“I had nothing to do with it. Nor,” he added calmly, “did anyone else in my crew. I’ll stake my job on it.”
Sloane let out a relieved breath. She couldn’t say why she believed him, but she did. He didn’t prevaricate, didn’t dodge the question or her stare. Her body relaxed a fraction more, and she took another swig from her bottle. The frothy beer fizzed going down.
“What did she take?” he asked. “You said classified.”
Sloane tipped her beer, frowning down into the dark neck of it. Buying time, really. Deciding how much to say. Sloane decided to enfold him in her trust, get him on her side of this, lest his loyalty to Irida become a barrier.
“A database. Full of maintenance data, equipment placement, that sort of thing. I can’t figure out why.”
“Can’t you?”
That got her attention. Sloane’s gaze lifted to meet his. “Explain.”
The turian let out a long, gusty sigh. He shifted in his chair, set the whiskey on his leg and cradled it there. “Think about it,” he said slowly. “You’ve felt the tension in the air, right? People are worried.”
“I know.” She pulled a face. “It just adds to the real problems.”
“It is a real problem,” he corrected. “First we woke up in chaos, then we found our leadership dead.” He gestured at her. “Suddenly, there were three people in charge nobody really knew. No offense to you or Addison, and okay, maybe a bit to Tann, but Garson was the heart and soul of this mission.”
“Thanks for pointing out my lack of heart and soul,” she cut in wryly. His eyes twinkled with returned humor, but he didn’t stop to address it.
“You wake up a lot of people to get things back in order, they see the mess and lack of stores of food, not to mention this mysterious and downright dangerous Scourge looming all around us, and then you ask them to go back to cryo on faith that things will be okay. When they don’t agree, they start getting rationed. Rations are inevitably cut, and people start getting hungry. They want answers. Hope. Will the scout ships return? Will the Pathfinders ever arrive? Will the Scourge finish us off? Patience dwindles by the day, Sloane.”
The list annoyed her, mostly because he was right. She leaned forward, cradling her beer between both hands, braced her elbows on her knees, and scowled.
“Justification isn’t what I’m interested in, it’s motive.”
“You humans have a saying for it,” he said, unfazed by the irritation she didn’t bother hiding. “Waiting for the shoe to fall?”
“Close enough.”
“The pioneers aboard the Nexus have hit obstacle after obstacle.” He gestured at the commons around them, which was deceptively quiet given the nature of their discussion. “Tensions are running high. Every emergency, accident, and failure leaves them feeling more exposed. Less safe. Leadership treats them like babies you can put down to bed—”
She couldn’t help but snort. “You aren’t a parent, are you?”
He laughed outright, shaking his head. “All right, perhaps that was a bad analogy. Point is, to them, leadership seems to want them to perform like VIs—on command, when necessary, power down when done. Like good little machines.” He shrugged. “They’re scared, Sloane. They think no one will protect them when that shoe falls. They don’t want to be in cryo, helpless, when it happens.”
She could see it now.
“By stealing that information,” Sloane said slowly, thinking it through, “Irida could be ready when the shoe drops—she’d know where everything is, and perhaps how to get to it. But for what? A siege? A threat?”
“No,” Calix said quietly. “Think about it the other way around. It’s a ticket to some freedom. Maybe she just wants to make sure there’s a place where she and others like her might feel safe.”
“Great.” Sloane rubbed at her forehead, then pinched the bridge of her nose between two tense fingers. “Meanwhile this presents a threat to everyone else on board. What are the odds she passed the data off to someone else?”
“Only she and whomever she may have talked to know for sure. The real question here, I think, is how do we stop the shoe?”
That was an excellent, excellent question. How did you reassure hungry, scared people that everything was going to be okay? Hold out hope for the Pathfinders? The scouts? Talk up hydroponics? Would an “everything is going to be okay” cover it?
Hell if Sloane knew.
Maybe Addison would. Maybe even Tann would have ideas that didn’t involve forcing people back to sleep.
“If you don’t mind me saying,” Calix offered cautiously, “it may start with how you treat Irida.” She scowled. “I know, I know, she’s on my team and of course I want her treated well, but if she winds up out the airlock, if her punishment is perceived as a warning to others…”
She squinted at Calix, and thought of the way she’d carried herself during the arrest. The punch she’d thrown, and what she’d said. But more than that, the punishment Sloane herself had advocated back when those terrorists had tried to steal a shuttle.
“Do you think I’d space somebody over a dissenting opinion?”
His crack of laughter forced him to put a long hand over his drink to keep it from spilling.
“You? Nah. You’re a hard woman, Sloane, but you’re not completely heartless.” At her grimace, he cocked his head again. “Why, is our ‘acting director’ spreading rumors?”
“If it helps his position.” Now she grimaced. “Ugh, I shouldn’t say that. I have no proof.”
“Probably don’t need any.” He hummed a low note of wry humor. “He’s a real piece of work, isn’t he?”
Sloane’s chuckle felt sharp in her chest. “And then some.”
“Well, stands to reason.”
“Because he’s salarian?”
“Just an observation.” Calix leaned forward, fingers curved around his glass so he could swirl its contents at her. “He’s a numbers type. An ‘at all costs’ sort, right? It’s important to him to keep the upper hand in a power play. After all, power is money.”
It should have been money is power, but in this case, the turian was dead right. Tann, she admitted silently, would much rather have the power. “Whatever that’d net him on this floating wreck,” she said aloud.
The turian’s index finger uncurled from around the glass to point at her. “It’d net him plenty. Including full say over operations. I bet he wants a finger in everything.”
Sloane grunted a laugh, uncomfortable at how cozy this conversation had become, but unwilling to draw a line. It felt good to talk to someone who understood the clusterfuck the council had become. Calix seemed to understand.
“Sorry I don’t have better news, Sloane. Things are tough.”
“Things are out of control,” she replied.
“Why did you come here?”
“Fadeer. And the drink.” She lifted her bottle in salute.
He studied her, slowly shaking his head. “I mean why did you, Sloane Kelly, security director, come to Andromeda?”
“A fresh start,” she said automatically. Calix was too clever by far for this pat answer, though. And she didn’t have any reason not to say. “Because I didn’t have anything to leave behind. Because it was a chance to do things right, for once. To be better.”
“You could have been better back home.”