Jane left the med-bay feeling a little drained, despite having slept for nearly 15 hours. Visions of destruction appear to not be great for a person's rest. Still she wouldn't complain about the outcome. At the moment she was just worried the beacon was doing something that could harm or even kill Jenkins. Even if it had been a lethal blast, she’d still make the same choice. Her job as their commander is to keep her soldiers alive. At least as far as she was concerned with it. If anyone had to make the sacrifice play it should be her.
Just out of the door to the med-bay she could see Jenkins, pacing lightly from side to side beside the stair to the upper deck. He noticed her as she approached and stopped his pacing to speak to her.
“Commander. I’m glad to see you’re up and about alright. I owe you for dealing with my stupid mistake. I shouldn’t have approached recklessly like that. You shouldn’t have had to step up for me like that.” Again he looked guilty, worried about what had happened, as though she was angry with him.
“Corporal, it’s fine. You couldn’t have known, besides, you saved my life once that mission yourself.” Her words caused a look of shock and confusion, and she was surprised to realize that he didn’t know. Didn’t realize how close it was.
“That sniper round, on the catwalk. You boosted my shield just in time. Even with the boost the round blasted through both my shields and biotic barrier. My armor barely held up and probably wouldn't have without the shield boost.” It was the truth, that round had put her on her ass and might have pissed her off enough for her to lose her cool. Even then Jenkins still backed her up, and followed her reckless charge into combat without hesitation.
“I wanted to apologize to you actually. Our talk in the med-bay before the mission. I had accused you of being a liability. A risk not worth taking on the mission. I can admit when I was wrong, and you more than proved that on that mission. I was glad to have you on my side.” Jenkins looked shocked at her words. He looked away for a moment, but not quick enough for Jane to miss the flash of red across his cheeks. He looked back quickly though, no sign of the embarrassment present and she decided she’d let him get away with it.
“Well thanks. And don’t worry about the shield boost thing. We're soldiers, it’s our job to have eachothers backs. Besides, given how you charged through them I’m pretty sure you would have survived the round even without shields or armor on spite alone.” He laughed slightly and it was Jane’s turn to look away embarrassed for a moment. She was aware she had… aggressive tendencies. Heat of the moment she could lose herself in them and make bullheaded or reckless choices. It was a good trait for a soldier. But not a great one if you were a commander.
“Eh hem. Right. Anyways, you’re holding up okay? I know we lost Nihlus on that mission. You seemed like a fan of his.” She quickly changed the subject, not wanting to dwell on her personal traits longer than necessary. Jenkins' face dropped a little in response, a look of guilt and regret on his face, and she felt bad at how casually she had brought him up. That was thoughtless.
“Right. Nihlus. He seemed like a good man, so It’s a shame things went how they did. Still, he didn’t die in vain. We’re gonna stop Saren, and he’s gonna help us with that.” He said with a light smile on his face, but his eyes still filled with guilt.
“What do you mean? We’re going to stop Saren absolutely but how will Nihlus help with that?” Jane recalled the Anderson mentioned they had a stroke of luck in acquiring some evidence, and Jenkins knew about it. Is this what it was?
“Nihlus was wearing the omni tool upgrade I had designed. Well the VI unit had a secondary feature running in the background. It was part of the code I wrote planning for a future upgrade if I could get a more powerful model and approval from the council to link the VI to our comms. It records its surroundings while it’s on. Only saving the last 30 minutes at a time, but we recovered it from Nihlus before that time limit was up.” Jane was truly shocked, the VI was recording its surroundings. The fact this hadn’t been mentioned was a little concerning, felt like something he should have informed Jane of if she was going to be wearing it, but that uneasy feeling was overridden as she realized what it meant.
“Wait, that means..”
“Yeah. We have a recording of Saren confronting Nihlus. There’s nothing as incriminating as him announcing him and the geth are finally executing their evil plan to destroy the humans. But it does confirm he was on Eden Prime, which he absolutely should not have been. We plan on letting him deny he was present before revealing the evidence to the council.” Jane was truly impressed. They actually had solid proof of Saren’s involvement. They weren’t just hoping the council would trust their word, they could present some evidence to back their story up.
