Shepard sighed, sliding another heatsink into her shotgun as bullets rattled into the stone outcrop she was using for cover. She could see Garrus crouched behind a similar formation fifteen feet to her right and he caught her eyes and made a face she vaguely recognized as disgust before miming shooting himself in the temple with one hand. She nodded and pretended to yawn, and could hear him chuckle through the translator. The barrage of bullets suddenly cut short as four people simultaneously decided to reload. Shepard made a sound of absolute disgust as she stood, whipping a ball of pulsing biotic energy out in front of her as she vaulted out of cover.
The shockwaves caught all four of their attackers, tossing them up in the air where the trio had little trouble dispatching them. Shepard sighed again, snapping her shotgun into place at the small of her back and stretching as she looked up at the ramshackle hideout their latest targets had erected. Killing pirates proved to be the most boring kind of work, the majority of them unskilled in the most basic aspects of team fighting. The general strategy seemed to be `shot bullets in one direction until things are dead` and that made their assaults little more than outright slaughter.
"EDI, what are we looking at for active hostiles?" She asked, as Jack leant to the side and spit on the ground. The arid planet of Hun was covered in fine silicone sand that stuck with astounding competency to anything damp, such as tongues and teeth. Shepard grimaced at the unpleasant sensation of it grinding around as she spoke.
"Negative, Commander. It seems that we eliminated the brunt of their organization when we attacked their vessel. This was likely only a discretionary guard force, though mech security is a possibility."
"So we can leave then?" Jack asked, obviously unimpressed by their current surroundings. A hard wind was blowing over the silicate dunes, blowing the stinging sand into them from all sides. The other woman dragged her hand over her head and the dust collecting in her buzzed hair scattered across her shoulders in a wave.
"No, I doubt these guys were set up with any sort of mech that we can't handle. We'll do a sweep for salvage and info, and signal for the shuttle when we're done." She tapped the radio to signal an end to their conversation and advanced on the doorway of the small building.
"I don't get it, Shepard." Jack complained as they made their way inside, automatically noting the squalid surroundings that typified many Terminus pirate lairs they had been attacking in the past month. She kicked over a pile of greasy dishes as they made their way through the mess hall, a room so disgusting that not even Garrus could stomach the obvious joke. Pirates were not the sort that kept a dish-washing rotar, it seemed. "We storm in here, take everything valuable, fix up their ships and just fly off to some colony and give it all away. What are you, Robin Hood?"
"I've got it figured out, Jack." Shepard replied. "You don't have to worry."
"I have to admit, I'm a little lost too Shepard." Garrus cut in as they made their way into the next room. There were terminals here, two of them, and Shepard holstered her pistol and crouched down in front of the first one, flipping open the service panel so she could access the circuit board. "I know you said you wanted to empower the people, but giving them guns and starships? Isn't that sort of..."
"Stupid?" Jack supplied helpfully.
"I know what I'm doing." Shepard insisted, cursing as the circuit board shot a couple greenish sparks past her helmet. A moment later the terminal lit up and Shepard stood, tapping at her omnitool to set up a data mine.
"Do you?"
She stopped, turning around and fixing her doubtful companions with a hard stare. Her eyes were intense, almost black but for that eternal sliver of orange lights circling her iris, like a solar eclipse. As her omnitool continued to pull streams of data from the pirates systems she put her hands on her hips and sighed. "Okay, I can see where this is going."
She went to the second terminal and began the same bypass process as she began to talk, her back to them. They did not need to see her face to know that she had her tacticians face on. It was the same face she used when she played poker, completely unreadable beyond a decisively confident intensity around the eyes and the solid, expressionless lines of her mouth. It was the face that stared down krogan and broke tight lipped mercenaries without so much as a raised hand, the one that made them follow her into the most deadly and insane situations imaginable.
"I can't control the Terminus. I'm not a government, I don't have an army, I just have one ship with a damn fine crew that can do just about anything I point it at. So the only way to unite the Terminus is to strengthen the people who want to be united. I could take the ships we attack, the money and salvage we find and strengthen my own position but that doesn't change the fact that I'm only one woman. So I'm going to take the ship we just captured and give it to the governor of Gathras in the Jorun system, because he's got a decent sized colony that's producing agricultural surplus. He's focused on economic expansion and defense, so he'll use it to expand inter-system trade, and the money that it makes him to train a garrison that will be able to defend the planet." She stopped to apply another data mine.
