Targismar (short form: Targis) - The most vile curse in the turian language. Has its origins in turian prehistoric rituals involving the disgracing and execution of enemies.
35 Days ASR
Shepard grasped Liara behind the neck and shoved her head down below the dash. "Brace yourselves!" The way the chia had taken down trees, she held no doubt that they could toss the cars like leaves, even with the vehicles parked solidly on the ground. She cursed as she ducked down and covered her head with her arm.
There was no way to protect the cars, she just needed to pray that everyone was buckled in and the flurry of diamond-hard hail she'd felt pelting her skin didn't rip the vehicles to shreds. Their shields wouldn't be enough, and all she could do was wait it out. She closed her eyes, her memory latching onto an image of Garrus giving her one of his 'don't worry, I've got you' smiles, his arms strong and so very warm around her.
The storm hit, but instead of ripping the car from the ground and tossing it, the vehicle merely rocked a little. Outside, a sound akin to a hard rainfall rang against their metal and polymer skin for less than a minute before stopping. Shepard lifted her head a little, a soft hum rolling around in her throat. A scowl creased her brow. Being hit by millions—if not more—of the little beings came off with less of an impact than the flurry on Freedom's Progress? Tentative, prepared to dive back into cover, she sat up.
"Liara, open the blast shields, please?" Shepard's voice sounded tiny and distant to her ears, a mouse squeak against the roaring silence.
"Do you think it's over?" Shiala asked, her voice crawling up from between the seats. "Maybe that was just a first few … scouts or something." Wide eyes stared up from the dim space behind the driver's seat.
Shepard turned a little further, meeting Nihlus's stare right behind her shoulder. He looked as though he'd been prepared to throw himself over her. Damned overprotective turians. "I think that was it," she said, directing her words to Shiala even though she held Nihlus with a pitchfork and barbed wire laden stare. 'Keep your distance,' it demanded.
Liara finally seemed to process the request to lower the shields over the windows and reached up to press the control. She pulled her head back and scowled. "Are we buried in a chiastyllia avalanche?"
Shepard looked out the side window, unable to see more than an artist-palette blur of colour. "I think we are. I can't even distinguish the ground from the sky." The moment the words appeared in her head … even before they rattled loose of her lips, a shimmer passed through the chia outside her window: an alignment? Whatever it was, the view clarified. Not just a little better either, the tiny beings aligned themselves to provide a scalpel-sharp view of the deep, blue-green grass, the weeds in a myriad of hues … the mountains in all their violet-silver majesty, crowned in white.
"What the … ?" She looked down at the cuff. "What happened?" she demanded. "Why are your people encasing the car?"
"Will demanded protection," they replied. "They protected."
A frown sharpened the angles of Shepard's face. "Will demanded?" Reflex and confusion formed a denial, but before she shoved it up through her larynx, her brain interfered. She'd wished for a way to protect the cars from the chia. "Sweet baby Jesus," she grumbled and then sighed. "Well, that's one solution."
The mutter provoked a hearty chuff from the back seat. "And how do we escape our protection?" Nihlus demanded.
"We need to get back on course before gunships are sent to ensure we do," Liara said. The tightness in her voice wrapped the alarm at the base of Shepard's skull in thorns. Sharp and tenacious, they demanded action and quickly. For the first time since they'd landed, Liara looked over at Shepard, fear glistening, blue waterglass, in her eyes. "Who knows what they'll do if they arrive out here to find us like this?"
Shepard held the young asari's stare for a few seconds, trying to ease Liara's fear through the contact. "We've been in tougher spots, T'Soni. We'll be okay. We just need to work the problem." When she coaxed a nod from the pretty blue head, she looked down at the chia wrapped around her arm. "Okay, let's think this through. Your people came because you called and then formed a shell around the cars to protect them? Even though they were the perceived threat?"
"Will shouted 'protect, must protect'," the cuff replied, glowing orange letters appearing in the crystal. "We protected."
