Scott pursed his lips in thought. "You've never shot me."
"Not even once," Sara agreed.
"That was an observation, by the way, not a challenge."
"Of course." She laughed.
Families were always tricky. A bunch of unchecked personalities an individual had no say in selecting, and yet were granted more leniencies on account of Mom and Dad expecting you all at the dinner table on Christmas.
Sara had never considered herself best friends with Scott, but they'd always gotten along. He did cut her hair when they were four, but then, she also replaced the homework in his backpack with a hamper's worth of dirty underwear when they were eleven. And together, they both managed to glue their eyes shut with bubblegum when they were seven! Perhaps it wasn't always the most sensible of relationships, but they never seriously tried to hurt one another. The closest thing Sara could think of was Scott giggling and pointing an unloaded pistol in her direction the first time they went to target practice. Dad blew a gasket and spent more time dressing Scott down than showing them how to actually shoot.
"You always treat a gun like it's loaded," Sara remembered.
"Especially when it is," Scott added, "and you have it pointed at your brother's back."
"Teviint!" Baranji darted into the cave after her.
Jaal was already on his knees and rolling Lathoul face up. SAM was in the process of dumping every Alliance medical protocol known into Sara's brain, while she stood uselessly gaping. Unless angaran physiology was wildly different, Jaal shouldn't have moved his brother until Lathoul's spine had been assessed and stabilized.
"No, no, no- the bombs in the Forge," Lathoul was saying.
"I'm not leaving you," Jaal told him.
"I'm okay. Jaal, I'll be fine."
"You going to make it?" A dumb question, but Sara thought it prudent to keep him talking, all things considered.
"I hate Akksul." Lathoul was surprisingly alert for someone shot point blank in the back. "Don't let him win."
"I've got him." Cora knelt down next to Jaal and placed a hand on his brother. As Jaal started to protest, she cut him off, "We need to stop those bombs and you're the one who knows the Forge. I can get him to the shuttle safe and sound."
"He had some damn good shielding to take a hit like that," Sara muttered.
Lathoul rattled a laugh. "Teviint's always been a horrible shot- couldn't even kill me when I was standing right in front of her!"
"That's good, you laugh about it," Cora told him as she wrapped him in biotics and stood. "Laugh about it all the way to the shuttle."
"Come on." Sara nodded toward the cave.
Jaal gave his brother a final look and sighed at Sara, "I'm glad you're here."
"Uh huh." She snorted. "Tell me how glad after we're all safe on the ship."
Despite it being a cave, Sara could immediately see the care the Forge had been treated with throughout the years. The walls had been roped off with stanchions to protect the multitude of symbols and images etched into the rock. She recognized the stems from the researchers's dome, thriving here between cracks in the cave face and peeking out next to stalagmites. All of it- the lighted, secured pathways and delicate, plastered repairs- was easier to focus on instead of SAM screaming in her head. There were so many heat signatures, so many Roekaar, and one, two, three explosives up ahead.
"This place is amazing, Jaal," Sara murmured.
"Stay clear," he told her.
"Yeah, about that..." she replied. "Do you have a plan for getting out of a literal den of Roekaar alive?"
Apparently, Jaal felt that grunting was an appropriate response. Great. The more Sara thought on it, all she needed was for someone to call out, "you look like you're waiting for someone," in an Earth accent and the nightmare would be complete.
It didn't go down quite like that.
"Jaal! Jaal!" The cave opened to a central dais, with beams of light peeking in through eroded rock overhead. The explosives could be seen plain as day, secured to key structural supports and heavily guarded. The only thing that stopped the Roekaar from opening fire was Teviint dashing in front of their weapons and scrambling over to Jaal. She reached him breathless and with her voice trembling. "I killed Lathoul. I killed him. I'm so sorry."
Jaal gripped his sister by both her arms to prevent her from throwing herself at his feet. "He's not dead," he said. "You're lucky."
A panicked laugh bubbled into a sob. "I lost my mind. Jaal, I want to go home."
"But the cause!" Baranji forced his way through a cluster of Roekaar, their guns still raised. "I joined because of you."
SAM refused to quiet in Sara's head through all of this. There was no way they could compete with the sheer number of angara surrounding them, but the bombs were a simple matter. Intentionally constructed to be user-friendly, the blasted AI was encouraging her to shuffle one yard forward so they'd be close enough to access the controls remotely.
"I shot our brother," Teviint was saying and maybe all eyes really were on her. Sara took a chance and stepped toward the bombs, only freezing when she heard the sound of a rifle cocking.
"Don't leave me-"
"Let her go." Clumps of Roekaar split and from the center, a single angara strode through. "I only want soldiers committed to our cause- Not weaklings who stand by and watch the destruction of our people at the hands of aliens!"
On SAM's command, Sara seized the opportunity to walk forward at the Roekaar leader. She stopped toe to toe with him, intimately aware of how many sites were aimed directly at her as she pointed a thumb at him. "I take it this is the asshole you told me about, Jaal."
That got her a little sneer before Akksul turned his back on Sara, and continued to speak to her without granting her the basic decency of looking at her. "I speak for our people! And I say you're done in Heleus."
"The people, huh? That's a tall order." About as tough as keeping everyone stalled and occupied until SAM could disarm three bombs. "You speak for Jaal, then? The Moshae? How about the pilgrims you turned away or the science team you brutalized?"
"You flaunt your ignorance of a people you'll never understand." As he talked, it clicked that despite his words being to her, he was addressing the crowd.
One. Two, and... "Is that kind of the same as attempting to use alien tech you don't understand?" she replied. "Those bombs are duds. Go ahead, give them a try."