"Because of the wealth the new trade routes are creating, he'll suddenly have a direct interest in the success and defense of other colonies. They'll grow closer and closer, if only for the money and security unity will provide them under their new circumstances." She put her hands on her hips again, looking between the two of them. "Questions?"
"What's to stop the governor from going pirate?" Garrus asked immediately, his mandibles quivering. "That's generally what people do out here, given the slightest advantage."
"Please, Garrus. I'm giving him a ship that I acquired by storming in and killing everyone on board. The weapons I'm giving him are the ones I took off the enemies I killed, for no other reason than because I felt like it. Why risk getting horribly killed by me for money, when you could make just as much in a way that instead guarantees you my protection?" She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Would you take that risk?"
He did not need to answer that.
"Aren't you banking a lot on the general good nature of people for this, Shepard?" Jack's sceptisism was more blatant, as she made a face of general disgust at the idea. "The general good nature of the Terminus Systems?" Shepard turned to look at her, her back straight and confident, her shoulders square.
"Yes." She answered, before her omnitool dinged, alerting her to the completion of her download. She sent the data to EDI, before she drew her gun and continued advancing through the compound.
"And you don't think that's, oh I don't know, fucking INSANE?" Jack asked, exasperation lacing her voice. The garbage piles and faint acrid smell of sweat seemed to be almost everything the base contained. They must have sold off the majority of their take not long ago. "To rely on the good nature of a bunch of people renown throughout the galaxy for being a group of sour, vicious, crusty, violent assholes?"
"Saying everyone who lives in the Terminus Systems is a criminal is like saying everyone who lives in asari space isn't. There are areas of the galaxy where the people in power have different reputations, but when you go down to the lowest level of society, the lowest and largest levels, everyone is pretty much the same. They want to protect their families, have enough to eat, sleep somewhere warm, and not have to worry that some hammer is going to come smashing unexpectedly out of nowhere and crush them." She glanced over her shoulder. "I spent three years of my life as street-trash in the borders of the Terminus. I met some of the best people of my life there, people who let themselves be nothing because they didn't know there was anything better. I'm giving them something better. Something worth fighting for."
Jack gaped for a moment. "I don't know what's worse, the fact that you just said all that bullshit or the fact that you really, honestly believe it." She choked out after a moment.
Shepard turned back to the door and said nothing. The rest of the base provided little in the way of valuables, and Jack swore viciously about the waste of time while they made their way back to the shuttle pick up point. Shepard continued to say nothing, and stared silently at the horizon as they waited, her eyes pressed almost entirely closed to protect them from the waves of blowing sand. Jack approached her cautiously, her hands folded in front of her in what was the most timid posture she could ever remember seeing on the other woman.
"Shepard?" She asked, her voice was confident at least. Nothing could really keep the fire out of Jack, not even her Commander's ire.
"What is it?" Her tone was harder then she intended, and Jack bristled. Shepard shook her head, holding up a hand to stall the aggressive young woman's immediate retreat. "Sorry, sorry. I'm always so tense these days. What did you want?"
"I just... look you know I'm not good at this shit so don't expect anything fancy." Jack shoved her hands in the pockets of her baggy pants and glared at the armored figure before her. "But I feel... not good about what I said. You've never given me a reason to believe there's something you can't do, so in the end I'll be more surprised if we end up doing the logical thing."
"What's the logical thing?" Shepard asked, crossing her arms as a small smile touched her lips.
"We crash, burn and die horribly." Jack replied with a shrug. "Or get raped to death by pirates. Or get captured by slavers and spend the rest of our short lives sucking batarian dick. We should set up a pool or something."
Shepard laughed, and after a moment Jack did to. As the shuttle pulled down to the planet surface she clapped the other woman on the shoulder, her gauntlets rattling. "Put me down for five hundred credits on 'save the galaxy and live happily ever after', okay?"
"A hundred-to-one odds, Shepard." Jack grinned, as they climbed up into the small vehicle. Garrus gave them an odd look as he shook sand out of his head fringe. "If you were smart, you'd put your money on the dick-sucking. That sounds promising."
"Maybe for you." Shepard replied, which earned her a retaliating shot to the shoulder that made her entire arm go numb. They both laughed as the tiny craft began its ten minute climb through the thin atmosphere to be scooped up by the orbitting Normandy.
"You guys are weird." Garrus commented, shaking his heavy head as he looked between the two of them, which only made them laugh harder. They spent the rest of the trip up in silence, staring at the tangled nets of stars and thinking about everything that was waiting for them out there. From this distance, in silence, it seemed like they might actually manage it.
