ALPHA AND OMEGA

TWO: THE CAR


The air outside the Kalendis Novembris club was dully stale, the kind you got from recycling the same artificial gas ten thousand times, but to Garrus it might as well have been fresh off a Palaven nature reserve for how good it smelled. The stench of blood was still worked into his nostrils, but at least now it was lighter, more manageable. He took a couple of deep breaths. They made the pulsing pain in his head scream out again, but he barely noticed, forcing the pain away. It was an old soldier's trick, focusing on the centre and isolating it, blocking it away until it was just another warning bell ringing in his head.

Note to self: wear a helmet next time you're abducted by thugs and beaten for information. It might help.

"Vakarian."

The word wasn't spoken loudly, but there was an air of command in it that cut through the ambient sound of Omega, the usual hum of traffic and distant machinery like a neutrino through plasma.

She's in charge. That's a commander's voice if I ever heard one. Ah, strong women. Not that there are really any other kind with our species.

He looked up to see Chirin standing by an aircar parked haphazardly on the flooring twenty metres away. It looked like they'd almost crash-landed; the grey paint on the bottom - grey, same as their armour - was scratched and torn, while a deep groove was dug into the metal for a few metres behind. A crowd of bystanders was already starting to congregate around it. It was a miracle it hadn't been stolen already, this being Omega.

Well, here's the sixty-four thousand credit question, Garrus. Do you: a) go with these strange professionals who could probably kill you at a moment's notice and whose motives for saving you you have no idea about, or b) make a run for it?

What do I do? Walk into the darkness, or scuttle about in the shadows? If I leave them - assuming she doesn't shoot me down, of course, and I'm not entirely confident of that - what's to say the same thing won't happen again? There won't be anyone to save your scaly ass next time.

But will there be a next time?

Oh, there will.

...

Damn.

Well, what's life without a few surprises?

He shouldered his way past a couple of salarians and pushed aside a human to reach the car. Sidonis was already inside, sitting in the driver's seat, and as he approached Chirin swung herself inside.

She'd never get you now, a little voice inside his brain urged. You could melt away and be your own man again.

Shut up, brain. I knew I couldn't trust you.

He ducked under the door and sat down, taking the second back seat. It was roomy inside the car, and when the door came down the murmur of the crowd outside and the perennial background hum of Omega were cut right off. Nice model. These guys are well-equipped.

"Told you he'd come. One hundred credits, Lant," Chirin said.

"Fuck you," Sidonis grunted, and flicked a credit chip over his shoulder. Chirin caught it neatly and slid it into a pocket on her armour.

"Only a hundred?" Garrus said, buckling his seatbelt. He noticed Chirin hadn't bothered to do the same, but then again that armour could probably handle a car crash easily enough.

"What can I say?" Sidonis said. "My girlfriend always said I was frugal." He yanked back on the throttle, and the aircar's engines throbbed underneath them. The crowd suddenly shrank away as the vehicle bobbed up twenty feet and slid away into the shadow of a starscraper to join the traffic lanes.

"Out of interest," Garrus said carefully, "what would you have done if I'd run for it?"

"Missile to the small of the back," Chirin said. She didn't appear to be joking.

"Right," Garrus said.

There was a short pause, which Sidonis broke by clearing his throat loudly in the traditional ritual of bypassing something awkward in the conversation. "That went well," he said, sounding mildly cheerful.

"Speak for yourself," Garrus said, feeling his faceplate tenderly. "Some day, this thing's gonna fall right off."

"Not soon, I hope," said Chirin. Sidonis had taken off his helmet but hers was still in place, the opaque visor blocking any eye contact. "We have work to do. Seems that might be difficult without a face."

"Yes, I've been meaning to discuss that," Garrus said, and put down his stolen pistol on the seat between them. Outside the tinted windows of the aircar, the high-rise buildings of Omega flashed past. "Work, that is, not my face. Although, if you're particularly interested in it-"

"Don't even bother," Sidonis said, voice weighed down by the universally recognisable burden of experience. I thought you said you had a girlfriend? Not doing a great deal to win my trust here, Sid.

