The inside of the Nomad was warmer than the icy winds of Voeld, but not warm enough. Sara's death grip on the wheel was much harder to maintain with her numb fingers. It was a real shame she couldn't wear mittens over her armored gloves.
"Steady hand at the wheel, Ryder?" Liam asked, laughter in his voice like always. He was behind her, next to Cora, the two of them scrunched in the surprisingly sparse passenger area of the Nomad.
"I got this," she assured him. Which was not, strictly speaking, true. It was possible the track they were on was at one point meant to be a road, but now it was just a very curving ledge coated in ice, snow, and more ice. But if it turned out she didn't have this, well, there wouldn't be much of an opportunity afterward to yell at her about it.
"This is a beautiful world," Cora said, her soft wonderment leaking through. Over the past few months, she'd noticed Cora had two voices. Her Combat Voice, and her normal voice. Combat Cora barked orders like a commander, and her tone never relaxed down past "harsh." Regular Cora sounded like a little girl coming out of a space station to see the open sky for the first time. It reminded Sara of what Scott said, back on the Citadel, before—
"Beautiful and deadly. My favorite combo," Liam said, and she could hear his grin. She felt like she'd swallowed boiling water. Was he flirting with Cora?
And why not? She'd tried flirting with Cora, briefly, before the former commando explained she was not at all into women. It was half-hearted, rooted as much in missing Scott and wanting to one-up her twin while he was still unconscious as thinking Cora was attractive. But if Liam liked her, well, Sara could see the attraction.
God. What if the two of them ended up together?
She'd met up with Scott for food right after their health screening on the Citadel. She'd met, or at least seen, most of the Pathfinder team that day. It was exciting—a group of people from all different backgrounds that Dad would lead. Specialists. Explorers. Like her, and like Scott. But Scott looked almost dour when they met for noodles.
"Do you think Dad has like, an entire ounce of subtlety in his whole body? Because if he does, I've got a concern," Scott had said. She'd laughed, and punched his arm. And she wished she could do that again, right now, because she hadn't laughed at Scott in over six hundred years.
"Not a single ounce," she told him, "unless it's about covert ops. Is it about covert ops?"
"It's about matchmaking," Scott had told her. And he'd leaned in, like he was imparting a great secret. Even though no one else in the lively noodle shop cared about their conversation at all. "You met Cora, right?"
She'd told him yeah, of course, she'd made an effort to get to know both of the other women Dad picked out for the Pathfinder team. But Scott was convinced that Cora was exactly the kind of woman Dad always wanted him to end up with—idealistic, military, and above-all disciplined as hell. He'd made her laugh so hard she couldn't eat, moping about how Dad always wanted him to be a rise-at-dawn go-getter and now the old man was deliberately putting him in the orbit of a beautiful woman that was exactly the kind of solider Scott wasn't.
But then her brother had leveled his chopsticks at her like he was threatening to stab her with them, and announced in dire tones, "Don't laugh so hard. Dad's got somebody picked out for you, too."
"I really don't think he does, bud," she'd said. "You're paranoid. Dad might, like, think in terms of whose combat skills best complement each other, but personalities . . ."
"He's a total dork. I just met the guy, and he rattled off a bunch of junk about how close the Initiative armor was going to be to something out of some movie. I can already tell you he's seen all those old vids you like," Scott had insisted. "Big guy. Pulled out of some kind of special squad. Bet you Dad wants me to tighten down and you to loosen up, and he's - "
"If you think Dad's ever wanted any human being to loosen up, you're crazy," she'd laughed. But Scott was unconvinced.
"Bet you ten credits," her twin had said, "that you're banging Kosta before we've been in Andromeda a year."
And she'd taken the bet. Right after she threatened to put Scott's baby pictures on the web if he ever talked about her "banging" anybody ever again.
Back then that bet felt like a win-win. She'd either end up proving her brother wrong, and get ten credits, or she'd end up seeing someone. Right now, hearing Liam chuckle with Cora right behind her, it didn't feel like a win-win anymore.
But they were her team. Her people. She couldn't let personal stuff get in the way of the things they had to do. And if she let either of them see that she was bothered, it would get in the way. They'd get awkward and stiff and stilted around her. So she swallowed the lump in her throat and did her best not to let her shoulders clench and hunch.
They all piled out of the Nomad with her while she replaced the angaran medical caches. As usual, Cora and Liam watched her back. She stayed out of it when they all got back in the Nomad and the two of them started joking with each other and teasing her about her driving. She plastered a distant, professional smile on her face and tried really, really hard not to think about how it would feel if Liam and Cora got together.
Because Scott was right. Liam was a huge, huge dork. Like her. She couldn't imagine lounging around watching vids with anyone and being more comfortable. Scott hadn't mentioned, probably hadn't even noticed, Liam's beautiful liquid brown eyes or his ready smile. And he couldn't have known at all that every time she jumped into the middle of a hot situation Liam would be hot on her heels, slicing up "baddies" with those overclocked omniblades.
And if it was just that, just that he was cute and they made a good team, it would be fine. No big deal. She really wanted it to be no big deal. But when he turned that smile on her something hot in the center of her chest tightened, cutting off her air and making it hard to think, and she was very much afraid that it was a Big Deal after all.
A big deal she did not at all have time for.
After a long day attempting to improve their relations with the angara by running various errands for the Resistance, she found herself scanning a frozen lake for a cloaked wraith.
"All right there, Pathfinder?" Liam's voice sounded behind her. She rolled her eyes. Of course. One of them would follow her out, keeping an eye on her even for this.
"Yeah, just helping out that sniper back on the ice atoll," she said, not looking up from her scanner. She felt, more than saw, Liam take up position behind her. Off to the side, where he could watch her back for threats.
"Not what I meant," he said, and his voice was pitched low. Probably an attempt to prevent it from carrying across the ice. "It's all right if you want me to mind my own business, but, you seem tense. Everything all right?"
Crap. Of course he noticed.
"Yeah. It's fine." There. She found the heat signature, and clicked her signal over to the sniper. A shot rang out, and she could tell it hit—the wraith came uncloaked, it jerked, but it didn't go down. In a split second she readied her biotics and threw the beast back. It cracked against the icy hills. And it was down.
"So," she continued, her tone deliberately casual, "you think Cora's beautiful and deadly, huh?"
"What?" he practically squawked. She could look at him now, the incredulity on his face, the wide gestures of his hands as he talked. "I wasn't talking about Cora."
"It's none of my . . .I mean, sorry. I shouldn't have said anything," she said. Even in the cold her cheeks burned. But Liam's eyes were twinkling, his grin lopsided and just this side of rueful. He glanced from her to the dead wraith, his eyebrows cocked in amused disbelief.
"What? Why not? Civilian ship. You can ask whatever," he assured her. He wasn't pitching his voice low anymore. Probably everyone back on that atoll could hear them. Perfect. "But did you see what you just did to that wraith? You're a stone cold badass, you are. You're the deadliest person I know. And I know Drack."
"See, now I know you're just puffing me up," she said, but she could feel herself smiling back at him. It felt like falling, like taking a leap off some high place and trusting in her biotics and her gear to see her safe to the ground.
"A little," he admitted. "But not so much as you might think. Let's get out of here. My lungs are turning into ice."
She walked with him back to the atoll with good grace, in a far better mood than before. But there was a question, burning around the edges of her tongue and threatening to slip out of her mouth. A question she couldn't ask, because no matter what the answer was she didn't have time to deal with it. But it ricocheted around the inside of her skull regardless.
So, you were calling me beautiful?