Bigbang Fic: You Can't Always Get What You Want

[infelixsoror]

Title: You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Summary: After giving the N7s years of good service, all Shepard wants is to be allowed to retire in peace. She’s not convinced that a dozen N7 cadets, a smartarse pilot, old rivalries and the odd assassination are really the same thing at all.
Fandom: Mass Effect
Characters/pairings: Joker, Shepard
Rating: Teen
Word count: 16000
Warnings: Death, violence, some swearing, mild spoilers and shameless reinterpretation of canon.
Author's Notes: Written for The Bioware Bigbang

Art by the amazing and lovely regeener, who also helped me a great deal with the story as well!



xxx
Joker had been waiting outside Admiral Ahern’s office for a good twenty minutes, getting twitchier by the second. Switching ship this suddenly, never a good sign. Could mean something more interesting than the troop drops he’d been doing for the last two months. Bloody waste of his talent, runs that simple. But something this secretive could be... complicated. Or illegal. Not that it was illegal if he was ordered to do it, at least he hoped it wasn’t, but still. This was going to get complicated.

A woman in full combat-armour, minus weapons, settled down on the bench next to Joker, dropping a standard-issue personal crate by her feet. The helmet balanced on her knees had the N7 insignia, as did her armour, and the scars on her face spoke for serious combat experience. She didn’t look at Joker, aside from one quick glance that dismissed him as any sort of threat.

Yeah. This was going to be painfully complicated.

The Admiral’s aide looked up from his desk. “Shepard, why is the turian commander trying to reach the Admiral?”

“How should I know? I only just arrived.”

The aide gave Shepard a disapproving look. “Because you’re named explicitly in the message.”

Joker was fairly certain that Shepard’s response would have been very interesting and somewhat likely to lead to a dishonourable discharge, but the Admiral appeared at that moment. He didn’t look any happier to see the N7 than the aide had been, but waved Shepard into his office anyway. With Shepard gone, the aide only had Joker left to glare at, and by God, glare he did. Joker slunk a little lower in his seat.

Really painfully fucking complicated.

xxx
“I understand you’ve been on Pinnacle Station before,” Ahern said, sitting back down behind his desk.

“Yes sir. In ‘73.” Shepard remained standing. As a brand new lieutenant commander faced with a new admiral, she had no idea whether she was allowed to sit or not. She preferred standing anyway, as she reminded herself.

“During which you caused significant problems for the Alliance’s relationship with the Turian Hierarchy and prompted a major re-evaluation of the N7C training code,” Ahern read from what was presumably Powell’s report on the N7C-73s.

Shepard had read that report. It contained more exclamation marks that she really thought was necessary, but it covered most of the relevant details.

“My graduating class worked extremely well together, sir. I can’t take all the credit.”

“If your cadets accomplish anything similar, I will be most unhappy.”

“Understood, sir.”

“The cadets arrive at the end of the month; their training is entirely up to you. Admiral Hackett has also requested that you be made available to him for solo infiltration missions. You will receive those assignments directly from Hackett and you will not discuss them with anyone on this station other than your pilot, who only needs to know where to take you.”

“I’ve worked covert ops before, sir.”

“But never alone, I understand.” Ahern paused and Shepard did not like the way he was looking at her.“I’ve never met an N7 who wants to work alone.”

“There aren’t many other options for me, sir.”

“I suppose not. The Alliance is aware of your reluctance to head up another unit, given what happened to the 95th, but it has been decided that you cannot work entirely alone. Your pilot is waiting outside. I thought it would be better if you told him what he needed to know.”
 
“Yes sir.”

It was probably a dismissal. Even if she’d known for certain it wasn’t, she would have walked out at that moment.

xxx
Shepard came storming back out of the office a lot faster than Joker had anticipated. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so complicated after all. But then she turned her very scary gaze on Joker and he gave up all hope of an easy outcome. That gaze wasn’t the basic friend-or-foe once over she’d given him before; it was enough to bring Joker to his feet.

He squashed the urge to stand tall, hide the way he was favouring his left leg, shield the crutches from view. She’d notice his mobility problems the moment he had to walk anywhere, after all, and then who knew what her reaction would be? Plenty of bog standard marines weren’t all that fond of someone who couldn’t even fire a rifle without breaking his collarbone. An N7 was going to be even less impressed.

“I take it you’re not up for a walk and talk,” Shepard said and turned her attention away from him to the Admiral’s aide. “Can I borrow the conference room?”

It was technically a question, but the aide wasn’t in a position to refuse and he knew it, giving a brief nod of agreement. Shepard pointed at the right door and waved her hands impatiently at Joker when he didn’t immediately start to move. So Joker shuffled forward, walking right in front of Shepard on his way to the door. Wasn’t any point in delaying the inevitable and all that.

Shepard followed him into the conference room, already reading what Joker could only assume was his personnel record.

“Did you volunteer for this?”

“No, ma’am.” 

She gave him a look. He wasn’t sure what kind of look, precisely, but it certainly wasn’t a pleased one. “It’s Shepard. Or commander, if there’s a superior officer nearby. Now, what’s wrong with you?”

“I have Vrolik Syndrome.”

“And for those of us who barely passed field med, that means...”

“Brittle bone disease. One wrong step and crack!” He gestured violently. “It’s very dramatic.”

“Fine. But that’s not all, is it? Believe me when I say that Command wouldn’t waste a perfect pilot on me, but they wouldn’t dare send someone who was merely incompetent to the N7s. So you’re competent, more than that if you were spotted by who I think you were, but you’re not wanted.”

It felt like a test, the way she spoke, the way she watched him oh-so-carefully for his reactions. “I’m sure everything you need to know is in my record,” he said finally. And there was something, a feeling, an instinct, maybe, that told him he’d passed. 

“Fair enough. This is a temporary assignment. You’ll be working for me until the end of the year. If it works out, you’ll be bounced to another N7 unit or operative. Can you shoot?”

“Nothing bigger than a pistol.”

“That’ll do. Log some hours on the range, get your scores up.”

“What am I aiming for?”

“Someone’s right eye, but only if I screw up.” His surprise must have been written all over his face, because Shepard rolled her eyes and explained. “My work is not nice or safe or particularly wholesome. You need to be ready in case something goes wrong. I’ll get you clearance for the shooting range and for the flight simulators. You need to be ready to fly any ship and we’ll probably never use the same one twice, so don’t get too comfortable. You’ll only be working for me from now on and my missions are few and far between, so you’ll have plenty of time to practice.”

Joker blinked. “Is this a good time to mention that I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing for you?”

Shepard paused. “So when the Admiral said I should explain things to you, he meant I should explain everything to you. Right.” She rubbed the scar on her chin absently. “I have been and will be ordered to perform certain high-risk missions, mostly infiltration and sabotage. I need a pilot who can keep up and keep his mouth shut. It’ll be your job to get me to the target and then pull my boots out of the fire when I’m done. If you’re as good a pilot as is claimed, you won’t be in any danger. Well, not a lot of danger, at any rate.” She paused, thinking. “Less danger than me, certainly.”

“Any perks?”

“Not really. I’m not big on protocol or procedure, and you can mod the ship any way you like so long as it gets us there and back in one piece. We’re never going to have much in the way of backup and we’re not going to get any medals for this stuff. But if you stick this out, I can recommend you for other N7 units and we take care of our own.” Shepard shrugged. “Can’t promise much more than that.”

Joker nodded slowly. Definitely complicated.

“Lieutenant Moreau, if you don’t want any part of this, I can probably find a way to get you out of it. No backlash, no repercussions.”

“So I can go back to doing supply runs? No thank you.” Joker shrugged. “Didn’t join the Alliance for an easy life. Might as well do this.”

Shep nodded. “In that case, print here.”

Joker obligingly pressed his right thumb against the datapad.

“Welcome to the 95th.”

“That’s our unit?” Joker asked when Shep turned away.

“Yeah. Infil-95. But it’s not really a unit anymore. Just us.”

And that was a sentence that needed a whole lot of explanation, but not right now. Given enough time, Joker could figure out what had happened to the unit he’d just joined. Hell, Shepard might even tell him herself one day. But Joker had spent too much time around soldiers to be able to ignore the tightness in Shepard’s face when she spoke of her unit. Whatever had happened, she’d been there. Lived through it. There was no guarantee that Joker would be so lucky.

“How do I find out when you need me?”

“I’ll find you. Be ready, Flight Lieutenant Moreau.” Shepard pulled a face. “Hell of a mouthful, that.”

“Most people call me Joker.”

“Joker it is, then.”

He grinned at her, not the slightest bit surprised when she didn’t smile back.

xxx
It turned out that Shepard really hadn’t been joking when she’d said he would have plenty of time to practise on the simulators. He made it into the third week of his assignment without any sign that they’d be moving out any time soon. Shepard dropped by every day or two, officially checking his scores, but mostly watching him carefully, like she was still sizing him up. She didn’t take issue with his jokes or ‘disrespectful attitude’, so he was inclined to let her puzzle over him for a bit. He’d never heard of the Alliance sending a one-person team into enemy territory before and she had a perfect right to be a little cautious about the man who’d be pulling her boots out of the fire on a semi-regular, if not frequent, basis.

Careful eavesdropping, and a few outright inquiries, let him know that Shepard was officially a training instructor for the N7C programme, whatever that meant. Got on well enough with most of the people on this station, the same station that Shepard had trained on, if you believed the rumours. The only exception to the general feelings of goodwill seemed to be Vidinos, the training instructor for the turian cadets. There was no lost love on Vidinos’ side, either, and the ever-active grapevine said that they’d been this way since they themselves were cadets. Joker could believe that; if Shepard wasn’t the sort of person to hold a grudge, he’d eat his own hat. And there was nothing like time to put a nice shine on a bitter grudge.

He was well into his fourth week on the station, elbow deep in the wiring of an old YT-1300, when he finally the message he’d been waiting for. Simple enough, just the registration of the ship they were to use and a time to move out. Joker made sure to be there twenty minutes early and was left with the vague sense that Shepard had been pleasantly surprised.