"Questions can wait until we're out of the system," Chirin said, ignoring him. "The Blood Pack won't let this go easily."

"They might even kill us," Sidonis said brightly. "That'll be fun."

"Out of the system?" Garrus said. "I can't go out of the system. My work's needed here."

"Ever heard of modesty?" Sidonis muttered.

"Your work nearly got you killed," Chirin said, with all the concern as if she was reminding him of a dentist's appointment.

"Yes, I was going to ask about that as well." He shifted his position so that he was staring right at Chirin. "First: where are we going, and why?"

Chirin turned her helmeted head away to stare out at the flickers of light behind the glass.

"First, we're going to the spaceport. We need to get off this station, and you've got our ticket out."

"Ah."

The ship. Everything comes down to the ship. What kind of galaxy is this, where people fight and die over who gets to commit genocide?

Well, this kind, obviously.

Sidonis flicked a switch on the console in front of him, presumably sending the aircar into autopilot, and turned to face them. For the first time, Garrus got a good look at his face; he didn't recognise the tattoos, which were pale blue and less substantial than Garrus's own. Looks like Aspian, but I don't think the colours are right. I hope they aren't, anyway. As I recall, we did some rather nasty things to them in the U-War, and we do love to hold a grudge...

If he was planning on murdering Garrus for the honour of his clan, Sidonis didn't seem to be showing it. He looked fairly young, no more than mid-twenties, maybe as young as late teens. Handsome, too.

"That ship," Sidonis said, "is worth a metric fuck-ton of credits."

"That an exact measurement?" Garrus said, smiling thinly. The side of his face tightened painfully, and another trickle of blood seeped into his mouth from the cut there.

"Fuck yes it is," Sidonis said. "And guess who the lucky turian who just so happens to have stolen the only set of codes to it from the Blood Pack is. Three guesses, first two don't count."

"And the Blood Pack took it off a human entrepreneur, who took it from an asari businessperson, who stole it from someone else," Chirin finished.

Garrus cocked a brow ridge. "Someone else?"

"We don't know everything," Sidonis said. Behind him, the vista from the windscreen turned sharply to the left as the aircar cornered. He wouldn't even have noticed if he hadn't seen it. Now that's inertial compensation. Perhaps I should have some built into my face. It might take less damage that way.

"There are at least eight identified parties after that ship," Chirin said, "and most likely at least twice that many total. We've confirmed Blood Pack, obviously, as well as the other major merc groups - Blue Suns, DiamondEye, Eclipse - plus three private operations, almost certainly run by local plutocrats. Unconfirmed interest from Forty-Four, the Crows, Stranglehold, Marcus Ladstock, Yarin - and Aria, of course, but we're willing to believe she'll stay out of this and let it end itself. She doesn't go in for intervention."

Garrus rubbed a hand down his face, wiping away some of the blood congealing there in a blue smear. Match the tattoos.

"Crap. I thought it was just the Blood Pack who stole it from the creators. That's what they seemed to think, anyway."

"It's bigger than that. A lot bigger," Sidonis said. "Everyone with hands and a brain on Omega - and that ain't everyone, bear in mind - wants a piece of the pie. We're talking more credits than can physically fit on a chip. After all, that ship can seriously fuck up a lot of people's days."

"Tell me about it. Unprotected colony world meets that kind of biological weaponry... it'd kill all of them, and it could be out of the system before anyone even knew something was wrong," Garrus said, and leant back to stare up at the car's roof. "Untraceable. Uncureable. Unstoppable. Control that, and you've got the biggest hostage in the history of the galaxy at your fingertips." He rubbed his right eye with the back of his hand. It was already swelling up. "Maybe I should just hide."

