2. To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before

His name was Liam Kosta. It was a pretty name, flowed off the tongue. His parents had named him well. And in another life, or another time as it were, she might have been flirting with him so hard that both their heads rang. Except she already had apparently because every time he talked, she remembered and it was hard to concentrate on anything but the desire to yank him against her hardsuit and kiss him soundly. And that was the good news.

The bad news was, well, really bad. The Hyperion had hit some sort of dark energy field thing that did massive damage to the ark, screwed with the gravity and they didn't know how much damage had actually been done and wouldn't until they found the Nexus and had them start to figure out the whole shebang. Cassie herself probably would have been happiest staying on the Hyperion and starting to study the thing that they'd hit. Actually, no probably about it. She didn't particularly like shuttles after the incident with the batarian pirates a few years back. And here she was, packed in another one, with Liam, no less, and feeling about ready to jump out of her skin or jump him or both and really none of this was particularly working out for her.

Then, there was the worst news. Cas was okay, but she'd seen the worry on Harry and Dr. T'Perro's face. And for Harry to worry enough that it showed, well, that worried her. Worse than dealing with her brother in a medically induced coma to keep him alive was the look on her dad's face when he saw her without him. Now that she had a spare moment to think about it, which was completely preferable to trying not to hyperventilate, she wasn't sure that he'd ever seen them apart. But he'd shifted into N7 mode and so she'd shoved her stress down to deal with the immediate problems.

And now, here she was, flying down in a shuttle to a planet that didn't look anything like what their scans from the Milky Way had shown with a man that she was insanely attracted to because she knew what he was like in bed (and in various other locations and didn't that thought make her wince) but he didn't remember. That or he was a far better actor than anyone she'd ever met. That would also be okay, sort of, as long as he stayed away from her and they didn't have to have much interactions. Hopefully, once Cas woke up, Dad would take him instead of Cassie, let her do her thing and stay away from him. The shuttle trembled and her gloved hands clenched reflexively.

"Uh, the mountains are floating." Liam's voice more than anything snapped her out of her head and it took her a heartbeat to register and understand what he said. Her head whipped around and her jaw actually dropped. Unreal. Tentatively, her hand reached out to touch the glass as they passed the floating rocks.

"Unbelievable. How does that work? Are the laws of gravity somehow different here?"

She hadn't meant to talk out loud, hadn't realized she had, until Liam's soft chuckle at her side sent shivers down her body.

"Look! Port side," Fisher called from the cockpit, wonder in his own voice. They passed through some more clouds and then she was stepping closer to the window, hand pressing more firmly.

"That has to be advanced engineering," Cora said over the comms. Cassie agreed with her. What she wouldn't give to meet whoever had built them.

"Hyperion, this is the Pathfinder. We've got evidence of an alien civilization." She smiled at the excitement hidden in her dad's voice. Behind all the grump and gruff of the N7 was the man who'd volunteered to go with Grissom because it was new and hadn't been explored, the man who'd attracted her mother because he was easily as smart as he was good looking. He hadn't sounded like that in a while. Not since her mother…

"Has anyone seen us?" she asked, shoving that thought back to the so-not-dealing-with-this-right-now box where it belonged.

"What if they're not friendly?" Liam asked, voice tight.

"What, like the turians?" Cassie asked, watching as he tipped his helmet toward her.

"We stick to contact protocol: no use of deadly force unless hostile intent is clear." Her father paused, and she braced herself, recognizing that pointed silence, no matter how brief. "And Cassiopeia?"

Whatever he'd meant to say was cut off as the shuttle ran into something that shook the whole vehicle. She couldn't keep the panicked squeak from escaping, whole body bracing, eyes squeezing shut. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.

"Shit!" Fisher echoed her internal thoughts. Hopefully they were internal. She'd never hear the end from it from her dad if they weren't. "Ionization just spiked."

She felt a pressure through her suit on her right hand. Cassie opened an eye to see Liam had shifted closer and wrapped his fingers around hers, briefly tightening his grip before letting go to grab hold of the shuttle himself. She knew, right then and there and damn the mission, that if she hadn't already slept with him, she would have made it her mission to do so as soon as possible. Well, as soon as they survived this and were out of the danger zone and mostly safe. And fortunately she wouldn't have to worry about it. She knew. She could ignore. She could hope her dad didn't put the two of them to work together on the team. She closed her open eye, shifted her stance to one more conducive to not flopping all over the place, and clamped down on the shriek that was building in the back of her throat.

Cassie could hear shouts over the comms but was far more concerned with the sound of blood rushing through her ears and the building rapid beat of her heart. She didn't know how long it lasted, flashes of lightning making it through her eyelids.

The sound out of her worst nightmares came and her eyes snapped open just in time to see the door of the shuttle get ripped off by whatever the hell they were flying through, and the mindless babble in her head transitioned into a wordless scream. Liam got pulled out, barely grabbing the mangled edges of the shuttle. "Liam!" She went to lunge for him, but the panic surging through her kept her white-knuckled grip on the shuttle. "Hang on!" She reached for him as he tried to claw his way back inside.

