He scanned Irida’s stolen list, found the ID code he’d spotted on the frame, and tapped in the override. A dull thud from inside the wall, and then the massive doors opened.
“Come on,” Calix said to his team. “We won’t have much time.”
“What’s in there?” Ulrich asked, suddenly dubious.
“The armory,” Calix answered.
No further convincing required.
William Spender watched from afar as Calix and his little gang moved on the armory. He watched the door open for them as if it were welcoming old friends, too.
“Isn’t that interesting,” he said to himself, and glanced around to make sure he wasn’t being watched.
He should report this to security. Probably be in a lot of trouble if he didn’t.
But William Spender had little love for Sloane Kelly, and even less for a political landscape with only one side to play.
So, yes, he’d contact security. But first he’d give Calix a full minute inside the weapons vault.
Maybe even two.
Even deep in the weapons locker, Calix could hear Foster Addison’s speech. She spoke of the mission, and the need to support its aims no matter the cost. That was her mistake, really. The continued and irrational belief in a dead dream. They were going to get everyone killed, except perhaps for themselves, and all because they couldn’t see the truth.
Jien Garson was dead, and her vision died with her.
Calix found it slightly amusing, and more than a little frustrating, that their leaders just assumed the life-support team would go along with the plan. That he and his people would participate in this misguided effort. No one had asked him, of course.
He wondered if anyone had asked Kesh, but considering a salarian was in charge, probably not.
Around him, they were stealing every gun they could get their hands on.
“Bag it all,” he said to them.
No one needed to hear it, though. They were on autopilot now. A veritable feeding frenzy of weaponry. His plan had been to take the weapons and relocate them to some hidden, out-of-the-way chamber. That would even the odds a bit, and give him a bargaining chip. Leverage to demand new leadership, and a more diverse security force. A new plan. And, of course, a full pardon for his team. Only then would he tell them where the weapons were.
Yet standing there, watching his angry crew stuff the tools of violence into tactical bags so heavy they could barely lift their prizes, he knew they’d never agree to return them. He’d been crazy to think it himself.
“That’s enough,” he said. “Security will be back soon, and we need to be gone.”
“Where to next?” someone asked.
Calix had to think fast. He hadn’t expected this to happen so quickly, or to go like this. For a moment he felt adrift on a swift current, the one person with a raft to which everyone else had decided, inexplicably, to cling.
“After what Addison just said,” he replied, “I think we’d better get our hands on as many supplies as we can before the council barricades them.”
If they haven’t already, he amended silently.
“Even if they do, they won’t be able to stop us,” another said with a wolfish grin.
“Maybe so,” Calix admitted, “but I’d rather be the ones defending it.”
“Smart play.”
Agreement all around. Again. Calix wished they’d think for themselves a bit, but this wasn’t the time to encourage them. Far from it. No, he’d started something here, and there would be no walking away. In Andromeda, there was nowhere else to go, after all.
As they slipped out of the armory, each of them carrying two full bags and most with a third slung over their shoulders, Calix tried to picture this moment from the perspective of the bystanders. The few crew members milling about in the common room had backed up to the walls, hands outstretched, mouths agape as they watched this random group of techs walk out of security with so much gear.
Barrels of weapons poked out of the bags they strained to carry. Despite Addison’s words that still echoed off the walls, they saw only theft. He needed to do something about that, and soon. The label of terrorism would be slapped on them, and quickly.
As they moved toward their destination, Calix’s omni-tool squawked relentlessly. Sloane, Sloane, Kesh, Sloane. He wondered if they were trying to discover his location—he’d disabled that function an hour ago. Security might have a way around that, though, but he still needed the device to override the bulkheads.
Override the bulkheads.
Of course! Calix dropped the bags of weapons and knelt. His band of thieves silently gathered around, knowing something was up. He rushed through the menus again, from rote memory this time, and found the option he wanted.
“We’re going to have to hurry after this,” he said. With that he selected a command and entered it. Then he used his credentials to do one of the few things his chief’s status would allow. He activated the station-wide public address.
“This is Calix Corvannis, and I am here to tell you all to say no.” His words echoed where Addison’s had just a few moments ago. “Say no. Resist the order to return to stasis.”
The message was loud and clear. He thought he’d pulled it off, too. Stern and yet rational, collected. As he finished, the command he’d entered took effect. Every sealed bulkhead door in the inhabited zone of the Nexus began to open.
Calix moved at a brisk walk, forcing a look of concerned focus onto his face, not meeting the eyes of any they passed.
Smoke billowed from Hydroponics. He walked on by without even glancing into the room. He didn’t want security to see him, but more than that, he didn’t want to know. Nnebron may have doomed them all by starting that fire, rendering all of this moot. They’d just have to hope the damage was superficial, or quickly contained.
A distraction, not abject sabotage.
He turned down a long hallway, his team following close behind like a gang of hired thugs. What have I started? he thought, then he pushed the question aside. All that really mattered was how it would end.
He turned on the PA again, before they removed his authority to access it. He spoke into it as he walked.
“Do not enter your pods,” he said. “We are not robots who can just be switched off when our existence here becomes inconvenient. This station is ours, all of ours, and it’s not going to be fixed by anyone but us.
“No one is coming to our rescue. No planets wait to harbor us. Addison got that part right. What she didn’t tell you is that our leaders have known this for two weeks. Two weeks! The Nexus doesn’t need all of you asleep. What it needs is all of you at your stations, doing what you came here to do. A great push to right this ship! A great—”
His access to the PA vanished.
His omni still worked, but the channel had been cut.
“Well,” he said, “I guess someone didn’t like what I was saying.” That elicited laughs from his “gang.” He looked at them over his shoulder. The resistance, they were. The uprising.
Calix couldn’t quite pinpoint how he’d managed to be at the head of this, but he suspected it went all the way back to the Milky Way. The stand he’d taken against the captain of the Warsaw. Something anyone in his position would have done, as far as he was concerned. Yet the action had grown in that case, too, becoming an unstoppable thing that made him out to be some kind of legend. A role, evidently, that fate had found for him.
So be it.