Shepard stepped down out of the shuttle and wished, not for the first time, that she could have kept the Mako. The desert sand swept away from the landing pad in huge, inviting peaks of red-gold, just waiting to be conquered. The heat, kept at bay by the climate control of her armour, began to creep into her awareness. Her HUD registered an exterior temperature of 53 degrees C, and the air vibrated with it. She crouched down and let a handful of fine sand run through her glove.

Behind her, beyond the cracked but serviceable landing pad, the sand-scraped ruins of a city slept in the heat. Erosion had eased the sharp edges of decay into smooth contours, and the shadows and curves struck her with an impression of beauty. The ruins stretched out down a deep valley of rock and sand, held at bay by thick bracing walls at the edges. In the distance, the dark smudges of cliffs blurred with the heat haze.

Shepard trotted down some steps to a viewpoint set into the bedrock. The railing had long since fallen to the shifting sand, but the platform felt solid enough. She raised her visor and coughed at the thickness of the air. It was like being in a sauna room. A gust of hot wind caused handfuls of sand to whip up and rattle away down the dune; abruptly the air current changed and blew some of it back into her face. Shepard gagged and blinked and spat out the desert.

'It would be best if you were to isolate yourself from this environment, siha.'

She closed her visor up as the drell spoke, and straightened. She still found it irritating to have to communicate through comms when standing right next to someone. Particularly this someone. 'Is the wind always out to get you?'

'Not always. As well as dust, it brings smells, of water, food, company. This time...' He inhaled. '… Nothing but warmth and silence.'

Thane had his eyes closed, but only horizontally: the transparent film kept out the worst of the sand until the wind subsided. He blinked both ways and came and stood very close to her, staring out over the city.

'I can't help but think this might have been us,' mused Shepard. '11 billion people, heavily industrialised, dwindling natural resources... Do you ever think about them?'

'Of course. It is tradition for drell on Khaje to return to the homeworld on pilgrimage, at least once in their lifetime. To pray for those who did not survive, and remember.'

'I thought you said most people didn't believe in the old gods any more.'

'They don't. But they return to pray all the same. Sometimes I think the gods are aspects of this world that we observed during our genesis here.' He paused. 'The dust is everywhere, in all the pieces of my clothes. Dry and warm and breathable. The pilgrimage leader sets the orb on the top of the stand and the sun burns through it into our eyes. Everyone can feel the heat. The cynical pilgrim next to me falls to her knees in the dust.'

Shepard took his hand. 'Sounds powerful.'

Thane blew out a breath in a quiet hissing noise and gripped her hand. 'Yes.'

She waited a moment while he anchored himself in the present again, then tugged him. 'Come on. Let's explore.'

'The entire planet was picked clean by pockets of survivors, siha. There will be little to scavenge.'

'You know me too well. But I still want to look around the place. Come on.'

Two lifetimes worth of training dictated she jog all the way down the steps leading into the city, and automatically pick out spots of cover. Behind her she knew the assassin, just as automatically, was scouting vantage points. The first few blocks were, as he had said, picked clean. Empty warehouses yawned at the golden heat of the street. After a crossroads she dived down the shade of an alley, and went boldly through a doorway covered by a scrap of greasy cloth.

With the abrupt change in light levels, the thing on the floor in the little room caught her by surprise, and she was aglow with biotic energy before she had a chance to examine it properly. 'What's that?'

The drell slipped in behind her, and collapsed his rifle. 'A relic.'

Shepard relaxed her concentration as he knelt and collected the thing up into his arms. The figurine was smoothed of detail and battered by the environment, but the polished metal still glowed. It was a large-eyed female figure with many arms and a thin, coiling tail. Two hands held a child, one a bow, one a knife, and another set held two flowers up high. Six glorious dragonfly-like wings splayed out from the figure's spine.

'Illium sunrise beams through the window behind. Drop. Take out the guards, flip the asari around, one quick shot to the stomach. Shock and pain. Twitching and bleeding. I close the asari's eyes and let her down gently onto the console to die. Fold her arms. Clasp hands to pray. Close my eyes fully but the black stare of the dark-skinned human female follows me into the prayer and for the first time in ten years I cannot concentrate.'

Shepard shivered despite the heat. But touched as she was, she wasn't going to encourage Thane to dwell any more than he already did. 'Did my skin make that much of an impression?'