The flight to and away from the drop point were uneventful, Shepard did whatever it was she was meant to do without having to fire a single shot, although if Joker hadn’t been sworn to secrecy he would have sworn that he heard bones crunching over the comms, and then they were back on the Station in time for tea and medals. Well, not really. There weren’t any medals, obviously. And not really any tea, just the standard issue slop.

But it was a good start.

xxx
The oddest part of the whole setup, to be honest, was the fact that super secret Alliance infiltrators were apparently given their own offices. It wasn’t a very nice office; just like on ships, space was a premium on a station, but it was an office nevertheless. Complete with a desk and a dataport and a very unhappy Shepard.

“I’ve got my report on our last little outing,” Joker said. “Which was so terribly important that I apparently can’t comm. the damn report to you, in case someone can pull it off the system. What the hell do you even do with these things?”

“Remove most of the relevant details, encrypt them every way I know and a few I make up and send them to Internal Affairs, who encrypt them further and then hide them somewhere. The reports can be pulled out if there’s an inquest, but most of our reports will never see the light of day.” Shepard took the datapad. “Which is the only reason I’ll accept this as a report. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to write one of these things?”

“Yes, because my instructors at Flight School were always expecting me to work for people like you.”

“I’m just saying that if we’re ever pulled up by IA, your spelling will be the first thing they criticise.”

“Very funny. When are we next going out?”

“Not for a few weeks. The new kids are coming and it’s going to take time to knock them into shape.”

“Kids?”

“When I’m not busy technically not existing, I’m an N7 training instructor which means that, lucky me, I get this year’s N7C class.”

“N7C?”

“The future N7 commanders, in theory. A dozen promising kids from Basic are sent to this Station every year and I have to turn them into, well, me.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Yes, balancing a dozen cadets and my duties as your commanding officer and taking pot shots at whoever’s pissed off the Alliance this week is all a sentient being could ever want. If someone else could just do the bloody paperwork for me, I’d be laughing. Are you a qualified flight instructor?”

“Nope. Ornery bastard qualified only to fly your ass around, remember, we’ve been over this.”

“Fine, I’ll find someone. Are you going to be able to keep out of trouble ‘til the end of the month, or I do need to find some for you?”

“I’ll be fine, Shepard.”

“Better be. I’m going to be far too busy not-quite-killing cadets to deal with any pranks, Joker.”

“Got it. Not that I was in any way responsible for what happened to the Admiral’s aide’s computer terminal.”

“Noted.”

And that was, more or less, the last he saw of Shepard for almost a month. Along with the new cadets came a whole host of new support staff, because clearly the way to deal with the confusion of being on a new station was to make sure as many people were confused as possible. And, as was prone to happen in such a situation, the rumour mill went absolutely fucking crazy. At least ninety-eight percent of the rumours were about Shepard, and as her only teammate, Joker was in the endlessly entertaining position of being considered to be much better informed than he actually was, which mostly meant that he found out all the best rumours when he was asked to confirm or deny them. He experimented with different responses; I can’t discuss that was a classic, but his personal favourite was just to stare at the person asking until they hurried away in shame.

He was fairly certain Shepard knew about all of this. He was also fairly certain that she had never plucked out a batarian’s eyes one by one, or that she had defeated a clan of krogans all by herself, or that she could bring down the entire Council with only six words or fewer. He was less certain about the tattoos and the Asari lover. Her squad’s actions on Elysium were common knowledge, even to the new cadets.

The rumours about Akuze were the last to reach his ears. He really hoped that no one was dumb enough to repeat those where Shepard could hear them.

xxx
Then Shepard nearly died.

Not because of anything Joker did or didn’t do - his actions actually earned him his first commendation from Admiral Hackett - but that didn’t mean a damn thing when his CO fell into the ship with a hole in her stomach, blood rolling down her combat armour to splash across the floor.

“Go!” she yelled when he instinctively moved to help her. “Damn it, Joker, go now!”

He spun his chair back round, ignoring the sounds coming from Shepard, and started hitting controls. Hatch shut, ship moving, all in record time. But there were still three gunships in his way when he cleared the dock. No problem; he’d chosen this ship for its speed and manoeuvrability. Time to put it to the test. Behind him, Shepard coughed and he could hear something splattering on the floor.

“Hang on to something, Shepard,” he called.

What he did next was technically illegal, meant to be impossible and resulted in a minor inquiry and the complete re-fitting of the right thruster. It worked, somehow, and two of the gunships collided, hopefully wedging themselves together and taking some of their guns offline. Not that Joker was sticking around to double check. He still needed to take care of the third gunship. Well, not take care of in the normal sense; this ship couldn’t even manage to fight off an escape pod, never mind an actual gunship. The guns were starting to glow, almost ready to fire, but they were shit at tracking a fast-moving target. Particularly a fast-moving target doing loop the loops while spinning. Artificial gravity could only do so much and Joker was fairly sure he’d just heard Shepard hit a wall or something, but they were past the last gunship, heading out of the atmosphere, and Joker rammed every scrap of energy he could find into the engines. They’d burn out before too long, even with Joker’s modifications. Just had to pray they hit a relay or a friendly ship before that happened. Wasn’t like taking it slow and steady was an option.

That done, or as well done as it could be, Joker grabbed his crutches and heaved himself up out of his chair, making his unsteady way to his commander. She was pale, bloody, armour cracked and stained where it wasn’t gaping open, but still alive.

“Knew I kept you around for a reason,” she said weakly, showing bloody teeth when she tried to smile. “Tell me you’ve got medigel.”

Joker fired up his omnitool, but Shepard grabbed his arm.

“Don’t load them up, just give me the tubes.”

“Shepard!” he yelled a moment later, when she grabbed one of the tubes, cracked the seal and tipped the gel straight into the hole in her stomach. “That could poison you! Or eat your guts or something!”

“Unless you’re volunteering to hold my intestines in with your bare hands, shut up,” Shepard said, fumbling with another tube. “The medigel should solidify, hold me together until we can get to a real doctor.”

He took the tube from her shaking hands, breaking the seal for her. She could yell at him later, if she liked. “Will that work?”

Shepard met his eye for barely a second before looking away. “I don’t know. Don’t have any better ideas.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Not sure. Anti-tank grade weaponry, but... It was like my shields weren’t even there. Ripped right through them.”

“You were just supposed to be picking someone up!”

“Yeah, well, she’s the one that shot me.” She coughed again, blood running down her chin. “Where are we headed?”

“Pinnacle. It’s closest. Still a good hour away, though. Can you last that long?”

“Guess we’ll find out. Aren’t you meant to be at the helm?”

“Course is laid in, Shep. Things’ll bleep real loud if I’m needed.” He shifted around and settled down next to Shepard, ignoring the blood stains.

“Not quite the blaze of glory I imagined, you know.”

“You got hit by a rocket-launcher. That’s pretty hardcore.”

“God, I promised Hackett I wouldn’t blow anything up this time.”

“He probably didn’t expect you to blow yourself up,” Joker said.

“You know, this might actually be worth it just to prove once and for all that Hackett can’t actually predict every damn thing I’ll ever do.”

“Because that’s so much more important than me having a job tomorrow.”

Shepard laughed or, more precisely, attempted to laugh and failed fairly miserably. “Think I’m going to pass out here. Shit, I hate passing out.”

“So don’t.”

“Easy for the man who hasn’t been hit by a fucking rocket to say.” Shepard let her head lean back against the bulkhead. The smile she gave Joker was meant to be reassuring, but it faded a little too quickly and then her eyes slid shut.

Joker stayed right where he was, trying to ignore the feeling of his commander’s blood soaking into the knees of his jumpsuit, watching for Shepard’s next breath until they hit the Mass Relay.

xxx
It took two days, multiple arguments, some really terrible attempts at bribery and, finally, Hackett’s involvement before Joker was allowed into the Medbay to see his CO. Shepard looked surprisingly well for someone with a hole in her stomach. She was even sitting up, datapad balanced on her knee, but she was pale and had the slightly dazed look of someone on the really good painkillers.

“Finally yelled loud enough, huh?” she said when she saw him.

“Something like that. How are you feeling?” Joker ignored protocol in favour of sitting down. Shepard would let him know when she wanted him out.

“I’m going to be in some sort of medical journal. Apparently, no one else knew that medigel could do that.”

“Well, seeing as we didn’t actually know either, shouldn’t you be saying that no one at all knew?” Joker caught the datapad when Shepard threw it at him and glanced at the article.

“I had complete faith. Limited medical training, but complete faith.”

“Uh-huh. Which is also how you just set a new record for the largest amount of some chemical I can’t pronounce  in a human bloodstream without the arteries melting. Your arteries were melting?”

“No, they could have melted. They didn’t; that’s the point of the article.”

“All that and you’re not even dead. Not a bad day.”

“If I hadn’t been double-crossed, it would even be a good day. Listen, I’m going to be stuck in here for another week, at least. They need to rebuild my guts or something, but I can probably swing you some leave, if you want.”

“I’m good. The Admiral’s asked me to keep an eye on your recruits.”

“Good. If you’re doing that, could you drill the little bastards in ship specifications? They should know everything there is to know about all the ships you’ve used since coming to Pinnacle Station.”

“Sure thing. Anything else I should know?”

“Don’t take any crap from the Turians, or the cadets, and try not to show any fear. They can smell it.”

“Turians can smell fear?”

“No, the cadets can.”

It was entirely possible that the cadets could smell fear, but whatever hold Shepard had over them was still effective even when she was in sickbay, so Joker managed okay. He taught them all a few piloting tricks that weren’t in any official handbook and left the sim training to that salarian tech who spoke too fast to remember to introduce himself. And the cadets weren’t a bad bunch. Past midnight on the crazy clock, the lot of them, but they were good kids. Joker had no real idea how to train the next generation of affable killers, but Ochern’s simulations ran themselves and he could limit his input to a few sarcastic comments when a cadet went down.

