Here we go, the Normandy is on the way!

Garrus had not seen much of Shepard for the first two days on the Normandy. She kept herself busy with tours of the ship from top to bottom and spoke to everyone. He had never seen a commander of a ship being so familiar with her crew. She learned everybodys name, asked them about their jobs, had them explain everything to her and took notes of what they needed. She spent a lot of time in engineering and Garrus saw her disappear in the ductworks with Tali, checking out Spirits-know-what in the intestines of the ship.

The travel to the Artemis Tau cluster went through four relays and it took four galactic days to get there. Once in the system, the Normandy jumped from one weirdly named system to the next, scanning everything. They found mineral and gas enclosures to survey but no prothean ruins.

Whenever she passed him or saw him in a room on her way to somewhere else, she gave him an apologetic smile, promising to come to him eventually too. He tried to be calm and patient but it got harder every hour. All he wanted was to hold her in his arms and talk to her.

To distract himself, he had turned to the Mako, an agile tank, loosely based on the design of turian ground combat vehicles with some changes and improvements by human engineering. The Mako was secured at port in the cargo bay, opposite the weapons workshop. Garrus found the open workshop quite strange, as on a turian ship, a whole room was dedicated to the armory and the weapons workshop.

At least the weapons bench was close to the lockers so that he could easily find a place to clean his rifle at. Unfortunately though, the human marine Ashley Williams worked at the bench most of the time. Garrus had greeted her and had tried to engage her in a friendly chat but she answered in the most short and cold way possible. Her face practically radiated distrust and anger. He was pretty sure that he had done nothing to warrant such behaviour but he knew these kind of expressions from his time at C-Sec. It was the typical expression of a xenophobic human, spewing hateful remarks about the First Contact War.

At least she didn't look at him like she looked at Wrex. The krogan mercenary had thrown down his pack on the other side of the lockers and Williams had to walk past him whenever she wanted to get to her workbench. Garrus did not need to recall his training on human expressions to know what she was thinking. This could turn into a problem. On Shepard's ship, she had better get used to aliens. He was not looking for friendship with her but she had to be able to work with him and the other aliens on board.

Scratching his fringe, he turned back to the Mako and called up the data sheet on his omni-tool. It looked fairly familiar, but there were a few controls added to accommodate for human customs. They had even added a steering wheel, which was apparently preferred by humans but the turian control sticks were also installed in hidden compartments. The guns looked familiar enough and Garrus let a few simulations run to see if he could improve anything on the software.

The sound of the elevator doors pulled him out of his concentration. Shepard stepped out and gave him a short smile before turning to the requisitions officer. After speaking to him, she exchanged a few words with Wrex and Ashley and then, finally, she came over to him. Garrus locked the terminal and turned around to greet her respectfully, only to find her right in front of him, stretched on her tip-toes. Feather-light, she placed a kiss on his mandible.

Garrus wasn't sure how to react but his head followed hers as she went down on her heels again. It was so good to smell her again and to feel her soft lips, he just didn't want to lose that contact. He only moved his head back a bit to get a good view of her wide smile.

Finally. I missed this smile so much.

"Hey," he mumbled, his hand lightly stroking over her arm, "what... I mean, public display of affection? Won't that be a problem?" He vaguely pointed towards the requisitions officer, who was unashamedly staring at them, and Ashley Williams, who turned a bit too fast back to the gun on her workbench.

"Can we sit down? Maybe inside of this baby?" She pointed to the Mako. Garrus nodded and opened the door for her. The inside compartment was not exactly luxury seating but it had a bench on the side where they both could sit. Garrus left the door open, so that the light of the cargo bay illuminated the inside. As soon as he had sat down, Shepard stretched out beside him on the bench and placed her head on his thigh. A happy sigh left her upon stretching her legs, letting them hang down from the bench.

"I feel like I have been running around this ship for a week." She grabbed his hand and placed it on her stomach, interweaving her own fingers with his. Garrus quickly removed his gloves to really feel her skin. He let his other hand stroke through her hair, lightly scratching the skin with his talons. She closed her eyes and made a deep, rasping sound in the back of her throat.

"Are you purring?" He asked with a chuckle.

"Maybe?" She grinned. "I'm a spacecat, just like you."

"I thought we turians remind you humans of birds. Frank always calls me Birdy."

Shepard giggled. "I think they got it all wrong, you are definitely a purring spacecat."

Garrus let out the kind of deep hum that she loved so much.