“That’s huge for us. Lucky you seem to have big plans for these things.” She laughed lightly and Jenkins chuckled along.
“Yeah, people complain engineers overdesign things but every so often it turns out to be useful.” They shared a moment of levity, but one that couldn’t last long.
“Well, take it easy alright, we’ll be headed into the citadel soon. Should be a busy next few hours.”
“Understood commander, I’ll be ready and waiting.” he gave a salute, but cracked her a grin as he dropped his formal stance just as quickly, turning back to his own thoughts quickly as Shepard walked away. On the other side of the mess hall she could see Williams and Alenko speaking with each other, and Chakwas herself was leaning against the outside of the med-bay.
Jane gave her a nod. Chakwas was a good woman, and she’d have to treat her to a drink later as thanks for patching her up once again. She crossed the mess catching Alenko and Williams in the middle of their conversation.
“I find it crazy that you could consider BaAT a tougher experience than marine training. One is a school where you learn to control mind powers, the other is weeks of grueling physical training. Doesn’t seem like much of a contest.” Williams was speaking to Alenko, but seemed a little heated in their discussion.
“Yeah well you never had to experience what BaAT training was like. I was half the age compared to when I started training for the military as well. I’m telling you BaAt was tougher.” Alenko seemed to be dodging the details, but convinced in his answer of which was more difficult. Upon seeing her approach both soldiers give her a salute, stopping their conversation.
“At ease you two. Just checking in.” She understood their formality, it was professional, but after learning Jenkins was actually a competent soldier she found his more relaxed nature a little easier to talk to then most prim and proper soldier types.
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“Of course commander. We’re glad to see you're doing alright, you had us worried back there.”
“Yeah, that mission went badly enough as it is. Losing someone personal to the crew would have been too much.” Ashley speaks to her first, making polite and professional conversation, while Kaidan speaks a little more comfortably.
“How are you holding up Williams, things got rough down there.” Jane felt the need to check in on the one she was worried about, she understood what it was like to lose your entire unit. How it felt to be the only one to make it out.
“I’ve seen friends die before. Comes with being a Marine. But to see my whole unit wiped out…” She trails off, shaking her head before continuing. “And you never get used to seeing dead civilians. But things would have been a whole lot worse if you hadn’t shown up.”
“We couldn’t have done it without you Williams. And if you ever need to talk, let me know okay. Trust me when I say I understand how hard it can be to be the only one to make it out of a unit.”
Ashley gives a look, but nods a light smile filling her face. “Thanks commander. I have to admit I was worried about being assigned to the Normandy. It’s nice when someone makes you feel welcome. You and Kaidan both.” She says giving Kaidan a nudge to the ribs which causes him to shake his head.
“Well what can I say, it’ll be nice to have someone aboard who takes things more seriously then I do. It was frustrating being the strict one of the group.” Kaidan gives a look over to where Jenkins was browsing some program on his omni tool, lost in his own world.
“Yeah, he seems like an odd one. Kinda feels like he’s the ship mascot. Morale just improves wherever he decides to spend his time.” Ashley somehow gives an incredibly accurate description of Jenkins despite having only known him a short amount of time and any worry Jane had is dealt with.
“I think you’re going to fit in here just fine, Williams.” She gives the soldier a smile, which Ashley returns. She gives a light wave as she heads off, moving towards the staircase to make her way up to the flight deck. She passes through the busy area, getting a light wave from several workers, along with Pressly who gives a nod, happy to see her up and about. Jane closes the distance to the cockpit, seeing Joker still sitting in his chair, working away at the controls of their ship.
“Good timing commander. I was just about to bring us into the citadel. See that taxpayer money at work.” The sound of footsteps moving quickly fills the air behind her as she sees Jenkins speed walking up.
“Hey, sorry for intruding. I just, absolutely needed to see this.” For the first time since the talk in the med-bay pre mission, Jenkins had the same look in his eyes he had often watched her with. Just this look of total fascination and wonder. Jane had to catch herself staring as she turned away quickly to look out of the ship's sole windows.