"Wouldn't work," Chirin said. "Once word got out that they've disappeared, we get a little war of our very own. Nobody's broken into the ship yet, but that's only because every damn merc group in the Terminus Systems is hanging around that ship like a group of heavily-armed flies."

"Someone tries, a lot of people get fucked," Sidonis said, "but someone has to win, and they'll get in eventually."

"So our only hope," Sidonis continued, "is to rain on their parade. We have you, you have the codes, the codes have the ship, ergo we have the ship."

"Let's talk about this 'have' thing," Garrus said. "You don't 'have' me. I don't even know who you are. I know names, names that might not even be real, but that's it. Who do you represent? Don't tell me you're on your own, this is..." - he waved an arm around the car - "...professional."

There was a second or two of silence.

"Those are our real names," Chirin said, and turned back to him. He couldn't read anything, anything at all into that calm, smooth voice, and without any facial expression to go on talking to her became slightly unnerving.

"Well, that's nice, but who are you?" Garrus said. "Forgive me, but I don't think giving the keys to the genocide machine to enigmatic mercenaries is-"

"We're not mercenaries."

Chirin's voice could have frozen water.

"Then what are you?"

"Colleagues," Sidonis said.

"Colleagues," Garrus said flatly.

"Colleagues."

"Little more specific?"

Sidonis sighed, and cracked his knuckles.

"Vigilantes. Outlaws. Outsiders. Men of the night. Bastards. Whatever the fuck you want to call us, that's what we are."

"Men of the night?"

"I think I heard that somewhere," Sidonis said vaguely, waving a hand. "Probably wasn't serious, but I like it. Air of mystery."

"Lantar, you've got all the mystery of a bad film noir," Chirin said, her tone still unchanging.

"Fuck you," Sidonis said, and a wide grin flashed across his face like a fish through water. "Fuck you very much."

"Vigilantes," Garrus said sceptically, trying to steer the conversation back on track.

"The very best," Sidonis said, and thumped a fist into his armoured chest. It made a dull thud.

"Yeah? I'll bet." Lantar. His prenomen is Lantar. Must make a note of that. "Still doesn't explain the uniforms. Or the equipment, for that matter. Anyone who saw the two of you together would say you're mercs. I still think you're mercs. You can't tell me you're just a couple of well-dressed vigilantes. I'm not going to buy that."

"We-" Sidonis began.

"We aren't mercs," Chirin said, cutting him off. Sidonis rolled his eyes and looked away, out of the window at the vast light show that was Omega. "But we were."

Ah. There it is. The truth comes out. What were you expecting, though? It's not as if people see 'crazed vigilante' as a valid career choice without a past like that. I should know.

"Did you hear about the, ah, the incident up in Sunwise a week ago?" Sidonis said, as the car swooped neatly around another corner to join a new lane.

"There are more incidents in Sunwise than there are people," Garrus said, with all the weariness brought on by detailed first-hand knowledge of exactly the sort of incident usually involved. "Hell, I'm probably involved in a good ten percent of them. And that was when the ship surfaced, wasn't it?"

"The day before the broadcast of the technical specifications of the ship across the station," Chirin confirmed. "We were lucky, really."

"Yeah, everything was pretty chaotic. So no, basically," Garrus said.

"Let me refresh your memory," Sidonis said. He made a fist out his right hand and brought it up, then opened it. "Boom."

"B- that was you, huh?" said Garrus. Now, this is interesting. Not in a good way, though. Very few things are interesting in a good way on Omega. May you live in interesting times indeed.

It had been a week ago. A normal day up in the Sunwise district, which essentially meant open warfare. Aria tended to have it left alone by her enforcers. Give her credit for that, at least; she knows when not to fight a losing battle. The world without law has its own outlaw district. Ah, irony. What a dull universe this would be without you. An explosion had rocked it - hardly unusual for Sunwise, but this one had taken out a series of warehouses and office buildings. Garrus hadn't been there, but he'd seen a few grainy vids on the extranet. It had looked fun. Casual estimates said that two or three hundred people had died, but nobody had claimed responsibility. It had obviously been an inside job, too, the buildings apparently having been rigged to blow from the interior. Professional.

