Jason Hough - Mass Effect - Nexus Uprising

“I know,” she called. “We’ve got to cut them off.”

And then the woman stood next to her, with her, like Kandros would have. Another officer appeared to Sloane’s left.

“Use your omni,” she said. “Seal it.”

Of course. Sloane knelt and tried to forget the combat swirling all around her now. A knee jostled her. Someone almost stepped on her hand as she struggled not to fall. Finally there was a precious second of calm. Sloane attacked her omni-tool, found the menu, accessed her location marker on the map. Then she found the door, and set it to closed.

She glanced up. The door didn’t budge.

Calix and his group were almost to it.

“What the…” she said to herself. Her eyes narrowed. In her glimpse of Calix she’d seen the omni on his arm, and she remembered. The database Irida had stolen. Among the litany of items it contained, one was bulkhead maintenance codes. Calix had claimed ignorance of the stolen data, but he’d had it after all. That’s how he got into the weapons storage. That was why all of the doors had opened. Everyone had unfettered access to everything—and she’d only left guards at the armory. She’d deliberately kept her forces out of sight, as a way to inspire calm.

“I’m such an idiot,” she muttered. A list of all the vulnerable places ran through her mind. Operations. Security’s offices. The Colonial Affairs hangar. The spare hangar appropriated for supply storage. The water tanks and reclimators. The still-sealed cryo pods.

The vast, unvisited, silent portions of the Nexus. Down a tunnel she herself had helped Kesh clear. Calix wasn’t on the verge of being cornered. He was about to trap her and the rest of the waking crew in a tiny portion of the vast station.

Oh, fuck .

Sloane watched as Calix, his cohorts, and a small army of sudden converts to his cause all entered the access tunnel. She could see a whole fleet of lev-carts in there, and people waiting with them. Piled with rations and water and who-knows-what-else.

Now the door closed, at Calix’s command via a wall panel.

Sloane Kelly called for a retreat.

She headed toward Operations, sending frantic messages to Kesh as she went. So far the krogan had not replied. Sloane wondered how the Nakmor clan was reacting to all this. They hadn’t exactly jumped willingly back into their cryo pods either.

On the other hand, they were near the end of the list. And besides, Kesh could always threaten them with the wrath of Nakmor Morda, should they complain.

They should consider themselves lucky Morda’s not awake , she mused. Then again, we’re all lucky Morda’s not awake.

Calix had betrayed Kesh, too. Technically he worked for her, one of the few non-krogan teams to report to Kesh. Had he discussed any of this with her? Were they collaborating? Sloane let out a worried sigh. She doubted it. Refused to believe it. Kesh was loyal to the mission, despite her differences with the leadership, Tann in particular.

But damn… if the krogan were part of this. If this turned out to be some kind of coup designed to re-cast the political landscape of Andromeda before old biases became entrenched once again…

“We’d be doomed,” Sloane said to herself. Her team, no matter how well trained, no matter how much help they received from civilians, were no match for an organized krogan opposition.

She glanced at her omni-tool again.

“C’mon, Kesh. Respond.”

Her team passed clustered groups of the Nexus’s crew. Some were gathered around wide-open doors, presumably defending what lay behind. Their work or their own possessions, Sloane hoped—though from what she saw in some of their eyes, their intentions might be decidedly less honorable.

“What’s wrong with the doors?” someone shouted at her. “Why won’t they close?”

“We’re working on it,” Sloane shouted back without stopping. She couldn’t spare the staff to help defend the contents of those rooms. Calix knew this, too, the clever bastard.

She reached a promenade that ran parallel to one of the Nexus’s long arms. The view should have been glorious. Verdant gardens. Personal vehicles streaking along, citizens strolling as they shopped or sought a meal and the company of their fellow crew.

But the wide space had been heavily damaged in the Scourge. Part of the deck above had collapsed along its edge, obstructing the exterior view. The net effect was a wide avenue lined with shops on one side, still packed with their wares, and a mess of debris on the other.

Shots rang out.

Sloane hit the ground even before the noise really registered. An instinct honed over years. She crawled forward to take cover behind a long low decorative planter as rapid bursts from an assault rifle hissed through the air and sparked against the walkway beside her.

There was a pause in the gunfire, and she chanced a look over the wall. All she saw were dark storefronts. Her team had become spread out as they’d made their way here. Only a few of them were with her, the rest still just silhouettes down the long hallway she’d just come through.

“Anyone see them?” she asked.

No one had.

“Spread out,” Sloane ordered. She motioned toward the rest of her officers, now at the mouth of the tunnel, advising them to stay back. Of the four out here with her, three shuffled or crawled farther away from her, taking positions as best they could.

One hadn’t moved since she’d given the order. Sloane felt an all-too-familiar knot of dread in her gut at the motionless, curled body.

A burst of fire clattered against the wall around the tunnel opening, sending her team there scrambling back into the shadows.

“In ten seconds I want covering fire,” she said, just loud enough for the three near her to understand. “Disruptor rounds, for effect, understand? Overhead. Pin them.”

On her belly she crawled to the other end of the planter and brought her own weapon around. Careful to keep her back low—the planter wall stood only a half-meter high or so—Sloane brought one foot up and under her, readying herself to spring.

Exactly ten seconds after her order the three officers began to fire on the row of storefronts. Sloane turned and shouted back at the hallway.

“Medic! Come now! One down, immobile!”

Without waiting for a reply, she pushed to her feet and ran, eyes on the ground to avoid the dazzling flashes that flickered all across the signage above the row of stores. She angled herself for the nearest shop and shouldered her way through the entrance, into shadow.

With any luck the enemy had not seen her cross. The gunplay continued, and it yielded one benefit—intel. She’d counted four of them. One in an adjacent business, three more farther down the row.

Moving through the empty aisles of the dark store, keeping her light off so her eyes could adjust, she swung her weapon at each corner. No one inside. No reason anyone would be, though. The place was empty.

No one at the back of the store, either. In fact the whole row was empty, as far as she knew.

So why were there armed thugs stationed there?

A maintenance door at the back let her into a labyrinthine tunnel system that allowed shop workers to come and go, deliveries to be made without bothering the flow of customers. Activity ahead gave her pause. Low voices and the sounds of gear being moved or assembled.

“You got too greedy,” someone said.

“Shut up and help,” another replied.

She glanced behind her, only to confirm what she already knew. She was alone here. Sloane crept forward in the darkness. The gunfire behind her dwindled into the background, sounding more like distant thunder. Ahead someone swore, then the sound of something crashing to the ground. Sensing her chance, Sloane rushed forward. She entered a small storeroom, empty save for a pair of human men in the uniforms of life support. Together they were trying to load a sack of something onto a lev-cart.