crackling only once. Much better than it used to be. Tann had done good there. Kesh and her technicians were a marvel of ingenuity. “One in particular caught my attention.”
“Go on.”
As he spoke, she booted up her own terminal and logged into the security access. Much of it was still locked up behind firewalls. Only Garson had all the access privileges. Just in case.
With the original leadership now gone, Sloane and a few others had access to some of the data, but nobody alive had all of it. She wasn’t sure Spender should have been among those with access, but as close as he was working with Tann and Addison, she couldn’t be sure that he didn’t need it, either.
“The name is Falarn,” Spender told her. “Priote Falarn. I’m sending you the records now.” It took no time at all. Within the space of her mm-hm, the records showed up in her mail terminal.
“A salarian,” she said aloud. “One of our contracted Sur’Kesh specialists.” Her whistle was low as she scanned the list of recommendations attached to his file. “Highly trained in communications and arrays. Your team, right? Colonial Affairs. What about him?”
“I’ll be blunt. He stinks.”
“You should call medical.”
“What I mean is I have reason to suspect him.”
Great. Now Spender was starting to sound like Tann. Sloane grimaced, reaching over to flick the video array on.
The advisor’s haughty features filled the screen. His eyes briefly widened, as if he hadn’t expected a face to face, but settled again with a half-apologetic smile and nod.
She nodded back out of habit. “Okay. Talk to me.”
“Before we launched, a few of our staff were undergoing some last-minute checks. Most were officially cleared.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously, and he continued hastily. “Including Falarn.”
“So?”
“So I thought it was a mistake, and I wasn’t the only one,” he replied. “The classification division was on to something, started building a case. Before we could take it to Director Addison, though, something strange happened.”
“Short version, Spender.”
His eyebrows knitted. “Most of the digital evidence was gone. Not destroyed, just…” His fingers popped into the air like a firework. “Poof. Never existed. I tried to backtrack the lead, but—”
Sloane’s patience wasn’t made to hold up to this shit. Her elbows hit the table. “Hit the bottom line in the next thirty seconds,” she growled.
“Someone on the inside destroyed the case, and Falarn was the most likely candidate.”
“Spender,” Sloane said slowly, drawing out his name as if he were a toddler, “has this salarian done something wrong, or not?”
He hesitated. “I’ve seen him in places he has no business being in. Records show him accessing terminals he has no need to access. Yeah, it’s a hunch, I admit it. But given the concerns before departure, and the fact that supplies have been reported missing, I thought… call it ‘suspicious activity.’”
Sloane didn’t drop her forehead to the desk. She’d give herself that much of a victory.
“Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll check this guy out. Where’s he stationed now?”
Spender tapped a few keys, eyes flicking side to side as he pulled up the data. “In and out of Operations, according to the logs. And down in Central Comms.”
“Wonderful. Fucking perfect.” To his credit, Spender didn’t flinch. If anything, his smile got a little less conciliatory and a little more wry at her salt. “I’ll go see what I can find.”
“Thank you, Director Sloane.” The title still annoyed her, but at least he used her first name, and actually thanked her when he sent her on a wild goose chase.
Sloane signed off and gave a long hard look at the wall. “I really,” she said, at first slow and level, and graduating to a shout with every word, “really need some fucking coffee!”