Shepard gathered her squad, ran through a quick inspection, giving them a nod of approval. "Never have I seen a more impressive collection of monkeys with guns. Glory hallelujah brother and sister pyjaks, get your butts in formation behind the princesses." She cut a teasing glance across at Nihlus. "And by the light of the holy Enkindlers, try not to stare at their tiaras. It makes them cranky."
She took her place in the march order, feeling a twinge of regret that she wasn't piloting the Mako. The Normandy didn't land very often, favouring dropping the teams in the APC, and she wished she could see it from the outside. A scowl creased her face as she glanced at her chrono. Maybe she had time to ask Garrus to record it.
"Team Leader, this is Team 'Thank the Spirits Alenko is driving the Mako, not Shepard'. The exterior defenses are down." A grumbled curse greeted Garrus's voice coming through on the comms. Damn his timing.
Nihlus snickered from Shepard's right, earning her best death-glare. "That's right, laugh away mighty leader of Team Princess." A wide, smile answered Nihlus's closed-dialect curse. "I know what that word means, oh so pretty princess."
"Stow the flirting, pyjak," Wrex barked before cutting over to Ashley. "Varren pup, you're up." The krogan strode to the ramp, crooking a finger at the rachni queen. "You, with me."
Shepard watched Shiala, the asari remaining behind while the queen stepped up beside Wrex. As the asari wrung her hands, Shepard found herself struck by an image of a mother sending her child on her first sleepover, or the first day of school. "It's a strange old universe," she muttered.
The Normandy's thrusters kicked in for landing, grabbing her attention. The deck plating rumbled, throbbing with a powerful bass—a thunderstorm early on a summer morning.
The moment she caught her first glimpse of the Normandy, Shepard laughed aloud with delight . . . the sleek, gleaming hull poised to soar, a legendary raptor sitting on a branch, head raised to the lightning, it's wings spread to face the storm, trembling in the wind. That instant attraction had become a flirtation that grew deeper each day she served aboard. However, in that moment, as the raptor swept toward the ground, its great wings becoming the thunder itself, Shepard fell madly and helplessly in love.
She had no idea how or why the universe chose her, but she felt incredibly honoured to have been gifted the chance to command such a remarkable ship and crew. Pity she couldn't remember the grand deed that had earned her so much of the universe's good will.
Sighing, she settled into parade rest to wait, softly singing to herself. "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could. So somewhere in my youth or childhood . . .." From just ahead of her, Jenkins joined in for the last few words, "I must have done something good." She grinned. "A Sound of Music guy, huh?" Shaking her head, she clicked her tongue. "I honestly don't know what to do with that, Jenkins."
"Always make sure I'm on your karaoke squad?"
The ramp touched down, revealing a large prefab building like a million others spread across the galaxy. The Mako idled outside the front door, almost appearing impatient as the chassis bounced with the vibration from its engine. If it were a bull, it would have been snorting and pawing the turf.
"Move the Mako onto the ridge and keep your eyes open," Wrex ordered, marching down the ramp. "Actus has never shown signs of having a brain larger than my back left nut, but anything's possible."
"Roger that, Team Leader," Alenko answered.
"Move out," Wrex called. "Come on, bug."
Stately, graceful, and terrifying, the rachni queen moved along at the krogan's side, the two of them striding out like royalty surveying a conquered land. In that moment, Shepard knew they would be fine. Somehow, their races would find a way to work together, becoming one of the galaxy's great juggernauts. Heaven help the council races if they turned their back on them rather than accepting their people as partners and equals.
Wrex led the team down the ramp, marching strong but controlled, just as he'd said . . . he intended to go in as if he already owned Actus's ass. Varren Pup followed, their every movement exuding menace, and Shepard chuckled, knowing why the queen wasn't worried about being attacked. Her ability to project emotion would keep her safe.
As Wrex and the rachni queen burst through the inner door, and the air filled with hollered swears and cries of confusion and panic, Shepard found herself cursing her height for the first time in a lot of years. All her fine work bringing the players and the plan together and now a krogan battlemaster and a rachni queen were terrorizing the greedy merc bandits, and she couldn't see over Jenkins's head.
