After a brief tour of the ship—following Shepard letting him have a look at the place she intended to be sequestered—she directed him up here, to the commanding officer's quarters. It was funny, in a way, that Shepard had seen to everything from the seeing-off of her crew to her own isolation. Some people might have argued that a cargo bay would be a better place to keep her…but there were a lot of things in a cargo bay that an N7 could use to varying effects and that might make security nervous.
That, and this way would keep him from having to walk as far if he wanted to see her.
Which he did; he had questions, but wasn't willing to rush into asking them.
Admiral Anderson had to admit that, for all Cerberus' failings, they knew how to spend money. The captain's cabin was beautifully appointed, though it showed signs of having recently had all personal touches removed.
Shepard had, in fact, forgotten to dust a shelf, which bore an odd dust-free square patch—he'd noted the hamster in its tank in the former XO's quarters, which was probably what had left the mark—but the familiar collection of model ships still adorned the office area's 'wall' space.
Except for the model of the Normandy, conspicuously absent. That particular model rested on the desk, as though asking 'please put me back where I belong.' He remembered very well Shepard's disgust over how he had come to leave the Normandy in the first place. Clearly she felt that he, at least, was back where he belonged.
It had been a wrench to hand over the Normandy to her, even if he knew it was for a good cause. He'd loved the ship from the first time he set eyes on her. However, he comfortably could admit that the Normandy, SR-1 or SR-2, was Shepard's ship. If sheep became like shepherds, then the Normandy had become Shepard's. They'd 'got used to one another' as the saying ran.
Which was why he would always feel like a visitor. Some people might call all this utter nonsense, but most of those people weren't spacers.
He placed the model Normandy back in its brackets. The SR-2 might be bigger than the SR-1, but no one could say anything nasty about the up-scaling of size: the Normandy still looked like a lean, mean bird of prey.
And, he had to admit it again as he gazed around, it was a very nice suite for the commanding officer. Good to see Cerberus had, at least, valued the kind of CO they'd drafted.
The empty fish tanks puzzled him, but he could see how (with fish in them) they could be soothing. The question was why there were no fish…
Someone had put serious thought into this room. Serious thought and serious credits…like the stabling for a prize-winning racehorse. They might be asking the impossible of Shepard, but they'd had the good graces to appoint comfortable living quarters. He'd seen apartments that were smaller and less comfortable.
He knew she'd list it as an attempt to buy her off—it probably was—but logistically it was easier to do an impossible job if you had a few of the civilian comforts military frigates often sacrificed.
…he found himself constantly and consistently distracted by the empty fish tanks. They were like…an unpainted wall in an otherwise finished and furnished room. He'd have to ask Shepard about them. Maybe he was missing their true purpose, or maybe he just…well, some people called a black dot in the bottom right corner of a large white canvas 'art.' Maybe it was like that.
Anderson dropped into the chair at the workstation. "Ow, dammit!" he barked as he knocked a knee against a minifridge he hadn't seen—partly because he hadn't expected it to be there—as he swiveled to face the terminal. A mini-fridge. They'd even stocked her on Astro-Fizz. The whole room was a great gesture of 'making nice' but anyone could have told them to save their credits.
Maybe it was best that they didn't: Cerberus' resources couldn't be limitless and he couldn't even begin to calculate how much it had cost to build this ship without anyone knowing anything about it. He remembered being staggered by the original Normandy's price tag, and she was Spartan compared with her successor. Maybe it was enough to drain them…and Shepard wasn't exactly a cheap replica (or any kind of replica, he added hastily in thought), either.
Anderson turned on the terminal, finding the prerecorded, preprogrammed 'hello and welcome' Shepard had left where he could easily find it. No blind poking around in the terminal, trying to figure out her unique sense of organization: just where to find what, and anything not listed probably wasn't important. He was glad to see she'd kept after-action reports, despite not being required to fill them out. That showed premeditation in absenting herself from Cerberus: she meant to do it sooner or later.
At this point, he might have asked why Shepard was at Aratoht at all, but he'd already had the question answered (by surmise more than concrete fact): Hackett had asked her to go, the mission went sideways, and now a great deal of care would be needed to manage the fallout. It was not really a question of protecting the galaxy from Shepard; it was a question of protecting Shepard from the galaxy.
Well, what was done was done, and nothing would be resolved or mediated by finger-pointing. The sooner she was at Arcturus, the better. Hackett could do what he needed to do then, very quietly, ship her to Earth. Earth was by far the safest place.
…depending on how one weighted the concept of safety. Still, Headquarters was on Earth, and it would be harder for anyone with murder on their minds to get close enough to try anything.
…something had to be done about those fish tanks.
-J-
Author's note: Just a short one, to say that Newton's Third Law is confirmed!