Shepard did not turn. Did not shift his stance. Did not answer the junior's report.
"Where were you born, cor-po-ral?" the officer's lips spat.
"On Eden Prime, sir! The frigate is headed there, sir!" Jenkins didn't even try to step beyond the bounds of regulations and ask directly what had happened and why he was being called in.
"Want to fight, cor-po-ral?" There was threat in Shepard's voice. Jenkins caught it.
"Yes, sir! We've been in space for two weeks, sir! And I'm assigned to the landing team, sir! I'm not a flier, sir!" Jenkins desperately tried to understand what this captain wanted from him. He already knew that Captain John Shepard—the newly appointed executive officer of the Normandy—was the Hero of Akuze, that he had survived, that he was N7.
He knew a lot about Shepard now. What the higher-ups and the chain of command had allowed him to know.
But the Shepard in front of him now was different. Jenkins had never seen the landing team captain like this. And now he was ready to pray to God—no, not just one God: to every thinkable and unthinkable God—to pray that he would never have to see him like this again.
"Assigned?! That's exactly the word, cor-po-ral. Assigned. But I, your commander, need you not only assigned. I need you a Marine. What task did your previous commander give you?" There were notes in Shepard's voice that left Jenkins no room to delay his report.
"Report aboard the Marine frigate Cape Town, sir! Fifteen thirty hours, three weeks ago, sir! To the disposition of Lieutenant Velland, sir!"
"And why do I, the landing team commander of the frigate Normandy, find you aboard another ship a week after the Cape Town left on deployment, cor-po-ral?"
As Shepard filtered those words out, Jenkins felt more than once that the captain would turn around any second—and that would be the last thing Richard ever saw in his life.
"Late, sir!"
"Late?! You, a Systems Alliance Navy Marine corporal?! Late?!" There was no surprise in Shepard's voice, no astonishment. The tone was flat and clear.
"Yes, sir!" Jenkins had no idea what else he was supposed to answer.
The lounge's half-darkness began to frighten him outright. The blackness of space, barely lit by stars, pressed down like a terrible, dead grief.
"Main motto of Earth's Marine forces. Now. Clear. Separated," Shepard ordered.
"At any time! In any place! Any mission! Execute! Exactly! Completely! On time! And no! Other way!" With each word, shouted more and more loudly, Jenkins felt something happening to him.
The bravado drained away. The boasting hid somewhere. The ease and carefree perception slipped off into nothing. Jenkins saw that Shepard did not turn, did not react in any way to the familiar words.
"Now you, cor-po-ral. Go to the cargo hold and spend the two hours left until lunch. With full effort. The rapid weapons-handling drill. Exe-cute," the captain spat, not changing his pose.
"Aye, sir!" Jenkins pivoted on instinct and bolted out of the lounge.
Shepard did not turn. He knew Jenkins, running, had even forgotten to close the lounge door. He knew what would happen to the corporal in those two hours of work at the limit of his current ability.
He would become different. And he would stay alive…
If Jenkins was simple, then Lieutenant Alenko… was much more complicated. Kaidan was a biotic burdened with artificial profile implants.
Not a particularly successful model. The L2. Made of several interconnected components.
Kaidan flatly refused to replace those biotic implants with a more advanced model—the L3.
And now Shepard, still holding the same pose by the viewing port, was examining Lieutenant Alenko's implant on the screen of his consciousness.
A standard, now outdated model, without any "extras." Producing hellish migraines in Kaidan, as the carrier of that model.
Lines of recommendations for suppressing the migraines—the main sign of incompatibility between implant and carrier—assembled into a separate "field" in the special forces captain's mind, next to a clear, detailed image of the implant.
Shepard read those lines, rotating the implant in his mind this way and that. He did not think about why that display had surfaced in his consciousness, or why unknown forces had suddenly supplied him—a Marine, an N7—with such detailed, complete information about this implant and its carrier. In the past, such data would have been available only to the narrowest specialists: medics and techs.
If it's needed, it's needed. And now this information was available to him. For a decision. Shepard felt himself calm a little; the sharpness dulled. The wire-taut tension in body and soul was no longer so absolute.
