FIC: Architects of Their Own Fortune (11)
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
~*~
Eleven: Unexplored Depths
~*~
Shepard's quarters were a mess. In fairness, they hadn't been when she and Kaidan had entered, and she would have been hard pressed to pinpoint the moment where her room had transitioned from tidy to 'bomb site', but she honestly didn't care. The sheets were tangled around their ankles somewhere, the environmental controls set a little higher to keep them comfortable while naked, and she felt more relaxed than she had in days. She wasn't totally at ease; all the worries and problems she had were still there, but they seemed distant, less important, their edge dulled by the endorphins buzzing about her system.
Kaidan lay on his back next to her, his attention momentarily taken up by the Prothean relic in his hands. It had been knocked to the floor during their exertions, and Kaidan had noticed it glinting in the low light when they had paused to catch their breath. Shepard ran a hand absently through damp hair as she watched him awkwardly attempt to pick it up. She knew from experience that it was like trying to hold a soap bubble.
"What is this?" he asked, as he moved his hands around the silver sphere. No matter where he moved his fingers, the sphere stayed the same distance away from him, rolling and contorting in the air.
"It's Prothean," she said, idly, and reached over to poke the skin of the relic. It flexed in response. "No idea what it does."
Kaidan eyed the orb with distinct alarm. He looked like he wanted to drop it but wasn't convinced it wouldn't explode if he did. "And you use it as a paperweight?"
"Don't be silly," she told him, "It hovers. Can't hold anything down."
Kaidan, very carefully, set it back on the floor.
"So are you going to tell me you use your wrecked, burnt helmet for that?" he asked, voice slightly strained.
She was rather hoping he wouldn't notice that. "No," she said, "I just like to have that there to remind me that I'm mortal, in spite of what everyone thinks."
He shifted his weight, rolling her onto her back and fitting himself close to her, above her. His weight was solid, both achingly familiar and alien at the same time. They had never exactly had a lot of time to enjoy each other's company on the old Normandy. There had been snatched moments when no one had been looking, mostly in her Council-granted accommodation on the Citadel while the Normandy was in port, but she could count those times on one hand. Mostly they had been forced to restrict themselves to surreptitious glances and fleeting touches.
She would have been lying if she'd said she hadn't thought about exactly this, hadn't fantasised about it. Thoughts of him had been the first thing she'd reached for when she'd spent time in the shower making sure that Cerberus hadn't messed up any important wiring. After Horizon, he had been painful to think of, but she'd clung to the memories of what had once been, and snapped at Kelly when her Yeoman had tried to get her to talk about it. To have him here, now, heavy and warm and pressed against her skin, didn't seem quite real.
"I've missed you," she said, honestly, "So much."
Kaidan looked her in the eye for a long moment. She let herself enjoy the moment, even if it was clear that he was looking for something. "Come back to the Alliance," he said. "No one's going to arrest you. You're a Spectre. You only answer to the Council, and the Council decided to reinstate you."
He ran his fingers over her arm as he spoke, and she allowed herself to be distracted by the sensation, forcing the knot of tension in her stomach that had suddenly sprung up at his words to disperse. "So I'd be welcomed back with open arms?"
"I'd be lying if I said people weren't suspicious," Kaidan said, "But no one knows anything for certain. Only Anderson and he has a tendency to keep his cards close to his chest these days. And, truthfully, most of the Alliance brass isn't even sure that Cerberus exists. It's half urban legend, half conspiracy theory to them."
"Those that aren't on the Cerberus payrolls," Shepard murmured, and sighed when his hand stopped.
"Seriously?"
She shrugged awkwardly, the motion not easy while she was lying beneath him. "I don't know for sure." She raised a hand, passing it over her face. She felt tired, and for the first time in a while, she felt like falling asleep, felt relaxed and secure enough to do so. She forced herself not to let her eyes droop. This wasn't a conversation she could get out of so easily.
"I wish it was so easy," she murmured, "I wish I could just go back to the Alliance and everything would be the way it was when we were the big heroes who'd saved the Citadel. But the Council doesn't believe in the Reapers even existing, the Alliance would hang me for consorting with the enemy, however much that it wasn't exactly a choice, and the fact is that the worst is coming and no one seems to want to help."
He kissed her gently, silencing her for a moment. When he drew back, Kaidan said, "There are always options. Haven't you made a career out of figuring out the way to do things that no one else can see?"
