FULL CHAPTER HERE —>MASSIVE DISASTER 5-33

“You compromised a Spectre operation.”

The lock to the briefing room had barely even finished cycling when Jane Shepard turned around to face him, all five feet and change of her huffing the recycled aluminum taste of the briefing room air.

“Mmmhmm.” Zedd let out a breath of his own through his nose, long and low, the taste of that same air on his tongue. That was the Normandy for you; a legitimately nice ship, the kind most Alliance hopefuls would cry real tears to one day helm but the air in every compartment came out of the scrubbers with the special gift of making you feel like you’d been sucking on a battery in a dream.

By the fourth day onboard, he’d honestly stopped noticing it. The only reason he even noticed it now was the sheer difference between the air in Peak 15 and what this room gave off the moment the doors hissed shut behind the four of them with a heavy seal-and-settle.

Cut off from Wrex’s grumbling and Ashley’s footsteps and the whole rest of the ship, the taste was all there was in the enclosed space.

That and four people.

Three humans and one asari maiden, in their respective positions around one table; a single holo-projector humming on standby and throwing a pale blue haze over brushed metal.

“Do you have anything at all to say for yourself?”

Oh, we’re back on that. Zedd dropped into the nearest chair at Jane’s question and allowed himself another sigh. He’d hoped the trip back — tram, Mako, and the full half-hour it took to return to the Normandy and strip out of acid-crusted armor in total silence to have bled some of the steam out of her. Unfortunately not. Something to note. He reached to his side out of habit, one hand held up expecting a NicStic to be placed in it. 

When a few seconds passed without that happening, the young man threw a reflexive glance out to his side and was surprised to see no one there. Oh, right.

Kai was on the Sable already, burning out of Noveria’s system with a half-dead Matriarch strapped down and the last rachni queen in the galaxy folded into a cargo hold not at all built for her. Add to that one borrowed commando with bleary dishwater eyes, and he’s got a whole crew of his own.

Zedd took off his glasses to properly look at the green-eyed woman glaring death at him. “Hello to you too, Lieutenant Commander.”

FULL CHAPTER HERE —>MASSIVE DISASTER 5-33