"Life just isn't fair," she grumbled waiting for Nihlus to move his princesses through the doors. Maybe she could still catch some of the action. "I should be able to command my corporals to duck down and let me stand on their backs."
"Not today, ma'am," Jenkins whispered. She didn't need to see his face to know he wore a big, stupid grin.
"May the Enkindlers smite you with . . .." She floundered, falling in over her depth of Galactic Brotherhood doctrine. ". . . whatever they have that smites tall people who won't move out of the way."
"Want me to pick you up so that you can see?" Nihlus asked just before swinging around out of cover, his shotgun coughing death at an asari in leathers.
"Great, just what I need," Shepard grumbled without any heat behind it, "another turian who thinks he can toss me over his shoulder at will." When Wrex gave her the nod, she waved her team forward, moving them along the back wall of the main room.
When the last of her team made it through the door, she followed, double timing it up the line to take point. Two mercs dashed through the door, seeking cover from the battle in the main room, but at least one of them took cover just on the other side. Shepard pulled a grenade and lobbed it in front of the door, letting it roll lazily over the threshold before she hit the button.
She halted her team, going through on her own to be sure the pair were down before signalling for her pyjaks to move forward. As usual, she took point up the stairs. Sporadic gunfire echoed in the main room, men and women still screaming back and forth, trying to figure out what was going on. Those who survived could chalk up the krogan/rachni/geth terror to a really lightweight rehearsal for the Reapers.
Confident, Shepard took cover behind the door jam at the top of the stairs. A quick peek out confirmed five mercs along the railing, shooting down at the other teams. She gestured to her team, assigning them targets, then stepped out, Roger tearing into a krogan on the far right. The merc's shields crashed before he could even get turned around, but in true krogan style, he didn't let that get in the way. Roaring with fury and pain, he spun on Shepard and charged, a pulverizing tornado of armour and bone.
Retreating back through the doorway onto the stairs, Shepard dropped two grenades on the top step before running to the bottom. She kept her thumb on the button to blow them early, but she didn't need to. The krogan eased through the door, wary, his massive head swinging around before he stepped through, shotgun belching ineffectual shots down the stairs at her. The explosion tore him off his feet, shredding his armour and legs. He flew down the first half of the long staircase without touching ground, his long flight ending in an armour splintering crash. Limp but not dead, he slid down the remaining stairs. Shepard halted his descent, jamming a boot against the top of his head.
"If you live, would you return to Tuchanka and rally under the banner of a strong leader?" she asked, her emerald, hawkish stare curious and piercing as she leaned over him, forearm across her knee. "Or would you keep selling your loyalties to this sort of scum?"
His reply came out too garbled to make out the words, but she understood him just the same and straightened, three quick squeezes on Roger's trigger relieving him of any further decision making.
Shepard ran back up the stairs. All but two of the mercs lay sprawled across the prefab flooring, their life running down the rubberized grooves. Those two crouched huddled behind a couple of crates, popping up sporadically to shoot wild rounds that hit nothing. Shepard tossed another grenade, and they popped up one last time.
Scanning the rafters and the tops of the piles of crates, Shepard moved down the long balcony, but nothing moved. She took cover next to the door at the end, her team forming up around her, two keeping an eye on their backs, the others ready to meet any resistance on the other side . On the three count, she palmed the control, and the door slid open. Empty.
"Bit of an anticlimax," someone grumbled. "I hardly got a shot off."
Shepard walked to the railing and looked down over the confusing maze of crates, shelves and what looked like mining equipment or building struts. The fighting had moved to the far back corner judging by the noise. She turned and drew a circle in the air to enclose three of her pyjaks. "Keep an eye out from up here. Let me know if you—"
"Hey! Shepard!" Nihlus called from below. "Was that you demolishing the building over our heads?"
She stepped back to the railing and took a deep bow, complete with flourish. "Why yes it was. Thank you very much for noticing my work."
