Kaidan felt a rush of adrenalin as he gunned the shuttle, sending it hurtling through the darkness at breakneck speed. The slipstream whipped up a cloud of dust behind them, obscuring their escape.

He looked over at Shepard, who had buckled herself in and was hunched forward, trying to stay below the worst of the wind howling over the windscreen. Kaidan couldn't fathom why the colonists had opted for open-topped shuttles on an inhospitable planet like Feros. It was bitterly cold, but at that moment he didn't care. After so many days spent fighting his instinct to take Shepard and run, he felt that a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

He snapped his visor down, activating the helmet comm.

"We did it, Shepard," he said. "It will take days for them to get their shuttles operational."

"Thank God," she said. Her voice sounded thin and tinny inside his helmet.

"We'll send help as soon as we can," he reassured her. "The colonists won't be thralls for much longer."

"You got that right," she said, sounding angry. "I'm going to organise a crack team with neural grenades to neutralise the colonists and then we'll blast that thorian to pulp."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the thorian before," he said, apologetically.

"It's OK," she said. "If you had been the sick and injured one, I wouldn't have wanted to tell you either. It was just a shock to find out when I did. I'll feel better when we kill it."

So would he, although for the moment all he wanted was to get Shepard to shelter as soon as possible. She was shivering violently, and he suspected the wind must be driving into every hole in her battered armour. He was much better off; his armour hadn't suffered as much damage, and he also had more flesh on his bones. Shepard had lost weight during her illness, despite his best efforts to get her to eat.

Endless, undulating dust dunes stretched before them, dotted with sad, withered shrubs and menacing black hollows. The cold advanced slowly, inexorably, and Kaidan felt his body heat start to drain away like bath water. The only thing in their favour was the fact that they were making good time.

It was too good to last. Kaidan judged they were two-thirds of the way there when a group of huge boulders loomed ahead, bigger than the Mako. He hit the reverse thrusters and swerved, managing to dodge between two of them, but not without a sickening scrape along the side of the shuttle.

Feeling his heart pounding in his chest, he put the engine in neutral and looked over at Shepard. She was rubbing her neck – he'd stopped very suddenly – but otherwise she seemed well enough. Now that the engine was idling they could hear the sounds of the wasteland around them. The wind whistled between the rocks, whipping up puffs of fine dust, and far away a varren roared a challenge.

"Judging by your stunned expression," Shepard said, "your omni-tool radar didn't detect this field of shuttle-sized boulders."

"It's an outdated radar." He swivelled the floodlights to scan for a way around the field of boulders. There was none. "I've been been meaning to ask for a new one, but you've bought me so much expensive gear lately that it seemed churlish to ask for more."

"When have I ever refused to give you an upgrade?" Shepard said. "I'll get you a new omni-tool as soon as we get back, the best there is."

It was ironic, he thought wryly, that he was being offered the best upgrade money could buy, just when he was so stressed he couldn't get excited about it.

He motored forward slowly, manoeuvring around the towering rocks. Dust swirled around them, picked up by the rising wind, and the sharp edges of the boulders began to blur in front of his eyes. If the wind got any stronger, the visibility would quickly deteriorate. Kaidan hoped that Shepard, who was slumping wearily in her seat, hadn't noticed. A futile wish, he knew, because Shepard noticed everything.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her sit up straight. She pulled out her shotgun and loaded it, but her normally fluid movements were stiff and clumsy.

"Varren," she explained. "Off to the port side. About five of them, keeping pace with us."

She fired several times and he heard yelps.

She stowed her shotgun, and then grasped the grabrail on the dash and rested her forehead between her hands. When she didn't shift from that position he began to feel faintly alarmed.

"Shepard, are you all right?"

"Yeah," she said, drowsily. "I was cold before but I've gotten used to it. Now I just feel sleepy."

Surely she couldn't be hypothermic so soon? She couldn't be.

But what if she was?

"You have to stay awake," he said, urgently.

"I know. I'm trying," she murmured. Her voice was faint.

He cast around for something to say to keep her from falling asleep. "Shepard, um..." Think of something! "Why do you think the thorian wanted to stop people leaving?"

"What?" she murmured. She paused for a while, and then: "So it could build an army of tenders? Or maybe to ensure no outsiders discovered it?"

"The Zhu's Hope thorian didn't try to confine us," he pointed out.

"We were helping it," she said, and yawned. "We were fighting the geth."

She sat up then, which was encouraging, but then her head began to droop.

"Shepard," he said. "Shepard!"

"Mmmph."

Kaidan felt desperate; he wanted to shake her but he needed both hands to steer. He swerved hard and saw her jerk awake. With luck, if he kept talking and swerving, he would be able to keep her awake until they got there.

He talked to her about his family, about BAaT, about planets he had travelled to and outlying places that he longed to see. He even started to talk about politics but realised that was not the smartest way to keep somebody awake. With the possible exception of Udina, he thought, wryly.

Finally he saw the telltale blip of a building on his radar. He weaved through the rocks as fast as he could, feeling the cold tightening in a painful band around his middle. He kept talking to Shepard, although he was concentrating so hard on driving that he barely knew what he was saying. He thought he must sound like an idiot, chattering about trivialities, but he didn't know what else to do.

Every fibre of Kaidan's being urged him to go faster, faster, but that would be suicide. They'd end up battered to bits on the rocks.

At last he saw a grey metal building ahead of them, half buried in dust. He jerked the shuttle to a halt alongside it, jumped out, and nearly fell flat on his face when his knees buckled. Somehow he got his legs to work, stumbled around to the passenger side and helped Shepard out. He carried her into the hut and the wind slammed the door behind them.