ALPHA AND OMEGA
THREE: THE CHASE
Pain defines us, in a way. Pain nerves firing, electrical impulses racing up and down your spine like wildfire. That's the same thing as sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. I can look at a sunset and think I'm enjoying it, but all I'm enjoying is the pain being different, less severe. If you look at it like that, maybe it's not so bad.
In another, much more pertinent way, however, it really is.
His head was on fire. The beating had started it and the missile fanned it; he'd smashed it painfully against the left-hand door as he'd fallen back, and then one of Chirin's durasteel-weighted legs had come crashing down on it like a hammer to the anvil. He could swear it had kicked up sparks from his plates.
"Shit!" came a cry from the remaining front seat. "SHIT!"
Garrus tried to haul himself up, but the car rolled again and they started to slide towards the gaping hole in the side. The lights of Omega danced like fireflies as the car weaved through the air, tracking blinding trails across his eyes as blood pounded in his head. He managed to bring an arm out from under him and his hand closed tightly the remnants of his seatbelt, the thin material creaking ominously under his weight.
"Fly-" he began, then spat out a mouthful of blood. Chirin was trying to untangle herself from him, her legs trapped under him as she steadied herself with the edge of the wound down the side of the aircar. Someone's blood was on her visor, glistening a venomous blue in the flashing light. Probably mine. I've been leaving a lot of that around of late.
"Fly straight," he managed, just as the car banked left again and threw the two of them back against the other door. At least the thick armour was protecting them from most of the damage, and the sheer size of it made it that much harder to actually fall out. If I hadn't been wearing it, he thought vaguely, I'd be a nice blue stain on a street somewhere. Perhaps we should tell the humans it would help to bulk up.
"Oh, yeah! Thanks for the fucking tip!"
The car bucked violently and began to dive again, heading for the lower buildings.
"Sidonis!" Chirin said, and managed to drag herself out from under Garrus's legs, bracing herself against the remaining front seat. "Where the hell are the inertial dampeners?"
"Good fucking question!" Sidonis hollered back. Another blue streak burned a purple trail across Garrus's vision, this one even closer than the last. It was a couple of seconds, full of the engines' tortured whine and the sickening pounding in his head, before he heard it detonate against a building below, sending a sun-white flash up through the sky. The shockwave buffetted the aircar again, but by now he'd wrestled free from Chirin and was hanging on for dear life from a handle over the left door.
"Make yourselves useful and shoot them!" he continued, and slammed a gauntleted hand into a control on the dashboard. There was a short screech of shearing metal before the entire remaining top of the car detached itself from the main body and flipped away through the rushing air.
"Now we're talking," Chirin said, and drew her assault rifle from her back. She stood, swaying with the motion of the car, until her head and upper torso were in the open air. The muzzle of the gun flashed and spat, and a spray of light streaked out into the night.
Garrus pulled himself up, bracing against the frequent sharp turns. His hand went to his holster only to find it empty. Crap. Must have fallen out. It'll be a few hundred metres away now.
"Sidonis!" he said, shouting to make himself heard over the electric rattle of Chirin's gunfire and the engine's howl. "I need your rifle!"
"Like fuck you do!"
That doesn't even make sense.
"We don't have time to argue!"
"Then why are we arguing-"
The car rolled almost onto its side to dodge another incoming missile. It sizzled past a few metres to the left as Garrus was thrown back against the edge of the newly-made convertible. Chirin swayed but somehow kept her feet, popping the heat sink as she did so. The red-hot cylinder bounced onto the floor, and she slid in a fresh one.
"Sidonis, give him the rifle."
"No!"
"Lantar!"
Hah, Garrus thought. That takes me back. That was an instructor's tone, sure enough. Prenomen helps too. I like her.
"Fuck," Sidonis grunted, and pulled his rifle from around his feet. "You'd fucking better be careful with that."
Garrus took it from his outstretched hand, feeling the weight thoughtfully. Big gun. I thought this thing was powerful, but just how much kick does it have?
Well. Let's find out, shall we?
