Shepard woke early the next morning. All the other pods were dark, the dimming privacy screens still enabled, so it was safe to assume that the rest of the day crew were still bunked down. She rummaged through her bag and grabbed her toiletry kit before heading to the showers. She lingered under the scalding water for only a minute before hurrying through the rest of her shower routine. On ships, water was rationed along with the food. Each soldier was allotted a daily five minute shower. Any longer than that and the water was cut off, leaving you sudsy if you hadn't been quick enough.
After donning her armor, she rounded the corner of the bathroom and collided with a solid force.
"Excuse me ma'am, I'm sorry ma'am," Lieutenant Alenko stuttered as he stared down at her with bleary eyes. He had Alliance issue sweat pants slung low across his hips, his plain tshirt rising a fraction as he saluted her, leaving a quarter inch of taut skin visible between the fabrics.
"No worries, Lieutenant," she smiled at him, returning his salute while trying to keep her eyes upward. "Enjoy your shower." His eyes froze a second and then he nodded, slipping past her into the bathroom.
She entered the mess and grabbed a steaming cup of black coffee. Enjoy your shower, she groaned inwardly. That was too easy to construe as a subtle come on. Shit.
Ten minutes later, Alenko slid into the chair across the table from her. He'd dressed in his ship casuals: Alliance utility pants and belt with a navy blue shirt. She ignored the way the rolled sleeves of the shirt hugged his biceps. Instead, she focused on his creased brow. Something was bothering him. She hoped it wasn't what she'd said earlier. The last thing she needed was some lieutenant reading too much into what she said.
"That doesn't smell like coffee," she nodded towards the mug his fingers gripped tightly, trying to ease him into a conversation.
"No ma'am. I tend to avoid caffeine and I think the rest of the crew would be pretty upset if I switched the pot to decaf," he grinned at her.
"An Alliance soldier who doesn't survive on caffeine? That's new. Next you're going to tell me you don't eat meat and that you're celibate." She watched as his dark eyes widened. What is wrong with you? First the shower comment, now this? You act like you've never talked to a man before. He is your subordinate. Stop it! "Uh, not that it's any of my business, of course."
"Not eat meat? That's blasphemous," his eyes twinkled as he teased her. He glanced at her cup. "Do you need a refill?"
She hadn't noticed it was empty. "I should go. See you later Alenko."
Kaidan clenched his eyes shut against the shooting pain in his forehead as the commander disappeared silently around the corner. He'd need to see Doctor Chakwas before the day was over. He took a sip of the herbal tea and thought back to his conversation with Shepard. What was that about?He wondered if she'd been flirting with him. Not likely. A soldier like Shepard didn't jeopardize their career by having affairs with subordinates. It seemed just as unlikely that a battle hardened warrior was nervous talking to her crew though so he was left puzzled.
"Where'd the commander go," Jenkins propped himself against the table. "Did you get a chance to talk to her? What's she like?"
"She drinks coffee like normal humans," Kaidan reported.
The table filled around him as the rest of the day crew arrived to grab morning rations before switching over with the night staff. As the voices rose, each competing over each other to be heard, Kaidan excused himself and slipped into the medbay.
"Are you alright, Lieutenant Alenko," the doctor's accent greeted him from the desk.
"Just needed somewhere quiet to rest for a minute," he assured her.
She nodded and waved him to one of the cots. "Captain Anderson briefed me on your unique situation. Whenever you have any complications at all with your implant, you're to come to me immediately." She crossed the room to examine him. The bright flare of her penlight stabbed through him as she surveyed his pupillary response. "I take it that you're experiencing a migraine?"
"Only the start of one," he assured her. She pursed her lips but said nothing before she flipped off the overhead lights. Kaidan closed his eyes in the dark and let the raucous laughter of the rest of the crew fade to an imperceptible hum. Dr. Chakwas' faint steps echoed through the room as she crossed back to her desk and clicked on a small lamp so she could continue working.