"There it is, the purr." She gave him her bright smile as she looked up to him. It warmed his gizzard and his subharmonics sang.

Her hand reached up to his mandible, the tip of her finger tracing its outline. "As for the public display of affection... us having a relationship is not against any rules. Besides the fact that I'm a Spectre on an Alliance ship, the Alliance actually has no problem with established relationships, they just get panicky if something happens between an officer and a subordinate while they are on tour. But even that is not exactly forbidden." Her finger moved down his throat, softly stroking. "There is just this unwritten rule that we don't flaunt it, you know? No smooching during combat, no kisses on the bridge."

"The bridge?"

"Command deck. Sorry, we still use a lot of nautical terms on spaceships. I guess, for us humans, sailing the ocean is not so long ago compared to turian history of spaceflight. So, no kisses on the command deck."

"Damn, and here I thought about bending you over the CIC." Garrus murmured with a deep purr from his chest. Her eyes widened and a little sound of surprise escaped her lips.

"Oh, I like the way you think, Garrus Vakarian." She pulled his hand up to her mouth and kissed his fingers, still looking at him. "I was thinking of christening the Mako soon."

Garrus let out a surprised trill and she laughed out loud. "Not now! You horny turian, we may not have to hide but I'm not putting on a show for Ashley there."

"That might scare her off the ship, the way she is looking at me." Garrus said with a look over to Williams' side of the cargo bay.

"Let me guess, suspicious, paranoid?"

"She looks at me like she is expecting me to attack any minute."

Shepard stretched and folded her hands behind her neck. "Ashley is careful, that's for sure, not quick with the trusting. The thing is, she's a Williams, born to be a soldier but unappreciated. So she only got the shitty jobs on Earth or some backwater colonies. This is probably the first time she has ever seen aliens up close. I saw her fight on Eden Prime, she should have been a squad leader by now."

Garrus felt that he was missing something. "Why isn't she?"

"Right, the name Williams doesn't mean anything to you." Shepard sat up and settled down next to him. "During the First Contact War, on Shanxi, General Williams surrendered to the turians to avoid further civilian casualties."

"Oh, he was leading the guerilla fight? His name is actually known in turian annals and you should ask General Oraka about that sometimes. I think he has something to say about it." Garrus said.

"Really? That would be interesting, I wonder what the turians thought of the surrender, knowing now, that the Second Fleet was actually on it's way. I think it was a wise decision, he was cut off from reinforcements and had to protect the colonists. He had to play for time. But in the Alliance Navy it has put a kind of taint on the name Williams. So Ashley still has to make up for her grandfather or something like that. It's ridiculous."

She had taken his hand and played with his fingers, letting her many digits slip between his. Garrus felt his mandibles quiver in a smile.

He recalled something that he had learned in training. "You know, before the Relay-314 incident, turians did not really have a concept of unarmed civilians."

"No?"

"Every turian goes to basic training at age 15 and even if he or she does not stay in the military, they still have regular training in weapons and self-defence," he said, recalling his mother grumbling about having to go to another training session, while his father was giddy about it like a little boy. "Asari have their biotics, salarians all have some kind of defense suite on their omni-tools and krogan... krogan are krogan. If batarians leave their home-world, they are either mercenaries or business men and there is no batarian business man without a gun. So the idea that the new aliens could settle on a planet with people who had no military training, protected by just a small unit of soldiers, never came to anyone's mind."

"I see," Shepard said, "that kind of explains why the attack was so... overblown, from a human perspective. For us, it looked like the turians were trying to wipe a peaceful colony of unarmed farmers off the planet, while you guys thought you had to stop a military installment taking place."

Garrus shook his head. "If the Council had not intervened..."

"Yeah, that would have ended badly. It was bad enough..." She let her voice trail off.

"Turians don't retreat," he said, thinking back to the conversation he had had with the General, "and humans don't know how to give up. That's what Oraka told me."

Shepard raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Huh, I think I really want to have a little conversation about the First Contact War with him. That could be very interesting."

She looked back over to the weapons bench, where Ashley Williams stood with her back turned to them, taking a rifle apart. "Anyway, this is the first fleet posting Chief Williams has ever had and it is the first time that she is working with aliens. Part of her reticence is that she feels that we should keep the Normandy and it's capabilities a secret. She thinks that humanity has to look out for themselves and I know that a lot of people think that way." She grinned at him. "I disagree, I'm a fan of interspecies collaboration but... who knows, maybe she is right and that openness will bite us in the ass one day."