Shepard’s notes on the cadets were almost oddly accurate, considering that Shepard did a damn good impression of woman who couldn’t be bothered to learn the cadets’ names. She’d noticed Clark’s habit of taking the lead, always with good results, and Joker tried putting one of the others in charge to see what would happen. Nothing that interesting; Clark was better at giving orders, maybe, but he still took orders better than many of the squaddies Joker had met. A few of the cadets had very specialist skills to add to their status as charming killing machines: Quinn’s computer access had to be closely monitored to make sure she wasn’t hacking her own records and Tchen’s favourite solution for almost any problem was the careful application of insane amount of explosives. Lin and Ali, one recruited from the criminal gangs of the Terminus Systems and the other from a planet devastated by civil war, were both as sneaky as Shepard and just as happy to press that advantage for all it was worth.

As Shepard’s innards regrew, she was allowed more and more time out of the medbay, and those snatches of time were generally spent in the observation room with Joker, watching her cadets. He was never quite sure what she was looking for in her cadets; he could occasionally tell when she was particularly pleased or annoyed, but the cause was often hard to spot. But she wasn’t there every day and he thought nothing of it when she was missing for two sessions in a row.

He did start to think something of it, however, when scuttlebutt told him that she’d left the station.

xxx
Halo wasn’t the best bar Shepard had ever been to; the music was all synthesised and the drinks were watered down, but it was an N7 friendly place and that was all that mattered. Shepard made sure to get a drink, even if it would be mostly water; Daria was happy to host these little get-togethers so long as everyone brought enough at the bar to make it worth her while. Daria passed over an access card with the drink and Shepard slipped into one of the back rooms.

Freeman and Abby were both already there, Abby showing off that faint blue shine that told Shepard that she’d perfected that live-action transmitted hologram thing; once Shepard settled at the table with them, Freeman activated the jamming device that made the drinks so damn expensive.

“Sending me messages through Ochern? Really?” Shepard said, leaning back in her seat.

“You don’t check yours,” Freeman said. 

“I check them. I don’t respond to them, there is a difference.”

“One which is so easy to see from the other end of a datastream.”

“Are you two done?” Abby interrupted. “These transmissions can only be hidden in lines of code for so long before someone realises what I’m doing.”

Freeman looked at Shepard. Shepard stared right back.

“I’ll behave if he does,” she said after a moment. “What’s the news? You mentioned Hikaru. Do we have something?”

Abby nodded. “My kids turned up some good information on Kingston. No idea what they’d found, of course, but luckily I double check all the data I can.”

“How good is this information?”

“The best.”

Freeman leant forwards. “We want you to go, Shepard. You’re the best we’ve got.”

“And I’ve got the least to lose.”

“And we trust you to get it done right,” Abby corrected.

“You all know I’ll do it. Take it we’re not working through the official channels.”

“Alliance knows nothing and never will,” Freeman said. “The General decided that this was for the N7C-73s to deal with. He’ll get you five days of emergency personal leave. If you get caught, he’ll order us to stand down. Don’t really think he expects us to follow that order, of course. If you succeed, the mission will be written into the official N7 orders. This will never come back to hurt us if we do this right.”

“I don’t do things any other way.” 

Abby typed for a moment on keyboard that Shepard couldn’t see and a moment later, Shepard’s omnitool lit up, receiving data. “It’s all I have.”

“Should be more than enough, then,” Shepard replied. “Thank you, Abs.”

“Godspeed, Shep. Don’t make us come get you.” The hologram of Abby shimmered out.

“Are you still planning to quit?”

Anyone else, she’d ask how they knew or try and call it ‘early retirement’ instead of ‘quitting’. But it was Scott Freeman and she hadn’t been able to lie to him for years.

“Yes. End of November. And you know full well why I’m doing it, so please don’t start with me.”

“But it’s ridiculous! You have to stop with the guilt and self-recrimination,” Freeman said. “Lyra doesn’t blame you; neither would any of the others.”

“And that’s supposed to make it all magically better. Six good operatives are dead, one more will never walk again.”

“And you’re still standing!” Freeman yelled. “Which means that you have responsibilities. The cost of being the best is being the fucking best. We have to do what we do because no one else can and you can’t just walk away from that.”

“Watch me.”

It was a little bit petty, maybe, to storm out of a clandestine meeting with her closest friend. Maybe a bit more than petty. But it was pettiness or violence and Freeman deserved the latter even less than he deserved the former. He didn’t follow her. He was, after all, her best friend and, more to the point, if they were seen together outside of one of Daria’s hidden rooms, there’d be hell to pay. There was a reason the N7C-73s had been scattered across the galaxy the moment they graduated. They made the Alliance nervous. 

The shuttle ride back to the Station only took twenty minutes. It was always fairly crowded; Pinnacle Station was host to a constant stream of fighters, all looking to prove themselves against Ochern’s simulations. It was a right pain, most of the time, but Shepard got most of a bench to herself. The sort of people who came to Pinnacle Station could recognise an N7 with something on her mind. Ten minutes into the ride, Shepard’s omnitool beeped and she pulled up the message from Ahern, confirming the emergency leave that she’d never applied for. Thank God for Abby and her casual manipulation of Alliance databases.

There wasn’t really any such thing as standard-issue N7 armour. The cadets were given a slightly-modified version of the Alliance basic hardsuits and encouraged to mod it however they liked; by graduation, the suits were almost as unique as the people wearing them and it only got worse from there. The only consistency was the red and white stripe; that was the only uniform the N7s ever needed. Instantly recognisable, that stripe, enough to start and stop fights without so much as drawing a weapon.

But this wasn’t the time to be recognised.

So she left her hardsuit, still shiny-new from the recent repairs, in her locker, along with her rifles and shotgun, and only took her pistol because it would attract more attention if she left all her weapons behind. Oh, the Alliance would know that something was up. Six years of service and Shepard had never taken emergency personal leave. Hell, most years she hadn’t even bothered with the requisite leave. But there was plenty of space between knowing something was up and knowing precisely what was up and Shepard could do a lot of damage in that space. The cadets were easy to deal with; Ochern had enough simulations to keep them busy until kingdom come and the recordings would be enough to check their progress and dole out punishments or rewards as required. Joker had proved that he could safely be left to supervise, even if he really had no idea what they were looking for in cadets.

And so Shepard was on the next shuttle back off Pinnacle Station.

She really would have been very cross to know that Joker was on the next shuttle after that.

xxx
Shepard liked Omega. You knew where you were on Omega. Admittedly, mostly you knew that you were two steps away from a knife between the ribs, but Shepard had grown up in the Riverside Ship Yards and that feeling was practically nostalgic. There were other reasons to like Omega, of course. Even small stations were at least the size of a city; Omega was a floating continent and Shepard liked places with lots of room to get lost in.

She really liked places with lots of room to hide and cute arms-dealers who owed her almost as many favours as she owed them. Jason towered over her by at least a foot and had once saved her life; apparently this meant he was allowed to hug her and Shepard had never bothered to argue with him on that.

“What brings you back to Omega?” Jason said when he’d put her down.

“Family business.”

“You don’t have any family.”

“I don’t have any relatives. Doesn’t mean I don’t have family.”

“Bloody N7s,” Jason muttered. Shepard agreed with him, really. “Take it this is complicated?”

“Not at all, for you at least. I need a blackout suit, an inconspicuous lift to Terra Nova and whatever little surprises you can spare.”

“And what do I get in return?”

“The gratitude of Scott Freeman and the rest of the 73s.”

Jason nodded. “That’ll do. There’s a suit in your size somewhere in back. Go find the damn thing.”

That was easier said than done. Jason claimed that his system was known only to himself for reasons of security; his husband would say that there was no system, which of course worked just as well to prevent petty theft. More serious thefts were dealt with a careful application of heavy weaponry. But the suit was eventually found. The blackout suits were probably Jason’s greatest idea. They were also his least-known idea, a situation that Freeman and Jason were equally keen to maintain. There wasn’t actually any law against creating body-armour with hermetic seals inspired by the quarians, but the authorities would most likely frown upon a suit designed to eliminate forensic trace left by the wearer. Particularly when such suits were being made for people like Shepard.

“Any fun upgrades I should know about?” she asked as Jason’s husband helped her suit up.

“He adapted the weave slightly; apparently it reflects light just weirdly enough to mess with security recordings. But it screws with omnitools.”

“No omnitool, check.”

“Also, this stuff won’t stop any high-velocity explosives.”

“Everybody’s making a fuss.”

Getting on the armour was time-consuming; each piece had to lock perfectly to the others and any slight mistake could so easily lead to Shepard’s DNA all over a crime scene. But Jason helped her with the tricky bits and she was ready to go soon enough, albeit not as soon as she would’ve liked. Wasn’t any point in rushing things, though. This was going to be her last gift to the N7C-73s before her retirement; she might as well do it properly.    

xxx
In this day and age, when a man could cross planets in hours and be halfway across the galaxy in a matter of weeks or even days, tracking killers was a fine art. Finding one man in all the galaxy was always going to need a whole lot of skill, but all the skill in the 'verse wouldn't make luck irrelevant. Abs had the skill to narrow the search to a single planet; Shepard had the luck to pick the right city.

Neither luck nor skill, however, was quite as good as the enemy being an arrogant, idiotic bastard. Shepard found her target in the bar where Hikaru had met his wife, the same bar the couple had visited together the night Rina had been killed. 

Rina had probably never known that her husband had first visited this bar on official N7 business, that he had skulked on the high walkways over the dance floor just as Shepard was doing then. It was a good bar for a killer with its high viewpoints and shitty lighting. Shepard leant on the railing, watching the crowd below, and idly wondered if Kingston had watched Hikaru from this spot. It was less than a year since Rina's death. Would that be enough time to find a new hunting ground, exhaust it and move back to the old? Or had the son of a bitch been here the entire time?

She shook the thought off. It made no real difference. If he'd been loitering in Rina's place all this time, it would make Shepard angry. Well, angrier. She was already angry enough. Either way, her anger was irrelevant. There were more important things to consider.

