Before Eden Prime

Melanie Shepard knew that a lot of N7's would have been annoyed, seeing this new assignment as a waste of time, but she wasn't one of them. Though Eden Prime was a sleepy colony world, it was also supposed to beautiful, the kind of place that joining the Alliance military had given her the chance to see.

As a street kid back on Earth, she'd heard about places like that, places better than where she was, but she hadn't given them much thought. Her life having been the way it was, she'd had to keep her eyes on what was in front of her or she'd likely have ended up hurt or worse.

When, at 14, she joined a gang, the 10th Street Reds, it had been more for security than because it appealed to her; she'd never really felt like she belonged. For a while, a life of petty theft and fighting had been all right, but shortly before her 18th birthday, she'd nearly killed someone.

A member of a rival gang had seen her kissing a girl he thought belonged to him and came at her with a knife. When the fight was over, his blade was an inch from his heart and he was on life support for a month. It was then that she decided to get out. It wasn't the violence she was afraid of; she'd proven she could take care of herself, but gang life would've made her into someone she didn't want to be.

The Alliance recruiting officer hadn't initially been impressed with the skinny, dark-haired girl in front of him, but her scores on the aptitude tests changed his mind and her performance in basic training changed those of anyone else who doubted her. The tests even revealed a minor biotic talent: she could form barriers, although not much else.

If there was one constant in her life, it was that violence was something she was good at. Whether with a gun or hand-to-hand, she could out-shoot, out-fight, and out-maneuver soldiers much bigger and more experienced than she was. In combat, the doubts and hesitations that sometimes afflicted her personal life dropped away: there was nothing but her, the target, and the knowledge of what she had to do.

Though she'd joined the military largely because she lacked other alternatives to the streets, she found that she enjoyed the life it offered. Growing up, she never knew for sure who her friends were; people could turn on you in an instant if they thought there were a few credits in it. By contrast, the bonds of service and camaraderie among soldiers were reliable. These were people who'd have your back, and who's allegiances you could count on even when the going got tough.

Her service had also allowed her to meet people she'd barely been able to imagine when she was growing up. As far as Melanie was concerned, that's all aliens were: people. They may not have been human, but they lived, they worked, they fucked, they fought, and who the hell cared what they looked like? When she'd been younger, she'd been judged by those who looked at her and saw only street trash; screw anybody who viewed people the same way because they had blue skin or mandibles. Besides, her experiences with humanity didn't encourage her to buy into that crap about how much better it was than other species. It's not like she didn't know plenty of good humans, but there were lots of bad ones too, just like every other species she'd met.

Shepard rose through the ranks quickly, especially after Elysium. She'd been on shore leave, doing a little rock climbing, when the attack hit. She'd rallied the survivors and held off a larger, better-equipped force for hours, killing many of them and saving most of the colonists, before Alliance reinforcements arrived to finish the raiders off. It was soon after that that she was invited into the N7 program, an invitation she was happy to accept.

After her training, she'd had a few postings, the most recent of them on the Normandy, a plum assignment considering it was the most advanced ship in the Alliance fleet. It was also a clear sign she'd been tracked for command. On Elysium, she'd shown she could rally even frightened people behind her and act independently in a crisis, abilities that were vital to someone who hoped to do more than just follow orders.

She suspected the ship's current mission wasn't entirely what it seemed; a turian Specter didn't take a trip aboard a cutting edge Alliance ship unless something important was going on, but for now she kept her suspicions to herself. She hadn't been on the Normandy that long, and growing up she'd learned not to say more than she needed to. She trusted that Captain Anderson knew what he was doing; she didn't know him that well, but from what she'd heard, he was a soldier's soldier, someone who did what was right and backed up the people under his command whatever the cost to himself. Until he filled her in though, there was nothing to do but wait; whatever the mission was, she'd find out soon enough.