When Leng charged Shepard, she was ready for him. She was not ready, however, for him to swerve at the last moment, ducking her fire as he changed direction. Rather than go for the leader of the team, he sent a biotic pulse at Liara, which staggered her before he ducked again.

Javik, always accepting of collateral sent an attack sailing at Leng's back—which missed Leng and slammed Liara backwards. She hit the ground with a yelp and a gasp—making it plain that Javik, not true to the norm, had pulled his metaphorical punch a little.

Leng turned, then smirked…and Alenko did not like it.

He didn't hear what Leng said, but he did hear the gunship's weapons firing up.

He did the only thing he could. He pulled Shepard to him and forced them both on the ground, taking up as little space as possible and threw up a barrier. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Javik engaging Leng and making headway.

Or maybe Leng figured now was as good a time as any to make his exit.

But Javik wasn't in the line of fire, even if he could be trusted to ignore the fact that two of his comrades were.

If comrade was even the word.

The first impact made Alenko gasp. He'd never tried holding off gunship missiles before, and he felt his concentration flutter at the impact. He held Shepard tighter, focusing with all his might. If his barrier failed, the missile would kill them both.

Another missile impacted, sending a strange kind of feedback at him. He had to manipulate the energy. He felt it when something hit it.

He'd failed her before. Not this time.

A missile followed by a hail of gunfire. They were going to hammer on him until he couldn't hold up any longer…

Blood tricked from his nose, a warm slither that dripped down on Shepard's armored back. She shook where she was, utterly helpless, totally dependent on him and the thin blue shell of energy domed over them.

Suddenly the impacts stopped. Opening his eyes to mere slits—he'd closed them the better to concentrate—he found a second shell of energy closely layered with his. Since it was blue, he knew it had to be Liara, even if he couldn't see her.

What he could see was Javik—and something about the way he moved suggested the man was one pissed off Prothean.

"Do something!" Liara screamed.

Alenko's head began to ache, but he didn't dare reduce the barrier's strength. The shaking being protected by dark energy, his own bulk, and at least one shield module was too important to take chances with.

Javik did do something as soon as the gunship paused in its firing. With a spring and a roll, the Prothean came to a kneeling position in the middle of the gunship's shooting gallery, hands raised, fists glowing green. He offered some kind of challenge, something with an almost ritualistic sound and the green expanded until he resembled something of a walking bomb, a mass of potential energy.

Alenko squeezed his eyes shut. "I love you," he whispered, a high-pitched noise starting to sound in his head.

"It'll be okay!" Shepard hissed. "Just hang in there!"

Two missiles headed—not for Javik—but to continue hammering on Alenko's now-reinforced barrier.

Several things happened at once.

The missiles never made it past the Prothean. Javik flung his arms out with a shout that seemed more a sound of coalescing focus than anything else. The missiles veered to either side of him, moving wide. They struck the support pillars to either side of him, leaving the structure above dangerously unstable. "Move, asari!" Javik bellowed, snapping his arms at the elbows and sending a massive biotic pulse at the gunship. There was a resonant boom as the blow rocked the ship, then the nasty sound of the ceiling giving way.

Liara threw herself across the room in a sprint, dropping her barrier just long enough to press herself against Alenko's and put it back up, shielding all three of them.

"Duck, asshole!" Shepard roared as Liara reached out, her barrier steady as she let out a push of her own slam into the unstable roofing.

He saw the plan: they were going to collapse the ceiling to block the gunship's fire. It would either have to move or leave, because fighting a gunship was a matter of luck and resources and right now they had neither.

He had a glimpse of the gunship getting away, which elicited a stifled snarl of frustration from Shepard.

The roofing came down almost over Javik's position, burying him in a cloud of rubble and dust.

For a few moments everything seemed silent—even though Reapers made a hideous amount of noise. It was the silence of a threat departed.

As the blanket of lessened sound settled, the place Javik had been standing—on the edge of the worst of it—exploded outward, the Prothean apparently having erected a barrier of his own at the last moment.

Huffing and puffing, turned grey with finely powdered duractrete, Javik made his way over to the two biotics and Shepard. The hand at his nose suggested Alenko wasn't the only one having problems.

Cautiously, Liara and Alenko both let down their barriers.

He didn't blame Shepard for scrambling free of his protective weight.

"Ah. They didn't kill you," Javik said blandly, looking her up and down with his customary nonchalance.

"Or you—and you tried to hand them your Prothean ass on a silver plate," Shepard declared.

Alenko reached up to staunch the blood still flowing from his nostrils.

"Everyone okay?" Shepard asked breathlessly, her skin gleaming with sweat.

He wasn't sure she heard the three answers in the affirmative, for asari comm chatter began to fill their radios. Screams of pain. Roared snarls. Pleas for help. And gunshots that sounded all too few to be aimed at the Reapers.