He brought it up to his shoulder. The stock had clearly been customised for Sidonis's own armour, which seemed to be slightly smaller than his; it didn't quite fit, but he managed to wedge the dull grey metal in tightly as the car rocked around him.
Painfully conscious of his missing visor and the thumping in his head, he brought the scope up to his eye. The compensators in the car seemed to have regained a little power, at least, which meant that he could actually stand up without the fear of being thrown around like a rag doll, but it still meant that the image of the pursuing car was shaky as all hell.
He concentrated, and the adrenalin began to race. Red-hot, electric tendrils stormed up through his head and strangled the oily, pulsing pain there, and the whole world seemed to glow a little brighter, move a little slower. The car danced in the scope even now, but it was at least in the scope: he could pick out the same iron-grey paint, the single figure standing up inside, ramming another missile home into the launcher as if in slow motion.
I'd like to hit him. That would be nice. But realism must prevail. Instructors always taught us to aim for the centre of mass. Headshots are for showoffs, or for when you have enough time to be certain you'll make the shot. After all, there's few things that'll make you look stupider than missing a headshot. No, aim for the car itself. If I'm right about how much this thing can do, we might just be able to do a little damage.
The scope was zoomed in as far as it would go. To the side, he could see the rhythmic flash of Chirin's assault rifle, see the individual bolts of light - but that wasn't the kind of weapon you needed here, and no more than a fifth of the shots could even be hitting the car's armour. And with that kind of power, you won't even get through the windscreen.
The shot was lined up. At least, as far as it could be in these conditions. His finger tightened on the trigger, and suddenly all the noise in the car - the staccato buzz of Chirin's assault rifle, the screaming engines, somehow still working after the punishment they'd taken, the roar of the fires still burning, Sidonis's cursing, the bass drum pounding in his head - melted away to nothing, and all there was was the slow DUH-DUH-DUM, DUH-DUH-DUM of his heartbeat. Didn't Shepard once tell me humans only have DUH-DUM, DUH-DUM? Crazy human biology.
The rifle sang, and the kick drove him back a step, until his back collided with Sidonis's seat. The flash of the muzzle had been almost blinding, and the crack of the report needle-sharp. He'd seen the shot race away, a streak of white light burning like a comet against the perennial Omega twilight, and drill straight through the upper middle of the shielded windscreen like it was paper.
That won't have hit anyone, but the power... you know, they say you can tell a lot about a man from the gun he shoots. Sidonis, you like power, I can tell that much. Willing to sacrifice ease of shot, efficiency and your own pain to get it, as well.
Interesting.
He eased his shoulder around, trying to work off the worst of the recoil.
"Damn right!" Sidonis called.
"What?"
"I said, damn right!"
"What's right?"
"When you fired that shot, you shouted out 'impressive!' I'd say that's on the fucking money, eh?"
Really? I don't remember that. Must have been an involuntary thing.
Sidonis didn't wait for an answer, but instead whipped the car up and over a solid, unmoving traffic lane with contemptuous ease. They were heading for the spaceport still, Garrus realised, but they'd been taking so many twists and turns as the car followed them that they were barely any closer since the first missile had hit them. That was the Iridion Operations starscraper to their left, hundred of windows twinkling with the harsh white light even at this hour; in fact, every building in sight was still lit up like a Christmas tree. At least, I think they are. Kaidan never really explained that simile. Some sort of human custom, I imagine.
The pursuing car had started to trail a thin grey smoke, barely visible in the dark as it wove around the lane and followed. It didn't seem to have hurt its performance, though, so they were still a good deal faster; all that was keeping the gap between them manageable was Sidonis's flying. Maybe I should introduce him to Joker some time. I'm sure they'd get along like an engine room on fire. Garrus had a sneaking suspicion that the only reason they hadn't pulled away entirely and lost them was that Sidonis couldn't pull any particularly complex tricks with the roof gone, a gaping hole in one side and barely functioning inertial dampeners. Even so, they might have got away, but there was only so much to do on Omega for evasive manoeuvres.
"Is that Lomon, do you think?" Chirin said, looking back over her shoulder to Sidonis as another empty clip bounced onto the floor and rolled out of the open side of the car. "It looks like him."
