2. The Still-Beating Heart
Though she's seen Arcturus station many a time in the vids, Hayley's never been there herself before now. The almost impossibly huge deep-space installation looms ever larger through the viewport as the transport on which she's a passenger nears its destination.
As the headquarters for the human fleets, Arcturus is the most heavily defended outpost humanity possesses and, as such, boasts an impressive number of warships maintaining cover. Tiny dots, the drive flares of fighters flit here and there, past the larger dots that are frigates and cruisers. As the transport angles towards one of the station's immense docking bays, Hayley plays Name That Ship. A four-ship wolfpack of Alliance frigates sails past and she quickly checks them off: Gallipoli, Waterloo, Alamo and Long Tan.
A cruiser in the distance, bearing towards the mass relay opening this sector to the rest of Citadel-controlled space she identifies as SSV Manhattan. Manhattan along with the frigate Agincourt have seen action in the Syllian Blitz. Glumly Hayley tells herself that they're probably en route to administer another ass kicking to the batarians. Meanwhile she's off to make sure Admiral Hackett's coffee percolator is always full.
---
In the six months since her arrival on Arcturus, First Lieutenant Storm had committed to memory all of Admiral Steven Hackett's likes, dislikes and personality quirks. He liked his coffee black, two sugars and none of that 'artificial sweetener crap' as he put it. "That's my wife's hobbyhorse, Lieutenant, not mine," he'd told her in that gravelly voice of his on her first day on the job. She smiled and nodded. Smiling and nodding gets you far in life, was another of her brother's pearls of wisdom. "You'd love this, Jules," she muttered to herself as she sat behind her desk in the reception area of Hackett's office.
Her staff position entailed that she wore her dress uniform at all times, along with the little peaked cap and take notes at all the meetings, of which there were many, that the Admiral attended. She'd long since become inured to dealing with the generals, admirals and various politicians Hackett dealt with and after the first week she'd stopped being awed by the sheer number of medals amassed by the senior officers. The one thing she was yet to become inured to was that pompous windbag Donnel Udina.
The human ambassador to the Citadel had spent much of the last several months shuttling back and forth between Arcturus and the Citadel on business. Whatever he and Hackett discussed in their closed meetings was well beyond her level of clearance but on one occasion, she'd overheard them mention a "Project Normandy" whilst delivering a tray of coffee and danishes. Her initial instinct was to think, Normandy sounds like the name of an Alliance frigate. But she'd heard nothing through official channels and had found nothing on any of the various 'conspiracy whackjob' extranet sites that Hackett had asked her to monitor for signs of subversive activity.
Quite what she was meant to be looking for was never clearly explained. Surely even the most stupid wannabe anarchist wasn't going to post on an extranet message board, along with his manifesto, details of assassination plots against the turian Council member. Still, this Normandy thing played on her mind and she made repeated attempts to find more information, all of which resulted in dead-ends.
While many of the Admiral's meetings were with various Alliance politicians and military personnel, one visitor in particular stuck in Hayley's mind, long after he'd departed. Both she and Hackett had been enjoying a rare moment of solitude between meetings and briefings. Hackett, in his office had been listening to classical music, the strains of a Mozart concerto audible through the door to his office. Hayley, after getting the filing squared away, had been in the midst of composing a letter to home when the door to the outer office slid open with a slight sigh. Hayley looked up and blinked in surprise at the visitor.
Walking towards her with long strides was a tall, imposing turian. His face was painted with white markings; his intense green eyes seeming to scan the entire room for possible threats in mere seconds. Though he was dressed in civilian garb, something about him carried an aura of quiet menace. As though he was so skilled in the arts of war that he felt no need to boast or brag about it. He looks like he could snap my spine in half with a snap of his fingers, Storm thought.
"Admiral Hackett, please," the turian spoke English with barely an accent, his dual-toned voice dancing musically in her ears. Storm didn't need to check her calendar to know the Admiral had no meetings scheduled with turians. She checked anyway, such was the calm assurance in the turian's voice.
"Sir, there's no record of your appointment here," she said apologetically, risking a glance at his eyes.
