Chapter 5
"Sorry Commander, no can do," the comm feed chirped with Joker's voice, all three Normandy crewmembers listening in on their personal omni-tool feed. The timing of Garrus' was a little skewed compared to the rest, but that was merely because his VI was working to translate everything into turian. As such, his groan of dismay came a little later when Joker proceeded to announce, "We started discharge a little late. With the ship as it is, there was a problem with the discharge couplings. Estimated time of completion is 1500 hours, local time." Be it as it may, the C-Sec Officer had never learnt to speak any of the human tongues, and was about as proficient without his translator as Shepard was in turian. Which, mind you, consisted of three phrases: "Hello", "Thank you" and the standard, "Screw you", the latter being the very first phrase she had ever picked up. Naturally, learning other languages consisted of learning the insults first.
"What the hell am I supposed to do for two hours?" If Miranda's pout had been any larger, Shepard would have suspected she had just been whipped across the mouth with a wooden plank.
"Whore yourself out?" the turian offered.
"Enough, Garrus." Shepard's head rested in one palm, propped up by an elbow against the metal tabletop, so that her relatively gaunt cheek was smooshed forward, giving her a lopsided chubby look. "And for goodness' sake, no whoring," she was quick to add, noting that Miranda had been surprisingly tickled pink by the idea.
Miranda's chair scraped back, and Shepard braced her hands against the table to follow suit.
"We might a well make the best of this then," it was Miranda who suggested.
"Agreed," the Commander seconded. "The sooner we can find labour and materials, the sooner we can be off on our way to Illium for the final repairs."
"Commander?"
"Yes?"
"I have several Cerberus contacts on Omega I need to catch up with. If I can enlist their help, perhaps we can have several parts shipped in for a fairly low cut. It would save a lot more than platying the markets."
"And by 'catch up', you mean...?" Shepard trailed off, glad to see Miranda took the hint and continued.
"By that I mean I would like to go and see them alone." She had a remarkably stern expression, as if this was set in stone.
While Shepard could have objected - and she wanted to - she realized Miranda would no doubt argue her case until she was forced to retract her objections. In the interest of productivity, she sighed and with far more disapproval than she meant to show, nodded her acquiescence. "Very well. Make sure to contact me if you run into any trouble. We can rendezvous at the Normandy within two hours, proving all goes well."
"Understood," Miranda spoke in all seriousness. "And objection noted, Commander. But do understand that I'm a big girl. I can take of myself," she cooed in a sugary tone. Shepard only scoffed as the busty woman disappeared into the Afterlife crowds, almost itching to call out a profane rebuttal to what she had said..
"So what do we do?" Garrus asked, toying with his glass of liquor. He had taken only a single sip and had merely played with the glass for the rest of their on/off conversation with the Normandy and themselves while they waited for Joker's reply. For some reason, it had taken the comm signal some time to patch through. Curious, as the communications array had never been damaged in the attack, unless something was jamming the signals. No doubt, the interference from the discharge process coupled with the relatively low output of damaged sub-sytems was the culprit. EDI would be sure to investigate, assuming she had noticed the throughput problem. Hardly anything escaped her notice ever since Joker had plugged her into the main ship systems.
"There is a group of salarians that owe me a favour," Shepard noted, pointing a finger at the turian seated across the table from where she stood. "And before you think to object, you're coming with me." The last thing she needed was for someone to recognize the turian and end up placing a scrap mill's worth of shrapnel into his back.
"Figured as much," he grunted, heaving himself up. "Lead the way, oh fearless, Commander. Someone has to watch your back."
"Yeah, cut the crap will you?"
"What did I do this time?"
"You know what I mean."
"Do not!"
Despite the fact they had taken no more than several steps toward the exit, Shepard rounded on her heel to face the turian, who stopped just short enough of slamming into her that he towered precariously off-balance above the smaller human. She had to crane her head back uncomfortably, maintaining her best militaristic, stern expression. Despite the fact Shepard was taller than average for a human woman, even a turian teenager could best her in height. "Ever since the whole fiasco on the Collector base... you've been-"
"Not now," he interrupted far more harshly then he had intended to. There was a glimmer of some emotion in his eyes that Shepard took to be some sort of worry or sadness and Garrus only sighed.
"Alright," she acknowledged with a nod, entirely unaware just how much she had wrenched the turian's insides just now. She figured he was just in a shitty mood from being brushed off for Mordin earlier that day. Though Garrus felt as if his bowels had been clenched in a fist and dumped upside down. For a split moment, he saw the terrible news story recounting the death of "the late Commander Shepard". The reporter had gone on for several minutes, explaining the terrible tragedy while the stunned turian had sat upon his seat, hot drink entirely upended onto the floors and into his lap, entirely unaware it had been joined by a tray of breakfast food; a cold, chopped fish dish and some sticky greens that looked much like boiled spinach. He simply hadn't been able to accept the news, no matter how many channels he had flipped through thinking it was all a mistake or a hoax, though each displayedmuch the same recounting of Shepard's death.
He'd flown into a rage then, unaware of what to do with himself. For the first time in a long time, he had found himself whining softly in a turian expression of sadness. A soft, low keening that only grew in intensity when the reality of it all sunk in, Garrus falling to his knees and pounding his hands into the floor. She had promised to visit him sometime that month. She couldn't be dead. Shepard had never broken a promise!
The very next day he had shown up to work perfectly proper and in control, his co-workers unaware of the suffering he was undergoing. Only the holo-image of him posing with the Commander had disappeared off his desk, turned off and stuffed somewhere into a drawer to be forgotten, lest it bring the pain back up.
