The SSV Orizaba was by far the largest ship Tom had ever been on.
Following Akuze and before the reaper war, Tom had been doing shore duty on Arcturus and he only returned to active ship duty aboard the SSV Hong-Kong when the reapers first hit the Alliance Base, and the size of a frigate was nothing compared to that of a dreadnought.
One upside to the size of a dreadnought meant Tom got his own room, courtesy of his mother, and didn't have to share a room with 19 other marine's with various sleeping patterns and sleep volumes.
There was also a lounge, which quite a few vessels had as a place for marine's to kick back and relax, but one that had a fully equipped bar as well as a tv with a decent sports channel (as well as a couple other channels Tom approved of) was something that was hard to come by.
The only downside was that, due to the size of the ship and amount of those on board, there was only access to the extranet at dedicated terminals down on the crew deck, and the ratio of crew members to terminals was a fairly large one, which made it a rarity to get extranet access every day.
It was close to 3 am ship time, and the lieutenant had to be up at 6 am to resume duties, as being aboard the ship your mother's in command of does not relieve you of duty, so Tom got into bed and tried to get to sleep.
An hour passed, and Tom had been staring at the back of his eyelids trying to achieve sleep, but to no avail. When he opened his eyes and looked at the clock, he smiled to himself, finding it somewhat amusing that, during the war, he had always slept well, something that most people didn't, and it was only after the war he stopped being able to sleep as well, due to the fact he wasn't exhausted from endless hours of combat and potential death anymore, and was usually well rested.
After another 40 minutes of staring at the ceiling or the back of his eyelids, Tom got up and went to get some breakfast. Another downside to the dreadnought was it had the same regulation food for an alliance vessel, which was beans, rice, eggs, several dried and canned fruit and vegetables and 'meat' (comprised of beef mince, lamb mince, fish mince, pork mince and various other types of mince mashed together) amongst other delicacies. Of course there was a lot of non-regulation food items that the crew had brought on board, but they were all labeled with names (and the occasional death threat) to stop other crew members stealing them. After the raid in the fridge turned up nothing, Tom settled on a couple regulation nutrient bars from the cupboard. They looked edible and similar to a chocolate bar, although after one bite he wished he risked 'having his balls sold to some backwards krogan on Omega' for a muffin.
"You're awake early" Tom looked up to see Hannah walking towards the mess hall from her quarters.
"Couldn't get sleep" The younger Shepard took another bite from the nutrient bar, before ramming what was left into his mouth so he could start on the second and end the ordeal with the terrible food faster.
"You're so much like your father" Hannah laughed as she watched her son shove the whole of the second bar in his mouth at once.
"Wha'?" He managed to form around the chewed up food in his mouth, spitting a few crumbs in the general direction of his mother by accident.
"Your father. He ate enough for himself and the crew of the Einstein." The Captain (Hannah's promotion to rear-admiral was only effective during the war) smiled as she reminisced the time she had with him. Tom's father died while he was still young, when he was 7 years old after a run of the mill mission took a turn, and he refused to surrender to the vorcha that caught him and his squad. As Tom was a spacer, he went to Alliance schools which meant that he didn't see his parents that much after the age of 5, so his memories of his father were hazy at best.
"Ha! What else I get from him?" Conversations like this were a rare occurrence, as his fathers death never stopped having an effect on his mother, so the lieutenant was sure as hell going to milk it.
"Well there's your looks, and your attitude" Deep down, both of them knew the latter was a wonderful combination from both parents, "also your metabolism," she gestured to the empty packets on the table.
"And your dashing personality came from me" His Mother grinned. Tom laughed at first then let out a happy sigh while his mother just continued to grin at him.
Hannah eventually got up to get herself some breakfast as she was due on the bridge in 2 hours to start her shift. Tom was thankful he didn't go for the muffin, because it turned out that was his mothers and she was often credited for being a woman of her word. Her son was also going to work on the bridge as her yeoman, something which he had no experience in yet wasn't all that hard to master when one of the Orizaba's rules was: 'if it's not from an alliance admiral, ignore it'.
