FIC: Architects of Their Own Fortune (9)
Title: Architects of Their Own Fortune
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Fandom: Mass Effect
Disclaimer: Mass Effect is Bioware's. And don't they do well with it?
Summary: Rumours abound: the Omega 4 relay has been used, and signs lead to Shepard being involved somehow. Someone has to investigate, and who better than one of Shepard's former crew? On top of all that, ship crews are disappearing, and it can't be the Collectors. So who's responsible, and why?
From The Beginning
~*~
Nine: Enquiring Minds Want To Know
~*~
A smiling young redhead who said her name was 'call me Kelly' came by the infirmary while Kaidan was still sorting up from down and reeling from the knowledge that Doctor Chakwas had handed in her notice to the Alliance and had gone to work for Cerberus. It did nothing to detract from the strange sense of déjà vu he felt looking through the windows from the infirmary and seeing a crew area that looked a hell of a lot like the old Normandy's mess. The yeoman had set a pile of folded clothing down, and apologised for not having any civilian clothing, and that she hoped "this" was acceptable.
It turned out to be a pair of black trousers, a black t-shirt, and a black and white tunic with what he had come to recognise as the Cerberus insignia on the breast. It was the same uniform that Shepard had been wearing, some sort of officer-level dress for Cerberus members, as if a uniform gave it the slightest shred of legitimacy.
He balled up the tunic and threw it in the corner for Chakwas to find later. The t-shirt and trousers were relatively inoffensive, and he reluctantly donned them; since they'd taken his armour off him when they'd brought him aboard, it was that or walk around in the thin, backless medical gown that he'd woken up in.
He had been left alone to dress, and he wondered if that meant he was free to wander about the ship. The medical bay's door wasn't sealed; it slid open at his approach readily enough. Standing just outside, her hands folded in front of her and a slightly tight smile on her face was call-me-Kelly, and though she wasn't armed, she was clearly there to provide some form of escort. The armed guard that was loitering in the mess area glanced at Kaidan as he left the Infirmary, but out of nothing more than apparent curiosity, which was either meant that Shepard trusted him to a degree, or she didn't think he was a threat. He liked to think that she knew him well enough to know the latter simply wasn't true.
"You served with Commander Shepard aboard the old Normandy, didn't you?" Kelly asked, as she led him towards the elevator.
"Yes," he answered, fairly convinced that she already knew the answer to that question.
"I gather that you and she had a close working relationship," Kelly spoke with studious disinterest as she tapped the elevator controls.
"Ah... yes." He was half tempted to simply say 'Yes, we were lovers. Why do you ask?' just to see what her response would be. But she had that slightly-too-smooth approach to the question that would probably mean it wouldn't faze her at all, and only lead to more questions he didn't feel like answering.
So he avoided the whole issue.
"You must have missed her while she was gone these past years."
He ignored her. He had no obligation to answer the questions of a Cerberus terrorist who felt that working for Shepard gave her some sort of credibility. After a long moment of silence, Kelly got the message and stopped staring at him. She only spoke when the doors slid open again to say, "This way, Commander."
When he stepped out of the door, he nearly came to a complete halt and stared about him in shock. It was like taking a step back into the past, to a part of his life that he'd taken great pains to tuck away in the back of his mind and try to forget about. He imagined he could have blinked and seen Pressley standing over his station, grousing with Adams over some minor slight. Then he took a second look, and realised that it was all subtly wrong.
He didn't stop. His step barely faltered, and if Kelly noticed his brief hesitation, she gave no sign as she led him aft of the command deck, through a door labelled 'Armoury', behind which was an array of small arms that any Alliance military officer worth his salt would rightly drool over. Kaidan slowed slightly to get a closer look at one or two of them. One seemed to be a Collector weapon, similar to those taken off a few of the corpses that Shepard had left behind on Horizon, another was a geth rifle. Some others were clearly illegal, and there were those that Kaidan simply didn't recognise, and was aware that he saw no manufacturer's logo on the side.