"Oh come on," she said, "Are you honestly saying no one else would have thought about taking on an ancient machine race with nothing but a pistol and their wits?"
Kaidan shook his head minutely. "No, and that's why I love you."
His weight suddenly seemed oppressive, and even though her body temperature was noticeably higher than his, Kaidan's presence suddenly felt stifling. He'd said as much on Horizon, giving voice to thoughts she'd batted around in her own head for the few weeks after Ilos, before she'd died. Neither of them had said anything back then, and Shepard hadn't been able to bring herself to hold out hope that, after two years, those feelings would have survived. He'd surprised her, even as he put his feelings in the past tense, by saying it. But then, Kaidan had always been much freer with his history to her than she'd ever been with him.
She'd never told him about her past, although he had to know a lot of it from the news vids that had suddenly gotten made about her after she was uplifted to the hallowed rank of the Spectres. She had never told him what it was like to grow up feeling constantly hungry, always looking over your shoulder, wondering if today was the day you'd be taken out by some rival gang member looking to make a name for themselves by putting a bullet in your brain. She'd never told him how it made you calculating, suspicious of everyone, and that to survive you had to be either had to be more brutal or much cleverer than everyone else. Deep down, she thought he might think less of her. She'd never told him that, really, what did she know about love? Even parental love was an alien concept, seen more often in vids than in person. She'd imagined she'd found it with him, but she just hadn't been sure...
She opened her mouth, to say even a few of those thoughts, and found that she couldn't speak, her throat closing off before she could make a single sound.
To his credit, Kaidan didn't seem to be waiting for an answer, a return of the sentiment. He just reached up to stroke her cheek gently. Maybe he'd picked up on all the things she'd never said.
Haltingly, she said, "I've... I've lost two years."
"That's a lot of catching up still to do then," he told her.
She wanted to say something to make sure that he understood, but perhaps it wasn't necessary. Shepard sighed as he kissed her neck, just below her jaw, and then made a noise of exasperation as EDI spoke up, intruding onto the moment.
"Commander Shepard. Operative Lawson has asked me to inform you that we are holding position off the mass relay, awaiting further orders."
"EDI," Shepard said, in annoyance, "What did I tell you about calls?"
"You told me not to allow you to be disturbed for one hour. That was two hours and sixteen minutes ago."
"Hmm," she said, eyes half lidded as Kaidan's fingers and mouth continued to work their way down her body. "The galaxy held off on me that long, huh? Tell Miranda I'll be down in five minutes."
"Yes, Shepard."
That was when Kaidan's tongue pressed against her, and she threw her head back, breath hitching. "Ten minutes," she amended.
~*~
In the end it was eighteen minutes, but no one would have dared to call their commander on her poor timekeeping. Miranda just looked at her, and then at Kaidan as he emerged from the elevator behind her. Her expression was unreadable, but Shepard was pretty sure that she didn't approve. But then, Miranda seemed to possess a rather dim view of the Alliance and its soldiers.
"We're holding position off the M16 relay," she said, putting a hand on her hip as Shepard stepped up the galaxy map. For lack of anywhere better to stand, Kaidan stood at the base of the steps, by her private terminal. "Ready to jump when you are."
Unspoken was the 'we've been ready for a while'.
"I want us stealthed the moment we jump in," Shepard said, tugging a wrinkle out of the sleeve of her tunic. "Whenever you're ready, Joker."
"Aye, Commander." Joker's voice filtered through from the forward cockpit.
It was a proven fact that biotics felt the distorted mass effect fields generated by relays more strongly that non-mutated humans, but everyone felt the same sense of being flung across space, the same sensation of being stretched too thin for an instant. Returning to normal speed and mass left the odd feeling that one should be taller.
"Stealth systems are running," Tali said, from engineering.
"Confirmed," Joker said.
Shepard leaned closer to the map. "Where are we?"
The galaxy map spun on its axis and enlarged to show their current location. They were on the edge of a spiral arm, a region of space less populated by stars, towards the trailing end of the Perseus Arm.
"We have exited the mass relay on the edge of a three planet system," EDI's voice narrated the hologram shifting, filling in detail that was previously blank. The star was given no name, but instead was labelled with a number string that was probably the AI's way of adding to her database. "I am not detecting any starship activity in this region. If this is where the cruiser that attacked the batarian freighter came from, it is not here."
"Small favours," Miranda muttered, and Shepard thought she heard a huff of agreement from Kaidan's direction, but when she glanced at him, his expression was neutral.
