You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
- Consort Sha'ira
"Don't you ever get tired of proving me right?" Shepard asked, stepping back from the console and instinctively wiping his gloved hands on the seat of his environment suit. He took a moment to admire his handiwork before snapping the metal door closed over the circuitry he had been dissecting and stepping back. Jupiter curved across the darkness of space above him as he picked his slow, careful way across the surface of Calypso station. The great red storm stood out like a blood stain, raging silently overhead.
"I've been waiting for the 'I told you so' since last night," Ramirez replied. It was hard to tell if the other student was hung over or just her regular level of surly over the fractured, buzzing comm. signal. "Get it out of your system, I want to go see if they've posted graduate assignments."
"I told you not to set that garbage chute on fire," Shepard said, grinning as he flicked off his mag boots and pushed away from the surface of the moon. The gravity wasn't completely null, but it was light as a kiss, and he sailed through the air toward the airlock. He flashed a thumbs up at the guy in the study hall who happened to be looking out its third storey window when he floated past. "I looked you straight in the eye and I said 'Ramirez, don't light the garbage chute on fire. I know it seems like a good idea to the vodka right now, but it will get us three and a half weeks of contact maintenance.' Those were my exact words."
"I remember," Ramirez said lightly, "you should have tried harder to stop me."
"You threatened to cut me with a piece of glass," Shepard reminded her.
"As if I would," Ramirez sniffed.
"The last time you threatened to cut me with a piece of glass, you cut me with a piece of glass," Shepard reminded her again.
"Oh right! Well you can't blame me for that, we were drinking fire wine that night."
"Sorry I brought it up," Shepard pushed up again, launching himself directly up, past the airlock and activating his mag boots as he neared the correct wall. His boots thudded firmly into place, anchoring him sideways on the surface of the processor wing wall. He began climbing, the gravity so slight there was barely any difference compared to walking right way up. "It's just that I still have the scar."
"I debugged your programs for two and a half weeks to make up for it, didn't I?"
"Yeah, eighteen days. One for each stitch."
"Psh. Whatever."
"Anyway, my point is we got exactly three and a half weeks of contact maintenance for doing exactly what I told you not to do. I'm just wondering if you learned anything."
"I have a sneaking suspicion you're about to try and teach me whether I learned something or not. Do your worst, eight months in this craphole hasn't managed to teach me a damn thing."
"The lesson is I'm always right."
"It's not like you weren't drunk too."
"This applies even more when I'm drunk, and even more than that when BOTH of us are drunk. I should just strap a muzzle on you when we go out, it would be less weird and embarrassing."
Shepard reached the ceiling of the processor wing and swung up right in orientation to Calypso again. Ramirez looked up from where she was closing up her own panels, nothing but a stripe of dark skin and night black eyes showing through the visor of her helmet. She flipped him the finger before standing up and hammering the corners of the panels into place with the heel of her boot.
"I don't think you're supposed to do it that way," Shepard commented when she paused and nudged one dented corner with the toe of her boot.
"Whatever, let's go. I want to make sure they posted us on opposite ends of the galaxy like I asked," she picked up her tool kit and started heading toward the airlock. After a moment, he followed her.
"You know they probably posted us at some piss-water south of nowhere, right?" He asked as the doors slid closed behind them and Ramirez punched anxiously at the console. "It's not like knowing the name of it is going to make the assignment any less mind numbing. And then we're going to go and get shit faced and piss and moan even though we could have easily done better if we'd just studied instead of drinking and defacing school property every free day."
"What's your point?"
"If we start drinking before we check, that'll make it a little less mind numbing," Shepard pointed out.
"No, I want to know," she pulled her helmet off and jutted her chin out in that stubborn way she had. "I want to know if I'm stationed near my family."
"Ugh, you civilians and your familial relationships," Shepard sighed in mock exasperation. "Let's go then. But stay away from the garbage chutes."
"No promises," Ramirez grinned.
Shepard showered and changed back into the black and orange jumpsuit with the tech academy logo stitched on the breast with a smile on his face. Unlike the other guys in the locker room at the moment, he didn't have a care in the world. In fact, he was elated. The Infiltrator pilot program had estimated a full three years of training before first assignments were given out. Shepard, and the rest of his tiny pool of test students, had completed it in one. Slightly less than one, actually. He didn't care where they dumped his troublesome commission, he had already accepted he wasn't going to be doing anything important.
Instead of thinking about it as he strolled toward the cafeteria, where the assignments were being displayed, he thought about the new firewalls that were being thrown up over important accounts lately, his fingers itching to pull up the data and start poking at it again. There were things he wanted to know in those accounts.
"I've been assigned to the Minerva garrison!" Ramirez interrupted his train of thought by launching herself into his arms.
