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“Hold it!” Kaidan shouts from outside. The Mako lurches to a stop. “Okay. Keep going, a little further.”
She backs up more, keeping an eye on the HUD in front of her. Lights begin to flash in extreme alarm. “Seriously, Alenko?”
“Stop! You’re good.” He jogs up and hops back in, pulling the hatch closed behind him.
“How close am I?” she asks, tapping at the HUD, checking calculations and angles and topography.
“Six inches, max.”
She looks up and over at him. “Lava, Kaidan.”
“This was your idea, Shepard,” Garrus reminds her. He’s considering getting out and walking. They’ve already cleared the geth, he can wait for them at the top. From the look on Kaidan’s face, he’s not the only one with this thought.
Without another word, she revs the engine and launches them at the narrow gap in the rocks.
“Only one way down,” Shepard says, and keeps most of the glee out of her voice. She checks to make sure everyone’s buckled in, and then nudges the Mako over the edge of the cliff.
Liara’s eyes widen as they pick up speed. “This is insanity.”
Wrex grins. “Welcome aboard.”
Shepard’s in the middle of a torrent of curses Tali’s translator is having difficulty catching. She turns in her seat to Ashley behind her.
Well. Below her, technically. They’re almost vertical.
“Is this common with your people?”
Ashley checks the security of her seatbelt and wonders if she can convince Garrus to install some sort of parachute-enhanced escape hatch. “The swearing or the driving up a wall?”
Tali thinks on that for a moment. “Both.”
“Swearing’s common, though it’s usually directed at other drivers. And, uh,” she hesitates for a moment, debating whether her relationship with her CO is strong enough to not be left on this desolate rock, before just going for it, “most people would’ve taken that nice path over there instead of trying to cheat gravity.”
The Mako crests over the mountain and Shepard twists the wheel hard to the right, landing them perfectly on the flat top of the mountain instead of flinging them down the other side. “Piece of cake.”
Ashley checks her chronometer. Forty-eight minutes to get up the mountain Shepard’s way.
Tali falls back in her seat and voices Ashley’s thought. “We could have walked faster.”
Garrus doesn’t see what they hit, only feels the right side of the Mako lift up, drive over something, and crash down again. He swings the gun turret around, aiming for the juggernaut. Aiming in this thing is hard under normal circumstances of Shepard driving, made infinitely worse by the whirling snow and concern about the steep drop-off to their left.
“Shepard.” Liara’s voice, eerily calm for the situation. He fires the cannon into the last armature as Shepard swings them into a covered bridge.
“Yes, Liara?” Equally calm, even more unnerving.
“That was a colossus.”
“Yes.”
“Is there a particular reason we drove over it?”
Garrus nearly chokes. He finishes off the remaining geth and slides back into his seat just in time to see Shepard shrug.
“It was in the way.”
“Shepard.”
“Wrex.”
“Shepard.”
“Wrex.”
“Shepard.”
“Wrex.”
“Shepard.”
“Wrex.”
“I will kill you both.”
“Commander,” Kaidan starts as she climbs back up, a world of questions in that single word.
She lowers herself into the driver’s seat and pulls the hatch closed behind her. “Why did that happen?” She asks his question for him and starts the engine, driving them away from the mine and toward the pickup site.
“If you don’t mind.”
“Garrus and I have a bet,” she says.
“Those were pyjaks.”
“We didn’t specify they had to be geth.” Shepard grins.
From the back, Wrex snorts.
“Are we sure this is the best way, Shepard?” There’s a puddle beginning to form underneath her feet, no matter how much water Tali tries to shake off before getting back in.
“It’s the only way.” Shepard gestures to the map.
“It’s a river,” Wrex says.
Shepard drives around the cluster of pod crabs; it seems cruel to run them over when they managed to survive a firefight with the geth. “We could see if this thing floats,” she nods to the right, indicating the ocean.
“No,” Tali and Wrex say at the same time, not entirely sure she isn’t kidding.
“I spy with my little eye, something that begins with R.”
“Rocks.”
A sigh. “I spy with my little eye, something that begins with M.”
“More rocks.”
Another sigh, exasperated this time. “I spy with my little eye, something that begins with E.”
A pause.
“Even more rocks.”
The ground vibrates.
“Take over,” Shepard says and unbuckles her seatbelt. With more grace than should be possible, she climbs over the seat and lands solidly in Wrex’s lap.
Liara blinks in shock for half a second before realizing Shepard was talking to her. “This is not any navigation system I’m familiar with.”
Shepard twists around, nearly shoving her elbow in Wrex’s eye. He grunts. “Hold still and jump the jets when I tell you. Blue button,” she adds, at Liara’s confused silence.
The thresher maw roars up from the ground and Shepard locks on, fires the cannon. It rears its head back and spits. She counts to herself, and then – “Jump!” The Mako levitates with a rush and the spittle goes underneath the carriage, grazing a wheel. They land hard and everyone bounces up. Shepard’s head hits the roof, but she doesn’t miss when she fires the cannon again.
Four more rounds and she has a splitting headache and has spent way more time with Wrex’s face in her chest than she ever wanted, but the maw collapses with a shriek, dead. “Sorry,” she apologizes to Wrex, and climbs back over him, somehow landing upside down in her seat.
“You know,” Wrex starts, once Shepard’s righted herself and they’re on their way again. “Most people run.”
“How much longer do you think he’ll be?” Tali counts a sixth shot.
Shepard shrugs and leans back in the seat as much as she can. “Garrus is a good shot, but there are,” a seventh, “were a lot of cows.”
The number in the HUD next to G continues to rise with each shot, slowly catching up to S.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
“It is the Conduit, but we do not even know where it leads.”
“Saren’s already gone through. Anyone got a better plan?”
Silence.
Shepard takes a deep breath and tries to count the number of geth between them and the Conduit. She gives up, not actually wanting to know. “Alright. Garrus – guns. Target…everything. Liara – hang on.”
She floors it.