Kelly led him through to another corridor, and stopped outside a set of double doors. "They're waiting for you inside, Commander." She was clearly not coming inside with him.
Inside was a conference room, if the fact that Shepard had assembled several of her crew around a table was any indication as to its purpose. Shepard herself was standing at the head of the table, her arms folded and a firmly neutral expression on her face. With her were two Humans both dressed in figure hugging jumpsuits decorated with the same angular logo as everything else on the ship, and-
"Lieutenant Alenko!"
Kaidan was nearly knocked off his feet as a tall, lithe female threw her arms around his shoulders, nearly knocking him over in the process. "Hi, Tali," he said, slightly breathlessly.
Her moment of exuberance over, Tali drew back. "It's so good to see you again," she said, sounding sincerely happy. "It's been too long, and I never thanked you properly for your gift-"
Shepard cleared her throat pointedly before Kaidan could make any attempt at keeping her quiet on that particular subject. He wasn't sure why he didn't want to bring up the subject of what he'd done with Shepard's bequeathed wealth, but it really didn't seem like a good time to do so. Tali made an embarrassed noise and glanced back to Shepard as if just remembering she was there.
"Oh," she said, "Sorry." She glanced at Kaidan, made an apologetic hand gesture, and moved back a couple of paces.
"Commander Alenko," Shepard said, stressing his title for what was presumably Tali's benefit, "I was hoping that you would be able to shed some light on the attack on the cargo freighter you were found on."
"I was rather hoping he'd tell us why exactly an Alliance soldier was hiding in the cargo hold of a freighter we'd hired." The dark-haired woman he recognised from Omega as Miranda, but the man was unfamiliar to him, and it was disconcerting to have a stranger scowling at him with such distrust. Kaidan liked to think that he was familiar with most people who didn't like him.
Shepard chose to enlighten him. "My second in command, Miranda Lawson, my security chief Jacob Taylor, and, of course, you already know my chief engineer, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy."
"Vas Normandy, huh?" Kaidan said, glancing at Tali.
Tali seemed to stand straighter. "I'm proud to call this ship my home," she said. The way she said it made Kaidan think there was a story there.
"I was on that freighter," he said, carefully, aware that the only thing that was keeping him safe from the tender mercies of Cerberus was probably Shepard's past relationship with him, "Because I was assigned to find out what had happened to cause the Omega 4 relay to open, and because we had reason to believe that this ship was involved it was a logical course of action to track it down."
"So you were spying on us," Jacob said, and scoffed, "I say we toss him out of the airlock."
"There's been enough of that for one week," Shepard said. She reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "As long as we get the ship up and running again, it doesn't matter if the Alliance knows where we are now."
"On the run now?" Kaidan asked, glowering at Shepard.
"Just from the elements within the Alliance who'd pass on our location to Cerberus," Miranda said, a smile tugging at her lips.
"About that," Tali said, "With the new materials we should be back at reasonable operating capacity within forty eight hours."
"Good," Shepard said, "Now about the attack on the freighter-"
"Until I woke up in your medical bay," Kaidan cut in, "I didn't even know the freighter had been attacked. All I remember is a lot of pain and then losing consciousness."
"That makes it a lot harder for you to provide useful information," Miranda said. She tilted her head at him. Possibly she was considering how feasible Jacob's suggestion of tossing him out of the airlock would be.
"EDI?" Shepard spoke up, "Display tactical scans of our encounter with the asari cruiser."
"Yes, Shepard." There was hardly a pause between the reply and a hologram springing into life in the middle of the room.
"What we've been able to determine so far is that the asari cruiser was using some sort of experimental weaponry." Shepard unfolded her arms to lean on the edge of the table. She stared at him through the thin screen of holographic planets. "Experimental weapons designed by Citadel scientists."
Kaidan frowned, looking at the hologram. It didn't provide him with much information, just the relative positions of the asari cruiser, the freighter, and the nearby planets, but it was better than meeting Shepard's gaze. "Stolen?" he asked.
