AN: This is going to be a series of short stories focusing on my particular Shepard and her connections with the various squadmates she picks up during the events of Mass Effect 1. Eventually I may swap perspectives, but for the moment I'm sticking to Shepard.

The Spectre

Commander Antares Shepard. Earthborn orphan and self trained marksman in the Tenth Street Reds gang of the Vancouver area. Recruited by Captain Anderson to the Alliance Military at age 16. Hero of the Skyllian Blitz six years later, earning a Star of Terra. Graduate of the N7 special forces program, specialization Infiltrator. As she rose in the Navy ranks, her combat prowess as a sniper and leadership skills under great pressure earned her the nickname "The Scorpion's Stinger." Give her the smallest opening, and she'll find a way to soundly defeat any foe.

Per her latest assignment, Shepard now served as the Executive Officer of the Fifth Fleet's experimental frigate, the SSV Normandy. The design and stealth system of this ship were a joint effort between the Systems Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy. A way to rebuild trust with their enemies turned tentative allies.

Shepard had never worked on a ship with a Turian soldier before, let alone a Citadel Council assigned Spectre. An agent that bent the galactic laws to their will for the sake of peace. Nihlus Kryik happened to be both.

They picked him up at Arcturus Station, one of their stops on their way to Eden Prime. That was a rather peaceful colony on the edge of Alliance territory, which apparently made it a great site for testing the Normandy's engines and crew.

"Play nice with our guest, Shepard," Anderson said to her in his office. "As the XO, I expect you to set an example of tolerance for the rest of our men. They'll follow your cues more than any direct order I give them."

"Understood, Sir." Despite her decorated status, Shepard could never quite grasp the pride and distrust that drove many of her comrades to be wary of Turians. The First Contact War invoked no personal emotions in her. She didn't have any family involved in those conflicts. The Alliance and Hierarchy had a treaty and were officially "friendly", and that's all Shepard concerned herself with. Wasn't her job to determine the morality of every alien that crossed her path.

During the next few weeks of cruising, Nihlus cut an interesting figure on the deck. In her few brushes with on duty Turian soldiers, they tended to stay rigid. They walked with a certain posture, drilled into them at boot-camp maybe, and tried to minimize wasted movement and action. Always asked for explicit permission from their leaders before changing course. That tight discipline was the Hierarchy's pride.

Nihlus reminded her of big cat footage she'd seen on a wildlife holovid. His dark plating made his stark white markings stand out like stripes on a tiger. They mimicked a skull in appearance, the way they framed his face. He constantly watched as he moved about the frigate, his wanderings natural yet calculated. Taking in every detail while seeming completely at ease. He approached in near silence sometimes, hugging shadows and blind spots as if it were second nature, and his brief comments buzzed with a quiet, unwavering confidence. This soldier was no stiff grunt, he was a well honed predator. The crew could sense that, and made sure to only speak about him when out of earshot. Nihlus was not the kind of man you provoked on purpose.

"You have quite the record, Commander." His voice had a hum to it. Turian sub-vocals, she recalled from textbooks and informative slideshows She glanced up from her spot by the gear locker, performing routine maintenance on her pistol and sniper rifle. She used semi-auto models when choosing handguns, but preferred a bolt-action when it came to her rifles. Sniping was precise, unrushed work.

Nihlus stood a respectable few feet behind her, an HMWA assault rifle in his hands. Expensive equipment, but Spectres had pricey contacts, she heard. He kept a casual grip on it. Not a threat to her.

"That's what the top brass likes to tell me before they assign extra work to do." She shrugged and slid over on the garage's metal bench. The mandibles lining his jaw flared once, and he took the spot. A smile, maybe? "Something wrong, Sir?"

"Not at all, just...curious." Nihlus checked the individual parts of his firearm as he took it apart. "I like to get to know the people I'm working alongside. Captain Anderson was kind enough to send me a copy of your recent history achievements." Oh? She raised a brow at that. He chuckled. "Only the good parts, of course. I'm sure he just wanted to preen over one of his N7 Operatives." His rifle hissed as he vented the chamber. A young serviceman across the hangar jumped. She ignored the sound.