"Joker, plot a course for the Jorun system." Shepard ordered as soon as her boots struck the polished floor of the shuttle bay, tugging her helmet off. She hooked the chin guard into the convienient loop on her belt as she headed for the elevator, running her hand through the curls that had become pasted to her head with sweat. They hung damply into her eyes and she sighed, pushing them away. She needed to get this all cut off again.
"Shepard, Mordin has requested to see you as soon as possible." EDI informed her. Shepard stopped, staring up at the cieling out of habit, even though she knew there was nothing there to see.
"Did he say why?" She asked.
"He said it was concerning medical matters." The AI reported. Shepard frowned, rubbing at the back of her neck. This was worrying. What if something was wrong with Thane's implants? What if his complex lung physiology was causing some sort of unforeseen side effect? She strode briskly to the elevator and directed it to the CIC, a frown beginning to crease her forehead. But when the tech lab door whooshed open he looked unconcerned, his gaze barely wavering from his console screen.
"Shepard, was hoping you'd come by." Mordin said, looking up from his computer screen for a moment and then back down, tapping furiously. "Will only be a moment."
"Well it helps that you had EDI specifically ask me to come see you about 'medical matters'." Shepard commented, examining the unimpressive looking square of metal that seemed to be the current article of interest in the laboratory that Mordin had overtaken and now called his own. She glanced up as he shook his head and finally dropped his hands, looking disappointed. "I'm still not entirely sure what you meant by those words. Medical matters."
"Will explain. EDI informed me of your sudden interest in drell physiology. Wanted to make some recommendations as physician knowledgeable in biology of many different species." Mordin began to circle around the work table as Shepard stood up straight, her face twisted into a mask of absolute horror. "No need to look so concerned Shepard, recommendations strictly on a patient-doctor level. No need to attach negative feelings of embarrassment because of intimacy of topic."
"Understand you have been consulting Fornax magazines' extranet site for information. Inadvisable, hardly a reputed publication, much of the content designed to spike hormone levels rather than properly inform, though video archives you have already accessed should provide firm understanding of the mechanics of things, it would be unwise to proceed without more in-depth data." Mordin typed at his omnitool, scrolling through the information.
"Mordin?" Shepard rasped, her voice higher than usual as though she were trying to stop herself from screaming. Really, she was trying to stop herself from throwing Mordin and possibly herself through the nearest airlock. Probably EDI too. Somehow.
"Yes, Shepard?" The salarian chirped, not looking up from his omnitool.
"We need to talk about boundaries. Actually, what we probably need is to never speak, ever again. Or at least you need to never speak." She pinched at the bridge of her nose, taking deep breaths to steady herself. She had woken up this morning feeling so great, at least compared to how she could remember feeling since her sixteen hour nap.
"No need to be so uncomfortable! Simply wish to advise of possible complications and offer advice. Prolonged contact may cause rash, also be advised that reaction coupled with your cybernetic skin weaves may have unforeseen side effects. Also, drell saliva contains compound found to be psychotropic in most humans. Be prepared." He smiled innocently up at her. She supposed, since salarians had no hormonal drives and therefore no real concept of the sort of intimacy that surrounded the act of mating, he really was not trying to make her so uncomfortable, but that did not stop her from wishing the floor would open up suddenly and swallow her whole.
"Can provide soothing ointments if needed, also possibly something to counteract effects of saliva exchange if effects prove too intense. Will be hard to avoid, understand that use of tongue is crucial in the mating habits of drell." Was he winking at her? No, no, no, this was too weird. She had to leave before her nose started bleeding.
"Thanks for the information Mordin. You probably don't want to have this conversation with Thane, okay?" She said, slowly making her way into a position where she could sprint for the door. Anything to get away from... whatever this was. The most awkward five minutes of her life, most assuredly.
"Already have, Shepard. Thane was a great deal more relaxed." Mordin replied. "Even though it's much more complicated for him, bigger changes."
Shepard bit back her curiosity at THAT little comment. However drell women differed from human ones, beyond the obvious ways she had found, she was pretty sure she did not want to hear about them from Mordin. She continued her steady retreat and Mordin waved to her as she turned to flee back to the relative sanity of the rest of the ship. She was pretty sure she never wanted to see this room again, after that little exchange.
"Enjoy yourself Shepard!" Mordin called after her. She waved one hand in vague goodbye, not turning or looking at him in any way. She straightened slightly as she made her way onto the command deck, nodding at a few crewmen as they made their way back and forth down the halls. She felt like everyone was in on the joke, tossing her scandalous looks, and shook her head. It was just left over insanity from the conversation she had just escaped.
