Morning, if such a thing existed on Noveria, was quiet and uneventful aboard the SSV Normandy. Hushed voices and throbbing engines echoed the restless nothings that permeated Ashley's thick skull. She sat in the golden ambiance of the Normandy's mess hall, sloshing a mug of viscous brown fluid in her olive hands. Lean fingers grasped the vessel around its mouth, hot steam condensing as moisture at the palm.
Sadly, the sensuality of this experience was wasted on the listless gunnery chief. Her salty, condensed "stew" was not stimulating her appetite in the slightest. Her palette craved something cool, something that would refresh the mind and awaken the senses. She once consumed twelve packets of the ubiquitous, "military-grade" hot sauce to win a bet with a mouth-breathing sergeant during one of her dull garrison postings. Of course, she was the only person in her unit who considered the cheap hot sauce to be watery and bland. That wouldn't do the trick. Frozen custard sounded pretty good, although the best ice cream aboard the Normandy tasted like icy packing foam.
Hearing footsteps, Ashley relinquished her mug and rose to full height. Lieutenant Alenko peered at her with those squinty little eyes, and she made a swift chopping motion from her forehead as a campy, theatrical salute.
"That might be the first salute you've ever given me, Chief", Alenko observed, a thin smile playing upon his gentle features.
"Might be", Ashley shrugged, dusting herself for crumbs. She appeared immaculate, but cleanliness was very important to the gunnery chief.
"Shepard wants you" Alenko said as he sauntered to the beverage dispenser. Before even reaching for a cup, Ashley knew the lieutenant would be preparing a black coffee without even a drop of milk. It was humbling to realize what wretched fluids passed for "milk" aboard the most advanced vessel in the Alliance navy.
"Wait, right now?"
"Yep", the lieutenant replied with a heavy sigh. He pressed his forefingers against his temples. Ashley wasn't sure if coffee was the best way to relieve a chronic headache, but she didn't bother to ask him. She already made long strides to her locker, in the depths of the Normandy's lower deck.
Commander Shepard frequently called upon the Chief whenever the fighting was expected to be thick. Shepard had no trouble sending her out into roughest conditions, where even the thickest armor of a professionally trained Alliance soldier couldn't guarantee survival. Didn't hold back, like those bums she once took orders from, too timid to accept the possibility that a "pretty little gal" like Ashley might be injured or killed on their watch. They were cowards, and she despised cowardice.
"Liara, do you know how to install this?"
Doctor T'Soni lifted her head, and saw a thin bar of metal Shepard's gloved hand.
"What is it, some kind of weapon upgrade?"
"Hand me your gun", she requested firmly, and T'Soni complied. She watched as the commander's swift hands went to work on her pistol, and after several sharp clicks, she returned the weapon to Liara.
"Squash rounds. Should come in handy next time".
Next time. The words trickled along fibrous pathways in Liara's temporal lobes.
Although she often carried a pistol for the purpose of self-defense, T'Soni did not relish the thought of her gun packing even greater destructive force that it already possessed. Her biotic powers seemed much easier to control than any mechanized weapon, but perhaps that was merely the result of her asari physiology. In a violent clash against a synthetic foe, a more powerful sidearm would be appropriate. Once again, Shepard's judgment demonstrated exceptional wisdom, particularly for a member of a supposedly impulsive species.
"Thank you, Shepard", came her delayed expression of gratitude.
Shepard was already preoccupied, however. She carefully set a second magazine, glossy and black, within the recesses of her own pistol. Liara could not identify the ammunition type, though she had encountered "squash rounds" at least once before.
During one particularly fascinating excavation, Doctor T'Soni had been interrupted by a human who repeated the same string of questions several times before she decided to ignore him. He appeared to be in an altered state of consciousness, and Liara suspected that he was under the influence of a powerful narcotic. After leaving for several minutes, he interrupted again, this time backed by a group of poorly-dressed bandits, most of whom appeared to be equipped with firearms. Three times she politely asked them to leave her in peace. They drew closer, threatening her with harsh words and weapons, and she had been forced to defend herself with violent measures. Several of them sustained grievous wounds, but nothing terribly debilitating. Liara enjoyed the remainder of her workday without interruption.
"Joker. Status", Shepard cupped a hand to her earpiece.
"Chief has left the building, Commander. Should be there any minute".
"Glad to hear it. Shepard out".
Upon completion of her work, the asari discovered a single firearm dropped by one of the bandits. Curious, and having little else to busy herself with as she awaited the next transport shuttle, Doctor T'Soni studied the weapon. The ammunition type she recognized as the "squash rounds" the commander had recently gifted to her. Also known as "hammerhead", each sheared projectile was considerably softer than that of typical ammunition blocks. The principal behind this design was to allow each round to spread and flatten at the tip upon impact with a hard target, spreading kinetic force throughout the target rather than simply punching a hole right through it.
T'Soni holstered her weapon. She had never been seriously injured by a micro-mass accelerator round before, and she was grateful for it.
"Hey there, bullet sponge!" came a sudden shout from behind, and Liara flinched when the relentless hammer of Ashley's fist impacted with her unarmored shoulder.
"Ready to move out, Commander?" the Chief approached Shepard, leaving Liara alone to rub the soreness from her bruised deltoid. They busied themselves with some of the ammunition Shepard harvested from the recent battle, and Liara was glad for it.
Sleep did not come easily to Urdnot Wrex. He knew he needed it, probably even more than most of the Normandy's crew. They slept regularly, cramping themselves inside tiny "sleeping pods" like insects in a hive. Not so for the krogan.
