Jason Hough - Mass Effect - Nexus Uprising

No, what the council needed were cool, calm heads and councilors ready—even eager—to handle the day-to-day minutiae of station control. It had nothing to do with prejudices. This was just common sense.

By the time he made it to Operations, he’d almost convinced himself.

Morda hadn’t become clan leader by being soft . She pushed against Kesh with a roar, forcing the krogan to stumble back a few steps.

“You can’t attack just anyone,” Kesh shouted, nose to Morda’s nose.

Morda’s snarl drowned Kesh out. “I demand satisfaction,” she growled. “I demand that they treat us with the respect we have earned here!”

“I understand, clan leader.” Kesh glared at her, arms spread. Engineer though she was, that didn’t make her any less of a krogan. Morda respected her enough to know that any conflict would end in blood and bruises, and both would lose teeth. And Kesh wouldn’t back down. She turned her glare on them all.

“The human aide made a mistake,” Kesh pressed. “He is an idiot—he overstepped!”

“An aide,” Morda spat. “He presented himself as… what was it, chief of staff?”

Behind her, Kaje snorted his agreement.

“He played too hard,” Kesh said flatly, “but that is not a reason to tear the salarian apart. Would you war with all of the Nexus now?”

Morda drew herself up. “I am Nakmor Morda, leader of the Nakmor krogan, I do not bend at the threat of war.”

“But it will destroy us all nonetheless,” Kesh replied. She fisted both hands, held them wide. “We are in a new galaxy, surrounded by a Scourge that tears our ships apart. Like it or not, we must work together. Will we drown this dream—this masterpiece —in the blood of our own?”

“They deserve blood,” Wratch shouted.

Kaje huffed. “After all our work.”

“We should just wreck the Nexus,” Wratch added, nodding fiercely. “After all, we built it. Rebuilt it, too.”

Drack reached out a casual, enormous fist and punched Wratch in the chest. “Watch your tongue, runt.” With his craggy, scarred stare he forced the other to look away. “To destroy this station is a waste.”

“Better to take it over,” Kaje added, “and claim it for all krogan.”

“ My krogan,” Morda corrected, her gaze pinned on Kesh. “Does that or does it not include you, Kesh?”

Kesh blew out a hard breath. “Clan leader, if we take over this station, we will enjoy the victory of a single battle, yes, but also doom our species to the same hatreds as those left in Tuchanka. We need allies. We need the other species.”

Morda stared at her. The engineer had nerve. She’d always been smart— too smart—and Morda wasn’t pleased about her divided loyalties. Kesh belonged to the Nakmor.

Even so. She wasn’t wrong.

Morda stared down the shadowed corridor that had swallowed the salarian. He’d sent some lowly rat to speak for him, to promise things—no, to outright lie—in order to win her support. The clan had been used as a weapon. That’s how they were seen and treated. They’d shed blood for this farce.

But to shed more…

Morda’s head turned. The krogan that flanked her met her stare. Even Wratch, the dumb pyjak, had stopped grinning his bloodthirsty grin.

Kesh pressed her hands together. “Clan leader,” she said, her voice low. “Are you willing to let this go?”

Morda looked back, teeth gritted. “ No ,” she said. “It is one too many, more of the same when we had been promised a new life.”

Kesh nodded solemnly. “Then I have an alternative, if you’ll hear me.”

Morda hesitated, but then the wizened Drack spoke, all the gravitas his thousand-some-odd years had earned him resonant in his voice. “Listen to her, Morda. She’s more familiar with these two-faced councilors.”

Fair enough an observation. She nodded once.

“Krogan are not new to tough environments,” Kesh said. She gestured toward one of the large viewports—and the caustic, vaporous tendrils of death that tangled beyond. “We tamed Tuchanka and we will tame Andromeda, but perhaps…” She shrugged expansively. “Perhaps, clan leader, the krogan must find their own way, beholden to no one. Maybe,” she said, drawing it out, “the krogan deserve to find what suits us on this so-called other side.”

Clever , Morda mused. Clever and bold. She may not have always agreed with Kesh when it came to matters regarding the krogan and the Nexus together, but separately…

Kaje rumbled a thoughtful noise. “Sounds interesting.”

Wratch’s grin came right back. “Sounds fun.” A beat. “Less turians.” They both snorted.

Morda ignored them all. “And you?”

Kesh held her gaze. “I will stay.”

Morda kept her gaze on Kesh. “Why?”

“I don’t support what was done to the Nakmor clan,” Kesh said flatly, “but I have put the blood of both hearts into this station. Someone from the clan must stay and ensure the krogan are not entirely without allies. I choose to be that someone.”

Morda rolled her shoulder, even as she rolled the ideas in her mind. She wouldn’t lie—the thought of taming this deadly galaxy, that so frightened the salarian and his council, pleased her perversely. And Kesh, for all her refusal to take sides, had a point.

Morda took a step forward, seizing Kesh by the collar. She jerked the krogan forward, but rather than the spike of foreheads that might have followed, Morda stopped and stared at her, eye to eye.

“You will not forget your allegiances, Nakmor Kesh.”

“Never,” Kesh replied.

Morda held that stare for another moment longer. Then, with a grunt, she pushed the engineer away, turning her back. On Kesh. On that prejudiced, stuffed-head salarian.

On the Nexus.

“Make the necessary preparations,” she roared as she strode away, footsteps pounding like a batarian war beast on the hunt. “We leave when the exiles do.”

Behind her, she heard Kesh exhale a hard, stilted breath. Morda decided to end the conversation there, to let Kesh stew no matter how cold it made her seem. Kesh knew what her suggestion had cost the krogan, and what it cost Morda to accept.

The Nakmor Clan would be victorious, with or without the Nexus.

It seemed that some things on this so-called “other side” would not be so different after all.

Generations to produce a dream.

Hours to shatter it.

Tann leaned against the solid metal frame of the viewport. The long hangar spread out before him, bustling with activity. Ranks of krogan filing into the small armada of shuttles being provided them, Nakmor Morda at the head of the group, arms folded in defiance and resolve, overseeing the exodus. Now and then she would lift her gaze toward him, and her stare would bore into him before he’d look away.

The krogan were matched in the distance by the exiles. Sloane Kelly and her band of criminals, and the sympathizers that had chosen a slow death in Scourge space than life on the station. Hard to think of them that way, but Tann couldn’t get around the truth.

They were less organized, but just as fearless. Surrounded by security, their groups formed, and soon enough they began to head for their assigned ships, too. Bags slung over their shoulders, pushing lev-carts of bundled supplies. Two weeks of food and water, Spender had said.

Tann lowered his head.

Easy to see all this as misfits and malcontents taking their leave, and good riddance. Harder to admit the truth. The people out there represented a sizable number of the Nexus’s population. His construction crew, and the better part of the life-support team, chief among them.