That one earned a full-on flinch.
She drove it home. “You want to assume he’ll just pat you on the back and say you tried your best?”
When he blinked rapidly, she took it as a win.
She shook her head once. “Won’t happen. There will be consequences, and if you want to have any sort of life in this galaxy, you’re going to have to grit your teeth and deal with them. Starting now.”
“What about the krogan?” somebody asked.
Nnebron’s eyes sparked with renewed fury. “Yeah, what about them?” he demanded. “They didn’t even stop to negotiate, they just started killing!”
Sloane had no answer. It was true—they’d done just that. Ordered or not, it was a perfect example of just how much a “workforce” could stand in for an army. Especially a krogan workforce. To admit they’d been deliberately unleashed felt like a perfect way to get these people back on the mutiny train.
She knew exactly what Tann had hoped to accomplish by releasing Morda. The fact any of them were still alive was a fucking miracle. Surrender or no. But he’d failed at killing them off. Now he had to deal with them.
Another shake of her head drew Nnebron’s heavy eyebrows together. “The krogan put down an insurgency,” Sloane said. No salt. Just candor. It was all she had. “They won’t be reprimanded. They’ll be praised. Like it or not,” she continued while the rest shuffled and muttered, “the mutiny failed.”
He didn’t answer right away. Others threw out thoughts, suggestions, but it didn’t matter. Without Calix, they didn’t have a singular goal. An end point for which to strive. They’d stormed the barricade, and got brutalized for their efforts.
She was all that stood between them and Tann’s twisted sense of logic.
The decision was made. She read it in the slump of Nnebron’s shoulders. The hang of his head.
“Fine,” he muttered.
On that word, the others went still. Slowly, painfully, Sloane watched them try to come to grips with the universe they hadn’t expected. The one where they’d lost. No caring leadership. No fair shake. Just consequences and shame.
Sloane nodded. “Fine,” she repeated.
It was all they had.
In the end, it was all she had, too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“This is a nightmare,” Addison declared. It was her opening salvo within seconds of striding through the office door. Caught mid-sentence with a small group of aides, Tann looked up from his informal briefing and frowned.
“I believe I specifically requested not to be distu—”
“I know what you requested.” She glared at the aides and jerked her thumb at the door in silent demand. They didn’t even look to Tann to confirm—an oversight he’d have to address sooner rather than later. They hurried out, avoiding her eyes entirely as they went.
Tann sat back in his chair—a salvaged thing from a conference room, for now—and studied the obviously ruffled director.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” she replied flatly. Rather than sit, she grabbed the back of a chair and leaned over it. It was a typical Sloane move, but Foster Addison seemed to have adapted it well. He could appreciate a fine fury when it wasn’t lobbing punches at him or aides. “We have wounded in the medi-labs, dead to tend to, a few hundred insurgents to deal with in rooms never meant to be jail cells,” she continued, more loudly with each word, “and our fucking security director—one of us, Tann—is among them!”
Tann’s eyelids tightened. He laced his fingers delicately, elbows resting on the arms of the chair. “There is nothing to get worked up about,” he said coolly. “The dead will wait until we can handle them properly, and the medics are doing all they can for those who still live.”
He’d swear one of her flared nostrils twitched. Fascinating.
“That is an extremely cavalier view of our own dead,” she said, a hiss somewhere under the tightness of her words.
He shrugged. He was right and he knew it.
“Of everything we need to address, the dead can wait,” he pointed out. “They are hardly going to come knocking on anybody’s door, unlike the very much alive men and women we must take care of immediately.”
“What are we going to do about the insurgents?” she demanded.
“An easy solution.”
“The hell—”
“Director, please.” Tann held up one hand, as placating as he could. “At least hear me out.” He gestured at the seat on which she leaned. “Sit.”
Addison frowned. “I’m good,” she said, “and I’m listening.”
Well, it was better than Sloane, most days. The salarian allowed the woman her small rebellion, saying nothing more about it.
“Let’s discuss this like rational creatures,” he said instead. “What has been our primary consideration since waking?”
“Survival.”
“True enough. And what else?”
Addison considered this. “The mission.”
“Exactly.” He smiled at her, pleased that despite the horrors of the last few hours, her wits remained. Of course, he’d expect nothing less from the director of colonial affairs. In a strange way, it was nice to see her standing up to him, finally. Showing a little passion and intensity, a trait her file noted but he feared the Scourge had knocked out of her.
“The moment those people refused to go back into stasis, we started losing ground. With too many mouths to feed, too few resources, and the time and energy of balancing everything, they cost us more than we could afford.”
“Those people are still part of the Nexus ecosystem.”
“Exactly,” Tann said. “Exactly.”
“So?” Addison folded her arms on the back of the chair, leaning in a way that looked less menacing.
“So,” he repeated, drawing the word out, “to handle the insurgents, all we must do is offer them two choices.”
“Two?”
“For the sake of simplification.”
“Fine.” She raised her eyebrows. “Please don’t say we’re going to space them.”
Tann chuckled. He couldn’t help it. “Actually space them, as our erstwhile security director had suggested? That would be especially ironic, now that she is one of them, but no, of course not. However, it may be worth pulling a page from Sloane’s own peculiar way of handling situations.”
“What, like, give them a terrible choice and then a reasonable one?”
“Exactly,” he said, nodding approvingly. “Option one, we offer them shuttles—”
“We can’t afford—”
“Director, please. Allow me?”
Addison sighed. “Fine, go on.”
“We offer them shuttles,” he repeated firmly, “and supplies to last a reasonable—but not unreasonably reasonable—amount of time. Wish them well on their journey to find a world more to their liking.”
“Exile.”
“Precisely.”
“In a corner of Andromeda plagued by a death nebula from hell, where all our scouts either failed to find anything useful or disappeared trying? Shit, Tann, just space them, it would be less cruel.”
“Yes.” Tann’s smile just widened. “And they know it. Sloane does, at least. Which is why option two will sound so much more appealing.”
“And that is?”
“Cryostasis. Which was all we were asking in the first place. Of course, a punishment hearing would await them at the other end of that, but at least it would occur under less pressing circumstances. Cooler heads, as it were.”
She caught on immediately. “We can get everything settled, an infrastructure in place, and resources steadied.” Her gaze sharpened on him. “In short, put this whole mess in a drawer for now and come back to it later.”