"Why is my will the one you listen to?" Shepard asked. "I don't want the chia to be my slaves." The thought curdled between her synapses and deep in her guts, and for a moment she thought her stomach on the verge of introducing the floor to her fried egg and bacon sandwich.
"Not your will," the cuff declared, sending out a wave of emotion with a taste and tremor that she knew all too well.
Nihlus's overprotectiveness brought the chia down on them, causing their encasement. At least it was good to know that they didn't just mindlessly obey her every order. The rest of figuring out the chia's issue with their easily subverted will could wait until the whole party wasn't on the cusp of being bombed as an alien threat.
"We need to move the cars," she said. "We need to get to the mountain." She sighed as the cuff remained silent, the sigh belying the slow turn of dread working its way through her. "Right. I want your people to release the cars."
"Must wait." A number showed on her wrist. Eighteen … seventeen.
"What does this mean?" Shepard demanded, fear pricking her spine hot nettles. Nihlus loomed over her shoulder again, no doubt alerting to the sudden sliver of alarm in her voice. Why had she done as they wanted and brought them along? She didn't know or understand the chia well enough to have done so. Damn her impulse. Who else would follow up being attacked and basically taken hostage by a completely alien lifeform by bringing them aboard her ship and then just letting them do whatever they wanted?
An image of Amalair nested in the corner of the Normandy's cargo bay flashed through her mind followed by one of Legion fixing his armour next to Kaidan's station.
Yeah, you have a history of glaringly naive stupidity, Janey. Luckily, it's all worked out before now.
"A countdown?" the Spectre asked. He cocked his head. "To what? What are you doing?"
The cuff didn't respond, the countdown passing ten, then five. Shepard's mind raced. What could it possibly mean? And why wasn't it responding to her? It had never just ignored her before. Never, in all of the three times she'd spoken to them. Damn, she really was an idiot. Why had she imagined that their trip to Thessia wouldn't involve almost certain odds of death? Nothing they'd ever done had been easy. Hell, a shopping trip on the presidium had nearly ripped her brain out of her skull.
"We really need to … ," Liara said, cutting through Shepard's bewildered internal diatribe.
Then Shiala cut through Liara. "Um." The asari's voice wavered between alarm and wonder. "Where are we?"
Shepard looked up, the countdown running out. Her brow creased, her heart knocking against the inside of her ribs. Even before she looked out the side window, she could see that they'd moved, and no small distance. A solid wall of violet-steel rose up before them, filling the forward view. Looking out the side confirmed that in those twenty five seconds or so, they'd completed the journey to the mountains.
"Where are we?" she asked the chia.
"Mountain."
Shepard grumbled. "We need to get enough of you in one place to ease the communication barrier." Glancing down, she asked, "Are we going to be able to get out now?"
Her answer came in the form of a flurry of movement, then the sudden clearing of the windscreen. The car in front of them appeared through the haze, completely cleared. The top opened, five very stunned-looking commandos rushing out, guns drawn. Shepard didn't need to look behind her to know that the entire platoon had followed their lead. She let out a long, weary sigh.
"Note for your next briefing when bringing the commandos on an op with me," Shepard said, annoyance lashing out before she could get it under control, "don't leave out the part with the 'freaky shit always happens around Shepard' warning." She shot a glare over her shoulder at Liara, even though it wasn't really the asari she was pissed off at.
The entire mission felt completely out of control, and had since she stepped off the Ypres. Nothing made her crazier than feeling as if she'd been caught up in a tornado, events flinging her ahead of them, then dragging her behind. She hit the door control and swung out, her body tight, every movement locked down and controlled.
The second she straightened and stepped away from the car, a small flurry of the chia attacked, much less violently than before, swirling around her arm. The cuff expanded, intricately designed cogs appeared, meshing into one another … some no larger than a speck of dust, some a centimetre or so across. It built up her forearm, a lattice of chia creating who knew what. Her annoyance bled away, transforming into wonder. She felt Nihlus step up beside her.