Shepard blinked, adrenaline flooding him at the surprise contact and took a moment to repress the instinct, cultivated over years on the street, to fall on her in a wild fury of teeth and elbows. Minerva was her home planet, a piss-water south of nowhere on the safer side of the human settlement. Of course she was happy. Shepard assembled the pieces of a smile on his face.
"Hey, that's great," he jostled her around as she grinned at him, "think of all the cows you'll save from invading space coyotes."
She punched him, hard.
"Go check!" She insisted, shoving him toward the displays. "I want to make fun of you, too."
"Alright, drum roll?" He typed in his name as Ramirez drummed on a nearby table, jostling calmer students lunch trays and cutlery until one of them pushed her away. "Corporal Trinidad Shepard of... Elysium."
"Elysium? Seriously?" Ramirez whistled. "Sweet. Boring but high-class. You'll fit right in."
"I'm glad you're enjoying my misery," Shepard shot back, fighting through his dismay to get the words out. Elysium was the worst possible option, nestled in the centre of a complex network of AA guns and mech security, it was the kind of job where soldiers became tech support. The thought of it put a pit in the bottom of Shepard's stomach.
"It's not that bad."
"It's pretty bad," Shepard shook his head. "Fuck damn. Who did I piss off?"
"I don't want to claim any inside knowledge here, but may I remind you that you hacked into the Major's net identity and sent out a bunch of randy emails under his name?"
"They never found out who did that," Shepard sniffed.
"Really? You creamed yourself so hard when you got away with it, I was sure it would leave DNA evidence on the data. Also, everyone knows it was you. People who don't even know who you are know it was you."
Shepard sighed.
"Let's go get shit faced," he suggested. He just wanted to forget about Elysium, purge the very knowledge of it, and nothing could do that for him better than a bottle of whiskey.
"Now you're talking. Don't worry about it Shep, it's not like either of us were ever going to amount to anything anyway.
"Shepard, what should we do?"
It was funny the way the human mind worked. It had only been a moment since the panic began, but that memory had come smashing up into the middle of his concentration in just a second and a half. He shook Ramirez's voice from his ears and turned to look at his current companion. Corporal Calhoun was white as a sheet, an unfortunate condition in that it made his freckles and carroty hair all the more distinctive. Behind him Shepard could watch the first of the light pirate frigates touch down on the city limits, splitting open like a rotten fruit to flood Elysium with hostile foot units.
"Call the rest of the squad. Shoreleave is cancelled."
"Right," Calhoun lit his omnitool as Shepard zipped up his jacket again, and fished his rumpled cap out of his pocket. The uniform was a pain nine times out of ten, but it had one real advantage. Civilians gathered around it like moths to a flame at times like these.
"This is an order for all citizens of Elysium," he pulled himself onto a bench so he was at least mostly visible to the mob beginning to form in the middle of the street. Men and women turned their faces up to look at him. A sea of wild, frightened eyes spread around him. "Return to your homes immediately. Lock your doors, jam your systems, arm yourselves but no matter what STAY INSIDE. They own the streets now. It's up the Alliance to get them back."
"The rest of the squad has converged on the southern bridge access," Calhoun reported. He looked around as the crowd began to disperse and then up at Shepard again. "I want to know how you do that."
"Do what?" Shepard asked as he climbed down and pulled up a map of the surrounding streets on his omnitool for inspection.
"Just trick people into thinking they should do what you say," Calhoun grinned crookedly. "Lieutenant." He stuck the title on the end for the sake of mockery, not courtesy.
"Let's head to the bridge," Shepard decided. "There's a garrison office where we can supply before heading across."
"Orders are to converge on bridges and lock in positions," Calhoun reported. Shepard was notorious for switching off the incoming mail function on his omnitool. "They want to confine the invasion to one section of the city and fight it out gradually."
"Oh really?" Shepard's eyes flashed. "I wonder what influenced that decision? Couldn't be that the ships just touched down in the poorest quarter of the city, could it?"
Calhoun stared up, over the roof tops, to where small ships were still sliding through the atmosphere. Rockets tore through the clear summer air and exploded in gouts of orange flame. Smoke began to rise, and thicken, until it hung over the city in an oily cloud.
"Orders-" He began again.
"Fuck orders," Shepard spat. "I'm making an executive decision. We're going to round up the rest of the squad and hammer through those streets to the garrison on that side of the bridges. I assume that they've locked themselves down?"
"Of course. But, Shepard are you sure-?"
"I'm sure," Shepard cut him off, brandishing a finger in the older soldier's face. "There are civilians on that side of the bridge too, Calhoun. Are you going to sit ten feet away and not protect them because some fat guy with a couple bureaucratic medals on his tit, some asshole who's not even standing on this fucking planet, has decided that they aren't important enough to help?"
Calhoun seemed to struggle for a moment, but it was a short moment.
