In Love and War
Chapter One – Eden Prime
The sky above Eden Prime had turned reddish orange as dusk lingered. The imposing alien ship that had brought destruction to this idealistic human colony left orbit and for a moment, everything seemed quiet as though no firefights had happened and nobody had died just hours before. Exhausted from the day's fighting and pushing forward the minute they landed on the planet, Shepard took off her N7 helmet and allowed herself a moment to breathe and to take in the sight of the beautiful horizon. Natural beauty always managed to catch her by surprise. She grew up on spaceships and spaceports that were built with generic steel and concrete and space stations with artificial time, air and even weather. She enjoyed watching the artificial rain on the Citadel, especially standing at certain spots on the Presidium and feeling the purified water washing down the dust and dirty air. And seeing everything shiny again and breathing in the clean air, she often felt more alive. But natural beauty affected her differently. It made her heart stop a beat and her breath catch.
Shepard looked up at the sky above Eden Prime as she walked toward the Prothean beacon they were sent to investigate. She heard footsteps behind her; Shepard could clearly tell the difference between the sounds Ashley Williams' boots made and the ones of Richard Jenkins'.
Jenkins. She hadn't known him for long, but she knew him enough to feel the emptiness in her stomach when she saw his expressionless face and vacant eyes as he was lying there on the land that nurtured him. He told her all about Eden Prime where he grew up just before their mission, barely containing his excitement and pride when he described how the environmental engineers had used local resources to create a self sustaining colony that included a good sized city and several outskirt settlements. He was also hoping that the Normandy would stay for a few days, because he'd got a girl here who he had dated before the assignment on the Normandy, and if he was lucky he might get to see her.
Oddly Shepard felt worse for the girl who'd get the news that her boyfriend would never come home and hold her in his arms again than for the man who died. A native son giving his life defending his homeland, there was an indescribable honor in that. Jenkins knew that and he would have been proud. But her family and friends wouldn't see it that way.
Shepard came to the edge of the train platform and now had a full view of the city below the hills. The black smoke brought her thoughts back to the day's events.
What was that ship and what did Saren want?
"Hey Commander, there's the beacon." Lt. Kaidan Alenko pointed at the large square below the train platform.
"It doesn't look much." Ashley stared at the beacon for a moment and then started scanning the area for anything unusual. She was a good soldier, Shepard thought, noticing Ashley's habit of scanning her surroundings every time Shepard did the same thing. Before the geth and husk stragglers even heard their footsteps, both Shepard and Ashley had already put a dozen bullets into them while Alenko readied his biotics aiming at the last remaining geth.
The Normandy
Shepard woke up in the med bay with a pounding headache. "W…What happened?" As she sat up from the bio bed, Doctor Chakwas moved closer and put a hand on Shepard's forearm. "You gave us quite a scare, Commander." Doctor's warm hand felt nice on her bare forearm that'd been cooled by the metal bio bed.
Shepard hadn't been serving on the Normandy for more than a couple months, but she already felt that she could make this work. She loved the ship not only because it had the best stealth system, one of the fastest FTL drive core designs, the most advanced and different CIC and the state of the art med bay, but also because she felt she fit in with the crew. She'd known Anderson for a long time and felt comfortable around him, and she knew what he expected of her. The first new friend she made on the Normandy was the ship's doctor, Karen Chakwas, whose confident yet quiet demeanor reminded her of her own mother.
Shepard recalled one of their first meetings. She'd been burned on her forearm while helping Engineer Adams on a weekly exhaust waste cleaning detail not long after she came onboard, and one of the tubes had a puncture and leaked hot chemicals onto her arm. Adams was shocked at Shepard's request to go with him on this detail that he usually sent one of his guys to perform. But she said she wanted to learn everything about the ship, and getting a hands-on was the best way to do it. He offered to accompany Shepard to the med bay after the injury, but Shepard insisted on completing the detail first and on her way to the med bay she got hung up on another matter that needed her attention. By the time she made it to the med bay, Dr. Chakwas had a stern look on her face, "I was about to send an MP detail to fetch you, Commander." She immediate sat Shepard down on one of the bio beds and started scanning the wound. It was during that treatment and several follow up visits after, Shepard learned that Karen Chakwas had served on almost as many ships as her mother.
"You like being on a ship, doctor?" Shepard could see the telltale signs of a seasoned spaceship breed.
"Sure, Commander. When I first came out of med school, I wanted to see the galaxy. Every ship was exciting and every mission exhilarating. As I got older, I grew to like the people I served with." Karen had read Shepard's files that Anderson forwarded, and she knew she had a "spacer rat" on her hands.
"It's like they become your home after a while." Shepard said, smiling.
"Indeed. I served on one of the dreadnaughts for nearly a decade, and I was the godmother for several children I helped delivered." Karen said, lost in her thoughts. "The only thing that's hard is losing people that you know well. Even after you know you've done everything for them, they still don't make it. You go over their charts, scan results and your own actions even long after their bodies are resting in the morgue." She shook her head as though to get herself out of the memories she didn't wish to share with the young Commander who always seemed to have inquisitive eyes. She put the smile back on her face, "But the joy of being around talented crew and colorful Marines is it keeps me young."
The more she talked with the medical doctor, the more Shepard saw her mother in her. "Oh, yeah? You like being with us jarheads then?" She quipped.
"Oh, Commander. If the person who invented the term 'jarhead' had met you, he'd have come up with another term." The doctor laughed.
"Careful, doc. You're starting to sound like my mother."
Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko's voice pulled Shepard out from her reveries. He spoke after Dr. Chakwas stepped back to give Shepard some space to stand up. "It was my fault, Commander. When I got too close to the beacon, somehow it got activated. After it exploded and knocked you out cold, Williams and I had to carry you back." Shepard raised her eyebrows at Kaidan, and the lieutenant added. "Well, we did a divide and conquer. I carried your ass and Ashley carried all your weapons. But it was my fault."
Shepard stepped down and tested her balance. When she straightened her back, she looked at Kaidan with a cocky smile, "Lieutenant, unless you actually touched my ass, this isn't your fault."
Shepard liked Kaidan. He was very easy to like. Kaidan was only a couple of years older than her, and like Shepard, he grew up on ships and followed in his parents' footsteps by joining the Alliance. They hit it off the first time they sat down and talked.
"You were on the Moon's training base too? You've had the pleasure of working with Sargent Mills?" Kaidan smiled easily.
"Sure, I was Sargent Mills favorite. He gave me more than he gave anybody else." Shepard kept a straight face, "Oh, yeah. More hours running on the indoor tracks, more details cleaning the head, more programs on the battle simulator… I bet you didn't know he was a such giving person, did you?" Kaidan burst out laughing as Shepard smiled brightly.
"Did you ever visit the Pod?" Kaidan was referring to an old escape pod salvaged by someone and dropped in one of the craters some time ago, just a couple of klicks away from the training base. The original owner of the Pod had taken out all the jump seats and put in a sleeping cot that was actually wide enough for two people.
"You mean the Love Pod?" Shepard raised one side of her mouth, remembering the giggles her bunkmate had after visiting the pod with a guy named Alan. If you got on the good side with the unit chief, he'd let you drive the Mako out unsupervised. And most Marines took the Mako to only one place outside the camp. "No. You?"
Kaidan didn't deny it, instead he asked, "Didn't you get bored?" He remembered the Love Pod very well, but love, it wasn't. Fun, it was.
Love Pod, Shepard smiled at the memory of her bunkmate and Alan's adventures at the Love Pod, as she walked out of the med bay and headed back to her quarters. The long day of trekking on Eden Prime had drained her completely, and the horrific images from the Prothean beacon weighed on her. She needed a shower, a hot one. Maybe it would take her mind off Jenkins, or at least let her forget the unwanted images replaying in her head like an old horror vid. She turned on the shower and peeled her sweaty under armor off. Staring at the sharply defined muscles on her legs she chuckled at the memory of Sargent Mills' signature mantra, "It only feels good when it burns!"
The truth was Shepard was too busy to be bored at the basic training camp. She was only half joking about the training Sargent Mills gave her when she was talking to Kaidan. She knew the reason why she was pushed harder than the others at the camp: she had an invitation from the N7 program and a letter from Alliance Propulsion Academy, both wanting her to join them after her time on the Moon's basic boot camp. Sargent Mills knew that and he did his best to prepare her the only way he knew how. The training was so exhausting that she slept most of the time when she wasn't performing her duties. But she also felt fulfilled, as she told her mother on their regular holocalls. "Honey, designing ships is very exciting too." Hannah was always very encouraging when it came to Shepard's pursuits. "You'd make a great design engineer, and you are also so gifted in computers, biology…"
"And history and xenology, yeah I know, mom." Shepard heard this speech before but she wanted more specific advice this time. "I think I'd learn so much in the Propulsion Academy. I read some of the professors' bios and even some of their books, and I have to say it intrigues me." Shepard always had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. When she focused her interest on one thing, it became her obsession. Hannah enjoyed watching her daughter growing up with such a passion for knowledge, and she always tried to encourage her.
Hannah smiled with pride. "Do you remember when we were on the Logan, we had an engine cooling cluster failure and you went and got the manual for the correct pressure calibration and waved it under the nose of the lead engineer. He wouldn't have caught that miscalculation if you hadn't pointed him to the right direction, and you were what, 15 years old?" Shepard heard that story many times from Hannah.
"But with the N7 program, I get to see the galaxy and help people up close." Shepard debated more with herself than with her mother. "They get the best ships in the fleet, the best weapons and the best chances to work with other species. I see that as our future, mom, working as a part of the galactic community and learning from other species."
Hannah smiled again, "Honey, you always had a knack for getting along with other species. Remember when you were eight, we helped a quarian living ship with their supplies? I took you with me aboard to meet their children, and within an hour, you had them following you around their own ship and getting into places they weren't supposed to go?"
"I don't remember that." Shepard remembered the wonders of a living ship that was the size of a small colony, and the different colors of environmental suits the quarian kids wore. She had asked every question she could think of, and her new quarian friends answered every one of them eagerly. She had taught them her best hide and seek tricks, fort and spaceport and other children's games she knew. Oh, they had a great time!
The talk with her mother didn't help Shepard make her decision, but she lingered on the call for an extra hour. Time always escaped her when she talked to her mother. "I still have time to decide, mom. Don't you worry." But in the end, the battle on Elysium decided her path for her.
Turning off the shower, Shepard felt her aching muscles starting to relax. Looking into the mirror at the reflection of her naked body, she repeated. "It only feels good when it burns, Sargent!"
A/N: Thanks for the reviews and PMs. All comments, reviews, suggestions and PMs are welcome.
To answer one of your questions: I realized that Ashley went to the same training camp with Shepard. But given the similar background, I thought Kaidan and Shepard would share the same training experience.