Mass Effect

“We are not all so free as the volus.”

The volus’s thick, phlegmy voice took on actual notes of warmth. “I am glad you are rid of it now.”

Anax found she loved wearing a suit. She could smile and gloat and no one would see. “A subject for another day, I think—now, surely you heard it that time!”

The volus closed her crate and keyed in the lock code on the security pad. “Heard what? Look, it’s probably just your suit’s processes. It takes time to get used to the background noise. It’s usually just below the normal hearing range. Maybe I didn’t adjust it enough for drell ears.”

Anax had left her Lancer rifle leaned against the side of Non’s luggage. She picked it up again.

“Is someone there?” she said loudly.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Non snorted.

Therion swept her weapon through the still darkness of the hold. Nothing. Blood rushing in her ears. Dammit. She had heard something.

“I’ll tell you something ridiculous,” Anax said, powering down her rifle with a frustrated grind of her teeth. “I didn’t know whether I should tell you. But I think… I think you’re all right, Irit Non.” She thought no such thing. But she needed allies right now. She needed allies more than she needed secrets. “Ysses, the hanar in the lab with Yorrik? It’s happy. I have never seen a jelly so happy. Even when it was speaking of preparing the corpse of its priest, Ysses was positively pulsating with joy.”

“Huh,” said Irit Non.

“Indeed,” Anax answered. “Now, let’s go question that quarian.”

“Can we go via the mess hall? I’m starving,” the volus complained, and the drell could not disagree. She had been putting the pains of her empty stomach aside, but she couldn’t do it forever, and they had been awake for over thirty hours now.

A crunching, skittering crash echoed all around the deck. A lot of things falling over at once. Or one big thing.

“I know you heard that,” Therion hissed. She powered up the Lancer again. “Show yourself! Hands up, and don’t come closer than ten meters! Who the fuck are you?”

“Nah,” came a brutish, snarling voice. A male voice, strangled with fear. “You put your hands up. How about that?”

Out of the shadows, a cluster of bright-red laser sights danced across Anax and Irit’s chests.

9. UNCOATING

Senna’Nir sat on his bunk in the first officer’s quarters. He could not quite think of them as his quarters yet. They were so elegant, so clean, so new. Si’yah was, in the end and the beginning, still an Initiative ship, however modified by her quarian commanders, and so it bore all the superfluously elegant lines of human design. Mirrored surfaces, concealed lighting, tables and chairs as nice to look at as anything in a museum. A forward chamber with seating for several, an observation window, a personal terminal recessed in a long, broad desk, an empty fish tank that took up most of one wall, and a private rear chamber for sleeping, study, and eating. On a human or asari ship, these two adjoined rooms would have been considered modest. He did know that, somewhere inside the overabundance of self-deprecation that was his genetic heritage. But on a quarian ship, this would have been enough room for three families, perhaps four. Space was at a premium on the Fleet. That was why almost all quarians were only children. They just didn’t have the resources for siblings. That this space was all his felt almost obscene. When Qetsi had first shown him, he’d refused. Too much, too beautiful, too big. He didn’t need all this, told her to give it to the Pathfinder or use it for storage. She’d had to coax him into accepting. It’s a new world we’re headed for, she’d said so sweetly, and put her hand on his arm, like they were still young. We don’t have to live by the rules of the old one. It’s yours. Enjoy it. Besides, the Pathfinder’s quarters are much better. So are mine, incidentally.

The command staff had all been assigned cabins before departure. Their belongings were not down in the hold with the rest of it, but stowed here. All Senna’s old scavenged parts, his tablets, his books, his memories, even a few of his mindfish, packed into secure lockers set into the wall in the dining area. That, too, felt like privilege. That, too, made him uncomfortable. But Qetsi was right. He had to let the old rules go. Some part of him was grateful that, at this very moment, he had somewhere to go and think, somewhere to be alone with the problem before him, even if the rest of his team did not. Though the Keelah Si’yah was fully equipped to house all twenty thousand souls aboard, the rest of the passengers would disembark onto the Nexus almost immediately, so there was no real need to arrange housing for them unless something went very wrong.

Something had gone very wrong. But at least almost everyone was still in stasis, blissfully ignorant. Something had gone very wrong, and he had to fix it.

“K,” Senna said softly to the empty room. “Is my suit intact? Analyze for external damage. Activate conversational protocols Senna4, command passkey: alpha-vermillion-9-4-4-0-pallu.”

His internal display showed no breaches, no compromises of any kind. But the collective quarian worst nightmare scenario was happening all around him, and with every breath, every jolt in his stomach, every ache in his elbow, he feared that it could get to him. Somehow.

No external damage detected, Commander. Your suit is excellent and attractive.

He ran his hands over the tightly crosshatched gray panels squeezing his waist. Was he having trouble breathing? Was that the first shallow breath of his eventual, inevitable death? No. No. Stop it. You’re fine, you idiot. You’re not even breathing their air. You’re not even drell. Even if that batarian has it, you’re not fucking batarian, either.

“Are you lying, K?” he said ruefully.

I do not understand the question, Commander.

“No offense, but you seem to have developed a tendency to lie lately.”

What is a lie, Commander?

“K, you know every word in every language spoken on this ship, plus the Council races’ languages, plus rudimentary Vorcha. You know what a lie is.”

Correct. A lie is a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive. However, I cannot make false statements, I cannot deceive, and I have no capacity for deliberate intent. Therefore, in this context, I cannot access a definition that fits appropriately into your chosen sentence structure. I also cannot take offense.