"You talked about the Skyllian Blitz, I'm guessing?" That's what most people curious about her record asked for.

"Not quite." The casual tone disappeared. "All the Council species heard about the attack on Elysium, and the multiple military reports were very thorough." Nihlus closed his eyes. "Over 600 civilians, many not even human, were trapped on the resort grounds when the pirate raid hit. Forty Alliance marines and officers happened to be on shore leave at the time. About twenty of the hotel's security staff survived the initial attack to rally with them."

She remembered that well, hurrying to collect her combat gear when the fighting started. Ordering anyone capable of fighting back to form a perimeter as even more Batarians dropships arrived. They managed to push hard enough to get the building's kinetic barriers back online and hide the defenseless in the lobby. The front gates had been sabotaged beyond repair, but they improvised a strategy to make up for that hole.

"But what I really want to know is...what compelled you to hold your sniping position for over six hours without relief?" Nihlus glanced back at her. Shepard hummed and set her weapon down. Her arms still ached when she let herself think too much about it. Sitting in that pitch black room with only the sunlight that streamed through the open windows of her makeshift sniper nest. Overheated guns and used up stim packs piled on the carpet. A radio crackled in her ear, the officers downstairs barking orders and calling out which angle the next wave came from. Her own shots echoed in her ears worse than the streams of gunfire below. Her fingers shook from the stress and drugs that kept her alert.

"I was the best marksman there, and the penthouse was a vulnerable position," she said. "Didn't want the bulk of our men to get taken out if the enemy managed to drop the roof on my head." Not like she let them get anywhere close enough to do that, but it was a risk she took into account. "If only I went down, they'd have a good chance of surviving until backup got to us." Shepard let out a long breath. "Just seemed like the right move."

"You killed approximately 850 men before the attack ended, according to the cleanup crew." He spoke without any judgment. She could imagine that a Spectre had even more blood on his hands.

"I'm a perfectionist, what can I say?" Those six hours blurred together, her mind focused entirely on that one task. Keep the breach clear. The effect on her body from that day left her hospitalized for two weeks, and then another month before she could pick up her rifle in real combat again. But it was worth it. She reflexively smiled. Nihlus cocked his head to the side.

"And you were comfortable sacrificing both you and your fellow soldiers' lives to potentially save people you considered aliens?" That wasn't an angle she expected to hear from him, but it didn't deter her.

"Elysium is an Alliance colony. It and everyone groundside were our responsibility to protect. Asari, Salarian, Turian, everyone. We all knew that." Not a single one of those marines or servicemen hesitated to do their job when the chips were down, and the civilians did their best to be of help. A Turian guard scavenged extra weapons and shield batteries, an Asari engineer helped hack into the hotel's automated defenses, and a Salarian worker jumped in to man the security feeds and call out intruders when the marine faltered from fatigue. "I just did my part. That's all."

"Hm. Well...thank you for the explanation." Nihlus finished resetting his gun and stuck it on his back holster, activating the magnetic lock in his armor. "For the record, I agree with your actions, even if others thought they weren't genuine." What did that mean? He stood up and showed a flash of his dagger-like teeth. "Humans have a reputation of putting themselves before the galactic community, but I don't believe that's true."

"Uh...thanks?"

"That's merely an observation on my part. Keep up the good work, Commander Shepard." The Spectre departed the hangar area and headed back up to the deck, leaving her to contemplate the strangeness of his words as the soldiers returned to their maintenance tasks.

That conversation came back to her as she stood over the cooling body of Nihlus Kryik at the spaceport, dark blue blood leaking out the bullet hole through his head.

"Is humanity really ready for this?" he asked her an hour ago, before they arrived at a burning Eden Prime. The massive Geth warship hummed in the distance as it took off, the strange noise it emitted piercing her to the bones.

The grip on her sniper rifle tightened.