With his eyes shut, Kaidan's mind drifted to the sparring Shepard and Nihlus had engaged in the day before. Her movements had been calculated elegance and lethal grace. Still, he'd been surprised when she'd managed to best the turian Spectre. He stood almost a foot taller and had a marked advantage with both his reach and talons, besides being a Spectre to boot. Kaidan reminded himself that Commander Shepard was not a woman to underestimate.
He recalled the way her armor fit as she'd spun around the cargo bay. Armor was designed with maximum efficiency in mind, N7 armor even more so. That same armor also did wonders at highlighting the shape of the human body. The lines of her N7 armor accentuated the flare of her hips and dip of her waist. It hugged her in exactly all the right places, molding to the curves of her body like a second skin. He sucked in his breath as his pants began to tighten. He was horrified to realize what he'd thinking about.
"Lieutenant," Dr. Chakwas looked up with concern from her datapad.
Yep, enough of that. Kaidan pushed himself up, the shooting pain erasing any lingering evidence of the start of his erection. "I'm fine. I'll come back if I need anything." He'd rather deal with the migraine.
Shepard spent the next hour stripping her guns and cleaning all the moving parts at the armory bench in the cargo bay. It gave her something to do with her hands as she waited for the duty switch when she could begin her day with the crew. After she had meticulously pieced everything back together, she called for the elevator to make her way back up the CIC. As the door slid down with a hydraulic whoosh, she was greeted with the sound of laughter. It sounded like most of the crew was still in the mess. Shepard peered around the wall and saw a group of them sitting at the table, coffee mugs dotting the surface. She ducked back around hoping none of them had seen her.
Shepard always took the opportunity to observe the people around her but the Normandy didn't have many places that she could watch from without interference. She'd be able to hear someone coming down the stairs making this as good a chance as any to get a sense of where the crew was at.
"C'mon! Show us what you can do," a voice egged on someone. After what must have been a refusal, the voice added, "Please! I've never worked with one before."
"Not once," someone else asked. She couldn't see him but she recognized the husky timbre of Lieutenant Alenko's voice. "Okay, but I'll go easy on you."
A blue glow pulsed through the amber of the system lights. Shepard heard a squeal and felt a crackle in the air. Understanding washed over her as she connected the sizzle from their handshake to the light show around the corner. Kaidan Alenko was a biotic.
"Shit," Kaidan cursed at the same time something large cracked into the table.
"Corporal Jenkins, are you alright," Dr. Chakwas concerned accent rang out. "Alenko, we need to get him to the medical bay, right now."
A groan was followed by Jenkins shouting, "That was awesome," to which the rest of the crowd broke into laughs.
After a minute, Shepard heard the unmistakable flutter of cards being shuffled. She was just about to head around the corner for more coffee when she heard a new voice ask, "So, what does everyone think about Commander Shepard?" She stilled. If she came into view now, they'd probably all scatter assuming she'd heard them talking about her. Getting a sense of the crew's dynamics and eavesdropping were two totally different things. She began inching her way towards the staircase, hoping that no one had a line of sight on the stairwells.
"She's so cool. I can't wait to get out there with her," Jenkins voice rang out. Shepard smiled. She wondered if she had ever been so excitable. Probably not. She hadn't joined the Alliance out of a sense of duty or honor. She'd been cynical before she'd even reached her teen years. Living on the streets tended to do that to you. No, Raina Shepard had joined the Alliance to escape the Tenth Street Reds.
She didn't remember ever having a family. She knew she had to have come from somewhere but she had no memories of parents or relatives of any kind. She'd been homeless, sneaking in and out of any place she could find shelter, stealing only the food she needed to survive, running in the morning before she was found sleeping in the corner of whatever building had offered shelter the night before. She'd learned quickly how to read people; how to know when they were lying, how to watch for tells if someone was about to throw a punch. She was hungry all the time and she trusted no one. It wasn't the life for a little girl but it was the only life she'd been given.
One day when she was ten, she got sloppy. It had been days since she'd managed to get enough food to take the gnawing pain from her belly. She'd seen older kids able to lift wallets and Raina almost salivated at what foods she would be able to afford with credits. Taking wallets couldn't be hard, right? She'd followed a couple through a store, waiting for an opportunity. She realized a moment too late that she hadn't been nearly as sneaky as she had hoped. As she reached for the man's wallet, his hand had clamped down on her wrist. She'd shrieked so loud she had startled him into letting go and she had taken off running through the store. Her terror over her near capture resulted in two days of self-enforced isolation in the basement of a burned out apartment block, afraid to move and get caught by the police.