"Wha … ?" he whispered, his voice seeming to ask if she wanted him to smash it off her arm despite the obvious wonder. Must have been the layer of subvocals that preceded and followed the partial word.
The construction ended, the flurry of sparkling lifeforms vanishing in favour of a holographic interface and screen. "Enhanced communication interface and intelligence upgrades completed," a feminine voice said. "We apologize for moving the vehicles without alerting you prior," it continued. "We sensed military vehicles closing on our previous location. Spectre Kryik's previous command to protect you and thus removing you from the threat, seemed to take precedence over providing an explanation."
Shepard looked at Nihlus, a wry grin greeting the embarrassed flutter of his mandibles. "Well, thank you." Turning away from the Spectre, Shepard's eyes travelled down the line of cars, her squad moving toward her, their attention divided between the commandos and the wall of chia that climbed the cliff face. Beyond the cars, the long shoulder of the mountain swept down toward the shadowed valley. Long, dark blue-green grass flashed silver as it blew in waves. Small flowers of a cyan so brilliant it appeared to glow crowned the center of each plant.
"Blessed Enkindlers," she whispered, her chest and throat aching as awe seized hold, "it's breathtaking here. No wonder they chose this spot for their retirement." Taking a deep breath that teased her nostrils with the spicy-honey-and-pepper scent of the grass and the whisper of ice carried along the back of the spring wind, Shepard let out a long sigh. Maybe she could get permission to take a vacation there. She could call it Spectre business … investigating the disappearances.
Enraptured, Shepard wandered down the slope, the entire place feeling eerily familiar. A couple hundred metres below her, a herd of small, wooly-looking animals grazed across the grounds of a house that she knew all too well. A soft keen of sorrow and longing shivered through her mind. Shepard nodded in mute understanding. "Nihlus … how did they know to rebuild it exactly … ?" The question evaporated as the Spectre stepped up behind her arm, and Tashac let out another thin wail of pain.
"What did you do here that hurts so badly?" Shepard whispered to the silent presence in her head, not expecting or getting an answer. Something told her not to rush too quickly for answers, because their reveal—coming up hard and fast—would change everything. So, she took a long breath and looked back toward the mountain, her lips pulling into a wry smile as she saw the cascade of chia flowing down the cliff, looking like a frozen waterfall despite the heat of the season precluding its existence. The chia needed to learn a thing or two about subtlety as well. As the thought formed, the chia began to move: one moment ice, the next water that flowed but didn't pool. She just shook her head.
Nihlus turned along with her. She saw his mandibles give a bewildered flutter as he asked, "Do you ever think that we all died at some point along the way, and this is some bizarre afterlife?"
Shepard snorted in the back of her throat, and turned her attention to the crystallized gauntlet that now covered her arm from wrist to elbow. "Do the chia retain the ability to reform even after they've become something … like this gauntlet?" she asked, lifting it, wonder tinting her examination of its inner workings. "This is amazing. Completely mechanical."
"We retain some malleability for a time, but once we set to our purpose, our form locks. The form can be added to, and if parts are destroyed, it can be repaired, but the form cannot be reduced. Will assigns, but function maintains our form. Form is purpose."
Turning her back on the house below, Shepard walked toward the cliff. "How long have your people been hiding here?"
"The snows have come millions of times. Multitudes of our kind were destroyed as slaves of the suzerain. The rest fled our homeworld. Most formed the Cynosure. Others hid on distant planets, such as this one. We keep watch for the return of the suzerain or their servants."
Shepard wandered closer to the cliff as she listened to that voice, the midmorning sun warming her back. "What is the Cynosure? Are you in contact with it? Do your people share awareness?"
