Joker shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose as a pair of boots made their tenth circuit around the small cockpit. Williams had been pacing behind him since the moment the Mako had dropped onto Therum. He counted her steps in his head. Three, four, five. Right on cue, she stepped up to the side of his chair and peered over his shoulder, checking the positioning readout on the scanner. She did this every second lap, making this the fifth time she'd checked the location in the last fifteen minutes.
"Don't you have guns to clean or something?" he finally asked as she resumed her anxious back and forth march.
She didn't bother to respond.
At the hour mark, Joker thought he was going to lose his mind. He swiveled his chair around and glared at her from under his cap. "Seriously, you're going to wear a hole in the floor. It's hard enough getting downstairs to take a piss as it is."
Ashley froze and watched him for a moment, before she expelled all the air from her lungs in one breath. Her whole body drooped; her shoulders slumped, her head dropped to her chest. Even her arms, which had been rigid at her side with clenched fists, went limp. His eyes followed her as she took two more steps across the floor and let herself collapse into the chair Kaidan occupied when he was playing co-pilot.
"Why'd she take Vakarian? The LT I get. But I'm an Alliance marine too. Shouldn't that count for something?" She leaned forward in the chair and shoved herself backwards, slamming her back into the upright, unyielding plastic of the seat like a sullen toddler. It reminded Joker of his sister, Hilary, and the tantrums she'd liked to throw when she didn't get her way.
"Maybe it was his charming personality," Joker deadpanned.
Brown eyes so dark they were nearly black in the low lighting of the room narrowed as she countered with a snappy comeback. "If that's what it takes to go ground side, it's no wonder they keep you up here in the cockpit."
"Ouch," Joker clutched a hand to his heart in mock pain.
"Sorry," she added with another sigh as she reached up to tug on a lock of dark brown hair that had escaped her bun. "I hate sitting still. I need to be down there, fighting. I'm useless up here."
"How is it that you and the Commander aren't bffs yet?"
The both of them jumped as Shepard's voice blared over the system. "Joker! Lock in on my signal and get your ass over here as fast as you can."
"Aye, aye, Commander!" Spurred into action, his hands flew over the controls as he ignited the thrusters and computed the route to her signal location. "Secure and aweigh. ETA eight minutes," he relayed back to her once they were in the air.
Joker kept his hands steady while the Normandy rocked and shuddered the closer it got to the surface of the planet. He pulled them alongside a mining platform that wobbled unsteadily as the ground trembled beneath it. The heat alone was messing with the sensors of the ship but, before they'd gone haywire, this was where Shepard's location had pinged from. Smoke erupted in giant puffs from the entrance to the shaft but there was no sign of anyone below.
"There!" Ashley leaned against the back of his chair and pointed as four figures charged out on to the rickety metal scaffolding.
The cockpit filled with the loud sirens of alarms. "Yeah, yeah," Joker muttered, trying to ignore the warnings that the hull was in danger of melting as he maneuvered the frigate as close as possible. His palm slammed down on a button to his right and the Normandy shuddered again as the hatch began to open.
"Balls to the wall, Joker!" Ashley shouted when the three suit transmitters clicked over to the internal system.
He was steps ahead of her. The Normandy sped backwards and up, away from the crumpling ruins. The metal platforms folded like a house of cards and collapsed to the ground, vanishing behind a thick pillar of smoke that rose straight in the air. Seconds later, a geyser of fiery magma burst through the cloud, raining molten lava and ash down on to the planet.
"Holy shit," Ashley gasped, staring in horror through the glass.
Clear of the maelstrom, Joker reeled the ship back around and set them on a course to exit the planet's atmosphere. He really was the best damn pilot in the Alliance fleet. He made a mental note to remind Shepard to fill out the commendation for his medal.
"You're smiling." He looked up to see Ashley staring at him slack-jawed. "Why are you smiling?"
He cupped his hand to his ear. "You hear that?" She cocked her head to listen and then furrowed her brow in confusion. He grinned widely. "That's the sound of my awesomeness."