Kaidan
Staff Commander Alenko leaned back in his chair as he reviewed the report he had just finished, discussing the raid on a pirate hideout he and his ground team wrapped up a mere hour before.
The mission was an easy success. The pirates were woefully unprepared to defend their base of operations. There were no external defenses save a lone guard that was subdued from five hundred meters out. Inside was little different. Only a few of the members were wearing armor of any kind and none were armed when the team breached. A few scrambled for the weapons locker and put up a token resistance, but most simply surrendered. Now the brig was full of pirates ready for trial, hopefully putting a stop to the raids on the Attican Beta colonies.
Kaidan filed the report and turned to some other menial task to fill his time. Life after the Normandy had been substantially unexciting. After the funeral (Kaidan dared not speak his name; that particular wound was still too fresh to risk picking), the newly promoted Lt. Commander Alenko was given a leave of absence which was code for a series of interviews with psychologists to determine his readiness after experience so much loss.
Eventually, they gave him a posting on the SSV Bangkok, a cruiser in the Seventh Fleet. He took over as Marine Detail Commander and performed many of the duties he had on the Normandy. Alenko met with his marines, ran them through drills, and got to know his ground team. He should have found comfort in the familiarity of it all.
He did not. The Bangkok was nothing like the Normandy. The cruiser stuck to a patrol path through the Systems Alliance colonies, only deviating when command deemed it a worthy risk. The ground team occasionally fought the last holdouts of geth, but the majority of their missions centered on pirates, slavers, and smugglers.
In a word, the SSV Bangkok was boring.
Kaidan knew his time on the Normandy was unique, and he would more than likely never experience a posting like that again. He doubted that such postings even existed. Yet, the absence of all the rare occurrences that happened made military life dull. When he looked around the ship, he only saw the familiar shape of human faces, no asari, turian, krogan, or quarian among them. Their enemies were human, turian, batarian, and the occasional krogan. There were no geth, rachni, or thorian creepers.
Initially, he thought that removing himself from the strangeness would help him distance himself from the tragedy that happened over year ago. Alenko realized now that the separation only increased his musings about his time aboard the deceased ship. Even though most of the memories left him smiling, they did little to help with the lingering survivor's guilt that still ate at the Staff Commander.
In the end, Kaidan wondered if the monotony of his new posting was by design. During his time "on leave," Rear Admiral Anderson had approached him about starting a company of biotic talented individuals suited for covert operations. From the way the man explained it, the new unit would perform duties much like special operations, and they would receive training similar to N-School. Anderson also made it quite clear that Alenko would be perfect to train and lead these talented biotic soldiers, so perfect in fact that they would not proceed with the idea without him.
Kaidan politely turned down the offer. Truthfully, he didn't know if he was suited to train an entire company of spec ops. It sounded like a task better suited… well, better suited for the commander. Alenko was not him.
Now he was here, sitting on the Bangkok, wondering if he should reconsider his answer. After the Normandy, normal military life no longer appealed to him. A sneaking suspicion suggested that was Anderson's intention when he gave the staff commander this posting, to show him that he could achieve more.
The speaker in his small cabin crackled to life before he could go too much further with that thought process.
"Commander Alenko," a young woman's voice said. Kaidan recognized it belonged to the communications officer. "Sorry to disturb you, but you have a call waiting in the comm room, sir."
He wasn't expecting that. "Is it from command?"
"Yes, sir, but they won't say who. It's for you alone."
Curiouser and curiouser. "Let them know I'll be their momentarily. Thank you, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir," she answered, and the speaker clicked off.
Alenko quickly made his way to the comm room. Once there, he hit the necessary buttons, and a hologram sprung to life. He couldn't resist a small smile forming.
"Councilor Anderson. Your ears must have been burning. I was just thinking about you."
The older man chuckled. "Nothing bad, I hope. How is life on the Bangkok? Everything you hoped it to be?"
The question practically confirmed Kaidan's earlier suspicions. "Just fine, sir," he answered simply. He wasn't about to give Anderson any more ammunition than he already had.
"Hmmm. Have you given any more thought about that offer?"
Alenko shook his head. "My answer is still the same. As much as I enjoy talking with you, sir, I know you didn't call just to exchange pleasantries and chew the fat. What is this really about?"
Anderson's smiled faded, and he grew serious. "You've heard the reports of a human colony going missing in the Sentry Omega cluster, correct?"
