Liara
Shepard engaged the skycab's engines and turned off the auto-drive function. The vehicle jolted into the air and she slammed on the accelerator, shooting after Vasir's car. I winced as I flew back against the seat and the wound in my side twinged. I wondered if there might still be shards of glass inside the wound, because, in spite of the medi-gel applied by the armor's medical interface, the wound would not stop seeping blood.
"You okay, Liara?" Shepard asked, though her eyes remained fixed on Vasir's tail lights.
"I am in a glorious state, thank you." I hissed. "I've been shot at, blown up, and now am chasing down a homicidal Spectre with a woman who is supposed to be dead."
"Miranda, did you hear that?" Shepard yelled at the back seat. "You're supposed to be dead! Is there a memo I missed?"
"You're not funny, Shepard." the woman drawled.
"I'm fucking hysterical." the former commander countered, and I could not stop the slight smile that crossed my lips.
"Left!" I shouted, seeing Vasir's car cut a sharp turn. "Go left."
"On it." Shepard replied, throwing the wheel to the left and following Vasir.
"Another left!" I said, leaning forward and placing my hand on the dash, staring at Vasir's car as though I could will us to move faster and overtake her. "I am not letting her get away with that data." I murmured, mostly speaking to myself, but Shepard overheard.
"Don't worry." Shepard spoke, her voice holding the same iron reassurance that had given me the strength to go from the landscape of archaeological digs to total immersion in the brutality of the battlefield. "She's not getting away."
"Side-seat driving notwithstanding." Miranda muttered, and I wanted to slap a biotic seal over the woman's mouth to prohibit her from talking.
My heart plummeted into my stomach as Vasir whipped her car to the right and descended, driving through a building under construction.
"Fly around." I ordered Shepard, but then the car plummeted downwards and Shepard engaged the car's speed thrusters, sending us hurtling towards the landscape of rebar, moving cranes, and crates of equipment. I could see people working and as much as I wanted to close my eyes, I couldn't.
"Fastest way is through." Shepard justified.
"You are not flying through an active construction zone!" I shrieked
"Looks that way." Shepard ground out between clenched teeth as she pulled the car hard to the right, scraping the top of the vehicle against the wall.
Sparks showered out from the impact and I clung to the dash with every milligram of strength that I possessed so that I did not get tossed against the door. I gritted my teeth as Shepard whipped through the construction zone and slammed the car back into the upright position, accelerating the engines again as we sped towards Vasir.
Nausea bubbled in my stomach as Shepard tailed Vasir between skybridges, engaging the engine thrusters as much as she could in order to catch up to the Spectre's faster vehicle. Even so, it was not enough and the frustration built in the back of my mind until I could not help but speak.
"Go!" I glared at Shepard as though she was the person responsible for the lagging of our pace.
Her eyes were riveted to Vasir's car, her hands clenched on the steering wheel, the muscle in her jaw worked as she gritted her teeth in concentration. Still, she seemed entirely too at peace, as though she neither realized nor cared that my fate, the promise I had made to what little conscience I had left, hinged on bringing down Tela Vasir and recovering the data that she had stolen.
"Go go go go go go go!" I bit off the words in a short staccato rhythm as I watched Vasir's car move further and further away from us.
"How the two of you sustained a romantic relationship is beyond me." Miranda groused from the back and the sole thing that kept me from throwing a biotic slam in her face was the fact that it would destroy the skycab. "There are opposites and then there are the poles of the bloody galaxy!"
"Is she incapable of shutting her mouth?" I sliced at Shepard as she continued to pursue Vasir.
"Most days, yes, but occasionally smart things come out of it so I haven't sewn her lips shut yet." Shepard grinned and the world seemed somehow right with that expression on her face and the tang of acidic humor that had taken me quite some time to adjust to.
Shepard yanked on the wheel again and the glare of headlights in front of us blinded me. I closed my eyes as the skycab became a flying death trap, jerked and pulled, lifted and lowered…I felt the same as I had inside the Rabid Buffalo on Virmire when we were being shot at by the geth while driving through a riverbed.
"Oncoming traffic!" I shrieked, this time not at Shepard. "She's driving us into oncoming traffic!"
"I happen to be well aware." Shepard answered, still sounding indifferent.
I dared to open my eyes again as Shepard navigated through the swarming mass of transport vehicles in the Nos Astra sky. I found the darting line of Vasir's vehicle and struggled to keep her in sight as Shepard kept us from crashing, exploding, and falling to our deaths.
We whipped through a small tunnel and continued following her. Her lights flared and something dropped into the air and hovered there.
"Fuck!" Shepard cursed as she swerved to avoid it, but another vehicle drove by and the sky bloomed with the oranges and reds of an explosion.
The skycab flew several meters in the air unchecked and not responding to Shepard's manipulating of the controls. The frame shuddered and the engines groaned. My stomach lurched and I doubled over, hissing as the action put undue pressure on my wound. I felt the heat of blood on my skin once more and knew that it had re-opened, yet another inconvenience in a day that was rapidly becoming a nightmare of unmatched proportions.
"She's dropping proximity mines!" I shouted a warning over the ringing inside my skull.
Shepard's silver eyes widened in feigned disbelief as she wrenched the car back on course. "You don't say!?" her eyebrows lifted and she slammed on the accelerator, sending us once more careening after Vasir.
