Shepard looked between the three paths, and it was blatantly obvious that he was trying to figure out which way to go first.
"Sir?"
"Yes Williams?"
"Having trouble?"
"Definitely," the marine reached into one of the special pouches on his hardsuit, pulling out a small silver disk with engravings on both sides, he made a fist, settling it on top of his thumb he flicked it up into the air, sending it spinning and careening upward.
As the disk spun in free-fall, Wrex gave the Spectre a confused look, "...Shepard?"
With a quick motion of his hand, Shepard snatched the spinning disk out of the air and slapped it onto the back of his other hand, looking down at it intently for just a moment before putting the disk back into his pocket, "Yes Wrex?"
The krogan gave him a look that was certainly questioning the marine's sanity, "What the hell was that?"
He smiled at his companion, shouldering his rifle and heading down the path to the right, "It's an old thing that human's used to use to decide between two choices."
This got the Gunnery Chief's attention, "Wait... that was an old coin?"
"An old eight-piece from the days of the British Empire on Earth actually," the Commander froze just beyond the range of the automatic door in front of him, "Later though. We've got geth to stop."
"Wrex, Williams, on both sides of me, assault rifles. I'll trigger the door, if anything so much as twitches, shoot it," the Spectre brought up his rifle, bringing the scope to his eye, "T'Soni, behind me, biotics at your discretion."
The squad moved at his orders, the two heavily armored members of the group getting on either side of him, once there, Shepard took a step forward.
The door clinked and opened with a metallic sound, the hallway looked empty.
A binary sound that likely passed for surprise in whatever language the geth used told them otherwise.
Three pairs of guns snapped up at the sound, pointed at the pair of geth snipers on a ledge above the walkway.
Shepard didn't bother pulling the trigger, his gun coming back down even as the near deafening sound of two assault rifles firing on full auto filled the small space.
'Sonuva-!' -THOOM-
Mason pulled the trigger on reflex, the hypersonic slug blasting away the drone's shielding. As the red painted rocket drone hopped into the air shouldered the rifle and snapped his wrist, a grenade disk popping up into his hand.
I felt completely and utterly useless.
Gunnery Chief Williams was an extremely skilled and hardened warrior, Undurot Wrex was a terrifying presence on the battlefield in addition to being a skilled biotic, what use was I?
When I saw the Commander's hand snap up, catching a glimpse of a small disk held between his fingers, I immediately covered my ears.
The camera on my hard-suit caught the blur of the grenade as it flew through the air and magnetically attached itself to the drone in mid-jump.
-click-
In the fraction of a second between Shepard pressing the detonator and the following explosion I had time to ponder the likelihood of the drone surviving the charge, which was entirely dependant on whether it was a tech mine or an actual grenade that the Commander had thrown.
The blinding flash, low boom, and pressure wave of a high explosive grenade left the drone as an almost entirely empty casing. The forms of the two geth soon crumpling off of the balcony onto the walkway before us.
It was things like this that made me feel useless, I barely had a chance to react. I was still unused to confrontation in all of its forms, let alone life or death combat.
Shepard started to walk forward, bringing his rifle to bear, and my eyes trailed past him towards the end of the hallway.
Then the Krogan spun out into the open at the end of the hallway, flinging its arm; and even from here, I could hear the soft beep as a grenade armed itself in the air.
We reacted.
Shepard dived. Williams started to cover her head. Wrex began to step in front of me.
I shoved the wall of Krogan aside and threw out my other arm, the dark energy flying from my palm in a wave of blue.
The grenade was thrown back into the enemy Krogan, and the large amphibian was slammed back into the wall behind it.
Moments later, the explosive disk detonated with a dull roar, thermite paste flying everywhere at the end of the hall and soon burning through the Krogan's armor and flesh.
Another pair of the massive Krogan leapt out of cover, running straight at us with unbelievable speed.
I threw out my other arm, distorting the energy of the planets gravity well and coalescing it in a single point just in front of the charging pair.
As the blue sun of a singularity flared into existence, and the Krogan sent into orbit, Shepard reacted.
"Unload!"
Even from his unusual position on the floor, laying on his side like that, Mason's rifle boomed. My two other companions bringing their own weapons to bear and filling the air with a staccato of gunfire; Mason's rifle the downbeat of every measure.
It was a short song.
When the singularity ended, the bullet-filled corpses fell to the floor, and I was left staring at them, speechless, and blinking stupidly.
I had done that?!
How in the Goddess' will had I done that?! Even Mason hadn't reacted like that! And I had shoved Wrex! What in the name of the Goddess was I thinking?!
A sound snapped me out of my total stupidity and my head turned sharply to find Shepard standing up. He glanced over at me, his gaze less intense than it usually was, almost appreciative, "Nice save Liara. That could've been messy," and with that, he turned his covered face back towards the hall, bringing his rifle up once again.
I flushed, I couldn't help it. It felt as if he had given me a glowing compliment and showered me with amazing praise, despite the fact that he had only said a grand total of seven words. His opinion seemed to count for much more than it should to me. It should count for a lot of course, it was at his will that I was allowed to stay on the ship, he was an unbelievably discerning and attentive individual and any praise from him surely had to be earned, but why did it fill me with warmth like this from such a small compliment?
"Hey, T'Soni. We should keep moving you know, keep up with the Commander and all that."
"Eep!"
A.N.): Okay, here's the deal, the writing but caught a hold of me and startd throwing me around until I started writing on an idea I had for an Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic. So i did. There's also the little issue that my 360 died on me the day after I started working on this again, it just came back in from repairs, so I'm starting on this again. I think I'm going to alternate between each story, chapter by chapter. I'm going to have some free time for a while now, so if I don't update something reasonably soon, shoot me!