Chapter 3
The council discussed the mass relays extensively. Too extensively. Shepard leaned sideways on her chair's armrest. She was just one face in an audience, but someone would probably still catch her if she closed her eyes. The councilors sat at a long table in the center of the stage. Amphitheater-like seats rose up in a half circle around the floor. They could cram a lot of people in here – diplomats, ambassadors, Alliance, her. Always her.
Daily council meetings were open session. Come one and all. And usually it was one or all. Most days, only the first three or four rows were full. Then a hot topic would get headlined, and the room bulged beyond capacity. It probably violated some fire code. Pretty much, attendees were either fighting sleep or suffocation. She knew it too well. She'd been here practically every day for months. She should have her own parking spot. This chair was good enough though. Fourth row. She could graffiti her name on the armrest. It'd give her something to do.
"The commercial ships have never been charged," a volus said from the lectern on one side of the council stage.
"We never had to repair the relays before," said an asari opposite him.
"How would these licenses be policed?" Tevos, the asari councilor, asked from the table.
Sparatus, the turian councilor, leaned forward in his chair and folded his hands on the desk. The salarian councilor stared over the heads in the crowd with a pinched expression. He always looked that way though. He might be more bored than she was during these meetings. Councilor Mason though, bobbed his head giving the asari on stage an encouraging smile. He was nicer than Shepard could be. But then, a politician had to be to balance friendship with the Alliance, other races, and the other councilors. He probably wasn't pro-Alliance enough to satisfy the Alliance brass though.
Shepard gazed down at a row of heads in the front row. Some of them were flight admirals. Apparently, the Alliance's upper crust had nothing better to do than listen to talk on mass relay tariffs. The galaxy lay in rubble, and the Alliance and council spent their days in details and gridlock. The real stuff, the important stuff, didn't seem to make the agenda when there were such pressing matters like commercial trade laws or credit security planning. This wasn't worth her time. Flight Admiral Dumas must have felt her eyes on his profile. He twisted and met her gaze with narrowing eyes. Shepard looked away.
The asari gripped the lectern and raised her voice. "The relays are costing an exorbitant sum of resources, manpower, and spacecrafts. We're making up half of it as we go. Without the keepers who survived the citadel, we'd be totally lost. And, the problems in its reconstruction? It's costing the council and the alliance more every day. If the merchants benefit from restoring the relays, the costs needs to be shared."
"It's our commercial sector that's hurting the most," the volus said. "Intergalactic commerce is dead on its feet. Eezo, Medigel, basic things are running out. If the Council wants resources shared between systems, you need commerce. You'll drive it into the ground this way. This whole war has been an economic nightmare."
It seemed like a pretty tame nightmare. Apparently, he wasn't waking up panting from a banshee stabbing him through his chest or watching as a crewmate stood frozen with a brute hurtling toward him. It was always too late. She was always too far away, her biotics just out of range. She'd arrive firing her gun as the brute swung around with a crumbled body sliding down the wall behind him in a blood streak. She'd take economic nightmares instead any night of the week. Oh no! Last quarter's discretionary budget didn't balance. Code red, everyone, code red. The terror.
The volus turned to the councilors. "The traffic jam alone, councilors. Stopping every ship—"
"They could submit a license number to a control ship," the asari said. "Fast, electronic, reflexive after a time."
The volus leaned forward on the lectern. "And what do we charge? Based on occupancy, merchandises, ship size? Who's policing it? C-Sec? Who issues the licenses?"
Shepard's elbow slipped off the armrest. She jolted upright. She glanced around, but everyone watched the asari councilor as she stood up from the table.
"This creates a whole new infrastructure to oversee at a time we are barely starting to rebuild," Tevos said. "We need resources shared. The economy to rise again. The smaller star clusters—"
A chair creaked behind Shepard.
"Commander Shepard, right?" someone whispered.
Shepard glanced behind her. The man hadn't been there earlier. He sat on the edge of the seat directly behind her and flashed a canine smile. Dark hair slicked back from his forehead like the feathers on head of a falcon. A scar crossing his eyebrow left a bald patch that looked barely healed. He wore an Alliance uniform.
"Yes?"
"Lieutenant Commander Bram Anchor."
He offered his hand over her shoulder. Shepard twisted and gave it a quick pump. A sigh came from the Alliance Operations Chief sitting on her left. He frowned at them. Anchor narrowed his eyes at the back of the chief's head then turned back to Shepard with a smile.