"Lomon?" Sidonis answered, raising his voice as the car twisted in the air again and the engines shrieked. "I think he was in Central when the bombs went off. He should be dead."
"Agreed on that," she said grimly, and opened up again. Garrus shrugged and took aim again with the sniper, this time making sure to brace his foot against the front seat to absorb some of the recoil. It might have been his imagination, but the inertial dampeners seemed to be coming back online; certainly Sidonis's razor-sharp turns and dives didn't feel as jerky any more, leaving him able to keep his footing more easily.
When he focused down the scope, he could again keep the car more or less in the crosshairs. A second window seemed to have opened, and what was clearly an asari was leaning out, armed with what looked like a heavy pistol. He tried to focus on her, letting the muzzle flash guide his shot, but when he pulled the trigger the shot went wild, flashing away into the night a few feet away from her. He cursed, and ejected the spent clip. Even as he did so, their pursuers took advantage of an open patch of sky to close the gap to something near ten metres, and another missile would have done them for sure had Sidonis not caught sight of it in his rear camera and thrown the car hard to the right. Garrus snatched at the side of the makeshift convertible to steady himself and watched Chirin's stream of fire strafe wildly across the front of their pursuers. The shields on that thing must be bloody strong. Then again, this one survived a near-direct hit from a missile, so I'm not exactly going to complain on that front.
"We're too exposed," Chirin warned. Her voice was barely audible over the fire and the engines.
"You want to drive?" Sidonis snapped. "Then you can fucking drive! But until then-"
He broke off as another missile hummed in after them, jerking to the left to dodge it by scant inches. Garrus could hear the paint on the car crackle in the searing heat of the ice-blue wreath whirling around the rocket. Good thing they don't have homing missiles, eh? Ah, small blessings.
"Four km left!" Sidonis called. Four kilometres? That's not good. They'll have us long before then. It's a damn miracle we're still alive in the first place.
"That's not good enough," Chirin said.
"Fuck you it's not good enough! Do you know how hard this is?"
"Find more speed, or we die."
"By which you mean, 'kill us or we die'. You think I can just press a fucking button and get some more speed out of nowhere?"
"You've done it before," Chirin said simply.
Hah.
Garrus lined up another shot, the rifle swinging smoothly around to aim at the dancing shape behind them. It barked again, deafeningly loud next to his ear, and set off another wave of oily pain coursing through his head - but that didn't matter, because whether by chance or by skill the shot drilled straight through the dark armour of the asari, taking her in the left shoulder. Just before the twists and turns of the chase snapped the car out of sight behind another building, he saw her collapsing back into the car, a twinkle in the air below marking her falling pistol.
"Scratch one!"
"I think that might have been Kepara," Chirin said vaguely. "I always liked her."
"She was trying to kill us," Garrus pointed out.
"No reason you can't like people who try to kill you."
There was something different about Chirin in combat, Garrus thought, watching her reload again and seeing the muzzle flash reflecting off her visor. She seems a lot more relaxed when she's trying to kill something. Good for her. I prefer music or a shower, but each to their own.
"Uh, guys?" Sidonis called. "I think we have a problem."
A high-pitched beep started to go off in the cockpit, barely audible over the rush of wind through the open side of the car and the engines. The engines which were suddenly sounding like they were coughing, the roar beginning to splutter and fail.
"A really fucking big problem!"
"What?" Chirin said, turning away from the back of the car. Their pursuers had lost a few dozen metres after Garrus had dropped the asari, but the missiles were still coming, albeit increasingly inaccurately. You'd think these guys would be able to afford a homing launcher if they have this much ammo. I wonder how many people they've killed with stray fire?
And what if they did? that voice said, sweet as honey. Tragedy. Only on bloody Omega can you mow down a crowd with an assault rifle and come out with a net karma boost. Don't try to tell me you don't believe that.
Damn. Whoever knew my inner bastard would be so talkative?
"We're losing fuel," Sidonis said, and Garrus was jerked back to the present by the brittle edge of panic in his voice.
"How much fuel?"
"All the fucking fuel!"