She shrugged her shoulders and settled her head against his armored shoulder. "I'm planning to take her along on our next scouting mission, take this baby for a ride," she slapped her hand against the side of the Mako, "and have her work with you on shields and guns."

"We still don't know where Liara T'soni is?" Garrus wondered.

"No, it's a joke! She is working as an official archaeologist for the asari government, she has a whole team with her and nobody knows where they are! Or," she raised her finger, "or this is another try of the asari councillor to make my job harder than necessary."

Garrus trilled out in disbelief. "Why would she do that?"

Shepard threw her arms up. "Shit on my head if I know! But it is all so weird, Sparatus and his connection to the Arterius brothers, Councillor Tevos' refusal to mind-meld with me, this sudden Spectre status. People usually get trained to become Spectres but I just get thrown out there, 'Ho! Go and play Spectre!'. And now we are drifting around out here without proper intel, looking for the daughter of an asari Matriarch, who, surprise, has been in contact with Saren for a while but nobody felt it necessary to tell us until we came up with proof on our own." She banged her head back against the wall. "So, actually I'm convinced they are setting me up to fail. I just don't understand why."

"Neither do I," Garrus admitted, "but you are right, none of this is making sense."

They sat in silence, thinking. Garrus tried to come up with a reason for the things Shepard had mentioned but he couldn't. The behaviour of the asari Councilor was irrational.

Their thoughtful silence was interrupted by the voice of the pilot coming over the shipwide comm system. "Commander? We are currently in the Sparta system and we have received an Alliance distress signal from Edolus."

Shepard tabbed the comm under her ear to speak directly with Joker. "Standard orbit, Joker, we will drop with the Mako and investigate." She turned to Garrus, excitement twinkling in her eyes. "Get ready, Vakarian, we are going for a ride!" She jumped out of the Mako and skipped over the the lockers. "Chief Williams, suit up, we drop in ten and you're coming with us!"

Williams almost jumped in surprise but managed to produce a salute and hurried over to the lockers to suit up. Garrus walked over as well to take out his weapons. He noticed how she looked suspiciously at him from the corner of her eyes, displaying signs of worry and distrust. He checked over his equipment, noticing his sniper rifle collapsing with a very quiet snap, unlike the day before. He turned to the woman, "Chief Williams? Did you change something about the mechanism?" The rifle's collapsing mechanism had given him trouble for weeks but to fix it he would have had to take it apart which would have meant a long session of calibrating the weapon again. He never had the time to do all that.

The human's head snapped around, guilt clearly visible on her face. "It was just wedged, I could realign it with some grease and by levering..." The shock must have been visible on his face because her eyes widened and she balled her fists at her side. "I calibrated and tested it, it shoots just as before!"

Garrus was about to hiss out an angry reply about her screwing up his careful calibrations, when a slight knock on his armored arm stopped him. Shepard looked at him, a serious scowl on her face but he could see a smile fighting it's way through by the twitching of her lips.

"I'm sure you can find something to shoot at on Edolus, so why don't you test your baby there? Now get ready." Shepard gave both of them her under-her-lashes stare that still let a shiver run down his spine.

The effect disappeared as she transformed into Commander Shepard in front of his eyes. She suddenly seemed to be taller and her face looked hard. Her normal, wide arm movements became short and precise. It was fascinating how suddenly every movement, every look seemed to be deliberate, not a single motion without purpose.

She settled down behind the strange steering wheel of the Mako and waited for Garrus and Ashley Williams to sit down in the aft section. A few commands on the interface later, an automatic announcement by the ship's VI rang through the cargo hold.

"Attention, flight deck in operation, stay clear of the containment fields on the cargo deck. Attention, flight deck in operation." Around the Mako, blue mass effect fields appeared, separating the vehicle from the rest of the cargo deck and forming a ring around the opening hatch. Shepard started the motor, letting it quietly hum. "Stand by for drop," the VI announced. "Drop in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1."

In front of the Mako, the field disappeared and tightened around the vehicle and pushed it out of the hatch. With breathtaking speed the Mako dropped to the ground in free fall, reminding everyone on board that is was not made for flying. Shepard used the thrusters to steer the vehicle, laughing madly as she floated above her seat in the loss of gravity.