Placing his three-fingered taloned hands behind his back, the turian replied, "The Admiral will see me regardless."
"Very well. What is your name, sir?"
"Nihlus. Nihlus Kryik."
Curious as to what Hackett's response would be, Hayley pressed the intercom button. "Admiral?"
"Yes?" came the reply. In the background she heard the concerto coming to a crescendo.
"A turian is here to see you. Nihlus Kryik?"
A pause. Then, "Send him straight through, Lieutenant. And Lieutenant?"
"Sir?"
"Take the rest of the day off. This meeting may take some time."
---
Each week, in addition to her usual duties, Storm sent off yet another request for reassignment to Personnel. Each week she received the same response:
First Lieutenant Storm,
Your application for reassignment to a combat unit has been denied.
You are free to reapply for reassignment and any future requests will be duly considered.
Sincerely
Alliance Personnel
In typical bass-ackwards bureaucratic fashion, whoever responded to her requests never specified why they were being denied. Sitting behind her desk one day, struggling to stay awake after one too many late nights filing (oh the excitement, it never ended!) she ran through a mental checklist of reasons why her requests were being denied, each one more implausible than the last:
1. Hackett
was secretly in love with her and wanted her all to himself. Midlife crisis and all that. She smirked and recalled the family photograph on the Admiral's impressively large mahogany desk. He often looked at the picture of himself, wife and children, now adults with a wistul expression. No, he wasn't secretly in love with her.
2. The guy in Personnel, whom she had never met was secretly in love with her and was keeping her here by way of denying her requests for reassignment until he could work up the nerve to actually introduce himself to her. She snorted to herself. She kept to herself mostly. Her long hours chained to the desk left her little time to socialise and she hadn't felt the urge to seek out company in any case. She was a pretty enough girl, at least her mother said she was. But then, a mother is supposed to think her daughter is pretty. Parents are particularly bad at maintaining objectivity about their offspring.
Storm had had a couple of relationships, one, when she was sixteen that she'd term 'serious.' Even at that age, she thought she'd found 'the one' and that they'd be together forever. That had lasted until Eric, at the age of eighteen had been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive variety of cancer and passed after fighting it for six months. Hayley had been gutted. While medical science had found ways to combat most every form of cancer, he'd had the misfortune to develop one that laughed in the face of everything the doctors had thrown at it. Since then, she'd dated on occasion but never allowed herself to become emotionally invested in anybody. After a while, her aloofness led men to tag her with names such as Ice Princess and the like. Hayley found she didn't much care.
The only person she really ever spoke to socially was her room-mate in the junior officers' quarters, First Lieutenant Kylie Cooper who was constantly trying to hook her up with her male officer friends.
"Hayles," Lieutenant Kylie had asked one night as she was preparing to go out, "When was the last time you got laid?"
"Sorry?" Hayley had replied, laying aside the technical manual for the new line of Bluewire omni-tools being rolled out to Alliance units.
Lieutenant Kylie leaned forward, brushing her dark hair aside from her forehead, "Got laid, rocked the casbah, performed the horizontal bop...had it off, you know?"
Disinterestedly, Hayley shrugged. "I forget," she said, feeling irked; what did she care anyway?
"Fuuuuck me sideways. I know this guy..." Lieutenant Kylie began. Hayley got up, left the room and hit the gym for a weight session.
3. Aware of her mini-meltdown slash berserker fury on Torfan, no sane commander would touch her with a fifty foot pole, fearing she'd drill one friendly through the forehead with her sidearm whilst simultaneously making a eunuch of another with her combat talon. The thought of it made her smile, a little sadly. Then she remembered Carver's words: if she hadn't lost control she'd probably be dead.
4. Infiltrators were so last year, Sentinels were the new black, the combat specialisation du jour. After all, any idiot with opposable thumbs could operate an omni-tool and make the other guy's assault rifle over-heat and his shields go down like a cheerleader in a locker room full of footballers.
