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This is Shepard, formerly Commander of the SSV Normandy. On the topic of signing up to do work, we've got huge unexplored sectors of this ship and that should be remedied. The ship changes at the jump [--or hell, mid-month--] but if we don't try to map it, we can't know if there's any kind of pattern to the changes. [And somewhere out there, there has to be a secondary control central for the ship seeing as no one was on the bridge when they took it.] As far as I see it: the more intel we can get, the better. And I don't know about the rest of you but I'm sick of either running blind or just waiting for something to happen.

I also realize I'm talking about dangerous work. I'm not here to tell anyone what to do, but if you're looking to help and want to volunteer then I'm all for building small scouting teams with mandatory check ins, written reports and posted communication lines. [With the unspoken message being: look, you're only cannon fodder if you don't write about it first.] I'm planning to go off the last known schematic we have of the ship. I've attached it to this message in case you haven't seen it as well as well as a short survey for anyone interested in volunteering. I'm looking to build at least five groups of three to four with a contact for each running and recording communications from a secure location.

Experience with field-ops is a bonus, but not a requirement. Weapons training is mandatory for anyone on a scouting team. If you don't have it, get it. If you don't know where to go, talk to Gunnery. For anyone looking to help with comms, technical skill is a bonus. Additionally if anyone out there has workable ideas about how to boost the network signal to deal with the ship's dead zones, I'll personally buy you a drink.

I'd appreciate cooperation with Security and Ops, but I won't argue with anyone who doesn't feel like backing this. Again: the is strictly on a volunteer basis only.

[As promised, attached to this message is a partial map of the ship and a short text document since everyone on the TQ loves surveys:]

Name:
Crew Number:
Previous Occupation:
Applicable Skills:

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Yeah sorry that was givens. Didnt wager anybody who couldnt get past the screener in your introduction with would fill out the form.

[That and paranoid secrecy, but her pragmatic tack and long list of credentials are a pretty good prophylactic for hysterical caginess actually.]

Not the top of the class but passed. Haven't got my own sidearm though.

communications dept might have repeaters, access points, or antennae we can use to expand comms. if they dont work might be deadzones are actively jammed or the wall construction is specially fucked up. my pessimism is if they knew how to trick round this maybe they would've done it already? [(It hasn't yet occurred to him that Shepard is charting unknown territory in more ways than one.) (It probably should.)]

I'll try to secure you a weapon. Don't suppose you've considered a career in Gunnery?

As far as I've determined, Communications has less technical know how than the name would suggest. [And her pessimism runs along similar lines as his.] But it's not a bad idea. I'll see what I can dig up. It's completely possible they don't know what kind of equipment they have.

[--it's quite possible that William had never anticipated to hear that question, specifically those words in that sequence addressed to him for the entirety of his life. In real life, I'm a weiner sounds rude and slightly counter-factual given the topic, so.]

Well I've killed loads of paper and plastic but you've set the bar pretty high, commander.

I'm asking because the weapons here are coded to our nanites. Apparently Gunnery can't just hand you a pistol and call it a day.

[Huh.]

that's actually pretty brilliant. Figure i'm better needed at medbay, really.

this a deal breaker, then? [It would be understandable. Somewhere in the Tranquility, the diminutive cadet rereads his text and is uncertain as to what point abduction horror turned into actual disappointment about potentially missing out on a manticore safari. Maybe there's a learning curve.]

No. I need people running comms as much as I need bodies in the halls.

['Bodies.' Not the best choice of words.]

All else fails and we need you running recon, I can probably find you a sidearm that isn't ship issue.

[At least, William has familiar enough with military culture that the terminology doesn't throw him. Bodies. Back home, that's what they called the kids who enlisted, too.]

k. not to arse it up but Id like to make a case in person. have you got 5?

[Frankly? She's got nothing but time.]

I can fit you in.

[Idle hands are the devil's playground, so they say, and the TQ has too much to offer.] k. swing by holodeck in an hour?

Copy that.

[And she's true to her word. An hour later, Shepard makes her way to the holodeck. She's dressed in the standard issue jumpsuit, but the line of her shoulders and the set of her chin screams military through it.]

[This particular holodeck isn't playing any holograms today.

Oddly, though, there are two tall consoles set against the wall; uncharacteristic for the Tranquility, not standard. Go one floor up and the holodeck up there has got only one; five floors down and the same thing. Yet the second console is there, chromed paneling and flatscreen replicated down to every detail-- except, of course, that only one of the monitors is bright.

The next instant, the clone console rips out a brief jolt of movement. Shivers, more like. Just like that, the shape of it seems to shake right off, like water taking the volume out of a dog's coat. In its place, there's then a framed canvas painting: a portrait, absurdly, of the Commander herself and life-sized. Chin up, shoulders square under the jumpsuit's clean, minimalistic lines, eyes clear, and daubed in in that eerie way that artists know how, so the figure looks like it's watching you right back.

One more shudder, and the painting is replaced by a young man. His hair is a little messy, but he's standing to attention in a way that's infinitely recognizable: someone taught him how to stand, march, salute, but he's no lifer yet.] Prefer to keep 'at off the dossier, Commander.