Like the woman dancing with Kingston.

This wasn’t how she’d wanted to do this. Her way, the ideal way, would have been to wait, spent some time learning this man’s routines, the places he went to and the people he spoke to. And, given enough time, given enough information, all she would need was a sniper rifle, the right line of sight and this would be dealt with.

She could still wait. The General could probably get her all the leave she needed to make this right.

But Shepard could see the way that Kingston was looking at the woman. She knew that he’d spotted the girl’s partner, watching them from the bar. One to kill, one to break, just the way Kingston liked it.

She had a sighted pistol with her; not enough for proper sniping, but enough for this distance. She could pick a man out of crowd with a sniper rifle, she could do the same with a sighted pistol, even when the crowd was moving as much as this one. But that sort of kill was too damn noticeable. Professional. And it would get her noticed in all the wrong ways. Not that there was really a right way to be noticed when committing murder. Patience it was, then.   

Following Kingston and the two women when they finally left the bar was shockingly easy. For a predator, Kingston had lousy instincts for other hunters. The girls lived in one of the crowded districts, towering housing blocks pressed in tight together, and Shepard settled on a nearby balcony, high enough to be unnoticed, close enough to leap from. And leap from it she did, crashing through the window just after the women succumbed to whatever drugs Kingston had spiked their drinks with; she could’ve jumped before then, but the fewer witnesses the better.

Kingston was a hunter, of sorts, and he was definitely a killer. There was a whole long list of people who could testify to that. But he wasn't a fighter. Drugs and restraints and a brutal knowledge of human anatomy and ancient torture, that was all he had and it meant nothing when faced with someone willing and able to fight. Not struggle or beg, but actually fight.

There was a certain vicious joy to be had in slamming him into tables and chairs, the occasional wall, and then she spent a little longer introducing vulnerable areas of his body to her fists and feet and elbows. There were cleaner ways to deal with him, kinder ways to end a life. And Kingston didn't deserve any of them. Given enough time, she could make this man beg, and she wouldn't even need to use any of the sick little tools he'd laid out on the kitchen counter.

But that wasn't the plan.

She flipped him over, letting him hit the floor with enough force to crack bones, and knelt on his chest, popping one of her wrist-knives. Kingston froze when the point was pressed against his jugular.

“I don't ask questions twice and lies make me very, very angry,” she said softly. “One question. Your answer dictates what happens next. Why did you kill Rina Hikaru and not her husband?” 

And the bastard laughed.

xxx
Getting off Terra Nova undetected was as easy as getting there in the first place. Shepard didn’t dare dump the blackout suit; the tech was too dangerous to leave anywhere but in Jason’s hands. She scrubbed the entire suit with bleach and disinfectant without taking it off; only way to keep her DNA out of the proceedings. The wrist-knives got tossed in an industrial burner. Such precautions were possibly unnecessary; if the cops here were even a little bit clever, they’d figure out who Kingston really was and then finding out who killed him would be a lesser priority. But she was never averse to an easier life and some habits were worth maintaining.  

Shepard pulled on some non-descript civvies over the blackout suit and faded easily into the crowds of people shuffling their way about the galaxy. She let herself bounced between a few different planets for a couple of days, before booking her alias a perfectly legit ticket to the Citadel and smuggling herself back to Omega in between crates of nodding dolls.

The look on Jason’s face when she walked back into his shop made her reach for her pistol, mind spinning with a dozen safe routes across Omega to the more easily-hijackable ships, but Jason shook his head and raised a hand to stop her. “We had a visitor,” he explained. “He turned up two days after you left and said he was looking for you.”

“And?”

“I think you need to see this for yourself.”

Still with her hand on her pistol, Shepard waited for Jason to shut the shop and open the door to the backroom, and then waited for him to unlock the hidden door to the room where he hid people like Shepard when things didn’t go as smooth as hoped. There were all sorts of people who it could’ve been, people who needed Shepard’s help or had a score to settle, hell, even one or two that she might’ve gone to help once or twice herself when things went bad. The list of potential visitors was as longer than she cared to think about and there were undoubtedly people she was forgetting.

But even with all the names that were slipping her mind, there was absolutely no chance of Joker being anywhere on that list.

“What are you doing here?” Shepard asked, as Jason slipped away again. “No, wait, a better question. What the hell are you doing here?”

Joker was sitting on one of the worktables, crutches laid out next to him, and he had least had the sense to look a little awkward. “The Admiral sent me.”

“Ahern wouldn’t dare-”

“Not Ahern. Hackett. He seemed to think that you were going to do something stupid, illegal or immoral. Didn’t believe it myself, but now I’m not so sure,” Joker said, awkwardness shifting ever so slightly towards accusatory. “Interesting get-up, Shepard. Doesn’t look like the sort of thing you’d need to deal with a family emergency.”

Shepard squashed the first answer that came to mind, That depends on the family emergency, you idiot, and settled instead for, “Hackett shouldn’t have sent you.”

“Or he should’ve sent me sooner. What have you done?”

“The same thing that I always do, Joker, and you know damn well what that is. It’s a little late to mention that you hold to the complete and utter sanctity of all life regardless.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Why? Because I killed someone because it was personal and not because someone neither of us has ever met told me to? Just because you’re ordered to kill someone doesn’t make it right. You should be smart enough to know that. Some people need to die, which means someone has to kill them.”

“And you’re qualified to decide who dies and who kills?”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry for killing that bastard? Because I’m not and I never will be. Kingston was a monster, responsible for way more deaths than the three I brought him to account for. He took happy families and tore them apart because he liked it. He did things that I don’t have words for and I’m a stone-cold killer. And there was always one person that he didn’t touch. One person that had to watch, powerless, as he did all those things to their families. They had to watch because Kingston liked when they shattered inside. And he did it to a man I considered family.” Shepard stepped closer, deliberately leaning into Joker’s personal space. “To my way of thinking, nothing that terrible has taken place here. If you disagree with that, maybe you’re not best suited to your current role.”

Shepard didn’t give Joker a chance to respond before leaving, leaving Joker shocked and silent behind her. She had plenty of things to be getting on with. Her idiot of a pilot had made his way quite safely to Omega; he didn’t need her to guide him back to Pinnacle.

xxx
Joker was a little bit impressed, despite himself. Shepard had made it a full week without so much as being on the same level as him, never mind the same room.

He went back to working on the YT-1300. It was a good ship for working on when he wanted to think. The first few days had been useful, admittedly. A chance to sort through things. He still wasn’t entirely sure where he stood on the death of an alleged murderer. And maybe it was a little bit irrational. He’d been transporting a solo infiltrator around for months and solo infiltrator was the politest way of saying assassin that Joker had ever heard. But he couldn’t shake the conviction that there was a difference.

Maybe it wasn’t a crucial difference. He still trusted Shepard. He was still angry with her, but he had the unsettling sense that he was angrier at being left behind than at what Shepard had done. That alone required more thought. But that trust was important, maybe more important than the rest of it. The news report about the posthumous conviction of Kingston for multiple counts of murder and assault did help, admittedly. Shepard was a smart woman and she always did her research; she wouldn’t have taken a life until she was sure it deserved to be taken. 

When he heard the doors open, he instinctively thought it was Shepard. No one else on the Station ever bothered him and the two of them had been so well synched before, why shouldn’t Shepard know without him saying that he wanted to talk it through again, maybe even apologise. Although he wasn’t entirely sure how Shepard would handle an apology.

But it wasn’t right. He’d left the lights on when he came in, always did, it was regulations. But they were off.

“Shepard, is that you?”

When the first blow came, it caught him completely by surprise and shattered at least two of his ribs. And very shortly after that, he stopped even trying to keep count of the punches and the kicks and the injuries and concentrated instead on minimising the damage.

But he couldn’t shake the thought that this would never have happened if Shepard had still been on his side. 

xxx
“Hackett says you’re refusing to file a report,” Shepard said softly.

Joker stayed exactly as he was, lying on his side, facing away from the medbay door. He’d probably turn over if Shepard ordered him to, but she wasn’t going to do that. Just as well. One more red flag and Internal Affairs would pay him a visit. Being brought up on charges while unable to walk would be a new personal low.

“I’ll assume from that complete lack of response that you don’t want to tell me anything either. Which is fine, by the way, but this strong silent thing is going to get old really fast out in the field.”

He just barely managed to hold back a snort. As if he was ever going to get to keep his job. She’d be given a new, temporary pilot while he lay about waiting for most of his bones to resolidify and then the new guy would be a better fit for the 95th than Joker, because it would be hard to find a worse fit than Joker and Shepard wouldn’t hate the guy, because the new guy would never have implied that she was a soulless murderer, and then Joker would come out of physical therapy to a reassignment order. Or his discharge papers.

“Okay then,” Shepard said as if he’d spoken. “See you around, Joker.”

xxx
The people crowding the corridors of Pinnacle Station parted before Shepard almost before she reached them. Shepard barely noticed, too busy examining and discarding a dozen courses of action. Slowing down wasn’t an option and, well, her improvisation was often better than the original plan. Someone had laid hands on her pilot, therefore someone needed to suffer. That basic principle wasn’t exactly a plan, but it was enough to get her moving. The turian trainees were running sims again, which meant Vidinos would be in the observation deck.

“Shepard,” Vidinos said when she entered, glancing briefly at her over his shoulder before turning his attention back to his trainees. 

She stood by him, watching the trainees below as they battled computer generated geth. “Impressive bunch. But you might want to consider increasing the difficulty of the sims. These kids are so desperate for a decent fight that they went after an N7, after all.”

“I heard what happened to your pilot, but I don’t see what makes you so sure that one or more of my trainees had anything to do with it.”

