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Chapter 24

He Said

Taking orders from Vakarian was irritating. I couldn't object to anything he was actually doing, but I'd been on my own or in command myself for too long Not to mention, I remembered him as an overly green and idealistic ex-cop. He was obviously no longer green or quite as idealistic, and gave competent orders, but still it rankled. I kept my mouth shut, however, because of the heavily tattooed leather-shirted tiny biotic on our flank.

Jack was a bizarre woman. Not only was she covered in tattoos, she seemed to think I kept checking her out. I almost took it personally until she did the same to Vakarian. "Dammit, Vakarian! I did NOT come on this mission to play grab-ass with you!"

I could see the turian visibly count to ten as he exhaled and shoved Jack back down behind a crate, "Then get your skinny human ass under cover when I tell you to, Jack!"

"Fine." The girl actually pouted.

When Shepard's voice came out of Vakarian's 'Tool, I felt my knees get weak for a moment in relief, only my training kept me upright and my gun pointed up the hallway, watching for an ambush. When his 'Tool closed I glanced behind me at him and he shook his head, what could only be a rueful expression on his face, "You're gonna love this guy, Alenko. Founding member of the Blue Suns."

"And she wants him alive?" I didn't even bother to hide the incredulity in my voice.

"Yes. Spirits only knows why."

Jack made a disgusted sound low in her throat, "I'd say she's gone soft, but…"

"If that's the case, why'd she let him on board in the first place." Vakarian interrupted her.

"Whatever. Shit. Lets get's moving," Jack snarled and spun to take point, her shotgun held at the ready. The scent of ozone filled the air and the small bones in my ear vibrated with a subsonic white noise as Jack flared, preparing a mnemonic. How was that girl not flying apart being that out of control?

We eventually found an elevator, strangely running into no further resistance. Vakarian stared at the panel. "All right, I give up. Which one are we on and which one is up?"

I looked at the panel. "You've got to be kidding me." There were no numbers and no display to say what floor we were on.

"What the fuck are you two staring at?" Jack demanded. She looked at the panel and snarled, "You've got to be shitting me." She held the door open and looked around outside, her full lips pressed tightly against her teeth. She glanced back in and seemingly chose one of the buttons at random and then rolled her eyes at both of us, "Men."

I rolled my eyes, "All right, where'd you see the floor indicator?"

She shoved her tattooed hand out and stopped the doors from closing, "Over the elevator door."

I stuck my head out and glanced up. We appeared to be on level, "HTA," if the writing over the door could be believed. I shrugged and got back in. "Well?" Vakarian asked.

"She's right. Can't believe we missed it." I must be more out of sorts following the turian than I'd thought. I needed to clear my head or my distraction would get us killed. Vakarian grunted, probably for the same reason. We were shown up by a teenager.

The elevator went up its one floor and when the doors opened we were greeted by a few thousand rounds of ammunition flying toward us. Throwing ourselves to the floor, we low-crawled out of the elevator. Vakarian led us to a door and we threw ourselves inside. "It would have been nice if she'd told us where on this level Zaeed was," the ex-cop muttered, pulling himself to his feet and looking around the small room.

I stood up and dusted myself off, doing the same. The room was empty except for a cheap desk and an antique-looking terminal. Jack took up a position in the doorway with Vakarian crouched on the other side of it, looking for shots with his sniper scope. "What can you see?" I asked.

"Same hallways as before. Looks like the same layout." Garrus lowered his scope to look back at me. "Why?"

"Where the hell are they shooting at us from, then?"

"There's a hallway junction a few meters away," Jack supplied. "They're shooting from around that."

"And no sign of Massani," Vakarian grumbled.

"We always did work well under pressure, Vakarian." I told him as I turned on the decrepit terminal.

"Heh, I could do without that talent, sometimes, Alenko," there was amusement in his voice.

"Would you two shut up!" Jack growled. "You're like a couple of old women!"

I laughed and broke through the shoddy firewalls to call up the schematics of the level we were on. I'd had the presence of mind to glance over the elevator door before we were shot at to find the floor designation. I stared at the holographic blueprints and downloaded them to my Omni-Tool. The ridiculously crabbed interface of the geriatric computer was useless. I flared my 'Tool to life and was finally able to make sense of the plans. "We need to go up this hall and take the branch on the left."

Vakarian took a shot with his sniper rifle and before he sought another target, he demanded, "How the hell do you know?"

"It's a warehouse. About the only place your friend can be in as much trouble as Shepard intimated and still be among the living," I told him, closing my 'Tool.

"Nice wide-open space, lots of boxes and crates," Jack said thoughtfully. "I can see that."

"That's not really going to help us get out of this, though, Jack," Vakarian muttered.

"Oh, yeah, turian? Just watch. And cover me." Before I could stop her, Jack launched herself through the door and I quickly took her place, covering her as she'd asked. The tiny girl launched herself at the hallway juncture. She threw Pull fields and Shockwaves with abandon, marking herself as an L5. Vakarian and I took advantage of her drawing the mercs' fire and with several well-placed shots, Jack found herself in the hallway alone, her leather-clad chest heaving, her shields depleted.

I shook my head. She was crazier than Shepard. I glanced at Vakarian who seemed to be thinking the same thing. And then she disappeared around the corner. Vakarian was already moving, cursing under his breath. I started running after them. The sound of gunfire echoed in the pristine white hallway.