"I am also detecting signs that there has been at least one ship travelling through this area in the recent past," EDI said.
"How so?" Kaidan asked, raising his voice. Shepard imagined that part of the reason he asked was that the technology to detect such things wasn't exactly well-used in Council space. The costs were prohibitively high. For a moment, she felt a sort of smug pride in her ship and its capabilities, even if its builders were unsavoury.
"There is a plasma trail leading away from the mass relay. The density of ionised gas would normally be far too low to detect in high-traffic areas of Citadel or Terminus space. However, without other interstellar traffic in the area, particle distribution shows a distinct increase along this line against normal background radiation." A line appeared on the hologram, clearly leading to a nearby system. "As star density is likewise low, the destination is obvious."
"They were relying on no one coming to look for them," Miranda mused, aloud.
"What about the planets in this system?" Shepard asked, frowning at the scrolling numbers that passed by too quickly for the human eye to read.
"The innermost planet has no atmosphere with surface temperatures of up to approximately five hundred Kelvin. The second is a hothouse world. I am unable to get clear readings of the surface from this distance. The third is a Jovian-type gas giant with several moons."
"Second planet would be a good bet for a hiding place," Shepard said, thoughtfully.
"That is the logical end point of the ionisation trail, if I were to extrapolate."
"Certainly wouldn't be fun flying through that soup," Joker commented. He was listening to the discussion via the internal communications. "Atmosphere's pretty acidic. It'd start chewing away at the hull pretty quickly."
"How quickly?"
EDI was the one to supply the answer. "The Normandy's hull would be able to withstand corrosive effects for prolonged periods. However, the shuttle or the Hammerhead would succumb much more quickly. I would recommend no more than thirty minutes of exposure to the atmosphere."
Shepard leant forward on the barrier separating her from the galaxy map. "Keep us on silent running, and bring us in close enough to drop a probe."
"Aye, Commander," Joker said.
~*~
"Anomaly detected."
Shepard looked at the planet floating before her, and at the flashing dot that marked a point near the southern polar region. "You couldn't be a bit more specific than 'anomaly' could you?"
"There is a detectable power source on the planet's surface, located within a mountain on the southernmost continent. While the probe's sensors cannot penetrate the mountain itself, the power signal is consistent with a low powered kinetic barrier."
"Enough to keep the atmosphere out?"
"That would be a logical conclusion to draw from the available data."
"Sounds like we should pay them a visit," Shepard said, turning away from the galaxy map and stepping down to the CIC's deck.
"You're just going to go charging in without a clear idea of what's down there?" Kaidan sounded like he was amused and trying not to show it. "You really haven't changed that much, have you?"
"Commander Shepard knows what she's doing," Miranda declared, hotly, folding her arms and glowering across the space between them.
Shepard stopped half a step from Kaidan, close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. She held his gaze as she slapped a key on her terminal. "Garrus. Get your prettiest armour and shiniest gun out. We're going dancing."
"Sounds like fun, Shepard. I'll be ready in five."
Shepard raised her chin slightly, not breaking eye contact. "Feel like coming groundside with me? For old time's sake?" Trust me enough to follow my orders?
For a long moment, he didn't say anything, and Shepard felt something tighten in her gut. Then Kaidan gave her a small, almost invisible smile. "Don't I get a shiny gun?"
Shepard's innards uncoiled and she looked behind him to the armoury. "Jacob'll get you set up. Tell him what you need."
"Yes, ma'am," Kaidan said, his smile broadening into a grin that, for a moment, took Shepard right back to the original Normandy, when she had told him he was on her ground team, and he'd flashed the same pleased expression.
"I want to join the team," Miranda said, pulling Shepard's attention away from Kaidan as he walked away.
Shepard wasn't sure when exactly Miranda had acquired a death wish, but she was getting tired of it. She turned, and offered her a sceptical expression. "Is that so?"
"Yes."
"Tough. You're going to be in command while I'm below."
Miranda hesitated, obviously surprised. Shepard usually let Joker and EDI run the ship in her absence. "I... I think my talents would be better put to use assisting you," she said.
"Really?" Shepard stepped close and looked Miranda in the eye. "How's your head? Think you can manage biotics yet?"
Miranda grimaced and said nothing. Shepard just nodded sharply.
"You're in command, Miranda. Don't break my ship. I just got it fixed."