But that was just a blip in interest, wasn't it? An explosion, a few hundred dead... all in a day of work for the good people of Omega. But the very next day, an anonymous ship broadcasts specifications that make it the most valuable thing on the damn station... it might as well be a dare for those good people to try and claim it. Maybe it was. Hell, I'm going for it.

Sidonis didn't answer right away. He glanced over at Chirin, who was as unreadable as ever. He seemed to get some kind of signal from her, though one that Garrus couldn't see.
If I had my visor, maybe I'd be able to see through that damn helmet. The area around his eye felt - well, above all it felt painful, the krogan's shotgun leaving one hell of a bruise under the plating, but it also felt naked without that visor. I'd had that one five years. Those things are expensive, too.

"Have you ever," Sidonis said, leaning forward, "heard of Vult?"

"It... rings a bell," Garrus said slowly. Where the hell have I heard that name before?

"We were mercs. A higher class of mercs, if you like."

"There's no higher class of mercs," Garrus said. "A merc is a merc."

"Yeah? Whatever," Sidonis said, shrugging. "Point of the matter is, we ain't. Not any more. That bridge burned, then blew up. Along with twelve buildings and a few hundred people." He caught Garrus's expression. "I mean, they were mercs too, mostly. No innocents. I hope."

Like there are any innocents on Omega, that voice spoke up again, in the shadows at the back of his mind. Wouldn't it be better if this whole place was dusted?

He forced it back, back into the darkness, but it wasn't going to stay.

"Vult worked on contracts that required a more finesse than the usual," Chirin said. Garrus might have been imagining it, but her voice seemed to have frosted over again. "Most of the time, clients only need cannon fodder-"

"-which the Blood Pack and their kind are only too eager to offer," Garrus finished.

"Tactical infiltrations, espionage, demolitions, assassinations... anything that couldn't be done by a hold full of armed fuckheads, we did," Sidonis said. "You know what I'm talking about. You did the same thing, after all."

Garrus bristled. "I never-"

"Never thought in such small terms?" Sidonis said sharply. "You couldn't just infiltrate, you had to destabilise the entire colony. You couldn't just demolish, you had to fucking nuke the facility."

"We did what we had to do." That was said with conviction. I know that's right. Shepard always did what was necessary and no further.

"What you fucking had to? Give me a break. You're the same as us, you and that Shepard bitch both-"

Garrus punched him.

There were a couple of seconds of silence, with nothing but the throaty hum of the engine beneath them filling the car. Garrus's knuckles began to sting like hell.

"Fuck," Sidonis moaned, feeling tenderly around his jaw. A trickle of blue blood was running down from one corner of his mouth.

"Some day," Garrus said, "everything Shepard did, everything she fought for, everything she stood for - it'll all come out. Read the reports. Watch the vids. If you still want to insult her after that, you can return that with interest."

"Fuck," Sidonis repeated. "Fuck, I think you broke my jaw-"

"Man up," Chirin said blandly, and turned back to the window.

"Man u- I risk my life to save your ass and you, you assault me?" Sidonis said, fixing Garrus with a steely stare of equal parts outrage and disbelief. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Shepard saved your life, mercenary," Garrus said, and his voice made the steel in Sidonis's eyes look like paper. "If you value it, I suggest you be thankful to her."

"I don't know if you heard me, but we're not fucking mercs!"

"You work for them, you're one of them. Mass murder isn't going to change that."

"What the hell do you want?" Sidonis said, and spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor between Garrus's feet. "What the hell do you want from me? If we hadn't been there to bail you out, you wouldn't have the ability to walk!"

"And if Shepard hadn't been there on the Citadel, we'd all be dust."

