Massive Disaster 5-27C

Metal screamed loud in his ears, the Alliance-built tin can protesting the sudden shock. Before Zedd could so much as shout, the world went sideways for all of a second.

God- His molars caught each other on the drop, copper on the back of his tongue as the Mako landed back on all four wheels without the mass effect auto-suspension doing a damn thing to help. The full landing had the grab rail biting into his palm, Zedd squeezing onto it tight as Wrex’s armor-plated shoulder slammed into his. Damnnit!

It wasn’t anything close to a light hit but Zedd figured it would have hurt so much worse if that same shoulder wasn’t juiced up to hell and back. Still nothing pleasant now, but he could live with a bruise.

Tali’s elbow caught him in the sternum as the Mako bounced again, the quarian apologizing like he even felt it. Zedd didn’t even pay attention as the console lit up every shade and hue of red the Alliance knew how to make, the young man only getting in one clean breath before Jane Shepard twisted the yoke as hard as she could.

"Contact, contact! Left ridge!" Ashley was already up in the gunner sling, voice half-swallowed by the turret servos winding up over their heads. "Two — no, three! Third one's dug in behind the—"

"I see it."

Five fingers tightened on the grab rail again as the vehicle twisted into a slide that should have rolled them, and somehow didn’t.

"You can't see anything, Command-"

“I said!” The Mako spun the entire opposite direction, barely avoiding another rocket that shot past them. “I see it!”

Zedd couldn’t.

That was the problem with this frozen ice-hell of a planet, his aviators trying their best to punch through the whiteout. All he got for his efforts was a smear of thermal noise and a targeting overlay that stuttered through white like a drunk. Yeah, that tracks.

The flashlights definitely weren’t stupid. As much as their tactics were shit, they made up for it with raw numbers and the simple nature of instant coordination. Love a killbox where nobody can see the box.

And, of course—

“Another one!”

Zedd slid his eyes shut as Ashley barked from her weapons position. The element of surprise.

He was lucky enough to catch the launch of another rocket this time — a smear of light lifting off a ridgeline of stacked white bright enough to make his eyes go wide. “Leftgoleftgoleft!” 

Jane had already gone left — before the words left his lips even — the Mako carving a trench through a snowbank hard enough to blast it to powder, the rocket detonating against the space where they had been a second ago.

Huh. She was good at this and that was unexpected.

Way better than he would have guessed.

Sure, she drove like she was mad at the world for letting her get behind the wheel and the ground was going to suffer for that indignity, no denying that much. Past all that, though, the wheels stayed under them through every hard drift even as rockets came screaming at them out of the white.

Every single time, Jane Shepard had the Mako somewhere else and not once did that somewhere else include off a cliff.

Which was more than he could say for some people.

"...okay," Zedd forced out, hand still knuckled tight against the rail. "Okay, so at least one Shepard can drive."

"Busy." Jane didn't look back.

"Got you. Just making a note of it. Y’know, for the record." And the eventual documentary. A finger tapped the button for the internal channel because he wasn’t going to yell all that loud over gunfire and explosives if he could help it. "Hey. John. Big Shep. You copy?"

Static crackled at the edge of the comms, systems showing their wear before John Shepard sounded off warm through it all. "Go ahead."

"Yeah, so, quick question." Tires screamed for grip as they tore up the ice-packed side of a mountain path. "Your sister's been driving like… I don’t know, like a person? Weird, right?”

"I’m not hearing a lot of actual questions here!" All that careful Commander warmth went out the window as John Shepard launched another salvo of shardfire from the Mako. “Kindly get to the point!”

“No, I get that. I’m getting there.” He pulled in a breath under another heavy shudder from the Mako, a rocket too close for comfort. “It’s just that I haven’t once felt like writing my will. You wanna explain that?"

"If this is about my driving again..."

“Of course it’s about your driving, Shepard. It’s bad.”

“My piloting is fine, Zedd.”

"...you remember Therum, right?” His fingers tapped out a rhythm against his thigh, breathing tight but nearly as controlled as the silent Kai Leng just three seats over. For someone who seemed to prefer the job of assassin to bodyguard, the guy seemed to have some excellent inner peace. “Cause I remember Therum.”

“D-don't you start with this.”

“Too late for that, Commander.” Zedd shook his head, doing his very best to cling tight to the new distraction as if it were another safety rail. “I tend to hold grudges when people force me to make peace with God twice in one flight.”

“Ashley, back me up here!”

The turret fired, Sergeant Williams letting off a burst as she chose to do her job in favor of speaking.

