“Perhaps.” Tann couldn’t bring himself to smile, not even when Addison’s hand curved over his shoulder. Sympathy or support, he didn’t know. He’d take both, maybe just this once. “May I ask you something?”
The lines of her features were very pale in the cool light streaming in through the viewport. It made it easier to watch her eyebrows raise, her chin drop in a nod.
Tann didn’t know why it felt as if his heart had taken up residence in his throat. Or why his insides felt so hollow. All he could say for certain was that for once, doubt consumed him. He looked away, back to the busy docks.
“Do you think she would have made the same decisions?” he asked. “Jien, I mean?”
Addison took a slow breath. “I don’t know,” she said on an equally as slow exhale. Tann nodded, expecting that.
“I think,” she continued quietly, staring out over the cold and pitted station, “that Jien Garson would never have allowed us to get into this situation in the first place. I hate to admit it, Tann, but we—all of us—we were out of our element from the start. Hopelessly so.”
Tann couldn’t disagree.
“We did our best,” she added. “Even Sloane. I believe that.”
“Perhaps.”
But they would never know. The mission had claimed the founder of this dream before she could leave any mark at all in the galaxy that was to be their masterpiece.
Sacrifice, she’d said. Tann had thought that he’d been prepared.
Perhaps Jien Garson had been wrong, after all.
“I think,” he said again, much quieter than before, “the greatest sacrifice we will ever make wasn’t coming here.”
“No?”
He shook his head, but didn’t give his thoughts any more words. He couldn’t. To admit he’d probably been wrong was hard enough.
Addison squeezed his shoulder. In silence, she left him to the sparkling lights of the operations consoles, the busy preparation of the docks, and the lurid, hovering threat of the Scourge beyond.
To know, somehow just know, that none of this would have happened with Garson in charge… It stung. And it proved to him what he’d subconsciously been dreading since the moment he’d woken up to fire and fear.
See you on the other side.
The greatest sacrifice wasn’t in leaving, he thought. It was her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
In the cold vacuum of space, ships drifted through the web of the Scourge, toward unfamiliar stars. Like a pack, they traveled together at first. Then, as if saying goodbye in silent harmony, they split into two groups.
Blue and white engine plumes flared as the exiles and the krogan truly set off, out of comms and sensor range now. They had officially departed the Nexus, perhaps never to return.
Kesh hadn’t realized that she’d pressed a callused hand to the window until it fisted against the smooth pane. Knuckles aching, she watched the exhaust of her people’s ships. Already, she missed the heavy, abrasive sound of krogan footfalls in the empty corridors. She missed the loud, often savage laughter.
The fights, the jeers.
The camaraderie.
Family. Above all things, krogan clans meant family—perhaps more so than any other of the species. After all, for so long, the krogan had only each other.
The other side, Kesh thought sadly, seemed to be one of loneliness. Of prejudices only half-forgotten, and conflicts given open ground to run free.
Had Garson expected that?
Kesh was not idealistic. She’d worked to the bone for this station, this Initiative, and she would die for it if she had to.
Or, as it turned out, leave her clan for the betterment of it.
With the resolution of conflicts, this mission had promised a new beginning, a chance at peace… yet the cost had been blood. Fire. Loss. What ground they’d all gained, what bonds they’d forged between disparate species as settlers of Andromeda, had begun to erode the moment Garson and her council died.
Maybe the krogan would find a new path on this side, maybe they’d survive—even thrive. Kesh believed in her clan leader. She believed in the genuine efforts of the Nexus leadership to guide and guide well. In the spirit of that hope, she remained behind as the seeds of the Initiative, watered by blood and toughened by flame, scattered through Andromeda.
What they became, what they chose to take from this, would be up to them. Kesh would remain here, with the station she’d helped engineer, waiting for the day they came back.
But first, there were so many to mourn. Survivors, bereaved and angry, to comfort. The work of a gentler touch than her own. Hers was to rebuild.
Preparing the Nexus, she thought as she turned away from the last glimmers of her only people, for the eventuality of peace.
Sloane watched the pitted lines of the scarred station as they drifted away. When—no, if—the Nexus finally came together, when all the damage was fixed and the elements were in place, it would be a remarkable place.
A place she would never get to see.
That was her one regret. Staring out into the eerie glow cast by the distant filaments of the Scourge, Sloane studied the way the curves of the station distorted everything around it.
Nnebron, his back to the window, huddled over his knees in exhaustion. And fear, Sloane figured. There was a lot of that going around. They all knew what was out here—or rather, what wasn’t. No planets. No food.
No hope.
Well, Garson be damned. This was the other side, and the idealistic woman’s masterpiece turned out to be painted in blood. In old hatreds.
In the stupid pride of a few.
Sloane touched the viewing pane in silent goodbye. Then turned her back on the Nexus once and for all.
“Okay,” she said briskly, clapping her hands hard. More than a few of the exiles jumped. Nnebron muttered something she didn’t bother asking him to repeat. Ignoring him, she strode away from the last vestiges of hope and cranked her compass to where it should have been from the start—survival. Hers, and the people who had been relying on her since the moment they’d woken.
She should have done that, just that, from the start.
“Maybe we don’t have a station,” she said, her tone firm. Her gaze level as she studied her new crew. “Maybe we don’t have a mission, but what we do have,” she continued as she made her way across the floor, “is one another. And the strength and determination to survive this.”
Irida, leaning against a panel, shrugged around her folded arms. “It’s a death trap out there. What do you think we can do?”
“Starve to death,” Nnebron said grimly.
“Come on—”
He cut the red-haired woman off, shrugged out from under her reassuring hand. “It’s true, Andria. Two weeks of rations, and we’re expected to find somewhere when seasoned scouts didn’t?” He laughed bitterly. “May as well just shoot ourselves now.”
The fear in the ship ramped up a notch.
Sloane eyed Irida. Then Nnebron. Even the one called Andria curled up on herself. She saw only gloom there.
So it was going to be like that, was it? She weighed her options. A good security director would crouch down. Sit eye to eye with her subordinates and hear them out. Reassure them.
Play the game.
Well. Fuck that. The game had landed them all here.
Sloane went for Irida. The asari raised her chin, but she wasn’t expecting the hand that went for her throat. Sloane spun, Irida’s collar in one fist, and slammed the asari hard enough into the ship wall that crewmates down the length of it yelped when it vibrated.