"No sir, Lieutenant."
"Then radio the squad and tell them to get ready for us. I want insular comm. after that, no public channels. We're going dark."
"They kick people out of the Alliance for doing shit like this," Calhoun reminded him as they took off, jogging toward the bridges. The street was clearing as people spread his order, and they barely had to fight their way forward at all.
"They give people medals for doing shit like this too," Shepard shot back. "As far as I can tell, all we have to do is get absolutely everything right and be totally awesome."
"Alright, great," Calhoun muttered, "no pressure then."
It was surprisingly easy after that.
Part of that was his squad. A few choice words, an inspiring speech, and they would have followed him to the moon without space suits. Convincing them to defy direct orders from the brass and throw themselves into hell was almost too easy. They were eager to get across the bridge.
On the other side, he had expected it to be harder. The amount of ships touching down had seemed astronomical, the troop size difficult to predict but undeniably massive. But they weren't military and most of them didn't know each other that well. They were a violent, chaotic rabble more interested in mayhem than anything else. Cross fires and sniper pits eliminated swaths of useless cock-ups before he even needed to touch the radio and summon the vanguards in.
So it was easy, because of that.
And also, because of something else.
He didn't know where it had come from. Maybe it had always been there, somewhere beside the darkness that usually overcame him in a fight. He could be irreverent, lazy, rebellious, outright silly at times, when he thought it was more interesting than the alternatives, but there had always been something deeper than that. Something smooth and cool as dry steel and black as night that stayed down deep inside him and came up for air and blood whenever it was available.
That darkness had kept him alive for years, until he couldn't tell it apart from the rest of him. He had thought that was always who he was going to be, under all the laughing layers he had built to hide it he was always X, always the dirty, starving streetling that would cut a man open for half a mouthful of water and a hit.
But for once, wading through blood on the streets of Elysium he felt himself surge forward instead of falling back into darkness.
"They're calling for you," the pretty young woman who had taken him through the rehearsal for the ceremony gave him a small push and he looked up, sunlight pouring in from the stage above. He began to climb the stairs, cool darkness burnt away as he rose into the heat of a Caribbean summer. He wished they hadn't insisted on having the ceremony in Cuba.
He rose, like he had on Elysium. Instead of retreating, he pushed forward, reached out, pulled his squad around him. They had gone smashing through the teeth of a pirate invasion. Now he emerged on a broad stage before an overflowing stadium and a wave of noise more powerful than anything they had heard in battle broke over him. His squad was already seated, their uniforms heavy with pieces of metal. They grinned at him as he blinked in the onslaught of noise and light.
The President was waiting.
"Lieutenant Trinidad Shepard symbolizes everything that is truly great about humanity," he said as Shepard approached. He had one of the flat, slender boxes medals came in on hand and his arms were open in his direction, but the President had eyes only for the crowd. Shepard came up and took his hand firmly, shaking it as the other man continued to beam at the cheering spectators.
"His bravery, determination and will to succeed is what made the victory at Elysium possible."
The sensation was strange, being so important, being adored, respected for all the things that had made senior officers despise him for the past two and a half years. Maybe it wasn't that senior officers were stupid, it just didn't matter how smart you were until you did something worthwhile. Such a simple revelation, he couldn't imagine why it had taken so long to sink in. He should have listened to Anderson and grown up a long time ago.
"I am proud to award him with the Star of Terra. This medal is a great reward, but more importantly it is a continuing mission," he was pinning it to his chest. Three years ago he had crawled across the rooftops of Havana dressed in rags and bruises and now the President of Earth was pinning a medal on his chest. The world was a surprising place.
"As I present this to you, I also have new orders for you, Lieutenant. Continue on into the universe and continue to show our new allies exactly what it means to be human."
His chest felt like it was full of light. He could feel his heart vibrating for a moment, and then he realized that it was the noise, climbing, rising like a tidal wave and sweeping over him. Gradually it took form and became a chant, rising higher, and higher, as men and women beyond the walls clued in and took it up. It shook the centre of his chest, the stage under his booted feet, it seemed to shake the sky and the soil under foot. His name. Just his name, over and over again.
Shepard, Shepard, Shepard.
Who was X? There was no X. He didn't have to be that boy anymore.
He could be this instead. He could be Shepard.
Shepard raised his hand to them, half a wave, half the solemn salute that marked the swearing of a vow. The crowd waved like a living thing and grew louder. He could feel the President's hand on his shoulder, jostling him, hear a voice in his ear that was calling him a hero. He could feel the weight of the medal pulling on the front of his uniform, the heat of the sun on his skin, even something strangely hot and wet gathering in the corners of his eyes. Only one thing mattered though. He closed his eyes and let it wash over him, changing him, burning away the darkness until there was nothing but white light.
Shepard, Shepard, Shepard.