“Tali?”

“Well…” The pause was long enough for a sentence and a half, her breathing filtered with the usual electric doubling from her suit. “The descent profile was within tolerances. I mean…”

“See!”

“The airframe tolerances. Not necessarily… ours.”

“Heh.” The krogan among them barked out a laugh with his whole chest. “Even the suit-rat won’t cover for you, Shepard.”

“Left! Left!” Zedd shouted out again and, like before, Jane Shepard forced the turn before he could get out the second syllable. Ice chips scattered against the Mako like gravel as the place they’d just been grew itself a crater.

"Hostiles pushing left flank!" The turret blasted shardfire across the white, Geth internals sparking as they died and another flashlight-head went dark — swallowed up completely by the ice and snow. "They're trying to box us. Commander, they're gonna wall us in!"

"Then we don't let 'em!" Jane twisted the Mako into a turn that had no business working, the back end coming around across the ice as they went sideways at speed. The tires bit, and they were pointed down-valley and gone, the two platforms that had been closing in suddenly behind them and shooting at empty space.

Jesus… Zedd’s head thunked back against the wall, biting his tongue as he rode the next few seconds of bumpy ice-road. Can’t even do anything back here. He knew that much with no gun port or console to actually play a part in the fight. Driving me fucking crazy.

It was just him, Liara, Tali, Kai and the walking mass of murder-turtle that was Urdnot Wrex, all of them strapped in while the Shepard twins and Ashley did everything worth doing.

Zedd’s eyes drifted down and to the right, tracking down to the hands of the sole asari in the transport. Huh… A weapon was clutched tight in her grip, the frame of the pistol a pink-purple-white mix with a curved grip, with a swollen underbarrel housing. He’d clocked the thing on Therum and Feros both and filed it away, the file choosing now to flutter open in his head the longer he stared at it.

“Hey, doc.” Voice raised over the chaos, he held a hand out. “Lemme see that shooter.”

“My…” Liara blinked those big blue eyes at him, before the researcher turned her attention down to the gun in question. “You wish to hold my sidearm?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Now?”

"You're not using it.” He made the ‘give it here’ motion, looking for another distraction. “We're all just cargo back here. C'mon."

She hesitated like he’d asked to see her omni and scroll through her photos, but it didn’t take all that long for the asari to pass it over to him. Zedd palmed it, letting it rest flat in his hand as he let its weight sit. Heavier than it loosks.

A decent balance on it though; the mass sat into the wrist, making it clear that someone somewhere had spent a good chunk of time considering ergonomics and artitcualtion.

“It…” Liara started, staring down at her now-empty hands. “It was a gift from my mother. Before we— before our estrangement, I mean.”

“Mmm.” He turned the heavy pistol over, staring at the Acolyte’s fat capacitor bank along the underbarrel. “Serrice Council, right?”

“You can tell?” The doctor blinked again, mouth half-open with the question. “It bears no branding.”

“Yeah, Serrice doesn’t do branding. Too fancy and bespoke for that but Serrice are the only ones who’d bother replicating biotic effects into small arms. Being real, its decent work…” He sighted down the pistol at the floor, safety on as he did a check of the trigger weight with a long pull — the only kind it allowed. “For what it is, not gonna lie… pretty decent. Definitely an ‘asari’ gun, though.”

Another pause answered him, this one with a frown layered into it. “I do not know what that means.”

“Means that it’s not a clunker. Just…” Zedd bit back a snort. “Just definitely built by people who treat a shooter like it's more of a backup plan, though.” The weapon tilted in his hands, coils catchingt the light of the cabin. “Look at the whole design language. Apart from the usual asari swoops…”

He didn’t need to read her lips to know Liara was mouthing the word; ‘swoops’ formed on her tongue in silence. “Every bit of this thing assumes you got something better. It’s a sidearm for people whose actual weapon is just more of the same—” Fingers waggled free at Liara and a curious Tali’Zorah. “—space magic, of course.”

“Biotics are not—”

“Yeah, yeah, hold on. Lemme explain.” He twisted over his shoulder. “Yo, Wrex! Krogan bash stuff with their guns, right? Like, up close? On purpose?”

“Of course!” The laugh came with no hesitation, shaking the cabin like the shockwaves outside. “Better than shooting!”

"—see, that…" Zedd turned back around with a free palm open toward the krogan, Mako bouncing as Jane yelled something to her brother sitting right next to her. "...pretty much says it for me.”

Liara’s attention flickered to the still-chucking Wrex, mouth suddenly small. “I suppose… I do take your meaning. The doctrine of the makers is reflected in the weapon.”

