Scoped and Dropped

The sizzle of an EMP overload marked Garrus’s arrival in the CIC of the starship Boundless Courtesy, a former hanar vessel commandeered by a Blue Suns hit squad. The two mercs nearest to Garrus lost their kinetic barriers instantly. Before they could recover from the shock, he stepped through the door, taking each out with expert headshots from his Thunder rifle. His visor added the shots to his tally, one he’d started since leaving C-Sec.

24 headshots as a vigilante. I must be slipping. Shepard would’ve had more, I’m sure.

Garrus ran a quick thermal scan of the room. No one else was in the CIC, but he could hear the report of weapons fire below deck. He tapped on his omni-tool. “Dash, do you read? What’s your status?”

A brief crackle preceded her reply. “Just shiny here soldier! Though I could do with a little more firepower if ya care to join in!”

“I think I’ll take you up on that. Hang tight.” He hustled back to the ship’s central confluence. Skipping the laboriously slow elevator, he opted for the stairs, hastily installed for humanoids during the ship’s refit. Running over the dead or incapacitated bodies of other Blue Suns mercs, mostly human and batarian, he joined the fray in Courtesy’s cargo hold. Dash had held her ground by directing a pair of hijacked LOKI mechs against the Blue Suns from behind a stack of heavy crates. To Garrus’s amazement, she worked two omni-tools at once, using the second one to fire EMP and thermal spike mines at the mercs.

There were three of them that Garrus could see: two humans and a krogan. They hadn’t spotted his approach, so he took an extra second to ready his Mantis rifle. Knowing the krogan would laugh off all but the most perfect shot through the eye, Garrus opted to blow away the human on his left. With his shields already fried, the merc’s helmet and head exploded into a mess of blood, bone, and plastic.

Garrus didn’t have time to admire his work, as accelerated metal flew toward him. He hit the ground only in time to avoid what would have been a return headshot. A few rounds still hit the top of his shields’ perimeter, sending an unpleasant feedback through his armor. Damn, they’re pretty good shots to have hit me back that fast, or just lucky.

By then armless, the LOKI mechs still brazenly closed with the mercs, oblivious to the fact that they now posed no significant threat. Even so, the krogan took his chance to indulge some aggression, charging at one mech crest first, pulverizing its torso. Then he grabbed the second mech by the head, ripping it in two with gusto. He let out a war cry even as Garrus took a few decent potshots at him from cover. Dash leaned out long enough to fire a neural shock probe at the krogan, only to have it deflect harmlessly off of his shimmering blue armor. He smiled through his yellow teeth as he charged into the crates protecting Dash; Garrus winced when the stack buckled but held, for the time being.

Garrus’s visor still had the other human’s position pegged. He took a gamble on his shields holding out and popped out of cover. As Garrus anticipated, the merc opened fire, and as he had hoped, his shields held out just enough for him to scope and drop the merc.

The krogan shifted all of his attention to Garrus. Knowing there wouldn’t be a chance to fire another shot before being forced into a melee, Garrus threw his sniper rifle to the side. He grabbed a talon dagger from the mag-clip on his back, where human troops kept their shotguns. He full-on charged the krogan, leaping dagger first toward his huge brown crest. The blade missed its the krogan’s left eye, instead scraping against armor and tough scale. They crumpled to the ground. He heard the krogan laugh again as he smashed Garrus in the cheek with an armored fist. A human would likely have had a bone broken from that kind of punch, but Garrus’s tough turian face stayed intact. He couldn’t reach back for his assault rifle quickly enough as he reeled from the blow, but he did launch another EMP from his omni-tool. The blast took the krogan dead center in the face, forcing him to roll away as many of his armor’s mechanical enhancements malfunctioned.

Dash leapt in as Garrus recoiled from his quarry. With two shock darts readied on each hand, she climbed up the krogan’s hump, sticking both neural paralyzers into his thick neck. The beast of a merc shook and thrashed as he desperately tried to fight back. Even with his redundant nervous system, he was reduced to a crawl. That was enough time for Garrus to unfurl his assault rifle, put it to the krogan’s head, and pull the trigger until it overheated.

Back in Courtesy’s CIC, Garrus grimaced as he inspected his Thunder rifle. The heat sink was blown out and the barrel had taken significant damage.

“You oughta use thermal clips, ya know,” Dash offered as she glanced over at him from the main communications console. “Keeps you away from nasty problems like that.”

“I’ll have you know that I helped Shepard stop Saren with guns just like this, thank you.” His mandibles twitched. He then remembered that Shepard had access to top of the line weaponry from both the Alliance and the Spectre stocks. They fared better in the field than the run of the mill weapons from the Traverse and Terminus that Garrus was using.

“Whatever, big man, just tryin’ to be a help. Could be that I want to say thanks for coverin’ my ass back there.”

He didn’t look back at her, instead returning his attention to the cargo manifest, which had finished downloading to his omni-tool. “Anyway, you were right about the red sand. I’ll put out a beacon to your contact, after he comes through with those credits he promised.” He groaned under his breath. He needed credits more badly now than any other time in his life. He hadn’t eaten more than a few turian-friendly protein packs since leaving Eden Prime.

“Sounds cool soldier. What else you got over there?”

“Hmm, mostly boring lists of weapons and mods, most of it legal. I still don’t see anything about eezo.”

“I figured that’d probably be it. Can’t make it too easy.” Dash giggled. “I’m surprised you ain’t put two and two together yet, Vakarian.”

He glanced over at her. “What do you mean? Why should I put two numbers together right now..?”

She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, you turians can be so damn stiff, even when you go rogue. I figured when I dropped Wrex’s name back planetside you’d have reacted more. Everyone not living under a moon knows you two were with Shepard.”

“So?”

“He’s the one who hired us, special! Well, me. He doesn’t know you’re involved. I mean, not you, the one and only Garrus. Far as he knows there’s some asshole turian heavy along for the ride to get some credits.” She brushed a lock of hair back under her cap.

“Interesting.” Some gears began to turn in his head, but he kept his outward expression stoic. “And somehow Wrex knows who I need to look for, who will lead me to my… targets?”

“Yep. I mean that’s what he said. He figured what he knows might make some good currency in your circles. I might’ve fibbed a bit before, me spacing your last contact wasn’t just self-defense, ya know? Wrex hired me to shake him down for the info on this ship and its cargo. Some of his rival clans have been usin’ old repurposed junkers like this one to bring shipments they ain’t supposed to past the krogan DMZ, givin’ em an edge in firepower. Wrex wants it stopped.”

She beamed up at him with big eyes. “Funny how small the galaxy can be, ain’t it?”

Garrus’s stomach gurgled to remind him how empty it was. His jaw and cheekbones stung with fierce heat from the punch. Though he begrudgingly liked the notion that he might get to meet Wrex again, he didn’t care much about sentiment then. He wanted only a few things: a new gun, some hot food, a cozy place to sleep for at least one night cycle, and the location for Jaroth. He frowned at Dash when he knew that none of those things were immediately available. Closing out the cargo manifest on his omni-tool, he started playing with the helm controls in front of him. The ship had been refit but was still hopelessly built with hanar in mind. The helm controls were a tall and impractical set of levers and holographic dials on a silvery pedestal. Working them as well as he could, Garrus limped the ship toward an orbit of the nearest planet, Tuchanka.

<—Chapter Three

—>Chapter Five