When I rounded the corner, I stopped and crept forward to the open doorway. Vakarian and Jack were no where to be seen in the corridor and I had to assume they'd gone through that door. I used the doorjamb for cover and peered around and into the warehouse. Apparently, we'd inadvertently stopped at pincer attempt on Shepard's position.

Vakarian had found a high perch on some crates and was using his sniper rifle to great effect. Jack had switched to her pistol and was chipping away at shields and armor to get to the point where she could use her biotics. There was grizzled older man in front of me crouched low, his scar-twisted features a mass of concentration as he mowed down the Blue Suns. The sight that made my heart stop, though, was Lawson and Shepard crouched behind a couple of crates together, hitting everything they could with Warp fields. Lawson's white catsuit was stained and ripped in a few places and Shepard had acquired a long blue trenchcoat with the Blue Suns' logo emblazoned on the back. She was completely unarmored but the sight of her was still one of the more beautiful things I'd ever seen.

I tore my eyes away from Shepard, who, after was busy, and tried to see what I could of our opponents. My HUD told me there were easily twenty Blue Sun mercs hiding behind various crates and supportive posts in front of us. There were only six of us. Remembering Noveria and Feros and Ilos and all the other times Shepard, Vakarian and I had been outnumbered and outgunned, I almost felt sorry for the mercs.

Almost.

I saw one trying to sneak around the side while Shepard and Lawson were looking elsewhere, presumably at the captain they'd just hit with their dual Warp field, and I took aim at the sneaky bastard. I hit him with my own Warp, the biotic field surging from the mnemonic gesture that helped me direct the energy from my mutated nervous system. It always caused what felt like every hair on my body to stand on end. The merc, his armor decimated by my field, dropped at a headshot from Vakarian. "Scoped and dropped!" the turian crowed. Jack raced out of cover long enough to grab the heatsink that fell from the Blue Sun member. I grinned and looked for a better spot from which to take cover. Too many of the mercs were out of my range from the doorway.

I finally found a decent spot near Shepard and sprinted there, knowing that the small team was covering me. Shepard glanced up long enough to give me a tight grin and said, "What took you so long?"

Firing over the crates (my HUD now told me there were at least ten to fifteen more mercs than I'd originally gotten a read on), I told her, "We, uh, ran into some old friends."

"So I heard. Thanks for covering our backside." She grunted and threw a Singularity up to block the mercs' advance on hers and Lawson's left.

I grinned, "It's always a joy to cover your backside, Commander."

She laughed and then there was no more time for battlefield flirting since the Blue Suns decided to press their advantage. Apparently, they finally realized we were getting no more reinforcements and they heavily outnumbered us. Shepard began barking orders. When I realized no one could really hear her over the sound of the gunfire, and that she had no headset to speak of, I began relaying her orders to my team through my own headset. I glanced back and saw Jack conveying them to Zaeed who was apparently on a different frequency.

With Shepard taking control and my relaying of her orders, our small squad had a coherency the mercs lacked. Despite the odds, we were able to advance against the tide of blue-armored opponents and take out a few of their leaders, scooping up their dropped heatsinks along the way. Several well-placed Singularities seemed to stop them in their tracks and funnel them where we could take them out easier. Shepard's people continuously cheered each other on and boasted of their own kills over the din of battle.

I found myself sharing cover with Shepard the next time we advanced. "We need to stop meeting like this," she told me.

I laughed and shot someone trying to creep up on us. Shepard flared red and the merc I'd shot screamed in agony as she used that terrible ability of hers. I refrained from reacting, though I wanted to shudder. "I'd prefer to have met on a tropical beach somewhere, but no, you had to go and get captured."

She grinned. "That sounds like fun. What else did you have in mind, Commander?"

"Swimming in a large non-man-made body of water." I fired at a bad guy trying, yet again, to sneak up on us.

Shepard bent her over backwards with a Warp field. "With or without suits?"

I grinned, "Both."

"You're on, Commander. Let's clean up these assholes, first."

It didn't take long after that to wipe up the rest of the stragglers. Without their leadership, which Shepard had ordered taken out first, the rest of the mercs had little to no coordination and just threw themselves into our range, determined to take us out by any means necessary.

When my HUD registered no further Blue Suns, I told Shepard, "Negative enemy contacts, Commander." We both stood up to survey the warehouse we'd just fought through. The floor was littered with corpses and debris from exploded crates and fuel tanks. Jack and the scarred Massani pushed forward and began to loot everything they could carry. I met Shepard's blue eyes and I could see the relief in them. Had she actually doubted our survival or her escape? She stepped backward behind a taller crate and used my armor to yank me to her. Her free hand reached up to the back of my neck and her fingers entwined in my sweat-dampened hair. She pulled my head down to press her lips against mine. I reciprocated by wrapping my arms around her, under that ridiculous coat, cradling her close and pushing my tongue into her mouth to taste her. It hit me then, how close I'd come to losing her again and I kissed her with a bit more force that I normally would have. She didn't seem to mind as she returned the kiss with interest.

Vakarian cleared his throat behind me, "We're not out of this yet, Commanders. The reunion's a bit premature."

Shepard pulled her mouth away from mine reluctantly, but didn't let go of me. "He's right."

"I know."

"I did find out where to go for the Normandy. Or at least the next most likely place." She unwrapped herself from around me and I let her go, my hands wanting to linger on her unarmored body.

"Good." I felt a pang of reluctance, though. When she found her ship, she'd leave mine.

"Let's get the hell out of this base," Vakarian interjected.