Akksul turned suddenly and lurched at her. Sara heard him chuckle at the way she flinched.
"Ryder! Don't." Jaal. She blinked and realized she'd pulled out her pistol and held it out defensively. As if that would be enough to handle all the red laser beads positioned on her body.
Akksul was grinning. He grabbed her wrist and directed the barrel of the gun up and pressed it snug against his forehead. "Martyr me. Please. I dare you."
Jaal hadn't been kidding. "You're out of your mind," Sara said, thumbing the safety on.
The prick only grew more smug as he returned to his rapt audience. "They move onto our planets," Akksul declared. "They take our resources. Make us weak."
"I've watched Ryder make planets habitable," Jaal cried out, his voice amplified by the acoustics of the cave.
"Exactly!" Akksul scoffed. "And they'll never let us forget it."
"She rescued your beloved Moshae."
"I know..."
"Saved her life!"
"Yes, yes, she rescued our Moshae and created a cult!" A desperate, low jab.
"Ryder did no such-"
"This is all stupid," Sara interrupted them. "You're getting into a pissing contest with someone who thought it'd be a good idea to blow up your sacred birthplace."
Jaal stared at her, tense and wide eyed. From where she stood, SAM began to pick up on the din of murmurs.
"...Humans compete with urine?"
"Don't be stupid!"
"Why has no one shot her, yet?"
"Are you going to?"
"Well, no, I just thought with everyone here, someone was bound to by now..."
"You know, your plan here is obviously flawed," Sara announced to the restless crowd. "If you're going to behave like terrorists, you can't cling to some idealized morals. It doesn't work."
"Ryder!" Jaal looked at her so aghast, Sara could practically imagine Cora on the shuttle, wondering why a shiver traveled down her spine at that exact moment.
"We're just talking, and I'm only saying," Sara assured, perhaps insincerely. "Did you actually let the science team go, Akksul? Or did you kill them all? Because you should have killed them if you were really going to blow this place up."
It got a high pitched laugh out of Akksul. He held his hands out. "Listen to this alien argue for wantonly wasting our lives."
"It's the only practical option," she insisted. "They have no loyalty to you. You want everyone to believe the Initiative destroyed this place, but they'll tell everyone you were here, that you bloodied them and forced them to leave." Sara let out a laugh to continue her momentum, "Hell, I see more than a skeleton crew here. They can't all be one hundred percent sold on blowing up an irreplaceable holy site. I mean, just by walking through the door one of your 'trusted' Roekaar confessed immediately."
"You're suggesting I murder my own people?" Akksul asked quietly.
"I'm telling you, you've gone too far," Sara said. "How many of your Roekaar don't want you to do this? How many have come here to prove to themselves that you won't? How many won't keep their mouths shut when you do?"
Jaal shook his head and stepped forward. "The Moshae trusts Ryder and-"
"Stop!" Akksul's pistol was out before he'd finished his exclamation. He pointed it at Jaal until silence was achieved and then directed it at Sara, letting the pistol drift back and forth between them, undecided. "We've been fighting the wrong enemy. Maybe the enemy is this traitor!"
"Easy..." Slowly with his hands raised and open at his chest, Jaal placed himself step by step in front of Sara.
"Stop defending them," Akksul growled, his pistol aimed squarely at Jaal's face.
Sara wasn't collapsed stupidly against a cave wall this time. She was armed with a gun and by her friend's side. She felt her voice crack. "Jaal..?"
"The Moshae trusts Ryder." She didn't like the stony calm that emanated from Jaal. With how volatile the situation was, she had nerves enough for the both of them, but it didn't mean he should be cold and emotionless to compensate for her shortcomings. "You've become a danger to your own people. Walk away."
"Or..." Akksul had settled on a target. "I kill you and reveal the Resistance for the traitors they are."
She couldn't stand it. Sara held her pistol up at Akksul, despite Jaal standing between them, despite being caught in sniper's crosshairs, despite there being no clear shot to take. The only other option was to do nothing and Draulir had already shown her how that scenario played out.
Akksul had no compunction about firing a single round while Sara was still trying to rationalize how to curve a bullet's trajectory around Jaal in her panicked state. She dropped her gun and screamed, whatever delusions of heroics gone and replaced with closing the gap between Jaal and herself. It wasn't until her ankle twisted and she went skidding across on her knee into the back of his leg that Sara registered he was still standing.
His arms were steady and strong as he hoisted her up to her feet. It was only after Sara was standing that she saw the blood running blue down his face from where Akksul's shot had grazed Jaal's cheek. She buried her face in his torso, unconcerned at how loud or absurd the noises coming from her may have sounded.
"The alien is not the monster here," Jaal said, keeping his arm around her as Sara struggled to pull herself together.
"I love my people," Akksul insisted over the growing murmurs of dissent. Some of the Roekaar dispersed, unwilling to fire a rogue shot, while others fiddled with the useless bombs.
"Are you okay?" Jaal asked softly.
"Am I- Of course I'm not. Are you okay?" Sara scrubbed at her face with the heels of her palms.
"Thank you for this-"
"Let's go home." Teviint. She had a hand on Jaal's back, but dropped it and put a few footsteps between them when she saw Sara's eyes on her.
"Home. Yes, that sounds-" Jaal nodded and with a glance down at Sara, gave her a squeeze. "Why don't you come with us, Ryder? I could introduce you to my mothers."
"Come with you?" Sara couldn't think straight. "But I'm supposed to get you to come back with me."
"Yes," he said. "Come on; the longer we stay here, the longer we invite trouble."