"You tell us." He didn't have to see her face to hear the way her mouth twisted into a wry smile. "You're the Citadel agent."
"I work for the Alliance," he snapped. "C-Sec doesn't routinely share classified information with me."
Miranda folded her arms and fixed him with a look of arch-scepticism.
Kaidan stifled the urge to sigh and reminded himself that he was supposed to be gathering information on Shepard's operation, and that would be hard if he was at odds with her crew. Besides, there was something that he remembered hearing... back on Omega...
"There was something," he said, slowly, rubbing his chin absently as he cast his mind back to the overheard conversations on the station. "I overheard a few conversations about missing colony ships not too far from the Traverse. There's a certain failure percentage with non-Alliance colonies that goes unreported in the media. Pirates, accidents and the like."
"Like you say," Tali said, though she didn't sound disbelieving, only thoughtful, "There is always a certain percentage of loss."
Kaidan debated for a moment, then made a decision he hoped Anderson would back him on. Of course, it wasn't like Kaidan was planning to give him much in the way of choice. "If I can contact the Alliance I might be able to get them to forward some statistics about missing ships in the Terminus systems. Maybe a pattern will emerge."
"I thought the Alliance didn't keep track of colonists who decide to set up shop in Terminus," Jacob said, glowering faintly at Kaidan.
Kaidan just shrugged. He wasn't going to insult the man's intelligence by denying that the Alliance kept tabs on any humans attempting to leave their jurisdiction. Shepard's mouth quirked, a smile only half stifled, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.
"We're off the FTL comms grid at the moment," Shepard said, "But once Tali's finished repairs, we'll move back in range and you can make contact with whoever you need to in order to get that information." She looked at the hologram, and rubbed her fingertips together in an apparently absent-minded motion. "Something is going on here. Tali? Would you care to explain your research into the cruiser's weapons?"
Tali bobbed her head and quickly outlined her conclusions regarding the creators of the weapon that had targeted the freighter. It wasn't much more than Shepard had already said, but it at least let Kaidan see how they'd come to the conclusion that the weaponry could have been stolen from the Citadel authorities. As she spoke, Jacob's scowl depended, and Miranda looked more thoughtful.
"Weapons research of that level," Kaidan said, "Doesn't just go missing and wind up in the hands of pirates."
"Right," Shepard said, "Which leaves only two options."
"Either it's loss has been extremely well hidden," Miranda said, "Or it didn't go missing at all."
"The Citadel conducting slaver raids in the Terminus systems? Kidnapping freighter crews?" Kaidan shook his head sharply. "I don't believe it."
"You wouldn't," Miranda said, and sniffed pointedly.
Shepard held up a hand, forestalling any argument. "Any speculation is academic at this point. I'm satisfied that Commander Alenko knows nothing right now. Hopefully we'll be in a better position to learn more in a day or so."
"And you're just going to drop your mission to chase up leads on a mystery that might come to nothing but piracy?" Kaidan looked at her, scrutinising Shepard's expression, looking for some hint to her thoughts. There had been a time when he'd spent hours watching her out of the corner of his eye, learning to read her moods, her thoughts, but that had been years ago now.
Shepard gave him a grin that showed more teeth than amusement. "What mission? Besides. My ship, my rules. Being outside the chain of command has perks, which I'm guessing you've figured out by now."
Jacob glanced at her sharply, but she was just smiling placidly at Kaidan.
Kaidan had no intention of airing his current occupation in public, so just inclined his head in acknowledgement of the point.
"If there's nothing else?" Shepard glanced about the room. "Very well, you're all dismissed. I believe I promise Commander Alenko the tour."
~*~
There were enough similarities, Kaidan learned, between the original and new Normandy to make treading the deckplates a decidedly eerie experience. It was like walking through some twisted hall of mirrors, a dream-distorted variation on a cherished memory. Everything was a little off, proportionally, or there were doors where he didn't expect to find them.