On the third day, she'd been so hungry that she knew she needed to find something, anything at that point, to eat. She'd crawled from her hole and went in search of an easy target. A house nearby was dark, no cars in the drive or any sign of life through the windows. She'd crept around back and listened for noise inside. She waited an hour and, when the time had passed and she'd still heard nothing, pried open a window, praying there wasn't an alarm system. No sirens blared so she had beelined for the kitchen. A hand tangled in the rat's nest of hair she had and yanked her off her feet. Her eyes had darted, looking for an escape route. She turned on the waterworks, pretending to sob into her hands. Combined with her rail thin child's build, her assailant loosened their grip just as she had anticipated. She'd lashed out, kicking their shin and landing a punch to their scrotum and tore to the door. She'd wrenched it open only to find a leering teenage boy standing between her and freedom. With a smirk on his face and a blade in his hand, he'd offered her a choice. It was simple enough: gang or death.
It started out small. Delivering messages back and forth between safe houses. Playing the role of lookout because she was small enough that most people wouldn't even notice her. The older she got, the more she learned. They taught her how to lift wallets without getting caught. She learned what goods sold best and where to take them to get the best price. She discovered when to press for the advantage and when to cut her losses and run. She learned which bones to break first to get a man to talk. And when she'd begun developing a woman's body, she'd learned how to use it to distract and entice without the need for a weapon.
She paid for her lessons in blood and ounces of flesh. But never tears.
It was better than being hungry.
Raina had watched as other children came and went. She'd watched from the shadows as kids were hauled off to jail. That was the kinder of the many futures she faced. She'd seen kids left in the street to bleed out from stab wounds or gunshots, all so the others could save their own hide. There was no honor among these thieves. She'd watched many of them become addicted to the drugs they'd been tasked to peddle on the streets. They'd withered away, only caring where their next supply came from, until the gang got rid of them or abandoned them. At thirteen, Raina Shepard had a better understanding of mortality than she had any right to. She knew how dirty and depraved life could be.
It was better than wondering where to find the next shelter to wait out the storm.
At fifteen, only her skill with a blade saved her from being raped. Marcus, the gang leader, had pinned her down. She'd stabbed her knife into his kidney. His body had been left in an alley and, only a mere four hours later, a new leader took his place, crowned in the blood of the other contenders. That one knew better than to try to lay claim to her. Raina kept everyone at a distance. To show emotion was to show weakness. Show weakness and you show your enemies how to kill you. She slept with one eye open and always knew at least two ways in and out of anywhere she went. It wasn't much of a life, having no one to depend on except herself.
But it was better than having no life at all.
Raina was sixteen when she was witness to her first gang initiation rite. It turned out, she hadn't known just how ugly life could be. Not before that. She'd been forced to witness as another kid endured a brutal beating at the hands of the gang's inner circle. When the beating had ended, he'd been unconscious, no part of his bare skin unstained with blood. "If he lives, he gets to do phase two," one of the guys had laughed as they left him in a bloody heap on the floor. They'd dropped his body in a dumpster the next day. Phase two, she would later learn, was just as bad. Her knife wouldn't save her then. The final phase was different for everyone. It was designed to test the limits of your loyalty, how far you would really go for the Reds. As though being beaten bloody and abused didn't prove it enough. The last initiate had been tasked with killing a police officer who had busted one of their operations, along with the officer's entire family. On completion, he'd received his gang tattoo and cuts of all the spoils.
A few days before her eighteenth birthday, they'd given her the final choice. Gang or death. She chose neither and ran. She'd been with the Reds for seven years. She knew how they operated, knew where they hid. But she had a price on her head now. If they found her, they would make an example of her. She would become the final phase for someone else.
On her eighteenth birthday, she'd enlisted in the Alliance.
It was better than the alternative.
