Confidence
The room was fairly standard for such things. Rows of chairs for multiple species set up in rows. One wall that had a large holo screen built in. One door led to a hangar where a number of shuttle waited for use as simulators. Another door led to restroom facilities, also set up for multiple species.
Jak watched the seats fill up from his hidden vantage and fought back a sigh. There were things he would never miss about the military, but say what you would, the military got some things right. Discipline and attention to detail were the two most important things for soldiers, no matter their species or field of operation.
Attention to detail was imperative. If you missed one step in a series, bad things often happened. Even if it was simply cooking food for a crew, you could poison them. Not so good for morale. If you were trying to disarm an explosive while the timer was counting down and missed a step? Ouch.
Discipline was what separated soldiers from a mob. From the first time a sentient had picked up a rock to bash another sentient over the head with, warfare had been a constant in most species' histories. It varied from group to group. Asari preferred styles of warfare were very different from turian preferred styles of warfare which was very different from most krogan warfare. Humans varied quite a bit, but in the end, what separated soldiers from warriors was discipline. Warriors fought for themselves, soldiers fought for each other. Or that had been what Jak had learned in Basic Training. Things got blurry as he got older, but in the end, to Jak discipline was what mattered.
This group of pilots was varied. Some seemed disciplined, others were loud and to Jak's expert eye, lacked confidence. That could kill a pilot as surely as a bullet could. The only way to get confidence was to do stuff, so Jak was ready. Or so he hoped. He had taught such classes before, but it had been a long time.
Finally almost all of the seats were filled and Jak looked at the time. Two minutes to go. He strode from his cubbyhole and started for the front of the room. It was easy to tell who was pure civilian and who was former military. No one called the room to attention, but all of the former military personnel were suddenly silent and attentive. The civilians all realized that something was happening and shut up as Jak reached the front of the room.
He wasn't carrying anything for the class, but even now, he wore his Predator. He had authorization for that from Ryder, Garson and the head of security, a feisty woman named Sloane Kelly. He had seen several others armed as well, probably security troops with the same dispensation he had, to carry concealed while on duty, which he was. Even if he hadn't been authorized, he wasn't going to walk around unarmed. Not when Lara and Korri both relied on him. He wouldn't have carried it openly, but he would have carried it. At least no one else was carrying anything heavier than a pistol or perhaps a submachinegun.
Jak looked at the clock and then at the few empty seats. Three of them. He quirked an eyebrow.
"They did send out the memo that this refresher was mandatory, right?" Jak inquired. Head nodded around the room. "Good. The Initiative isn't the force I worked with, but memos get lost for everyone."
A sour chuckle swept the room and most of the beings in it relaxed a little. He saw Perrin'Shiya sitting near the back and did not acknowledge the quarian. He saw turian he had called Spook Two sitting with his back to a corner and did not acknowledge the turian either.
"Well, we only have a day to get this done, so we better start." Jak looked around the sea of faces and nodded. "My name is Jak Collains, I am former Alliance Military and most of my experience is in atmosphere. I have flown most of human designs and am current on the Kodiak, although my hours are down at the moment."
"Then what good are you?" A loud female voice sounded from the door and Jak fought back another sigh as three humans swaggered in. Two guys and a girl. From the looks on their faces and the general disheveled appearance of their jumpsuits, they had probably found an out of the way closet to do some hanky panky. None of them were former military.
"How many hours do you have, Ms Rivers?" Jak asked, ignoring the murmurs as he named her in front of the class. His implant had queried hers and pulled up a short bio when it did. A decent pilot, but also a troublemaker. Not that surprising. "Actual flight that is?"
Jak knew that, just as he knew that Ms Princilla Rivers had come from an influential family and considered flying as an adventure, which it could be. He knew exactly how many hours she had logged, which likely wasn't the truth. Every pilot fudged a little, for any number of reasons, some good, some bad. To his surprise, the woman stiffened and nodded.
"Three hundred flight, two hundred instrument. Eighty with the Kodiak." She replied with a savage smile. "You?" Jak nodded, he has expected such.
"Twenty six thousand, four hundred and seven hours total. About half on instrument." Jak replied quietly. Ms Rivers paled and Jak continued in the same calm voice. "You have me beat on the Kodiak though. I only have sixty nine hours with that. This refresher is for me too."
Those numbers made more than one person whistle. Then again, Jak had been a pilot for ten years and had been active duty for most of that time. That wasn't even his true total. No one outside Alliance High command knew that. Not even Jak. He never bothered to count the secret hops.
"How many in a Mantis?" Someone asked. Jak ignored the question and the speaker grunted. "Never mind."
Had that question come from a krogan? There were three in the class, all of whom looked attentive. Odd.
"Frankly? Number of hours here doesn't matter." Jak waved and the woman sat, her two paramours or whatever they were sitting as well. "We do not know what we are getting into. We could find perfectly habitable planets with perfect weather and natives that offer to sell us the planet for beads and some blankets." That got a laugh from a couple of the military types. "Or we could be flying into a shitstorm. Maybe literally if we find a planet sized being." He smiled as several people chuckled a little. "We do not know what are flying into, so we have to be ready for anything. Anything at all."