Kaidan nodded.
"Well, a second colony has been found empty, this time in the Hawking Eta cluster."
Alenko mulled over that information for a moment. Both systems were in the Attican Traverse, outside of Alliance jurisdiction, but they were so far apart that it didn't make sense for a single band of attackers. Why go so far when there were plenty of colonies still untouched in Sentry Omega?
"Is it slavers?"
"That is uncertain at the moment," Anderson answered. "Quite honestly, we don't who is doing this or if they are even connected."
"But you wouldn't have brought them up together if you thought they weren't."
The councilor nodded. "The two exhibit many similarities. It's like everyone in the colony just decided to get up and leave. There are no signs of struggle, no scorching, no bodies. They are just empty."
"I'm guessing command is going to do something about it, and it involves me."
"Yes. We are sending you to Horizon, a colony in the Iera system of the Shadow Sea cluster. Officially, you are a part of a goodwill program we are extending to the colonies in the Traverse. We are sending you with a few defensive towers that you will help install to better protect the colony."
"And unofficially, sir?"
"Unofficially, you will be there to monitor communications. We believe that Horizon is a prime target for whoever is attacking our colonies. We want you there to gain any intel possible while stopping the culprits."
"Understood, sir. And when will I be leaving for this mission?"
"Once the Bangkok gets back to Elysium, you will disembark and come to Arcturus Station to be fully briefed on your assignment. From there, you will be sent on a chartered cargo ship to Horizon where you will oversee their construction. If all goes well, you will be there in two weeks. Preliminary information has been sent to you in this burst."
Kaidan realized that Anderson wasn't telling him everything he knew. "Sir, was there anything else I should know?"
He nodded. "Command believes that Cerberus may be behind the attacks. The reason we suspect Horizon to be next stemmed from a tip given by one of our undercover Cerberus agents."
"Cerberus?" Alenko questioned. "Why would Cerberus be attacking human colonies? They are all about the advancement of humanity's standing in the galaxy. That doesn't make much sense."
"Nothing about this makes sense, Kaidan," he said softly, obviously agitated.
Now he knew there was more. "Sir?"
"The same agent reports that the commander is with Cerberus."
By the way Anderson said "the commander," Alenko knew he could only be speaking about one person. "Impossible. He…" His voice caught for a moment. "He didn't make it off the ship. Joker was there. He may be many things, but Jeff isn't a liar.
"And if he somehow survived, why wouldn't he come back? Why wouldn't he tell us? You need to check your source. There is no way that's true."
"I don't want to believe it either, but that is the intel we have."
"He would never leave the Alliance for Cerberus. After what happened on Akuze and Admiral Kahoku, he hated them almost as much as he hated batarians and slavers. Well, as much as he could hate anyone. Shep…" Saying his name opened a floodgate of emotions and memories Alenko never realized he was holding back.
Anderson nodded knowingly. "He wouldn't stand for this, and he would only work for Cerberus if it was absolutely necessary. Others in command may have their doubts about Shepard, but I don't. You shouldn't either. You know how he works. He would lay with the devil or sell his soul if he knew it would save lives. If he is working for Cerberus, it must be the only possible course of action."
The councilor straightened. "You have your assignment, Staff Commander. I wish I could be there to brief you in person, but being on the Council is quite the time sink. Hell, I wasn't even supposed to be able to give you as much as I just did, but if you needed to hear this, it should come from me. The Alliance owes you that much."
Kaidan knew he was right. Coming from anyone else, he would have dismissed the information about the commander as slanderous insults against a great man. Only Anderson could have made him believe that there was the possibility. "Thank you, sir."
Councilor Anderson nodded simply, and the hologram blinked off.
When he arrived back in his cabin, Kaidan brought up the extranet and searched for any mention of the commander, missing colonies, and Cerberus. He realized he would run into a lot of dead ends and conspiracy theories, but he didn't care. According to the Alliance there was a connection. He needed to discover what that connection was.
Author's Note:
Holy crap! I just realized I've been spelling Kaidan's name wrong for the entire last story. Why didn't anyone tell me this? Went back through the entire story and changed every one. Hopefully, something like that won't happen again.
It's a short chapter, I know. That was kind of my intent with this in between chapters, to give a glimpse of what the crew's life was like without Shepard. As always, thanks for reading and please review.