He leaned in closer. "Glad we're meeting, Commander. Heard good things about you."
Shepard wrinkled her brow. He didn't look familiar. The name meant nothing to her.
"I'll be on leave for a few weeks," Anchor continued. "Wanted to make sure we met though. Admiral Hackett said you'd be here."
Anchor glanced back at the exit and gave her a quick nod before standing up. Shepard peered up at him.
"What's this about?" she asked.
He bent down to her ear. "See you on the Normandy, Commander."
He ducked into the aisle and disappeared into the recessed shadows at the back. A door opened and closed. The Operations Chief glanced over again. Shepard gave a weak smile and turned back to the council stage, back to the relays, commerce, credits. There was no way she was keeping her mind on that now. The Normandy …
X
Shepard stopped in her tracks. A turien collided into her. His datapad rattled to the hallway floor as people streaming around them.
"Look what you're doing," he snapped then paused as he looked into her face. His eyes widened. "Wait. You're Commander Shepard. Sorry about that. Wasn't looking where I was going."
He snatched his datapad off the floor and rushed around her. Shepard drew her eyes away from him and stared down the hall. It was Joker. He sat on the other side of a glass wall in a pub. Shepard shot forward with a grin. She darted to the glass wall's open doorway and rounded the corner into the pub. Joker hunched over a table next to the plane of glass. Alliance's HQ hallway swarmed on the other side with people heading home or setting out for dinner.
"Joker."
He snapped his head up.
"You didn't tell me you got back to headquarters." She dragged a chair out from under the table and flopped down. The table wobbled, and Joker clutched his drink with a frown. Shepard darted a look under the table with a grunt. "Damn table. Last time I was here—"
"Yeah, sure, take a seat, Commander. Thanks for asking."
Shepard cocked her head with a lopsided frown. She sat back in her chair and waved at him.
"When did you get back?"
Joker adjusted his ratty baseball cap with one hand. He clutched the mug of beer against the stains on a frayed-collared band T-shirt. His bearded needed trimmed.
"You okay?" Shepard asked.
Joker shrugged and kept his eyes down. "Why wouldn't I be? I'm alive. All that matters, right?" He took a deep drink from his mug.
"Uh huh. Might be just me, but you don't look like you're doing too hot, Joker."
"What? Cause I didn't report into you the moment I hopped off the shuttle?"
Shepard scooted her chair in and steadied the table. She folded her hands on top.
"Do you want to get something to eat? You drinking that on an empty stomach?"
"No." He took a drink again. "The first one was on an empty stomach. This one? This one's definitely not on an empty stomach."
"Yeah. Cute."
Joker thudded the cup down in front of him. He fixed his eyes on the table and ran a finger around the mug's handle. Shepard didn't say anything. Something upbeat played overhead. A human woman passed in the hall and gawked at Shepard. Ah, the life of celebrity. The faster she was away on the Normandy the better, if that's what was happening.
"So …" Joker gestured expansively slouching back in his chair. "You have something you wanted to say? You tracked me down."
"I was just walking down the hall and saw you."
"Walking down the hall to where?"
"To my apartment. You know how late it is? You don't have somewhere you need to be in the morning?"
"What apartment? Admiral Anderson have an apartment here too? You get his bank codes and shuttle keys, too, this time?"
"Not Admiral Anderson. Apartment in the barracks. A lot of open quarters now."
"Nice quarters?"
"A general's quarters. So, yeah."
"General, huh? Taking it then, he's either dead or … or, if he's not, then he's pretty damn happy. Probably goes against regs cohabitating and such. But then, we know how much of a stickler you are for those anyway."
Shepard stood up knocking against the table. "That's enough."
"Now, Kaidan wasn't promoted to general while I was gone, right? Cause that would explain a lot."
"Enough. I'm a commanding officer. I like you, Joker, but you're out of line."
People at the bar turned around on their stools and frowned at them.
Shepard grabbed the back of her chair and leaned down with a quieter voice. "I know you're grieving over EDI. Maybe you think no one else cares, I don't know, but this isn't the way to go about it. Pull yourself together. EDI's memory deserves better than this."
Shepard pushed off against the back of the chair and left. The group at the bar stared as she passed. Maybe they recognized her. Maybe it was just the outburst. Shepard frowned over her shoulder at the bar and continued down the hallway.