Sidonis gave him one last withering look, then twisted back to the front seat, turning his back on Garrus, and stared fiercely ahead as the aircar entered a slow lane.

Perhaps I shouldn't have hit him. It may not have been a good idea to piss off one of the two people capable of getting you off this station alive.

Then again, he was being a real dick.

"All he says is true," Chirin said quietly, still studying the view flashing past the window. She hadn't moved in a good minute.

"So you're mercs."

"No. We were mercs. Now we're unemployed."

"And I bet unemployment benefits aren't up to scratch on Omega."

"Nobody stays out of work for long here," Chirin agreed. "As long as you count crime as work."

"So, I take it I'm to believe that you two just want to get out of the system, and have absolutely no ulterior motives regarding this extremely dangerous, massively valuable ship I have the only codes to?"

"Yes."

"No offence," Garrus said, "but that's a load of crap."

"I see your point," Chirin said. "You don't trust us. We don't trust you. But we each have something the other needs."

"Somehow, I think my need is just a little more urgent."

"Just because you've got the Blood Pack on your ass?" Sidonis chimed in, still not looking back at them. "The Blood Pack are fucking amateurs compared to Vult. We knew that. That's why we left, that's why we left as many of the bastards dead as we could. But we didn't get all of them, not by a long shot. There's a scorpion tail of Vult operatives on the station, and let me tell you - they are fucking pissed off."

"Not without good reason," said Chirin. "We shattered their entire infrastructure. They've already lost most of the outstanding contracts they had. Shortly put, we killed them."

"I'm having trouble believing that Vult was up to all that," Garrus said. "I've only heard the name a few times, for a start."

"We... they... were secretive," Sidonis said. At least he seemed to have gotten over the punch, although his tone was noticeably sharper, colder. "Black ops. Well, grey ops. It was word-of-mouth among contacts at the very highest level, working for the sort of people with more creds than skin cells. It's not as if anyone ever trumpeted it from the fucking rooftops."

"And presumably they'd be good?"

"The best." There'd been something in his voice as he said it, something more than mere fact...

That was pride. I know pride when I hear it, even if he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't even know it, but he liked the prestige, the high demand. Still does. He's wondering if this is all a mistake, and I can't say I've done much to change his mind there.

Interesting. You're one to watch, Lantar Sidonis.

"And if they're the best," he said, "how did two operatives bring down the whole organisation? Even for the most shambolic operation in the systems, that should be impossible."

"It was," Chirin said quietly.

Ah.

"There were ten of us," Sidonis said, after a short pause. "Four turians, including the two of us, three salarians, a human, an asari, a krogan."

"And now..."

"And now, there aren't."

Sore point. Not a good idea to press. Then again, hitting him wasn't a good idea either. Stealing the codes wasn't. Getting into the car wasn't. You're just bubbling over with genius these days, Garrus. Give yourself another ten years and you'll have more fractures than faceplate. If you live ten years.

"We knew there would be losses," said Chirin. "But we lost our ship, the money, the equipment... all we had left was this aircar and these suits."

"Don't play me for sympathy," Garrus said sharply. "Somehow, I doubt you left Vult because you were just too moral and upstanding for them."

"We did."

"I'll bet."

"It's the truth," Sidonis said, and turned back to them. A thin line of blue blood was still drawn down the left side of his face. "You think mercs are all monsters? There's... things, things we won't do." He paused for a second, breathed in deeply. "Things that I can't do, not for any amount of money."

"Not many," Garrus said. "Not many at all."

"Fuck you." Sidonis's mouth twisted upwards into a sneer. "Who the hell are you to tell me who I am? Is this your thing? You take people and you, you define them to your own godly standards? You're not a fucking hero."

"I know."

"Then don't act like one," Sidonis said, and turned away again. The blood he'd spat onto the grey durafoam carpeting the aircar glimmered in the harsh artificial light flooding through the windows.

