The soothing hum of the core reached Captain Shepard's ears as he stood by the viewing port in the small lounge.
The frigate Normandy, which Alliance staffers had ordered the officer to report to several days ago, was cutting through the blackness of space.
Shepard had been trying for several minutes to understand why he disliked literally everything happening around him.
Those people moving like somnambulists, trading around some primitive datapads, dressed in identical uniforms and trying to maintain proper hierarchy. Those conversations over a poorly secured channel—between humanity's ambassador to the Citadel, Udina, and the frigate's captain, Anderson. Those desperate—and, most of all, numerous and constant—attempts to pass wishful thinking off as reality. That growing sense of doom in the face of an unknown future that, somehow, looked like it would last.
Landing team commander…
There were twelve military police lugs here. Twelve. Lugs. Under his direct command, the captain had only two who were even remotely workable: Corporal Jenkins and Lieutenant Alenko.
That's it. They hadn't given him anyone else, stuffing every open berth with cops. All of them. Cops.
Who had no idea what they were supposed to be guarding on a long flight. Two lugs at the comm station. One at each of the two entrances to the ship's main ladderwell. Two lugs at the main airlock. Someone even had the bright idea to post two by the main battery. Two were shoved by the medbay. What, exactly, were two military police sergeants supposed to guard in the medbay? Sergeants who—by actual standing—were two. Two levels higher than what ranks meant in a regular army?! Sergeants by insignia alone, while first lieutenants went rigid at attention in front of them, hardly breathing. Two MP lugs were posted outside the captain's cabin. The first after God on this particular Systems Alliance Navy frigate.
And to him, the landing team commander, they handed, for direct subordinates, a biotic lieutenant whose only program still functioning properly under constant migraines was "I serve the Alliance, sir!" And a half-trained corporal Jenkins, whose adolescent maximalism hadn't worn off yet—and, as it now seemed to Shepard, had no intention of wearing off at all.
Both "assets"…
They were exactly the kind of base-dwellers even a squad leader would run from harder than the monthly sixty-kilometer run in full kit with orders to survive under threat of orbital strike.
No one wanted to take responsibility for an "L2" carrier—a migraine-riddled lieutenant who could fly off the rails at any moment and glowed brighter and scarier than a portable shipboard decontamination lamp. And certainly not for a boy whose Alliance corporal uniform still showed the outline of short suspenders and, practically, no shirt at all. A frivolous little checked one. With short sleeves.
Shepard was slowly, like floodwater rising, going feral. Him—specialist academy graduate, who had clawed and bled his way to the highest badge that mattered, N7—they ordered him to take command of a landing team on a ship that could not, by definition, be a real warship.
Schematics of the Normandy slid across Shepard's mind's eye. A turian screwjob like that… he could not have expected. Not in principle.
For an operation carried out so successfully to hoodwink—there was no other word he could allow himself right now—to hoodwink Alliance people with power and influence… every sentient organic in the Turian Hierarchy's psychological warfare directorate deserved the Star of Terra. No less. There was no point settling for anything smaller.
A frigate fitted with a stealth system that became worthless if the enemy had ancient but good optical instruments and scanners aboard their ship. And harmful if any opponent of the frigate had simple, familiar portholes in their hull plating.
To swaddle humanity's spaceborne armed forces like that. Swaddle them—in the dry, abrasive lines of a Treaty, "pressed out" through months of wrangling.
A not-quite-frigate, not-quite-destroyer, not-quite-dreadnought, not-quite-battleship, not-quite-monitor. "Gifts" from advanced species to a neighbor that had suddenly "pecked through" the bluish haze of an active zone around a forbidden mass relay.
Very peculiar "gifts." More like Trojan offerings.
Shepard felt the air around him in the small lounge thicken—growing more viscous with every second.
Somewhere at the far edges of his mind, an inner voice—maybe even his own—was screaming that what was happening to him right now was utterly inhuman. That this state, this behavior, was not for a human. Not for an officer. Not for an N7. Somewhere at the far edges…
Shepard didn't pay attention to the screaming. Where was the frigate going? Eden Prime? Why? To test the pseudo-invisibility system? Why test it this far out? Take the frigate out to Luna and test it all you want.
Any sentient being with enough sense and the necessary equipment would see perfectly clearly a frigate desperately trying to become invisible. And none of those outside observers would even curl their lip in a smirk. Because that's how it has to be. And who it has to be for is none of their business. Live, exist, breathe through two holes—and don't twitch…
Shepard's gaze slid over the sparkling scatter of stars beyond the thick glass of the viewing port. Two days remained until arrival. Two days.
And his fingers—both hands—were already cramping into spasms. So hard that from the pain he almost howled out loud. Because he knew.
He knew that until the war with the synthetics there were only those two pathetic human twenty-four-hour days left. Knew what polished uncles in admiral's uniforms were afraid to believe. Imagining themselves brilliant strategists—yet guaranteed to faint if a holo-projector suddenly died in their living room.
Knew what could deliver an instant stroke and heart attack "in one package" to any admiral's wife for whom fifteen-centimeter heels on regulation designer pumps had become more familiar than standard-issue combat boots.
Knew what was a death sentence for most inhabitants of all human colonies. Painfully built on barely settled, barely legally secured planets that, on paper, belonged to Earth and therefore to humanity.
Knew what was a burial shroud for thousands of eighteen-year-old boys who had put on Systems Alliance Navy uniforms. Not much younger than Jenkins.
