Note: All standard disclaimers still apply. Thanks again to all the people who've taken time to encourage me by adding me or my story to favorites. And, most especially, thanks to those few who've written reviews. Your interest and support is always appreciated, and often instrumental to maintaining the inspiration necessary to develop a story.
Chapter-Specific Note: This takes place on one of the very first ground-side missions in ME1. I don't necessarily have a specific mission in mind. Yet, anyway. This chapter doesn't so much end as quit. I envision it eventually expanding to the end of the battle, maybe some discussion of Akuze, but I don't have an ETA on when that might happen.
"Where in the realm in the of all the restless spirits did you learn to drive?" Garrus demanded indignantly.
At least, he tried.
He suspected he mostly managed to sound relieved. But traveling a few miles without jumps, jolts, flips, or bounces was more than worth the sacrifice of a little dignity.
"It's not so much driving as controlled crashing," Alenko observed, casting a sidelong glance in Shepard's direction. "Or an attempt to control a crash, at any rate," he elaborated with an odd, lilting note in his voice. It was a note Shepard's voice often carried, but that his own almost never did. "But even Shepard couldn't hit so much as a bump in this wide, flat open plain."
"Nothing the size of a pebble in sight, and thank the spirits of the place for that," Garrus sighed, sagging back against his seat.
Shepard wrenched the Mako into a hairpin turn so tight even her own head snapped.
Kaidan and Garrus reached up to rub the backs of their respective necks almost in sync, as if the entire move was some elaborate battle maneuver they were practicing.
Garrus was surprised Shepard hadn't reached up to rub her neck as well. She had to want to-in fact, he thought he saw the muscles in her shoulder quiver slightly, as if she were willfully suppressing a movement she'd begun to make without thinking, but that could have just been an odd optical reaction to another jerk of the Mako that sent them careening off.
"Akuze," She said tightly.
"Ak-uh-what?" Garrus sputtered, fighting the urge to dig his talons into the gunnery control panel some desperately inane attempt to keep himself upright. "My translator is making an escape attempt. Is that some sort of human response to a rhetorical question or something?"
But even as he said it, he realized Alenko had somehow managed to go unnaturally still. Which in the wildly-bouncing Mako, was really quite an impressive accomplishment. Alenko was staring at Shepard, which was more-or-less standard operating procedure, but his expression did seem to be a bit...
"Talk later," Shepard grunted a bit tartly. Garrus had never imagined Shepard and his father might have anything in common, but that particular tone was one he'd always assumed his father had invented. "Shoot now," she added helpfully, twirling the Mako into another gizzard-twisting side-spin.
"Shoot?" Garrus repeated as the view outside the Mako whirled into chaos. "Shoot what exactly? The sky?"
"No." The word wasn't Shepard's, it was Alenko's, soft and somber. He'd stopped staring at Shepard and started craning his neck about to look out the windows, as if he was trying to catch a glimpse of some particularly important landmark.
Shepard's driving was so bad, the very ground beneath had begun to tremble. Garrus didn't blame it.
Shepard flung the Mako into reverse, slamming Garrus into the gunnery console.
"Sorry," she said, not sounding it in the least, and pulled hard to port. "But would you please just shoot!"
Garrus reacted to the commanding tone of her voice instinctively, slamming his hand down onto the controls without the slightest idea what he was doing.
A missile arced from the gun, solidly impacting... "What in the names of all the ancestors-" Garrus pressed his hands into the panel, levering himself up for a better look. The guns tattooed rapidly in response, spraying bullets like the geysers in the Presidium fountain sprayed water.
"Thresher Maw," Alenko gasped.
"That's better," Shepard sang out, slamming her foot onto the accelerator in lieu of punctuation. "Thank you!"
"Uh...Shepard," Garrus said, reluctant to refuse her praise, but figuring they'd all be better off if she knew the score, "I'm afraid I'm not actually aiming at anything. It's...uh...kind of hard to get a target lock-"
"That's the idea," Shepard agreed chirpily, spinning the Mako like a top.
And narrowly avoiding a splash of some very vile green liquid the worm-like erupting out of the smooth, quiet had spat at them.
"Kaidan-"
"Standing by to slap omni-gel on any leaks in the vessel, m'am," he said smoothly. His unruffled manner always made Garrus want to shake him up a bit just to see if anything came loose. Garrus suspected it annoyed Wrex equally, if not to an even greater degree, but, if so, the krogan routinely exerted an amount of control widely believed to be contrary to the nature of his species. "Seeing as how I'm temporarily relieved of navigational duties." In defiance of all things likely, that lilting tone seemed to be creeping back into the LT's voice.
Shepard's lips twitched and her head might have turned the merest fraction in Alenko's direction. She mumbled, as near as Garrus could tell over the bone-jarring vibrations of the Thresher Maw's pursuit, the more immediate rumble of the Mako's guns, and the crash of a haphazardly-aimed missile impacting...something, "that's my...that's, 'atta boy."