"Yeah, noticed it when a loose girder nearly took my head off." He ducked his head and pointed to a small blue river flowing down his neck. Nodding toward a hatch in the roof, he called, "Did you clear the roof, or too busy practicing for your career in demolitions?"
"I was about to clear the roof when you called to complain." A bright light burst down over her and something hit her from behind, throwing her into the railing. The edge of the low wall slammed into her gut, driving the wind out of her lungs in a belching sort of cough as her attacker's momentum flipped her over the edge.
Scrambling, the need to avoid falling three storeys foremost in her mind, Shepard caught hold of the railing with one hand. Her team lunged forward, snagging her arm. Her attacker grabbed her legs, his weight crashing down hard enough that her shoulder let out a sinew tearing pop. The moment he gripped her armour, he began to flail, trying to climb her, his legs kicking and forcing her into a partial spin back and forth.
Her pyjaks snatched at her pinwheeling free arm, trying to catch hold, but they just managed to make the situation worse.
"Stop trying to rescue me, and someone shoot him!" she shouted. Two rounds fired, one kicking into the metal about a hand's width from her backside, the other spraying the merc's brains up her back. "Lovely. Thank you." She heaved up, her free hand catching the railing. "Pull me up for pity's sake."
"You're welcome," Nihlus called from below.
Once her feet were rooted back on deck plating, Shepard looked down. "I wouldn't have been caught off guard if it weren't for you." She rotated her shoulder a few times, then climbed the roof access to find it clear.
"All clear!" Wrex called on their radios. "Shepard to the back room on the main floor."
"Start moving these crates onto the Normandy," Shepard called as she strode back toward the stairs. "I want to be on Illium first thing in the morning, so let's move."
She found Wrex alone in the back room, standing next to a wall safe. If she didn't know the battlemaster better, she would have thought him nervous or trepidatious by his posture. She approached. "Hey." She looked from the safe to the battlemaster and back. "Is it in there?"
Wrex nodded and stepped back. "I tried my way to get it open, Shepard."
She grinned and nodded. "Understood, sir. My way, it is." She activated her omnitool and hacked the lock. When it popped open, she ushered him up with a wave of her hand. "It's all yours, Battlemaster."
Wrex opened the safe, staring into it for a moment before he reached inside. Shepard tried to see around him, but his massive hump blocked her on every angle. She'd begun to suspect that the safe was empty when he backed up, holding an ancient, battered suit of armour.
"What a piece of shit," he grunted, the expression on his face one of amused satisfaction. "Oh well, at least it's back in krogan hands." He threw it over one arm and turned to look at her. "Thank you, Shepard, not just for my pride, but for that of the krogan."
She punched his shoulder. "I don't know what you're talking about. I just commanded one of your fire teams. Thanks for making us the pyjaks." She laughed. "The look on Princess Nihlus's face will keep me going for years, although making Ash the Varren Pup has me thinking you might be sweet on her."
"Watch yourself, Shepard." Wrex gave her a playful shove that just about put her through the wall.
"You watch yourself, old man." She turned and walked to the door, a great, invisible spider spinning strands of silk, tethering her to each of the amazing people on her crew and filling her with the most remarkable sense of connection. Glancing back when she reached the threshold, she winked and said, "Sweet baby Jesus, at your advanced age . . . a girl like that'll kill yah."
His rumbling laugh followed her from the room. "Yeah, but I'll go smiling."
Chuckling to herself, Shepard ducked between teams working zero-g dollies to move crates, making her way to the exterior door. Halfway across the main room her inner alarm sunk barbed teeth into the base of her skull, an electric jolt of warning. She stopped, looking up, trying to place what she felt.
There's more than the Normandy and Mako's engines running out there.
She nodded to herself. The energy—vibration—in the air felt off.
"Shepard!" Joker called through her radio. "Three geth drop ships coming in from all directions."
Damn being right! "Get the Normandy in the air, Joker, and see if you can't take them down." The subtle sound and vibration in the air grew stronger. "However, if the Reaper is in orbit, go stealth and get the hell out until it leaves."
