Author's Note: my expanded between the lines take on Garrus' loyalty mission. Eighth in the Rose Shepard continuity, and fits in the canon events before Romance Convo 4 with Kaidan Alenko.

Standard Disclaimer: All trademarked characters and Mass Effect itself are the property of Bioware, EA, etc. I'm just playing nicely with their toys and will put them back neatly when I'm done.

SSV Normandy

CIC

Kepler Verge

Shepard stood in the pilot pit of the Normandy, arms crossed and brow furrowed. "Anything yet?" The orange light from the holographic HUDs that Joker used to control the ship washed over her face, illuminating her frown.

"Nothing on ladar, ma'am."

"Keep looking."

"Aye-aye, Commander. You want a needle in a haystack, we get you a needle in a haystack." Joker's voice carried more than its usual component of sarcasm. "Just don't ask me to jump."

Shepard raised an dark eyebrow at him. "Wouldn't dream of it, Joker. Hard to pilot when you're bouncing. Even for you."

He snorted. "Heh. Yeah. But the sound of snapping bones would make such an awesome percussion piece."

The instrumentation pinged softly, drawing their attention. "What have we got?"

"A freighter." A slow smile spread across Joker's bearded face. "And look who it's registered to."

"Hello there, needle." Mirroring the pilot's smug look, Shepard leaned over the comm. "Garrus Vakarian, report to the CIC."

O o O

The ex-C-sec officer was on the bridge within a minute. As soon as he stalked up to the helm with that peculiar predatory glide that was uniquely turian, Shepard brought up a screen at the navigation station and pointed at a freighter that was cruising at standard orbit from the nearest planet. "MSV Fedele. Registered to a Dr. Heart."

Garrus' mandibles tightened against his face. "We found him?"

Shepard knew humans couldn't hear all the registers of a turian voice, but she recognized the inflections she could hear well enough. Garrus was ready to go to war. "You bet your ass we did. Get your gear." Shepard tapped the comm. "Lieutenant Alenko, suit up. We're going boots to ground in ten."

Kaidan's pleasantly raspy voice sounded in the dim confines of the bridge. "Aye, ma'am."

Garrus stiffened and looked at her. "No offense, Shepard, but why bring someone else? I can handle this."

She fought the urge to cross her arms over her chest. She had no need to indicate defensiveness. "My ship, Garrus. My rules. Standard complement for the shore party, and Alenko comes with. He's our field medic. If your Dr. Saleon has been experimenting on hostages, and if they're still alive, we'll need him."

The turian shook his head. "I'm not going to be responsible for his safety, Shepard."

She laughed. "Clearly, I haven't taken you on enough shore parties, Garrus. The only one who's responsible for anyone's safety is me. Now go suit up. You have eight minutes left before we go in."

O o O

The airlock of the Fedele was disturbingly quiet, cloaked in vague shadows from poorly-maintained lights, and smelled of industrial cleaners mixed with the unpleasent ammonia reek of piss and a vaguely rusty scent that wasn't quite blood. The Normandy shore party stood braced just inside the connection between their vessel and this one, and Shepard was willing to bet that neither of the other two really wanted to go any further into the stricken freighter.

"Lieutenant?"

"Nothing on HUD, Commander. No hostiles of any kind." Kaidan brought up his omnitool and used local scans for verification. There were times, Shepard thought, that his methodical nature was very useful. "Standard freighter layout. The medical modules we saw from the Normandy might be just out of ping range. More likely, they're shielded from normal scans. Would Saleon have the tech to do that?"

"Probably." Garrus considered the thought, his talons tightening on the stock of his rifle. "It would explain how he was able to evade detection for so long if he's emulating a normal freighter to anything but visual scans."

"I don't see anything to indicate any security systems." Shepard looked around the corridor and frowned. "Which means there either aren't any, or they're too well hidden to spot. I don't like this." She blew out a breath and straightened her shoulders. "All right, weapons free, check your targets first. Last we heard, this asshole had hostages, so let's do this by the numbers, gentlemen."

"She must be talking to you, Alenko." Garrus checked the scope on his sniper rifle. "I'm no gentleman."

"I see my reputation precedes me." Kaidan flipped the safety off his sidearm. "Let's rock, Garrus."