"We're a few minutes out from the relay," Joker's voice echoed through the comm system. Kaidan slipped the deck of cards into one of his pockets and pushed back from the table. Everyone dispersed, heading to their stations to begin final preparation for the jump. Kaidan made his way back to the cockpit and lowered himself back in the co-pilot's seat. The distraction of the camaraderie below had been short lived but, between that and his migraine, he had at least gotten the improper thoughts from his head.
Kaidan hoped Jenkins was alright. It had felt nice to have someone be interested in, rather than wary of, his biotic abilities so when Jenkins had asked, Kaidan had grinned and extended a hand to lift the corporal to the ceiling. Jenkins had bounced in excitement when he'd realized Kaidan was going to comply. Slight fluctuations in movement and air pressure could send lifted targets floating off into space. Jenkins had gone careening towards the wall so Kaidan had released him, hoping to minimize the damage of an impact against steel but the corporal had still crashed into the table. Should have used stasis. Luckily for them both, Jenkins was unharmed.
"Arcturus Prime relay is in range, initiating transmission sequence." Joker narrated their approach to the relay. Kaidan heard steps behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see Commander Shepard making her way up the bridge. To his surprise, Nihlus was also there. For such a large turian, he sure did move quietly.
"Thrusters check, navigation check, internal emissions sync engaged, all systems online. Drift, just under fifteen hundred k," Joker announced as they completed the jump into the Exodus Cluster.
"Fifteen hundred is good. Your captain will be pleased," Nihlus announced before turning and marching back into the ship silently. Shepard apparently hadn't been the only one interested in witnessing the jump from the 'driver's' seat.
"I hate that guy," Joker scoffed upon Nihlus' exit.
"Nihlus gave you a compliment, so, you hate him?" Kaidan tried to work out the logic.
"You remember to zip up your jumpsuit on the way out of the bathroom, that's good. I just jumped us halfway across the galaxy and hit a target the size of a pinhead, so that's incredible," Joker explained. "Besides, Spectres are trouble. I don't like having them on board. Call me paranoid."
"You're paranoid," Kaidan affirmed. "The Council helped fund this project, they have a right to send someone to keep an eye on their investment."
"Yeah, that is the official story. Only an idiot believes the official story." Kaidan glanced at Joker, silently agreeing with him, despite his previous statement. A Spectre, one of the most decorated captains in the Alliance, and an N7 infiltrator all on board? It was highly suspicious but Kaidan trusted that he would be debriefed if he needed to be debriefed.
"That's enough. You're soldiers, act like it," Commander Shepard's admonished both of them.
"Sorry Commander," Kaidan apologized, avoiding her gaze.
Captain Anderson's voice rang out on the cockpit comm channel. "Joker, status report."
"Just cleared the mass relay, Captain. Stealth systems engaged, everything looks solid."
"Good. Find a comm buoy and link us into the network. I want mission reports relayed back to Alliance brass before we reach Eden Prime." Kaidan frowned. This must be one hell of a shakedown run if the captain wanted to keep a line open. He shook his head. It wasn't his place to question it.
"Aye, aye, Captain. Better brace yourself, sir," Joker warned. "I think Nihlus is headed your way."
Anderson voice was tense with controlled ire. "He's already here Lieutenant. Tell Commander Shepard to meet me in the comm room for a debriefing."
"You get that, Commander," Joker glanced over his shoulder.
"Great. You pissed the captain off and now I'm going to pay for it," she scolded him.
"Don't blame me. The captain's always in a bad mood."
"Only when he's talking to you, Joker," Kaidan reminded him as Commander Shepard strode from the cockpit. Kaidan tried to ignore the swish of her hips as she made her way back down the bridge.
"She's hot, right," Joker spun his chair around and watched as the commander stopped to talk to Pressly.
"She's your superior. Not going to happen." He knew the reminder was more for himself than the pilot at his side.
"Eh, who am I kidding," Joker turned back to the controls. "This is the only woman for me."
"Good thing. Shepard's N7. She'd break you in half for even thinking about it."
Joker glanced down at his legs and smirked. "Probably more pieces than that but it'd be worth it, don't you think?"