"But what about . . .?" Joker protested.
"We'll be fine, just keep my ship safe. Shepard out." She ran for the door. "Fire teams, geth incoming." Racing out the front door, she saw that most of the portable barricades remained intact. "Get these back up, pull them in close, under the overhang of the second floor."
She reached up to her radio. "We need a team back in the Mako." As she spoke, the Normandy's thrusters flared to life, lifting the ship off the ridge. Fifty metres up, Joker sent her darting forward, the thunderbird returning to the clouds, where she belonged. Shepard tore her eyes away from her ship's graceful beauty, spotting a geth ship coming in from the south.
"Prepare yourselves. Come on people, get your asses onto the firing line." She spotted Ashley. "You're in command down here, I'm taking Ingrid onto the roof."
"Yes, ma'am," the chief called back.
Shepard looked around, searching, hating how naked and exposed her back felt now that they found themselves deep in it. "Where's C-Sec?"
"Mako!" someone called back.
"Damn. Nihlus! I need another sniper on the roof." Without waiting for an answer, she ran back inside.
The rachni queen strode toward her, obviously intending to join the others outside.
"Oh no," Shepard called, throwing up a hand as she ran by. "You stay inside. Singing won't defend you from the geth." She spun around just inside the doorway to the main room, running backwards for a few steps. "Stay inside."
Nihlus caught up with her at the stairs, and they ran side by side up to the roof access. The first geth ship had just settled into position at the ridge, dropping troopers. As it began to pull up, thrusting away from the ground, twin blasts from the Normandy's weapons tore into it, slicing along the dorsal spine of the ship. It exploded out over the lowlands, pieces raining down onto the grassland beyond the ridge. The ground shook.
"Glory hallelujah, Brother Joker!" Shepard let out a whoop as she pulled Ingrid off her back and sighted the troopers moving in on the barricades. Both sides already traded bullets. She felt the air tremble with another incoming drop ship, but then a lighter vibration hit her—a smaller vehicle. Much smaller.
"Nihlus! Down!" She slammed into him, driving him to the floor a moment too late. A heavy warp field drove her to the floor. It felt like being immersed in a bubble of magnetic water, each molecule of it ripping loose the molecules of her body, tearing them apart. She cried out, agonized and jagged but strangled by the warp.
It dissipated, leaving Shepard gasping and twisted, her cheek pressed to the hot metal of the roof. "And that was just a glancing hit."
"Shepard!" Nihlus scrambled up and turned her onto her back, supporting her with his arm. "Are you all right?" He ran a hand over her hair.
Catching movement out of the corner of her eye, Shepard's heart stopped even as she cried out a warning. A hovercraft zipped toward them, the person aboard riding low, his arm glowing blue and extended toward Nihlus. Even as her brain screamed in denial, that arm snatched Nihlus right off the roof. Shepard leaped up, lunging after them, trying to snag any part of the Spectre's armour, but too slow. Her fingers slid over the ceramic without catching hold.
"Saren!" Her scream followed them out over the grassland behind the building and away from the fight. For a moment, she stared after them, frozen with disbelief, but then the ice shattered as fury burst through. "God damned sloppy . . ." She spun around, throwing the hatch open with such force that she tore it right off the hinges and flung it across the roof. Jumping down, she grabbed hold of the stair-railing, swinging over and sliding down a couple of feet before letting go and dropping the rest of the way.
She hit the ground running, but didn't head for the stairs. She threw herself over the low wall, arms and legs pinwheeling as she flew through the air, managing to snag the top of a shelving unit. Momentum slammed her body into the metal, tipping the unit over against the next one. Rolling to the side, she dropped to the floor and raced past the rachni queen to the door.
"You let yourself get caught with your ass hanging out again, Shepard," she growled, slamming into the door control. "Stupid. Predictable. Idiot."