"We know what we are getting into." Ms. Rivers said smugly.
"Do you?" Jak countered evenly. "So nothing can possibly go wrong or change in six hundred years worth of cryo sleep?" He shook his head. "You are not stupid or you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't have made it past the screenings. We are going to Andromeda. No one has been there before that we know of from the Milky Way. Our job will be to carry stuff from place to place, probably through the worst environments. We may carry people, cargo, livestock… it doesn't matter. Our job is to get from point A to point B safely."
"And if we find trouble?" This from a human in the third row.
"The Mk 45J Kodiak, Civilian model, has strong kinetic barriers and powerful engines." Jak replied without answering the question." What would you do?"
"Run the hell away." The human replied instantly. A laugh circled the room, but more than one person was nodding.
"Good answer." Jak said with a smile. "We are not in a military now. Picking fights is not our job. Winning fights is not our job. Our job?"
"Carry stuff and come back safe." Came a chorus from around the room. Ms. Rivers had her mouth firmly shut and Jak bit back another sigh. That one was going to be trouble.
"Right." Jak nodded and turned to the wall where a screen lit up showing a shuttle in Initiative colors. "The Mk 45J Civilian model Kodiak shuttle as modified by the Andromeda Initiative..."
Nine hours later
Jak was pleasantly surprised. The class had only contained a few of the stereotypical pilot sorts. The loud, confident arrogant idiot stereotype which had little to do with real pilots in Jak's own experience. A pilot needed confidence true, fighter pilot in particular needed confidence that lesser beings could only marvel at to simply do their job even when it wasn't in space. But the Initiative wasn't going to need fighter pilots. They had a number of beings who were trained as such, far more than they had fighters for. They didn't need that. They needed shuttle pilots. Badly. The mindset was very different. Most in the class got that, a few did not and Jak was looking forward to seeing their reaction to the simulations. Ms Rivers was the loudest of the, but there were others who seemed to vie for place of 'class jerk' with her.
He had pulled strings and gotten enough shuttles set up for the class to have four of them running as simulators at once. He had also managed to come up with a sneaky flight pattern that started small and easy and ended with maneuvers that were the definition of tricky.
"You have got to be kidding!" Ms Rivers screamed from her simulator as it shut down."You… You..." She was almost frothing thing at the mouth as she clawed her way out of the restraints and stormed from the shuttle to glare at Jak. "What was that?"
"Which?" Jak asked calmly. Inside, he was enjoying the show and both Lara and Korri were snickering as the woman in front of him sputtered. He checked his omni-tool to see how far she had gotten and nodded. "Ah, you tried to fly through the canyon."
"That is not possible!" Rivers snapped. Jak looked at her and then at the other simulators, which were still humming.
"Sure it is."Jak retorted, keeping his voice calm to counter the woman's angst. "You just took it at three times the recommended speed. The Kodiak is not a fighter craft. It won't handle like a fighter craft." He shook his head slowly. "And if a fighter pilot tried what you did, they would be grounded for a while at the very least."
"The Kodiak cannot do that!" Rivers retorted hotly.
"The Kodiak can." Jak said with a snarl as the woman drew in a breath to start again. "It is sturdy and quick for its size. It is not a fighter or ground attack ship. It was never designed to be such. Even the newest military models, some of which I think have weapons..." He knew damn well they did. "...are not designed for air to air combat or suppression of enemy air defenses. If we run into such situations in Andromeda, our best choice is always going to be to run away. We are not an army."
"Maybe we should be." River said sullenly.
"Then maybe you should leave." Jak replied and everyone's eyes were suddenly on him. "That mindset will likely get you killed. You we might be able to spare, but the others and possibly the shuttle you will likely take with you are less replaceable."
"That cannot be done." River snapped. "Why give us scenarios that cannot be done?"
"To see if we will try them." A voice Jak had heard before piped up form the back of the group that had gathered around him and Rivers. Jak nodded to the female krogan who had spoken. "Aborting the run when the winds got too high was the right choice?" She inquired.
"In that particular situation, yes." Jak replied. "But that scenario based on a real world example. You didn't have the urgency of the real world mission."
"If I may ask, sir..." The female krogan said quietly. "What was the real world mission?" Rivers drew in a breath, but several people hushed her.
"Delivering medical teams and medicine to an isolated settlement that had an outbreak of a nasty cross species flu." Jak replied quietly. Several people stiffened at that. "The outbreak was bad. Dozens sick, hundreds infected. When the dust had settled, there were thirty seven fatalities including fourteen kids. The medicine saved the rest." He looked at the floor. "The mission was done."
"That run is not possible." Rivers declared. "Who here managed to do it?" Everyone looked, but no one raised a hand until Jak did. "You?" Rivers sputtered.
"2173, Elysium." Jak said quietly. "A hurricane came and sat on the operating area. All flight in the area was grounded due to high winds and lighting. A deep canyon was the only way in that would not tear even a Kodiak to pieces but the winds in that were unpredictable. I did it at the specified speed. Not a single shot was fired and it is still the single hardest mission I have ever flown. Nothing else in my experience has even come close."