“Because turian fists leave very different bruises to human ones. Because your trainees have been escalating the rivalry between human and turian since the day they arrived on the station. Because whoever beat Joker doesn’t know nearly enough about human biology to deliver a safe beating, but clearly wasn’t actually trying to kill Joker because he’s still alive, which exempts you from my inquiries on two counts. But mostly because I have proof that someone in Section Alpha-38-D, the section of the station reserved exclusively for turian personnel, deactivated the turian trainees’ tracker ID chips for the hour either side of the attack on Joker. Now, if I take that to the authorities, every single turian down there will be blacklisted and sent home in disgrace. Deactivating the ID chips is, after all, strictly prohibited. And I can’t imagine what the Hierarchy would do to the instructor who let an entire class get so out of hand that they conspired to murder an N7 operative on neutral territory.”

“You wouldn’t destroy the careers of turians who have done nothing to you just to make a ridiculous point. You think of yourself as too honourable for that.”

“You really don’t know me at all, do you? Defending my people is not now nor will it ever be a ridiculous point. I’d do much worse than destroy a few careers to safeguard what is mine. But you are right, in a way. I don’t want to solve this through official channels. That’s not the N7 way.”

“So I remember. But the turian trainees and the human cadets no longer share rankings. Freeman’s old idea no longer works. What is it you want?”

“I want every single trainee whose ID chip was deactivated in the primary sparring room at 1600 tomorrow.”

Vidinos nodded. “That seems fair. If you question them directly, the ones responsible will almost certainly confess.”

“Ah, yes, the fabled turian honesty and honour. But what makes you think I’m interested in anything they have to say?”

xxx
Joker was not the least bit happy about being pulled away from his nice, quiet hospital room with the constant supply of painkillers. But there wasn’t much he could do to stop an N7 cadet from taking him anywhere even when he wasn’t mostly broken into little pieces and it was embarrassing to try and run away when he was still in a wheel-chair. And so he settled for bitching, as loudly and imaginatively as he possibly could.

“You little shits can’t order me about till you get your stripes, you know.”

“I didn’t order you. I didn’t ask you, but I didn’t order you. And you need to see this, sir,” Clark said, calmly enough to make Joker even more annoyed.

With a little bit of luck, Joker could’ve seriously lessened the odds of any little Clarklings running around someday, but all thoughts of revenge went out of his head when he looked down into the sparring room. Shepard was there, her back to the window, facing what looked like every turian trainee on the station. And he could tell, even without being able to see her face, that she was pissed. More than pissed.

He’d never for one moment thought that Shepard had anything to do with the attack. But he hadn’t quite dared to hope that she’d be involved in what came afterward.

xxx
“At ease!” Shepard barked when the turians were finally in the correct formation. “If you’re half as smart as you’re supposed to be, you will have worked out why you’re all here today. Anyone who’s confused, speak up now.”

Dead silence, just as she’d expected.

“Good. This is the part where I supposed to ask the trainee or trainees responsible to do the decent thing and turn themselves in. Hell, if I asked you all directly, I’m sure one of you who tell me who was responsible. But you’ll notice that I am not asking. That’s not because I don’t care who’s responsible. Due process will be observed in due time. But first there’s another matter to which we must attend. Someone here is very keen to fight an N7.” Shepard uncrossed her arms, held them out as if in welcoming. “I hate to disappoint them.”

No one moved.

“You can’t be shy all of a sudden,” Shepard said. “You might want to take this opportunity to attack me, boys and girls. It might be your only opportunity.” When there was still perfect stillness, she sighed. “Fine. Let me remind you how this goes.”

xxx
Joker watched in fascination as Shepard punched a trainee in the throat and grabbed the arm of another, twisting it around enough that even turian joints would snap.

“This is insane. She can’t just-”

“She can, she will and she does,” Clark interrupted.

“She doesn’t even like me.”

“Debatable, but also irrelevant. I don’t know what you two fell out over. I can guess, though,” Clark said thoughtfully. “This isn’t really any different, you know. The proportions are different, I suppose, but the principle is the same. You and Shepard could argue every single day you knew each other and she’d still think of you as one of hers. And being one of Shepard’s entitles you to whatever safety she can find or make for you.”

Down in the sparring room, three turians were already down. Another two tried to rush Shepard; that didn’t go well for them, to say the least.

“It isn’t shameful,” Clark continued. “Shepard doesn’t see it that way. To be honest, I think she’s happiest when she’s fighting for us. And this next part complete guesswork but judging by the way she’s breaking all the turians she can find, I’d say you two were okay.”

“You’re a real bastard, Clark.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’m also right.”

xxx
Shepard turned to the last turian standing. The runt of the litter, barely good enough to make it onto the Station and always just that little bit behind everyone else. Sometimes it was good for a group to have someone like that, it could bring the stronger closer together and teach them how protection should be as instinctive as breathing. It never seemed to work that well for the turians, so keen as they were on knowing your place. Pushing your own boundaries was frowned upon. And so Lonn was frowned upon and tolerated, rather than accepted or protected, and maybe Shepard could have felt sorry for him. In another world, one in which he hadn’t beaten Joker half to death to try and prove himself, she could have felt sorry for him.

In this world, however, she punched him in the face hard enough to knock him down and then put her boot on his windpipe, not hard enough actually to cut off his air, but hard enough to make it damn clear that she could, if she wanted. Hard enough to make it damn clear that she did want to.

“Take a good look at your classmates, Lonn. This is what happens when you can’t control yourself. Every bruise, every broken bone, every injury in this room is a direct result of your foolish attempt to prove yourself. You will request a transfer and be off this station in forty-eight hours, or the ruined careers of your teammates will be added to the list of consequences. Stay out of special forces, stay away from joint-species task forces. No N7 will ever work with you or your unit and where we lead, the Alliance follows.” She took her boot off his throat for just a second. “And if you so much as look at one of my people the wrong way again, I’ll remove those scales of yours one by one.”

As she turned to leave, she looked up at the observation room. Joker looked back at her. She nodded in acknowledge, he did the same in return and that was it.

They never spoke about it. Not once. Just as they never spoke about Omega or Kingston again.

xxx
“Joker!”

Joker rolled his eyes, confident that Shepard wouldn’t be able to see him do so, hidden as he was by the half-built turian fighter on top of him.

“There are these wonderful things called comms.,” he said. “Means you don’t have to shout quite so loudly.”

“What’s the point of being a CO if you can’t shout a little? And speaking of responsibilities, please tell me someone said you could mess with turian tech.”

“It’s a sorry one of my kids nearly shattered you spine present from the turian commander.”

“Learning anything interesting?”

“Just that turians are all style and no substance, but I knew that already.”

Shepard chuckled softly, a rare sound and Joker couldn’t help but already be a little bit proud when he heard it. “Why are you taking this thing apart?”

“Because you need to know how something works in order to break it properly.”

“I generally find high-grade explosives work quite well.”

“And that’s why you’re the infiltrator and I’m the driver.”

“A very good driver, though.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, bringing out the tone of voice he used on superior officers who weren’t Shepard. She swatted the back of his head, gentle enough for him to know she was being careful but hard enough for him to ignore that fact. “What brings you down here, Shepard?”

“We need to clear the station.”

“Why?”

“Something to do with the maintenance circles. Standard procedure; everyone but Vidinos and his trainees are scattering. I’m taking the cadets to do a little survival training planet-side; you can be our designated driver or I can swing you some leave. Your choice.”

“I’m not letting you run around by yourself. You’ll get yourself shot again.”

“That was one time, Joker.”

“And it was with a rocket launcher. Forgive me for not forgetting that anytime soon.”

“So you’ll help with the cadets?”

“Yep. Do we have a ship?”

“We will do. Bring a book or something. It’s going to be two days of hanging around in orbit while the cadets do their damnest to kill each other.”

“Fun times.”

xxx
Thirty-one hours after throwing the cadets out of a perfectly serviceable ship and Joker was bored. All ready recalibrated everything, run out of books, liable to do things necessary for a dishonourable discharge bored.

“Whatever you’re considering doing, please don’t,” Shepard said from where she was sprawling across one of the benches.

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“I don’t know precisely what you’re thinking,” Shepard replied. “But I know you’re getting twitchy. Tom Roberts was just the same, only he was a biotic and one of the early signs of his boredom was when your gun starting reassembling itself.”

“Was he in the 95th?”

“Yep. My second ended up teaching the poor bastard how to knit to stop him messing with our equipment. Of course, I had no idea why Lyra knows how to knit, but that was a problem for another day and I never got around to solving it.”

“Are you suggesting I should start knitting?”

“No. That’s Lyra’s solution, but she’s unhappily retired and definitely not hosting old-style craft classes. My solution for twitchiness is push-ups and pull-ups.”

“Don’t even think about it; I have a note from the doctor!”

Shepard laughed. “Alright, so no pull-ups. How about-”

The comm. crackled to life, spat out a string of completely unintelligible words, and died again. Shepard went from lounging carelessly to standing ready on her feet before the noise had died completely.

“Joker-”

“On it. Filtering the message and back-tracing.” Joker’s hands flew over the keyboard. “Whoa. This was sent on the Station’s internal system.”

“Then how the hell did we pick it up?”

“Someone rigged the system, but not very well. I doubt the message could travel out of the system. Give me a second, I can probably clear it up, but the translator can’t make heads or tails of it.”

“Could’ve been Old Turian. They don’t load the translators with dead languages.”

“How do you know Old Turian?”

“Long story. Play it again for me.” Shepard nodded. “One more time, please. Oh, yeah, that’s not good.”

“How not good?”

“Pinnacle Station’s been taken.” She leant over him, taking over the controls.

“Is that the emergency broadcast channel?”

“Yep,” Shepard said. “This is, after all, an emergency.”

“Let me. You always hit the buttons too hard, my girls don’t like that.”

“Freak.” But Shepard leant back, letting him access the control panel, and waited patiently until he gave her the nod. “This is Commander Shepard for the N7C-80s. This is not a drill. I have reason to believe that Pinnacle station is under attack. I want all cadets at the emergency extraction point by the time the ship touches down. Anyone not there by the time we take off can kiss their stripes goodbye.”

“Think they’ll be there?” Joker asked, programming the flight path without needing to be asked. “Also, are the targeting drones still active? It’s not a problem, per se, but I do like to know these things.” 