Outside, the battle continued, another ship full of troopers and a handful of the huge walking tanks ranged along the ridge and closing. She stuck to the front of the building, ducking behind her team until she made it to the corner and dug in, sprinting down the shadowed side of the base. She just prayed she got there in time to put a good dozen bullets into Saren before he got a chance to put any in Nihlus.
"Saren!" She cleared the building and brought Ingrid to bear.
The two Spectres faced off a good fifty metres away. Saren faced Shepard, but he ignored her completely, all his attention riveted on his ex-protege. With the fight raging behind her, she couldn't make out anything they said. For the second time, she stood, staring at the mentor and apprentice, hesitating, not sure whether to fire and just take the bastard down, or to leave it until Nihlus either requested help or showed signs of needing it. The last time, she'd saved Nihlus only by the narrowest of margins. Fortune might not favour her another time.
"Damn it," she grumbled, moving forward steadily, not letting her crosshairs move off Saren's head. A few squeezes of the trigger and their problems would be . . . she grumbled again. Their problems wouldn't be over. Saren wasn't the big problem. Sovereign was. Heart beating hard and fast, her hands and knees beginning to tremble ever so slightly as the adrenaline wore off, she began her warrior breathing in time with her steps. In, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four, five. The trembling eased as oxygen flooded her system.
"You were nothing but an angry malcontent on the brink of washing out of the military when I found you. I gave you pride, a way to serve and rise above all your mother's grasping ambitions. I created you! How can you turn your back on me now?" she heard Saren call out. "Come with me, Nihlus. You can survive the coming armageddon."
She smiled, hard and cold, as Nihlus replied, "I created who I am, Saren. You aren't even who I thought you were. What sort of coward agrees to sacrifice innocents to save himself?"
Awe tingled down her spine and out to her limbs. "Glory hallelujah. Preach it, Brother Nihlus," she whispered, overlapping Saren's next words.
"To save our people! Are the humans and volus so dear to you that you would watch the turian people vanish beside them?" Saren threw his arms out toward the battle. "Sovereign speaks for the Reapers. If we make ourselves useful to them, we can be spared." He took a step toward Nihlus. "Thousands of cycles of evolution, of civilization, glorious battles, miracles of art and science . . . the great stories, Nihlus. The ones our fathers raised us on. All of it will vanish in a heartbeat."
Saren held up his arms as if he could embrace the entire galaxy. "What is left of the Protheans, Nihlus? The Reapers all but obliterated them from galactic memory. Would you consign us to that fate?"
Shepard frowned and stopped inching forward, although her sight never wavered from his brow. Yes, she knew indoctrination ate at his will and reason, replacing it with Sovereign's, but the passion and the sincerity in his voice . . .. For the first time since Eden Prime, a rusted iron sliver of doubt worked its way into her guts. What if they couldn't prepare for the Reapers? What if Saren and the council had the right of it? Wasn't it better to save some rather than none?
"Our people are about honour, Saren," Nihlus practically screamed back. "Honour above all. That is what becoming a Spectre meant to me. I would see our people pass honourably into oblivion rather than sell their souls to become slaves to those monsters." He pulled his rifle off his back, taking a step to close the distance between them again. "I'll fight them alongside Shepard, and we'll defeat them, Saren. We will defeat them. Save yourself. Save your honour and your spirit." He held out a hand. "Break free of that thing's hold on you."
Saren backed onto the hoverboard, his posture slumped, but as Shepard watched, something moved within the Spectre . . . not anything willing to show itself, but revealing itself just the same through his expression and bearing. Shepard started forward again, lifting into a jog.
"A long time ago, I told you the terrible secret about your father's death," Saren yelled, the hoverboard thrusters firing, lifting him into the air. Shepard squeezed off a shot, but Saren's shields deflected it. His face twisted into a gruesome expression of cruel satisfaction. "Today, I'll tell you the even more horrible secret of your mother's death."
Shepard fired again and again, switching to Roger as she got closer, needing to tear down Saren's massive barriers before he tore her partner down. Nihlus opened fire as well, but without her conviction. Heart sinking with every centimetre Saren opened between them, Shepard squeezed the trigger. One, two, three. Pause. One, two, three. Pause. Roger chattered his mechanical rhythm, almost loud enough to drown out Saren. Almost.