A missile came closer than usual, forcing Sidonis to jam the car into a short, steep dive to let the blue fire streak overhead like a comet.
"Can we get to the spaceport?"
Sidonis's hands flew over the console. Screens set into the dashboard glimmered with strings of glowing numbers, numbers that meant absolutely nothing to Garrus.
"I've shut off the leak, so... assuming pursuit speed... no."
"No?" Garrus said, turning back as well. "You mean we'll just fall out of the sky?"
"Well, not fall," Sidonis said brightly. "It'll start out as 'graceful glide', then progress to 'horrific fiery crash from which no living thing could possibly escape'. But the principle is the same, yes."
Responding to danger with irreverence? Can't be healthy.
Pot and kettle, the voice purred.
...shut up.
"How close can we get?" Chirin said, and her voice was as calm and glassy as the surface of Lireon Lake back on Palaven. Garrus was impressed. Even Shepard didn't stay that cool.
"In- shit!" The car rocked as Sidonis rammed the nose to the left, another rocket coming horribly, horribly close to destroying the car completely. Garrus flailed and managed to grab hold of the top of the door on his side, barely keeping his feet. The open side of the car tilted up to display the dull grey 'sky' of Omega briefly before coming back down to show the luminescent cityscape again, and the engines screamed their disapproval.
"In theory," Sidonis continued, voice strained through gritted teeth, "we can get there, but only if we fly straight."
"Not a problem," Garrus said confidently. "We can deal with these guys."
"Yeah, you've been doing a fucking great job of that so far!" Sidonis snapped.
"If we land, they'll pick us off," Chirin said thoughtfully, and turned back to the following car. "I agree with Garrus. Make a beeline for it, and we'll do what we can."
"Boy, suicide's real fucking popular these days."
Chirin's rifle chattered and juddered against her shoulder, and another spray of light trailed the car. I don't know what she thinks she'll achieve by doing that. Blind them, maybe?
He raised the sniper rifle again and tried to get the wielder of the rocket launcher in his sights, but their pursuers had apparently got wise since he'd downed that asari; the car was constantly shifting position, miniature blue thrusters working around the base of the chassis to jerk it around his crosshairs like a fly. He fired a shot as soon as he thought he had one, but it missed by at least ten metres and sped off into a building on one side, leaving him with nothing but mild tinnitus and a bruise on his shoulder in return.
They were closing the gap again, now down to about fifteen metres. Another missile came at them, but this one was already off course and shot by ten metres astern. Sidonis was doing his best to keep the car's position unpredictable but, Garrus realised, with all the sickening power of a hard kick to the guts, they wouldn't be able to keep this up for more than a few minutes if they didn't go back to making sharp turns. Sooner or later, they'd be right on top of them, and even the man who'd missed so many shots until now would hit the target from there.
Shit.
A mental map of Omega wrote itself across his mind. They still had a few kilometres to go and they were coming from the Forty Towers district, which meant they were coming up near Silverthorn...
Silverthorn...
Is this really a good idea?
No. But look on the bright side. If you crash, well, you won't have much time to beat yourself up.
And if I don't? This is going to cause massive psychological scarring, brain. That hurts both of us.
Deal with it.
"Take the tunnel!" he heard himself saying. The pain in his head had returned, but now it was nothing but an impotent hum in the back of his mind. His vision felt somehow sharper than usual, his hearing keener, everything about him slightly tuned-up, operating at beyond a hundred percent. This is how it feels to be Shepard.
"The tunnel?"
"Tunnel 12! It comes out right near the spaceport! If they follow us in, we can shoot them down!"
"Are you insane?" Sidonis spat. "We'll crash and burn and die! In that order!"
"We'll die if we stay out here!"
"Then at least we die in the open air!"
"Just bloody take the tunnel!"
"No! That sort of thing only works in piece-of-shit e-net films! We'll just die!"
They were interrupted by another fizzing stripe of blue humming past the open side of the car, inches away. Paint crackled.
"It's our only chance!"
"We've got plenty of chances to die!"
"Take the tunnel, Lantar," Chirin said, and that calm authority made Garrus's body automatically try to snap to attention. I never knew you could be so attracted to a voice.