"Yeah, go baby!" She yelled out. Garrus wondered if she had lost her mind, they fell like a rock, the ground hurtling towards them, promising a painful death on impact. Williams stared at him, fear in her eyes that he could very well relate to. Her hands gripped the handlebar so hard that it creaked. Garrus did the same, holding on as he stared at his crazy girlfriend cackling madly.

A mere breath above the ground, Shepard hit the thrusters with full power and the Mako set down on the ground with a thud, bouncing a few times before coming to a stop. She turned around in her seat, a triumphant grin all over her face. "Wasn't that awesome?"

"Have to respectfully disagree there, Skipper." Williams said, taking a deep breath and slowly letting go of the handlebar. "Never been so sure of dying before."

"I second that." Garrus mumbled. Williams looked at him in surprise and for the first time she actually smiled at him.

Shepard snorted loudly. "Pfft, you guys are such partypoopers. That was fun. Fun, fun, fun." She fiddled with the controls and started driving, slowly at first. "Reminds me a bit of skiing. Dashing down the hill at full speed, oh, so awesome." They began to leave the flat landing surface behind. Around them, jagged hills closed the valley off like walls.

Garrus slowly relaxed, feeling the muscles in his neck soften and his hand releasing the handlebar from his painful grip. "What is skiing?" He wondered, asking no one in particular.

"Do you have snow on Palaven?" Shepard asked.

"Up in the north, there is permanent snow. But turians don't like the cold, so nobody goes there."

"What a shame." Shepard laughed. "We don't like cold all that much either but we put on warm clothes, tie two long pieces of wood under our feet and then ride downhill on them as fast as we can."

"Isn't that dangerous?" Garrus shook his head.

"A little... I mean, you shouldn't ram any trees and stuff that could kill you."

"And you do that why?"

Shepard grinned her mad grin again. "Because it is fun!"

Garrus stared at her in disbelief. "For fun? You humans..." The floor crashed against his face, impeding his speech. He failed to orient himself in space, tumbling over the floor, seeing the side hatch of the Mako over his head.

From up front he heard a cascade of swear words as Shepard tried to get the vehicle under control again. They had hit a rock on the side of the cliff, not even a very big one, but it was big enough to send the Mako spinning and almost ending up on her roof. The vehicle swung around as Shepard turned sharply, narrowly avoiding another rock and climbing up the cliff face at full speed. Garrus and Williams flew backwards against the rear end, Garrus managed to grab hold on something to avoid crashing onto the human.

When the Mako's front tipped over the cliffs edge, Shepard brought the thing to a hard stop, sending them both tumbling forward and crashing against the half-wall separating the cockpit from the rear. Shepard fell back against her seat and snapped her hands away from the steering wheel as if it was on fire.

"What the blazing fuck was that?" She yelled out. Garrus muttered some oldfashioned curses under his breath as he unscrambled himself from the bench he had slid under, and held out a hand to Williams who sat on the floor, looking slightly dazed. She took his hands without hesitation and he wondered if she had suffered head trauma. But she seemed to come around again, carefully stretching her neck. Garrus assessed his own bumps, the tip of one fringe felt a bit sensitive but other than that, he seemed uninjured.

He twitched his mandibles into a sly grin to Shepard's angry face. "I had no idea that I was supposed to wear a helmet inside the Mako."

Her features relaxed, the anger melting away from her frown. "I'm sorry guys, I swear I'm a good driver, I steered combat cars before."

"Didn't feel like it, Skipper." Williams said, rubbing her elbow. "I'm about to rethink my posting on the Normandy."

Shepard gave her a scowl that sat somewhere between anger and amusement. She turned back to the steering wheel and very slowly steered the Mako along the cliff edge until they had reached an almost horizontal plateau. She turned to Garrus, who had held on to the divider behind her seat a bit harder than necessary. "Garrus, the Mako is based on a turian design, right? Why does it control so bad?" She waved over the steering wheel, "If I so much as breathe against that, it goes off!"

"Well, turians don't use steering wheels. Maybe it wasn't set up right." Garrus had to hold on to his subharmonics to keep the amusement out of his voices, Shepard sounded like she was personally offended by the car.

Shepard strained her neck to stare up at him. "What do you guys use then?"

Garrus leaned over and swiped a few controls on the interface. The steering wheel collapsed and disappeared behind a flap while the familiar control sticks locked in place on the sides. Shepard hesitantly laid her hands on the control sticks, adjusting her five fingers to the three indents on the grip.