They would burn in those "tin cans." Proudly called cutters, fighters, frigates, cruisers, dreadnoughts. They would burn in tight gun-system booths, stations, and compartments. They would burn in drop pods. They. They. They. Burn and die, not even trying to survive—just trying to understand, to comprehend… if not accept… accept the Fact.
The fact of contact. The fact of contact with a machine intelligence. For which. Any. Sentient organic is only an enemy. Only a target. Only an opponent to be physically destroyed.
One thought hammered in the mind of the landing team commander as he went feral. Hammered like a bell. Not the frantic fire-alarm kind. The kind that scrapes down your spine like a rasp. One thought: "We. Were not. Taught. To fight. Machines."
And that thought stank of bitterness. The kind that twists every facial muscle into a terrible grimace. A grimace that promised rage. The rage of a sentient being driven into a corner. Ready to tear off the mask of Civilization—and show the enemy another. A second mask. The mask of the Beast.
Shepard's fingers clenched into sledgehammer fists. Fists that could stop a sumo wrestler frozen on the low start. Two wrestlers. Three. Five. Stop them dead. In a fraction of a second.
"N7." The best. Super-soldiers. "At any time. In any place. Any mission. Execute. Exactly. Completely. On time. And no. Other way."
Shepard felt his shoulders silently spread under the uniform jacket. Muscles tightened. Shoulder blades tried to draw together, clamping his spine in a vise. His neck stiffened, straightening into a strict vertical ninety degrees. His chin took the position of a bulldozer blade, promising nothing good for whatever stood in front of him. Facial muscles loosened, just barely, letting his jaws leave a few millimeters of space between his teeth. A few. Millimeters.
Boot heels clicked together. His toes took the regulation angle automatically. Legs straightened fully, lifting the body to its maximum height. His stomach tightened by habit, rib cage expanded, letting the lungs pull in a bit more air. Arms fell along his sides, catching the invisible "lines" of the seams and becoming one with them.
Far in the corner of his mind, a beacon blinked a single code: "Not human." "Not human." "Not human." And Shepard, drawn upright like a wire before the viewing port, did not hurry. Did not hurry to enter exhausting, unnecessary, harmful debates with that beacon. He knew. Knew one thing: "To. Defeat. A machine. You have. To give. Everything. In the shortest time."
If any of the Normandy crew saw John Shepard now—twenty-eight years old, an orphan who had joined the Alliance immediately after his eighteenth birthday… they would have been stunned. The figure standing before the lounge's wall-wide viewing port was nothing like the frigate's previous landing team commander.
It radiated hurricane force and the power of a mudslide, the inevitability of a storm and the grave-darkness of a crypt. But the worst thing came from the captain's face—motionless, fixed like a shaman mask. The whites of a human's eyes glowed, sparkling with thousands of sparks. And the pupils, in their blackness and depth, easily left behind the eyes of asari and drell.
Against the force coming from those eyes and spreading several meters, there was no standing firm. Only obedience. With maximum precision, speed, and completeness.
Right now the captain's face did not need to part tightly pressed lips. Words were not required.
A turn of John's head in these minutes could already crush the walls of a sea container standing far below, in the frigate's cargo hold, into dust. And if a turn of the head were joined by a movement of the eyes… the container would simply cease to exist as a physical object. Instantly. With any contents. With all contents.
It was precisely in that container that they planned to imprison the thing the frigate Normandy was heading to Eden Prime for.
A display flared and unfolded in Shepard's mind. Ship status. Weapons status. Crew status. Course and remaining distance. The ship's position—within the Milky Way and within the current star system. An avalanche of data.
The captain stood motionless, absorbing it, processing it, sorting it. Ten percent, you say?! Twenty?! Thirty?! Forty percent brain power, you say, works in an average sentient human?! How about eighty?! How about a hundred?! How about multiplicity?!
To him—the landing team commander. N7. An Alliance captain. Some polished colonel from division HQ had not handed a proper order on a formal datapad, but a scrap. A datapad with three lines of text. A specimen of clerical detachment from real life. Assume the duty of executive officer of the frigate Normandy.
That colonel hadn't even understood what he'd passed along. In what form. And with what consequences. That kind of contempt for proper order formatting was only acceptable in wartime. And if that contempt was allowed—then war was already underway. And he, John Shepard, was not simply serving in the Systems Alliance Navy. He. Was. At. War…
"Corporal Jenkins, report to the port-side lounge. To Captain Shepard," the lips of the landing team commander spat, barely parting.
His head did not turn. Only the lips moved. And the thing in a human body that produced a voice for an order that had to be obeyed instantly.
The speaker didn't fail. The microphone activated in time. The system, obeying its automation, received the sound vibrations, stripped the noise, and sent it into the transmitter circuits. And the transmitter dumped it to broadcast. Quickly. Almost instantly. For a human. Not for an automaton.
In his mind's eye, on the display of his consciousness, Shepard saw Jenkins freeze mid-conversation with the ship's doctor, Major Karin Chakwas. Saw him straighten, abruptly fall silent, cutting off his sentence halfway through, adjust his beret, salute the ship's senior medical officer. Saw him pivot crisply to the right and, passing even the MP sergeant who did not bother to leave his relaxed stance, march up the ladder to the crew deck.
The footsteps of Jenkins, carefully stamping his pace, drew closer, almost breaking into a run as he neared his destination. At last the corporal froze on the lounge threshold.
"Corporal Jenkins, sir! Reporting as ordered, sir!" the arrival snapped out.
Only then did he realize something in the lounge had changed. And the center of that change was directly in front of him. Captain John Shepard. The frigate's landing team commander. His immediate commanding officer.