Is that how I act? Is that really what I am? Maybe Shepard was a bad influence on me. She was a hero. What am I? A hanger-on? I put a bullet through Saren's head, but if not for her... would I still be wasting my life trying to fight crime with nothing but the law on my side? Do I have the right to call him right or wrong?

If I did, would I know?

"What's done is done," Chirin said. "The past is past. I don't pretend to justify what I was. What matters now is what I am, what we are. I'll tell you what we want: we want to leave Omega, to regroup, re-equip, then return. With enough people, we can make a difference. We can't end the mercs, but we can help."

"Admirable."

"We knew about you. We knew what you want. You're after the same thing as us, you're after an Omega without crime. It's not a realistic dream, but it's a dream we can work towards. The ship is just a means to an end. We want those systems destroyed as well. They cannot be allowed to fall into mercenary hands."

"And if that is what you want, I'd agree," said Garrus. "But see it from my perspective. I'm effectively the owner of the most valuable ship on the station. You want to get onto it. What are you more likely to be: two reformed mercs looking to redeem themselves, or two mercs looking for money?"

"If we didn't know about you, we might assume you're after that as well," Chirin said reasonably.

Crap. Got me there.

He didn't answer, instead turning to the window again. Omega glittered outside, a sea of brilliant gems in the darkness. It was almost beautiful, in its way. I know what those gems are, though. You can gleam all you like, Omega, but all you're doing is putting a shine on dirt.

I can't trust them. They know the codes are gone forever if they kill me, they know I can delete them. Just because you're alive, just because they haven't tried to extract them from you - that's no reason to think that's not what they want.

But you need to get off this station, that voice spoke up again, dark and sweet as Spurian treacle. Think about what they've told you. You know damn well that every merc within a few hundred light years will want that ship, you know they'll be there waiting. You know everyone knows that the codes are in the hands of a single turian. You know that the only way for you to live is to go with them. That's the only way out.

And that's it, isn't it? You can delete those codes. You do that, you've got nowhere to run... but that ship can't hurt anyone. That's the hero's way, Garrus. You won't do that. You can't do that. You think you're doing the right thing? You think you're lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness, don't you? But that's not it at all. You're doing this for yourself. You can't enjoy your good deeds if you're not alive, after all.

You're no better than any of them. At least mercs are honest. They want money. You... you lie. You tell yourself, you tell people you want a better galaxy, but you're too self-interested to actually do the right thing. And the best thing? To you, to a turian... there's nothing worse than that.

He couldn't ignore it. He couldn't block it out. The thoughts kept on slithering through his head, dark and damp and impossible to shut away. That's not me, he wanted to scream, that's not who I am. But who was there to scream at? Himself?

Damn.

It would only take a few seconds. A few button presses on his omnitool, a confirmation, and the codes would be lost forever. And he'd be a dead man.

I can't do it.

...

I can't do it.

Would deleting them really put an end to thing, though? What if they found another way to use the tech? The way it was designed, that was theoretically impossible, but... yes. There's always a chance. Deleting the codes would just take you out of the equation. If anything that makes it more likely that someone will use the weapons on that ship.

Yeah.

So why don't I believe myself when I say that?

"Damn it," he said aloud, and shifted until he could look out of the back windscreen of the aircar.

The lane behind them was a roiling, heat-shimmering line of light, stretching back tens of kilometres, and traffic had slowed to a stately twenty-odd kph. Omega didn't have any central body to enforce traffic regulations, of course, but experiment had shown that allowing free flight caused chaos. The sky wasn't all that big, after all, not when made of metal. People on Omega were nothing if not savvy, and they knew that this was one rule it wasn't in their interests to break. Some people always skipped the lane and flew solo, but people didn't like that. Omega was perhaps the most weaponised place in the galaxy, so anyone leaving the lanes to save time might as well be painting a target on their cars. You never knew which buildings had SAM units mounted on them, after all.

