On the far side of Tann's quarters, beyond an artificial solarium and a dalatrass' private conference room, an atrium of pools reflected the stars. When Jien Garson had been raising funds for the Andromeda Initiative, and when the Nexus was only a blueprint, the space had been purchased and designed by a circle of salarians from the Union colony of Jaeto. They had stamped "intergalactic explorer" next to their names in their family databases, and then they left the Milky Way forever.
They had probably expected to have a grand adventure together.
But, like many others, the circle had never seen their dream on the other side of dark space. Each one of them had perished when the Nexus crashed into the energy cloud called the Scourge. And so the space had remained silent and unused. And it was still mostly silent now, and mostly unused, except for Tann laying on his back near the edge of a pool and staring up at his own feet.
He was counting to twenty.
"Legs down," he said when he reached it. He placed his hands on his calves and curled his legs inward. "Knees tucked to your chest for twenty again."
Next to him, Sara mimicked his movements. There was a sheen of sweat on her forehead and her eyebrows were pinched together in concentration. She carefully pulled her legs toward her chest and closed her eyes.
"One," he began again, "two, three, four..."
She exhaled a soft breath of pain but held steady. The physical therapy that Doctor Carlyle had prescribed to her was as much about restoring her muscle mass as it was about reminding her brain how to control those muscles, and how to move with confidence again. The position should have been a relaxing stretch - Tann himself was exerting very little effort- but for Sara, it was a mountain to be scaled in bad weather.
She scaled it every morning. Tann led her through the steps so she could concentrate.
And he turned his head, checking her form. As he watched her, it was difficult to imagine what Andromeda might have been like if she had become the Hyperion's Pathfinder instead of her brother. His thoughts drifted to it often now that she was staying with him. But he couldn't picture her in combat armor on Eos or fighting the kett scattered around the star cluster. He couldn't imagine her threatening their leader, the Archon.
The only image that seemed reasonable to Tann was Sara getting along with the crew of the Tempest. After living with her for a week, he believed she could have charmed the teeth off a krogan.
Sara opened her eyes and looked over at him. "You stopped counting," she said, flushed from the exertion but smiling. "Is something wrong?"
Tann blinked rapidly and looked upward again. "Not at all."
He resumed counting.
He changed position, as did Sara, and the counting began again. She would have coffee and take a bath when they were done. Tann would immediately go back to his office for the morning shift. That was how it had been each day so far. Tann's schedule hadn't changed much.
But when they were done this morning, Sara didn't leave the atrium or get up to make coffee. Instead, she grabbed a towel and sat at the edge of the pool. She dipped her legs into the water, cautious at first, then waved them around while she dried her neck and her face. Afterward, she held the towel and watched the water rippling against her skin.
And she had never done this before. Tann had been preparing to leave the atrium, just as he usually did, but turned back and approached her. He ran through conversational openings, taking into account the fact that she looked gloomy, then he leaned over. His fingers ached for his sleeves and he ignored them.
"How are you feeling?" he asked her. A very human start.
Sara hid her face in the towel. "Like this should be easier," she mumbled through cotton. "It was easier six hundred years ago."
"You're doing well considering your circumstances," he said, nodding his horns once. "There's no need to worry," he added. "You would feel weaker than before even if your pod hadn't been damaged. The labs didn't have time to completely perfect the stasis technology."
"Great," she said bleakly through the towel as if that wasn't comforting at all. Then she removed the towel from just her eyes. "Can I tell you something?" she asked, and when he nodded she confessed, "I don't feel anything at all about what's happening to us."
Tann sat down next to her, avoiding the water. He said, "You don't feel the physical therapy helping you?"
"No, that's not it." She set the towel aside, folding it into a square. "I know what happened to my dad on Habitat Seven, and I know we're in a new galaxy, but it's like my brain hasn't absorbed it. I haven't felt anything since the first day." She hesitated for a moment and then said, "I don't know what I'm going to say to Scott about it when he comes back."
"Your brother is your first circle," Tann said. "He'll understand because you share a kinship."
She shook her head. "I don't think he will. He was really excited about coming here."
Sara looked down at the water and seemed certain about her brother. Tann didn't know Scott as well as she did, so he couldn't agree or disagree with the prediction.
But memories slipped through his mind. Addison's depression and Kesh's preoccupation with the krogan settlement. The endless complaints of the newly awoken colonists whom he was host to. And in the spaces between these memories, there was the face of Sloane, his previous Security Director, who had her outcast planet with its rebels and its lonely bar called Tartarus.
"In my time here it's been difficult to predict how an alien will react to anything," Tann admitted, more to himself than to her. He frowned as he thought of so many variables surrounding each person. "It's always different for each of you."