Well, I guess there was Tali.
"You always take his side," Sidonis said, and resignation hung heavy in his voice. He reached for the controls and the car's nose tilted down, sending them in a shallow dive towards the surface. The bright lights of the city rushed up to meet them, and the snare-roll of Chirin's assault rifle started up again. Garrus turned back in time to see the first of the white lines pepper the front of the other car, which had followed their trajectory perfectly. A couple of them even buried themselves in the chest of the rocketeer, but his armour was the same grey durasteel as Chirin's and Sidonis's. That kind of protection needed a lot more penetrative power to do more than put a dent in it. But what else do you expect from mercs?
The car's engines were still protesting even as they descended to just a few metres above the street. Suddenly, there were crowds of people under them, crowds that began to scatter and panic as the car lurched further down, almost clipping the street lights that perenially shone by the side of the walkway. Ahead of them was Tunnel 12's entrance, from here a black speck set into the side of a huge block of buildings that ran through most of Silverthorn and even into the Diamonds, a speck that was rapidly growing larger even as he glanced at it. They'd left the pedestrian walkways now and were skimming along just above the lanes of ground traffic, tracking one that led directly into the gaping black maw of the tunnel. Hundreds of rectangular metal shapes pulsed and throbbed beneath them, the roads glinting with a dim, dirty light, and a chorus of hoots and curses trailed them like a wake as they spluttered past.
There were dozens of tunnels drilled throughout Omega. Garrus had always found that oddly appropriate. Can't have worms without tunnels. They wove through the thickest blocks of buildings, remnants of whatever cycles of construction and decay had gone before, maintained as thoroughways for the ground vehicles of Omega. Aircars were vastly more popular, but they were expensive - and money was hard to come by on Omega. It left thousands upon thousands of vehicles on wheels, tracks or low-clearance lifting fields, electric beetles crawling beneath the flies. They used the tunnels to go where aircars couldn't.
Well, not 'couldn't'. I hope.
The other car shot after them like a guided missile even as the tunnel entrance neared, and Garrus got off a quick shot with his borrowed rifle. It clipped the very left side of the front, nowhere near anything vital, but the chips of metal it blasted away felt like a victory.
"If I die doing this, Vakarian," Sidonis shouted, almost drowned out by the roar of the engines as they approached the entrance, "I'm going to fucking kill you!"
A wayward missile detonated into a vivid orange cloud to the left of them as it impacted on the side of the tunnel, and they were in.
It was dark inside.
Very dark.
Omega may have had a reasonable sky traffic system, but those who couldn't leave the ground didn't even have the luxury of lights. The tunnel stretched away into the distance, a vast acoustic sounding board that amplified every engine and every blast of a horn into a vast symphony of noise, walls illuminated with a constant flicker from the working headlights of the cars packing it. There were maybe three metres between the top of the ground vehicles and the patchwork metal of the tunnel's ceiling, a cramped, confused space of noise and darkness.
It might not have been so bad if the car was intact, but the gaping wound gouged throughout the side and the entirely disappeared top meant that there was absolutely nothing to dampen the cacophony outside. The noise flooded the cabin, rushing into the space the light had left, and made it impossible to distinguish anything from the constant chaos. His brain seemed to catch fire inside his head, beaten into a searing pulp by the hammering roar of sound, and the nightmarish flashes of light coupled with the crushing claustrophobia of the tunnel weren't exactly helping. I haven't felt like this since Uiron. Who'd have thought krogan drinks could even do that to a man?
Chirin was firing again, but even the sharp roll of her assault rifle was lost to the constant roar. The car was pulsing white from the muzzle flash, worsening his headache even further, and when he tried to bring his sniper rifle around to bear all he could see through the scope was that rapid random cycle of light and darkness, with individual details indistinguishable. Behind them, the pursuing car was still coming, its headlights burning a powerful white that would have been painful to look at even if he hadn't been wrestling with the mother of all migraines.
This tunnel is only a few kilometres long, then we come out almost on top of the spaceport. We're going well over a hundred kph. Just a couple of minutes. That's all you need to survive.