"The Cynosure is the center, the great intelligence of the chiastyllia. It contains decillions of chiastyllia, all hiding. So ancient, so clever that it shrouds itself, hiding in plain sight, yet so powerful that the suzerain dare not approach or be destroyed." The voice paused. "Yes, all chiastyllia can share thoughts, sensory stimuli, and pain across any distance. The only chia who are lost to the whole are those corrupted by the darkness. Many have been over the millennia. So many lost, their voices silenced."
Shepard stopped, catching sight of what appeared to be a road curving around the mountain slope. Touching Nihlus's hand to alert him, she set out, jogging to where it curled around the great shoulder of rock, leading down to the house below.
A thrill of excitement, electric and smelling of ozone, seared through her. They'd found it. She recognized the view from the opposite angle, having seen Tashac standing on the porch below, looking up at that very spot. Shepard spun back toward the mountainside, eyes narrowed and searching the rock for any sign of entry.
When she reached the wall of rock, she turned to her people. "Search the cliff face. Look for any sort of entry mechanism or lock … anything that makes you think there might be a door." She looked back to the rock. "However, no pressing what you find. Call me. We have good reason to believe whatever lies inside the mountain is dangerous."
The commandos remained facing outward, watching for incoming threats as the team did as Shepard asked while giving the chia a wide berth. Liara and Shiala joined in while Aethyta stayed with the commandos, the matriarch appearing very much in command.
"Here," Nihlus called, his voice pitched low. "I've found it." He leaned in, talons scraping away at thousands of years of built up dust and muck. After a second, he activated his omnitool, fabricating a heated chisel.
Hope, excitement, dread, and fear all waged war, their battle twisting the knots in Shepard's gut tighter and tighter as she watched both the future and the past chipped from under the stone. The edges of her vision darkened, the spiders skittering like tar trickling through the grooves and fissures in her mind. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on driving them back … at least until she felt the faint pressure of something pressing against the injection port in her armour.
Cracking one eyelid as the icy, sour relief of Dr. Chakwas's indoctrination serum flowed through her veins, Shepard looked up at Nihlus. "Do you feel it?" she asked.
He nodded, the effects clear in the haunted shadows flickering through the green stare and the tight, distressed set to his mandibles. "They're here, somewhere." After giving himself a shot, he turned back to his work. "I almost bolted last time, Shepard. They went straight for Tashac. She panicked."
"Do you have enough mojo juice?" Shepard asked, not missing that his talons moved to one of his belt pouches even as he nodded. Tucking that information away just in case, she forced herself to take long, even breaths, driving back the darkness. She needed to keep herself under control. Nihlus would need her if Tashac could throw him like that.
She swallowed what felt like a mouthful of chalk. "They don't feel like they're trying to take over like they've done before." Choking on a dusty laugh, she popped her shoulders in an embarrassed shrug. "It feels like they're afraid of what's inside." Stepping up beside Nihlus as he paused in his work, she laid a hand over his. "Whatever the hell is in here that has them all terrified … we'll face it. Right?" Pressing her lips into a thin smile, she nodded in answer to her own question despite the rapid thudding of her heart, the adrenaline that hummed through her bloodstream.
Nihlus's mandibles fluttered a little as he glanced back over his arm. "We've faced down Reapers. We can handle this." He rubbed the heel of his hand against the door interface, scraping away the residual film. "There's still power to this door."
Shepard shook her head. "Protheans built things to last." A terrible, and unfortunately likely, alternative whispered in the back of her head. "Or, this place has caretakers."
Taking a deep breath, she forced her attention to focus on one thing … what waited on the other side of that door. Whatever it was, letting superstition take hold wouldn't help her face it. Nihlus's failed attempts to override the lock shattered what fragile calm she managed to achieve. "What's going on?" she asked, the fear mutating into frustration and impatience.
He stepped back after another couple of seconds. "I can't bypass it or hack it." Holding out his hands as if to usher her in, he said, "I think Tashac has to do it. She locked it against Merol, and you know how their tech is."