The people were different too, all of them wearing the same Cerberus logo that Kaidan had come to despise, as if by giving themselves a uniform and a symbol, Cerberus granted themselves some sort of legitimacy. Most of the crew were ex-Alliance, who looked at him with a combination of scorn and nerves, as if he were about to arrest them. Then they would glance at Shepard, and subtly straighten. Kaidan knew the look. It was the one that said 'I'm on Shepard's crew, so screw the rest of the galaxy'. He'd worn it himself at one point. They all had, back then.
Shepard had also introduced him to a few of the specialists she had recruited. Some, she told him, had already left the ship, but others had made no mention of their plans, or weren't in a position to leave. Tali, he knew, had chosen Normandy for her ship name and wasn't leaving, and there was a krogan that Shepard had briefly introduced him to who had just looked him up and down and wondered out loud if Kaidan were truly as soft and squishy as he looked and who had pointedly referred to Shepard as his 'battlemaster', as if trying to impress on Kaidan exactly the sort of woman she was. It was almost touching.
Kasumi Goto was warm and friendly, and had been lounging in her observation room quarters, reading a book, when Shepard had shown him in. She had offered him a drink which he'd politely declined, and Shepard had taken him out, showing him engineering and then hesitating at the top of a set of stairs.
"Hmm, probably not a good idea for you to meet Jack just yet," she said, without explaining herself, and hurried him on. She ended the tour back where they'd started, on the CIC deck, walking him forward. It had been such a familiar path to tread that he'd half-expected to find Joker sitting in the cockpit, instead of the dark-haired woman in a Cerberus crew uniform that was there.
Shepard paused there, and frowned. "EDI, where's-"
"The main shift pilot is currently off-duty, Shepard." The AI spoke before Shepard could finish her sentence.
Shepard stared at the holographic ball that was the AI's avatar and narrowed her eyes slightly. "I see," she said, "Please remind 'the main shift pilot' that I'm very familiar with the roster and he's kidding no one, so man up and get back to his station."
"I will do so." If he hadn't known better, Kaidan would have said the machine sounded embarrassed.
Throughout the tour, Shepard was polite, professional, and didn't say a word to him that she wouldn't have offered to a total stranger. Kaidan had tried, and failed, to come up with the perfect opening line for a conversation that could somehow start to broach the subject of two years absence. Eventually he'd just followed her around, nodding politely and playing role of the mute guest.
They walked back through the CIC, and it looked for a moment, just a moment, like she might say something, but her expression abruptly shuttered tightly when the same redheaded woman that had first escorted Kaidan from the medical bay stepped up to them.
"Hadley's psych eval," she said, succinctly.
Shepard sighed, almost imperceptibly, and took the datapad off the crewman and rubbed the back of her neck. "I should-" she waved it vaguely in the air. Kaidan had no idea who Hadley was, but he could guess that it was a sore subject for her. "Kelly, could you show Commander Alenko where he can bunk?"
Kelly bobbed her head and smiled brightly. "I took the liberty of having starboard obs repurposed, now Samara has vacated," she said.
"That's fine," Shepard said, and offered Kaidan a small shrug. "We're not big on passenger space here."
"Whatever you have is fine." And if it was a private room, all to the better. Kaidan would be able to learn much more if he wasn't being observed all the time.
"This way please, Commander." Kelly stepped back and gestured for him to precede her to the elevator.
Shepard had already turned away, focusing her attention on the datapad in her hands.
Kaidan went the way indicated, and when the doors opened, he started to step sideways to allow the crew already in the elevator to disembark onto the CIC deck, but came to an abrupt halt when he realised the crewman who was staring at him with a look that was best described as a combination of guilt and chagrin.
"You've got to be kidding me," Kaidan said, loudly, as he stared at the man who, until a few moments ago, he'd been sure was piloting civilian freighters halfway across the galaxy.
"Uh, hey Alenko," Joker said. He rubbed his hands together nervously. "Long time no see."
"Oh, of course!" Kelly said. "You two know each other from the old Normandy, don't you?"
Kaidan decided that Anderson was giving him a payrise. There was no way he was getting paid enough to deal with this sort of shit.