"Your mother wasn't the one who killed your father. It was a mining accident." Saren sailed up into the air as Nihlus froze mid step, like a badly balanced statue. "I just needed to cut the cord that tied you to that bitch." After staring at Nihlus for another moment, Saren looked over to Shepard. "But I see you've just gone and roped yourself to another one."
A gloating grin transformed his face into something so hideous that Shepard started to look away. But then the Spectre's hands ignited with a halo of blue energy that built until it enveloped his entire body.
"I wonder what it will take for me to get you to kill this one?" he asked, his words fruit dropping off a dead tree, bitter and rotten, oozing venom. He unleashed a warp at the still-paralyzed Nihlus then soared off.
The world slowed to a crawl as Shepard bolted forward, her finger locking down on her trigger until her gun overheated, burning the side of her cheek. She flung the rifle to the ground as Nihlus contorted, a tortured scream roaring from both larynxes as the warp twisted and wrenched his body from the inside out.
"No! No, no, no, no. Nihlus, don't you dare let Saren do this to you. You let him kill you, and I swear by the holy light that I will kick your ass from here to Tuesday." Shepard slammed into the ground, breathless, knee-guards carving furrows through the rich, loamy earth. She hovered over him, hands fluttering helplessly, praying that the warp died before Nihlus did.
Finally, the Warp dissipated, and she pulled Nihlus across her lap, turning him over with a strength born of panic and horror. He looked conscious. Frantic hands searched him for wounds, but found nothing.
The Mako rumbled up behind her, its engines shaking the ground beneath her. The back hatch squeaked open. "Shepard?" Garrus started to get out, but she waved him back.
"I'm fine. Go help the others finish off the geth," she shouted, the battle and wind snatching at her words, stringing them out over the grassland.
"Are you—" He asked, hesitating, but not obeying.
"Go! Help the others." An impatient hand flicked his direction, then took hold of Nihlus again. "Nihlus, come on big guy, holding your prone bod is getting old. I've done this way too damned much for being partnered with the best Spectre in the galaxy." He appeared conscious, his eyes open, but the look in them bore into her, frozen termites spreading a deathly chill as they ate the heart out of her. "What happened?" She shook him gently. "Come on, talk to me."
Nihlus stirred slightly, but didn't try to sit up or pull out of her arms. "It was a lie. All these years . . .." He turned his face into her breast, his eyes closing. His voice came out rough, his subvocals practically roaring with a fury that made her hair stand on end. "Can you hate someone enough to kill them?"
She chuckled, warm and soft, and lowered her brow to the top of his head, her heart hammering in relieved fury. "You mean without the aid of a bullet?" He nodded, and she sighed. "Udina's persistence in drawing breath says no, but I live on hope." She pulled back. "So, you're intact. No large holes spilling litres of Nihlus blood onto the ground?"
"Yes." He took a long, slow breath and wrapped an arm around her for a second before pulling away and sitting up. "The blade Saren used doesn't leave wounds you can see." Still clouded, but clearing, his eyes looked toward the skirmish. "We got too predictable." He cursed and levered himself up off the grass. Stretching he cracked most of his joints. After adjusting his armour, he reached out to help her up.
She nodded and took his hand. "Yeah, we got stupid. Forgot that we might not be the only ones on the hunt." Standing, she dusted herself off. "That was the strongest warp I've ever seen," Shepard said. "Are you sure you're okay? I swear I heard your atoms coming apart." When he tried to walk away without answering, she stepped in front of him and gripped his forearms. "Nihlus . . .." She waited until he met her eyes before continuing. "Come on, Spectre. Talk to me." Staring into the shuttered green eyes felt like looking at a mirror or running into a forcefield.
He took her hands and squeezed her fingers. "I'm okay, Shepard. He won't blindside me again. Twice is more than enough. Give me some time to ignore what happened and then stew over it, then I'll talk about it."
