“And new leaders!”
Who said it, he didn’t see, but the words started a fire. Andria darted around Nnebron to grab Calix by the arm. Her grip bit.
“How long?” she demanded. “Until the supplies run out? Will they let us starve?”
Whoa. He hadn’t expected this to move quite that fast. Calix covered her hand with his free one, pressing her fingers against his arm in what he hoped was a firm, comforting method. He had a hard time gauging human comfort, sometimes.
“Easy,” he said, trying for soothing. “We aren’t going to starve.”
“No way the boss would let us starve,” Nnebron added.
“Yeah… Hey, yeah!” The others started to nod. To look Calix’s way. To… to almost vibrate. The tension was palpable.
“Plans,” one repeated. “Priorities… we need to lock down supplies.”
“We need to spread the word!”
Andria stared, her gaze pleading. “We can’t let everyone else starve. What about Reg? Emory? Some of us have friends out there…”
“We won’t.” He said the words before he could fully weigh them. Saw them take hold in her features, create a vortex of confidence he’d never known he could inspire. Suddenly his crew surrounded him, all reaching out to touch his shoulder, his arm. Pats of confidence, of pride.
Of support.
“Irida needs to be freed,” he heard.
From someone else, “We need to secure the rations!”
“What about security?”
“Screw them,” someone jeered.
It spun around and around him, a heady mix of anger and relief and confidence. All because of him. They looked at him as a leader. Calix’s shoulders squared. He squeezed Andria’s hand, then stepped back far enough that he could see them all in his field of view.
“First things first,” he said, loudly enough to cut through the voices. They all went silent. Watching. Listening.
Really listening.
Heady stuff, that power.
He summoned every ounce of meritocratic confidence he never knew he possessed. But instead of laying down his orders and forcing them to obey, he met them as equals.
As friends.
He spread his hands. “We need a plan.”
Nnebron’s grin stretched ear-to-ear. “I think we can help you there, boss.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“What a fucking mess,” Sloane said. The words were directed not at Tann, who paced behind the desk in Operations, or Addison, who sat head-in-hands against the wall by the door. The farthest she could be from Sloane and still be in the room. No, her words were directed at the floor.
At the whole damned station.
Rage had got the better of her, weeks back. She’d stormed out of that crowded control room and kept on going, rampaging around like a petty tyrant, doing anything she could to get her mind off Kandros. The failure of the scouts was bad enough, but she couldn’t get past the fact that those scout missions had cost her the best first officer she’d never had.
His ship had not been found, or heard from, since. Some had wanted to declare them lost, and to stop using critical resources to continue the search, but Sloane was having none of it.
Time had passed, which only made the situation worse, both in terms of Kandros and the fact that the general population had yet to be told of the scout’s failure.
In fact, time had become a physical source of pain. Every day that passed without answers, without showing the guts to admit the truth to everyone, only made that inevitable moment all the worse.
“This cannot go on, my friends,” Tann said. “We have only one option left.”
This is it, Sloane thought, bile in her mouth. The end of denial. Jarun Tann, all business, as usual. The past, to him, was merely data. Sloane glared. “If you say that we turn around and go back to the Milky Way…”
“No,” Tann said. The word cut like a knife. Unusual for him. Despite herself Sloane straightened her back. An involuntary reaction every soldier learned when they heard that tone. “I’m not ready to give up yet,” he added, casting his gaze between Sloane and Addison. “None of us should be.”
Slowly, like a marionette, Addison lifted her head and blinked.
“What option, then?”
“Cryostasis,” Tann said.
Sloane laughed. Or would have. She wanted to, but nothing came out. Tann, she realized, was right.
The salarian went on. “Everyone goes back in, save a skeleton crew. We wait and hope the Pathfinders reach us. That we don’t encounter the Scourge again. It’s all we can do.”
“Risky move,” Addison said, though little conviction stood behind her words. She also knew he was right. Sloane could hear it.
“Absolutely,” Tann agreed, “but then everything is these days.”
The words settled. Like a blanket over a corpse, Sloane thought. For a long time no one said anything.
“I’ll do it,” Addison said. “I’ll make the announcement.”
“Are you sure?” Tann asked, thinking the same thing as Sloane—that Addison wasn’t up for it. Her mood was… complicated, to say the least.
“Well, you can’t do it,” Addison said, almost laughing. “Remember your call for volunteers?”
“I’m still trying to forget.” He frowned. “Why not Sloane?”
“Screw that,” Sloane said. “You got us into this mess, Acting Director.”
“That’s unfair,” Tann fired back. “I’ve done my best to consult the two of you in every decision—”
“You mean whichever of us was most likely to agree.”
Addison hauled herself to her feet. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? No one’s going to like this. It can’t come from Sloane because while we make the announcement, she’ll be getting security ready for the crew’s reaction.” She studied each of them. “It’s why we’ve sat on our thumbs for two weeks and avoided this. People aren’t going to go willingly.”
“They must,” Tann said.
“They won’t,” Addison replied. “Not unless they are… compelled.”
Sloane Kelly clenched her jaw, shook her head. “What a fucking mess.” Addison was right, though. No arguing that. “When do you want to announce it?”
“As soon as possible, I think,” the woman replied.
“Okay. Okay.” Sloane’s mind raced through the preparations that would be required. Her team was already spread too thin, but that couldn’t be helped. She’d pull them all in, brief them, and get ready for the party. Calix, she’d need to talk to Calix. Fuck, this was exactly what he’d warned her about.
They could at least drink to that.
His team would have to enter cryo last, so they could assist the rest. She wondered how willingly that bunch of hard-asses would help. They all looked at her now with one thing written across their faces.
You imprisoned Irida.
Sloane went to the door. “Give me an hour,” she said as she left.
Exactly an hour later she had her entire team gathered at headquarters, a space little better than a ruin. Every time Kesh offered to send a team to fix it up Sloane waved her off. Too many other places were more important. Besides, other than the occasional arrest, her team hardly spent any time here.
Strange to see all their faces gathered. Stranger still not to see Kandros at the front of the group.
Her team had been briefed, and they were just waiting for the announcement. Sloane could have dispersed them ahead of Addison’s speech, in order to have a security presence “in the streets,” so to speak. An old tactic from the tyrant’s playbook, that. In the end, though, she thought this might work better. A little reverse psychology. Let people think, hopefully subconsciously, that security wasn’t even worried. That this was a perfectly acceptable step in the station’s recovery.