But kill people with your brain? That was special. Yeah, she thought, that was it. Those damn Sentinels: able to lift, throw, stasify as well as hack, decrypt and dispense magic healing powers courtesy of medi-gel hypos. "Bastards," Storm muttered to herself and plucked out a couple of sunflower seeds from the small bowl on her desk. She cracked the seeds between her teeth and dumped the husks in her waste bin. The bottom of which was liberally coated in old sunflower seed husks.
5...."Lieutenant Storm," Hackett's distinctive voice rasped through the small intercom set into her desktop. She pressed a button on the desk, "Sir?"
"Can you come in here for a moment?"
Uh oh. "Sir," was all she said. She closed the link, rose swiftly, adjusted her uniform and crossed to the closed door behind which lay Hackett's sanctum sanctorum, his personal fiefdom.
The door slid open and she stood before the man himself. Hackett, tall and somewhat gaunt-looking rose from his desk - he was old-school like that, she'd noticed, always stood when a lady entered. She saluted and said, "You wanted to see me, Sir?" She would have said, "You requested my presence, O Great Leader?" but thought that was pushing the envelope.
"Captain Donaldson in Personnel contacted me today," the Admiral began.
So that's the guy's name
"Apparently you've been requesting reassignment to a combat unit...every week for the past six months. Is that right, Lieutenant?" Somehow, hearing the words come out of the old man's mouth made her feel more than a little stupid.
"Yes sir, that's correct."
"The Captain informs me that you currently hold the station record for the most reassignment requests in the shortest period of time. Tell me, am I that much of an ogre?"
Hayley breathed deeply. "No sir. It's just that when I enlisted, I didn't picture myself..." she paused trying to find the right words. Somehow being the Admiral's Girl Friday didn't seem quite right.
Hackett filled in the blanks, "You saw yourself helping to forge humanity's future in the wider galactic community?" His sharp blue eyes bored steadily into her hazel ones. "Maybe you had less noble reasons and just wanted to blow stuff up and see the galaxy on Alliance's credit?" The Admiral's voice carried no reproach or rancour; he sounded genuinely curious. Hayley figured she was a dead woman.
"Sir," she answered, spine straightening almost by reflex, "My older brother always wanted to serve the Alliance. For pretty much the same reason you just mentioned. The forging of humanity's future, not the blowing up of things. But he failed the medical, congenital heart problem. Four years later, I enlisted. And I did if for him, Sir. For myself as well but I also wanted to make him and the family proud."
"And you feel that organising an old man's diary and taking down minutes is less glorious than armed combat?" Again, the Admiral's dry voice carried no hint of recrimination, he was merely curious. Hayley imagined that the turians had felt much the same way when they first encountered humanity. Right up until the shooting started, at least.
"No...sir," she said. But oh, that was a lie. He knew it and she knew that he knew it. Awkward. She swallowed, fought the urge to shuffle her feet like a child called to the principal's office in school.
The Admiral crossed his hands behind his back, "You know, Hayley," and he spoke her name with a kind of fatherly tone. She doubted he was aware of it. "All Alliance officers do a rotation or two through here during the course of their career. It's not the black mark on the permanent record you seem to feel that it is."
Wow, he's sharp.
"It's a chance to learn and develop new skills and liaise with the people who do the behind the scenes work, as it were."
Hayley smiled and nodded, nodded and smiled. "Yes, sir," she said through her smile.
"Give it another six months, Lieutenant. Then if you decide it's time to move on, Captain Donaldson will approve that request. Dismissed."
Suppressing a smile of real pleasure, Hayley saluted and left.
Six months? She could do that on her head.
---
The morning it happened began like any other. Hayley paced the small outer office, talking hands free to a guy in Requisitions about the Admiral's coffee deliveries. At the same time she used her omni-tool to update her copy of the Admiral's diary. Her omni linked automatically with both Hackett's forearm mounted interface as well as the desktop unit in his office. At 1000 hours he had an appointment with Captain David Anderson as well as Ambassador Udina. Hackett had informed her to set aside a block of three hours for the meeting during which they were not to be disturbed.
"Even if batarians attack the station?" she'd asked with a small smile.
