3. Gravity

Shepard dreamed that she was floating. Lying on her back and floating high above everything. It felt so incredibly real - she could even feel individual strands of her hair floating upwards from her scalp and gently waving as though she were underwater, could feel the sensation of her clothes against her skin. An insistent buzzing intruded into the dream; Shepard realised it was her alarm clock - she'd set it to go off an hour before the Normandy was due to pass through the mass relay and into the Hera system.

Still half asleep and with her head still half in the dream, Shepard rolled over on the bed and her hand slapped down on the alarm clock.

Only it didn't.

Her hand passed through empty air and the movement caused her to spin lazily in mid-air.

Mid...air.

"What the hell?" Shepard blurted out as her eyes snapped open. Even given the dimly lit quality of her quarters, Shepard could tell something was very badly wrong. She was floating above her bed. So either she was still dreaming...

"Ow!" Shepard gasped in pain as she pinched herself, hard. So she wasn't dreaming. That meant...Shepard pressed a hand to the side of her head and keyed her comm implant. "Adams?"

"Commander," the professional-sounding voice of her chief engineer calmed her a little.

"Is it just me or are we experiencing some issues with the A-grav system?" As she spoke, Shepard slowly rotated through the empty air over her bed. The hem of the tank top she wore to bed floated gently above her waist. An errant thought occurred to her - zero G porn. She could make a mint renting out her quarters in their current state to sleazoid film makers.

"We were just about to inform you, Commander," Adams said, bringing her back to the present. "There's an...irregularity with the Tantalus core."

"Oh, is that what you call it when I wake up floating in mid air? An irregularity?" Shepard scratched vigorously at her scalp. Suddenly her head itched abominably.

Adams sounded apologetic, "We're running diagnostics, Commander. We should have a handle on things shortly."

Shepard closed the connection and sighed. Now for the laborious job of getting dressed in zero-G.

---

"You ever have this happen before, Sir?" Hailstorm asks Adams. The engineering section of the frigate is quite crowded at present - every member of the engineering staff and every crewman who knows which end of a wrench to hold has been drafted to assist with first diagnosing the cause of the loss of gravity and, more importantly, getting the A-grav back online.

"Once when I was serving on the Tokyo. And that was after we'd taken a round amidships from an enemy cruiser. This...this random loss of power is something new."

"Fan-bloody-tastic," Hailstorm mutters, maneuvering herself as close to the deck as possible and planting the soles of her magnetised boots to the floor. Her feet contact the decking with a muted thud and each footstep is an ungainly effort as she has to wrench her foot free of the embrace between metal and boot whilst maintaining her upright stance in the null-gravity. Her hair floats about her face like a constantly shifting blonde halo and the various diagnostic tools arrayed along her tool belt kept wanting to escape.

Unbidden, the words of an old rock song come to mind: It's only gravity and she laughs aloud, drawing questioning looks from the rest of the engineering staff. Still chuckling, Storm activates her omni-tool and opens a panel set into the port bulkhead behind which lies a diagnostics panel. Fingers of her right hand dancing above the amber-glowing omni-tool interface surrounding her left forearm, Storm runs a basic diagnostic pattern - start with the most obvious things first and work outward.

Much to her surprise, the most basic diagnostic check reveals a faulty control panel buried deep within the innards of the drive core.

"Adams?" she says, looking up from her work. The chief engineer turns to face her, right hand steadying himself against the bulkhead.

"What have you found?"

"Well, I have good news and bad news. Good news is that the fault's with a single circuit board."

Adams nods, pleased. "What's the catch?"

Storm tilts her head in the direction of the eezo core. "Bad news is we'll practically have to dismantle that just to get at the circuit in question."

Adams utters a string of profanity-laced invective the likes of which Storm has never heard. And he seems so calm and easy going on the outside. When the outburst subsides, Adams takes a breath and says, "Alright! You heard the lady, I want everybody to pull up the schematics of the core and get to work. And for God's sake, we don't want any parts left over when we're done, OK?"

The engineering team nod attentively. Left over parts would be bad.

---

Shepard was fuming. Storm and company were waist-deep inside the Tantalus core and the marine squads were currently floating around the ship about as useless as fake tits on a husk.

Flight Lieutenant Jeff "Joker" Moreau was loving every minute of the situation. No gravity meant no pressure on his limbs and no pain when he moved. Sure, he had to be careful that his braced legs didn't inadvertently bang against the bulkheads as he pulled himself through the ship but that was SOP in any case. Simply being able to be without feeling as though his legs would fracture was one of the most joyous things he'd ever known.

It was better than sex. Well, almost.

As he passed through the mess, he crossed paths with Shepard who took one look at him and all but snapped, "What are you so happy about?" and on the heels of that, before he could even respond to her initial outburst, "Why aren't you flying the ship?"

Smirking, Joker answered, "It's a great day to be alive Commander. And to answer your second question, with the drive core off-line, all we're doing is drifting and the automatics can handle things for now."