~*~
Part Ten
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Fandom: Mass Effect
Disclaimer: Mass Effect is Bioware's. And don't they do well with it?
Summary: Rumours abound: the Omega 4 relay has been used, and signs lead to Shepard being involved somehow. Someone has to investigate, and who better than one of Shepard's former crew? On top of all that, ship crews are disappearing, and it can't be the Collectors. So who's responsible, and why?
From The Beginning
~*~
Nine: Enquiring Minds Want To Know
~*~
A smiling young redhead who said her name was 'call me Kelly' came by the infirmary while Kaidan was still sorting up from down and reeling from the knowledge that Doctor Chakwas had handed in her notice to the Alliance and had gone to work for Cerberus. It did nothing to detract from the strange sense of déjà vu he felt looking through the windows from the infirmary and seeing a crew area that looked a hell of a lot like the old Normandy's mess. The yeoman had set a pile of folded clothing down, and apologised for not having any civilian clothing, and that she hoped "this" was acceptable.
It turned out to be a pair of black trousers, a black t-shirt, and a black and white tunic with what he had come to recognise as the Cerberus insignia on the breast. It was the same uniform that Shepard had been wearing, some sort of officer-level dress for Cerberus members, as if a uniform gave it the slightest shred of legitimacy.
He balled up the tunic and threw it in the corner for Chakwas to find later. The t-shirt and trousers were relatively inoffensive, and he reluctantly donned them; since they'd taken his armour off him when they'd brought him aboard, it was that or walk around in the thin, backless medical gown that he'd woken up in.
He had been left alone to dress, and he wondered if that meant he was free to wander about the ship. The medical bay's door wasn't sealed; it slid open at his approach readily enough. Standing just outside, her hands folded in front of her and a slightly tight smile on her face was call-me-Kelly, and though she wasn't armed, she was clearly there to provide some form of escort. The armed guard that was loitering in the mess area glanced at Kaidan as he left the Infirmary, but out of nothing more than apparent curiosity, which was either meant that Shepard trusted him to a degree, or she didn't think he was a threat. He liked to think that she knew him well enough to know the latter simply wasn't true.
"You served with Commander Shepard aboard the old Normandy, didn't you?" Kelly asked, as she led him towards the elevator.
"Yes," he answered, fairly convinced that she already knew the answer to that question.
"I gather that you and she had a close working relationship," Kelly spoke with studious disinterest as she tapped the elevator controls.
"Ah... yes." He was half tempted to simply say 'Yes, we were lovers. Why do you ask?' just to see what her response would be. But she had that slightly-too-smooth approach to the question that would probably mean it wouldn't faze her at all, and only lead to more questions he didn't feel like answering.
So he avoided the whole issue.
"You must have missed her while she was gone these past years."
He ignored her. He had no obligation to answer the questions of a Cerberus terrorist who felt that working for Shepard gave her some sort of credibility. After a long moment of silence, Kelly got the message and stopped staring at him. She only spoke when the doors slid open again to say, "This way, Commander."
When he stepped out of the door, he nearly came to a complete halt and stared about him in shock. It was like taking a step back into the past, to a part of his life that he'd taken great pains to tuck away in the back of his mind and try to forget about. He imagined he could have blinked and seen Pressley standing over his station, grousing with Adams over some minor slight. Then he took a second look, and realised that it was all subtly wrong.
He didn't stop. His step barely faltered, and if Kelly noticed his brief hesitation, she gave no sign as she led him aft of the command deck, through a door labelled 'Armoury', behind which was an array of small arms that any Alliance military officer worth his salt would rightly drool over. Kaidan slowed slightly to get a closer look at one or two of them. One seemed to be a Collector weapon, similar to those taken off a few of the corpses that Shepard had left behind on Horizon, another was a geth rifle. Some others were clearly illegal, and there were those that Kaidan simply didn't recognise, and was aware that he saw no manufacturer's logo on the side.