I groaned as Shepard deftly manipulated the skycab around the proximity charges that Vasir kept dropping until I wondered how many of them she had simply tucked away in her car.
And if she has something as powerful as proximity charges with built in anti-grav generators simply sitting around, what else is she armed with that could spell our demise?
"Shit!" Miranda cursed from the back and biotic energy spun from her hands. She cocooned herself in a shimmering shield as bullets peppered the frame of the car.
Shepard's face went white and she pursed her lips into a thin line. I saw two sky cars behind us, tailing us carefully, muzzles protruding from the sides of the vehicle.
"She has reinforcements." I informed Shepard. "Behind us."
"Roger that." Shepard's voice was tight, and I realized that Miranda's shield had only protected the woman herself, and that Serena might have been injured in the unexpected attack. "What sort of weapons does this thing have?" she asked.
I stared at her, incredulous. "This is not the Rabid Buffalo!" my voice rang louder than it should have, with more heat than it needed, but I could not stop it. "This is a skycab! It has a fare meter!"
"Old fashioned way it is then." Shepard nodded, her lips still in that thin line that I knew meant she was hiding physical discomfort.
She pulled the cab straight up and punched the thrusters, moving us as fast as the vehicle could towards the…wall above the opening of a traffic thoroughfare carved into the city of Nos Astra. I could hear Miranda shouting at Shepard, but did not care to understand the words. I said nothing, praying to the goddess that what Shepard was doing would make some sort of sense.
We were too close when Shepard cut the anti-grav systems off. The car plummeted with an alarming speed and my heart leapt into my throat and my stomach filled my heart cavity just as Shepard re-engaged anti-grav and sped through the tunnel. I looked back, watching pieces of the skycars, now scrap metal, falling from the top of the tunnel, where Vasir's re-enforcements had met their deaths.
I turned my eyes forward in time to see Vasir weaving through the heavy traffic, too close to a large truck.
"Truck!" I shouted.
"I see it." Shepard countered.
"Shepard! Truck!" I yelled as she did not change course at all, instead driving straight through the chaos that Vasir and her proximity mines had caused.
"I was dead, Liara, not blind!" Shepard shouted, and for a moment, I heard the anger in her tone that had lifted every hair on every neck aboard the Normandy SR1 when it was brought to bear.
Another proximity charge blew and I gasped as the skycab was flung against the wall of the tunnel; only a clever maneuver from Shepard saved us from being smashed between the wall and the flying debris of the truck we had barely dodged. We sped through the tunnels, gaining time on Vasir as once more she led us into a stream of oncoming traffic.
The Spectre took a sharp turn and I groaned internally as I saw another truck looming in our way. I looked to Shepard; her eyes were darting back and forth and she was blinking too rapidly, even for a human. I waited, not wanting that anger directed at me again…it was the anger that threw men out of the airlock, that tortured Cerberus scientists in the most chilled of blood.
"Another truck!" I spoke at the last moment.
"Goddammit!" Shepard swore, pulling the car up as the truck took a sharp turn.
She pressed the accelerator and yanked the wheel, riding up the trailer of the vehicle and slamming down on the thrusters, launching us forward until we hovered over Vasir's skycar.
"This is gonna suck." Shepard muttered, pulling her pistol out and pressing the window control until I could feel the chilled air rushing into the car. "Warning, fun times ahead."
With that, Shepard sped up until we were above and in front of Vasir. Then, she cut the anti-grav and we plummeted again, landing harshly on Vasir's skycar. I winced as my head hit the roof of the cab. Shepard re-engaged anti-grav and moved the cab in reverse, scraping across the top of Vasir's vehicle and moving behind it. The Spectre's car stuttered in the air, no longer charting a smooth path through the sky.
Shepard moved the car to the left and moved her weapon arm through the window, firing at the weak points of the skycar. I glanced at her arm and saw a thick, dark liquid running down and between the plating and my alarm accelerated. She kept firing her weapon, but the bullets had little to no effect.
"Miranda, take left, Liara right." Shepard ordered as Vasir's skycar began to lose altitude. "Biotic shockwaves, both of you. Blast that bitch out of the sky."
"Shepard, are you insane?" Miranda asked. "There is oncoming traffic and a head on collision at this speed…"
"Is bad for our health, I know." Shepard quipped. "Now grow some damn ovaries and Kick. Her. Ass!"
I slammed my fist on the window control and half stood, leaning out of the window, feeling the win buffeting and stinging my face. My eyes began to water and I blinked rapidly to clear them, focusing on the car in front of me, and of bringing it down and taking back what was mine. Biotic energy swarmed in my hand and I built it into a maelstrom, noticing, out of the corner of my eye, that Miranda did the same.
We released our energy simultaneously and the shockwave slammed into Vasir's skycar. Smoke plumed from the vehicle and a warm sense of triumph settled over me as I crawled back into the car, pressing my hand to my aching side, looking at Shepard.
Approval, pride, and victory lived in her silver eyes and she followed Vasir's plummeting skycar with the sense of purpose that had saved the galaxy. But in that purpose, she spared a moment to look my way, smile, and speak.
"You're such a fucking badass." Shepard whispered, for my hearing alone. "I never forgot that. Even when I was dead. I didn't forget that."
The words that she did not say, that I could hear, hung in the air between us like a tangible torment that made me wish to clutch them with one hand and set fire to them with the other.
I didn't forget you.