It'd been thirty minutes since Garrus dropped Liara and Wrex off. In that time, Wrex and Liara had trekked half a mile to the collector base to prepare their distraction.
The wait had been suffocating.
"Wrex. How you guys doing?" Garrus finally asked over the radio.
"Letting the situation develop. Let us do our jobs."
"Copy. Keep us posted."
Garrus hung the receiver and chewed on his tongue as he stared out into the vista.
"...You ready?" Garrus asked without ever stopping to look at her.
"As much as a girl could hope to be." She whispered quietly.
He nodded.
"Nervous?" Garrus asked.
"Hard not to be."
"I'm no more scared than you are."
"I know, Garrus." She said meekly, "I know."
"Good. Don't lose sight of who we're fighting for now, okay?"
"You think I'd really lose sight of that, Garrus? This is John we're talking about."
He rose his hands up. "Right. Sorry."
It was quiet for another minute and Garrus faced her with a forlorn look on his face.
"...We'll get him back."
"Will we?" Tali said with a quiet and mirthless laugh. "We're taking on a dreadnaught with only the Mako and the guns on our backs."
"We took on Sovereign and the Geth. Don't tell me that doesn't mean something."
Tali felt a tear grace her eye, "No. This is different. And you know it."
"It won't stop me from trying anyways."
"I know." Tali relented as she faced the ceiling with a bitter sigh, "God damnit, Garrus. What're we going to do."
"Stick with the plan."
She cupped her hands against her face before slamming them against the dashboard, "That isn't enough, Garrus!"
"What do you want me to say, Tali?" Garrus murmured, "Because I've got nothing."
Her voice fell into a whimper. "I just want him back, damnit—I just want him back."
"Hey." Garrus put a rough hand on her shoulder, "Knock that off. We've got the Normandy to save still."
She inhaled sharply and cuffed the urge to break down and cry. The amount on her mind was beginning to take its toll. The idea of not seeing John again... The fact that the crew could already be dead... knowing that Liara and Wrex were trekking toward what pretty much amounted to suicide...
It was hard not to cry. But Garrus was right.
They still had to try.
She could stop when she was dead.
"You're right." She nodded lamely, "Sorry."
"Good. I need the snarky bubbly quarian. The one with the shotgun, remember?"
She couldn't help but snort at Garrus' attempt to cheer her up.
"Okay."
"Good."
The radio squawked for their attention.
"Garrus," Liara said in a hushed whisper, "do you hear me?"
"Reading your loud and clear. What's going on?"
"We're preparing the explosive. Get ready."
"Got it. Give us the green when you do it. Then we'll pick you up."
"Okay. And Garrus?"
"Yes, Liara?"
"We have thirty seconds before it goes off."
"...Stay alive, Liara."
Garrus put the receiver back again and took a deep breath.
"You ready to get Shepard back?"
Tali nodded once. "I am."
"Then let's get to it."
The Mako's many instruments power to life when the engine started.
He sighed one final time, nodded to Tali, and began their descent down the mountain.
Out off in the far distance, a cloud of smoke bloomed.
The go was loud and clear.
It was time to get them back.
A dozen collector soldiers rose into the air for Wrex to take his picking.
"Get them Wrex!" Liara screamed as she held them up with a biotic attack. As unfair as it was, the collectors were cut down without a chance to defend themselves.
"Liara," Garrus called through the Radio, "how're you doing? We're almost near the perimeter."
"Resistance is heavy." Liara answered as quickly as she could, "They're pressing, but we're holding for now."
"Hold tight; we'll be there soon." Garrus said before cutting the line.
Liara didn't have the time to reply.
"Left side, Liara!" Wrex bellowed as he raised his fist raging with biotic energy to send another dozen or so soldiers into the air.
"Die you bloody maggots." He slammed them against the rocky earth at an ear splitting speed. After the sonic booms boomed and the crunching bodies crunched, there wasn't much left for Wrex to look at.
"Wrex! Another squad is coming!"
"Good. They're warming me up."