A wire? Why not. Maybe if this state returned, it could be called the Wire. It was typical for a human—and, as it turned out, not only for a human—to slap a label on something quickly. Often just not to get lost in the abundance of information about the world.
And now the XO felt that, from a recent moment onward, he would always have more than enough information. Far more than an average sentient organic. That was what had changed in him.
And if he had changed so substantially… then the world around him had changed no less substantially as well. Only because the Veil had moved closer not only to him—an Earthborn human, a special forces officer. It had moved closer to all sentient organics.
And if now he, with these significant capabilities, still could not help all other sentient organics—they would have to strain themselves not to die.
But some sentient organics he could help significantly.
And first of all—the crew of the prototype frigate Normandy.
He knew that Lieutenant Alenko felt someone's gaze on him, but could not determine who it belonged to. Besides him—formally the ship's second pilot—and the professional first pilot sitting beside him, Lieutenant Jeff Moreau, there was no one else in the cockpit.
As for non-humans, the only one aboard was the turian Spectre Nihlus Kryik. But he hadn't shown up in the cockpit for the last few hours.
Right now Shepard didn't care where that bird-faced bastard was. He didn't want to use either his standard tools or these new capabilities to find out.
Officer Alenko sat in his chair in the cockpit. By the duty roster he was the ship's second pilot. Though he had no special authority and no special qualification. Shepard knew that for a fact.
John had already managed to recall everything he had ever read in the documents characterizing this lieutenant. A functionary. A staff type. A formalist. Incapable of combat work at the limit. Unable to lead effectively anyone—least of all himself. A biotic who didn't know what real combat biotics were. Quickly burning out, unable to meter his strikes with machine-like precision to achieve maximum results.
All of that was a consequence of using an ancient, low-quality, outdated model of biotic implant.
If they had given him, Captain Shepard, these two as subordinates, then he would force the lieutenant to change. For the better. At least so that this kid of an officer would simply survive what would begin in two days. Less than two days. Prewar time wasn't likely to last any longer. In Shepard's understanding, only two days remained. Forty-eight Earth hours.
Shepard read the recommendations glowing on the screen of his consciousness. Read them without paying any attention to the fact that, even with the rank of N7, he had no business having access to these recommendations at all. They were the purview of a team of extremely narrow specialists—people he, a Marine officer, was in no way part of. He read, while simultaneously inspecting the implant and its connections to this particular human body with picky, focused attention. He read, assembling a command sequence.
At last the captain made his decision. The command sequence was launched.
Now Alenko knew that the gaze was no accident. But still didn't know who it belonged to.
Too late to look for the source. Too late.
Lieutenant Alenko's hands, resting calmly on the armrests until the moment the sequence activated, dug into the padding with every finger, taking the brunt of the horrifying nervous strain that locked the young officer's body in something like stasis.
Everything happened too fast. Too fast even for Jeff Moreau—sitting in the first pilot's chair and, essentially, the only truly sane, professionally trained pilot on the frigate—to notice that something nonstandard was happening in his cockpit.
At last the "stasis" cocoon released Alenko, but the man didn't slump in his chair. He resumed a normal posture, giving no sign of post-stress collapse.
Shepard didn't feel like smirking. The captain barely had time to think that if Systems Alliance Navy bureaucrats had decided to load the landing team commander down with the executive officer's job too, then they had no idea what airlock—and to what—they had just opened.
Third on Shepard's list for "explanatory and corrective work" was the pilot Jeff Moreau. Shepard flicked through his service record on the screen of his consciousness out of habit.
A colorful character. Stole the Normandy during flight testing and pulled stunts in it that… for three straight weeks had every officer on three Alliance bases—from platoon commander on up—shaking with fear over the consequences. Everyone who had anything at all to do with Lieutenant Moreau and his little stunt.
And in the military, everyone wearing rank insignia on their shoulders has something to do with stunts like that. Even those uninvolved. Even those not guilty. Because when there's no one specific to punish, you punish everyone.
