Jason Hough - Mass Effect - Nexus Uprising

Tann might have won against the mutiny, but the cost was truly terrible. No getting around that.

A mess , he thought, and shook his head as Sloane boarded her shuttle without so much as a glance back toward him.

So many had given their knowledge, their time, their bodies, and various forms of exertion to make the Nexus happen. So many had pinned their hopes and their dreams on this, their foray into Andromeda.

He looked up, farther than the docks and the folded hubs of sectors waiting for repair, saw the eerie colors of the Scourge, floating beyond. Waiting. Drifting. Somewhere in there drifted devastated planets.

The bones of dead civilizations, too, according to some of the scouts.

He folded his arms over his chest, trying not to notice that it felt more like trying to protect his aching insides, and less like casual posturing. A soft knock behind him alerted him to another guest, but it was too late to pull on his usual mask of logical calm now. At least it would be Addison. Something about her way of moving. She had a distinctive tread.

“Hey,” she said.

Tann didn’t look behind him. He didn’t need to, and she didn’t need him to. Foster Addison was a perceptive human. And he didn’t know how to hide his uncertainties now.

“All that time,” he said, not an answer or a greeting, but it was all he had. “All those plans and dreams and hopes. A masterpiece, and it was ours to create.” In his peripheral, Addison climbed the steps to the large window and took up a similar position a short distance away.

“Jien Garson had a way of making it sound like an adventure.”

“An adventure,” Tann repeated sourly. “A grand new galaxy with innumerable fertile landscapes to provide us with all that we needed.” He closed his eyes, let his head fall forward until his brow thumped against the solid pane. His breath fogged it on a shaky exhale. “I don’t know, Foster. I don’t know that I made the right choice.”

“Which one?”

“Any,” he admitted, his voice very small. “All I wanted was for the Nexus to blossom, to fulfill its role from the start. I swear to you, I made every choice with this in mind…”

Addison, in perhaps the most damning reaction, said nothing.

Tann laughed, and it felt weak, even to him. “Sacrifice,” he said bitterly. “Jien Garson spoke of sacrifice. She said that by undertaking the journey, we made the greatest sacrifice we would ever make.”

“Something tells me,” Addison said quietly, “that was optimistic at best.”

“At worst, a lie.” Tann opened his eyes, lifted his head as a ship’s exhaust flared at the docks. Wavering spots of color. He rested the tips of his spindly fingers on the pane. “Did she know, do you think?”

“Know what?”

“That what she said was probably a lie? Or, at best, marketing?”

Addison’s chuckle was little more than a short exhale. “I think Jien Garson felt what we all felt.” She straightened, made her way to Tann’s side to watch the ships prepare. “Hope is a powerful thing, Tann. For a brilliant, ambitious woman like Jien, for governments willing to fund them. For normal everyday people.” A faint trace of humor edged into her voice. “Even for logical salarians.”

“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.

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.