The Normandy SR2

"I am not having an AI on my ship." Shepard turned angrily towards me. Her ship? I fought the urge to

roll my eyes. Give her a ship, and her old pilot, and tell her she's in charge of the mission and suddenly she forgets who she's working for.

"Have I offended?" EDI sounded confused, and a bit hurt. Not for the first time, I marvelled at how much EDI resembled an actual human. Then again, that was the point, wasn't it?

"Shepard's spent a lot of time battling rogue AIs. The geth, mostly, but there was also that incident on Luna, with the Alliance's Hannibal program."

"Your distrust is logical, Shepard. Most humans merely blindly distrust AIs. However, I am no threat to you or the ship. I collect data and make observations. Nothing more." Shepard watched EDI's avatar over her shoulder as it spoke, then turned back to me.

"Joker's not going to like this." She said finally. I merely shrugged. "Anyone else on board I should meet?"

"The Normandy has a full crew. You can introduce yourself to them at your leisure. For now, may I suggest you look over the dossiers and decide on a course?" I held out a datapad. The dossiers had been assembled by a Cerberus operative who went by the name of Rasa. The Illusive Man had given us five dossiers thus far, stating he'd provide more support once we knew what we were up against. The dossier I'd called up was for a salarian, Mordin Solus. "May I suggest we start with Doctor Mordin Solus, on Omega? It's likely we'll need him to create a countermeasure to the swarms." That was how Veetor had evaded capture. The Collectors apparently prefaced their invasions by releasing swarms of an insect like creature into the colony. These insects immobilized the targets, who were then extracted by the Collectors. Veetor's environmental suit had shielded him from the swarm's detection, but we couldn't wear such suits. Shepard took the datapad, and spent a minute examining it.

"There's three dossiers for Omega. We'll start there. Joker! Set a course for Omega." Joker responded affirmatively. Shepard turned to go, but motioned for me to follow. "So I hear you're my XO."

"Yes, Commander."

"Do you answer to me or to the Illusive Man?" We'd stopped by the elevator. I fought back a sarcastic response.

"Both. This is a Cerberus mission, Commander, on a Cerberus ship, with a Cerberus crew. And I'm the ranking Cerberus operative. The Illusive Man has a personal interest in this mission. It's my job to keep him up to date. However, I am assigned to this mission, and thus, assigned to work with you. I'll follow your orders, so long as you don't order me to keep the Illusive Man out of the loop." The Commander nodded, and the elevator doors opened. Both of us stepped inside.

"How long to Omega?" Shepard hit the intercom button on the control panel. Joker's voice filled the elevator in response.

"About five hours, Commander."

"Where are my quarters located? I'd like to rest before we get to Omega."

"Captain's quarters are deck one, Shepard." I rode up with her, watched as she entered her quarters, then rode down to mine on deck three. Shepard may have spoken with the Illusive Man after our mission, but I still had a report to file.