Mass Effect by Catherynne M. Valente

Author:Catherynne M. Valente
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

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

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