"- ...Garrus?" The turian snapped back into reality, quite surprised to find he had spaced out for a moment there. "You coming?"
"Yeah," he grunted, nodding his head. He took after her, but quite half lost in his own little world as he tailed Shepard through the doors exiting Omega. He didn't know what these salarian contacts she talked about were, but he trusted in her to run this little show, leaving it onto himself to make sure she was protected under his watch.
...
"We would if we could," the nervous salarians exchanged a glance and nodded sporadically. "You see, we are..."
"-very busy. Very, very busy," the second salarian continued. They were seated at their dining table, Shepard sitting opposite. Garrus had taken a post off to one side, leaning casually against the wall to watch the discourse. It was mostly Shepard who unnerved the salarians, but there was no mistaking the fact that their eyes would often glance off to one side to take the image of the turian in and make sure he was not about to come and snap their necks or whatever such else they envisioned.
"Busy? With what?"
They gave Shepard a slight sheepish glance before one of the salarian twins stood from the table and went to fetch a datapad of information from a nearby docking station. "The current market in Omega is not favourable," he told her. "As we can see from this information I have collected-"
"Collected?" Shepard interrupted dubiously. There was a severe scowl forming on her face, and a sudden sense of danger gripped her movements and her tone. She noted Garrus had unlatched his sidearm from its holster and had a talon slipping closer to the trigger, ready to fire at a moment's notice. "I've only just contacted you for this discussion. You don't even know what I have to ask. How could you possibly know what I would require or need?"
"Aria - Your ship - gave us - came in battered - the information - and we saw it-" Even as both salarians were talking over one another, each contradicting each word that came out of the previous brother's mouth, they moved back, further and further away from the door. They were practically shouting now, almost huddled up against the kitchen counter on the opposite side of the room. She saw them glancing nervously at the entrance way, whether to make a run for it, Shepard had no clue. Garrus' sidearm was in his hand and even Shepard began to get a sense of impending doom.
She hardly had a chance to linger on it. It was the salarians who warned her to what was about to happen next, for one of them screamed even before the heavy blast hit her back and forced her gut into the table. Amid the falling debris and dust and the clamour of ringing bullets, Shepard managed to orient herself enough to roll over the table, body falling sharply against the edge of the seat on the other side. Garrus had opened fire on something barely visible through the smoke, the rapid fire giving enough cover for her to flip onto her butt and kick the table over for a limited, flimsy sense of cover. She knelt behind it, fumbling her assault rifle into her hands.
"Get in there," a gruff, unfamiliar voice preceded the rapid gunfire that came in return to Garrus' own.
"Blue Suns!" Garrus pierced the air with a shout. His luma-gel targetting display had probably picked up an image of the enemy. His next bullet caused the first merc who came through the door to lose his kinetic shield and take a fatal shot to the forehead from the next round. The upheaval left Shepard in a daze, but she managed to thrust herself upward just enough to clear the top of the table and fire upon the next mercenary in line, the high velocity rounds punching through his kinetic barrier and ablative armour alike. Blue, turian blood sprayed in all directions, mingling with the reddish hue of the human dying just before. Several shots returning fire tore through the doorway, piercing the thin metal of the table behind her as Shepard twisted her body and ducked back down. A sharp pain burned in her shoulder, the suit indicator blinking to indicate the kinetic barrier had taken the force, but energy to the shield temporarily had fallen below fifty percent. One more shot like that and the shield would go down for the cooldown period and she'd be taking those bullets with her ass.
"Shepard!" Garrus screamed.
"Here," she replied amidst more shots. One must have found the hiding salarians, for there was a scream and she watched his slim, unarmored body crumple to the floor, his twin pleading for him to hang in there.
"Can you duck in to the side?" Garrus had asked again. He probably had some plan in mind, but even before Shepard could assess the situation she heard the familiar clinking of a thrown projectile. It skittered along the cement floors, bouncing against a chair leg before the flash bang went off in a display of blinding white light and high pitched noise that drilled into her head like a thousand migraines.
Blind and defenseless, her ears ringing and heartbeat pounding within her skull as if it was a drum, Shepard fumbled her body to the floor, strangely aware of the bullets zinging above her head. She could feel the floor shake as if many booted feet were running through the doorway in her direction. Disoriented still, she could feel hands grabbing at her shoulders, forcing her upward and off her knees. The Commander managed to wrestle an arm back, elbow smashing into the nose of the assailant on her right, tears streaming from her eyes from the pain of the bright light. There was a yelp and a faint trace of an image came back to her, smeared and muddied in bright yellow aftervisions. The merc she had just elbowed was holding his bloodied nose and being shoved aside by a comrade to grab her arm yet again. She could see Garrus in much the same predicament, pinned to the floor with a booted foot pressed up against his cowl, keeping his face into the cement. He grunted something and attempted to flip himself over, only to be kicked roughly enough times until his body went still and limp.
There was wailing and snivelling that came to her now, no doubt the salarian mourning his brother, and also the loud, painful shouts of the mercenaries who held her. It felt as if their every word was shouted directly into her ears, forcing their words at her. Sluggishly, she turned her head, struggling briefly against the grip that held her from behind, wresting her arms up and back at the shoulders. The painful hold had her at a disadvantage of dislocating an arm, and she was forced to stop even before the mercenaries decided she was better off completely still.
The last she saw was the incoming butt of a rifle before her vision went black.
A/N: Yet another chapter. For those of you following the original, I am going to be removing it, so hopefully you've updated your links.
Please rate and review though! I would love to hear what everyone thinks of it so far. :)