[Advanced forms of camouflage aren't alien to her, though they tend to take the form of tech screens and reflective panels and not-- whatever this is. She balks at the appearance of her own image in the painting (the mirror in her quarters has long been broken, and she has a brief but strangely sharp and vain thought of 'Is that what I really look like?' before the canvas shudders and changes, its edges tangling into something considerably more organic and settling, finally, into the more comfortable form of a young man.

She's on her heels, the square line of her shoulders briefly rigid and she doesn't answer immediately. When she does, it's simple:]

That's handy. Tech or bio?

Bio, [he replies, neither surprised nor disconcerted that she isn't either.] Changes on a molecular level. If I want to go diamond, I become a five-foot-something metastable allotrope of carbon. I been anyfing from armor to a brick wall. After that, the science gets fuzzy pretty fucking fast.

I can't copy biological matter, though, [he notes. He winds up linking his hands behind his back-- a bizarrely militaristic posture, for anyone who's seen him talk to just about anybody else aboard the Tranquility. Something about Shepard demands the old respect, though.] I'm hoping that'll shore up for the B-average shooting skills.

Well it definitely doesn't hurt your chances.

[She moves in closer. After a moment, Shepard offers her hand out to him to shake. Rank doesn't really mean much here and she might be heading up this operation, but he's apparently done enough to impress her.]

You said you'd been armor - you mean for another person?

[The little airman looks at the great commander very carefully, even if their physical disparity in height is not so very great. He won't have been the first cadet she's met, standing there, trying to guess at what she's thinking.]

That's right. Nothing motorized, mind you, or tech. But I done all sorts of alloys, [he furrows his brow, trying to think of any other salient details,] kevlar weaves. Been worn once or twice. [--not always consensually, but he leaves that part out, diplomatically.]

['Been worn.' She's not even going to begin to try wrapping her head around that one, so instead she takes it in stride. Don't ask hard questions, don't get weird answers.]

As far as you know if there anything that could force you to revert back to [--she flicks her eyes across him--] being you?

[She does have a gift for normalizing the profoundly abnormal.]

I reckon catastrophic damage wouldn't go well, [he says.] Maybe somefing telepathic. But I been banged up pretty thorough and held for hours before.

[Compartmentalization: practically standard issue in the Alliance Military.]

So you can still get roughed up while you're in a different form?

That's right. Ain't indestructible. My abilities function concurrently, but armor, knives and pistols don't exactly regenerate on a cellular level, so it's less relevant f' me, probably, than anybody I'm in contact wif. But I've always come out of it unharmed. [His brow knits fractionally. Relaxes again. He can guess at what she's thinking.]

I was also going to ask if this could stay in confidence. So this is me doing 'at, right now.

[Which earns a somewhat impatient, but affirmative nod of the head. All these people with their secrets are a goddamn logistical nightmare - and she wouldn't want to be a team leader out in the halls trying to wrangle a bunch of people with unknown mystery abilities, but she can't exactly refuse either.]

I won't tell anyone without your approval. [But--] If it were me I'd share it with the people in your team when we go into the ship.

[That's practical for those of us who want to survive, and William's prerogative of secrecy was to serve that goal, not to impede it.] Awright. Better'n that, I'll let them know once our assignment's up, [he tells her.]

Any idea when you'll know if I'm granted field status? [He knows better than to phrase it as a demand, and that's only half military culture. Survival comes first-- perhaps even before the tactical objective in this case, he knows it's for his own good, etcetera etcetera, but there's a restlessness seeded in his head. She's seen it before: the stupid kids growing stir-crazy in the barracks, not knowing that's easier by far than the reeking dead, the roar of a thresher maw. William doesn't exactly look like the type, but anybody would go stir-crazy, in the Tranquility.]

[If she's being honest with herself, stir-crazy might play some part of why she's running this at all. It's one thing to have a theory and another to act on it when doing so means running blind and headlong into the open mouth of something ready to eat you, but she's also not content to sit around with her thumb up her ass until someone comes along to tell her otherwise.

So yeah, his gentle needling isn't exactly a foreign concept.]

That'll depend on what the final roster looks like. Give me a few days to get my ducks in a row.

Awright, perfect. [Whatever passes for perfect on this ship. He grins, shows teeth, a clean white row with a few crooked individuals. He hands his hands down even at his sides, and he bows from the waist with a sort of deference that's familiar but different from the culture of her home.

He doesn't move. Won't realize, for at least one or two longer, more awkward moments, that he's waiting to be dismissed.]

[It's a long pause. Once she realizes he's waiting on her, Shepard half clears her throat - throws him a salute out of propriety or habit.]

Dismissed, cadet.

[Jesus, she hasn't had the reason to say those words in long enough that they feel downright alien.]

[The airman smiles. Fleetingly. Not enough it would have got him in trouble, back at the camp, but it's something.] 'Ave a good evening, ma'am.

[With that, William heads out of the holodeck.]

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why cant i html fonts properly

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