Kelly led him through to another corridor, and stopped outside a set of double doors. "They're waiting for you inside, Commander." She was clearly not coming inside with him.
Inside was a conference room, if the fact that Shepard had assembled several of her crew around a table was any indication as to its purpose. Shepard herself was standing at the head of the table, her arms folded and a firmly neutral expression on her face. With her were two Humans both dressed in figure hugging jumpsuits decorated with the same angular logo as everything else on the ship, and-
"Lieutenant Alenko!"
Kaidan was nearly knocked off his feet as a tall, lithe female threw her arms around his shoulders, nearly knocking him over in the process. "Hi, Tali," he said, slightly breathlessly.
Her moment of exuberance over, Tali drew back. "It's so good to see you again," she said, sounding sincerely happy. "It's been too long, and I never thanked you properly for your gift-"
Shepard cleared her throat pointedly before Kaidan could make any attempt at keeping her quiet on that particular subject. He wasn't sure why he didn't want to bring up the subject of what he'd done with Shepard's bequeathed wealth, but it really didn't seem like a good time to do so. Tali made an embarrassed noise and glanced back to Shepard as if just remembering she was there.
"Oh," she said, "Sorry." She glanced at Kaidan, made an apologetic hand gesture, and moved back a couple of paces.
"Commander Alenko," Shepard said, stressing his title for what was presumably Tali's benefit, "I was hoping that you would be able to shed some light on the attack on the cargo freighter you were found on."
"I was rather hoping he'd tell us why exactly an Alliance soldier was hiding in the cargo hold of a freighter we'd hired." The dark-haired woman he recognised from Omega as Miranda, but the man was unfamiliar to him, and it was disconcerting to have a stranger scowling at him with such distrust. Kaidan liked to think that he was familiar with most people who didn't like him.
Shepard chose to enlighten him. "My second in command, Miranda Lawson, my security chief Jacob Taylor, and, of course, you already know my chief engineer, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy."
"Vas Normandy, huh?" Kaidan said, glancing at Tali.
Tali seemed to stand straighter. "I'm proud to call this ship my home," she said. The way she said it made Kaidan think there was a story there.
"I was on that freighter," he said, carefully, aware that the only thing that was keeping him safe from the tender mercies of Cerberus was probably Shepard's past relationship with him, "Because I was assigned to find out what had happened to cause the Omega 4 relay to open, and because we had reason to believe that this ship was involved it was a logical course of action to track it down."
"So you were spying on us," Jacob said, and scoffed, "I say we toss him out of the airlock."
"There's been enough of that for one week," Shepard said. She reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "As long as we get the ship up and running again, it doesn't matter if the Alliance knows where we are now."
"On the run now?" Kaidan asked, glowering at Shepard.
"Just from the elements within the Alliance who'd pass on our location to Cerberus," Miranda said, a smile tugging at her lips.
"About that," Tali said, "With the new materials we should be back at reasonable operating capacity within forty eight hours."
"Good," Shepard said, "Now about the attack on the freighter-"
"Until I woke up in your medical bay," Kaidan cut in, "I didn't even know the freighter had been attacked. All I remember is a lot of pain and then losing consciousness."
"That makes it a lot harder for you to provide useful information," Miranda said. She tilted her head at him. Possibly she was considering how feasible Jacob's suggestion of tossing him out of the airlock would be.
"EDI?" Shepard spoke up, "Display tactical scans of our encounter with the asari cruiser."
"Yes, Shepard." There was hardly a pause between the reply and a hologram springing into life in the middle of the room.
"What we've been able to determine so far is that the asari cruiser was using some sort of experimental weaponry." Shepard unfolded her arms to lean on the edge of the table. She stared at him through the thin screen of holographic planets. "Experimental weapons designed by Citadel scientists."
Kaidan frowned, looking at the hologram. It didn't provide him with much information, just the relative positions of the asari cruiser, the freighter, and the nearby planets, but it was better than meeting Shepard's gaze. "Stolen?" he asked.
"You tell us." He didn't have to see her face to hear the way her mouth twisted into a wry smile. "You're the Citadel agent."
