Mass Effect

. You focus on the datacore. We need those shields back up or we won’t be around long enough to worry about a deadly contagion.”

“Yes, sir,” Senna acknowledged.

Qetsi’Olam reached out her arm and took his shoulder in her hand with a strong grip. “Hey,” she said—and there it was. That old voice. The voice that had once told him to come with her and meet the future of the quarian species in a repurposed supply closet on the Pallu’Kaziel. The voice that had given a spine to the Nedas Movement, night after night, keeping them all drunk on the possibility of change. Of something, anything but that hopeless fleet drifting into nowhere. The voice he’d followed between galaxies, that he’d follow to another one if Andromeda didn’t give them what they wanted. “We’re going to make it,” said that voice. “We’re going to get out of this alive. I will buy you a drink on the Nexus, Senna’Nir vas Keelah Si’yah, I swear it.”

Attention, Captain.

Qetsi answered the ship’s vocal interface. “Yes, K?”

Oh, Qetsi, thought Senna. Even you’re calling her

K. Maybe things can be just that different in Andromeda. Maybe they really can.

I have detected an atmospheric anomaly in the cargo hold.

The captain groaned. “Keelah se’lai, what now? Another system malfunction? I said breathing room, K. Senna, you clearly heard me say we needed breathing room.”

There is a significantly elevated concentration of carbon dioxide, adenosine triphosphate, ketones, water vapor, and other volatile organic compounds in the cargo hold.

“Interpret,” Senna’Nir ordered.

There are people in the cargo hold. They have been there for some time. These gases are byproducts of organic exhalation.

“Yes, we know. Anax Therion and Irit Non are down there,” the captain said. “They should be finished soon, I imagine.”

Given the size of the hold, the proportional change in air composition indicates more than two respiring individuals.

Senna’Nir felt his heart begin to race again. He felt like he was standing on a platform over depthless, empty space, a platform in which some important bolt that held it together had already come loose, it just hadn’t collapsed yet. But it would. It was inevitable. The bolt had never been there, he just didn’t know. The commander shut his eyes.

“How many more, K?” he asked.

One thousand, six hundred and thirty-nine.

The platform wobbled. The fateful bolt slid out, tumbled down, disappeared into nothingness.

“Anax Therion, come in,” Senna barked into an open comm line. “What the hell is going on down there?” No answer. Just dead air. “Irit Non, respond,” he tried again. Still nothing. The hiss of a severed connection. It sounded different, somehow, than just silence on the other end; someone thinking, or distracted. Heavier. Senna toggled the line over to medbay. “Yorrik? Are you there?” The same heavy, empty quiet. He tried a shipwide open address. “Ferank! Jalosk! Anyone! If you can hear my voice respond on open comms immediately!”

No reply came.

“K, open a priority override comm channel to Anax Therion,” Qetsi tried.

All communication channels are open and operational, Captain. You are already connected to Analyst Therion.

They heard nothing. Not Anax, not the volus, not the supposed sixteen hundred and thirty-nine people swarming over the cargo hold. The Keelah Si’yah was no longer just blind. She was deaf, too. Comms or trams or cryopods, Senna’Nir thought. You have your answer, Grandmother. And two out of three is terrible. Now what are you going to do with it?

Captain.

“Yes?” answered Qetsi’Olam, staring numbly, straight ahead.

I have detected gunfire in the cargo bay. Updated calculations available. Current population of Deck 11 is one thousand six hundred and thirty-seven.

The platform fell away.

10. TRANSCRIPTION

Over the next eighteen hours, Yorrik watched Jalosk Dal’Virra die.

Stars moved outside the wide medbay portholes, distorted by the ship’s ungodly speed. The Keelah Si’yah traveled at a rate of some eleven light years a day. One moment, a comet flared blue in the dark, its tail full of ice. The next moment, it was gone, lost to the past. The tall magenta hanar floated by the window, its back to anything that might be called work. It had been standing there motionless since Borbala Ferank had airlocked the three autopsies. Since Kholai’s body, like the comet, flared briefly in the night and then vanished far behind them. Gradually, Yorrik became aware that Ysses was asleep. He had never seen a hanar sleep before. Its tentacles drifted out around it like gelatinous petals. It snored softly, a sound like a flute trying to play a single perfect note underwater.