“I agree,” Calix said, “but we don’t need to draw attention to ourselves. We’ll do so in ways that matter.”
Nnebron kicked at an invisible pebble, scuffing the floor.
Calix glanced at the others around him. Just a bunch of friends, enjoying a few minutes of R&R before they went back to the repair work. Only Nnebron had fallen out of character, and perhaps that wasn’t so bad, Calix thought. It gave him something to talk about with the two guards.
“The rest of you stay here, I’ll be back.” Before any of them could question him, Calix walked calmly over to the pair. He put on his best turian smile. “How are things, officers?”
“What’s the matter with your friend?” one of them asked, jerking his chin toward Nnebron. The stained uniform identified him as White. An older human, squat and powerfully built, with a rather awful-looking pencil mustache incongruously framed by bushy eyebrows and overgrown sideburns.
“Yeah,” the other guard said. “He doesn’t seem too happy with us.” Another human, her height and thin clean face an almost comical contrast to White. Her uniform read Blair.
“Don’t mind him,” Calix replied. “One of his friends was arrested, and he’s still a little sore about it. I just wanted to apologize if his, er, attitude bothered you.”
“If we bother him,” White said, “maybe you should take your group elsewhere.”
“We’ll be getting back to work in a few minutes, don’t worry. In the meantime, you both look like you’re at the far end of a long shift. Need anything? Food, water?”
Blair turned her focus to him, now. Her eyes were sharp, narrowed. “Rations have already been distributed for the week. If you’re suggesting that you can acquire—”
“No, no.” Calix held up his hands, palms out. “I saved a bit is all, and I’m happy to share.” He pulled a water bottle from his jacket and waved it in front of her. The clear fluid sloshed.
“I’m good, thanks.”
White sized him up as well. “Why don’t you rejoin your friends, sir. We’re on duty here.”
“Of course,” he said. “Sorry to have troubled you.”
Calix took one last glance at the bulkhead door behind the pair. Imprinted on the frame, in tiny lettering, a maintenance identifier had been stenciled. He walked back to his team. Nnebron eyed him with curiosity, and perhaps a little bit of suspicion.
“Why are you offering water to those assholes?”
With his back to the guards, Calix poured the bottle of water into a planter. The plant was fake. The soil, too, no doubt scheduled to be replaced with something from hydroponics in that alternate reality where the Nexus wasn’t a wreck.
“What the hell?” Nnebron asked. “I could have used that.”
“I doubt that.” He shook the last few drops out and returned the empty bottle to his jacket. “Unless you want to sleep for a week.”
Nnebron blinked, looking at Calix with renewed admiration. An expression matched by the others from his team, who’d gathered around. In truth the water was just water. Calix had only meant to distract the two guards for a moment while he learned the ID code for the bulkhead. He hadn’t anticipated what the gesture would look like to his own people.
They were already a little suspicious of him, ever since his lengthy talk with Sloane Kelly, and though that suspicion had remained unvoiced, he could tell they were looking for signs. From the looks on their faces, though, he’d not only dispelled the concern, but swung the pendulum in the other direction. Not only had he not offered the guards water, he’d tried to drug them.
If that was what they were made to believe, Calix saw no harm in it.
“We’ll have to take a different approach,” he said.
They all nodded. Just tell us what to do, their eager eyes said.
“They refused the water,” he continued, already feeling a bit trapped in the fiction he’d created, “so we’ll need some other way to get them to leave the door.”
“A diversion,” one of his crew said.
“That’s easy,” Nnebron said. “I know just the thing.” There was something in his voice Calix wasn’t sure he liked. A malice, yet the enthusiasm couldn’t be denied.
“Maybe another barbecue,” he suggested thoughtfully. “Open flames are sure to draw a response.”
“Count on it,” Nnebron said. With a simple gesture he recruited two others from the group, and the trio strode away, talking in hushed tones as they went. Calix watched them go, and wondered how wise that assignment had been. Nnebron was a hothead, and the arrest of his friend Irida hadn’t exactly helped matters.
Oh, well, he mused. Nothing to be done about it now. He could see it in the faces of the six who remained. They were looking to him to lead the way, but they were going to do something, whether or not he accepted the role. They needed a change. They needed to know that life wasn’t going to be like this forever, working themselves to death on a station that should have been abandoned months ago, for an unqualified trio of leaders who made questionable decisions at every turn. Leaders still mired in the prejudices and politics the rest of the crew had wanted to leave behind.
They’d come here for a new beginning, not to prop up old, outdated bigotry.
The PA crackled, and the voice of Foster Addison began to fill the station. “As many of you know, ten weeks ago Colonial Affairs sent out a fleet of vessels to scout the nearest worlds…”
Calix and his little band of admirers listened without a word. The two guards, Calix noted, shifted uneasily, eyes scanning the few people in the common room. He wondered if they knew what this was about.
Activating his omni-tool, he dove into the endless menus and elaborate maze of files and folders he’d created to hide the thing he needed. The true prize in Irida’s stolen data.
Addison’s words continued to echo around the room and down the long hallways.
“I am sad to announce that these missions have failed,” she said. Gasps from those who had gathered.
“I can’t believe they sat on this for weeks,” one of Calix’s team said. It was Ulrich, a burly human whose gruff bruiser appearance often led others to underestimate him. The man was one of the finest engineers Calix had ever met. He’d been part of the team since the beginning—one of the first to join the Nexus mission.
“Stay calm, stay calm,” Calix said, getting the tone just right. He’d had no idea Addison would announce this just as he and his team were going to act. It presented an opportunity, however, that he couldn’t resist. Let them think he’d planned the timing.
Got it! Calix found the hidden file. The override codes Irida had stolen. He still couldn’t quite say why he’d kept them, or why he’d lied about it to Sloane, the only member of the hierarchy “worth her salt,” as the saying went.
“Here’s the plan…” he said.
An alarm rang out.
Someone shouted, “Fire!”
It came from a connecting hallway. The same hall Nnebron and his friends had taken. Then another shout.
“Fire in Hydroponics!”
A message blipped on Calix’s screen.
This should get their attention.
Oh hell, Nnebron—what did you do?
The two guards raced from the room, shouldering Calix aside as they abandoned their post in front of the bulkhead door. As diversions went, a fire in Hydroponics was about the best he could have wished for—only he hadn’t wished for it. Not at all. If Nnebron damaged the food supply…
Calix didn’t want to think about that. He had to act, now, while the guards were gone. They’d left the bulkhead unguarded, that much he had predicted. It was a bulkhead, after all, and only security could override those.