~*~
Part Twelve
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
~*~
Eleven: Unexplored Depths
~*~
Shepard's quarters were a mess. In fairness, they hadn't been when she and Kaidan had entered, and she would have been hard pressed to pinpoint the moment where her room had transitioned from tidy to 'bomb site', but she honestly didn't care. The sheets were tangled around their ankles somewhere, the environmental controls set a little higher to keep them comfortable while naked, and she felt more relaxed than she had in days. She wasn't totally at ease; all the worries and problems she had were still there, but they seemed distant, less important, their edge dulled by the endorphins buzzing about her system.
Kaidan lay on his back next to her, his attention momentarily taken up by the Prothean relic in his hands. It had been knocked to the floor during their exertions, and Kaidan had noticed it glinting in the low light when they had paused to catch their breath. Shepard ran a hand absently through damp hair as she watched him awkwardly attempt to pick it up. She knew from experience that it was like trying to hold a soap bubble.
"What is this?" he asked, as he moved his hands around the silver sphere. No matter where he moved his fingers, the sphere stayed the same distance away from him, rolling and contorting in the air.
"It's Prothean," she said, idly, and reached over to poke the skin of the relic. It flexed in response. "No idea what it does."
Kaidan eyed the orb with distinct alarm. He looked like he wanted to drop it but wasn't convinced it wouldn't explode if he did. "And you use it as a paperweight?"
"Don't be silly," she told him, "It hovers. Can't hold anything down."
Kaidan, very carefully, set it back on the floor.
"So are you going to tell me you use your wrecked, burnt helmet for that?" he asked, voice slightly strained.
She was rather hoping he wouldn't notice that. "No," she said, "I just like to have that there to remind me that I'm mortal, in spite of what everyone thinks."
He shifted his weight, rolling her onto her back and fitting himself close to her, above her. His weight was solid, both achingly familiar and alien at the same time. They had never exactly had a lot of time to enjoy each other's company on the old Normandy. There had been snatched moments when no one had been looking, mostly in her Council-granted accommodation on the Citadel while the Normandy was in port, but she could count those times on one hand. Mostly they had been forced to restrict themselves to surreptitious glances and fleeting touches.
She would have been lying if she'd said she hadn't thought about exactly this, hadn't fantasised about it. Thoughts of him had been the first thing she'd reached for when she'd spent time in the shower making sure that Cerberus hadn't messed up any important wiring. After Horizon, he had been painful to think of, but she'd clung to the memories of what had once been, and snapped at Kelly when her Yeoman had tried to get her to talk about it. To have him here, now, heavy and warm and pressed against her skin, didn't seem quite real.
"I've missed you," she said, honestly, "So much."
Kaidan looked her in the eye for a long moment. She let herself enjoy the moment, even if it was clear that he was looking for something. "Come back to the Alliance," he said. "No one's going to arrest you. You're a Spectre. You only answer to the Council, and the Council decided to reinstate you."
He ran his fingers over her arm as he spoke, and she allowed herself to be distracted by the sensation, forcing the knot of tension in her stomach that had suddenly sprung up at his words to disperse. "So I'd be welcomed back with open arms?"
"I'd be lying if I said people weren't suspicious," Kaidan said, "But no one knows anything for certain. Only Anderson and he has a tendency to keep his cards close to his chest these days. And, truthfully, most of the Alliance brass isn't even sure that Cerberus exists. It's half urban legend, half conspiracy theory to them."
"Those that aren't on the Cerberus payrolls," Shepard murmured, and sighed when his hand stopped.
"Seriously?"
She shrugged awkwardly, the motion not easy while she was lying beneath him. "I don't know for sure." She raised a hand, passing it over her face. She felt tired, and for the first time in a while, she felt like falling asleep, felt relaxed and secure enough to do so. She forced herself not to let her eyes droop. This wasn't a conversation she could get out of so easily.
"I wish it was so easy," she murmured, "I wish I could just go back to the Alliance and everything would be the way it was when we were the big heroes who'd saved the Citadel. But the Council doesn't believe in the Reapers even existing, the Alliance would hang me for consorting with the enemy, however much that it wasn't exactly a choice, and the fact is that the worst is coming and no one seems to want to help."
He kissed her gently, silencing her for a moment. When he drew back, Kaidan said, "There are always options. Haven't you made a career out of figuring out the way to do things that no one else can see?"