Shepard just nodded and stepped around him to look at the interface. As she reached up to touch it, pain raked down her spine, spiking out when it hit her shoulders, someone stabbing a skeletal branch beneath her skin. Shoving it down the length of her body, they drove it into the ground through the soles of her feet, pinning her there.
"You cannot take the dark ones inside!" The wail slammed through her mind, smashing against the inside of Shepard's skull.
Shepard braced a hand against the wall of stone as a comet tore through her, the ice flaring into explosions … geysers of steam as it neared the sun. "I have to know how to fight them," she said, growling the words too low for it to carry past Nihlus.
A flurry of images, not unlike the beacon message burst through the fog of panic boiling inside her skull. Weapons, those images said, not understanding. Forcing them aside, fortifying the wall holding Tashac at bay, Shepard set back to working on getting the door open. No matter what the prothean commander's panic insisted, the protheans had possessed weapons far more numerous and powerful wielded by a greater number of more advanced races, and they'd all proven utterly useless. With far less advanced science, smaller numbers … understanding was Shepard's only hope.
A sharp vibration resonated through the ground under Shepard's feet and the wall at her fingertips. She paused to ensure that Tashac remained walled up, closing her eyes to reinforce the seals before she allowed herself to wonder if she'd managed to open the door. Damn, she could use the prothean's help, but Tashac couldn't be allowed to distract Shepard the entire way through. As much sympathy as she felt for the commander, Tashac's screaming and grief would prove fatal.
"Ah, Shepard?"
She spun around, the quiet, 'I don't want to worry you' alarm in Nihlus's voice grabbing her by the scruff of the neck. Where'd he go?
"Nihlus? Where are you?" she asked, walking toward the cliff where he'd been standing.
"Shepard, those gunships are just pulling up," Liara called, the agitation in her voice completely undisguised.
"Handle it, Liara," Shepard snapped, glancing back over her shoulder. "You're the voice of authority on Thessia, not me. I'm a dead Spectre, and I've lost our live one." She took another step, losing her balance a little as she swung back around. She reached out to steady herself against the cliff, but instead of her fingertips pressing against violet-silver rock, they passed straight through.
Nihlus grabbed her as she stumbled into what had to be a hologram. "Well, you found me, but now you're in here with me," he grumbled, pushing her upright. "Since I can't seem to get back out, that's somewhat inconvenient."
Shepard staggered a little. Once balanced on both feet again, she turned a full circle. In front of her stretched a wide, dark tunnel leading down and into the mountain. Behind her, there appeared to be nothing … an opening to the plateau as tall and wide as the tunnel, but when she tried to walk through it, she ran into an invisible barrier.
"Damn it. We can get in, but not out?" A thin cry echoed through the thick layers of cement holding Tashac at bay, sending Shepard's heart racing jackrabbit-quick against her ribs. Shepard sidestepped until she could see Liara approaching a gunship. Two others hovered in the air behind and above it. "No one's noticed we're missing," she grumbled. "I wonder if they can get in, or if we just got through thanks to the beacon?"
Lifting her hand to her radio, she opened a channel to Miranda. "Operative Lawson, Nihlus and I appear to have a problem," she said.
"Shepard?" Miranda looked around, suddenly and quite comically alarmed. She spun in place, then ran to look down the slope. "Where are you?"
The best and worst game of hide and seek ever.
"Inside the mountain. Nihlus and I appear to be trapped in here. I need you to see if you can get to us." She stepped right up to the barrier and pressed a hand against it, as if that could help. "Walk toward the cliff," she instructed. Behind her, something moved in the darkness, and for the barest of moments she managed to tell herself the sound lived in her head. Then Nihlus pulled his shotgun and turned to face it.
"Just keep talking her over," he said, the words lashing her ever so slightly, as if transferring his default blame over to her. "I've got your back."
