Jason Hough - Mass Effect - Nexus Uprising

The human stared after him for a moment. “Is he always like that?”

Kesh’s snorted laughter echoed in the tumbled chamber. “Calix Corvannis is like many of his kind,” she said. “Except it’s for neither glory nor position that he seizes control of moments like this.”

“Not big on the meritocracy, then?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know his history, Director Sloane. Not entirely. I never saw the need to ask. What I can tell you is that he is an extremely talented engineer, slow to anger and protective of his own. A concept,” she added, “that includes that which he oversees. Systems or staff.”

Sloane raised an eyebrow. “And you let him just make decisions like that?”

Again, Kesh lifted her broad shoulders. “Unlike most, I don’t feel the need to second-guess my crew. When Calix operates on his own terms, he does so for good reason. And to success,” she finished pointedly.

“You trust him.”

“Enough to let him implement the entire cryostasis system.”

Sloane whistled, low and under her breath. “Will he need help collecting his crew?”

That, Kesh didn’t know. “You have spent more than your fair share with turians,” she said instead. “What do you think?”

Whatever she did think, Sloane wasn’t about to share it with Kesh, that much was clear. Back in the Milky Way, rumor had placed the human in very close proximity to another turian. Kaetus, if memory served—and it usually did. Surprising no one, Kaetus had boarded the Natanus , the turian ark destined to dock with the Nexus soon enough.

Whether it was friendship that had him following Sloane into Andromeda or, as gossip suggested, something more, didn’t concern Kesh. Nor did the existence of said turian. What mattered to her was that Sloane was familiar enough with turian ways that she’d be willing to let her engineer do what he did best.

Something she appeared to allow, for now.

Kesh would take what she could get. Calix and she would both earn the trust needed to operate unfettered in this failing system. The fact Sloane appeared to prefer their species would only help. “Now,” Kesh said briskly, clapping her hands together hard. “We might as well keep busy.”

“I guess so,” the woman sighed. She stretched hard, rolled her shoulders, and bent to work.

With Sloane’s help, fallen equipment was righted, debris cleared from a bank of control screens.

In record time, Calix Corvannis returned with a bleary-eyed group of seven engineers of junior rank. Junior, Kesh knew, only because they refused to surpass their supervisor in rank. They leapt right to work, as if they didn’t need instructions. Not that Calix was silent. He barked the occasional order, using terms and abbreviations Kesh did not recognize.

He knew these people very well. They’d worked together for a long time. In fact, they’d all volunteered for the Nexus as a group, Kesh recalled. Something had happened on Calix’s previous post, a labor dispute during which—the notes attached to the report she was given had explained—he had gone against orders for the well-being of his team.

She didn’t know the details because he was too humble to talk about it.

Whatever the case, they were loyal after that, “to a fault,” in his words.

“They said they’d follow me anywhere,” Calix had said dryly, “so I thought I’d test them on that with Andromeda. Turns out they were serious.”

She’d asked if he was satisfied with that.

“I don’t hold anybody to anything they don’t want to do,” he’d told her, nodding in the direction of his team as they’d worked. “They want to leave, they can. But they saw the Initiative specs, heard the speeches, same as me. They’re here because they want to be, Kesh. They’ll work hard.”

She had never been given any reason to doubt that.

And thank the stars for it. Now they needed every last one of them honed and ready.

At a tersely shouted order from the turian, two of his team raced off in unison to fix a stuck valve, one deck below and three over.

Kesh stood back, resisting the urge to check the clock. Not that there was any need. Sloane saw fit to call out the remaining time as each minute ticked away. Fifteen. Soon enough it was only ten. Then five. The engineers worked furiously, but with the kind of calm usually reserved for a drill.

“Two minutes,” Sloane called, with less fervor than prior. Her voice sounded breathy, her tone weakened. The air now tasted of burned chemicals. It smelled even worse, and that was to a krogan. Kesh could only imagine what the humans were experiencing. Indeed, after uttering those words, the security director pulled her rebreather mask over her face and sat down.

Kesh didn’t ask if she was okay. She wasn’t, obviously. Only time could tell now.

And time was exactly what Calix called. “That should do it. Confirm?”

Sloane and Kesh waited as the engineering team verified the surgery they’d just performed.

“Oxygen levels stabilizing,” one said.

“Filtration at eleven percent,” another, an asari, said. “Now ten… nine. No, wait. Hovering between nine and ten percent.” The tension drained from the room. They smiled at one another.

“Success?” Sloane asked, her voice muffled by the full-face mask.

Calix let out a breath, reaching his long arms up in a stretch. “Let’s just say we’ve bought ourselves twenty-four hours. Maybe more.”

Sloane let out something that might have been one of her profane phrases that were meant to suggest gratitude. Kesh couldn’t hear her. She reached for the mask, only to pause when Calix waved at her.

“You’d better keep that mask handy. The air in here is still poisonous, and will be for a while.”

Visibly short on breath, Sloane let her hand fall and said loudly, “We can’t fix all this damage to the Nexus if no one can breathe.”

“Sir?” the asari engineer said.

Calix turned to her. “Go ahead, Irida.”

“If we returned unnecessary portions of the Nexus to a state of vacuum, and used the sorting membrane—”

“—we could create a pocket of custom atmosphere. Good thinking, engineer.” The asari, Irida, grinned at the praise.

Sloane rubbed her temples again. “Explain that?”

“Bring the good air here, shift the bad elsewhere, and leave most of the Nexus with nothing at all.”

“Sounds like a shell game,” Sloane said. Calix recognized the archaic reference.

“That’s because it is.” The turian raised a hand to stave off Sloane’s next objection. “It leaves us with a section, maybe two, containing perfectly safe air. With some clever rerouting we can move that air wherever it’s needed.”

Kesh pulled Sloane aside. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “We still do not know where Jien Garson is. If she’s wandered—”

“She can’t have gone that far.”

“It’s a risk.”

“We don’t have much of a choice here, Kesh.” Then, louder, to Calix. “Do it.”

Kesh studied the human. “You don’t want to run that by Tann, first?”

“Tann can bite—” She cut herself off. An improvement, Kesh noted. The narrow victory had settled the human some. “He’ll understand. Besides, better to ask forgiveness, isn’t it?”

Jarun Tann sat cross-legged on the floor of Jien Garson’s office—technically his office now, at least for the time being. He held a glass of asari honey mead in both hands, throat still tingling from the first sip, a pleasant warmth spreading through his belly.

He stared out through the impressive floor-to-ceiling window, one of the long habitat arms of the Nexus stretching out several kilometers before him. Doing so, he could just about manage to convince himself that everything would be okay. Then he smirked, amused and annoyed that his mind would flirt with that very human way of thinking.