"Run the simulation again." Joker commanded.
"We have already ran it 3 times!" The Navigator cried in irritation.
"And we will do it three more times if that's what it takes to get it right Jackson!" Joker yelled back. He was tired of waiting. He hated waiting, and all he could do right now was wait! He settled back in to his seat waiting for the simulation to start again. The Bridge of the Ardennes only held a skeleton crew, but after Kaidan, Miranda, and Liara had left, the atmosphere had grown to be more oppressive and chafing.
The simulation was a no win scenario. Four Reapers had trapped a fleet of twenty unarmed starliners filled to the bulkheads with evacuees. At the same time the Reapers also had the option to strike at a crippled and failing space station that held just as many people. The Council had sent just enough ship from the Combined fleet to save either most of the starliner fleet, or the station, but not both, and at an 'acceptable' loss of 80%.
It was a scenario he had built and suggested to Shepard that it be instituted as a 'final test' for the Academy's leadership candidates. He knew everything about it. How each ship would react, where the drop points were, and how 99% of the time it would end.
He knew it all because he had lived the real version of it...
And that was much more deadly.
Past three tried he had either lost both objectives, or gotten the entire fleet wiped out with in a few moments of the engagement...
In reality, Shepard had saved both objectives, with a loss of only 60%. That was against ten Reapers.
...Be he wasn't Shepard...
"Are you aright Jeff?" A Consoling voice asked behind him.
...He was just a ship jockey...
He didn't turn and face the person behind him, but he knew who it was. He let out a heavy sigh as he slammed his fists on the ship's consol, grinding his fingers.
...what could he do?
"Yeah Doc. I'm just peachy. I'm stuck here in this damn chair on this damn locked down ship and I can't do anything because I might bump against a desk and bust a kneecap. Might as well as be the first Normandy all over again" He growled.
"There is nothing any of us can do right now..." EDI responded.
"I know!" He yelled as he slumped back in to his chair. "But it just can't end like this... She can't have it end like this..." His voice barely a whisper.
Doctor Chalkwas walked up and placed a warm hand on his shoulder. "This isn't over yet."
"Yeah." He breathed weakly.
Navigator Jackson drew closer. And he looked on the image of Joker before him. Here was a living legend in the flesh at the helm of the ship. The man who had flown in to the mouths of Reapers and who knows what else; and flown right our the other side. Yet here he was, just a simple man.
"Sir, Doctor. The crew is going to round up in the mess area to watch the trial. Do you care to join us?" Jackson asked softly.
Joker breathed a breath out. "No...I just need time..."
"Understood Sir." Navigator Jackson turned on his heal and left the cockpit. Soon the only people left on the main level of the ship were Joker, EDI, and Chalkwas.
Joker finally turned around to look at Chalkwas. She was dressed in her usually medical jumpsuit and she took a seat in a near by chair.
"You don't think you were a little hard on Kaidan do you?" She asked imporingly.
Joker's face hardened again. "No. What? you really think he has some reason to be right?"
Chalkwas steeled her gaze at him in an icy scowl, and then she looked at the deck between them. Joker knew her answer was the same as his.
"...He's a coward." Joker's breathed out, as he listed back in to the chair, letting his arms fall to the sides. "Don't get me wrong. I get it that he has earned his rank and all. Hell he did a lot in the war. But he is still a coward. You think that after working with Shepard he would understand her..." He took looked down to the deck.
Chalkwas softened her features. "He never had to patch her up after a fight, or had to witness her being tormented by her own dreams."
Joker looked up at her.
"He also wasn't the last person to see her alive before she died..." Chalkwas spoke softly as she in turned looked at him. Joker turned his face away as the memory was almost too much to take, even after all these years.
"You know I still wonder sometimes...what would have happened if we had left that Med station just an hour early or late, or gone somewhere else..." He said dejectedly.
"Possibly the same thing, but at an entirely different time." Chalkwas soothed.
"Sounds like you believe in fate Doc." Joker chided.
The doctor smiled. "I wouldn't say that. I guess it just comes to a point in life where you have taken so many twists and turns that you can't see which was the ones that really mattered, or see the choice you would have wanted to change. So I find it better in just accepting the things that have happened rather then dwell on 'should haves' and 'what could have beens'."
Joker closed his eyes for a moment and let the quiet fill the bridge. His listening to the quietness of a ship at rest. It wasn't something we was used to on a ship. It sounded unearthly, unnatural, to him
"Ya know Doc. For as long as we have been together with Shepard, you never told me how they got to you..." Joker said airily. He was being careful not to use the word Cerberus. Sure, the organization had long since been declared 'inoperative', but saying Cerberus while on an Alliance ship was still taboo.
"You never asked." Chalkwas said raising an interested eyebrow.
"Ah well, guess there was really never the time. But, well, how?" Joker asked sheepishly.
Chalkwas smiled and shook her head. "If they were good at anything, it was giving you exactly want you wanted, so they could get what they needed."
"Humpf...tell me about it." Joker responded.
"For me, all it took was a holo. A picture of Shepard, on an operating table, and very much alive." She said simply as here eyes then went to the ceiling.
"So that was it Doc? Just an image of seeing Shepard alive?" Joker said surprised.