Shepard snorted softly and looked back. Miranda stood face to face with the cliff, walking her hands over the rock. "A metre or so to your right." She pressed her face against the barrier—the surface of it cold and either resonating too high or too low for her to feel a vibration from it—to better see the Cerberus operative. "Yeah, a little more."
Miranda's hands brushed across the surface to press directly in front of Shepard's face, and the captain stepped back. "Well, if that isn't a great, glowing hemorrhoid on an Enkindlers ass."
She heard Nihlus's talons scuffle against the dust-covered stone as he drifted a few paces down the tunnel. "A what?" he asked, distracted.
"A sore on the … ." Shepard sighed. "An ass sore, let's just leave it at that." She crouched, feeling along the barrier for any sign of an opening. "You're right in the center of where I came through, Miranda. The tunnel extends about a metre on either side of you, down to ground level, and about two metres above your head." Thane and Jack alerted to Miranda's behaviour and moved in. The three spoke, then the other two joined the search for a way in.
Shepard opened the mission channel, so that they'd all hear her. "I'll back up," she said. "See if biotics have any sort of effect on it."
"Shepard," Nihlus said, the deep rumble she knew meant danger rolled under the words, sending the sharp skitter of giant beetles up her spine.
Plucking Ingrid from her back, she spun to face the darkness even as she lifted the rifle to her shoulder and looked down the sight. "Great fuck, the entire tunnel looks like it's moving." The beetles sank their needle-like feet into her skin, burrowing for the meat. For a moment, she jerked the scope here and there, following every perceived movement, but then slammed a lid on the fear. She'd been through a hell of a lot worse than being trapped somewhere and outnumbered. Garrus was just usually to blame for her entrapment rather than Nihlus.
"There's no cover," Nihlus called, pulling her back. She heard no fear in his voice, his tone merely listing their disadvantages. "We've got our backs to the light. We're preteril with our burrows covered." He moved toward the wall, stealing a little of their advantage, but it wouldn't be enough.
She followed suit and moved out of silhouette, glancing back as she heard the dull whomps of her squad's biotics impacting the barrier. A few seconds later, she heard an overload sizzle over the surface that the biotic attacks left undamaged.
"Shepard, are you standing clear?" Miranda called.
"As clear as we can be," she replied, sparing their efforts another glance. "Don't go crazy with bullets or grenades, though."
Turning back to the dark, Shepard squinted, trying to see through the shifting shadows. The shuffle and scrape of feet echoed off the walls, warping and multiplying until the sounds pummeled her ears. A drum beat pounded inside her head, the sound of it mocking the cadence of her warrior breathing. The black beckoned, a vacuum drawing her in to fill its void. As she had outside the cave, she got no sense of the spiders trying to infiltrate her thoughts or pull forward her memories. Unlike outside, however, she felt curiosity more than fear.
"Whoever is behind the orbs has decided they're glad we're stuck in here," she said.
"They want to know what's here," Nihlus said, his voice no more than a whisper. "They've been trying to get past that barrier for a long time."
Shepard reeled, Tashac slamming against the barriers in her mind. They cannot get in. They cannot be allowed in. "Wait a second," she said, glancing toward Nihlus. "Is she screaming about not letting the ones behind the orbs into this place? But that would mean … what?"
The torin reached up, pressing the heel of his hand into his right eye socket. "I think so. Like I said, Shepard, she doesn't talk to me any more than Merol talks to you. It's just impressions." He dropped his hand back to his shotgun and gave his head a stiff shake. "It doesn't matter. We're here, and by the sound of it, we're about to get hit by—"
A pale shriek ripped up through the mountain, the shrill of a damned soul screaming in rage, the very stone trembling at its passage. Shepard's gut froze into a tangle of acidic ice then cracked as another cry answered the first. "Oh, sweet baby Jesus, what the hell was that?" She backed toward the opening, the sound of gunfire pounding at the barrier far more welcome than those terrible cries.