Shepard headed for the elevator, tapping at her omnitool in her lingering curiosity. The extranet was terrifying at times, especially when the topic of sex was at hand, but she managed to find a site that did not look like porn. Or at least it did not look like it was too terribly graphic porn. As she scanned the columns of data and the very informative diagrams provided she realized exactly what Mordin had been talking about.
Half an hour orgasms? She felt her eyes widen, eyebrows disappearing behind the thick fall of bangs across her forehead. These people did not mess around when it came to fucking. The average drell love session, complete with their typically extensive foreplay, usually totaled at three hours. Three hours! And despite the fact they had no clitoris or nipples the bitches orgasmed for thirty goddamn minutes! She could barely imagine what that would feel like.
It must be odd for him indeed, she thought as she climbed into the elevator. It seemed like drell women were more different then she thought, whereas all the vids she had watched, most of them cringeworthy some of them... not so bad, suggested that beyond a few negligent differences drell men were fairly similar to human ones. So where did that leave her and Thane? Was he weirded out by the knowledge of how different she would be under her clothes? How separate she was from what he knew, what he no doubt found desirable?
She reached her quarters and immediately began to strip out of her armor, peeling the many layers of reinforced metal, mesh and padding off until she stood naked save for a combat bra and underwear in the centre of her room. She kicked her discarded armaments into a relatively contained pile and headed for the bathroom. She resisted the urge to examine all her flaws in the mirror and took a long steaming hot shower instead, during which she brushed her teeth three times, until the foam she spat stopped looking brown. Satisfied with her cleanliness she dressed herself in her usual listless black pants and shirt and sat down to go over the information she had mined out of the pirates computers.
Most of it was junk, like she had expected, but there were a few promising leads, most notably, a rivalry with another gang of similar thugs a few systems over. Apparently, they had been quarreling over pillage rights to a few colonies in the area, neither of them brave enough to make a committed assault on the other. She pulled up more star charts, more planetary stats and colony brochures to begin the plans for their next movement. It was a slow way to start, but she knew she just had to get the ball rolling, just get some momentum going and she would be able to do great things.
At least, she thought she knew. The doubt she had heard in Jack's voice still festered, like a splinter in her mind. She found herself wondering if her faith in the fundamental decency and really, survival instinct of people was misplaced. Plenty of people in life had given her plenty of reasons to doubt. But plenty of others had given her reasons to believe.
Standing, she abandoned her work. There would be plenty of time for it later, as they charted a course to the disputed colonies and continued the purge. She made her way out the door, toward the elevator. She had long ago accepted that as an XO she would have to do lots and lots of desk work, but that did not mean she had to like it. She had earned the right to procrastinate a little bit, go have a bite to eat and maybe make plans to play Skyllian Five with Donnely and Daniels again. She had enjoyed that.
When she got to deck three, she already knew where she was going, despite her attempts to decieve herself in the elevator. Thane looked up at her as she entered, from his seat on the small cot he had set up in the room. She realized he was bare-chested and her eyes immediately dropped to his muscled torso, knowing what she would find from the vids she had subjected herself to but still shocked by exactly how vibrant drell markings were.
He jumped up, shielding his mid rift with both hands. She looked up at his face, one eyebrow quirked in question.
"No need to look so bashful." She chided. "I've seen stomachs before. Even drell stomachs. Now." She made a face as a few particularly vivid memories of certain less savoury vids sprang to mind and Thane cleared his throat, still covering the lower half of his stomach, just what poked up above the waist of his pants.
"Ah, Siha. It is considered very, shall we say, intimate for a drell to show their abdomen to someone. Something along the lines of how human women treat their breasts." She knew drell did not blush but she could have sworn that, had Thane the capacity for it, he would have been. She jumped, realizing exactly how invasive her staring had been and turned her back on him to preserve what remained of his modesty. Not much. She had seen enough, the way the dark lines along his arms twisted down, off his shoulders, along the side of his pectorals and down, twisting together as they descended under his waist band. And the two little strips of red, darker than his throat, almost like blood, that flanked the black. She could not help but peek discreetly over her shoulder as he pulled his shirt on, noting the continuation of the forked, lightning-shaped patterns from his arms, shooting across his rib cage.
"Have you ever considered locking the door when you change?" She asked conversationally as she turned around. Thane sighed, running one hand over his scaled head, and shrugged helplessly.