“They’d better be, and no. Those things are too expensive to run all the time when they’re only needed for scaring cadets.”

“Perfect. Taking us down now.”

It was a tense forty minute trip to the landing point. Shepard suited back up and spent the remainder of the time checking and re-checking her weapons, just as she did before any mission. Joker lasted three minutes before switching the shuttle to manual. It was faster, he told himself, and it was, if he ignored the odd safety measure or two. Shepard was willing to trade a little safety for speed and she trusted him to know how much was a little and how much was too much. He got them there safely and eleven minutes faster than the computer could have.

And when they landed, there were twelve bedraggled cadets all in a row, waiting for them.

Shepard hopped out of the ship before the ramp was properly lowered. “No way in hell should you all have been able to get here before me. When we’re done with Pinnacle, we’ll have a little chat about the proper meaning of scatter and run. But right now, we have work to do.”

“What do we know, ma’am?” Clark asked.

“Very little. Everyone on board. We’ll talk in the air.”

xxx
The cadets and Shepard crowded themselves into the back of the ship, surrounding the central console. There was a certain amount of good-natured nudging and pushing between the cadets; magically, none of it ever reached Shepard, who put a stop to all movement entirely with a single look. 

“We have very little information. Someone on Pinnacle Station sent what I can only assume to be a distress signal, in Old Turian. Our good friend Joker has detected several energy signatures for small vessels, most likely batarian troop-carriers. I do not particularly care who is there or what they want. We’re going to ruin their plans.” Shepard pulled up the holographic 3D plan of the station. “I won’t bother going over the schematics; you should all know the station as well as I do by now. We have no information on how many hostiles we have or what weapons they have. Thoughts?”

“Timing’s too good, ma’am,” Clark said. “The maintenance cycle was announced less than 24 hours ago; that’s not enough time to pull together a crew and a plan capable of taking out the turians.”

“Especially if the ones doing the planning are batarians,” Brink added.

“So we have to assumed that the batarians have detailed knowledge of the station, maybe even someone on the inside.”

“But their knowledge will be academic at best,” Clark said. “Ours is instinctive.”

“That is a minor advantage at best,” Shepard said, crossing her arms. “But a minor advantage should be all an N7 needs. I want you all working in pairs. Sort yourselves out; you know who you work best with.”

“What’s the objective?”

“Same as it always is.”

“Hurt them without getting hurt.”

Shepard nodded. “More specifically, however, each pair is to identify somewhere in the station where they can do some major damage to both the station itself and whatever unwelcome aliens happen to be on it at the time.”

“Surely the aim is to throw the batarians off without destroying the station.”

“If possible. Whatever happens, we cannot allow the batarians to take any of the technology from the station. If that means trashing the tech ourselves, so be it.”

Quinn raised her hand. “I helped with the installation of additional holographic projectors outside of the main simulators. If the batarians are in the right place, I can easily bring down a little holographic hell on them.”

“How little?”

“An entire battalion. The programme was designed for the turians’ final test. It’s pretty hardcore.”
 
“Do you have the codes?”

“Don’t need them. If I can get to Ochern’s terminal, there’s a backdoor I can use.”

“You found Jensen’s route?” Shepard smiled. “Excellent. Abs owes me a drink. Who do you want to help you?”

“Hansen.”

Hansen nodded. “Sounds like fun.”

“Alright. Hansen, start planning your route. Quinn, try and access the Station’s systems. I want to know what we’re dealing with. What weapons do we have with us?”

“Each of us has the four standard guns,” Watson replied. “Tchen’s got her explosives-”

“Which are not suitable for use on the Station,” Tchen added. “I can’t guarantee they won’t breach the hull.”

“And I am never going to ask how a cadet got their hands on explosives of that calibre,” Shepard said.

“Shepard, we’ve got the interior cameras,” Quinn said. “It doesn’t look like the batarians have spliced any of the feeds. And all the cameras are still running.”

“Batarians aren’t the sneaky kind,” Shepard said. “But this is bold even for them. Can you find anyone?”

“My bugs are looking for variations in the decibel levels across the station. Should pick up any- Bingo. Unless the batarians can swear in Turian, I’ve found the trainees. All of them, by the sounds of it.”

“You can tell that from the audio feed?”

“Well, yes, but only because one of them just asked why the batarians didn’t split them up.”

“Excellent. Lorne, take O’Neill, Mason and Brink, go get them,” Shepard ordered. “When you find them, save the gloating for later.”

“Shepard, it looks like the feed is being downloaded. Part of it, anyway.”

“Which part, Quinn?”

“Just the assembly hall.”

“Pull it up.”

The feed from the hall was high quality, good enough that footage of the occasional graduation ceremonies could be used by every major news broadcast in the Turian Expanse. The feed was certainly good enough that Shepard could the batarians, lined up to from three sides of a square and being unusually orderly while doing so.

“We’ve got the sensors. Picking up fifty-eight batarians in the hall, eleven more in the docking bay, six outside the turians’ cell. And what looks like ten patrols of five, spread across the station.”

“They’re just waiting,” Ali said. “Why aren’t they trashing the place, ripping the tech?”

“Because it’s not the about the tech,” Clark said. “But what else is there on the station worth that many batarians?”

“Us,” Shepard said. “The N7s went out in force against Torfan, there’s a lot of ill feeling there. You guys are meant to be our best and brightest; killing you would be like killing our children.”

“You were pretty active on Torfan yourself.”

“Very few people know that, even fewer batarians. These bastards are probably waiting for us to get back from our field trip so they can wipe out our graduating N7C class.”

“They could have sent the message.”

“Maybe. But they don’t look like people ready for our arrival. Even if they know we’re coming, they don’t know we’re here. Joker, tell me there are ways onto the Station that don’t involve the docking bay.”

“Like, eight if we have the proper equipment. Which we do because you’re intensely paranoid and very well organised.”

“Good. Start mapping them for me, then-”

“Shepard, looks like we’ve got eyes on their commander,” Quinn called. “Got the biggest gun in the room and all the others suddenly look scared.”

“Quinn, can you zoom in on that?” Clark said, pointing at the screen over her shoulder. “You see, his upper right eye? That scarring looks awfully like that left by a near-miss with a sniper rifle.”

“Let me see,” Shepard ordered and Quinn scrambled to comply; there really was no other option when Shepard spoke like that. And then she smiled in the most worrying way imaginable. “Malak. You stupid bastard,” she said, more to herself than anyone else, and then raised her voice again. “Alright, kids. Change of plan. We’re not going to blow Pinnacle Station to kingdom come. We’re going to take it back.”

“Fine by us,” Lorne said. “Can we do it by ourselves, or do we have to be grown up and share with the turians?”

“It would be rude to have a party without inviting them,” Tchen said.

“Why the change in plan, Shepard?” Clark asked.

“Because that batarian is Commander Malak,” Shepard said. “He led the attack against Elysium and he is personally responsible for the death of an N7 operative, Staff Lieutenant Reid Davis. He doesn’t leave Pinnacle Station alive, are we clear?”

The cadets nodded.

“We’ll need to move fast. Malak likes to execute commanders in front of their troops and he has Vidinos. Everyone suit up. Joker will drop each of you where you need to be. Clark, you’ll take command.”

“And what will you do?” Clark asked.

“I will be playing the role of bait. And I will be most annoyed if it goes wrong. Make me proud, boys and girls. However you see fit, make me proud. Joker! Take us into position. You know what I want.”

xxx
“Are we sure this is going to work?” Tchen asked, peering dubiously out of the view point.

“It’s just like an orbital drop,” Joker said. “In theory, anyway.”

“Yeah, only it’s horizontal instead of vertical and, if we miss, we’ll float in space until we die.”

“So don’t miss,” Clark said. “Shepard jumps first, then Joker will drop the rest of us off.”

Tchen glanced back at Shepard, standing by the hatch with her helmet under her arm, and then nudged Joker. “Do you have any idea what she’ll do?”

“Not in any detail. I imagine it will involve death and death-defying and a certain amount of smart-ass comments,” Joker replied. “Shepard! We’re in place. Are you sure about this?”

“No.” Shepard pulled on her helmet, sealed it down. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”

“That’s my CO. Opening inner hatch.”

She nodded and stepped through the hatch. 

“And she’s off,” Joker said. “Where next, Clark?”

Clark was still looking at the holographic map of Pinnacle Station. “Right. This is what we do.”

xxx
Shepard’s landing here, with any luck. She’ll hit a patrol in a matter of minutes, as she wished. And I imagine the poor bastards won’t do that much damage.

The first batarian to come round the corner got shot through the throat. The element of surprise was always good for at least one death and the four remaining batarians were too used to patrolling empty corridors to be ready for an angry and efficient N7 operative. Neat bullet holes and the odd broken neck were all Shepard left behind as she picked a corridor at random and started running.

It had been too long since she’d done this kind of work. Solo infiltration was all about stealth and sneakiness, which were admittedly qualities that Shep had in abundance. But there was always fun to be had when the objective was to do as much damage as possible and damn the consequences. Playing bait was never a problem, so long as you trusted the people getting ready to close the trap.

She made her way across Pinnacle Station, using the route to Ahern’s office that she used when she wanted to put off actually talking to the man. Shepard made sure not to touch any the cameras, just in case Malak was smart enough to have someone watching them. His attention had to be on her for as long as possible if this was going to work.

The hardest part of the whole situation, really, was letting enough batarians live so that they were able to take her prisoner, just outside the main hall and far away from whatever little tasks her cadets had found to keep themselves out of trouble until they were ready to cause trouble themselves.  

Her distraction won’t last forever. We’ll need to move fast. Hansen, you and Quinn will land here. Get Quinn to the computers she wants and make sure that nobody stops her.

“Open the door, open the door, open the door!”

“All that shouting is damaging my calm,” Quinn muttered, tearing panels off the wall to get at the wiring beneath.

“And all these batarian bullets are damaging me!” Hansen yelled back down the radio.