Another missile came racing towards them, but both cars were constantly shaking, adjusting and shifting their positions in the horribly narrow space available. Situation like this, you're bloody lucky if it even goes in the right direction. The blue ball slammed into a wall to their right, the explosion curving off the surface in a savage burst of red heat that buffetted the car like a leaf in the wind. Garrus thought he might just have heard Sidonis screaming something over the maelstrom, but he definitely did hear the screech of metal and saw the spray of sparks cascade from the intact side of the car as it crunched into the left wall of the tunnel. He was thrown back towards Chirin and the open side as the car tilted, and the tunnel wall damn near clipped his head as he stumbled. I smash my face against that wall at this speed, and Garrus never gets a date again, he found himself thinking, and the absurdity of it in the situation brought a harsh, rasping laugh from him that the rush of wind and sound snatched away.
As he recovered and the car bounced back into the centre of the tight space, still juddering wildly as Sidonis fought for control, Garrus caught a glimpse of the other car bursting through the orange cloud now covering most of the tunnel behind them, that figure still grimly leaning out of the window. What the hell does it take to get these guys to give up? Do people really go this far just for revenge?
Or is there something more than revenge going on here?
Vult, if it's what they say it is, has the goods. Had the goods. They say they took that down. But why would a few ex-operatives risk their lives just to kill those who brought the company down?
And why do I think best at the worst possible times?
He glanced sidelong at Chirin. Nothing was forthcoming from the blank visor. He looked at Sidonis. He was still wrestling with the controls, his mouth working apparently soundlessly. Nothing from him either.
Intriguing.
Another missile came after them, but this one was even more inaccurate, missing them entirely and impacting below them in the flat bed of a delivery vehicle beetling along below them, sending it up in an inaudible fireball. A pang of guilt surged through him. That sort of thing happened, but that didn't make it OK. Even on Omega, civilians don't deserve to be dragged into our conflicts.
And there I go again. Omega civilians... I automatically assume they're as corrupt as the worst of this place, but do I know that? Do I have the right to judge what I don't know?
No.
What did dad always say? 'If you can't do something right, don't do it at all'... but that precludes compromise. It's a rotten universe out there, dad. You can't be the paragon all the way. Sometimes, the only option is to do what's wrong to prevent a greater wrong. The lesser of two evils... is that what I've become? People who are, for all I know, totally innocent... they're dying, here and now, so that I can live. Is that justified?
It has to be. I have to believe that. Otherwise, there's nothing, no point to it all. I need to live to prevent more death.
Do you? the voice whispered.
Yes.
I do.
They'd been shooting down the tunnel for what seemed like hours, but it couldn't be all that much longer than a minute, maybe two. Time seemed to alternately slow and speed up around him, the cars and lights and sound flickering inside his head like a broken strobe light.
He closed his eyes, letting the blood-blue inside of his eyelids wash away the chaos outside. There was another huge bang, a wave of heat that blasted away the sweat that had been carried to the outside of his exoskeleton, and the car rocked again. He barely felt it, and the explosion seemed to fade away to nothing even as it battered the car. The floor's vibrations and shaking seemed to stop, and even the rushing wind in the tunnel dropped.
There's only death on offer here. We die. They die. Either way, a lot more people are going to die. I've killed more than I've saved, I can't deny that. Does that make me evil? I tell myself mercs are scum, that they don't deserve to live, but most of them just take their orders and fire their guns for money. I did that with C-Sec - hell, I might as well be doing it now, but without that little sheen of legitimacy, what am I but a murderer who thinks he's better than all the other killers out there?
You don't even think that, came the reply. You know better.
You're right. I'm right. I may be no better, but if what I do brings about a better world, if right can come from wrong, I'm happy to let my soul shrivel and die.
But not your body.
Ah, but that's the thing. I'm a tool. A hammer can degrade, a hammer can decay - but it can still repair, it can still improve. If you throw it away the minute it starts to show wear, then you might as well throw away all the good it can do as well.
There's always another hammer.
And until then, there's this one.