He spoke without looking round. 'Human races fascinate many species. Such diversity from a single planet is quite astonishing.'

'Yeah. Looks like there might have been deserts somewhere in my history too.'

He stood up and replaced the figurine on the little stone ledge in the wall from which it had fallen. He joined his hands. Shepard wondered briefly whether to leave him to it or to step closer.

She joined him and waited, clasping her hands in front of her. The aural receptors in her helmet picked up the sound of his breathing, silent in, mild hiss out... In, out, in, out, then a tight little rattling sound that sent adrenaline and fear shooting through her Cerberus-enhanced system. She wanted to punch something. Glancing back at the figurine, holding life and death in its many hands, Shepard felt herself reaching out with her mind instead.

'Thank you for staying,' he said presently, lowering his hands.

'You're right. There is something about this place that makes you think. Kind of... stretch.'

'I am glad you feel it too, siha.'

'Do all your angels have insect wings?'

'Yes.'

They went out into the alley again and walked its length. Another street brought them to a wide open space, where the sand had rubbed away the mosaic pattern on the floor and the desert had long since claimed the booths. 'The market square,' supplied Thane, stepping out into the open space and turning around to take it in. 'I feel a little strange, siha. This is a place that should be crowded with memories, but this is the first time I have been here. I feel connected but very distant at the same time.'

'I suppose that's the feeling of pilgrimage.'

'That is a good way of thinking of it.'

The wind roared again, tumbling streams of sand and grit down the street they had just come from and sending it cascading across the empty square. 'Good thing the drell don't have ancestral memories as good as their own,' commented Shepard, forcing her way through the blast of wind. 'You'd have drowned by now. When did you last come back to Rakh—'

She was only able to consciously sort through the events that followed thirty seconds later, sheltering behind a pillar. Something metallic had glinted at the top of a ruin to their right; firing up her implants she'd Charged Thane to the ground, sending them both skidding a good few metres, just as the dust where he had stood exploded into pieces of grit and shattered stone. Gripping one another's arm, they stormed across the gaping open space in a hail of bullets and dived for cover. Shepard booted up her radar while she waited for her shields to recover. 'Three on our left, one opposite. Low heat emissions.'

'Geth?'

'More likely pirates or mercs with radiation shielding. Is this building solid?'

He poked his head out to check. Shepard powered off a round of SMG pellets straight across, but the distance was too great and the target only took one or two hits to its armour. Thane ducked again and nodded. 'Get up high and pick them off. I'll distract them from down here. Good hunting.'

He nodded, sent off a quick prayer, then wheeled and hauled himself up the open staircase. Shepard loosed another clip across while he climbed then ducked back behind the pillar. The target took more hits this time and dropped. She reloaded just in time to see movement at the end of the row of pillars. She blew out a breath to focus herself, launched off the pillar, and Charged again. Her target, a human dressed in Blue Suns uniform, dropped like a sack of irridium and was quickly put out of his misery with a spray of bullets. Shepard kicked him over with her boot and crouched again. She flicked through open comm channels but the mercs were being unusually quiet. The first twinges of a headache began to gnaw at her consciousness.

The crack of a sniper rifle boomed around the square, and gunfire crackled above her. Another dot disappeared from her scanner. Two left. She needed a better position. There was a ruined booth out in the open that she judged would shelter her for a little while. She switched to her heavy pistol and went for it.

Such a blatant run did, as she'd hoped, draw their attention, and she heard the sickening sound of her shield shattering as she vaulted the ruined booth and ducked. Another boom echoed overhead, and a second red dot vanished from her radar. Return fire sparked in the heat, and she heard Thane grunt over the comm.

Rage unfolded its wings within her. Smoothly she holstered her pistol and unfolded the missile launcher. She forced herself to wait another second to throw up a Barrier, then stood up. Bullet poured into her defences as she calmly took aim, adjusted for wind and muscle shift, and launched a seeker. She looked up from the scope and watched through the bullets as the missile screamed across the marketplace and exploded into the rooftop, sending the hapless merc spread-eagled and very dead over the side. His corpse dropped into the dust with a revolting crunch.

Shepard breathed again and crouched, checking the radar. 'Thane? Clear from here. Anything up there?'

'Clear.'

'Stay there, I'll come to you. I swear Thane, one day, one day, I'll be able to take a vacation without someone trying to kill me.'

'Don't flatter yourself, siha. It was me they were aiming at.'