Zedd nodded slow. “There you g-”

The Mako caught air and Zedd lost his words.

Everything in the cabin went weightless before gravity remembered them, the mass effect suspension taking a split-second to adjust as the chassis screamed again.

Wrex bellowed along with it, the krogan clearly having more fun than the rest of them.

“A little warning!” Ashley was definitely not having fun with him.

“Ridge was there!” Jane bit back. “Now its not!”

“Ridge jumping’s always a joy.” Wrex leaned his bulk forward, aiming to carry his voice toward the front seats. He managed to accomplish that while also erasing the barrier between his own and Zedd’s personal space near completely. “Quicker way of getting around, and better angles to get off a shot. I’ve fought in many a valley like this. Less snow, of course, b—”

"Sit.” Jane chewed the word. “Back."

"I'm just saying, if I was the one driv—"

“We’d all be dead.” It only took a grunt and one arm for Zedd to push the krogan back, the giant alien actually looking down at him with wide eyes. “And I don’t like being dead.”

Wrex, who was having the time of his eight-hundred-year life, laughed again. “Let me drive and you wouldn’t have to worry about that!”

Zedd blinked slow. Cause dead people don’t worry.

"You're all soft.” The krogan rumbled again. “On Tuchanks, we don’t even drive with doors.”

“Wrex!” Jane’s growl carried to the back. “I swear on my brother’s grave—!”

“I’m right here, Jane!”

“My point!”

The main gun fired again, the burst of shardfire saving everybody from wherever that conversation was headed. Through the window, Zedd caught the shudder of something big coming apart out in the storm. With a shake of his head, he went back to the annoying pistol in his hand.

“Since we’re stuck here, doc, couple things.” He held the Acolyte higher, grip between two fingers as he presented it like evidence. “One, there’s a charge delay on this. At least a second of a gap between pull and fire, maybe more cold.”

Liara’s frown deepened at that. “The capacitors require—”

“Yeah, I know what they require, but that’s the problem here. The entire purpose of a sidearm is now. As in, use it now.” Zedd clicked his tongue as he dangled the weapon in front of the asari’s face. “If you fuck up the use case, what’s the point of it? A pistol that wants you to schedule the shot in advance is crazy. Whoever came up with this should be fired.”

Another rocket shrieked past, the Mako already in a drift before the hull could even get pinged.

“Two.” He wasn’t done. “I’ve seen you use this thing and the projectile is slow. Great against barriers, I’ll give it that. Phasic shaping on this took some smart work, the way it strips shields and barriers.” Zedd tilted his head to the other side, not even fighting a smile. “Though that’s how you know it’s by asari, for asari. Your whole meta is fighting biotics. Which…” The smile faded in place of a frown, Zedd mulling that oddity over. “Is kinda odd, now that I really think about it. Most threats out there aren’t biotic. There some Asari civil war I haven’t heard about or something?”

Before Liara could even answer that tangent, Zedd waved her off. “And three, this is the one that really gets me. Take the shields out of the equation and this thing sucks for lethality even on a naked target. Doesn’t do a good job at finishing anything. Just a setup with no punchline.”

“Tali?” The asari turned to face the quarian, only a hint of desperation in her voice. “Is he… is this accurate?”

“Well, I-I mean…” After another too-long pause, the quarian just nodded.

"Thank you, Tee." Zedd flipped the Acolyte in his palm and held it back out grip-first. "No offense, doc, but the way krogan are dense? Asari can be some airheads.”

The doctor took the weapon back with both hands, expression stuck between a frown and something lighter as she looked down at her mother’s gift.

"Remind me to build you something better when we're not getting shot at."

"...Thank you?"

“Tali gets hers first, though.” The smile slid back on his face as he eased back into his seat. “I’ll slide you onto the list, though. No worries.”

Up front the tone of the fight was changing — Ashley's bursts coming shorter and farther between, John calling targets with more space in between the calls, the rocket fire out in the white thinning from a conversation into a last word. Jane ran them straight through a drift that a smarter driver would've respected, and on the far side of it the last geth platform was just there, half-buried, dragging itself around on a shot-out leg to bring its launcher over.

The main gun didn't let it. The thing folded backward into the snow and the snow started covering it before the parts stopped moving, and just like that Noveria owned another statue.

"Clear." John let it out slow.

Wind fell off as the valley opened up in front of them.

And out of it — ugly, gray and stacked up the mountainside — Peak 15 came out of the storm.

"There she is." Jane didn't slow down.