Chapter 2 – The Deal
On Eden Prime an archeological dig unearths a Prothean artifact, soon discovered to be a beacon and quickly discovered to still be working. The Prothean's were a species of aliens that went extinct fifty thousand years ago, but much of the technology remained. Remaining technology was the Mass Relays, which enabled properly equipped starships to travel several light years in an instant, and the Citadel. The Citadel, a massive space station that served as a political headquarters for all species.
Human Ambassador Udina requested an audience with the Citadel Council, a group of three representatives that served as the leaders of Citadel Space. Humans, still new to the galaxy, lacked the technology and expertise available to handle the artifact. They were going to need the Citadel's help discovering its secrets, and humanity was willing to trade with them.
Udina sat down with Captain Anderson and Admiral Hackett. "They've agreed. We deliver and give them access with the artifact, and they will send one of their Spectre's along to monitor a human candidate, however they wanted a say in the candidate."
"Who's the Spectre?" Anderson asked.
"Nihlus, he's a Turian," Udina muttered. "He's given us a list of names of candidates he believes qualified."
Hackett and Anderson both looked, and a name popped up at both of them. "What is Shepard doing these days?" Anderson asked.
"She just finished a mission, on shore leave," Hackett answered. "Had one of my fleet take her back to Earth."
"Earth?" Udina asked.
"Shepard was born and raised there," Anderson said, he knew a lot about Shepard. "It made her tough as nails, believe me. First time I met her was after the Skyllian Blitz."
Udina frowned a bit as he thought. The Skyllian Blitz was eventually what the attack on Elysium had been called, it had been a monumental battle for humans. "That Shepard, the one who saved Elysium?"
"That's her," Anderson said. "She completed her N7 training five years ago, I was there when she graduated. First female to be accepted and still only female to graduate. She scores very highly in all marks. When she sets out to do something, she does it."
"Not always in ways that follow Alliance regulations," Hackett added in a low voice. "But nonetheless, she gets it done, and does what she can to avoid casualties."
"That's it? You won't even look at the other options?" Udina asked.
Anderson glanced at the other names, names notable but none of the owners of the name were as memorable as Shepard. No classic battle or mission that made them stand out, and their files showed marks that he found unfavorable.
"This is the kind of person you want," Anderson said confidently. "Shepard responds, thinks, and adapts. She can handle anything we throw at her."
Udina nodded, "Alright, I'll make the call. Hackett, you'll need to cut her shore leave short and arrange to have her back at Arcturus Station immediately. Anderson, I'll leave you to recruit the rest of your team."
--Back on Earth--
Shepard waved to the bartender, and he walked over and poured her another shot. "Want me to leave you the bottle, Andy?" he asked. Over the past three years she had started coming into his bar every time she was home. At most a few times a month, usually months between visits, depending on how things were. Always came in alone, drank alone, and always left alone.
"Is it that noticeable, Paul?" she asked, a bit of a smile.
He nodded. She had a black eye left over from her last mission. Nothing major, in fact, almost humorous looking on her face. The woman had a face that would have suited a young girl, freckles over her nose that spilled over onto her cheeks on creamy colored skin, framed by short red hair. The bruise started high on the bridge of her nose, going down to the inner corners of each of her eyes but going deep under her left eye.
Pinned down by a batarian warlord, she gave him a head-butt hard enough to break her own nose. The broken nose was fixed after the mission, but the bruise would have to run its course. But the black eye meant nothing, everything about her posture and eyes told him something was bothering her.
"Part of being a bartender means knowing how to talk people through bad spots in their life," he said. "And part of being a good bartender means helping them through it. I'm a damn good bartender."
"You are a damn good bartender, Paul," she said in a low voice. "But I'm afraid I'm not the type to talk it out. Leaving me the bottle just may be the best option."
It wasn't healthy, she knew it. She had seen a lot of marines lose their jobs because of alcohol, but she had a strict rule, she never drank unless she was on leave. And often that was easy to follow. No alcohol was allowed on Alliance vessels. Sure, Captain's often snuck a bottle of their favorite on, but she never went near it. Also, it was easier being in space for her. The past eleven years of her life had been spent on different colonies and ships. She loved her job, she loved what she was doing with her life.
She drank because of the loneliness. Any friends she had on Earth from years ago were gone. Off the grid criminals, only a few lucky ones had made anything of themselves…and she didn't relate to them. Civilians. Listening to the conversations around her…she was too disconnected from it. She understood the words, sure. "My son just turned two. I got a promotion at work. My boss got fired for having an affair with his secretary." But she didn't fit into anything like that. The most asked question, one Paul the Bartender asked her once she sat down every time she stepped into his bar, "What have you been up to lately?"
Even if she wanted to tell them, she couldn't. But she wasn't a glory seeker, she didn't want to bring these people to what she did or saw. "Well my squad got a distress signal from a colony in the Traverse. We hit the Mass Relay to get to them, still took us about an hour. An hour is good timing, on average, but when we landed all we found was a raided colony. It was small, only a couple hundred residents. They were just starting up, a lot of resources but no protection. Supplies gone, dead bodies. No survivors. Smell of burning bodies, there are worse smells. Found the sick bastards that did it, though. Blue Suns mercenaries. Chased their ship and damaged them enough to force them to land on a moon. Sorry bastard's hard suits didn't have necessary tech to help them adjust to the change in gravity. They still tried to fight us, though. Only thirty of them. My squad had fifteen, more training and better equipment. The sound of bullet finally breaking through the shields and cracking the air mask of a batarian…well, you can hear it in space."