"I work for the Alliance," he snapped. "C-Sec doesn't routinely share classified information with me."
Miranda folded her arms and fixed him with a look of arch-scepticism.
Kaidan stifled the urge to sigh and reminded himself that he was supposed to be gathering information on Shepard's operation, and that would be hard if he was at odds with her crew. Besides, there was something that he remembered hearing... back on Omega...
"There was something," he said, slowly, rubbing his chin absently as he cast his mind back to the overheard conversations on the station. "I overheard a few conversations about missing colony ships not too far from the Traverse. There's a certain failure percentage with non-Alliance colonies that goes unreported in the media. Pirates, accidents and the like."
"Like you say," Tali said, though she didn't sound disbelieving, only thoughtful, "There is always a certain percentage of loss."
Kaidan debated for a moment, then made a decision he hoped Anderson would back him on. Of course, it wasn't like Kaidan was planning to give him much in the way of choice. "If I can contact the Alliance I might be able to get them to forward some statistics about missing ships in the Terminus systems. Maybe a pattern will emerge."
"I thought the Alliance didn't keep track of colonists who decide to set up shop in Terminus," Jacob said, glowering faintly at Kaidan.
Kaidan just shrugged. He wasn't going to insult the man's intelligence by denying that the Alliance kept tabs on any humans attempting to leave their jurisdiction. Shepard's mouth quirked, a smile only half stifled, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.
"We're off the FTL comms grid at the moment," Shepard said, "But once Tali's finished repairs, we'll move back in range and you can make contact with whoever you need to in order to get that information." She looked at the hologram, and rubbed her fingertips together in an apparently absent-minded motion. "Something is going on here. Tali? Would you care to explain your research into the cruiser's weapons?"
Tali bobbed her head and quickly outlined her conclusions regarding the creators of the weapon that had targeted the freighter. It wasn't much more than Shepard had already said, but it at least let Kaidan see how they'd come to the conclusion that the weaponry could have been stolen from the Citadel authorities. As she spoke, Jacob's scowl depended, and Miranda looked more thoughtful.
"Weapons research of that level," Kaidan said, "Doesn't just go missing and wind up in the hands of pirates."
"Right," Shepard said, "Which leaves only two options."
"Either it's loss has been extremely well hidden," Miranda said, "Or it didn't go missing at all."
"The Citadel conducting slaver raids in the Terminus systems? Kidnapping freighter crews?" Kaidan shook his head sharply. "I don't believe it."
"You wouldn't," Miranda said, and sniffed pointedly.
Shepard held up a hand, forestalling any argument. "Any speculation is academic at this point. I'm satisfied that Commander Alenko knows nothing right now. Hopefully we'll be in a better position to learn more in a day or so."
"And you're just going to drop your mission to chase up leads on a mystery that might come to nothing but piracy?" Kaidan looked at her, scrutinising Shepard's expression, looking for some hint to her thoughts. There had been a time when he'd spent hours watching her out of the corner of his eye, learning to read her moods, her thoughts, but that had been years ago now.
Shepard gave him a grin that showed more teeth than amusement. "What mission? Besides. My ship, my rules. Being outside the chain of command has perks, which I'm guessing you've figured out by now."
Jacob glanced at her sharply, but she was just smiling placidly at Kaidan.
Kaidan had no intention of airing his current occupation in public, so just inclined his head in acknowledgement of the point.
"If there's nothing else?" Shepard glanced about the room. "Very well, you're all dismissed. I believe I promise Commander Alenko the tour."
~*~
There were enough similarities, Kaidan learned, between the original and new Normandy to make treading the deckplates a decidedly eerie experience. It was like walking through some twisted hall of mirrors, a dream-distorted variation on a cherished memory. Everything was a little off, proportionally, or there were doors where he didn't expect to find them.