"Settling into the role of executive officer?" came a calm, everyday voice from behind Shepard—Captain Anderson's.
After finishing with Alenko and Jenkins. Though almost any sentient organic would have had trouble forcing themselves even to try to understand what kind of work the new executive officer—and simultaneously the prototype frigate's landing team commander—had just done with his colleagues.
After finishing, Shepard used his new capabilities—he had to start mastering what he'd been given, or rather, what he now had at his disposal—and began familiarizing himself with the materials. The kind that could be called "information for reflection"…
Those reflections were already difficult and complex even for him, a first-rate special forces officer. They killed any desire to count himself—human, Earthborn, male—as any kind of "perfection."
Right now Shepard himself might not have understood what information he'd drawn from and from where: not only his conscious mind was working at full power, but his subconscious as well. The latter—even more so.
Some things Shepard already understood. And that understanding was even more bitter.
The frigate captain's appearance in the lounge didn't interrupt the process of receiving and processing information for even a second. As the XO realized, he had to parallelize—and he managed it without much strain and without the problems he'd expected.
"Yes, sir." Shepard pivoted in place and snapped to attention before the ship's senior officer. His commanding officer.
Only now did the captain clearly remember that the lounge door had never been locked.
And even if he had locked it, the Normandy's commanding officer had more than enough ways to open any compartment and any container aboard his ship.
"Decided to make Jenkins sweat?" Anderson kept asking, watching the executive officer with interest.
Shepard had no doubt that the ship's captain could sense the changes that had happened to him.
"Yes, sir." Shepard agonized over whether he should say anything right now, or whether this explanation could be postponed.
At last he decided:
"Permission, sir, to speak frankly."
"You're my executive officer. So you shouldn't be asking permission for that. I don't like misunderstandings with the officers who make up a ship's command cadre," Anderson replied, gesturing for his junior colleague to sit on the fold-down seat while taking the other seat beside it. "Go on, Captain."
"I've been put in a situation where I'll have to combine two jobs," the XO said after a few seconds of silence. "It doesn't scare me. I was trained for it. I learned it."
Shepard noted that the lounge door was now securely closed and the lock hologram glowed red. Meaning the frigate captain had already expected something like this conversation.
That pleased him.
"I was trained more as a Marine, of course," Shepard continued. "And I know that the executive officer carries most of the practical work with the ship and crew. I also know, sir, that testing the stealth system is a cover story. In reality, we're heading to Eden Prime for an entirely different reason."
"And you, Shepard, can name that reason?" Anderson asked calmly.
"Yes, Commander." Shepard did without the formal protocol address for the senior officer aboard ship. "Having assumed the executive officer's status, I have no right not to know the reason. And I can't help understanding what lies behind it. But I won't say it out loud. Not the time and not the place," he emphasized. "By my preliminary calculations, less than two days remain until we reach orbit over Eden Prime. Commander, why isn't the Alliance Fleet monitoring Eden Prime and the space around it if our frigate is headed there? We're reconnaissance."
"You're right. We're reconnaissance. And Eden Prime is a human agricultural colony. And if we're being honest, it's one of the most valuable ones for humanity. You know perfectly well, Shepard, that protocol forbids the Alliance Fleet from 'hanging' military surveillance satellites over the orbit of a purely civilian planet."
"Commander, when did the last situation report from the planet come in?" Captain Shepard asked, keeping his calm and detachment in both posture and voice.
"Half an hour ago. When I was coming to you, I reviewed it again," Anderson answered. "No changes. And, by the way—what changes are you expecting, Captain?" He looked at the XO carefully.
"Big changes, Commander," Shepard answered. "The agricultural planet Eden Prime is listed in every catalog as a planet with Prothean ruins. All kinds. Even ones archaeologists haven't reached yet."
"About the ruins—I agree. And I even see where you're going, Captain," Anderson said quietly.
"Permission to use the Alliance network, Commander? I want to show you something. Using both military and civilian network resources."
"Granted." Anderson tapped his omni-tool, ran his fingers over the virtual keyboard, and gave the ship's VI a command…