He put his head next to her, looking over her shoulder, breathing in her scent. "You steer the wheels with the left stick, the right stick turns the upper section to point the big gun. Keep your movements small," he said, as she slowly drove the Mako along the ridge of the cliff.

"This is much better, it actually works," she said with a smile. She enlarged the map and drove down the cliffside towards the marker for the emergency beacon. "On the Citadel, Admiral Kahoku has asked me to look for a group of marines that have been lost in this cluster on a mission. I hope that is their emergency beacon." She attacked another steep cliff, making Garrus and Williams hold on to one of the many handles that the engineers had thankfully installed in the car.

"Skipper?" Williams asked through her teeth. "Do you have to take the steepest route?"

"Look around, Chief, it's steep everywhere." The Mako tipped over the top edge and tumbled more than rolled down the even steeper other side of the cliff. Just as they were about to crash into the ground, nose-first, Shepard hit the thrusters and managed to set the Mako down on all six wheels. Beside him, Garrus heard Williams mumble something that sounded like a prayer.

They had reached a large, sandy area, surrounded by the jagged cliffs they had just tumbled over. Shepard stopped the tank and scanned the area in front of them. The terrain was flat and stretched out wide towards the horizon, delimited by more jagged mountains. Garrus adjusted his visor, he could make out the shape of a vehicle in the centre of the field and a few dark spots.

Shepard enlarged the picture on the omni-screen. "That's an M29 Grizzly and there is the emergency beacon," she zoomed in on the picture to the dark spots on the ground. Her mouth pulled into a thin line when she recognized the shapes. "Those are bodies and I receive no life-signs. It looks like we're too late. Damn." She punched the cockpits surface, earning her an angry beep from the translucent interface.

Williams crawled into the other seat, studying the enlarged picture. "Why did they even go out? The Grizzly is a fine tank, they could have waited shit out inside."

Shepard nodded. "We have to find out who or what killed them. Follow protocol." She settled her hands on the control sticks again and slowly drove towards the M29 Grizzly. The bodies on the ground were now recognizable to the naked eye, the blue of their Alliance armor visible under a layer of dust and sand. Shepard steered the Mako in a circle around the site, scanning the ground. She was obviously expecting a trap and Garrus had to agree, the whole situation made his plates itch.

Something was definitely not right.

She stopped the Mako and scanned the area once more. "I don't see any explosives, trip fields. All I get is the distress signal from the beacon."

"Ma'am..."

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, you did not just Ma'am me, did you?" Shepard turned towards her, one eyebrow raised high and a grin twitching on her lips.

Williams face turned pink and for the first time on this trip, she looked actually nervous. "Yes.. no! I'm sorry Ma-Skipper!" She raised her arm and projected a reading from her omni-tool. "Something is wrong with that distress signal. It seems to be Alliance but the encoding is outdated. And it has been running for a long time, it's not from these marines." Shepard leaned over, those expressive eyebrows of her pulled tight together in a frown.

"So this signal lured them here and then someone..."

The ground exploded.

Mere twenty meters away from the Mako, a giant thresher maw erupted from the ground, long tentacles twitching and stretching towards the vehicle. Williams and Garrus stared at the creature, paralysed. The giant mouth opened wide and green acid erupted from it, flying towards them. The Mako jumped violently as Shepard reacted in a split-second and skidded out of the trajectory at full speed.

"Thresher maw!" Shepard yelled out, forcing the Mako in a tight turn at full speed. "Williams - shields and cannon, Garrus - machineguns! And someone tell me how we kill it!"

Garrus slid into the gunners seat, belts buckling him in and connected to the interface. "That acid will eat through our plating in seconds." He aimed for the head and fired.

Shepard hit the thrusters to jump over a blob of acid, as the thresher maw appeared right in front of them. She jerked the Mako around so hard that the control stick creaked, driving in the opposite direction to get away from the thresher maw's head hammering on the ground. The creature disappeared underground again and Shepard drove towards the rocky cliff face at top speed.

"I know that, heard enough about Akuze." The thresher maw erupted in front of them and Shepard turned the Mako again, making them strain against their seat belts. "Killing, how?"

"Throat, below the head. Main nerve centre. Hit it here..."

Shepard didn't wait for him to finish, she pivoted the cockpit towards the creature, Williams aimed the gun and fired. The thresher maw twitched and shrieked as it went underground again. Garrus peppered it with shots from the machine gun until it was completely underground.