That wasn't something the civilian society wanted to hear, and she doubted she would ever want to speak to someone who actually enjoyed those stories that couldn't listen to them with their own professional insight. Everything the Alliance did, it was for the civilians. When she joined the Alliance, she had given up that part of her life…and she had no regrets about it.
"You lose someone?" Paul guessed.
Shepard thought about it, and nodded once, "Yeah."
Paul poured himself a shot, "God bless our troops, and when they are taken in service to us may He take them into His own service and grant them eternal peace."
Shepard clinked her glass with his, and they both took the shot in one gulp.
It was nearly closing time when someone sat next to her, "Hey, I'm Mark."
She glanced at him, her eyes a bit glazed from several hours of drinking. Blonde hair, bit shaggy. Brown eyes, bit bloodshot and glazed as well. "Andromeda," she offered.
He grinned, "Beautiful name. You know that is a constellation?"
"So I've been told," she said, looking for Paul, but he was busy cleaning off tables.
"I work in space. Stars are beautiful, and you are more beautiful than your name," he said, leaning towards her a bit.
She cocked an eyebrow at him and looked him over, "You work in space?"
"I'm a soldier. Alliance Navy," he grinned.
"Oh, you are?" she asked, her eyes critical on his hair, clothes, and physical appearance.
"Sure, am, baby. This is my last night on Earth before I have to protect the galaxy, maybe you'd like to spend it with me?" He put his hand on her knee, leaning closer still.
"I may be drunk," she started slowly, leaning towards him as well, "But I can still break your arm in three different places if you don't move your hand."
He leaned back a bit, still smiling but now a bit more unsure, "Something wrong?"
"I've heard some really bad pick up lines in this place," she said, pouring herself another shot. "I'm in no mood to listen to even decent ones. And your line is particularly distasteful."
"What?"
"I've been in the Alliance for eleven years," she said. "I've served with thousands of soldiers, and I can tell when someone is posing."
"No shit?" he laughed. "Really? You don't look like a soldier, Andromeda. Other than the shiner, I would have said you were a model."
She tilted her head, "You've already pissed me off, flattery isn't going to work now."
"It's the end of the night, what have I got to lose?"
Her green eyes looked over him again. There were benefits to casual sex, especially when one couldn't sustain a relationship. But she just was in no mood. Sad about the loss of a fellow marine and friend, angry that this guy had tried to pose as a soldier, and drunk enough that she just wanted to get home and pass out. "You can lose a lot if you don't leave me alone," she said quietly.
Shepard woke up only a few hours after getting home. She could still feel the effects of the alcohol, but she could feel the hangover more. The pounding head, queasy stomach, and dry mouth.
She was still fighting the hangover while working in her office, the largest room in her small apartment. She was modifying a spare standard issue Alliance hard suit. The suit was more than just armor and shields, but could relay injury reports directly to an omni-tool and then through radio frequencies to Alliance systems to show how soldiers were doing in combat. The idea was useful, however it only meant that when she was away from one of her team she could see on her own omni-tool that one of them was under attack, dying, then dead.
The design she was making involved a system of tubes to distribute medi-gel to weakened areas. Medi-gel was a standard all over the galaxy and saved millions of lives. It stopped bleeding and depending on the severity of the wound could heal it within seconds or minutes. More critical injuries still required surgery or other modifications to fix completely. Like her shoulder, during a mission it had been practically shattered. There was more metal in her right shoulder than bone, and occasionally it still caused her discomfort.
But, if things were bad enough that shields and armor broke and a bullet gets through the armor would detect it and through tubes throughout send medi-gel to the wounded area. Right now she was just having trouble making the system intelligent enough to do so. Without her own research and development team it probably wouldn't be ready for ten years, and with the Alliance budget it probably would never see combat.
She'd already made progress on increasing shield durability. Kinetic shields, based upon mass effect technology, had become standard in combat armors since before the First Contact War, and were constantly getting better. The Alliance didn't consider her modification cost effective, though. They didn't prevent her from modifying her own armor, but the cost of refitting the entire Alliance with new and improved hard suits wasn't in the budget.
Shepard answered her phone when a call came in, and listened to the operator as it told her it was a priority message from Admiral Hackett on Arcturus Station and to patient as there were possibilities of lag.
"Commander Shepard, hope I'm not interrupting anything," Admiral Hackett said. "We need you for a mission, you'll be briefed once you reach Arcturus. You need to get on a transport and be here ASAP."
Shepard was pulling up transport departures, "Civilian transport departs at twelve-hundred, that's the soonest."
"Due to the importance of this mission we're sending you a personal transport, it'll be docking in fifteen minutes. Sooner you are on that vessel, the sooner you'll be here."
"Understood," she said. Once the call was disconnected she said, "Shit!" and began rushing. Shower, trying to get the smell of alcohol off of her as it bled through her pores. Pack, her uniforms folded and pressed before putting them in her bag.
Important mission, she had a lot of those. Alliance Special Forces were elite. Past year she had been commanding a patrol vessel, short month-long cruises to discourage pirates and respond quickly to any attacks. They didn't happen often, though. But every now and then, a special mission came up that required one of the elite N7 operatives. She didn't know what she was getting herself into, but knew since she had been called her special training was required.