Chalkwas let out a breath knowing she needed to put more clarity to her response. "She was willing to do what needed to be done to keep everyone else safe. She paid the ultimate price price. Yet when she was gone. I couldn't stand what the Alliance, what the Council did to her. The survivors of her crew were broken up. With in months she was forgotten, and her warnings crucified. Yet a year and a half later I had an Agent talking to me about her and showing me a holo of Shepard alive..." Chalkwas said quietly, and held a small smile on her face.
"Interesting...a holo for a few credits did for you Doctor what it took a multi billon credit ship to do for Joker." EDI piqued in amusement.
"And the software just had to add in it's own two cents..." Growled Joker defensively.
Chalkwas gave out a chuckle. "Then what was your reason for joining up with them?"
Joker smiled weakly. "I told her it was because the Alliance grounded me and they gave me my wings back. But you know the Commander, that lasted about an nanosecond under fire. But she never persisted for the answer though. Let it drop." He breathed in. "My reasons were a lot like yours. Hell anyone who served with her the first time knew what we were up against. Anyone outside the Normandy didn't even want to acknowledge that the Reapers even existed. There also Miranda." He smiled and chuckled. "Miranda was pretty pissed when she first met me. She asked me how I liked working for them. I said 'fuck you. I fly for Shepard.' I think that why she hates me." He said with a satisfied canary eating grin.
Chalkwas shared in the elevated mood, but then her mind turned to a more sensitive matter. One she had wondered about for some time to ask him, but never had felt prudent to do so to till now. "Jeff...are you happy that you came back with Shepard to the Alliance? For me, it only seemed natural. Where you and her go, I go. Besides after the war. It was nice to settle down somewhat at the Academy. But honestly, after what happened when Shepard died, I didn't think you would have gone back?"
"Oh C'mon Doc! I just did that for the grins. You know how I love the first day of class." Joker said as he maliciously held a snarky grin to his face. It was no secret that rough thirty percent of each helmsman class washed out on the first day.
But Chalkwas wasn't going for it.
The question had caught him of guard. He remembered when Shepard told him that she was asked to instruct at the Academy. When she told him that part of the deal was that he was to come with her and head up the Flight Training arm. I did it for her... His mind rang. He could still hear the roaring sound of celebration. It had been three years and he could still hear it.
Victory. Victory had finally come, and he had lived to see it! The Combined Galactic Fleet had destroyed the remaining active Reapers in the Cho-Su system nearly a month ago. Now they only found dead hulks. Shepard had been right, the reapers had 'starved' to death. With out a steady supply line, the Reapers had been finished. The Battle of Haestrome a year before had sealed the Reapers doom.
The Council wanted to see Shepard privately and with haste on Esthasia before the official announcement had been made, that the War was over. So he had flown her to see the Council in a small shuttle. He had argued to have the Alliance 'loan' them a Frigate and have everyone go for the meeting, but the Council had wanted discretion.
And so it had just been Him and Her. The Pilot and the Commander.
Four hours. The meeting that had taken place between Shepard and the Council had taken four hours. When Joker had left her she was driven, held power, and knew that She had been the victor. When she came out on to the landing platform, just outside the newly constructed Council Tower, she looked tired. She looked worn, and defeated as the announcement blared across the city, across the planet, and across then entire Galaxy. They had Won. But she was still fighting...
"Shepard!" He had cried out as he saw her walk away from the giant doors out on to the platform. "The War's over! We did it!"
El'Jaid looked at the jubilant pilot and forced a smile. "And so we have..." But her eyes betrayed her. One was a brilliant Red. The over the deepest of Blues, and her face was lined with glowing fissures.
"So what? Are they making you an Admiral or General now? What does your Grand Victory tour look like? All those Medal events your going to have to go to. Glad I'm not going to have to deal with that. You'll need a freighter to just follow us around to hold them all!" He said. El'Jaid simply ignored him, which wasn't entirely unusual.
"By the way did you make sure to tell the Council that I like that new Ukavari S-9 in blazing Asari blue with the triple thruster upgrades." He said as the sky lit up with fireworks and AAA batteries expended fire in to the sky in Celebration. He walked over and opened up the shuttle's doors and he climbed in. El'Jaid followed him.
He looked back at her again as she took a heavy seat on the shuttle bench. "So what is it Commander? Are they going to give you your own Planet?"
"I'm still a Specter. They have...allowed...me to returned to the Alliance. In fact they want me to be the Commander of the new Council Military Academy on New Ceylon." She said breathlessly.
"What...that's it?" Joker said agog.
El'Jaid looked at him again trying to force something resembling happiness. "I need a good pilot for the flight training arm. Know anybody?"
Joker was cold. It was as if he had been sucker punched. "Yeah. I've got your back Commander." He said softly. It was all he could say.
"Let's get out of here Joker..." She had said as she started to take apart her amour. She had let it fall one piece as a time. The clatter of it ringing hollow on the Shuttle's grimy and worn floor.
"Aye Aye Ma'am." He said as he crawled up to the cockpit. Joker's sense of celebration had been stolen away. Even as the roar of the celebration outside intensified. The knowing that the Victory had finally come. That the Reapers were finally gone. But it rang hollow for him, because the cost had been greater than he had known.
He breathed in heavily, as he refocused on Dr. Chalkwas.
He looked with a serious eye at her and said. "I follow Shepard."
Author's Note: I know I know. A smallish chapter, but this really didn't fit well with Chapter 21, and does not really belong whit Chapter 23, but I also just didn't want to scrap it either. Don't work folks! Next we dive in to the trial.