"I thought I had. I was... distracted at the time." He confessed, pulling on his jacket. Shepard was sad to see the muscular arms and their many jagged patterns disappear, but was more focused on what he had said. She narrowed her eyes slyly at him.
"Mordin?" She asked. He nodded, folding his hands behind his back.
"He was... excessively helpful. And somewhat disconcerting." His discomfort was obvious and Shepard felt the playful grin fall off her face. Maybe he really had been discouraged by the differences between them; maybe he did not want to do this anymore. He caught her eye and seemed to realize what she was thinking because he took a step forward, catching one of her hands in his.
"I don't mean... it was just a lot to take in all at once." He smiled reassuringly at her. "Especially from such a source as that. When he started talking about orgasm..." He shut his eyes and shuddered. "There are a great many things I thought about doing in order to make him stop talking. It is unfortunate I shall never be able to forget that conversation."
She laughed, and cupped her hand over her mouth. "You and me both, I might not have perfect memory but that stuff is going to haunt my dreams." She sobered slightly, thoughts of what really did haunt her dreams pressing too near for a moment. She took his other hand in an effort to distract herself. "So we're still..."
He nodded, his hands warm around hers as he drew her closer, closing the chaste distance between them. She could feel herself bump up against him, the movement of his breath against her clear and strong. She could smell the faint aroma of leather, spice and drell skin, dry and slightly musty but not at all unpleasant. She wondered what he thought of her scent, of shampoo and hair and the sudden nervous sweat that had broken out across the back of her neck.
"If you want us to be." He said quietly, one hand leaving hers and settling instead on her waist. "The last time I asked you said you were unsure."
"I still am. Kind of. I know I want this, that I want you. I just don't know if we can make it work." Her thoughts were short circuiting, random doubts and inhibitions flying out of her mouth as she struggled to put herself back in control. His dark eyes were on hers, warm, inviting as the flesh that was pressing up against her. "We're so different. And there's so much going on, all around us, in between us all the time. That doesn't leave a lot of room for relationships, believe me I've tried it."
He nodded again. "This is all very true. We can stop this now, if you wish." His voice was very soft, because he was very close all of a sudden, his hand on the small of her back as the other slid up her arm to touch her hair again as he smiled. She hesitated, doubt tormenting her. She did not want to hurt him, she did not want to be hurt. All their flirting and playful looks had seemed so innocent even though they had both known it was leading up to this. She felt unprepared to make this decision, she did not have enough information to make a fully thought out, reasonable choice about what was right.
So she went with her gut, and kissed him. He stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed almost instantly as her arms slid slowly over his shoulders and she felt his hand at the back of her neck soften; almost cradling her head with gentleness she was unaccustomed to. She was often shocked to realize how much time had passed, those two years of death having been fleeting at best, and she had one of those moments then as they pressed suddenly together. It was like a dam letting go in her chest, flooding her body with forgotten sensations. The warm softness of lips, the beating of another heart passing into her chest, the strength of his hands moving across her body, she felt them all as though they were new. They were, in a way. This flesh, this newly grown, Cerberus-advanced flesh, had never felt the touch of a lover; never felt the kind of intimacy that invaded the moment.
After what felt like too short a time they broke away, and Shepard felt a shiver wrack her spine at the ghostly warmth his lips left against hers. She opened her eyes and he was smiling at her, warmly. She smiled back.
"Are you going to tell me what Siha means?" She asked, suddenly. He looked surprised for a moment, and then narrowed his eyes at her.
"Are you going to tell me what Rama means?" He replied, one brow arched in challenge. She shook her head and his face assumed a stubborn expression. "I think you know what my answer will be."
"No fair." Shepard complained. "You should have to tell first. You started this."
"Patience is a virtue, Siha." He pronounced the word with almost a purr, rumbling it through his chest and making her shiver all over again. Now she really wanted to know what it meant, which had of course been his plan all along.
"Fine." She wrinkled her nose at him and slipped out of his grip. "I have to get going anyway; I have some armour mods I wanted to talk to Jacob about, the exchange of a starship to negotiate, and a planetary garrison to found. Busy, busy, busy." She had been walking backwards toward the door, never breaking eye contact with him. "I'll be back later."
"Not too much later, I hope." He commented as she stepped through the door. She waited until it was closed to lean back against the opposite wall, breathing deeply. Things had just gotten a lot more complicated, she had added a hundred potential distractions and causes for mistakes to her life and it was probably, in the long run, a bad idea all together.
But damn, could the man ever kiss.