As the next group reared the corner, he fired his heavy rifle in rapid succession.
It wasn't much of a surprise to see the collectors pop and explode.
Liara was quick to point at another group coming their way. "Wrex!"
"I know, damnit!" Wrex bellowed, "I'll handle them!"
And handle them he did. His rifle barked several times and at the end, when the old rifle spit out the last shell from its magazine, did he end it with a giant push of biotic power.
One of the poor fools who'd happened to chance itself against Wrex's incendiary bullets and biotics went high up in the air before cracking its morbidly large head on what had to be an open thousand gallon drum of fuel. The lifeless body, with smoke still wafting from its body, ignited the tank.
Liara had to duck down down behind a boulder to keep herself from being swallowed whole in explosive flames.
Wrex wasn't expecting to see such a huge explosion just from that, but he was willing to roll with it.
Anything else left standing didn't survive the blast. Which, as Wrex supposed, wasn't much of surprise.
But before he could even give Liara a glint of a smile, a black and brazen looking collector dropped to the ground with an immense thud before standing up in the midst of raining coals and ash.
It's piercing eyes stared through them both with about as much passion as a black hole.
"You Will Know Pain."
The Mako vaulted over the wall.
When they landed, the first thing Tali did was ogle the long rows of parked gunships with a open mouthed frown.
"Keelah..." Tali murmured as she kept staring, "It's a whole army of them here..."
"Don't think too hard about it." Garrus said as he parked the Mako, "No time to waste. I'll get the gunship."
"Alone?" She asked disbelievingly, "You can't go alone!"
"I have to. You need to stay in the Mako and cover me with the turret."
Anything she had to say died on her tongue.
He was right.
He didn't have to say it, but there was a chance he wasn't going to make it from here. And there wasn't any sense in having them both die at the same time. Garrus was giving her the chance to escape if things went south.
"God... Just. Just, please be safe."
He clumsily grabbed a handful of sinks before tossing them in his dump pouch. "Can't promise that."
He opened the door and stepped outside before sprinting to the closest drop-ship.
As Garrus ran, he could see a dozen or so shadows move from somewhere off to his side.
"Okay... They're on cue, Tali. Collectors to my left." Garrus called out over the radio.
"On it."
Tali took control of the turret and scanned Garrus' left. Just as he reported, about a dozen soldiers ran across the field to see what was going on.
With a low frown, she faced them with the Mako's slick looking gun and pressed both its triggers.
She slung a 155 millimeter warhead toward the unsuspecting squad. Six of them disappear under a fiery cloud of smoke. The rest were cut down by the coaxial gun shortly after.
"Another squad, Tali. Again, to your left." Garrus said over the radio as he started working on a ship of his choosing, "Take them out before they can see me."
"Got it."
She got a bead on the next group and fired the machine gun before flinging another sabot into a nearby aircraft.
Somehow, by some miracle, Tali had nicked the ship's gas-line. Because the engine caught fire and started propelling itself toward an unsuspecting group of soon to be fodder before lighting into a fireball and exploding.
Garrus watched the plumes of smoke, raining shrapnel, and fire with a wide-eyed frown. "Spirits, Tali. Could you be any less subtle?"
"You don't screw with the Normandy, Garrus." She answered as she kept firing into whatever remained of stragglers, "The galaxy should know that by now."
Garrus finally unlocked the door and pried it open.
"Okay... I think I almost got it Tali, just a littl—"
"—Help! I⃫ᴜGoddess, heᴛ̶̷̸lp!"
"Liara? You okay?"