The people were different too, all of them wearing the same Cerberus logo that Kaidan had come to despise, as if by giving themselves a uniform and a symbol, Cerberus granted themselves some sort of legitimacy. Most of the crew were ex-Alliance, who looked at him with a combination of scorn and nerves, as if he were about to arrest them. Then they would glance at Shepard, and subtly straighten. Kaidan knew the look. It was the one that said 'I'm on Shepard's crew, so screw the rest of the galaxy'. He'd worn it himself at one point. They all had, back then.
Shepard had also introduced him to a few of the specialists she had recruited. Some, she told him, had already left the ship, but others had made no mention of their plans, or weren't in a position to leave. Tali, he knew, had chosen Normandy for her ship name and wasn't leaving, and there was a krogan that Shepard had briefly introduced him to who had just looked him up and down and wondered out loud if Kaidan were truly as soft and squishy as he looked and who had pointedly referred to Shepard as his 'battlemaster', as if trying to impress on Kaidan exactly the sort of woman she was. It was almost touching.
Kasumi Goto was warm and friendly, and had been lounging in her observation room quarters, reading a book, when Shepard had shown him in. She had offered him a drink which he'd politely declined, and Shepard had taken him out, showing him engineering and then hesitating at the top of a set of stairs.
"Hmm, probably not a good idea for you to meet Jack just yet," she said, without explaining herself, and hurried him on. She ended the tour back where they'd started, on the CIC deck, walking him forward. It had been such a familiar path to tread that he'd half-expected to find Joker sitting in the cockpit, instead of the dark-haired woman in a Cerberus crew uniform that was there.
Shepard paused there, and frowned. "EDI, where's-"
"The main shift pilot is currently off-duty, Shepard." The AI spoke before Shepard could finish her sentence.
Shepard stared at the holographic ball that was the AI's avatar and narrowed her eyes slightly. "I see," she said, "Please remind 'the main shift pilot' that I'm very familiar with the roster and he's kidding no one, so man up and get back to his station."
"I will do so." If he hadn't known better, Kaidan would have said the machine sounded embarrassed.
Throughout the tour, Shepard was polite, professional, and didn't say a word to him that she wouldn't have offered to a total stranger. Kaidan had tried, and failed, to come up with the perfect opening line for a conversation that could somehow start to broach the subject of two years absence. Eventually he'd just followed her around, nodding politely and playing role of the mute guest.
They walked back through the CIC, and it looked for a moment, just a moment, like she might say something, but her expression abruptly shuttered tightly when the same redheaded woman that had first escorted Kaidan from the medical bay stepped up to them.
"Hadley's psych eval," she said, succinctly.
Shepard sighed, almost imperceptibly, and took the datapad off the crewman and rubbed the back of her neck. "I should-" she waved it vaguely in the air. Kaidan had no idea who Hadley was, but he could guess that it was a sore subject for her. "Kelly, could you show Commander Alenko where he can bunk?"
Kelly bobbed her head and smiled brightly. "I took the liberty of having starboard obs repurposed, now Samara has vacated," she said.
"That's fine," Shepard said, and offered Kaidan a small shrug. "We're not big on passenger space here."
"Whatever you have is fine." And if it was a private room, all to the better. Kaidan would be able to learn much more if he wasn't being observed all the time.
"This way please, Commander." Kelly stepped back and gestured for him to precede her to the elevator.
Shepard had already turned away, focusing her attention on the datapad in her hands.
Kaidan went the way indicated, and when the doors opened, he started to step sideways to allow the crew already in the elevator to disembark onto the CIC deck, but came to an abrupt halt when he realised the crewman who was staring at him with a look that was best described as a combination of guilt and chagrin.
"You've got to be kidding me," Kaidan said, loudly, as he stared at the man who, until a few moments ago, he'd been sure was piloting civilian freighters halfway across the galaxy.
"Uh, hey Alenko," Joker said. He rubbed his hands together nervously. "Long time no see."
"Oh, of course!" Kelly said. "You two know each other from the old Normandy, don't you?"
Kaidan decided that Anderson was giving him a payrise. There was no way he was getting paid enough to deal with this sort of shit.
~*~
Part Ten