They drove another circle around the Grizzly, now the hunter and not the prey. Shepard's eyes roamed over the plain. "Ready, Chief?"

"Always, Skipper." The dark haired woman had murder in her eyes.

"Do we have grenades on the cannon?" Shepard asked, taking another turn.

"Yes, armed and ready!" The other woman answered.

The maw erupted right next to them, dousing the Mako in acid before they could get away. Garrus fired until the thing went underground again.

"Shields at 53%." Ashley called out.

"Fucking fuckshit." Shepard grumbled. "Next time that thing comes up, I want a grenade right into its mouth, let's see how it swallows that pill."

"Aye, Skipper."

Garrus noticed movement on his side. "On the right!" He aimed the guns and fired in short bursts. The guns tended to overheat from continuous fire and they could not afford anything like that right now.

"Williams?" Shepard called out as she turned the cockpit to the right.

The Gunnery Chief aimed, waiting for the moment when the thing opened its mouth. The tentacles twitched, the mouth opened to spit out another blob of acid and she fired the grenade. It flew in a slight arc and tumbled into the blue glowing maw. For a second the monster threw its head around, trying to dislodge the object from its throat. With a blinding flash, the grenade exploded. Acid and bits of flesh sprayed around and the giant thresher maw tipped over and crashed to the ground.

Shepard slowed down, carefully circling the heap of the monster. Garrus used the Mako's scanner on the thing.

"It's dead."

"Is it the only one?" Shepard asked, still driving, keeping the Mako moving. "Akuze had a whole nest."

Williams and Garrus kept scanning for movement and thermal images underground.

Garrus looked over to Williams, trilling in question. She looked confused and Garrus remembered that she had not worked with aliens before, so she probably knew next to nothing about turian subharmonics. "Anything?" He asked aloud.

Williams shook her head. "No, it looks all quiet underground."

Shepard slowed down, lifting her fingers off the handles one by one to stretch them. "Alright, I'm going to stop at the Grizzly. Williams, eyes on the scanner and the main gun, Garrus, cover me but stay in the Mako. I'm going out."

Garrus opened his mouth to object and quickly shut it as he realized that this was Commander Shepard and it was not his place to argue with her. He clamped down his worry trill and unfolded his sniper rifle and waited until Shepard stood beside him with a backpack, her assault rifle ready. A short nod by her gave indication to open the side door. She jumped out, carefully checking her surroundings. Garrus let his visor enhance heat signatures but the only red outline he could see was by her.

Shepard put her gun away and walked to every dead marine, pulling each away from the Grizzly by the feet and laid them next to each other. She searched around the upper armor of each soldier before moving to the next one. As she passed the beacon, she turned it off and placed a small pack from her backpack on it. At last, she crawled under the M29 Grizzly and came out without the backpack.

Garrus trilled questioningly and was surprised when Ashley Williams answered from the cockpit. Apparently she had learned what this specific subharmonic meant.

"Standard Alliance protocol. Collect the tags of any dead soldier, and destroy all Alliance equipment that can not be taken away," she said, her eyes never leaving the scanner display.

"What are tags?"

Williams looked up from her display. She stretched her underarmor at the throat and pulled out a silvery chain with two metal plates dangling on it. "Every Alliance soldier has these. It has the name and the identification number punched in and it contains a memory chip with personal information and..." she turned back to the scanner and her voice got very quiet, "...personal things like pictures and letters to the family."

"Ah, like a signaculum." Garrus was about to show her his signaculum but he didn't want to keep his concentration off Shepard for too long. She was trotting back to them now, the tags in her hand. When she had reached the Mako, she turned around and pressed a button on her omni-tool. The Grizzly jumped up as the pack exploded underneath it, dust and sand billowing out from underneath it and settling over the bodies of the dead marines. The beacon disintegrated as well and a second later, another explosion sounded out and a bright flash signaled the violent destruction of the Grizzly's eezo fusion cells.

Williams mumbled something under her breath and moved her hands in a pattern in front of her chest. Garrus wondered what that meant. Shepard turned back to the Mako and Garrus held out a hand to help her up. He pulled her into the Mako, maybe a bit closer to himself than necessary. For a glorious second he could smell her hair and enjoy having her safe in his arms. He knew it was ridiculous but he had worried about her, out there in the thresher maw's field, more than he liked to admit.

Shepard stepped out of his embrace, her skin a bit pinker than normal. She cleared her throat before she spoke. "What's a signaculum?"

