Tally Ho, Sally Forth… or Whatever

Kaidan had just reported for watch in the CIC when Chief Williams came from down below and saluted the Normandy's Command Master Chief, Operations Chief Han Vassiliadis. Vassiliadis, a bearded, dark-skinned man with a genial gaze and an impressive height, gave her orders and, as luck would have it, she came to stand at the watch station beside Kaidan, grinning jovially at him.

"CIC duty, huh?" he asked returning her smile. He had enjoyed her company over the past two weeks while they were uncovering evidence against the rogue Spectre Saren and getting into fire fights on the Citadel. The Chief was a good soldier and her sense of humor was enough to keep him smiling, though there were times he just wanted to throttle her for pointing out his faults. And she was pretty too. She didn't have Shepard's more refined looks, but—

Whoa there, soldier.

Why was he comparing Shepard and Williams? Sure, he admired Shepard, but… He mentally shook it off, just as he had been doing ever since looking out over the Wards. Oceans, beautiful women, and this emotion called love…

Duty first.

It didn't matter that the curiosity was there. He had a job to do. Whatever was stored on that beacon was damned important. They didn't know what the Reapers were, but they had to stop Saren no matter what, and focusing all of his attention on his commanding officer was not going do anyone any good. Losing focus could get someone injured in the battlefield or worse. Look at what happened with the beacon, he thought self-depreciatingly. Compartmentalizing as he had trained to do at BaAT and also at basic, he gave his brain a shake and himself a harsh mental reprimand and focused to catch up to the conversation at hand.

"...pons watch." Williams was saying with a shrug. "Second day. Sure, I received some training at basic, but I've always only been groundside. It's not like I had time to go over everything while picking up those aliens. This is new for me. Hell, we're about to go head to head with a fucking Spectre. I'm not scared, but it makes you think, y'know?"

"You'll do just fine, Williams," he assured her before turning his attention back to his terminal, frowning a little when one of the displays didn't light up as it should. It had performed just fine during the run to Eden Prime. His mouth twisted into a full blown scowl when the entire monitor winked out briefly, rebooted and then went out completely. Terrific. It was times like this he couldn't wait for Eight Bells.

"Problems?"

He sighed and looked over at the Chief, whose eyebrow was raised out of curiosity. "Computer glitch, looks like." He kneeled down in front of the paneling and brought up his omni-tool, running a quick diagnostic.

"I can't believe Shepard's a Spectre," she commented quietly, absently. "The first human Spectre. It blows your mind to think about it."

He nodded. Yeah. He, Williams, the turian C-Sec Agent Garrus Vakarian, the quarian Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, and the krogan Urdnot Wrex had all been present at the hearing that presented the Citadel Council with the evidence against Saren—The hearing in which Shepard practically talked the Council into allowing a human Spectre. Williams was right. It was mind blowing.

It had taken nearly a week for Ambassador Udina to make arrangements with the Alliance to put the Normandy under Shepard's command. That was also mind blowing. The fastest damned transfer Kaidan had ever witnessed in his eleven years in the service.

His omni-tool beeped at him, drawing him back to the present. He frowned mightily. Well, he wouldn't be fixing this here. He turned off the tool and stood, opening his mouth to speak to Williams.

As he did, his eyes met Shepard's coppery ones as she walked down the corridor from the bridge. His mouth snapped shut as he watched her stride gracefully past several servicemen, nodding at their salutes. Kaidan swallowed when she acknowledged him with a nod and stopped before XO Pressly, who saluted her.

"We're heading to the Artemis Tau Cluster," she announced, returning his salute with a nod.

Pressly wagged his head. "If anyone has to take over for Captain Anderson, I'm glad it's you." He cast his eyes around the area and leaned in a little closer. "I'm not sure about having non-humans on our ship though," he told her in a voice that was anything but quiet.

"We're all on the same team here, Pressly," she told him, though Kaidan thought she looked a little shocked at Pressly's admission. Kaidan was a little surprised at the admission himself. He had no idea that the older man was xenophobic. He had enough trouble with Williams' views. Though he respected the hell out his subordinate, her comments on the Citadel still rubbed him the wrong way.

"With all due respect, ma'am," Pressly replied, "that's what they said about Nihlus." He shrugged. "Look how that turned out."

Shepard blinked. So did Kaidan. In fact, he wanted to strangle his new XO. He felt the tale-tell signs of the mass effect field building in his body. His nostrils flared before he could stamp down his anger. Pressly had no right to say that to Shepard. Eden Prime wasn't her fault. The beacon… Nihlus had walked into a trap. And it wasn't because Saren was a different species. There were human murderers too.

He put his hand on the watch station and the moment his fingers brushed the smooth metal, he jumped back from the shock. Damn static build up.

Williams snickered at him. He cut his eyes to hers in warning, and she quickly returned to her duties.

What was wrong with him? He hadn't been this out of control of his emotions since… since Jump Zero… since before coming to grips with what had happened… And he had had. It was his past,and it made him who he was. So what had happened to his control?

"Speak freely, Pressly," Shepard said after a moment of studying her second-in-command, her voice bringing Kaidan away from the memories and his self-analysis, "I need to know if you have a problem with non-humans."

"Oh, it's not that Commander," the XO reassured her. "It's just that, well, humanity has always handled its own problems. Saren attacked one of our colonies. We should be the ones to stop him."

Kaidan blinked as the watch station flickered back to life suddenly. He busied himself with the reboot as Shepard and Pressly continued to speak. His omni-tool told him that the station was operating normally. He frowned mightily at it. It wasn't supposed to flicker; it was supposed to monitor comm. buoys.

"Following a lead, ma'am?" Pressly's voice pulled Kaidan's attention away from his station.