Hackett returned the smile. "Maybe not."
Captain Anderson and Udina? "Big, big fish," she muttered aloud, unaware she was doing it.
"He wants fish now?" Requisitions asked wearily.
"What? No, just thinking out loud here."
"So just the usual delivery then?"
"Better double it. He's been drinking the espresso like water just lately. I don't know how he sleeps."
"Confirmed, we'll dispatch it today." Hayley nodded to herself and clicked off.
That done, she activated her omni-tool and a menu appeared to float around her forearm. She selected the application she called Bug Zapper Version 2.56. Slowly the officer paced off her workspace, the device searching for EMF emissions given off by espionage and covert devices. A sharp pingindicated she had something. Lifting a large, heavy painting depicting old blue water navy vessels blowing the bejus out of each other with antique cannon-fire, Hayley found a small, barely visible spot on the wall.
"Nice try," she said to herself. The bug planting was part of the training for intelligence operatives. The goal was to collect as much sensitive data as possible then use said data to show up the Admiral's own security protocols. Hayley scraped the bug away from the wall with a fingernail, placed it on the carpeted floor and ground it underfoot. With an effort, she rehung the painting.
She returned to her desk and checked the status of her firewalls. Again, the boys and girls in Intelligence tested their proteges' abilities to penetrate secure systems. And what could be more secure than humanity's most important deep space facility? Feeling a bit smug, she noted that, although plenty of attempts to breach her security had been made, none had made it through.
Hayley spent perhaps more time than was healthy trawling the extranet in search of counters to the latest viruses and worms and had amassed a hefty collection of both. If she ever made it back to a field position, she'd be ready wreak havoc on hostile encryption protocols, make them cry for their mothers.
Hayley checked her chronometer: 0930. The Captain and Udina would be here in about twenty minutes. Hayley stood and collected a number of thick file folders from her desk. The folders were sealed but were of the type used for personnel records. Probably looking for people for this 'Normandy Project' whatever the hell that is.
Files in hand, Hayley entered the Admiral's office. He didn't look up from his computer though she could see his face bore a pained expression. Probably that ulcer of his flaring up.
Laying the files atop the Admiral's already overflowing in-tray, Hayley turned and left.
At 0950 on the dot, the doorway to the outer office slid open, revealing two middle-aged men. Captain Anderson, dressed in a dark blue Alliance Navy uniform with more medals and ribbons pinned to the breast than Hayley had ever seen on one person, led Ambassador Udina into the room. The Ambassador wore an off-white suit that set off his dark colouring. The two were speaking to one another in low voices though Hayley was able to catch a name: Shepard. Hayley schooled her expression into one of polite detachment.
Behind her eyes, thoughts moved at a rapid pace. Anderson, Udina, Shepard. The only Shepard she knew of was Lieutenant Commander Alison Shepard, the only survivor of the notorious Akuze incident. Fifty-one Marines had landed on that barren little world. Only Shepard had come out. Hayley suppressed a shudder. Threshers. I hope to God I never live to see one of those much less fight it.
Shepard, an N7, was almost as well regarded in the elite special forces community as Anderson. Whatever the Normandy Project entailed, it was big.
Hayley rose and stood at attention as the two men halted before her desk. Anderson returned the salute. "Lieutenant, we are here for our meeting with Admiral Hackett," he began.
"Yes," Udina put in, "We have much to discuss so kindly inform him that we have arrived."
For the briefest of moments, Storm's eyes locked with Anderson's and something unspoken passed between them:
What a jerk
You think you have it bad? I have to work with the man.
Aloud, all Hayley said was, "I'll let the Admiral know you're here, Sir. Pressing the intercom switch, she said "Admiral Hackett? Ambassador Udina and Captain Anderson are here. Shall I send them in?"
No response. After a few seconds, Hayley tried again, "Sir? The Ambassador and Captain Anderson have arrived."
Still nothing. Unease deepening by the second, Hayley looked up at the Captain. "I'll see if he's ready."