"How is it for you?" Sara asked.
He pulled himself back from his thoughts, glanced at her. "I react to everything as the Director of the Initiative should," he said. His eyelids retracted for a fraction of a second. "While others focus on the immediate I take the long view. The mission fulfilling its role in Andromeda matters above everything else."
And that was true, he thought to himself, silently correcting his eyelids as they retracted again.
"Everything?" she asked.
He nodded firmly. "Everything."
"I don't think I could act like that," she said. "It seems really cold."
Tann would have been surprised if she thought it was a reasonable stance. "You're not the first human to tell me that," he replied. "I'm beginning to believe it's a biological difference between us."
"What do you think should I do?" she asked.
Tann had no idea. He was suddenly aware of just how close they were. People didn't get very close to Jarun Tann, eighth acting Director of the Andromeda Initiative. More than that, people didn't ask him for advice. When he offered it unprompted they didn't respond well. And explaining a mathematical equivalent probably wouldn't reach Sara, nor a comparison to economic impact analyses. Aliens, particularly humans, could be surprisingly emotional creatures.
So he reached over. Sara's skin was colder than he expected when he touched her hand. She must have been using the water to warm herself up despite the exercise. He lifted her palm, cradling it in his own, and then placed a large finger right in the center.
"When I do this," Tann began, "there is a small amount of time between me touching you and your brain acknowledging that touch and reacting to it, correct?"
Sara looked up at him, looked down at their hands. She blushed.
And she was perfectly demonstrating his point. He continued, "The physical is not so different from the emotional. Right now you're traveling between the stimulus of the events you've experienced and the full emotional reaction." He lifted his finger, tapped it gently against her head above the curve of her ear. "I can't say what will happen when you get there or how you will feel, but biology dictates that you will arrive. You should be compassionate to yourself until then."
Sara looked away toward the water. "I'm kind of afraid I'm going to fall apart."
"You seem sturdy enough despite the injury."
"On the inside, I mean."
Tann was undaunted. He pressed his fingers against her chin so she was facing him again, looked into her eyes. "We'll make sure you fall right back together," he assured her. "I'll put all of my best people on it. We'll polish you until you're as good as new."
That finally coaxed a smile out of her. "Okay," she said. "I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens."
"Exactly." He nodded his horns grandly as a Director should. "Rome wasn't built in a day."
Sara laughed at that and immediately pulled her hand away. "Humans don't really talk like that," she insisted. She pulled her legs out of the water and dried them off. Tann glanced down at his fingers and tucked them into his sleeves.
"Come on," she said brightly. "I want you to have coffee with me."
He helped her to her feet and then offered his arm to her so she could steady herself. Sara let go when she felt stable. She walked carefully, with her footsteps echoing between his own as they headed to the kitchen.
That had gone well, he thought. Living with Sara was enjoyable so far.
And, smiling to himself, he carried the pleasant lift of companionship and caffeine with him back to the operations deck, where Colonial Affairs spread before him and where the tide of colonists waiting to be placed had already begun to swell. He could see his office window in the distance with Garson's desk waiting for him to start the morning shift.
He nodded at Foster Addison standing in her balcony office as he passed by below, but she looked flustered for some reason. She jabbed her finger at her omni-tool with an expression that could have withered every new tree on Eos. And she wasn't alone; two salarians, Del Jasin and Melo Tanos, were waiting with her. A pair of senior engineers in Colonial Affairs was an ominous sign.
Tann immediately checked his omni, shut it with a snap of his wrist, and changed course away from his own office. He had seven missed messages. "Did something happen while I was gone?" he asked as he approached the trio, walking up the steps while his smile evaporated.
"The cooling system is failing on decks five through seven," Del explained shortly. Her eye membranes were tight. "There's steam and hot water everywhere."
"Then what are we all doing up here?" he asked, with a patient tone he didn't feel. A failed cooling system led to temperature spikes and hot water escaping beyond the recycling nodes.
"We've been trying to find you," Del answered. "We've been waiting for you to approve our status downstairs for twenty-five minutes and seven seconds."
"Eight seconds," Melo added uneasily.
Addison said, "Tann, where the hell have you been?"
Tann hadn't realized he was so late. "I was attending to some personal business," he answered. But it sounded vague and inadequate even to him. He pushed away the urge to make excuses and turned his attention back to Del. "It's difficult for me to believe that you would wait around and let a system overheat in my absence," he said. "If the Nexus is about to depressurize do you plan to remain on standby?"
Del's voice was sharp enough to cut him. "You specifically told us to do that in our last meeting." She angrily tapped the data-pad she was holding. "You said the kett could be tearing down our doorstep and the hourly report still needed to be sent and approved first."
