The Commanders Shepard
Chapter 2: Prologue pt2 – Setting the stage
~Time Skip~
It has been many years since The Disasters graduated and they are all well into their respective military careers.
Calamity Jane followed through on her promise to join the Systems Alliance's Biotic Acclimation and Temperance training program. She showed strong potential as an asset to the Alliance with her uncanny control of her biotic abilities and clandestine creeping and espionage skill. Her first real test came in 2176 in the form of what would eventually come to be called the Skyllian Blitz. Her unit was assigned the task of protecting the colony world of Elysium. It was a hot spot of pirate and slaver activity. The Blitz was organized by pirate leader Elanos Haliat, who planned to use the prestige he gained from toppling the colony to cement his place as leader of all the pirate bands in the Terminus Systems.
Of course, his plans didn't account for Calamity Jane Shepard, a shadow operative lieutenant whose small stature and biotic ability essentially made her the perfect modern day ninja. While Jane's unit held the bulk of Haliat's forces on the field, Jane snuck behind enemy lines and began to destroy them from within. She infiltrated slaver ships one by one using an unauthorized cloaking device and sabotaged their mass effect cores. She also took control of the system that governed the pirates' battle mechs and turned them against the pirates. She had singlehandedly caused the downfall of a huge major offensive against a vulnerable colony and was recognized as a true war hero. For her efforts she was awarded the Medal of Honor, a battlefield promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and a spot in the coveted N-School, the training for the modern equivalent to Delta Force and the Navy SEALs.
Catastrophe James, the brains of the Shepard clan, joined up and became an engineer. With his immense intellect, he took very quickly to the work involved with engine cores and the mass effect accelerators in weapons. He earned a rare triple qualification as an engine maintenance officer, an armory officer, and for having shown a knack for teaching, as a marksmanship instructor. The units he served with had the best running ships, most reliable weapons, and some of the best shooters so long as he was around.
However, not everything was all peaches and cream for James. In 2177, just weeks before he was set to travel to Rio de Janeiro for the N-School combat engineer training he requested, his unit was sent to investigate Akuze, a world that was being set up as a new colony. All communication with Akuze had gone dark and they were being sent in to figure out why. It turned out to be a trap. When they got there, they found that all the people there to start the colonization process had disappeared and his unit was ambushed by a pack of titanic thresher maws. James was the only one to make it to the designated extraction point and his mind was permanently scarred by the ordeal.
The mountainous John the Cataclysm joined the Alliance as an able bodied ground pounder. Much to his delight, John realized he was very well suited to the life of an infantryman. His battlefield prowess saw that he rose through the enlisted ranks at an alarming pace. So alarming in fact that he received a battlefield commission, skipping straight from Marine Staff Sergeant to Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade. And that wasn't the end of his climb either.
John's test came in 2178. He had long since earned his Special Forces designation as N6, and he was put in command of an offensive strike that was planned as retaliation against pirates for the Skyllian Blitz two years earlier. The strike was aimed at a small moon called Torfan. It was honeycombed with underground tunnels and the pirate bands used it as a base of operations. During the attack, John was faced with insurmountable odds as the intel they received going in was way off regarding enemy numbers. However, he devised tactics that allowed for them to defeat the enemy, but it came at an astronomical cost. Three quarters of his people died in the strike, and though it was a success, he took their deaths very personally. Before Alliance backup could arrive to take the surviving enemy troops that surrendered off to custody, he took it upon himself to exact justice upon them. In a fit of righteous rage, John slaughtered his bound and helpless captives, earning him a ruthless reputation and the dubious title as the "Butcher of Torfan". Though John was certainly not that kind of person at heart, the stigma of his reputation as a cold, calculating killer would proceed him for years to come. The one positive thing to come from it was that he had earn full honors as N7 in the aftermath.
The Disasters had no clue that things were in motion behind the scenes that would eventually bring them back together…
Years later, their mother Hannah, now an Admiral, had pulled a lot of strings to get the three of them stationed together on a new prototype ship. Doing so meant circumventing a centuries old regulation called the Sullivan Brothers Policy, but it was allowed as there were other members of their family in other parts of the galaxy.
The year is 2183. The Shepard Triplets, all tried, tested, and battle hardened, had all reached the rank of Commander and had all earned the N7 Special Forces designator in their respective fields. They were all assigned to the SSV Normandy, a prototype stealth ship co-developed in secret with the Turian military. Given that each of them excelled at different aspects of shipboard operations, they were given equal footing onboard, albeit under the command of Admiral David Anderson. Admiral Shepard tried to get herself placed as commanding officer of the ship, but the special mission it was slated for beyond its initial shakedown pulled that opportunity out of her hands. She knew and trusted David though and felt he was a more than suitable stand in to lead her brood.