After a few more minutes of mother-son talk, Tom went down to the shuttle bay to do some quick exercises before his shift started, as lying in a hospital bed then doing virtually nothing for a few weeks had began to make him a little soft around the edges. He couldn't even rely on his favourite 'exercise', as he had fell behind his game a lot, the woman on Mars being the last woman he got into bed with since Arcturus went from an alliance base to a mass grave.
When he arrived down on the lowest deck, someone was already training with the weights he planned on using, so he settled for doing a few pull ups instead, seeing if he could beat his high score of 70 before his muscles gave out on him.
"You're Captain Shepard's son" The woman who was using the weights accused.
"What makes you say that?"
"Not seen you before, also she seems very warm to you" Tom had to admit, this woman was observant, as his mother was nice to a select number of crew members and he noted that most of those had been on the ship a while, otherwise she was cold and somewhat bitchy to the others. The newer the crew member, the colder and bitchier she was.
"Well aren't you observant"
"Before I joined the Alliance, I was trying to get a degree is psychology. I notice small changes in people behaviour pretty well" The woman smiled as she continued to lift weights. She didn't look particularly feminine as taut muscles were more evident on her figure than curves, and Tom made a mental note not to cross her in case she snapped him in half.
"What happened?" Tom wasn't really interested but he saw no harm on continuing the conversation. Well, unless this woman had short temper, then he'd be in a lot of pain and possibly made into some dumbbells.
"I failed out of it. Pretty damn hard too. Decided to join the alliance so I could hopefully make something of my life, seeing as my career in psychology flew out the window" She said nonchalantly.
"And here you are, lifting weights and talking to the Captain's son after surviving giant squid-bots from space" Tom smirked and felt as though he had achieved something great when the woman let out a laugh, "what's your name anyway?"
"Emily. And yours?" Of course she didn't know Tom's name, it never crossed his mind until this point.
"Tom Shepard" He let go of the pull up bar, taking a mental note of how many pull ups he did (52), and dropped to the ground, walking over to shake Emily's hand once she put down the weights.
"Say, you and the captain wouldn't happen to be related to the Commander Shepard, would you?" Her face was the definition of curiosity, and Tom felt anger grow inside him, as he had the horrible feeling that he would now be nothing more than 'Commander Shepard's brother'.
"Maybe...we don't talk" It was only then he noticed the time, 6:30, and realised he needed to shower and get to the bridge asap. "Sorry, I've got to run"
Emily watched as Tom pushed passed her and ran to the elevator. "Bye, Tom"
-Later on, on the bridge-
The shift was...boring, to put it lightly. Most calls that came through were just distress signals from various non-human vessels. There was one call from Admiral Hackett that made the shift slightly more bearable, but he was asking for a frigate to help some refugees out on Pluto, not a full scale dreadnought to do something exciting.
Hannah was having about as much fun as Tom, reading through emails on her private terminal that were mostly about the mass relays and the citadels varying states of repair. There was an interesting ANN article that found its way into her inbox about a couple cities on Earth accepting people back in while most of the planet was still recovering from the reapers. One of which was Vancouver, which had become a dreadful city in recent years, and therefore probably looked better following the reapers invasion. It certainly couldn't be any worse.
"Mom, it's the end of my shift" Tom whined, looking over at Hannah and acting like a 4 year old.
"And you can stay there until it's the end of mine, Tom" The lieutenant sighed in protest before bashing his head on the Comm Terminal in frustration. "Can you refrain from doing that, you don't need to add to your scars, nor get blood on the console"
"They add character" Tom laughed, raising his eyebrows which caused the light to catch the large scar over his left eyebrow, making Hannah sigh angrily and pinch the bridge of her nose to stop an outburst of fury from coming out.
"Go on. You're relieved" she said finally, before her son fist pumped and ran to the elevator, so he could watch a game of biotiball, even though it was a charity game between some asari team he hadn't heard of and the Eezo Warriors, a team from Los Angeles that won the trophy for 'most score attempts in a match' the previous year. It wasn't a great trophy, more like an award saying 'you tried!' but Tom had made a bet that they would win, putting a whole 300 credits on it, already thinking what visual delights he would buy when he won the current prize of 2,134 credits.