Grudgingly they complied, stepping onto the ladder and starting their descent into the depths of the Nexus. Sloane waited until they were three levels down before she boarded the ladder herself. She slid quickly, past ten steps, then sidled off onto the cool tile floor of the level below. There she took a knee and flicked on her rifle light. The beam found only empty corners in the shadows it chased away. Deserted, though some footprints had been made in the dusty surfaces.
She pressed into the darkness, ears pricked, every sense on high-alert. Sloane had been here a few months ago, scouting a possible way around the blocked tunnel she’d helped the Nakmor workers clear. An hour spent probing the ravaged, seemingly endless labyrinth and just when she’d found a promising route—though narrow as hell and almost inaccessible—Kesh had called her back, saying the way forward had been discovered already.
Sloane’s inferior path was more convoluted and thus abandoned in favor of the other, but she remembered the way. At least she thought so. This lab seemed right, but there were so many. She recalled a dented door. Yes, there it was. And the pile of desks and counters that had formed a sort of odd pyramid in one corner, with a crack in the wall at the top that led where she needed to go.
Hmm, she thought, not seeing them now.
“Where the hell are you?” she asked the darkness.
To her surprise, the darkness answered.
“State your business here.” A gruff voice, heavily accented. Sloane didn’t recognize it. No surprise, she knew only a fraction of the people on the Nexus.
“I’d ask you the same.”
“We’ll be the one asking questions.” Movement, to her left and her right. Shadows within shadows. Sloane forced herself to remain calm. It would hurt her cause to enter this place with the tip of her rifle.
“I’m not here to fight,” she said.
“What are you here for?” the voice asked.
“I want to talk to Calix Corvannis.”
“Never heard of him.”
Sloane shook her head. “So the three of you just happen to be down here, in the dark, guarding an unused, yet-to-be-repaired lab that just happens to have a hole in the wall back there leading to the section of the Nexus where Calix Corvannis has set up the headquarters of his uprising. Pure coincidence, that it?”
A lot of guesses, but their silence made her grin.
“Now,” she went on, “why don’t we cut the macho guard-the-door bullshit and get on with this. Either you go let Calix know that Security Director Sloane Kelly is here, alone, to speak with him, or I repaint the walls of this room with your innards and go meet him in person. What’s it going to be?”
The shadow in front of her materialized as the man stepped into the beam of her light. A tall, hulking figure that looked like he spent every off-hour he had lifting krogan for sport.
“I think we’ll go for a third option,” he said. “The one where you put down that rifle, and we haul you to see Calix in cuffs. Just so you can know what Irida felt like, Director.”
Gambling time, she said to herself. Give in now to get close. She would just have to hope that these frontline grunts wouldn’t act without their leader’s okay. And she doubted Calix had given any specific instructions about her, as opposed to just anyone who showed up, which meant they’d have to ask before they could rough her up—or worse.
So she set her weapon on the floor, and placed her hands at the small of her back, and waited.
They weren’t gentle, but despite the vengeance they unjustly wanted for their incarcerated friend, they didn’t hurt her, either. Sloane soon found herself being marched, prodded, and pushed through the narrow twisted passage that led, after nearly twenty minutes of walking, to join the corridor she and the Nakmor clan had cleared months ago.
The hallway, one of the Nexus’s main arteries, was clear in only the loosest application of the word. Debris and jumbled equipment still littered its length, but it had all been piled to one side to allow reasonably easy passage. Sloane regretted that decision, now. It had been the easiest way to open the corridor, but now all that piled junk served as cover for Calix’s makeshift army. Every discarded crate or torn-out hunk of air processor she passed had one or two rebels crouched behind it, all of them well-armed thanks to their score.
Any regrets she felt about coming here alone, however, vanished at the sight of them. If she’d come here by force with an entire squad at her back, it would have been a bloodbath no matter which side emerged victorious. These assholes might be untrained, but there were a surprising number of them, and they had the advantage that they could wait and remain behind cover as long as it took.
“Looks like you’ve made yourselves at home,” Sloane said to the brute in front of her.
“No talking,” he grunted back.
So original. Sloane sighed and went on counting the enemy, creating a little database in her mind of their positions, weapons, and any other details that might be of use. She hoped she’d never need it, but it beat trying to talk to the walking barricade.
He led her into a fabrication room where massive machines lay under protective coverings, dormant and cold. Surrounding these were untidy rows of shelving and workspaces, twisted and jumbled together by the Scourge. More cover, and plenty of room for the rabble. Beyond, if Sloane’s memory served, lay one of the empty ark hangars.
From there Calix and his people would have access to nine tenths of the station’s real estate, not to mention the access and expertise required to wake whomever they felt they needed—people they could tell any story they wanted. Sloane could no longer deny how brilliant this action was. Calix was no mild-mannered supervisor. Far from it.
“Director Kelly.” His voice filtered in from the adjoining small office at the side of the factory floor. Sloane turned and saw him step out, to stand amid a core group of life-support techs. His trusted inner circle, no doubt. These things always took on the same characteristics.
She nodded to him. “Calix,” she said. “Not sure what title to give you, actually. Sorry.”
He jerked his chin at the brute, his wishes implied in the gesture. A few seconds later Sloane felt her wrists being freed. She immediately went to work flexing the numbness from her hands and rubbing the ache from her wrists.
“I don’t need a title,” he said. “I just need better decision making.”
“Tann’s doing the best he can. We all are.”
He chuckled, dryly. His cronies picked up on it and echoed the reaction. All a bit forced, Sloane thought. Typical.
“Can we talk?” she asked him. “In private?”
“Depends,” he said. “Is this just a diversion? Get me away from the front when the attack comes?”
“No one’s coming to attack, Calix. We need you—all of you—back at your stations.”
“You need us in stasis,” he said. “And before that, you need us to put everyone else back in stasis. But that’s not going to happen.” He said this for his own gathered cronies, not her. A tactic she knew well.
“No one is coming to attack,” she repeated. “I just came to talk. I want to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“All of it.” She swept her arm across the room, indicating the band of wild-eyed miscreants this turian had somehow rallied to his cause, whatever it may be. “Why you did this. People are dead, Calix. Many more are injured. What little supplies remain to us have been looted or destroyed.”
For several seconds he just stared at her, as if still trying to decide if he could trust her. If he felt any remorse over the loss of life, he managed to keep it off of his sharp features.