"Ryder!" No, that's not right, that's my brother or my dad. I'm not Ryder, I'm just Cassie. Just Cassie. Cassie. Liam reached for her.

Time seemed to slow and for a moment it seemed as though she'd be able to reach him and life would be good and she could figure out whatever the hell she was feeling shortly. Alas, true to Cassiopeia Ryder's terrible luck, an explosion lurched the shuttle, forcing Liam to lose his grip.

She had enough time to have her heart leap to her throat, watching him fly away before she lost her grip and went sailing through the open hole.

It's not the landing that kills people. They usually have heart attacks on the way down from falling. She was barely aware that she was screaming out loud, never mind that it was almost certainly able to be heard over the comms and her father would be able to hear her. She flipped around, trying to find down when she lost her air, forced to go silent as she inhaled, noisily and roughly but she was still alive. She could do this.

"Acceleration increasing." Cassie yanked her head up before remembering about SAM. The AI sounded maybe barely concerned and did nothing to stem the shrieking that had started back up in her head.

"No kidding!" Her voice squeaked unpleasantly on the last syllable of the word.

"Your jump-jet is malfunctioning," SAM informed her pleasantly.

She swore fiercely enough to make a marine blush, barely avoiding getting impaled or crushed by the floating mountain rock things she was plummeting past. "Get it working!" She could literally feel herself shutting down, leaving her to wonder if it was possible to die of an overdose of adrenaline. She'd never wondered that before, and had never needed to know. Now, maybe, that might have been a bad idea.

"Approaching terminal velocity."

"SAM!" She was going to die. They'd barely made it to Andromeda and she was going to die and this so wasn't fair and-

Her jump-jet activated at what felt like the last possible second, sending her upwards with enough force to make her neck ache even with her hardsuit supporting her and her internal organs to hit the underside of her ribcage.

She started falling again, the fall broken by another mountain thing which she slammed into the face of and felt the impact in every bone in her body. With enough squeaks and pained yelps to make her self-conscious in the event that someone might be listening were she not possibly about to die, she began rolling down it, hitting branches and smaller rocks.

Finally, she hit the bottom, faintly registering a sharp crack but not paying it anymore mind than holy shit, I'm alive and damn I am telling this story to my currently nonexistent children. She wasn't breathing anyhow.

In fact, she didn't inhale until she slowed her rolling to a halt and immediately regretted that choice. The air burned in her lungs like acid and she coughed, choking in another inhale. She sat up long enough to type into her omnitool and held her wrist up to her face, repairing the crack in her helmet glass. Instantly able to breathe more easily, she gulped in lungfuls of air, most specifically and thankfully, air that wasn't trying to kill her for breathing it in. Tears stung her eyes but she was alive. The planet was clearly trying to kill her but she was alive. Alive. Beautiful word, that.

She stayed on her back until her breathing calmed and her heart rate slowed just enough that it didn't feel like it was going to hop out of her chest and go run a marathon. Thunder rumbled overhead but it was far enough away that she wasn't overly concerned. Still, she hummed thoughtfully as she rolled over then got to her feet. Her first proper look at Habitat 7 was met with rocks, funky ass plant things that looked like something out of an old fantasy vid, and a lightning storm in the upper atmosphere. And despite herself, she took a sharp breath. Tears entered her eyes and she quickly blinked them away. It was beautiful and it was new and this was what she'd been looking for her whole life, to see something no one else had seen. "To boldly go where no man has gone before," she murmured, a smile breaking out on her face. Feeling more settled, she tapped her omnitool. "This is Ryder. Come in." Her omnitool flickered and her smile faded. "Hyperion? SAM? Anyone there?"

She dropped her arm, omnitool interface vanishing from view when she heard the unmistakable sound of running. She turned to see Liam come over a rock and the relief that slammed into her overrode the brief panic that she'd already started to recognize him even when she couldn't see his face. "Save your breath," he panted, trotting up to her and dropping to brace his hands on his knees when he was at her side. "SAM's offline. Comm link's trashed. I'm surprised we aren't too."

"You and me both." She shook her head, looking back out into the distance. "Did the others make it?"

Liam straightened up, his own breathing mostly under control though she could still hear his panting and if that didn't bring back memories- No. Not the time. Survive first. Remember later. "I don't know. It was all a blur. Shuttle split in two…" he paused and she thought back to the panic of seeing him go flying out of the shuttle. "This is like some nightmare."

She exhaled loudly into a snort, surprising him if the twitch he made was any indication. "Yeah. No way this is home." She didn't envy her dad the job of doing the actual home finding. But the 'what the hell' factor, that was right up her alley.

They stood there in silence long enough for breathing to completely even out for the both of them. "Looks like we gotta find some high ground. See if anyone else is alive." As he moved past her, he hit her arm and she didn't want to say it was affectionately but maybe he was just that way. Focus, Cassie, now is not the time to think about it. "Come on."

"Lightning storm, high ground. No way this could end badly." She turned and activated her scanner to take a look at those plants.

"Hey, Ryder, how's your survival training?" Liam asked, circling back around her to peer over her shoulder at her omnitool.

She tapped into it, frowning. "Can't complain," she replied absently. "I've seen my share of troubles. Nothing crazy, but…" What the hell?

