Notes and Notices:

Please suspend your disbelief. 1) In case it wasn't clear last chapter: Liberties taken with the layout of Therum. 2) I'm treating Liara's dig site like a "regular" cave since I've never been in a cave that is near a volcano (not sure about the transfer of heat through rock) and there's no lava seen to warm the interior of the cave. 3) Caves are awesome.

And also: Thanks for reading, guys. You all are awesome.

Adventures in Babysitting

Operations Chief Han Vasiliadis towered over most of the CIC crew. He, like the majority of the crew at their watch stations, had stripped down to his Alliance issue undershirt and the lightest pair of BDUs owned. And even that wasn't enough to cool off. Sweat dripped off the tip of his crooked nose if he bent forward to look at readouts.

"We're within three clicks of the colony," he reported.

Pressly nodded, making a note on his datapad. "Geth activity?" he asked.

Vasiliadis shrugged. "Can't be certain, sir," he replied, blotted his forehead with a sweat-dampened rag. "We're hidden for now, blending in with the background heat, but actively scanning the area will give us up. There are scattered geth comm signals, but they could be coming from anywhere."

"Still no activity from the colony?"

The CMC looked disturbed. "No, sir. Passive scans haven't picked up much more than static from the local radio stations. No other radio signals. No comm signals."

Pressly nodded again. "Damn it."

"We could send out a team of marines, sir," Joker suggested from the helm.

"No," Pressly said casting his gaze towards the helmsman. "We're already sitting ducks. I'm not wasting any more lives than necessary on this mission." He flicked the comm switch. "Give me some good news, Greg."

Chief Adams voice filled the speakers. "How about mediocre?"

Pressly rolled his eyes, gave gruff grumble. "What's the status?"

"Twenty-five minutes, and we'll be able to breathe normally. The air conditioning will be able to cool the air again. Recommend dry-dock immediately afterwards. Geth war and evil Spectre aside, we've got to replace the Solaris modules and a hell of a lot of wiring." A muffled feminine voice sounded, but the comm didn't pick up the words. Or maybe it was the cluck of a chicken. "No, the Alliance has the resources that the Flotilla doesn't, Tali. Better to replace it out-right as soon as we can."

"Have you found the source of the problem?" Pressly questioned. He regretted the question as soon as it left his mouth, knowing the Chief Engineer well enough to know that he was about to spout a whole mouthful of tech. "Bottom line," Pressly amended just as Greg was elaborating on the intricacies of what sounded like an electrical issue. Or something.

"Faulty Solaris module within the starboard IES," Adams finished in a grumble.

Pressly gave a sigh. "Can anything else go wrong with this mission?"

"I think we're good, Commander," Ashley announced as she, Alenko and Vakarian searched the mining site for other targets. Ash would have double-checked her HUD for mass effect generator signatures, but whatever energy spike the Panoptes sensor network had picked up was playing havoc with her hardsuit's sensor suite. She'd had to shut the sensor suite down for the time being to keep it from continuously blipping distracting systems error messages onto her retina.

They had traversed the caldera from one end to the other, and this was the point where the geth seemed to be concentrated, but, without sensors, they couldn't be sure. They could only check out the mine.

A standard Grizzly without armaments sat burning a short distance away. There weren't any bodies besides the geth—and Ash didn't count the geth as having bodies. In her mind, only organics had bodies.

The Commander and Wrex got out of Precious and made their way over; neither holstered their weapons as they, too, looked for stragglers. This was worse than a signal jam. At least with a signal jam, they could rest easy once they got the jammer. But in this situation, they had no way of knowing if something was going to pop out and hit them.

Ashley swallowed, images of the 212 and the massacre on Eden Prime coming to the forefront of her thoughts. Not now. Not now. Not now. Please, not now.

"I think my eyes are going to dry out and fall out of my head," Alenko announced suddenly as he took point. He headed for the ramp to the mining shaft. A holographic sign flickered there.

"Yeah," Vakarian agreed. "I thought Palaven was hot."

Ash chuckled, caught off guard by the absurdity of the statements, but she continued to keep her vigil. Maybe it was nerves, maybe it was adrenaline. Or maybe it was the fact that Shepard had used the Mako to smash a geth Colossus and there had been fifty geth between the squad and the mine shaft where they assumed Benezia was trying to extract her daughter.

The entrance to the mineshaft marked with the flickering holographic words "Akrotiri Valley Archeological Survey, University of Thessia" was, so far, merely a long tunnel with dim lighting. The tunnel's incline was steep, 30 degrees or maybe a little less. It was difficult to judge as he traversed, the sound of his and the squad's boots echoing against the curvature of the walls and ceiling.

Kaidan wasn't expecting the sudden drop in temperature as they entered. The sudden cooling of his face brought on a sneeze. Then another.

Everyone jumped.

Garrus was the first to say something. "Is Alenko seizing?"

Williams shook her head. "Didn't get around humans much in C-Sec, did you?"

"Just a sneeze, Garrus," Shepard explained, looking pointedly at Williams who backed down a bit. "Nothing to be concerned about." She gazed at Kaidan eyebrow raised. "Right?"

"The air is cooler in here than it is out there," Kaidan supplied.

"Of course it is," Wrex said. "It's a cave. I don't see any sunlight to heat up anything. Do you?"

Kaidan blinked at Wrex's sudden animosity. "Ah, no," he said. "It must be taking a vacation."

"I don't think I've ever seen a human sneeze before," Garrus stated drawing Wrex's attention.

"Don't wet yourself, kid," he grunted and pushed past Kaidan to take point.

Garrus' mandibles flared, his body language rigid. "I'm not—" he began but Shepard cut him off.

"Enough," she ordered. "Both of you. Straighten up, and toe the line. You're both behaving like children."

"Krogan children can fight right after birth," Garrus stated earning him a baleful glare from the Commander. The comment stopped Wrex in his tracks. He spun around.

Damn it.

Kaidan was now standing between a pissed-off krogan battlemaster and an immature turian hothead. Today had gone from bad to worse to worst in a matter of hours. The only good thing about this day was the fact that his migraine meds seemed to be working and he was pleasantly numb from the brain down. One point for Team Alenko.

"Is that what kids are taught these days?" Wrex rumbled. He sounded like a mixture of confused, pissed off and amused.

Never confuse a krogan, someone had once told Kaidan, it pisses them off. Kaidan had long since forgotten who had given him that sage advice. He regretted remembering it while standing between Wrex and Garrus in the middle an op. In a cave.

"I said enough," Shepard barged past Kaidan to confront Wrex. "We don't have time for this. Our position is compromised." She indicated the mineshaft's entrance with her thumb. "Four dreadnaughts in the system and you really think that's all the geth we'll see?"

As if on cue, a squad of geth opened fire on their position.