O o O

They entered the poorly lit main hold of the freighter in standard pattern. Kaidan held up a fist in the universal military shorthand for "halt". "Pings, Commander," he said quietly.

Shepard nodded and unclipped her sniper rifle. The rest of the squad went to cover while she edged around the corner of the large, battered crate in front of them, looking for mobile enemies. After a few long, breathless moments, a shambling... thing crossed into her line of sight. She pulled the trigger even as revulsion iced her gut.

As the first thing dropped bonelessly to the ground, a gray-green tide of mouldering creatures poured around the weathered crates. A wave of putrid stench rolled ahead of them, triggering an instinctive urge to vomit. "We have incoming!" Shepard ruthlessly suppressed her gag reflex and fired at a containment cell someone had left lying around. Several of the creatures were vaporized in the resulting localized explosion. One of them was blown off its feet, literally leaving them at the epicenter of the blast while the rest of the body was shredded. But enough of the zombies were left outside the blast radius that they managed to make it through and get into close quarters with the shore party.

Shepard reclipped her rifle and drew her sidearm fast, drilling one of the zombies point blank between the ribs as it reached for her. Gas and guts exploded in a putrid splatter that reeked of scorched manure; Shepard managed to get her arm up to shield her face, but otherwise took the brunt of the refuse. Almost immediately, a wave of nausea swept her. Fighting to keep herself upright, she killed another zombie and scanned to see where her team was. Garrus was holding his own through massive amounts of firepower, and so was Kaidan, flaring a clean biotic blue and firing at a zombie that was clutching at his armor. She squinted down the barrel of her heavy pistol, drawing a bead on the thing, just as the lieutenant wedged his own gun under the creature's chin and fired.

The resulting eruption of airborne miasma and pus made Kaidan double over, retching in an immediate and apparently unsuppressable action. On her HUD, his hardsuit signal registered biological systemic failures and a toxin warning; a quick glance showed hers was the same. She staggered over to him, awkwardly pulling him clear of the remains of Saleon's victim and his own illness.

"That was the last of them. You two all right?" Garrus stood over them as they retreated closer to the cargo area hatch and slid to a sitting position behind a stack of crates that hadn't been ground zero for a zombie battle. "I'm no real expert on how your soft faces are supposed to look, but you look a little... green. Is that a normal human color variant?"

"No. " Shepard coughed wretchedly. "Those things were full of poison gas. Or something. You didn't inhale it?"

Garrus cocked his head at her, twitching a mandible in what looked a lot like a smug turian grin. "Real C-Sec officers never inhale, Shepard."

Shepard let her head thunk against the crate behind her and closed her eyes as nausea roiled through her on a greasy wave. "If I didn't feel like such shit, I'd kick you, Garrus."

Beside her, Kaidan groaned. "I'll help you kick him, Commander. When I stop wanting to throw up." He scanned them both with his omnitool's medical suite, then fumbled in his gear belt. "Feels like an acute systemic neurotoxin. Affects the large muscle groups first. The hardsuit medigel dispensing system isn't going to do a lot with that."

"Tell me you have an antidote."

"Wouldn't leave the Normandy without it. It's not exactly standard kit, but I figured this wasn't exactly a standard assignment." Fingers visibly trembling, arm muscles starting to seize, Kaidan pulled a syringe out of his medkit and injected it into a port in his hardsuit. "Normally, I'd fix you first, Commander." He coughed, breath rasping in his chest. "But in this instance, the physician needs to heal himself before the paralysis affects me further and I'm useless to you. I must have gotten a larger dose."

"No need to apologize, lieutenant. N7, remember? I can't help it if I'm tougher than you."

Kaidan's laugh was shaky, rusty, but warm. Warmer than it should have been, probably. "Aye-aye, ma'am." He leaned over her a moment later, and Shepard felt the clenching and trembling in her muscles start to taper off a moment after he injected her. "Got anything in there for the nausea?"

He chuckled, a rough, low sound that she had no business finding as attractive as she did, now or ever. "I'm carrying some peppermints in my belt pouch. Want one?"

Shepard tried not to look too desperate. "Oh, Maker, yes. Anything's better than this taste in my mouth."