"An asari scientist should be on a Prothean excavation site somewhere within the cluster."

Kaidan thought that was the vaguest lead he had ever heard. Didn't they have something more to go by? Judging by the expression on Pressly's and Williams' faces, they were wondering the same thing.

Shepard ran a hand through the different lengths of her short hair, looked tired. She made her way around Pressly and stepped up to the map platform, touching a button on the bar in front of her. The Milky Way Galaxy display wavered and disappeared. A new image of a violet nebula sprang up, a bloom of violence against the backdrop of CIC. Artemis Tau, a nebula comprised of several thousand stars, was a few million miles across but was condensed to the display that hung over CIC. The computer highlighted all the known systems within the new cluster. It looked like someone had scribbled over the display in blue.

Shepard frowned. "Any suggestions?" Her voice rang out over the whole CIC and many stopped what they were doing to look up at her.

Pressly studied the map and then a terminal closest to him. He scrolled through the summary quickly. "Artemis Tau contains thirty-two systems with known planets. All thirty-two have been mapped by the turians. Most of which are claimed by hanar, volus or batarian interests."

"Most?" Kaidan asked looking at his own display as it suddenly died again. Yeah, this definitely needs to be fixed, he thought. When he looked back up, Shepard's eyes were on him. He felt warm under her gaze, his mouth going dry. He averted his attention back to his terminal as it rebooted again.

Pressly touched a few buttons. "Only four are listed as interests to the Citadel Races as a whole. Artemis Tau is in the Terminus Systems after all. It's well into the Terminus Shock and it's not like the Council wants anything to do with the 'lesser' species." The word "lesser" dripped off his tongue like bad turnips.

"Would an asari scientist be interested in digging on a Citadel world or on a batarian world?" Williams spoke up.

"The salarians were having trouble with the hanar at one of their dig sites," Kaidan supplied as he remembered an extranet broadcast from a few nights ago. "I bet the asari get the same thing if they were to go poking about on hanar claimed worlds."

No one spoke a few moments as Shepard reached out and fingered the display, moving the cursor to highlight various systems before she spoke again. "Pressly, isolate the four systems," she ordered, "along with their shipping lanes."

The display changed. The violet nebula was quartered by two thin lines. Four blue circles appeared, one in each quadrant. The circles in the top quadrants were labeled Athens and Knossos. The circles in the bottom quadrants were labeled Macedon and Sparta. A thick red line appeared and linked Macedon to Sparta and Athens. Another appeared and linked Sparta to Athens and Knossos.

"Hades Gamma relays to Macedon; Macedon is the crux of the Cluster," Pressly answered the unspoken question. "Knossos' shipping lines don't appear because they're to and from batarian claimed space. No other relays to or from Artemis Tau have or are in use by the Alliance or any Citadel races. If there's another relay, the turians didn't bother to add it to our systems." He spat the word "turians" the same as before-bad turnips.

Kaidan patched into the ship's systems and called up the Macedon system on his own screen, studied the stats a moment. "It's a medium-sized system, ma'am. It shouldn't take long to search. A day and a half at the most."

"And Sparta and Athens?" the Commander asked, she seemed lost in thought.

"Athens is an energetic star from what I've been told and read," Operations Chief Han Vassiliadis told them from where he standing by a serviceman who had just reported for watch. "Only one inhabitable world. There's a small colony on Proteus." Vassiliadis came to stand beside Pressly, his dark olive skin a sharp contrast with the XO. "My daughter and granddaughter are colonists there. My granddaughter was born there."

"Anything Prothean?" Shepard asked the ship's CMC.

Vassiliadis shook his head. "Not that I know of, Commander. It's mostly a water world, but the air's breathable. They say it's like the hanar home world." He shrugged. "The colony itself is mostly underwater due to the typhoons. Erica's the chief architect that's heading the pilot program there that's building under the ocean."

"You must be proud," Shepard said with a smile.

Vassiliadis beamed, smiling brightly. "Oh, yes, ma'am," he affirmed.

"Admiral Kahoku's men were in the Sparta system when they dropped off the ladar, Commander," Kaidan said as he focused his terminal on the system. "We could check it out while we're there."

"Kill two space cows with one slug?" she asked, her eyes studying the display before her. Kaidan wondered what she was thinking about as she touched her own display, calling up the Sparta system. She touched the shipping line and it zoomed back out to the nebula. She touched another line and zoomed in to display a starburst of green.

"Attican Beta, ma'am?" Pressly queried. "The Feros colony?"

Shepard shrugged. "Artemis Tau could take weeks."

"Saren does have a jump start on us," Williams said from beside Kaidan. She crossed her arms over her chest. "If the Council had listened to you in the first place…"

Again a shrug. "It worked out, Chief. I can go places that I wouldn't be able to now." Shepard, the first human Spectre, pursed her lips, her intense gaze taking in the display before her, a small frown creasing her forehead and turning the corners of her lips down. "Pressly," she ordered after a full two minutes of staring at the display, "set course for Feros. According to Captain Anderson, there have been reports of geth."

"Ma'am?" Pressly seemed taken back.

"I'm not wasting my time on a damn scientist who may or may not be an enemy when another of our colonies may under attack," she said calmly. "If there are geth there, then Saren could be there, and that means we need to be there too."

"Aye, aye, ma'am." Pressly saluted.

"Joker," Shepard addressed the helmsman, "Tell me when we reach the Hades Gamma relay."

Joker's voice was tinny from the overhead speaker system. "Aye, aye, Commander. Seven hours till Exodus and then another two till Hades Gamma. Just so you know."

"Good." She looked at her XO. "Carry on, Pressly."