Miranda Lawson kept bruising hours and moved mountains behind the scenes of Shepard's enterprise. She was not out there, like Shepard, to win popularity awards. Shepard needed to be popular, needed the crew to trust her. She, Miranda, played a vital role in reminding people who they would be working for if not for Shepard.
It helped them appreciate Shepard's soft-but-firm management style.
But even she, Miranda Lawson, was still human. She did not like to get into the philosophical debate over that. She was a very, very, very good human. Smarter, faster, stronger…
…and very, very hungry this morning. Her stomach kept rumbling in a way that would shock anyone who heard it…except perhaps Jacob.
Glancing at her wall clock, she shook her head. Gardner would not have breakfast ready for another twenty minutes. No point in heading out to see whatever he had concocted if it was not ready. It wasn't seemly to circle around the galley like a hungry shark. She would just have to fill in the time doing something easy, something that would not suffer if she got distracted. She was a perfectionist, but she was still human.
Not that she would ever let on.
Personnel reports—she usually read them twice, anyway.
Miranda did not know how Chambers did it, but apparently Shepard had relegated her to a category of nonthreatening, and treated Chambers as an overeager, green recruit who really had no business on a spaceship but had signed enlistment papers.
Chambers' latest report indicated Shepard was acclimating, or seeming to acclimate, well. The Commander was not sleeping soundly, but that was to be expected. Apparently Shepard prevailed upon EDI to close off the viewing window above her bed. EDI had recorded what seemed like a mild panic attack prior to the orders about the viewing panel.
That viewing panel was a mistake, come to think of it. A window in spaceship living quarters was a luxury. It was also a potentially bad idea for someone who suffocated out among the stars. Shepard might have less trouble coping with a small window than the massive view afforded by the observation deck, but if she was not prepared for the viewport to be there…
…decidedly a design flaw in the ship.
But the Commander was in good shape, and taking well to the crew. Faster than expected, though Miranda suspected she knew why: Shepard needed the crew to trust her and knew it. She would, therefore, have to trust them first. By now, Shepard probably understood that most of these crewmen were not hardline Cerberus operatives but scavenged finds from the Alliance, with a few treasures like Moreau, Chakwas and Donnelly.
Also, most of the crew would not have a problem with aliens, or would have less a problem with aliens if Shepard endorsed their presence. Everyone knew Shepard traditionally worked with nonhuman crewmates (even though this was a recent development, when considering her entire career). Everyone knew, sooner or later, there would be non-humans on board.
Ten minutes to breakfast.
Miranda closed out her terminal, changing out of her comfortable pajamas and into her work clothes. Being a biotic meant having the appetite and metabolism of a pyjak. She could not quite eat her own weight, but some days it felt like it.
Gardner was humming—she assumed that was what all the nasal noise he made was—as he turned pancakes with efficient ease. "Morning, ma'am!" he did not snap to, but within seconds he held out a plate stacked high, which was just as good to her as a salute.
"Gardner."
Gardner did not let anything shake him up, except maybe burnt food or puked-up food. True, the provisions on this ship were not exquisite, but they were far from cold rations in a can. And the eggs here never saw the powdered stage, so there was no fear of goobers.
She noticed Shepard checking for them, the day before yesterday, just before the Commander dumped an obscene amount of Tabasco sauce on the eggs. Something about the hot sauce, once she had the eggs loaded with it, had made Shepard check, as if something pained her. She'd eaten them dutifully, but her expression indicated (to a distressed Gardner) that she might as well have been eating shredded cardboard.
Miranda grabbed a small jar of syrup before returning to her quarters—being second-in-command had its perks. Knowing she would only have to put them on again, she pulled off her boots, letting her sock feet revel in springy rug.
She set her pancakes on her desk, sitting down before drenching them in thick syrup. She cut into the pancakes with her fork, watching the utensil dig into the thick, fluffy, layers of her mountain of breakfast. Some people could not bear so much sugar in the mornings.
Miranda could not live without it. If anyone knew about her private stash of sugary cereal…
…Shepard could get away with kiddie drinks. She, Miranda Lawson, could not get away with Galaxy Crunch (with marshmallows, she was very specific on that point). Yet another instance of life being unfair.
She had to smile at the sentiment as she crammed a big bite of pancake into her mouth. One reason she took breakfast in private was so no one would see her shoveling food away like a marine.
Mmm…blueberry pancakes. Did a hot breakfast get better than that?
It could, she decided as she disappeared to the bathroom attached to her quarters to refresh what little makeup she used. Perfect skin and extraordinary looks did not need much cosmetic help, whatever the galaxy might speculate about the time and effort she put into her face every morning.
However, the one thing that could be improved would be skin that refused to get blueberry purple all over it. Right now, her lips bore the unmistakable stains of fruit juice not quickly enough removed.
Blast the blueberries. It was going to be a 'lots of lipstick' day.