Anderson nodded for her to leave and she walked briskly to his office, pant legs fluttering at her ankles. You chose a hell of a time to take a catnap, Sir.
Crossing the threshold, the first thing Hayley saw was the Admiral slumped over his desk, right hand pressing against the left side of his chest, face ashen.
"Oh Christ," Hayley muttered and dashed to his side. With a grunt, Hayley pulled the Admiral out of his seat and laid him on the floor, ripping open his jacket.
Pausing only long enough to trigger her omni-tool's emergency beacon, the Lieutenant commenced chest compressions on the Admiral, praying she wasn't too late.
"Is everything...Udina, find a medic!" Anderson's voice rose to a shout as he ran to to the Admiral. Anderson looked at Storm and said, "I'll take over the compressions until help arrives."
Hayley nodded and exhaled deeply into Hackett's mouth as Anderson kept up the compressions, his arms applying more force than the younger woman would be capable of. "I set off the emergency beacon so they should be here soon. But I don't know how long he's been like this," she gasped between breaths.
As she spoke, she heard running footsteps enter the office. Suddenly, the Admiral's inner sanctum felt very crowded. Beside herself and Anderson, were two medics, a stretcher between them. Each medic carried a bulky kit of emergency supplies. Udina hung back at the office door.
The medics waved her and Anderson aside. "Bag him," one said in clipped professional tones. His partner nodded, securing a mask with a plastic bag attached to it over the Admiral's mouth and nose. Immediately the medic began rhythmically squeezing the bag, forcing more air into Hackett's lungs.
"How long has he been like this?" the other medic barked at Storm.
"He seemed fine when I came in half an hour ago," she replied.
The medic quickly unpacked a portable defibrillator unit from his bag and stripped the plastic backing from the pads through which the electric shocks were delivered.
Pads applied to the Admiral's chest, the medic warned, "Stand clear."
Hackett's body jerked sharply as the shock was administered.
"He's still flatlining," the medic noted, "Again. Clear!" Again Hackett's body jerked. This time, though a incongruously cheerful bleeping sounded from the defibrillator.
"I've got a pulse," the medic with the bag said, clearly relieved. And well he might be, Hayley thought later, nobody would want to have the supreme commander of the Fifth Fleet die on their watch.
---
Hayley isn't at all surprised by the way Hackett's heart attack is reported in the vids that day:
"Admiral Steven Hackett, commander of the Alliance Navy Fifth Fleet was admitted to the medical facility on Arcturus Station today for a minor procedure. Sources close to the Admiral report that he is in good spirits and soon to make a full recovery."
"Well, it's true," she says to herself, pouring herself a glass of what the plastic bottle claims is fresh-squeezed orange juice. Fresh from the fridge, perhaps.
She has the quarters to herself for the moment, Kylie having left to 'spend quality time' with one of her 'friends with benefits.'
"True if, by minor procedure they mean he needs a pacemaker and by good spirits they really mean only half-awake." She shakes her head in bemusement. Hayley realises that telling people Hackett had suffered a heart attack and was actually dead for a brief period would only cause a panic and damage morale so she can understand the lies. God, I've been here too long. I'm starting to think like one of Them.
A few days later, she rides the Arcturus light rail system to the medical wing, to visit the Admiral. Unable to decide if he'd rather like a bunch of flowers with a get well soon card attached or a fruit basket, she brings one of each. People in the tram give her odd looks when she boards. Hayley smiles and nods.
The ward Hackett is recuperating in is guarded by a pair armed Marines in full combat gear. And not the standard-issue Onyx either, she notes. These two are decked out in Kassa Fabrication's top of the line, if a little garish Colossus heavy. Each one also cradles an assault rifle in his arms but as she nears them, Hayley can see they're also each mounting a pistol, shotgun and sniper rifle. What are they planning to do? Go skeet shooting and then duck hunting?
As she approaches them, they shift the position of their rifles. They aren't pointing at her, exactly but they're not not pointing at her either.
"First Lieutenant Storm to see Admiral Hackett. I have a security pass," she says nodding down at the ID on her uniform jacket. It's taken her fully forty-eight hours' worth of dealing with red tape to acquire it.
