A/N: Another short one here. Meet our pilot and his friend, Lieutenant Alenko!
Probably two or three more short chapters (or 1-2 long ones) before we get set out for Eden Prime.
Kaidan Alenko was not, as a general rule, a pessimistic person. Dealing with brand new ships put that to the test, however.
The Normandy SR1 was an amazing, state-of-the-art machine with amazing, state-of-the-art problems. He couldn't for the life of him figure out why turning on the lights in the bathroom triggered an overload alarm on the cargo bay's illumination system. After spending most of the night reading badly-labeled wiring diagrams with a growing migraine, he eventually just threw caution to the wind and wired the restroom lighting into the hall lighting circuit and called it done.
Which had left him with a whole three hours of sleep and a full-fledged migraine.
Needless to say, he wasn't in the best of moods... which didn't make Joker's perpetual snark and teasing commentary any more appealing.
"Hey, Lieutenant," the flight officer said as he walked up to the cockpit and collapsed in the chair. "Sleep well?" he asked with a smirk.
"No, Joker, I didn't," Kaidan snapped at him, "but thanks for asking." He picked up his coffee mug with a huff.
"Whoa, hey, man, what's wrong?" Joker looked up from his slate, a concerned expression on his face.
Kaidan sighed. "Eugh, sorry, Joker," he apologized. "I was up most of the night with Adams trying to figure out why turning on the bathroom lights blows out half the circuits in the cargo bay."
"Shit, man, I'm sorry. I didn't know." To his credit, Joker seemed genuinely apologetic... which wasn't surprising, Alenko mused, given that he'd been complaining about pissing in the dark for nearly two weeks. "Did you get it working?" he asked tentatively after an awkward pause.
Kaidan snorted. "Yeah, but it's a hack. Tapped in to the hall illumination line."
Joker rolled his eyes. "State of the art spaceship and they still can't figure out how to wire lights properly," he said.
"Tell me about it. Hey, did we ever get the personnel roster sorted out?" Kaidan asked.
Most of the crew had been on-station on a tentative basis for nearly a month now, but for whatever reason the formal orders detailing their next assignment had been held up by wrangling between the admiralty and Captain Anderson. Kaidan was sure there was a story there, but lowly lieutenants – even well-connected ones – weren't privy to those kinds of discussions.
So they'd sat there, in a kind of bureaucratic limbo, trying to figure out how their new ship worked with bad documentation, fiddly electronics, and an incomplete roster. Kaidan had been politely asking Captain Anderson nearly daily if the roster had been finalized, until the Captain had finally told him to stop asking and focus on getting through the pre-launch training and checklists.
Which merely meant that he'd taken to asking people that hadn't been pestering the Captain as often. Fortunately for him, Joker was nearly as grumpy about their current unclear state of affairs, with the added bonus of being willing to piss people off until he got an answer.
Joker, much to Kaidan's surprise, grinned conspiratorially at him and nodded. "Did we ever," he said, gesturing at the slate he was holding. "Remember how I said this wasn't a normal assignment?"
"Yeah?"
Joker handed the slate to Kaidan. "Well, I was right. Check out the finalized roster."
"Huh," Kaidan said, flicking through the document. "Adams confirmed in Engineering... big surprise there... Charles Pressly as navigator? I don't recognize him."
Joker shrugged. "Old navy family."
"Connections?" Kaidan asked.
"Yeah, but he's good in spite of them."
He snorted. "Right," he said. "Anderson confirmed as CO, not sure why that wasn't done earlier..."
"I'm still surprised they picked him for it," Joker said. "Guy's a bit overqualified to be babysitting twitchy hardware, yannow."
Kaidan gave him a reproving glance. "Joker, the Normandy is a brand new, top-of-the-line prototype. They're not going to hand her over to some freshly-promoted captain."
"Fine, fine," he waved his hand dismissively, wincing as his wrist made a dull pop. "Keep going."
"Karin Chakwas in medical, okay... nice bunch of enlisted, I even recognize a few of them... whoa, Jenkins? Is that the Jenkins?" Kaidan looked up from the list with a questioning eye.
Joker grinned and nodded. "The one and only," he said. "Try not to throw him around any more, I don't think he'll get lucky twice."
"You're never going to let me live that down, are you," he said with a sigh.
Joker laughed. "Not even a little."
Kaidan shook his head and looked back a the slate. "Executive Officer... Commander Shepard? Why is that familiar?" He scowled, wracking his throbbing brain.
"Yeesh, you really are out of it, aren't you," Joker said.
"Joker..." Kaidan trailed off warningly.
"Okay, okay," Joker said, his smile fading. "Uh, she's a biotic, and a pretty strong one, too. She's an N7," he added, and he glanced up from the slate surprised – successful ICT graduates were rare, and N7s were the cream of the crop. Any soldier that made it through both the qualifying training programs and the mandatory "real world" operations were worth their weight in gold, and most of them were fast-tracked up the chain of command. He gave a small whistle, and Joker nodded absently.
"Yeah. Supposed to be pretty nice, too, but if scuttlebutt is right..." he shuddered for effect, which was impressive when one considered that random motions could easily land him in the med bay. "What, she cursed or something?" Kaidan asked.
"No," Joker replied seriously, and Kaidan raised an eyebrow at his tone. "You're still not getting it. Read her service record."
Scowling, Kaidan scrolled through the surprisingly long service record included in the file. Let's see... served on the El Alamein doing scouting and S&R work... an antipiracy tour on the batarian border... wait, Torfan?
He blinked and nearly dropped the slate. "Wait, she's that Shepard?" he asked incredulously, and Joker gave him a grim nod. "And Anderson requested her," he said, disbelieving. Kaidan wasn't deeply involved in politics, but he wasn't a stupid man, and he knew that Torfan wasn't everything it had seemed to be. It was too... polished. Too cleanly done, despite how messy it had actually been.
He kept his opinions to himself, of course, but he couldn't help but wonder what exactly had gone on in the bowels of the batarian pirate base... at the same time, he wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to know.
He liked thinking of the Alliance as the good guys.
Joker nodded again, unaware of his friend's train of thought. "Yeah. She's also in charge of the marine detachment and the ground team. Have fun, Lieutenant," he said with a more typical smirk.
"Thanks," Kaidan said dryly before glancing at the slate again. "Well, at least she's competent," he said, handing it back to Joker.
"No arguing with that," Joker said.
Kaidan rubbed his temples with a groan and hauled himself out of the copilot's seat. "I'm gonna go see if the med bay's stocked yet," he said. "Don't set anything on fire. I'm not in the mood to fix it," he warned with a waggled finger before walking down the hall.
"Do not set cockpit on fire, aye aye, sir," Joker called to Kaidan's retreating back.
Despite his headache, Kaidan smiled.
Next time: Shepard meets the crew and has a talk with Anderson. Should be interesting.