"Like burnt mulch, old blood and..." He trailed off, a blush suffusing his cheeks as he handed over the candy.

"Yeah. Just like that. Except I think I detect a hint of unwashed dog hair, too." She fumbled with the clear wrapper, her fingers not up to their usual fine dexterity, and popped the candy into her mouth as soon as she could. "Oh, yeah. That's better. Not all the way better, but it definitely helps."

Kaidan crunched into his peppermint with strong white teeth. "We got hit with zombie pus and brains at point blank range, Shepard. I think the only real cure for that amount of sheer gross is time. Lots of time."

"Shepard, huh?" He was close, so close, and he was looking at her. He was still relatively pale, but his eyes were warm.

"Hey, we got puked on together. I figure that's gotta build camaraderie."

Shepard laughed, a short, soft sound. "Yeah. I'll go with that."

"Are you two going to finish healing up over there or are we going to wait while Saleon rebuilds his zombie army?" Garrus was on overwatch, covering the expanse of the freighter beyond their position. He was also very studiously not watching them.

"Antidote's going to need a few minutes to work its way through our systems, Garrus." Kaidan fell back against the crate, wedged in tight next to Shepard. He was pressed against her left side, from shoulder to hip and thigh, and though she couldn't feel anything beyond the sensation of pressure through the layers of neoprene and ceramic composites that formed her hardsuit, the knowledge that it was Kaidan who was close enough for her to see the texture of the dense black beard shadow that defined his jawline no matter how recently he'd shaved, that he was touching her, even in such a businesslike fashion, was... nice. More than nice. It was great.

Shepard closed her eyes again, less against the nausea that was still rolling around in her gut, and more against the completely unprofessional desire to look at her lieutenant like a mooning teenager. But the moment she did, her traitorous imagination called up an image of Kaidan on the Normandy, regulation ship's blues clinging to his broad shoulders and flat abdomen, shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal the lean lines of strong biceps and forearms. All Alliance members were fit and attractive; partially due to the gene mods they all got when they enlisted, and the lives they lived afterward. But Shepard suspected that Kaidan Alenko had been damnably attractive even before science had gotten its hooks in him.

Put it away, dammit, Shepard. Squadmate. Subordinate. You don't fraternize. Ever. Never even been tempted. Not to mention, you're on the clock, and Kaidan and Garrus are counting on you to lead. So get the hell up and lead.

Despite her determination, it was another five minutes before Shepard felt the muscle tremors and nausea taper off to the point where she was reasonably certain that she could shoot straight again. She spent that five minutes mentally reviewing standard freighter layouts and all the places their quarry could booby-trap or stash a number of zombies. She reviewed what she'd do to Saleon when she found him, what she'd actually like to do when she found him, and a variety of scenarios that involved talking down Garrus from doing what he'd like to do to Saleon. She very carefully did not pay any attention whatsoever to the pressure of Kaidan Alenko's arm against hers, or the sight of his leg stretched out next to hers. She also absolutely squashed the mental image of her in the captain's shower, Kaidan with her in the captain's shower, helping her remove the sweat and muck of this damned mission. She absolutely did not entertain even a moment's curiosity about what his hands would feel like on her skin...

Dammit! Head in the game, Shepard! "Anything moving out there, Garrus?"

"Not a zombie in sight, Shepard."

She didn't look at Kaidan when he struggled upright, except to note if he moved well or if he was too compromised to continue with her and Garrus. "Well, then, guess we better go find them."

The turian's multilayered voice practically hummed with his barely-leashed need to find the renegade scientist. "It's about damn time."

"Garrus, a patient hunter gets his quarry. Eventually." Shepard unwedged herself from her corner and started to lever herself upright. A black-gauntleted hand appeared in front of her. She looked up into Kaidan's dirt-smeared face with its carefully controlled expression.

He looked... patient.

Shit.

Shepard called herself six kinds of fool, but she accepted Alenko's hand up. Even through her hardsuit gauntlet, the contact sang up her arm, humming in her nerves. She was surprised her HUD didn't light up with a warning from her medical suite indicating biological riots. Shit, shit, shit. "All right, gentlemen and C-Sec officers, let's go find us an evil doctor."

O o O