Quinn rolled her eyes. If that were true, Hansen would be yelling a whole lot louder. She pulled out her boot-knife and went to work, splicing wires all over the place. Putting this back together was going to be a nightmare. Fortunately, it would probably also going to be someone else’s problem. The door finally slid open, not all the way, but just about enough.

“Door open, Hansen,” Quinn said, setting herself up by the door control inside the room. The moment Hansen was in-

Hansen came barrelling around the corner and threw herself through the door. “Close the door, close the door!”

“There is just no pleasing you, is there?” Quinn said, but the door shut obligingly anyway. There were a few faint thuds as the pursuing batarians didn’t manage to stop it time. 

“Is that door going to hold?” Hansen asked.

“Almost certainly not. I had to destroy the locking mechanism to get us in. The batarians will figure it out sooner or later.”

“You’d best work fast, then,” Hansen said. She took up position behind the first row of terminals, rifle ready in her hands.

“Hm.” Quinn picked a terminal seemingly at random and pressed a few buttons. “Or I could do this.”

There were a few screams, all of them suddenly cut off. And then the unmistakable stench of well-cooked flesh.

Hansen blinked, lowering her rifle slowly. “What did you do?”

“Ran a massive electrical charge through the door. And the walls. And most of the floor.”  Quinn switched terminals, completely missing the way that Hansen peered dubiously at the patch of floor she was standing on. She wondered how many crucial systems she could reroute to her omnitool before something caught fire or imploded. “Time for some real work, don’t you think?”

Lorne, you and yours are going after the turians, like Shepard said. Once you’ve got them, I want them here and here, ready to move at my signal, see? If they won’t come, leave them in their cell. This needs to go smooth. And don’t let Mason do anything stupid; I want all of us to graduate.

Mason was, in Lorne’s honest opinion, absolutely insane and letting her get out of bed in the morning probably counted as letting her do something stupid. But she was an excellent soldier, strong and fast and capable of taking care of herself, and her particular breed of insanity was particularly distracting, so she was the logical choice.

The batarians standing guard outside the cells were more than a little surprised when an N7 operative popped up out of nowhere, shot the nearest batarian in the face and took off running. And it was really only natural for a few of the batarians to give chase. Piss-poor display of discipline, but only natural. Lorne let Brink and O’Neil take care of the remaining guards; he had the highest tech scores of the three of them and someone had to get the damn doors open. Highest tech scores wasn’t saying a huge amount in this group, but he had soldier proof instructors from Quinn and some very nice omnitool mods.

The door opened and one of the turian trainees had a halfway decent attempt at rearranging the bones in Lorne’s face before Lorne slammed him to the ground and waited for him to realise the difference between a human and a batarian. It only took a minute, the bastards were better than they had been at the beginning of the course.

Mason came back, breathing a little faster than when she’d left but completely unharmed. The grin on her face told Lorne that the same couldn’t be said for the batarians who’d followed her. Good.

“Come on, then,” Lorne said to the still-shocked turian he was sitting on. “We need to get you lot armed and ready. Are you going to be okay with following my orders or do we need to have some time-wasting macho pissing match before we go?”

“Get us guns and we shoot whoever you like,” muttered one turian.

“As long as you just want us to shoot batarians,” corrected Volak, the closest thing the turian trainees had to a Clark.

Lorne smiled. “Good answer. Let’s move. I want to see the look on Vidinos’ face when Shepard saves his life.”

Tchen, you’ll take Watson and jump here. Take your little surprises with you, get ready to cause one hell of a light show when I say so.

Watson set the next block of plastic explosive, moulding it carefully against the bulkhead. And then took a good long look at precisely where Tchen had told him to put it.  “Hey, if we set them here, isn’t there a chance we’ll-”

“No,” Tchen said without looking away from the mess of wires she was using to string the explosives together.

“But you said-”

“If we set the explosives here, there isn’t a chance of a hell breach. There will definitely be a hull breach. Mainly because we’re setting these up all around an airlock. Things do not randomly explode around me, Watson. Around me, things blow up precisely when and where I want them to, with only so much force as I wish them to. My explosions are only dangerous to those who didn’t set them.”

“So we’re not going to die?”

“Well, we’re not going to get caught in the explosion or get spaced. Everything else is out of my hands.”

Watson sighed, but went back to work anyway. That was really the best that an N7 could reasonably hope for, after all.

Lin, Ali, I want you two here, ready to work your particular brand of magic. You’re going to see a lot of batarians trying to get through here; I’d appreciate it if few of them managed it.

There weren’t probably that many people who knew how to rig floor tiles so they’d crack under the weight of the enemy and send unsuspecting fleet plunging into the stream of super-heated plasma below. Technically speaking, Ali wasn’t one of those people and so he wasn’t so much working as improvising. The basic idea was sound, he was sure. Moderately sure. And they’d already done all the basic stuff, such as messing with the doors’ motion sensors so that they’d slam shut when people approached them, or even as people were passing through them.

Lin was busy carefully stringing micro-wire across the corridor, being sure to vary the height. The classic use of micro-wire led to plenty of slit throats, but there was always a certain joy in placing a length of the stuff at knee-height. It was slow work; the N7 hardsuits were strong enough to withstand micro-wire if it was touched with the lightest of fingers, but the slightest amount of additional pressure and Lin could kiss her digits goodbye.

Traditionally, the traps would get steadily more dangerous as the enemy moved further down the corridor. Lin had agreed, however, that you could never have too much of a good thing and so the corridor was consistently deadly all the way through.

“That’s it, I’m out of micro-wire,” Lin said, working the cramps out of her hands. “What else do we have?”

Ali grinned and produced the last of his little surprises: old fashioned pin-grenades and a length of plasti-thread for some proper tripwires. He’d always had a soft spot for the classics. 

Cohen, you’re with me. We’re going to set up here. And not a word to Shepard.

The balconies of the assembly hall were ornate and modern and very noticeable. They also gave shit cover and limited angles on the hall below. But there was a small alcove just above the main doors, just large enough for a man and a rifle, with good views of almost the entire hall and the small horde of batarians down below, and Cohen was in position at the other hand of the access tube, ready just in case the batarians found them before it was time. The rifle was better than one of the best money could buy; sleek lines and technically maybe-just-a-little illegal mods. Clark was sure the rifle was good enough.

He was almost as sure that he was. 
 
Joker, once we’re all where we’re supposed to be, these will be your targets. The Station’s shields are excellent, you’ll have to be inside the perimeter to do any damage with this ship.

Joker has long since gotten use to loitering in space while waiting for something to explode. The only real difference between this and the hundred other missions he’d done with Shepard was that, at long fucking last, he was finally going to get to blow something up himself.

He had one ship, with four guns, two on each side, always a good start. And he was spoilt for choice when it came to targets. Half a dozen batarian ships, all of them in desperate need for a few holes in the hull. Clark had said that he didn’t want any batarians making it off Pinnacle Station and so Joker was to take out the ships as quickly as possible once the fun started. Joker had spent enough time with the N7s to know that they really just wanted as many explosions as humanly possible.

It was hard, sometimes, being him. Work, work, work.

And then all we need to do is wait for the right moment.

xxx
Being dragged before your enemies with your hands tied behind your back wasn’t the most impressive of entrances, Shepard would admit, but it had a certain timeless class to it. Being thrown to the floor was rather less classy, but she kept her balance as well as she could and nodded politely to Vidinos, similarly bound and kneeling next to her.

“Fine mess you’ve got me into,” Shepard said. “You owe me a drink or three, you scaly bastard.”

“You didn’t have to come,” Vidinos replied. “I’m sure I could handle this.”

“Wrong again.”

“Silence!” The command was accompanied by a smart slap and Shepard rolled her eyes. Idiots couldn’t even hit properly. They’d already lost major points for securing her hands in front rather than behind her. An enemy’s stupidity was useful, true, but after a certain point it just became plain insulting.

The line of batarians in front of them parted and Shepard looked up at Malak, ugly and smug as ever.

“I’d hardly dared hope that you would be caught in my trap,” he said. “The famous Shepard, the butcher of Torfan. Are you ready to pay for the lives you took?”

Shepard smiled. “Malak, I see you kept my gift. I’ve always wondered, do batarian women like a man with scars?”

“They’ll love the one who brings your head back to our people.”

“Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you? You never managed to touch me yet.”

“Never before were you arrogant enough to face me on your own, Shepard.”

Shepard shook her head. “Christ, Malak, you really are the dumbest son of a bitch alive. All these years, all those battles, and you still haven’t realised.”

“Realised what?”

“I mean, for God’s sake, I had five thousand of my closest friends at my side when I burnt your precious Torfan to the ground. You’ve still got three good eyes. How didn’t you see it?” She stood, bound and bruised and surrounded by enemies and not a single batarian moved to put her back on her knees.

“See what?” Malak yelled.

She smiled. “N7s are never alone. And you are going to die very soon.”

There was just enough time for her to savour the look of surprise on Malak’s face before the bullet bore its way through his forehead and out of the other side.

Up on his little alcove, Clark reached for his radio. “Let’s go.”

And, perfectly unified, the N7C-80s unleashed hell.

xxx
The batarians in the hall turned as one towards the balconies, laying down some serious suppressive fire. It was a shame, really, that Clark wasn’t on the balconies and just kept firing, shifting his rifle effortlessly from target to target.

With the guards well and truly distracted, Shepard slipped her cuffs and grabbed Vidinos, throwing them both towards the relative safety of an overturned table. A bullet slid along her armoured shoulder, narrowly missing her neck and Shepard wished for her helmet, confiscated by one of the batarians.

She darted out again just long enough to take her pistol back from Malak’s body, then back to cover, where Vidinos was only just managing to unlock his own cuffs.

“What the hell’s going on, Shepard?” he asked.

“Wait for it-” She tucked her head down as low as it would go, and the doors on either side of the hall blew open. “Covering fire!” she roared at the mix of turians and cadets that flooded the hall, each and every one armed to the death.