"Harder than the bridge?" The female krogan asked.
"What bridge?" Jak asked calmly. Several people snickered.
"Ryder told us some of your history." The female krogan smiled. "You may deny it as you wish, and good for you to be so loyal to the Alliance." Jak looked at her and her implant read Nakmor Salira. "Aborting the run and waiting for conditions to improve was the right call."
"This time, yes. The cargo was not specified for a reason. It wasn't urgent." Jak said with a nod. "We may be called upon to do similarly crazy things. Because what I did on Elysium in 2173 was crazy. There is no other way to say it. It was foolhardy and I put both myself and the medical teams with me in grave risk. The only reason the brass didn't court martial me for it is that I managed to pull it off. We do not need heroes here." He said, looking at Rivers who flushed. "We need people who get the job done. We will have the knowledge and machinery to make new shuttles, but we won't have the resources to make them fast. And if you take a dozen colonist into a fiery grave with you? Who replaces them?"
Rivers bit back an angry retort, glared at the clock and left the bay without another word. Her two hangers on followed, both silent and red faced. Jak sighed and nodded. His time for the day was up. Everyone had gone a round in the simulators so the refresher had gone fairly well. Rivers was going to be a problem though. The others filed out until only the krogan was left. She spoke.
"She wants to be a fighter pilot." Salira said quietly. "And she won't get it."
"We are explorers, not a military." Jak said with a nod as he started shutting down the shuttles and readying them for storage. Most would be shifted to long term storage and sit there for the long trip to Andromeda. Only four would be left in the hangar and most of those were earmarked for the Pathfinder team."I can't talk about what I did." He cautioned.
"I know." The krogan reassured him. "I just wanted to say, 'Thank you' for the class." Jak paused what he was doing and looked at her. "Not every krogan is a testosterone fueled idiot and we do need the best for this crazy jaunt."
"Ryder said a clan was coming. Yours?" Jak asked as he finished shutting down the last shuttle. Salira nodded and Jak sighed. "If anyone in the galaxy has earned a fresh start, I think you krogan have."
"Kind words." Salira said with a frown. "As a race, the krogan earned the galaxy's ire. Not all of us believe in the dream. But we follow our clan leaders. Maybe in Andromeda we can make a better future for ourselves and our descendants. One untainted by our past."
"You are not the only one." Jak said sadly. Salira looked at him and both Lara and Korri felt shocked at the pain that flew through his mind, Both worked to ease him and he relaxed. "The bridge? People will keep asking. I… I shouldn't but… You deserve to know."
"You don't need to say." Salira said quickly.
"You krogan have a reputation." Jak said sadly. "So do I. The bridge? The newsies left out a lot. Do you know how many terrorists were there?"
"Fifty seven." Salira said instantly. "With heavy weapons and-" She broke off as Jak raised a hand. "What?"
"Fifty seven terrorists, yes. Nineteen of them under the age of sixteen. Kids. Children soldiers. Two of the woman of the group had brought infants with them. The pieces found of those never made onto the news." Salira stared at him in horror. Jak felt both Lara and Korri's shock. "It was a cult and I killed them all. The four who survived my assault didn't live long after. Only one survived to face trial and she didn't survive to her sentencing hearing. I killed them all."
"It was the right thing to do." Salira said slowly. "But children? Even our people wouldn't do that. Kill them in rage or in the heat of battle maybe. But use them as soldiers? No."
"They apparently counted on that squeamishness on the part of the cops. I didn't know. All I knew was there were terrorists there. If they had time to set up the bombs that they were going to, a thousand civilians would have died." Jak gave himself a shake. "So yes. What I did was crazy and needed. It was really the only thing to do. But that doesn't help me sleep at night."
"I can understand that." Salira said sadly. "I am fertile. I had… I tried once." Jak stiffened and she nodded. "I can't do that again."
A rush of sympathy came from the others in Jak's mind and he slowly reached out. Salira stared at him as he laid a hand on her arm.
"I am not going to say I understand, because I don't. I can't. I am male. I cannot understand completely." Jak said quietly. "But I do understand sadness and grief. The Alliance and my team were my family. I lost them all along with my sanity. I have gotten some of it back. I am not alone, but..."
"But it is hard." Salira said with a nod. "Maybe someday. But for now? I think part of me took pilot training in the hope that I would crash and burn somewhere. The rest of me just loves to fly."
"Let's hope that part stays." Jak gave the armored arm a squeeze and released her. "You can fly with me anytime, Nakmor Salira. Better you than Rivers."
"Thanks." Salira said with a grimace. "I think. You are crazy. I am krogan, remember?"
"It was a compliment. I am crazy. We are all crazy." Jak started for the door and Salira followed. "What we plan is not sane in the slightest. We could all use a fresh start. But one would hope than we leave all of our old grudges and nastiness behind."
"Care to wager on that?" Salira asked slyly.
"Nope." Jak smiled a little. "I am all about risk management these days."
"Drat." But Saliera was smiling too.
"Hey, confidence is one thing, but betting against stupidity?"
"Good point."