A stubby little volus once offered him generous payment to work a brief stint as a security guard. It had been a boring job, and like many security personnel, Wrex would doze off during his shifts from time to time. After one particularly lengthy snooze, he awoke to find the volus shouting and spouting all manner of obscenities at him. As it turned out, Wrex had been asleep while the volus's beloved family wished to make an unscheduled visit to his estate. They pleaded for entry, and gave up after several hours of staring into the crimson eyes of a sleeping krogan battlemaster. This was when Wrex discovered that the krogan tendency to sleep while standing was held as extremely unusual and discomforting to many other species. Equally unsettling was their ability to enter a deep slumber without shutting the lids of their eyes. Centuries of surviving in hostile environments had allowed the krogans to develop many extraordinary gifts, making them more resilient and adaptive than most professionally-trained soldiers.
The volus didn't stay angry for long. Wrex figured the perception of a standing, wakeful krogan security guard was enough to discourage interlopers, and the volus apparently felt the same way. The contract earned Wrex a good chunk of change, especially considering the fact that he slept nearly half the time.
It hadn't really been an ideal posting for him, though. All things being equal, Wrex enjoyed the battle far more than the credits. Financial resources comfortably covered his basic needs and a few decent weapons. The rest of it, he saved.
The krogan were not prudent investors, but they were not spendthrifts, either. Why he felt compelled to save most of his earnings was a mystery, even to him. He supposed he only saved the money because it felt like the right thing to do.
"Hey, Wrex", a tiny voice warbled at his right. Wrex blinked himself back into wakefulness, and turned to the speaker.
"Tali", he nodded, taking note of her staggered, asymmetrical gait. "You didn't fall down a flight of stairs or anything, did you?"
"What?" she halted in mid-stride. "No, I didn't fall. I slid".
"Slid?" Wrex repeated the word, groggy mind struggling to envision a tiny quarian injuring herself from a slide. "On the ice?"
"Ice? There wasn't any ice involved, no. I didn't even get that far", she added, gazing into the blackness of the Normandy's vehicle bay.
"You going to tell me what happened, or am I going to stand here like an idiot all day?" he tried to be as explicit in his request as possible. Easy for a krogan trying to extract information from a detail-obsessed quarian.
"Why do you want to know?" she asked him.
"Why? What the hell kind of question is that?" Wrex grumbled, now irritated that his rest had been disturbed by a quarian without a story to tell.
"Fine. Since you asked", the quarian complied at last. "We were in the parking garage, and I tried to warn Shepard that the geth would be waiting for us inside. I don't think she took me very seriously, because once the shooting started, she and Liara had to dive behind a crate just to keep themselves alive".
"Hm", Wrex snorted, unable to understand Shepard's choice of tactics. "She should have sent me in there first. Would have rolled out the carpet for her".
"Carpet? I don't think there would have been much carpet, Wrex. We were outnumbered two to one. Those aren't easy odds, even for you".
Although she was plainly mistaken, Wrex held his tongue and allowed her to continue.
"There were several geth already closing in on us, and they kept firing on Shepard and Liara, so I used the omni-tool you gave me, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah. Skip to the part where you got slapped around".
"I did not getslapped around, Wrex", the quarian corrected him, stepping forward as though trying to daunt him with her frail, fractured physique. Maybe this one had some stones, after all.
"Just keep going", he insisted, stifling the urge to swat her away with one yellow paw.
"As I said, I tried to launch a few mines at them. But they were drones, huge and powerful. I disabled their weapons, then their shields, but they just kept coming. When the first one finally dropped, the second one broke into a full run. I knew I would only have a few seconds before it would reach them, and they would be dead. So I ran".
"You ran?"
"I ran toward it, yes. Not exactly toward it, though. I darted out of cover, trying to pick up speed while keeping pace so that my trajectory would be just behind the geth. I nearly flew right into it, but instead, I dropped to the ground and slid a good two meters across the garage floor. Some parts of my suit have better traction than others, I guess".
"What good did that do?"
"Well, I fired my shotgun at its legs when I passed behind it. I had to wait for the precise moment, when I would be close enough to inflict maximum damage, without throwing myself right into its leg in the process".
"And?"
"And what?"
"Did it work, quarian? Looks to me like you tore a ligament or something".
"Oh, it worked. I slid right into some box or crate, I don't remember. I think I heard Shepard's voice, and some gunfire. The next thing I knew, my leg felt like it was on fire, and Garrus carried me all the way back to the ship".
"So you messed up your leg and the geth's leg? What kind of deal is that?"
"I never thought of it that way", she lowered her voice, as though some grand insight had just been gained. Were all quarians this weird?
"Still. You got the job done. Came back in one piece, sort of".
"That's true. I'm supposed to stay off my feet as much as possible for a while, at least that's what Doctor Chakwas told me".
"Forget her. You don't seem like the type to let other people tell you what to do. Maybe you've got a little krogan blood in you, quarian".
"What? That's not true, I listen to other people all the time. I'm not like-" she stopped herself for fear of bruising what many presumed to be the fragile ego of a krogan. "The quarians aren't like the krogans".
"No? You jumped right in there, smashed your enemies to bits. Threw everything you had at it".
"I didn't do it for fun, Wrex. I did it for my friends", she defended herself with tiny words, which failed to impress the cynical mercenary.
Tali'Zorah nar Rayya shook her head at the baffled krogan, gave one final farewell, and hobbled away to the Normandy's engine room. Wrex waited until she was out of sight, and he was alone once more in the darkness.
The krogan smiled.