Chapter 1: Of disasters and databases
Sitting at the semi-public terminal in the XCOM recruiting office on Nova Minsk, Shepard rolled his shoulders and thought back over the last few months. His stay on Nova Minsk had been quite good, and he'd picked up the local dialect fairly easily. Either way, his one hundred and eight days of administrative leave had gone up in a pleasant plume of fine tobacco smoke, and it was time to get back to the grind. So here he was, sitting in a chair next to a terminal that would bear a close resemblance to a dead Cyberdisc if it didn't hurry up…
"Database accessed. Please input your name and service ID"
Trying to relax, Shepard punched in his name and number with a practiced air. As the machine clunked along obligingly, he walked off to get a cup of coffee. Returning, he grinned at the password screen. Inputting the thirty character long string of gibberish, he sighed as he sipped the warm brew. He had to be honest- aggies always had the best food and drink of all the places he'd ever been, even if the tech was always slower than a lamed rookie. Suddenly, a red light went off. Reading to himself, Shepard leaned back and groaned. The magical words "data packets lost in transmission" had come up, and it was time to get to the most annoying job in the known universe: re-entering data. Each member of XCOM had a hard copy of their basic file, and when crap like this happened- which was distressingly frequent, even in the Home Reach- the standby was to break out the paper and provide the basics while IT support played find-the-downed-node-and-fix-it. As Shepard pulled out the hallowed hardcopy, though, the screen threw up a much rarer and annoying message.
"Warning. Data corruption detected."
Grumbling, Shepard took a long pull at his coffee and got ready to do the quick-n-dirty version they used when there was data corruption. The catch was, it sucked. Bad. Not in the nature of the forms, but in the fact anything ten light-years from corrupted data got tagged for investigation by the White Hats. Which meant Shepard would be bit in the ass a year from now when they finally got around to noticing the fact that he had blown a hundred and eight days of admin leave on a backwoods aggie world where they couldn't muster him up for something at the drop of a pin. At any one of a dozen sanctioned R&R facilities, they could snatch a guy in nothing flat if something came up. Out here, it had taken a week to deliver the summons, even with Hypercom. Probably didn't hurt he was nowhere near any of the R&R planets, though.
Said quick-n-dirty form was incredibly crude. A multiple-choice menu for preservice history, a couple of dropdowns on where exactly you came from; a menu that asked for any particular service highlights or traits, and then the oft-joked Class Specification Menu.
"Let's see…" Shepard said, mumbling. "Preservice. Mph. Battle brat, those REMFs might as well make it the default. Bases… Cydonia, Charon, Feraxis, Novo Brazil, Chesapeake. Carriers… New Cydonia, Volunteer's Gift, Von Zeppelin, Ares. Stations… Calais, Hiroshima, Fortuna. Service highlights… LTC, served on the Baldur…"
Shepard's voice trailed off as he thought of the next thing to put on the form. XCOM wasn't a miser with admin leave, but you needed a damn good reason to get it. A hundred and eight days wasn't a gift for inventing a new widget or bringing home a wounded squadmate.
"Survived Braddock's Reach disaster aboard XWS-73, El Regalo de Jesus."
Breathing out quietly, Shepard sped on. Three and a half months hadn't buried those memories too deep, and they still got him up in a cold sweat with one hand on his plasma pistol some nights. He had healed some though. Hopefully enough.
"Combat Classification: Sniper, Infiltrator training, Psionic. 700 hours in enclosed areas combat. 2000 hours in ship combat areas. 75 hours in naval engagements." Eighty three days in the guts of El Regalo de Jesus. 29 days' worth of combat. Spirit of the Commander, he had trained as a sniper. A goddamn sniper who specialized in killing people at dozens or hundreds of meters using the best tech XCOM had to offer, generally against the best tech the bastards on the other side could grab. And then, eighty-three days in the tunnels and shafts of a battlecruiser with a battered laspistol and improvised shotgun. God certainly had a sense of humor, he supposed. At least he knew his psionics were up to standards, though. No doubt about that.
"Profile Reconstruction completed. Please confirm all data entry."
Shepard pressed yes without any hesitation. Duty called, and this wasn't worth quitting for.
In a council chamber, three voices were talking quietly. When the fate of a very good junior officer was on the line, it paid to be careful.
"Well, what about Shepard?" one of the men, Ambassador Udina asked. "Grew up on ships, right?"
"Both his parents were Espatiers and Navy, respectively." Captain Anderson stated, calmly. "Good record on both of them, and both families go back to the Ethereal War."
"What about the disaster at Braddock's Reach?" Admiral Hackett said, snorting. "He was on El Regalo de Jesus if the logs are good."
"More importantly, he survived. For three month, in a drifting hulk overrun by Chryssalids. He trained as an Infiltrator, and lived through a disaster that killed every Espatier on board, plus two full London-class landing crafts going in hot. He only got out by firing himself out in a lifeboat aimed directly at the third London going in. If nothing else, he can and will survive." Captain Anderson said, almost proud. "I saw it myself during the rescue mission."
"Still," Udina stated. "Is this the kind of person we want protecting the galaxy?"
Anderson's response was flat. "We learned that one man can never carry the entirety of the load. There is no one, singular, hero. There is only the leader of heroes. That's the kind of man who can protect the galaxy. And to lead heroes, you have to be a hero yourself."
Udina acquiesced. "I'll make the call."
In the early 2005, Earth was invaded by a coalition of hostile aliens, led by the Ethereals. By 2006, the Etheraels and their servitors had been repulsed, leaving behind marvels of technology in excess of anything of anything developed on Earth. With this massive influx of technology, humanity managed to colonize their own solar system in record time. In 2035, during an geological dig on Mars, the ancient remains of another spacefaring race were discovered, prompting a fusion between the two alien technology bases that ended with man's place firmly entrenched upon the stars. The technology they found on Mars was incredable, resulting in the reworking of hundreds of theories. Laymen thought it was a miracle. The rest of the galaxy called it Mass Effect.
