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Chapter 13

Shepard stared blankly out his window with his face covered by the helmet of his blood dragon armour while stroking his Vindicator. Tali sat across from him with her hands together fidgeting her fingers round and round, unsure of the thoughts going through her lover's head.

"Shepard?" Tali managed to squek timidly. He looked up startled as if the shuttle had been ambushed by reapers but put on a smile for his love and stretched out his hand. She complied, taking his hand in hers and walked over towards him longingly, burying herself in his embrace. Cuddled up to him, she brushed her hand gently across his face while he softly rested his armoured palm on the back of her hand.

"Did I do something wrong Tali?" Shepard asked sorrowfully. Tali just tilted her head to the side.

"What do you mean?" Tali asked confused and dreadfully worried. Shepard held his helmet by its face and removed it gently to let his eyes stare deeply into the white glow lights of Tali's mask.

"All this time I thought Zaeed could be trusted," Shepard confessed weakly, "I let my guard slip, and now Garrus and Thane pay the price." Tali looked down for a moment contemplating on what she should do. She wanted to comfort him at the very least, remove his guilt entirely if possible but she felt like she had never been very good with words. When she tried to confess her feelings to Shepard for the first time she continously stumbled over her words before Shepard admitted to feeling the same way, and when she tried to get Shepard to relax before they made love right before the suicide mission she just babbled non-stop before Shepard calmed her down and told her that she didn't have to prove anything to him. Regardless, she had to say something.

"There are things even you can't predict. You can't shoot yourself for those," Tali purred. Shepard was the one who made her place confidence in herself. Shepard was the one who helped her move past her father's death. Shepard was her only reason for living, she HAD to do something for him.

"Is that really an excuse I can use when I have an entire crew in space to look after?" Shepard spoke like a zombie now, breathing but not truly alive.

"Those are the galaxy's best snipers on the ground Shepard, they must be alive. And you still need to kill that traitorous bosh'tet." Tali started to sound more sure of herself in her voice as she spoke and slowly a smile crept across Shepard's face as his faith in his own leadership was restored.

"I couldn't ask for a better girlfriend Tali," he confessed warmly. Tali hid her face slightly in his chest blushing beneath her mask.

"That's one of... one of the swe... sweetest things you've said to me," Tali squeaked shyly.

"Let's get this job down and then get back to the Normandy. There's plenty more where that came from." Tali just nodded in compliance as the shuttle landed right on top of a building on Omega; the co-ordinates that Garrus had sent the two. As soon as the shuttle's doors opened bullets and tech attacks of every kind just hammered themselves at his barriers, forcing him to jump off and find cover inside the building he landed on top of. Tali sent out a Chatika in the centre of the Styx Company formation, sending some out of their deployed soldiers panicking out of their deployed fortifications as they shot at her rather than the Quarian as she made her way into the building below. When she got in Shepard was crouched down below the window at the front of what she guessed used to be an old station room along with her Turian friend and the master assassin.

"Where's Zaeed?" Shepard asked his squad mates as Tali covered the door she came through with her eviscerator.

"He retreated," Thane stated.

"We'll find him Shepard," Garrus reassured while landing another head shot on a Styx mercenary, "and when we do we'll tear him into pieces and send the remains back to Cerberus as a warning." Shepard chuckled slightly at that remark; even though Garrus had time to settle down after killing Sidonis his dark nature was still ever present in the furthest depths of his soul. Shepard always felt like he was similar to Garrus in this way; he dedicated himself to protecting innocent people from the wrath of the mighty but still had his own carnal desires which he didn't bother to hide very often.

Breaking away from his thoughts Shepard poked his head out of the window slightly to see half a battalion of mercs armed with avengers, with a few wearing lighter armour than their allies and carrying larger containers on their backs who Shepard guessed were field engineers. Zaeed was also among the mercs firing his geth pulse rifle at the group, and telling by his much sterner facial expression and the stress of which he was fighting with Shepard guessed that he had become much more wary and careful now that he had arrived. The entire force was guarding a long alleyway about ten metres long while being protected by their own deployed cover, and at the very end of the alleyway was a door which seemed to be the objective that Styx Company was trying to protect.

"This isn't going to be easy," Shepard muttered to the team.

"They also have several snipers we could probably get to but we didn't have enough manpower before to take all of them out while they had a heavy vanguard hammering us down," Garrus informed. Tali withdrew from her position temporarily to join the discussion of the team.

"So now that we do have more people here can one of us flank the snipers?" Tali suggestion was simple but Shepard knew it was effective.

"Good idea. Thane, if the three of us can stand our ground here could you sneak up behind those snipers? It would make everything a lot more easy for us back here."

"Got it," Thane replied as he refolded his viper and drew out a replica of the locust.

"Give us time to draw their attention first, then take them out," Shepard ordered as he vaulted over the window flaring his biotics as he hit a group of Styx mercs with a wide area reave supported by Chatika and Garrus's sniper fire.

Thane closed his eyes and put his hands together in prayer to soothe his mind before the undertaking he had been tasked with.

"Arashu, goddess of motherhood and protection, strengthen my mind and harden my flesh for I must protect my friends in their time of need." Thane opened his eyes once more and sprinted out of the bunker looking back briefly to see Shepard and Tali had placed themselves safely behind some omni cover she had deployed while Garrus continued to man his sniping position, all three of them protected by biotic barriers that enhanced their shields. Thane stuck to the shadows as he ran going right past the enemy vanguard, taking care to keep his earthly body behind cover to avoid the snipers. Thane had to keep his breathing as steady as possible now with kepral's syndrome being slightly worse than it was a few months ago when Shepard first recruited him.