Garrus realized that he had forgotten that the team comm was always open; he had gotten used to the C-Sec standard of keeping the comm off unless explicitly stated otherwise. He opened the little compartment in his armor that contained the omni-chip with his personal information and showed it to her. "That code here is also etched into my plates, on the side." He pointed to the left side under his cowl.

Shepard stared at him with wide eyes. "Why have I never noticed that?"

Ashley Williams suddenly looked like her head was about to explode, the color of her face rivaled the pink joints on her armor. She turned abruptly and looked straight ahead. Shepard grinned and sat down in the drivers seat next to her.

"Well, Chief, I'm pretty sure you already knew about Garrus and me. And the grapevine was probably busy too"

The face of the other woman turned even more pinker. "Well, yes, but scuttlebutt actually has the LT pinned as having a crush on you, so I wasn't sure..."

"Alenko?" Shepard laughed out, shaking her head. "No, they got that wrong. This turian here is... the one."

She said something else but it was drowned out by the rushing of his own blood in his ears. The one?

Shepard called the Normandy for pickup and they stopped to wait. "Now, Williams, I know that working with aliens is new for you and I don't expect you to fall in love with one but I do expect you to work with them. This is a multilateral mission."

"Yes, Commander, I understand. I was mainly concerned about Wrex and Tali, since they both are not military. Giving them access to the technology of the most advanced ship the Alliance has..." Williams sat up a bit straighter in her seat. "But it won't be a problem. You tell me to jump, I ask how high, you tell me to kiss a turian, I'll ask which cheek."

Shepard grinned. "You're gonna have to find your own turian for that, I'm kissing this one." She smiled at him, making him feel warm under his cowl.

Like the sun of Palaven.

Williams looked between them, a strange expression on her face. She seemed appalled and curious at the same time. "I'm very glad to be on the Normandy, Commander, I'm not going to ruin it."

"Glad to hear it, Chief."

The Normandy swooped over them. The rear hatch opened and the cables extended, blue glowing from the mass effect fields. Shepard drove backwards towards them and hit the thrusters to give the Mako the necessary lift so that the cables could grab it and pull it in. The upwards jerk was even more unsettling than the drop before and only stopped when the mass effect field enclosed them again and positioned the Mako at its parking position in the hangar.

They all let out a sigh of relief and unbuckled the seat belts. Williams climbed back into the main hold and collected her equipment. Garrus gave her his friendliest smile, mandibles wide but his mouth closed so that his teeth were hidden.

"That was some good shooting down there, Williams," he said, nodding his head.

She looked startled for a second but then she bowed her head as well, a faint smile on her lips. "Likewise, Vakarian."

"Please call me Garrus, I'll think you're talking to my father otherwise."

The smile on Williams face grew wider. "Yes - Garrus - and please call me Ashley. Same reason, actually. Funny that."

He was about to jump out of the Mako, when he suddenly was pulled back by someone grabbing his armor at his backplate. Shepard made him turn around and pulled his head down to her, placing a fierce kiss on his mouthplates. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her as close as it was possible with their armor scratching against each other. Her tongue licked his mouthplates and he caught hers by wrapping his longer tongue around hers. She tasted of salt and heat, and her hand under his fringe pulled him hard against her mouth. He lost himself in the feeling of pulling, kissing, pressing, hunger, love. Only the lack of breath made them break apart, and they stared at each other for an endless second.

At last, Shepard turned around and jumped out of the Mako, a pleased smile on her face. Garrus followed her, an equally happy smile on his face. She put her hand on Garrus' arm and murmured, "I want to report to Admiral Kahoku right away, I'll find you later, okay?" She walked towards the elevator. Halfway there, she turned around and looked at him and Chief Williams, giving a salute. "Good job, guys."

Garrus and Ashley both saluted and then looked at each other, realizing that they both wore the same kind of proud grin on their faces. Even Ashley seemed to recognize it.

Garrus had to chuckle, Shepard may be his girlfriend but a compliment by your commanding officer was still something special.

WTF? There isn't even sex? I'm sorry, it just didn't happen.

There will be no chapter for November because I'm doing the NaNoWriMo and won't have time for it. The story for NaNoWriMo will be about the quarians and will be set about a thousand years before the events of the games. Maybe one or two of you will be interested in reading my headcanon about that.

But after November, I'm coming back to this story and will bring you a new chapter.

And thanks again to Credete for editing!