"NO! I'—ɪ̶̷̸̿ᴏ̶̷̸̿we'rS⃫T⃫I⃫ᴜᴘ̶̷̸̿ᴛ̶̷̸̿ɪ̶̷̸̿—ᴜᴘ̶̷̸̿ᴛ̶̷̸̿ɪ̶̷̸̿Wrex—ᴜᴛ̶̷ɪ̶̷̸̿is—ʀ̶̷̸̲̲ᴍ̶̷̸̲̲T⃫I⃫T⃫I⃫ Dead—!W—ᴏ̶̷̸̲̲ᴍ̶̷̸̲̲ can't hold out—ᴛ̶̷̸̿ɪ̶̷̸̿ᴏ̶̷̸̿ɴ̶̷̸̿"
Tali saw Garrus stand from his work and waved to her. "Tali. Go! Now! I'll get the ship running just fine by myself!"
Tali felt herself sit in a total stand still. "...Garrus. If they're already dead, then we're wasting our only chance to rescue the crew."
"This is Liara and Wrex we're talking about."
"You don't think I know that?" Tali stifled a cry, "But the crew still needs us."
"And if we want to have any hope in saving them, we have to do this together."
Tali sank into the driver seat. "I hope your right, Garrus. Keelah, I hope your right."
Garrus shut the large armored door behind him before sitting in the helm of the gunship. "I am, Tali. Go. Go and get them."
Tali locked onto Liara's transponder and started driving.
When she turned the bend and disappeared from Garrus' line of sight, he buried his head into the alien console in front of him and started pressing buttons.
"Okay, Garrus..." He said to himself, "You can do this... I think."
As soon as Garrus disappeared from Tali's view, she frowned inside.
There was a chance this would be the last time she'd see him.
And for all she knew, this could be her last moments alive.
With all her friends dead and her fighting all of them alone.
And no matter how impossible that seemed, she'd do it anyways.
She owed it to the Normandy.
Owed it to John.
She banked hard left into some narrow looking alleyway and swallowed a collector whole with the Mako's left wheel.
One less monster left in the galaxy, she thought numbly.
"Garrus?" She called over the mic, "Can you still hear me?"
"ᴘ̶̷̸̿ᴛ̶̷̸̿yes. I caI⃫n. But something's d̵͗̂̕͝é́̿͐f̶̃̃̍͑initely trying to jI⃫I⃫am us."
"I know. Anything beyond what I'd guess to be four hundred meters wouldn—" Tali didn't finish. A sabot round raced by her, bounced off the ground, and flew off into the distant horizon.
"Oh god!"
"Taliᴛ̶̷̸̿ɪ̶̷̸̿? What's I⃫aᴍ̶̷̸̲̲I⃫goingon?"
"I'm under fire!" She screamed before she got a look at who was shooting at her. Her heart stopped as soon as she realized she was being chased by two giant tanks.
"J̴us̴t̶ ̶ st̶a̶y alive Tali̷!̉͝"
"I'm trying! Please hurry Garrus!"
She veered left and forced the Mako over a wall.
"Okay..." She breathed with a slight sigh of relief, "I think I lost them."
They barreled through the wall and kept on her tail.
"Nevermind!"
She turned into a space between two buildings to buy herself time.
"Liara! Are you still there?!" Tali called over the radio frantically.
No reply.
"Liara, you've got to answer me. Please. Answer me."
Still no answer.
"Liara. If you can still hear this, I'm going to the LZ. Garrus and I will meet you there."
She turned right, went down the path, and ground to a halt at the LZ Liara had designated for them. At all three ends, high brown walls met her and blocked her in from escape.
Tali didn't realize it until now, but the place Liara had picked for an LZ wasn't particularly the greatest.
"Keelah."
Her neck felt damp as she bolted out of the driver to climb into the cockpit for the turret.
She'd have once chance to do this.
The first tank turned the corner and opened its giant maw of a gun as if it were trying to swallow her and the Mako whole. Then it sped toward her to close the distance between them.
She fired and watched the warhead hit home. The tank turned into a blazing ball of shredding metal and fiery lights.
To Tali's huge dismay, the tank kept its speed up as it spat out fire and chunks of metal before finally tipping over into a barrel roll on a headway collision toward her.
"Oh god... oh god!"
She screamed when the tank finally crashed on top of the Mako, crushing both the driver and passenger seats.
Lucky for her, she wasn't in either.