"Well, crazy just found us. Those rocks out there are floating."

"Terra incognita." She made a sharp noise of irritation.

"Some of those plants look like tentacles." He laughed lightly, the sound more disbelieving than anything. She wanted him to go away because this didn't make sense. New galaxy, new puzzles. "Is the water here even water?"

"Well, without SAM, it's hard to say exactly what it is. It's some sort of plant, maybe dead, maybe not." The scanner told her nothing about the tentacle plants except they don't work well photosynthetically, could possibly be carnivorous, and were most likely mutated. She hesitated a moment longer, but there was nothing she could do without SAM or running tests and now wasn't the time for it. She turned to see Liam standing with his back to her, staring off the edge of the cliff. Her eyes dipped lower of their own volition and Lord strike her from this planet but he had the absolute perfect ass she had ever seen in her life. She closed her eyes, wishing she could pinch her the bridge of her nose, gloves fingers pressing against her helmet at her bridge instead.

"Those structures we saw on the way in - who could survive in a place like this?"

"Hmmm?" Her eyes snapped open and she averted her gaze, lowering her hand as she did. She flushed a little when he looked at her. "Oh, you know, not sure we want to know right now." She started walking, sensing rather than seeing Liam fall into step behind her. She thought about questioning it, decided against it even though I am not the leader here what are you doing please stop acting like I'm the leader and I know what I'm doing, and kept going.

"Storms here don't seem very natural," he commented.

Her scanner blipped and she glanced down. It had caught a piece of debris and identified it. Quantum Entanglement Communicator. Offline but… She tried to connect to it with her omnitool and it threw sparks out at her. So much for hoping it would work for once. Cas would be able to fix it in a heartbeat and machines didn't like her. At all. In fact, if they were capable of emotions, she'd hazard a guess that they hated her.

"No fixing this. Must have broken on impact."

"Explains why we lost our SAM connection."

She shook her head and started walking again. "Oh, and safety tip: don't breathe the air. Found that out the hard way."

She could definitely hear a smile in his voice. "Got it."

Damn it. Why did he have to be this way? Hoping her lungs were feeling better and definitely hoping that she'd be able to put some distance between them, she eased into a jog. To her right, sitting just on the edge of the cliff, was a flaming pile of something from the shuttle. Wreckage, debris, whatever. It was on fire and that meant some sort of flammable something in the atmosphere.

"You think that energy cloud we saw could cause all this?"

She hummed, thinking. "SAM said it was dark energy but that's in space."

"Yeah. Hell of a cloud."

"A cloud that makes boulders float."

There was silence for a little bit, not long, but enough that Cassie started to get uncomfortable at how comfortable it was. She didn't like that they got along. She didn't like that she actually liked him. And she really didn't like that they were both on the Pathfinding team. Her dad would kill her, literally kill her, if she caused a rift in his team because she was mooning after a teammate like a lovesick puppy.

Actually, if he ever found out how unbelievably stupid she'd been on her last night in the Milky Way, he would probably kill her on principle. That or she'd get the disapproving Dad glare. Honestly, she didn't know which was worse.

Even in her hardsuit, her hair started to stand on end and she blinked back into awareness to see a very, oddly localized lightning storm in front of them. She slowed to a halt, head tipping to the side. "Uh, what the hell is this?" Liam asked behind her.

She found her fingers straying to her omnitool before she yanked her hand away. If she survived this, then she could come back and study to her heart's content. If Liam was going to treat her like the leader for God only knows what reason, then she had to keep him alive. As soon as Cas woke up, her dad would have another recon specialist but she doubted that Liam's job had been doubled.

"Come on - we've got to get through this." She braced herself briefly then took off at a dead sprint. Her hair buzzed out and she felt her biotics licking across her skin in response to all the electricity.

"This is crazy!"

She couldn't stop the giggle, wouldn't have been able to at all. "Welcome to Habitat 7!" A particularly close bolt had her biotics throwing a nearby rock that had started floating. Behind her came Liam's cry of pain. "Come on, keep moving." There. A cave. Caves were good. Caves were sheltered from freak lightning storms.

As soon as her biotics eased off, she slowed back down to a halt, checking her shields, making sure everything that had been working was still working. "What the hell's going on with this place?" Liam asked, a pained tightness in his voice.

"The planet is trying to kill us." Now she was the one panting with an ache in her lungs. Damn. Whatever was in the air that had hurt so freaking much when her helmet was cracked had definitely done some damage. She shouldn't be this winded. Liam paused in his own readings, head turning to look at her. Panic flailed through her because for everyone's sake it would be far, far better if he never remembered what had happened between them. No panting. Ever. Yeah, like that would work. "On the other hand, nothing like near death experiences after a 600 year nap. Remind me not to do it again. Not really a fan." Without bothering to take a look at her surroundings because anything would be preferable to staying here, with him, talking, and God, she needed to a moment to just breathe, she set back off at a trot for the opening on the other side of the cave.

AN: Oh, poor Cassie. She has absolutely no idea of what is in store for her and that team.

And here's the second chapter. As always, let me know what you think. Good, bad, ugly. I'm always looking to improve.