Unceremoniously, one of the Marines reaches out and yanks the ID from her chest. The force of this causes a button to come undone. The Marine runs the card through a scanner mounted on his left forearm and an indicator lights up green. "You can go in," he says as he hands back the pass.
Hayley thanks the man and pauses in the doorway to pin the badge back and readjust the uniform. It won't do to let the Admiral see her cleavage. Might induce another coronary infarction, she thinks with a smirk.
Hackett lies in the hospital bed surrounded by baskets of flowers and helium-filled balloons bearing various get well soon messages. He sits up when she enters. Hayley finds some free space on a table and lays down her ceremonial offerings. She comes to attention and salutes. "You look much better, sir," she says truthfully. His colour is much better and his chest is rising and falling like it's supposed to do.
"I understand I owe you my life," he says in reply. "The Chinese believe that, when you save a person's life, you become responsible for all the things, good and bad, that they do."
"Yes sir. I'm hoping you won't declare war on anybody and cause me to regret it," she says with a faint smile.
"I hope that won't be necessary, Lieutenant. As soon as the damn doctors let me out of here, I'll arrange for a replacement for you. I'll be sorry to see you go, Hayley."
For a moment, Hayley doesn't understand. The words coming out of his mouth are in English but the sentence doesn't make any sense. "Sir?" she says.
"I assume you'll still be wanting to be reassigned to a combat unit?"
"Ah, yes sir. But it can wait until after you're fully recovered."
Admiral Hackett seems not to have heard her. "Personnel informs me of several openings aboard the Tokyo. She's due to arrive for a refit next month. When she leaves, you'll be aboard."
"Yes sir. Thank you, sir."
"No. Thank you, Lieutenant."
---
Her new posting aboard the cruiser SSV Tokyo put the Lieutenant in command of a four-person fire-team. Personnel files for her new squad members were forwarded along with her new gear. Requisitions was unexpectedly generous, Hayley considered. Probably fallout from the whole 'help save the Admiral' thing.
Instead of the Aldrin Labs Onyx medium-class hardsuit she wore -and almost died in - on Torfan, the new hardsuit was a higher-quality Hahne-Kedar Mantis medium-class unit. The technical specifications for the suit made for interesting bedside reading: advanced ablative plating for extra protection from mass accelerator fire and a medical exoskeleton designed to monitor the wearer's vital signs and inject controlled doses of medi-gel, coagulants and painkillers as required in the case of, as the notes put it, operator trauma.
Slung over her shoulder as she made her way to the docking platform where the Tokyo had been undergoing its refit was her duffel with her shipboard fatigues and a few personal items. Though Requisitions had issued her a new sidearm and sniper rifle, along with an omni-tool, she elected to keep the old Kessler. Storm felt as though the Kessler was something of a good luck charm though she planned to upgrade the bejesus out of it once she had access to the appropriate upgrade OSDs and omni-gel to manufacture the components.
Approaching from the other direction - away from the Tokyo and carrying a duffel of his own over his shoulder was a tall, well built man with bronzed skin and short black hair and sideburns. The insignia on his dress uniform identified him as a slightly more advanced model of lieutenant than herself - Staff Lieutenant. Bringing her duffel to the floor, Hayley came to attention and saluted the other officer.
The man returned the salute and as he spoke to her, she noticed his dark brown eyes. They look like they've seen a thing or two.
"I was hoping I could get some directions," he began.
"Where do you need to go, sir?"
"Admiral Hackett's office."
Hayley couldn't help but laugh. "I can give you more than directions, Sir...by the way, I'm Hayley. Hayley Storm," she held her hand out to the older man.
"Kaidan Alenko."
A/N:Obviously I have no military experience and probably completely frigged up the whole 'life as Hackett's assistant' thing but if it helps to suspend disbelief just do what I do: say "It's the future and things have changed." As for Heart Attack Hackett, being in charge of an entire fleet must be hard, stressful work plus I imagine he'd be into that age when the heart starts plotting dissent.