Tann's thought process froze as he was confronted with the data-pad. Del took notes constantly and his own words convicted him in bright glowing orange. And he did, in fact, perfectly remember his order to the station crew now that he thought about it. It had been five weeks ago. At the time the possibility that he would be unavailable or forget to check his omni-tool had never even occurred to him.
It had never happened before.
Melo chimed in, "Kesh is still on Elaaden visiting Vorn. We report directly to you right now."
Tann nodded at Melo. "Your status is approved. Go fix it," he said quietly.
Melo vaulted over the railing, skipping the stairs completely, and pushed through the crowd of colonists. He would be faster than anyone else at both reaching and repairing the problem. Tann ignored a strong urge to pace while they all waited. Addison had her hands pressed against her forehead and Del was eyeing him suspiciously.
He had become distracted and made a mistake, Tann thought to himself. Again.
Why couldn't he focus lately?
He added the mistake to the future galactic history book with the others beneath his name. And Kesh would have a field day with this one when she returned from the krogan settlement. She would inevitably link it to the cultural center, and her previous accusation that he only cared for the public decks. If three lower decks flooded with water she might even move to demote him. There was no shortage of people around Tann who believed they were better qualified for his position.
And, judging from the dark expression hovering on Addison's face, she would concur with Kesh's motion. They would only need to convince the Security Director, a turian named Tiran Kandros, to move forward.
Tann folded his arms over his chest and adopted a veneer of professional calm. Inwardly, his thoughts spiraled with an expanding fractal of disastrous outcomes.
Melo's blue face popped up on the screen of Del's omni-tool a few minutes later. "Temperature stable," he said proudly, collapsing Tann's fractal. "No permanent damage to report."
Tann exhaled, closed his eyes briefly.
Del smiled at Melo's visage. "You're an asset to the department, Tanos."
"Thank you, Dalatrass Ja-" His eyes grew wide and he paused. "I mean Del."
Del closed her omni-tool and her smile faded with the orange light. She looked over at Tann and said, "You have to trust the crew to make the right decisions if something happens. This is ridiculous. Between you and the rest of the bureaucracy stacked up around here, we have to stop every time someone sneezes."
"The bureaucracy is here to help you," Addison said reproachfully, switching sides at the hint of insult toward her position.
"The chain of command exists for a reason," Tann agreed, nodding his horns solemnly. "So does protocol. Relying on snap decisions made by whoever happens to be nearby is no way to-"
Del interrupted, "If the protocol is so important to you then why were three decks about to flood? Where were you?"
Tann's mouth shut with a click of his teeth. The interruption grated and the question lodged itself sharply in his stomach.
Where had he been?
Tann had been sitting at a chrome table with Sara in his kitchen. There had been clouds of warm steam floating in the air and he had been drinking a cup of coffee that was one hundred and ninety galactic standard degrees. Sara had been speaking quietly about living on the Citadel and touring the Destiny Ascension, which was a Council starship that he had built once in miniature with brass and copper pieces but never actually had the pleasure of touring himself.
The memory was innocuous. It had been friendly conversation.
But he felt strangely protective of it. And it was a scandalous reason to be late, particularly by salarian standards. His horns burned and Del noticed. And Del, who was no longer Dalatrass Jasin, began to scrutinize him with low eyelids. He could feel everyone within earshot straining to listen for his answer, churning a doubt inside him that demanded some sort of action to quell it.
And so, in a moment that he told himself wasn't verging on panic, he drew a strategic card he had been keeping close to his chest.
"If the current protocol has become such an inconvenience," he said to her, "why don't we try something new? From this point on inform the departments to send reports to my office once a day instead of hourly." He hooked his arms behind his back, gestured his horns at Addison. "And contact the other Directors for emergency approvals if I'm not available."
The flow of Colonial Affairs below them ground to a halt. The deputies all looked up from their stations and the newly defrosted colonists they had been processing. Addison's eyebrows rose several galactic centimeters in surprise.
And Del gasped. He suspected that she knew exactly what he was doing, but she also knew when to take a deal. She started writing rapidly on her data-pad. "Summary and full statistical reports?" she asked, dropping the inquisition.
"Of course," he said. "I expect them to be complete and double-checked."
Del's eyes narrowed and she wrote faster. "Once every Standard Galactic Day or orbital?"
"Standard galactic."
"Hardcopy or digital?"
"No need to waste paper resources," Tann said smoothly. He looked around at the attentive faces of the deputies. "Now, send a memo," he said to everyone. He clapped his hands together a single time. "I want you all to think of this as an opportunity to prove yourselves fully capable in the event of my absence. If quality drops I reserve the right to reverse the decision."