"Oh come on," she said, "Are you honestly saying no one else would have thought about taking on an ancient machine race with nothing but a pistol and their wits?"
Kaidan shook his head minutely. "No, and that's why I love you."
His weight suddenly seemed oppressive, and even though her body temperature was noticeably higher than his, Kaidan's presence suddenly felt stifling. He'd said as much on Horizon, giving voice to thoughts she'd batted around in her own head for the few weeks after Ilos, before she'd died. Neither of them had said anything back then, and Shepard hadn't been able to bring herself to hold out hope that, after two years, those feelings would have survived. He'd surprised her, even as he put his feelings in the past tense, by saying it. But then, Kaidan had always been much freer with his history to her than she'd ever been with him.
She'd never told him about her past, although he had to know a lot of it from the news vids that had suddenly gotten made about her after she was uplifted to the hallowed rank of the Spectres. She had never told him what it was like to grow up feeling constantly hungry, always looking over your shoulder, wondering if today was the day you'd be taken out by some rival gang member looking to make a name for themselves by putting a bullet in your brain. She'd never told him how it made you calculating, suspicious of everyone, and that to survive you had to be either had to be more brutal or much cleverer than everyone else. Deep down, she thought he might think less of her. She'd never told him that, really, what did she know about love? Even parental love was an alien concept, seen more often in vids than in person. She'd imagined she'd found it with him, but she just hadn't been sure...
She opened her mouth, to say even a few of those thoughts, and found that she couldn't speak, her throat closing off before she could make a single sound.
To his credit, Kaidan didn't seem to be waiting for an answer, a return of the sentiment. He just reached up to stroke her cheek gently. Maybe he'd picked up on all the things she'd never said.
Haltingly, she said, "I've... I've lost two years."
"That's a lot of catching up still to do then," he told her.
She wanted to say something to make sure that he understood, but perhaps it wasn't necessary. Shepard sighed as he kissed her neck, just below her jaw, and then made a noise of exasperation as EDI spoke up, intruding onto the moment.
"Commander Shepard. Operative Lawson has asked me to inform you that we are holding position off the mass relay, awaiting further orders."
"EDI," Shepard said, in annoyance, "What did I tell you about calls?"
"You told me not to allow you to be disturbed for one hour. That was two hours and sixteen minutes ago."
"Hmm," she said, eyes half lidded as Kaidan's fingers and mouth continued to work their way down her body. "The galaxy held off on me that long, huh? Tell Miranda I'll be down in five minutes."
"Yes, Shepard."
That was when Kaidan's tongue pressed against her, and she threw her head back, breath hitching. "Ten minutes," she amended.
~*~
In the end it was eighteen minutes, but no one would have dared to call their commander on her poor timekeeping. Miranda just looked at her, and then at Kaidan as he emerged from the elevator behind her. Her expression was unreadable, but Shepard was pretty sure that she didn't approve. But then, Miranda seemed to possess a rather dim view of the Alliance and its soldiers.
"We're holding position off the M16 relay," she said, putting a hand on her hip as Shepard stepped up the galaxy map. For lack of anywhere better to stand, Kaidan stood at the base of the steps, by her private terminal. "Ready to jump when you are."
Unspoken was the 'we've been ready for a while'.
"I want us stealthed the moment we jump in," Shepard said, tugging a wrinkle out of the sleeve of her tunic. "Whenever you're ready, Joker."
"Aye, Commander." Joker's voice filtered through from the forward cockpit.
It was a proven fact that biotics felt the distorted mass effect fields generated by relays more strongly that non-mutated humans, but everyone felt the same sense of being flung across space, the same sensation of being stretched too thin for an instant. Returning to normal speed and mass left the odd feeling that one should be taller.
"Stealth systems are running," Tali said, from engineering.
"Confirmed," Joker said.
Shepard leaned closer to the map. "Where are we?"
The galaxy map spun on its axis and enlarged to show their current location. They were on the edge of a spiral arm, a region of space less populated by stars, towards the trailing end of the Perseus Arm.
"We have exited the mass relay on the edge of a three planet system," EDI's voice narrated the hologram shifting, filling in detail that was previously blank. The star was given no name, but instead was labelled with a number string that was probably the AI's way of adding to her database. "I am not detecting any starship activity in this region. If this is where the cruiser that attacked the batarian freighter came from, it is not here."
"Small favours," Miranda muttered, and Shepard thought she heard a huff of agreement from Kaidan's direction, but when she glanced at him, his expression was neutral.