Joker flew them in towards a Mass Relay, and soon after they had jumped. The dark void of space filled with stars quickly replaced by faint glowing purple mist. The luminescent clouds of a massive nebula. As they zoomed through the mist they suddenly came upon the view of the largest space structure in the galaxy. The citadel. Home to the galactic government referred to as the council and 13.2 million souls, making it one of the most famous destinations most would never get to visit. It was a huge structure, featuring 5 prong-like arms that extended outwards from an inner ring. Most lived on those arms, serving as essentially 5 individual cities on each one, and were referred to as wards. The centre ring was referred to as the Presidium and was home to the central governing bodies of the Citadel, as well as the wealthy who could afford to occupy the space.
Extending from the ring was a long tower that reached a peak right in the ring's centre. This was where the council resided and was called simply the Citadel Tower. All in all it was an impressive structure that even Jane could admit was worth admiring. The sound of footsteps reappeared as Ashley and Kaidan joined them staring out at the Citadel. As they approached closer they could see the space between the wards was filled with different space ships, one of them larger than any of the others. A truly massive Dreadnought class star-ship that was kilometers in length and height.
“Look at the size of that ship” Ashley calls out, pointing at it as though it could be missed.
“The Ascension, flag ship of the Citadel fleet.” Kaidan gives the response, calling out the name of the massive vessel.
‘Size isn’t everything.” Joker lives up to his name, cracking humor at the situation.
“Why so touchy Joker?” Ashley quips back, showing a touch of humor Shepard hadn’t expected from the serious mannered woman.
“I’m just saying size isn’t everything, you need firepower too.”
“Look at that monster. It’s main gun could rip through the barriers of any ship in the Alliance fleet.”
“Good thing it's on our side then.” Kaidan chimes in, bringing an end to the conversation as we finish our approach. Joker makes contact with the citadel and gets clearance to land. While we slowly clear out from the cockpit to prepare our landing aboard the citadel. The last to leave the cockpit, just behind Jane, is corporal Jenkins.
“Well, impressive view right?” She asks him, wanting to hear his opinion. The look on his face was different now. It still had that same spark of wonder, that fascination, but also had a hint of sadness. Of melancholy.
“Hm. Yeah, yeah no it's incredible. I-- I never really imagined I’d ever get to see it in person like that. It. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I feel I don’t deserve to be here.”
That was not the answer Jane was expecting. Jenkins had always seemed an upbeat guy, a mix of blindly confident and unbearably optimistic. He didn’t seem to be the type to stress about personal worth. It was then Jane realized she had been acting like a tool. Jenkins lost his parents. Less than 24 hours ago. She hadn’t even said anything. He shook it off in the moment on Eden Prime and no one felt the courage to press it since then.
She couldn’t just push it blindly again, she had lost people, but couldn’t imagine how it felt to be Jenkins in this moment. Still, she couldn’t just leave him without saying something. She placed a hand on his shoulder and spoke, finding the right words as she went.
“Hey. You do belong here. I understand what it’s like to doubt if you're ready, if you belong in a position you’ve never been in before. But you were right there with us on Eden Prime fighting to save lives. That’s what we are doing here. Continuing that fight. That’s what we do. We’re the heroes, remember.” She called back to their talk in the med-bay, Jenkins dream of being a hero, saving the galaxy. She didn't quite believe things were that fairy tale simple, but it is true that that’s what they were trying to do. And if they succeeded there would be people who would view their actions as heroic.
Jenkins gave her a smile, and stood a little straighter. The sadness was still there, but less prominent. Nothing could be fixed with a single conversation.
“You know you are remarkably good at that whole speech thing. Have you ever considered a career in public speaking?” He smiled as he said it and Jane laughed.
“Public speaking? No chance in hell, I'd much rather just be told where to point and shoot. Travelling to settlements telling people how to be more confident would be lethally boring.”
“Ah shame, you really could excel as a recruitment officer. Put on a skimpy outfit and parade about telling everyone how great it is to join the alliance military.” They laughed once again as Jane punched him in the arm and strode forward ahead of him.
“No chance in hell, I’m allergic to uniforms that aren't to Alliance code.” They shared a chuckle as they split up, each going to grab the things they'd need once aboard the Citadel. It was a nice moment, but they still had work to do. And even with evidence it wouldn't be easy to convince the council that one of their top agents was a traitor. They would have their work cut out for them.