Shepard settled back against the table. “This is how N7s do a rescue,” she said to Vidinos, as calmly and casually as if they were talking in one of Ahern’s endless meetings. “There will be more explosions, I warn you now.”

“There always are with you,” Vidinos grumbled. He hooked a talon around a fallen batarian’s rifle and checked it over. “Shall we?”

“We shall.”

They rose together, moving forward with their students. The main hall doors were open, the batarians shifting back towards them. Shepard shot one batarian as he tried to dash through the doors; his brains were slippery enough to cause two other soldiers to lose their footing and they were dead before they’d regained it.

“Hold!” Shepard ordered when the last living batarian was through the doors.   

“But we have the advantage!” Vidinos said. “We should follow.”

“It’s not necessary,” Lorne said, grinning. “That corridor leads to three possible routes to the airlocks and the batarian ships, you see. And when they hit those corridors-”

“They’re really going to wish they’d stood their ground here,” Mason finished, grinning equally broadly.

“But if you want to try and make it through all those booby-trapped corridors, you’re welcome,” Brink finished. Not one turian moved.

Clark and Cohen stated to climb down from the sniper’s alcove. An explosion rocked the Station, causing Cohen to lose his grip and fall the last five feet; the turians dived for cover, leaving the N7s standing together in the middle of the hall.

“Was that Lin or Tchen?” Shepard asked, intrigued.

“That was Tchen. I think she went for the airlock in the end. That, on the other hand,” Clark said as they heard distant screams. “Was almost certainly Lin and Ali. Did you know that if you hit micro-wire with enough forward momentum, it can slice through standard issue hardsuits? The spine’s hardly any trouble at all after that.”

“What’s in the third route?”

“Well, by now, Quinn’s had enough time to take complete control of the Station’s security systems. All she needs is an omnitool and a threatening smile. And maybe Hansen to hold a rifle for her. What’s in corridor 74-J?” Clark asked.

“Enough turrets to make a herd of battle-mecha jealous,” Shepard replied. “I hope Quinn leaves one or two for Hansen to shoot, she could do with the practice.”

The hall lit up suddenly as the space around Pinnacle Station was filled with fire and chaos. The charred wing of a batarian carrier floated past one of the windows.

“And that’s Joker. Even if the batarians survive the other 80s, there’s no way for them to get off of Pinnacle Station,” Clark finished.

“Damn it, Clark, did you have to include Joker?” Shepard complained.

“It seemed mean to leave him out,” Clark replied.

“But it counts as active combat,” Shepard said. “I’m going to have to pay him more now.” She retrieved the rest of her weapons from the pile into which they had been unceremoniously tossed by the batarian bastards and strapped them back into place, keeping her very favourite shotgun in her hands. “Right. We’d better go help with the clean-up, hadn’t we?”

The half-dozen cadets around her nodded and hefted their own guns, arranging themselves easily into a mobile combat formation. Shepard turned the turians, who were watching the N7s with expressions of admiration, faint concern and, in Vidinos’ case, the slightest hint of amusement.

“Are you guys coming or not?” she said and lead her troops out into the overly-perilous corridors of the very nearly reclaimed Pinnacle Station. 



xxx
Hours later, when the station was secured, the last of the batarians dealt with, and completely unnecessary reinforcements on the way, Shepard was sitting on the loading ramp of Joker’s shuttle and watching her cadets as they cleaned their weapons and armour. Not that they could really be thought of as cadets anymore after what they’d done. The final decision wasn’t officially made for another ten days, but everyone in that group was going to get the red stripe on their sleeve if Shepard had any say in the matter. And she did. She had the only say, really. The turian cadets were massed nearby, still separate, but facing the N7Cs and the two groups were talking almost amicably, possibly for the first time in the decade long existence of the joint training programme.

“Do you think this is what my people had in mind when they allowed your people to come here?” Vidinos asked, sitting by her side and surely seeing what she saw.

“Sure. The Turian Hierarchy wanted nothing more than for the batarians to attack Pinnacle Station so that me and my cadets could save you and yours.”

“I would never have allowed my trainees to plan such an assault.”

“Which is why you got captured and we got to save the day. You know why my cadets were able to do this? Because I never acted for a single second like they couldn’t. Even when they’d just started, I always maintained that they could do whatever I told them to. Even when they couldn’t really.”

“They were able to do this because of you, I do believe that. The next N7C class might not be so lucky with their training instructor.”

Shepard laughed. “Never thought I’d hear you trying to get me to stay on this station. It’s never been big enough for both of us. You once broke every bone in my right hand just to see what I’d do, for crying out loud!”

“And it turned out that what you’d do was destroy my career before it had even really started.”

“Attempted. I attempted to destroy your career. If I’d succeeded, we never would’ve met again.”

“And I would’ve been the worse for it. I’ve leant a lot from you, Shepard. Especially when I didn’t want to.” He held out a hand. “Allies?”

Shepard nodded. “Allies it is.”

And, possibly for the first time in the decade long existence of the joint training programme, the human and the turian instructor shook hands without an Admiral ordering them to do so.

xxx
Once things calmed down a little, Shepard remembered Ahern’s vague threats about what would happen if the N7C-80s did anything spectacular. Nothing came of it, as she’d suspected at the time. It helped, she supposed, that the cadets had helped rather than hindered inter-species relations. The Alliance as a whole seemed to be pretending that the Battle for Pinnacle Station hadn’t ever happened and it was easy enough to muddle through another week or so of sparring matches and the odd simulation. Shepard sent in her official recommendation to Alliance Command in plenty of time. It was concise and properly presented and very nearly true. The second report, the one that was only seen by the N7 General, contained a higher percentage of exclamation marks and curses, along with a much more detailed set of recommendations for what to do with the cadets.

It amused her more than it probably should, really, to add the recommendation that the cadets be split up the moment they graduated. They were dangerous together, of course they were, but they’d be just as dangerous apart, and they’d cover more ground, do more damage that way. If everything went according to plan, Quinn would end up working for Abby Jensen and Clark would make his way to Scott Freeman’s side and so the N7s’ hold on places that they shouldn’t have would be a little stronger.

But there were still one or two little formalities to be observed, and so Shepard managed to get all the cadets together. 

She faced them as she had on their first day on Pinnacle Station, hands held behind her back and head held high. But they weren’t in the rigid lines of raw recruits anymore. N7s weren’t overly found of formality, after all.

“Tomorrow, you will all graduate from the N7 Command Training Programme. Only the tenth group to do so. You probably feeling pretty proud right now and you have no reason not to. But there is still one last thing that you all need to do.”

A few looks were exchanged, not worried, precisely, but curious. Even expectant, in one or two cases.

“There are no more tests to pass. You have all proven yourselves to be extraordinary. But when you were selected for the N7C programme, you weren’t given a choice. I am giving you that choice now. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that every single one of you is ready and able to become a N7 operative. I cannot tell you if you are willing.”

“Tell us why we shouldn’t,” Lorne said.

“Because people will die. People you know and people you trust, people you like and maybe even love. You will never have another victory like the battle for Pinnacle Station. Hell, I can’t believe that we all made it through that unscathed. You are going to lose your friends and your allies and your teammates and sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop that.”

“That’s true no matter which part of the Alliance we choose,” Quinn said.

“It’s true even outside of the Alliance,” Tchen countered. “No one’s good enough to save everybody.”

“There are also those who find the work of an N7 operative... distasteful. Normal soldiering is easier, in a way. A man’s shooting at you from the other side of a battleground, it makes sense to shoot back. But all of you could be adapted for use as solo infiltrators and that is different. You may be asked to kill the weak, the defenceless, and you will only the word of people you will never meet to tell you that it is necessary and justifiable. There’s no shame in being unwilling to do that, just as there is no shame in being willing. But you need to know which you are.”

“Now tell us why we should,” Clark said. 

“Because God knows what else you kids could do without blowing a bloody hole in the universe.”

That got her a few chuckles.

“Sometimes the bad things need to be done and we need good people to do them,” Shepard said, speaking as seriously as she could. “And I can’t think of better. When faced with impossible decisions, I believe that you will all make the right ones.”

Only Clark would still meet her eye. The others were looking at each other, trying to guess who would quit, or at the floor, trying to guess if they would themselves.

“If anyone wants out, I’ll be in my office. There won’t be any repercussions. Leaving the N7s would not mean the end of your career. Any other unit in service would be lucky to have you.”  Shepard let the smile that she’d been hiding out into the open. “Congratulations, N7C-80. It’s been an honour.”

xxx
And so, on the sixteenth of November, a dozen humans stood before an Admiral of the Fleet and the only N7 General in the entire Alliance. One set of dress blues, thirteen N7 jumpsuits, each with the red stripe down one sleeve. One stripe was old, chipped and scarred, but the rest were brand new and practically shining in the light.

Up on one of the balconies, Shepard watched as they stepped forward, one by one, and received their helmets. It was a stupid tradition, an odd bit of symbolism that made no fucking sense because Shepard knew each one of them was just getting back the helmet they’d been wearing for the entirety of their training, and there was absolutely no reason for her to feel as stupidly proud as she did. They’d done all the work, not her. She knew when Joker came to join her. It wasn’t a man on crutches could be super stealthy, after all.

“They’re all there,” he said. And it wasn’t said in surprise or disbelief, as it might have been. A simple statement of fact. 

“I thought they would be. But they need to know that this was their choice. Freedom’s just as much about the choices you have as the choices you make, in my mind.”

“Yes, but your mind is a strange, strange place.”

Shepard chucked softly, then sobered slightly and said, “I’ve withdrawn my resignation. I’m going to stay here, take the next N7C group, keep on doing all the stuff that the Alliance doesn’t want anyone to know about. I could really use a good pilot.”

“Are you asking me to choose, Shepard?” Joker said, still watching the cadets. “Cause it’s a bit late for that. Looks like everyone here has made their choice.”

“For better or for worse.”

“Yeah. Only my money’s on the former,” Joker said.

He grinned at her, not the slightest bit surprised when she smiled back.
 
xxx