Kid Gloves

Only a few more weeks till ME3! Woo!

Also: (late) Happy New Year and sorry I couldn't update last month.

Kaidan walked onto the bridge to find only half of Joker. The helmsman's upper half was stuffed under the helm. The occasional twitch of a foot encased in a brace with blue glowing lights let Kaidan know the man was alive.

"Joker?" he asked, assuming Joker hadn't suddenly felt the urge to throw himself under the console for no real reason.

He stuck a foot out to give the helmsman's leg a playful kick before he realized what he was doing. His foot just barely managed to miss hitting Joker's calf. If it had been any other crew member, the gesture would have been a joke, but with Joker's condition, it would have landed the man in the infirmary with either a stress fracture or full break. Kaidan was still berating himself for being so careless when Joker gave a muffled response.

"Say again?"

Joker inched out from under the console, his hat turned backwards, a grease stain on his forehead and across his nose, and a scowl on his face. Kaidan noted with disdain that the Joker's beard was in need of trim. The wiry hairs of his beard stuck out everywhere like he had been in contact with static electricity. Were the pilot one of Alenko's marines, the biotic would have given the man a firm talking to about appearance. They were the faces of the Alliance, after all.

"I said," Joker began again as he turned his hat back around, "the damn bitch box stopped responding to Vocal Commands. Fucking prototype VI beta." He bit off a few other choice phrases, one of which was in Mandarin Chinese that made Kaidan laugh.

"It isn't funny," Joker grumbled. He hefted himself up with difficulty. Kaidan reached out to help, but Joker waved him off.

"I got myself down here," he told Kaidan hotly. "I can damn well get myself back up." He levered himself back into the pilot's chair with a pained grunt. "Thanks anyway," he added once he got himself comfortable. Kaidan watched curiously as Joker pulled on interface smartgloves and began shifting icons around on the helm's orange-colored display. "The damn engineers fucked up my ship with that latest install."

"I heard that," Adams' voice came over the MC as Kaidan sat at his station, the haptic adaptive interface recognizing the microframe chip implanted into his hand and booting up the display automatically.

"Yeah?" Joker shot back. "Well, good. That's great. Go back to the old one. It worked just fine without the clammy hand smell." He called up another display and scowled at it. "I can't work like this." Kaidan scowled at his too as Joker shifted more icons and screens around.

Joker ranted a little longer at Adams as Kaidan studied his readout. The design looked totally different from the one they were using yesterday. He'd read the specs on the install. They'd updated the systems to accommodate the latest patch of the heat monitor system. The displays weren't supposed to look like this. The original specs called for a new color scheme with the update, not a total redesign of the UI. How were they supposed to do their jobs if they weren't familiar with the design?

He reached out expecting the motion accelerometer implants under the skin of his fingertips to interact with the holo. His implants didn't give any force-feed back and his finger went straight through the projection. He made a choking sound. How the hell was he supposed to get any work done? What if they were attacked? They were in uncharted space with Intel from a krogan. A trusted ally, but still. Intel from a krogan.

Joker noticed his dilemma. "Adams, the con doesn't interact with Kaidan's implants either." He tossed Kaidan a pair of interface smartgloves.

Kaidan looked at the smartgloves with disdain. Shit. He hadn't gone bareskin with a computer since before enlisting. "Tell me you're kidding," he said, holding the gloves up with only his forefinger and thumb.

Adams chuckled. "No one likes the update. Jankovic is working on a patch. She should have it done and installed by this afternoon."

"No bugs, no gloves," Joker said imperiously.

"We'll fix it, Moreau," Adams' tone lost the playful edge.

Joker backed down. "Whatever," he groused.

"Whatever what?" Shepard asked as she stepped onto the bridge. Kaidan hadn't heard anyone walking down the gangway. When had the Commander gotten so quiet?

"Whatever, sir?" Joker offered in return, twisting to look at her.

Shepard leveled him with a look. "Joker."

"The new interface sucks," he complained, showing her his gloved hands. She frowned but said nothing. "I want my baby back."

"There's a signal in the asteroid field I want to check out," Shepard told them. She reached into a cargo pocket on her BDUs and withdrew a blue rag. She tossed it to Joker.

Kaidan put on the interface smartgloves. "Which field, ma'am? The system has two."

"Inner belt," she clarified as Joker smeared grease around on his face. "Could be nothing, but I don't like it. This system is crawling with pirate signals."

"You run head-long into geth," Joker pointed out, then asked, "but you're afraid of pirates?"

Shepard made a rude noise. "We could look at them cross-eyed with this ship and their drive cores would explode in fright." She shook her head. "No, I want to make sure we aren't heading into an ambush planetside. There's no telling where Wrex got his information for that family armor of his."

"You smell a trap, ma'am?"

"I smell something," she affirmed. "I want our bases covered, our 'I's dotted, 'T's crossed and extra incendiary rounds, just in case."

"No cryo?" Kaidan asked, only half-joking. He swore by cryo ammo. It had saved his life on more than one occasion and gave his team a chance to breathe when things got out of control.

"If it floats," was Shepard's vague answer.

"You've always got orbital bombardment as an option," Joker offered.

"Hn," Shepard grunted. "Only if we want the Alliance levered with sanctions."

Joker pouted. "Sanctions. Pshft. Aren't Spectres above the law?"

Shepard chuckled but gave him a hard stare. "I can legally kill my crew. No questions asked."

Every person on the bridge and in the CIC stopped what they were doing and looked at the Commander. It was silent a full moment before Joker spoke again.

"Have I mentioned what an awesome CO you are?" he asked. "Because you are The Best."

"Joker, stop brown-nosing and go play in the asteroid field," Shepard ordered.

A grin on his face, he declared, "Best. Ever." This time he meant it.