The Commander folded her arms over her chest and floated up towards the ceiling. "Well, I just hope the automatics don't go the way of the drive core or we're all screwed. Dismissed."

"Commander," Joker acknowledged, touching two fingers to his forehead in salute.

---

It takes the better part of an hour, but finally, the engineers gain access to the suspect circuit board. The board is very ordinary-looking to have caused so much trouble.

"We spent an hour digging around in the drive core for this?" Storm says in exasperation. Wearily she arms sweat from her brow, smearing lubricants from the Tantalus across her forehead. "Alright," she says over her shoulder to Adams, "I'm extracting the board now." Delicately, the Lieutenant grips the edge of the circuit board, wiggles it back and forth until it pops free of its slot and hands it back to Adams. As Adams leaves the engine room, heading towards the fabrication unit in the garage, Storm begins the tiresome chore of getting herself back out of the core. She can almost feel the gazes of the male crew on her butt as she crawls backwards on hands and knees, before being able to stand upright again on her magnetised boots.

Placing her hands at the base of her spine, Storm arches and stretches her back, feeling her vertebrae crack and pop. As she straightens up, the doors connecting the engine room to the garage open and Adams steps through, holding a freshly fabricated circuit board. This he hands to Storm. Hailstorm takes one look at the circuit board in her stained hands, glances back at the core and shakes her head.

"Pierson!" she calls out to a junior crewman. Praise God for crew members more junior than I am she thinks and smiles sweetly as Serviceman First Class Pierson steps to attention on magnetised feet. "Be a dear and install that will you?" Pierson glances at the core then back at his superior before accepting the circuit board.

"I probably should have sent him in the first time," Storm muses to herself, wiping her hands clean on an oil-stained rag. Pierson stands at just over average height and might weigh sixty kilograms soaking wet. Soon enough, the slim, wiry Serviceman returns in triumph. Storm turns to Adams, "We should be ready to power up the A-grav, Sir," she reports.

Adams nods and keys his comm.

---

Shepard floated above the galaxy map inside the CIC, a hand gripping a railing prevented her from drifting off. Her comm unit bleeped and she pressed her free hand to her ear. "Talk to me."

Adams' voice spoke in her ear, "We've repaired the drive core, Ma'am, and we're ready to power up the A-grav."

"Good work, Adams. Pass along my thanks to the engineering staff. I'll alert the crew."

Pushing off from the galaxy map, Shepard floated forward until she reached the bridge and keyed the PA system. "Attention crew. The engineering staff have repaired the A-grav system and are about to restore gravity."

The Normandy's crew was too disciplined to cheer or applaud but Shepard knew the temptation would be there. For Shepard, novelty of zero-G had worn off after about fifteen minutes. Which was about the time it had taken her to get dressed whilst floating upside down and drifting into the bulkheads.

"All crew are ordered to return to their stations and strap in. That is all."

In the mess, Joker sighed. Well, it'd been fun while it lasted but if he was caught away from his specially designed flight seat when the weight of the world crashed back in on his fragile skeletal system, he would be in a world of hurt. As fast as was safe and practicable, Joker turned and headed back towards the sanctuary that was the bridge, silently praying that Adams wouldn't just dump the full one gee on the crew, instead of dialing it back in gradually.

Heart beating a little too loudly in his chest and respiration a little too fast for his liking, Joker returned to the place he felt most at home without incident and pulled the restraints across himself.

The ship-wide comm system came to life and the slightly husky tones of Lieutenant Storm rang forth confidently. "Attention crew. We're powering up the A-grav in three...two...one..."

As Storm spoke the last word, Joker felt more than heard the subtle hum of power throughout the ship deepen slightly as the artificial gravity system spun back into life. Hailstorm was cranking up the G slowly, Joker noticed with approval. "Point three G...point five G...point seven-five...and we're there. Thanks for you patience, crew," Storm said cheerfully, "And thank you for flying Alliance Spaceways." Joker smirked as, in the background, he heard the dry chuckle of Adams.

Settling back in his seat, Joker keyed Pressly. "Hey, Pressly, have those monkeys you call navigators got the jump sequence loaded into the nav systems?"

Pressly refused to rise to Joker's bait. "Don't worry your pretty head, Moreau, we'll hold our end up."

"Awww, you think I'm pretty? That's so sweet!" Joker's voice rose in a falsetto on the last word and he cut the connection. Always get in the last word.

Pressly just shook his head as he unstrapped himself from his seat and stood up. Turning to face the Commander who stood gazing into the galaxy map, he reported, "We're ready to carry on into the mass relay on your orders, Ma'am."

For a moment, Shepard said nothing and Pressly could see the swirl of star systems reflected in the depths of her eyes. Then she blinked and looked at him, "Very good, Pressly. We've lost enough time already. Go."

Orders were given and carried out and Normandy disappeared through the mass relay in a silent burst of blue-white light.

A/N: Song credit - Gravity by The Superjesus. Which actually isn't a song about zero gravity, oddly enough. :P