"I am also detecting signs that there has been at least one ship travelling through this area in the recent past," EDI said.
"How so?" Kaidan asked, raising his voice. Shepard imagined that part of the reason he asked was that the technology to detect such things wasn't exactly well-used in Council space. The costs were prohibitively high. For a moment, she felt a sort of smug pride in her ship and its capabilities, even if its builders were unsavoury.
"There is a plasma trail leading away from the mass relay. The density of ionised gas would normally be far too low to detect in high-traffic areas of Citadel or Terminus space. However, without other interstellar traffic in the area, particle distribution shows a distinct increase along this line against normal background radiation." A line appeared on the hologram, clearly leading to a nearby system. "As star density is likewise low, the destination is obvious."
"They were relying on no one coming to look for them," Miranda mused, aloud.
"What about the planets in this system?" Shepard asked, frowning at the scrolling numbers that passed by too quickly for the human eye to read.
"The innermost planet has no atmosphere with surface temperatures of up to approximately five hundred Kelvin. The second is a hothouse world. I am unable to get clear readings of the surface from this distance. The third is a Jovian-type gas giant with several moons."
"Second planet would be a good bet for a hiding place," Shepard said, thoughtfully.
"That is the logical end point of the ionisation trail, if I were to extrapolate."
"Certainly wouldn't be fun flying through that soup," Joker commented. He was listening to the discussion via the internal communications. "Atmosphere's pretty acidic. It'd start chewing away at the hull pretty quickly."
"How quickly?"
EDI was the one to supply the answer. "The Normandy's hull would be able to withstand corrosive effects for prolonged periods. However, the shuttle or the Hammerhead would succumb much more quickly. I would recommend no more than thirty minutes of exposure to the atmosphere."
Shepard leant forward on the barrier separating her from the galaxy map. "Keep us on silent running, and bring us in close enough to drop a probe."
"Aye, Commander," Joker said.
~*~
"Anomaly detected."
Shepard looked at the planet floating before her, and at the flashing dot that marked a point near the southern polar region. "You couldn't be a bit more specific than 'anomaly' could you?"
"There is a detectable power source on the planet's surface, located within a mountain on the southernmost continent. While the probe's sensors cannot penetrate the mountain itself, the power signal is consistent with a low powered kinetic barrier."
"Enough to keep the atmosphere out?"
"That would be a logical conclusion to draw from the available data."
"Sounds like we should pay them a visit," Shepard said, turning away from the galaxy map and stepping down to the CIC's deck.
"You're just going to go charging in without a clear idea of what's down there?" Kaidan sounded like he was amused and trying not to show it. "You really haven't changed that much, have you?"
"Commander Shepard knows what she's doing," Miranda declared, hotly, folding her arms and glowering across the space between them.
Shepard stopped half a step from Kaidan, close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. She held his gaze as she slapped a key on her terminal. "Garrus. Get your prettiest armour and shiniest gun out. We're going dancing."
"Sounds like fun, Shepard. I'll be ready in five."
Shepard raised her chin slightly, not breaking eye contact. "Feel like coming groundside with me? For old time's sake?" Trust me enough to follow my orders?
For a long moment, he didn't say anything, and Shepard felt something tighten in her gut. Then Kaidan gave her a small, almost invisible smile. "Don't I get a shiny gun?"
Shepard's innards uncoiled and she looked behind him to the armoury. "Jacob'll get you set up. Tell him what you need."
"Yes, ma'am," Kaidan said, his smile broadening into a grin that, for a moment, took Shepard right back to the original Normandy, when she had told him he was on her ground team, and he'd flashed the same pleased expression.
"I want to join the team," Miranda said, pulling Shepard's attention away from Kaidan as he walked away.
Shepard wasn't sure when exactly Miranda had acquired a death wish, but she was getting tired of it. She turned, and offered her a sceptical expression. "Is that so?"
"Yes."
"Tough. You're going to be in command while I'm below."
Miranda hesitated, obviously surprised. Shepard usually let Joker and EDI run the ship in her absence. "I... I think my talents would be better put to use assisting you," she said.
"Really?" Shepard stepped close and looked Miranda in the eye. "How's your head? Think you can manage biotics yet?"
Miranda grimaced and said nothing. Shepard just nodded sharply.
"You're in command, Miranda. Don't break my ship. I just got it fixed."
~*~
Part Twelve