Shepard looked down at his hands and noticed that his knuckles had turned white on the Mako's controls. He turned to look at Wrex where he sat at the weapons controls, and twisted to look behind him at Liara, who sat the EWS station. Wrex, perhaps predictably, looked almost giddy. Clearly, the day's events on Xawin had been an exhilarating experience for the Krogan. Liara, on the other hand, would have appeared quite calm and collected to most observers. Shepard, however, saw the storm that raged behind her sky blue eyes, and knew that she was a jumble of frazzled nerves.

Shepard tried to inject some levity, hoping to ease the tension emanating from the back seat.

"This has been… interesting. If I ever suggest coming back here…"

"I will see to it you do not," Liara stated flatly. Levity was obviously not welcome.

"Oh come on, Liara. This was fun!" Any doubt Shepard had about whether Wrex had been enjoying himself vanished.

"Wrex, I'd like to ask you to refrain from treating either of us to a celebratory headbutt."

"Relax, Shepard. You're both too squishy for that."

Shepard took a deep breath, keyed up his comm, and signaled for pickup. "Joker. Get us out of here."

Shepard wasn't very adept at reading Turian facial expressions or body language yet, but the look on Garrus's face when he got out of the Mako was almost human in quality. Flanges set widely from the sides of his face, mouth agape, eyes wide with shock, shoulders drooping, and arms hanging lifelessly at his side, he simply stared at the Mako for several seconds before he broke.

"What the hell happened down there?"

"Thresher Maw."

"Another one? Spirits, Shepard, you find one of those damn things on every planet we go to!"

"Not every one…"

"Close enough. And this wasn't just a Thresher Maw. What are these burn marks?"

"Oh, those, yeah, there was a marker beacon on the planet that looked like another one we saw next to the corpse of a miner near an iridium deposit. We went to investigate and 4 Geth Armatures ambushed us."

Garrus twitched and turned to look at him, "You faced down 4 Geth Armatures. Alone."

"I wasn't alone. Wrex and Liara were with me."

"Beside the point, Shepard."

"Look, we did ok. I kept out of LOS as much as possible; the thresher maw had already inflicted a good bit of damage, and I didn't want to take any chances. We only lost 60% of the kinetic barriers in the fight."

"Ok, and this looks like a rocket impact. What else did you run into?"

"Oh for God's sake, do you ever stop being a detective?"

"No."

Shepard looked at him, heaved an exasperated sigh, and answered, "Rocket turrets at the Merc camp. I used the thrusters to jump out of the way of one of them, but my timing on the first salvo was off and we took a hit from the second rocket. It was the only impact and the kinetic barriers held at 30% afterward."

Garrus's eyes were glued to the Mako, dancing back and forth between scorch marks and acid burns, silently accounting for the damage until, finally, he growled.

"Can you fix it or not, Garrus?"

"I can fix it, but you're going to have to get me more armor plating to do it with, and I'm going to want new targeting software for the canon so I can better calibrate it for efficiency. Accuracy is key, you know."

"I'll get you what you need. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to eat and shower."

"Sure, run off to relax while I fix your mess. Again."

"Thanks, Garrus."

The Turian just grunted at his friend and turned to the Mako to plan his attack.

In the mess hall, Shepard sat down to a large meal of spaghetti and meatballs, a favorite from his youth. Across from him, Liara enjoyed the same, having come to appreciate the high calorie meal after groundside operations. Biotics needed a lot of fuel, and coming back from battle always saw her extremely hungry. He sat down across from her, determined not to try making her laugh again.

"You did well down there today," he remarked, "that singularity on those 2 Krogan was perfectly timed. I was impressed."

"Thank you. I am sorry I was so short with you before Normandy picked us up. Today was a lot of battle for my taste."

"I understand. It was a lot of battle for my taste, too. In fact, I think anybody but Wrex would have been ready for the whole ordeal to be over."

Liara nodded, looked at Shepard, and smiled. He loved that smile. It made everything ok.

"Joker. Set a course for the Citadel", he called out over the ships comm, "Time to go tell Garoth about his brother. Then we'll be off to Noveria. If you'd like to talk about our next steps, I'll leave my cabin door unlocked for you."

"I'd like that, Shepard. I think it would be wise to discuss this before we arrive. I'd like to make sure we have both explored what options we can before we arrive. It is hard for me to imagine what she is thinking, but regardless, Benezia is not to be trifled with. We have much to discuss."

"I'll see you soon, then."