Before she could even breathe a sigh of relief, one of two of the Mako's ceiling windshields splintered and cracked. Fiery oils spilled onto the dashboard and lit the floor on fire.
Tali deduced immediately that now was not the best time to get caught on fire.
She fell onto her back, out of the turret control center, and unlocked the exit latch.
Only to find it stuck.
"Not good! Not good!" She planted both her feet on the door and stomped repeatedly. She could start to feel the flames licking the back of her head.
The door flies open at the sixth kick.
"Fucking finally! Fuck!"
She leapt out of the burning tank and collided with the soft straw of cool grass.
As great as it was to feel the grass beneath her, it wasn't going to help her stop the second tank that just reared the corner.
"Tali!" Garrus' voice screamed through her radio, "Stay down!"
She had enough time to look up and see a long yellow ionic particle beam splinter the air up from above toward the collector tank.
The aftershock rippled across the ground, the earthly vibrations jarring her bones as she pressed her chest closer to the ground.
"Keelah!"
The last tank exploded, its pieces disappearing under a giant plume of smoke.
"You're in the clear Tali! I'm landing!"
"Garrus! You Bosh'tet! You did it!"
"Damn right I did. Now let's get Wrex and Liara."
She slowly groaned and got up before taking a good look around her.
The air was anything but pure now. Fires dotted the road and smoke absolutely covered the air.
Just as she was patting herself off, the wall to her right suddenly burst open with Wrex pummeling through with a collector unlike any she'd seen before in his hands.
The krogan's mighty fist squeezed tighter around the little shit's neck before placing the barrel of his shotgun right under its chin.
"Know pain my ass."
The swollen head erupts into a misty shower of brain and flecks of chitin. And with that, Wrex dropped the lifeless charred looking collector onto its back and huffed.
"We need to move! Now!" Liara yelled as she jumped through the hole. She turned around and fired in steady bursts at anyone trying to follow them through.
Garrus lowered the craft down (very clumsily Tali would add) and opened the hatch for them to clamber inside.
"Get the hell on!" Garrus ordered, "Let's go!"
The three jump in and close the hatch behind them.
"Go Garrus!" Tali yelled, "GO! NOW!"
He yanked a lever and the ship did nothing. Realizing he'd completely forgotten how to raise the ship back up into the air, he gave everyone a slack-jawed frown before searching frantically over the wide display of controls. "Erhm... I—Uh... Fuck. Don't remember exactly where the throttle is."
"How could you forget!?" Liara yelled at him exasperatedly, "You were just flying it!"
Tali scowled. "Damnit, Garrus! Just look for something that looks like a throttle!"
"IamIamIam!"
"Argh! Just start pressing buttons!" Wrex growled as he threw his hands up in the air.
"What? And trigger a scuttle sequence?" Garrus yelled as he yanked back and forth another weird looking lever, "God Wrex, your stupid loves to shine at the worst of times!"
"Do you have any goddamn room to talk?!" Tali accused, "You don't even remember where the throttle is!"
Just by chance, the next thing Garrus started fiddling with made the ship launch back up into the air.
"I got it! We're good!"
"Good! Now bring us higher!"
Garrus didn't waste any time doing exactly that.
"Oh, spirits..." Garrus said with the shake of his head, "That was close."
"Keelah." Tali breathed before letting her head hang, "too close."
"Is anybody going to come after us?" Wrex asked.
"No. Had enough time to blow up the vehicle depot. It's all set ablaze; hence the smoke. If someone's coming after us, it'll be from anyone inside their ship."
"Good."
As they rose higher into the air, the collector ship hovering just above the base started coming into full view.
Even Wrex gave the ungodly sight a frown.
"We actually did it." Liara said as she sipped eagerly from her canteen, " We actually made it this far."
"We'll make the rest." Wrex said as he started sorting through his chest rig, "Take stock on your supplies. Make everything count. We don't know what we'll find in there."
Everyone gave the collector ship a distant look.
They were flying into a giant maw of death.
And they all knew it.