First human Spectre. When I first enlisted 11 years ago, I never expected my career to take me here. To think that some kid from the colonies would become the most important human in the galaxy…it's humbling. It's a great responsibility that I will take as seriously as I have my commission and my N7 rank.
Because of how momentous this is for humanity, I'm taking the opportunity to, during my downtime, write down a log of my thoughts during my missions. And the best place to start is with how I became the commander of the SSV Normandy.
It actually started on the SSV Tokyo. I was the leader of the marine contingent on that cruiser when I was tapped to serve as the XO of the first ever stealth frigate by Captain David Anderson himself. Anderson and my careers had crossed paths a few times over the years; I first met him after Elysium, and again years later, after I got my N6 designation, where I served under him until he finally deemed me worthy and submitted the final paperwork to make me an N7.
Anyway, when I first laid eyes on the Normandy, I knew that my career would never be the same. Co-developed by human and turian engineers, merging turian discipline and organization with human ingenuity and creativity to make the most advanced ship in the galaxy. The Normandy has the innovative Internal Emissions Sink, or IES, which makes her invisible to sensors and gives us a great tactical advantage. And it turned out to be a great ship for a Spectre.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. As the Normandy was prepping for shakedown on Arcturus, I toured the ship and got to know the people I'd be serving with; Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, my Marine Detachment Commander, Corporal Richard Jenkins, a squad leader during his basic training, and a few others who were to be fighting in my squad during ground missions. I also saw that our drop vehicle was the M35 Mako, an APC that I absolutely hate due to its lack of maneuverability, though it does have its uses. And when the time came for us to take off, I asked Anderson what his orders were. He gave me what I now know to be a strangely prophetic smile and said "Shepard, let's see what we can find."
Of course, we found trouble. We received a distress beacon from Eden Prime, one of our first extra-solar colonies and headed there with our guest, turian Spectre Nihlus Kryik, who was there to test me and give the final word on whether or not I would be accepted by the Citadel Council. When we got to Eden Prime, we were attacked by geth, a race of synthetics that, until now, didn't leave the Perseus Veil. These geth were the troops of now former Spectre Saren Arterius in his quest to bring about the return of the Reapers, another synthetic race that destroyed the Protheans. Saren needed information from the Prothean beacon that had been excavated on Eden Prime, and he was willing to destroy the colony to ensure no one could follow him.
During the mission, we lost Corporal Jenkins, but picked up Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams and continued on to retrieve the beacon. From survivors of the attack, we found that Saren had attacked, shot Nihlus and set a nuke to destroy the colony. Thankfully, we managed to disarm the nuclear devices as we fought our way through Saren's geth, but Lt. Alenko got too close to the beacon and got caught in the field. I managed to push him away, but got caught in the field myself. I saw horrific visions—synthetics that I now know to be the Reapers waging a terrible war—before the beacon exploded, throwing me to the ground hard and knocking me out.
I came to about 15 hours later in the Normandy's med bay, surrounded by Doctor Karin Chakwas and Lt. Alenko, and told them of the visions. Then Captain Anderson came in and I debriefed him, and then he briefed me on what we were going to do; we were heading to the Citadel to inform the Council that Saren had betrayed them, but they didn't believe us. Saren was their top agent, and all we had was the testimony of a traumatized dock worker and my visions. So Alenko, Williams and I headed into the Wards to find some evidence, where we met Garrus Vakarian, a turan C-Sec officer, and Urdnot Wrex, a krogan bounty hunter. From there, we found that Choras' Den owner and small time criminal Fist had information on a quarian who had evidence of Saren's treachery. The five of us raided Choras' Den only to find that Fist had been hired by Saren to kill the quarian. We got the location that Fist sent the quarian, and Wrex shot Fist before we left. I wasn't pleased with that fact, but we didn't have time to argue; we had to fight our way out of Choras' Den to the meeting point to save the quarian. Luckily the quarian, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, was more resourceful than she looked, and had managed to defend herself long enough for us to swoop in and rescue her. From there, we brought her to the human embassy and presented her data to Ambassador Donnel Udina, the human representative. He presented the irrefutable evidence to the Council.
Left with no recourse, they stripped Saren of his Spectre status, but still refused to get involved with "a purely human matter". I was upset, calling them out on how every time humanity asked for help, they abandoned us. Udina agreed, saying he was sick of the Council's "anti-human bullshit", before being cut off and presented with the solution that he had been looking for the entire time; making me the first human Spectre and sending me after Saren.
The ceremony wasn't all that lavish; in fact, my crew and I were still equipped with our weapons and still clad in our armor. But that didn't take away from the importance of this moment; Spectres were usually chosen from the three races of the Citadel Council, and to be among a race that wasn't from the Council races showed just how extraordinary they consider me to be. A Spectres' primary responsibility is to preserve galactic stability by any means necessary, so I essentially became above the law when it came to how I accomplish my missions from this point on.
After the Council meeting adjourned, Udina told me to meet him at the Normandy in a couple hours as he set things up for me. Once I was there, however, I was met by both Udina and Anderson. They told me that Anderson was stepping down as the captain of the Normandy, and I was being given command of it.
This was just as exciting as being made a Spectre; my first command. I mean, I'm coming to the point where I'd be given my own command eventually anyway, but I'm still only a Lieutenant Commander; I'm used to commanding ground forces, not ships. But I know I'm as ready to assume command of the Normandy as I am to be the first human Spectre.
For now, we've been given three leads; a Prothean dig site in the Artemis Tau cluster to find Prothean expert Doctor Liara T'Soni, Noveria, a privately owned research colony world where Matriarch Benezia, Saren's lieutenant and mother of Doctor T'Soni went, and Feros, a place where the geth have attacked. Hopefully, we can get the information we need to stop Saren from bringing back the Reapers.