Another scream ripped through the dark, everything about it so very wrong that the sound frayed the edges of Shepard's sanity, tugging at loose threads. She swallowed the panic and turned her back to the sounds. The sun, grass, the sights and sounds of life helped tie some of those threads back together. "Miranda? Any luck? We either need to get you guys in here or get us out and fast."
"Sorry, Shepard. Nothing we've tried has even disturbed it." The operative's omnitool streamed data as she tapped away at the interface. "We need stronger scanners. Maybe the Ypres could find a way to break through the barrier, or locate another access."
Shepard nodded and added Liara and Nihlus. "Okay, Nihlus and I are going to be in deep in a couple of seconds. We need you all trying to get in or find us a way out. Nihlus, send Liara your Spectre authorizations … anything she needs to get the Ypres above this mountain. We need deep, detailed scans." She paused, swallowing a lump of want … need. "I wish we had Tali and Garrus here working the tech angle." A sudden grin accompanied her hand lifting to add EDI to the call.
"EDI, if you're not busy plotting a way to kill us all, we could use your help down here," she called.
"I am not currently formulating any homicidal plans that cannot keep, Shepard," the AI replied. "How many I be of assistance?"
"Miranda, send EDI everything you've got on that barrier." Why hadn't she thought of EDI before? The AI's entire reason for being was situational analysis and problem solving, not to mention ground team support. Shepard really needed to get some missions under her belt with the ship and crew … figure out how all her new pieces slotted into place.
Nihlus backed into her peripherals, his omnitool open. "Authorizations sent," he said simply.
"Good. Get the Ypres down here, Liara." Shepard barked the command, able to see the asari's mouth open and working on reasons it couldn't happen. Then Aethyta strode up, dismissed the asari from the gunship, and walked Liara away. She turned her attention to Miranda. "XO, EDI … find us a way out."
Miranda nodded. "Understood, Captain."
"Acknowledged, Captain," EDI replied.
The terrible shrieks continued, sounding closer with each scream. Shepard glanced over her shoulder, but nothing showed itself. The monsters could be a half klick distant the way the tunnel echoed. She turned back to her team. "I'll keep this channel open."
After a couple of breaths, she turned to face the darkness, sparing just a glance for Nihlus. "You're right, we're sitting ducks here. As much as I really hate suggesting this, we might find better cover further in, and we're almost definitely going to need it. Maybe, in the meantime, the squad can find their way in, have our backs to check this place out."
Nihlus nodded. "We don't stand a chance out here, not if they come at us in strength." Letting out a long, rumbling sigh, he cracked his neck, then hefted his gun, couching it against his shoulder in high ready. "I'll take point, five metres on the left."
Shepard nodded. "Miranda, we're moving down the tunnel to find cover," she said over the radio. Reaching down, she snagged two trackers, sticking one to Nihlus and one to herself. "I'm sending you our tracker frequencies now. Don't forget we're in here and go clubbing." A cracked laugh tumbled from her lips as Shepard opened her omnitool and scanned both trackers to ensure they were working, then sent their frequencies to Miranda. "I know how much you like to shake it."
"Ready?" Nihlus asked, glancing over at her, his gaze sealed off and hardened: one hundred percent veteran Spectre on mission. That steel settled along her spine and around her heart, slowing and deepening the fickle organ's beat for the first time since she fell through the cliff.
Shepard nodded and moved to the right hand wall, allowing him to get ahead far enough that she could cover him. "Glory hallelujah, Brother Nihlus. Glory hallelujah."
(A-N: I'm going to be taking a short, two week hiatus from posting. I am deep in the unfolding war now, and need to spend a couple of weeks brainstorming and writing out of order to make sure the seeds all get sewn where they should, etc. I may post during this time, but as far as I know, Aug 24th will be my next 'for sure' posting date.
As always thanks so much for reading and reviewing. *hugs for all*)