There were dozens of the shining snakes winding across the sky. One was positioned barely fifty feet above the one they were stuck in, moving parallel to it. The traffic seemed to be moving more smoothly in that one, the cars managing a solid forty kph. By Omega's standards, that was near light speed.

Don't think taking in the scenery will shut me up, the voice purred. He did his best to ignore it.

The faint shout of horns above him made him look up again. Something seemed to be happening in the lane above them, the spots of light shifting from their usual straight course to mill about as one of them left the lane. He saw a few shots fired from the window of one of them, luminescent flecks that flashed past the aircar as it descended. Does he mean to join this lane? Good luck there. He couldn't help but feel that he'd seen this one somewhere before, though it was too bright to tell what colour it was even through the tinted windows.

The aircar continued downwards, and Garrus shielded his eyes with his hand against the glare of the headlights. There was definitely something about it...

Is it my imagination, or is he coming right at us?

Chirin was saying something, but her voice faded away to a murmur on the edge of his hearing as the aircar matched speeds with their own, hovering ten feet above them and twenty back. A figure was leaning out of one of the windows, holding something... a tube of some sort.

With a start, he realised what had been bugging him. The body of the car was painted iron-grey.

The same grey as this one...

The tube flashed, and Garrus moved.

He twisted in his seat like a fish and dived forwards into the narrow gap between the two front seats, straining against his seatbelt. His right hand found the controls and yanked savagely, not caring about direction. Sidonis shouted something and tried to wrestle his hand away, but by then the autopilot had already been overridden and the car was beginning to hook left.

As it did, the aircar lurched sickeningly upwards as the missile caught it under the right-hand side. There was a tremendous bang and suddenly the air was full of the shrieking of shearing metal and the roar of pure heat. The whole right side of the car exploded inwards, the glass shattering and door crumpling as the fireball hit.

The car seemed to flip, the explosion lifting it into a complete barrel roll. Garrus, wedged between the two front seats, could vaguely hear Sidonis screaming something over the sudden whine in his ears, until the right front seat suddenly gave and he fell back into the rear seats. The rocket had dealt a massive blow to the side of the car, leaving a jagged hole near the front, and even as he collapses backwards he could see the seat slip out and fall into the permanent Omega night. Fire was still licking around the edges of the hole.

The car had fully rolled over before Sidonis managed to bring it under some semblance of control, falling out of the lane and starting to dive. Sidonis was still hollering something as he hauled back on the control yoke, but the words were lost to the air, if there had even been words in the first place.

As the car pulled sharply up, it slipped over to the right, Sidonis barely having enough control to keep it stable. Garrus started to roll towards Chirin and the other side of the car, but his seatbelt snapped him back and the floor of the car had suddenly become the wall. There was an ominous shriek of metal from the other side as Chirin fell heavily onto the door, and Garrus instinctively thrust out a hand for her. She grabbed hold of it just as the remnants of the door fell from its hinges and detached from the car, plummeting towards the ground eighty metres below. Garrus was jerked down by her weight, which must have been well over ninety kilograms with the heavy armour in the bargain. His seatbelt, not designed for this kind of strain, snapped, and Garrus began to fall towards the dangling Chirin, his hand still clutching hers. If Sidonis hadn't been able to jerk the car back to the left, they both would have fallen, but instead they ended up tangled together on the opposite side of the car. The whine in Garrus's ears began to fade a little, and he realised Sidonis was still saying something.

"-ck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!" he was shouting, the car weaving wildly as he fought for control. Most of the right front side of the car had gone, ripped away by the main impact of the missile, leaving a smoking hole that looked out on the Omega starline. The right hand door had gone too, leaving the whole side open to the air. As Sidonis kicked the car up a few years and sped off, another missile, a gleaming blue ball of light shedding layers like an onion, whipped past barely five feet away on the right with a roar. And on top of it all, his mouth had started to bleed again.

This is not turning out to be a good day.