His disease was slowly killing him, but he couldn't venture to the ocean just yet.

Kalahira would have to wait a while longer to greet him.

Shepard needed him here and now while his body and soul were still attached.

Thane had infiltrated a two storey building diagonally opposite from the fight around another block of unused living quarters to the right of Shepard's formation. He carefully and quietly avoided the wires and mines that had been left by the snipers and made his way to the top, locust withdrawn, spending only mere seconds to check the sniper's shoulder to prevent him from turning around, grabbing him with both hands by his chin and base of his skull, and then cranking it violently to the right. His neck was no longer usable. Thane dove to the ground as two other snipers from different points started shooting in his direction, grabbing his viper and sticking to the limited cover that the roof offered him. There were only two other snipers. Thane found the second one across another nearby building and biotically threw him off the roof of the building with a powerful biotic throw but then the third sniper managed to land a shot on him, wiping out his shields. He had anticipated this and now the sniper had not only failed to kill him but also gave away his position. He had two bullets from Thane's viper destroy his gun, nine to wipe out his shields, and the last bullet went straight through his throat, leaving his limp body in a dark red puddle. With the snipers dead Thane was now safely behind the enemy formation with his viper held firmly in his hands. He went prone and steadied his aim, his trained eye synchronized with his scope, and gave his team the covering fire they needed. Zaeed was his primary target, but he was going to rip through the enemy ranks first to ensure Shepard's safety.

Back on the ground Chatika continuously harassed and exploded within the cover of the Styx mercs, Tali drained their shields to keep her own kinetic barriers online, Shepard tossed out singularities to keep enemies in place and threw out warp fields while Garrus sniped whoever had been taken out of cover, but there were still many mercs left despite their offensive efforts and they were running out of medi-gel keeping their wounds closed. Shepard wasn't always able to keep his defensive barriers up for his team because they tired him out too easily, and the team's growing lack of thermal clips was becoming a larger problem for the three. Worse, he was becoming increasingly concerned for Tali, as she was becoming increasingly more fatigued, obvious through her heavy breathing and slumped sitting position behind her omni cover. Even when she did try to shoot back she wasn't able to rise out of cover quickly, her aim was off and after firing a shot from her eviscerator she would fall and slump back behind her wall completely out of strength. He dug his canine into his lower lip hard enough to leave a scratch as he noticed the dried blood on Tali's left forearm, right hip and left carve; with all her antibiotics she still must have caught a minor infection and her suit's supply of medicine was most likely starting to wear thin. The flesh wounds he had suffered himself could not have compared to what Tali had sustained in this short fire fight. Shepard ejected his last clip from his Vindicator, gave a stern face beneath his mask, rose up from his cover and let out burst after burst from his rifle, casting off a shock wave in between piles of bullets. It was Zaeed that wiped out his barriers but Shepard was able to take out the shields of four other mercenaries before he took another bullet to his chest, the sturdiness of his armour being the only factor that stopped the bullet from killing or injuring him severely. It was then and there that it was as if Arashu stretched out a helping hand for the three shock troops on the ground when the four mercs Shepard had shot at fell dead on the ground. Styx Company hadn't noticed as they were far too distracted by Shepard and his ground team but the Normandy team had the help smack them in the face. Even Tali seemed to become slightly more energetic at the new source of covering fire, draining more shields along with Garrus overloading them to with Shepard pulling them up into the air for both Thane and Garrus to snipe out of existence. When it became more obvious to Styx Company that their own snipers had perished and that they had been flanked Zaeed ordered a small portion of their force to retreat back to find the sniper but they didn't last very long and soon they were all gunned down by Thane as well. Zaeed's face turned to pure crimson when he saw that his men were being cut down by who he guessed was frog boy, and soon his eyes flared blue underneath his deployed fortification.

"Oh shit," he whispered to himself. He then turned to his men. "Hold da fuckerz off! I'm bringing in da big gunnz!" With their source of leadership gone the leftovers of Styx Company fell easily to the combined might of Shepard's biotics, Tali's tech support, and the sniper fire coming from both the Turian and the Drell. When the battle mist cleared Shepard ran to Tali's side who was back to slumping on the ground against her omni cover shaking profusely.

"Tali, Tali can you hear me?" Shepard demanded. He shook her hand roughly and held her head in his arms. Her eyes were open but blinking every few seconds and she was turning her head to both sides continuously.

"Sheeparrrrd..."

Shepard took a quick medical scan of her. Her organs were functioning properly but she was running a high fever and there was unusual brain activity that Shepard didn't understand other than it was just something to do with her behavior. He gave her an extra dose of dextro-amino antibiotics which he kept in his omni tool in case she ever ran out of her own which lessened her fever and her brain waves went back closer to normal. Thane came back in time to see Shepard holding his beloved in his arms, unconscious but breathing steadily.

"Tali's a strong woman, she'll live," Thane reassured. Shepard was optimistic for now, but naturally he panicked anyway.

"I hope so. Let's take her back inside the bunker until she recovers." Garrus helped Shepard carry Tali back into the building they had used earlier for cover while Thane kept his viper drawn and scouted the alleyway which they had fought on to make sure no more reinforcements came charging their way.

"Stay with me Tali," Shepard whispered to her unconscious, "I don't know what I'll do without you."