Shepard nodded, but then stepped into him, wrapping one arm around him in an attempt at a battlefield acceptable hug. "Saren stepped way out of bounds, Nihlus. He was trying to take the heart out of you."
He bent down, quickly touching his forehead to hers before striding off to join the fight. She watched him walk away, then sighed and jogged over to pick Roger up off the ground. "Come on, old man. You know, things were a lot simpler when you were the only man in my life. I kept you clean and oiled, you shot bullets into the people trying to kill me. It worked. Why did I have to go and start getting all quivery kneed over not one—oh no, that would be too easy—but two turians? Turians! I'm insane."
Geth chassis lay strewn, broken and smoking, across the grassy incline to the ridge of rock by the time Shepard got back around to the front of the building. Still, the team hunkered down, pinned behind cover, two of them down with injuries but alive. Five colossi closed on them from the ridge separating the base from the open grassland beyond.
Shepard started to pull together a plan. The team already concentrated fire on the closest, the Mako haranguing the other two with canon and turret fire, but five at once presented too much armour and firepower for small arms. They needed a plan and fast. She threw herself down as a ball of plasma streaked toward her head. Cursing, she slid in behind one of the barricades, the stink of burning hair telling her how close the shot came.
The Mako roared past, heading straight for the first colossus.
"Who's driving that thing?" she asked, spotting Alenko hunkered down behind the next cover.
"Wrex," Ashley called. "You been giving him lessons, Captain?"
Shepard just let out a grumbled curse, watching as the krogan made a suicidal charge, taking at least one out of every five plasma bursts from the giant geth tanks. Strong shields protected the Mako, but they couldn't last forever against the that sort of pounding. At the last second, Wrex turned, circling around, pulling the geth fire away from the team. Shepard traded Roger for Ingrid and lined up the first colossus in her sights, firing as continually as the old girl's cool down allowed.
"He's trying to pull them out into the low spot," she called on the radio. "Keep up the fire on their back side. Take advantage of the distraction." As she watched the APC's tires spinning, tearing up the loose sod as it turned to race back, she knew what Wrex had planned. She just hoped his theory proved correct.
Time after time, the krogan drove the Mako in a rush toward the colossi, keeping them chasing him, ducking back and forth, their attention concentrated on trying to hit the erratic machine. Gradually, he got them moved out far enough that Shepard began to hold her breath as the Mako swept out away from the ridge, praying that Wrex didn't get caught in his own trap.
Strung out in a staggered line—the closest a good ten metres on the other side of the ridge, the furthest a hundred metres out—the colossi didn't stand a chance when the ground began to tremble, then rock. The first disappeared as the earth erupted in a plume of soil and a nightmare of tentacles. Forsaking the vexingly hard to hit Mako for the thresher, the colossi scrambled to avoid the blasts of acid that tore straight through their shields to reduce their chassis into melted slag. The battle didn't even last a full minute, the grassland falling silent as Wrex brought the Mako down the ridge, the vehicle smoking and sparking, but still intact.
The vehicle stopped a couple metres ahead of the barricades, the metal clicking and banging as it cooled. The team began to stand, helping each other to their feet, supporting the wounded. Shepard stepped around her cover and stood, hip cocked, arms crossed, waiting.
Ten seconds later, the back hatch of the APC opened, a visibly shaken but jubilant Garrus hopping out. Wrex followed a second later, a wide grin showing his massive, slate-like teeth.
"You look pretty proud of yourself," Shepard deadpanned. "Can you explain the state of my Mako?"
Wrex glanced back and shrugged. "Thought the day would be a complete loss until that last bit. Then it got fun."
Shepard laughed and straightened. "Nice work, battlemaster. Nice work." She lifted her hand to her ear. "Joker, you have things cleaned up?"
"Yes, ma'am. Took out one more, the last one just took off . . . made it through the relay. We're on our way back to pick you up now."
"Excellent." The captain's grin widened as she looked up to see her ship swooping down out of the black. "And I even get to watch her land. Praise the great glowing asses of the Enkindlers."