His eyes snapped open, and everything slowed to a crawl. He felt his head turning, saw the end of the tunnel coming - a patch of darkness in the storm of light. The darkness at the end of the tunnel. How fitting. They'd be on it in less than ten seconds, nine, eight...
He swivelled again, and the action felt so smooth and easy that he could only tell he'd moved from his shifting viewpoint, and suddenly his sniper rifle was coming up to his shoulder and the scope to his eye, and the green lines of the crosshair seemed to hover perfectly still over the pursuing car.
I'm not doing this. This is.. this is a dream. It has to be.
He let the crosshair gently drift towards what would be the driver's side. Exactly where the pilot's head would be.
And then he realised, the thought coming in one vast rush, a tsunami in the calm.
I'm not doing this. This isn't me aiming a gun, this won't be me pulling a trigger. I'm the conduit, but I'm not the instigator. A river can't choose it's course. A hammer can't choose what it falls on.
Good, chuckled the voice. Good. Now you're learning. It's not about you any more than it is about any one of the hundreds, the thousands you've put an end to. All there is is action, a galaxy of tools doing what they must for whatever will follow.
Let the hammer fall.
His finger curled and, for half an instant, he actually felt the rapid, burning heat spread up the gun and fade away as the thermal dump systems kicked in.
He could have sworn he'd seen the shot fly.
Right is right, wrong is wrong. Shepard taught me that. But is that all there is to it? Wrong deeds giving birth to the right results... yes. That's what I must do. I'll do what has to be done, no matter what the cost.
Will you? Will you really? Can you overcome that sense, that feeling, that little reminded, burning like a candle in your mind? Can you disregard your own morality for the greater good? More importantly, will you?
...
Yes.
I will.
I will and I did.
The windscreen of the car shattered inwards from his shot, blunted shards of the safety glass spinning like a kaleidoscope. He knew, without looking, that the shot had been true. The pilot was dead.
Immediately, the car began to haul sharply leftwards, and the nose sank until it was aimed almost directly at the traffic below. He saw the moment of impact, saw the metal crumple as it collided with the back end of a vast tanker truck, and suddenly sound came rushing back as they both went up in a world-shattering crash of fire and noise.
Lives, snuffed out in an instant. Some mercenaries. Some civilians. They died so that I might live.
I must accept that.
I must.
The shockwave pulsed outwards, and the car was suddenly racing an orange wall of flame and death for the exit, and the engine was howling and the wind deafening, the heat immense, Sidonis's screaming harsh and loud...
And the still, small voice of calm spoke through the earthquake, the wind and the fire...
Is this you?
Death for life. That's a trade you made. A deal like that can't be reversed. You'll have to live with what you've done, with the knowledge that your boots walk on the bones of others. Can you do that? Can you?
He couldn't answer.
The car shot out of the tunnel like a cork from a bottle, trailing smoke and fire, a red-hot missile in the darkness. Bright tongues of orange flame licked out after it from the exit but they were already climbing, roaring up and away from the inferno, and Garrus felt a strange, rough laugh coming up from his chest. He let it out into the open air as the aircar climbed, the glittering jewels of the spaceport laid out a few hundred metres ahead of them.
If this is the price of life, so be it.
"Hell of a shot, Vakarian," Chirin said, and was there the faintest trace of admiration in those glassily calm tones?
"Luck," he muttered, staring down at the rifle in his hands. "Just luck."
"Well, if we're all done with the congratulations and the horrific, stomach-destroying terror," Sidonis said, with ice-brittle cheerfulness, "I'd like to let everyone know that we're officially out of fuel."
There was a solid, mechanical-sounding CHUNK from beneath them, and the splutter of the engine became more erratic still.
"Can we make it to the ship?" Chirin said.
Sidonis shrugged, and aimed the car straight for the spaceport. The air whistled around them as they picked up speed again.
"Might as well try. We're fucked either way."
"No," Garrus said suddenly. "No. We don't die here. We can't die."
"Oooookay," Sidonis said, as the car began to sink. "Well, Mr. God Complex, how do you propose we survive a spectacular high-speed crash?"
"Simple," Garrus said. "By not being in one."
"Oh," Sidonis said miserably. "We're doomed."