The deputies murmured amongst themselves while the colonists waited, puzzled by the delay.
Del finished writing, tucking the pad and stylus into her pocket. She looked deeply relieved. "You won't need to reverse it," she said. She raced down the stairway while the deputies continued talking amongst themselves.
Tann watched her go, noted that he hadn't dismissed her.
And Del's confidence was expected but, inwardly, he didn't share it. Quality would drop without his careful guidance and he'd reverse the decision in a day or two. A lack of reports inevitably led to incidents. So it wasn't a matter of if, only when the decision would be reversed. The crew themselves would force his hand. And Tann knew, with great certainty, that they would appreciate the reversal when it arrived.
Addison's eyebrows dropped low as she appraised him. She placed her hands on her hips. "What's gotten into you?"
"I'm simply playing the cards as they're dealt," he said with an impassive expression. "Do you think it's a bad decision?"
"No," Addison replied. "I think it's long overdue."
Tann shook his head. That was naive.
"But I also think it's manipulative," she added sternly. "Everyone will be too busy talking about the daily reports to even mention that you almost let three decks flood while you were off doing god knows what with Alec's daughter."
Tann's impassive expression faltered. He said, "I wasn't aware you knew about that."
"Every human knows about it," Addison replied. "Half of my department thinks you've carried her off and locked her in your quarters to bother Scott."
Indeed, a few of the deputies looked up from their stations again, as if this new conversation was just as interesting as the previous. It was mostly men of the human variety, Tann noted. A few women and asari. He sensed that he wouldn't be avoiding the subject of Sara quite so easily with them.
And one of them who was working nearby, a young man named Brecka, said, "You've got to let her out, Tann. A bunch of us got our hair done just to meet her."
Tann's eyes narrowed as he tried to suss the context. "Is that part of a social ritual that I'm unaware of?"
"Yeah," Brecka said. "You have to make an impression with a girl like that."
Addison placed her hands on her forehead. "This isn't a match-making cruise."
"...Sorry, Director Addison."
Admittedly, no one looked particularly sorry about their interest. Brecka's hair was newly trimmed and glossed to the point that it reflected the fluorescent lights. A woman next to him, Deputy Shaw, had gone so far as to dye her hair purple and curl it. And Shaw primped her curls, looking quite confident, while she whispered something to Brecka.
Matchmaking, Tann thought. Of course.
But it was difficult to be interested in their chances. They were deputies, after all. Tann shifted his attention back to Addison. "Sara's been spending her time recovering her strength," he explained. "She wants to meet the Pathfinder while she's standing confidently on her own two feet." He then added, with irritation creeping into his voice, "She's not being held against her will."
"That doesn't explain why you're the one helping her," Addison said. "Tann, we have specialists on ice for almost everything."
"I'm just making sure she recovers and adapts to life in a new galaxy," he replied. "Showing her the ropes, as you say. Like a mentor." He paused, thinking about it. "Or a friend."
"Mentors don't look as smug about it as you do. Neither do friends."
Tann would have rolled his eyes if it was possible for him to do so. Addison was convinced he had never helped anyone in the history of any galaxy yet accounted for, but she eventually dropped the subject.
She sighed as her staff returned to work. "I still need those shuttles," she said. She must have thought he was feeling generous after the protocol change. "Now that Eos has an established outpost I can't get the colonists down there fast enough."
Tann nodded. He was feeling a little generous, he decided. "The cultural center is ahead of schedule. You may have half of your requested number."
She scoffed. "I don't know why you think the angara will be impressed by that monstrosity."
"Why wouldn't they?" he asked. "We have a rich cultural history to share with them."
She groaned. "They're going to think we're colonial wads," she said morosely, turning away from him. "I don't know what I'll do if they reject the alliance. It'll be a nightmare for customs."
And, after that, the rest of the day continued without incident and without hourly reports. As Tann gained distance from his decision, he knew he had been rash with the protocol change. It wasn't like him to panic so easily. And it wasn't like him to lose track of time.
He stared up at the screen in his office, unsettled. The numbers were impossible to focus on while the statistics of the Nexus felt far away. Garson's desk seemed smaller than ever before. And his thoughts kept drifting to the memory of Sara's fingers resting lightly on his arm while he poured coffee for her, with her gray eyes watching him like he hung the stars up.
He hadn't even noticed how late he had become because of her. More than that, it hadn't even occurred to him to care.
And, for a time, he had completely forgotten that he was the Director of the Andromeda Initiative, with all the attention to detail and politicking that his position required. His thoughts began moving toward the certainty that something must be wrong with him.
He needed to do something about it before it became worse.