Chapter Text
Lieutenant Commander Emilia Shepard, Alliance Navy, negotiated her way through thick crowds that always clogged the corridors near the docks, sea bag in one hand and coffee in the other. She'd missed good coffee while out in the Terminus — the most they'd usually been able to get was coffee grounds in ration packs.
With her battered jeans and bomber jacket, out of regulation haircut, Shepard didn't quite look the Alliance's war hero. That was the way she liked it. People always wanted to see the Star of Terra, touch it. Ask about one of the worst days of her life.
If they were particularly brave, they might ask about what had happened afterwards.
This way she got to get to her destination without the whispers and the requests for selfies. It made the eyes of the uniformed men and women around her slide right past her, which was entirely the point. N7s were the Alliance's knife in the dark, secrecy a weapon as much as a rifle.
The guard at the docks didn't give her a second glance until he'd run her ID and orders. Then he looked in between it and her, his jaw slack. She raised an eyebrow.
"Uh...Bay E54, ma'am."
"Thank you." She stepped through, hefting her sea bag up more on her shoulder, and went in search of this ship that had pulled her from the near Terminus back to Arcturus Station.
Shepard had missed the commissioning ceremony, and she'd never been so glad for the sometimes inefficient naval transport network. She'd watched the ceremonies on one of the three shuttles she'd caught to get back to Arcturus Station, surrounded by chattering young Marines and sailors on their way home or to new stations. It'd been a lot of politicians and brass giving speeches, both turian and human.
It was incredible that they'd managed to make a new prototype ship boring.
If she'd been here for it they would've dressed her up and paraded her around. Look at our shiny war hero!
She'd become a N7 because she wanted to be the best, but also so she didn't have to deal with that crap anymore. And David Anderson was dragging her right back into it, away from her N7 team, away from the violent but rewarding life she'd built in the Terminus. Away from the mercenary officer who was too 'politically sensitive' to be acceptable as a war hero's girlfriend in the Alliance's eyes, but who had become a port in the storm.
Her thought of Selene Wasea was shoved aside with ruthless precision. She couldn't let herself be preoccupied with a break-up when she was sailing into the unknown.
The whole reassignment left her uneasy. Shepard had spent her career in the infantry and then the Ns. She didn't have the command experience to be an executive officer, just a single training course and the bare minimum to have the qualification to stand a deck watch.
There were dozens of officers who would be a better fit in the position than Shepard — officers who had spent their careers as space warfare officers and done their dues as division and department heads — and that meant this wasn't just an old friend wanting someone he could count on.
Her first glimpse of the SSV Normandy SR1 was a few flashes of dark, sleek metal through the dock windows. No wonder her mother had said Anderson was almost exploding with pride. Normandy was nowhere near the size of the Tokyo, Anderson's last command, but there were enough redactions on the files he'd sent Shepard to imply she made up for it in different ways.
"Excuse me, you can't come through here." The Marine who stopped her at the bay doors was a stocky young man, couldn't be more than nineteen or twenty, with a square face and red-blonde hair. "This is a restricted area. Civilians can't enter."
She examined his uniform, the single chevron on his collar. A combat engineer PFC, not one of the N5 Raiders Anderson had promised her.
"Just run my damned ID, PFC Fredricks."
He blinked, but took the chit she thrust at him. It beeped and then the cool, mechanical voice of the ship's VI crackled out of the speakers behind him. "Welcome, XO Shepard."
That was going to take some getting used to.
The Marine went very pale.
"Excuse me." She stepped around him and headed inside. She needed to find the bay bathroom and get changed into her dress uniform before she reported for duty.
It wasn’t to be. Captain David Anderson was standing in the middle of the bay near the docking tube, talking to a sailor. His dark eyebrows drew together at the sight of her and he gestured for her to come over.
"Sir. Lieutenant Commander Emilia Shepard reporting for duty." She didn't salute. She was out of uniform, after all.
He looked her up and down. "Not only did you not wear your dress uniform, you didn't even wear a uniform."
A line officer would have reprimanded her, but Anderson's barely concealed smirk was all N7. At least if she was being shoehorned back into the Big Navy, it was under someone who would understand a N7's foibles.
"I came here straight from the shuttle, sir," she said mildly, "I didn't have time."
He looked pointedly at her hand. "Yet you had time for coffee."
She shrugged, unrepentant. "You can't expect me to go without fuel, sir."
"You're full of crap, Shepard. And you're late." There was a gleam in his eyes that let her know that the pique in his voice wasn't really genuine.
"Sorry, sir. I know having to do your own paperwork was probably traumatising."
"Go get changed, Shepard."
She ran a hand over her tight black curls. "Aye aye, sir."
"Before she does, Captain, I was hoping you might introduce us." A dual-toned voice interrupted their easy camaraderie.
Shepard blinked at the sudden appearance of a tall, sleek turian, dressed in red and black armour, white marks striping his face. She hadn’t heard him coming and that made her frown. She didn't like being surprised.
"Of course," Anderson agreed readily. "Nihlus, this is Lieutenant Commander Emilia Shepard, my Executive Officer. Shepard, this is Spectre Nihlus Kryik, Office of Special Tactics and Recon. He's the Council's observer for our shakedown run."
"That seems...unusual."
Kryik flicked his mandibles. "A joint turian-human venture such as this is also unusual, wouldn't you agree, Commander?"
She inclined her head in agreement. Relations between the Hierarchy and the Systems Alliance remained decidedly icy. "That's true. I was a little surprised reading the files."
Was that why Anderson had decided on her? The colonel of Operational Detachment November was probably throwing a fit at PersCom for stealing her away, and this assignment didn't fit her skillset. But few officers had the same background with turians that she did. The first and only Alliance officer to lead turians in battle. Never mind they’d been part of the Elysian militia and helping had been their idea, not hers.
She should send Ava Jakarius an email, see how she was doing.
"How our peoples relate to each other in the future is important," Nihlus continued, "A matter of galactic stability, even."
"And you got saddled with babysitting duty," she said dryly. No, it couldn't just be her connection to Sergeant Jakarius.
He flicked his mandibles again, a turian sign of amusement. "I volunteered.”
“Why?” she asked bluntly.
“Shepard,” Anderson began and this time he was truly annoyed.
“It’s alright, Captain. She is just doing her due diligence by her new crew, no?” Those bird-like green eyes met hers, sharp as a knife. “Many of my people see yours as a threat, one we should have crushed on Shanxi for good. That was where one of your mothers was killed, no?”
She nodded stiffly. This Spectre had done his research on her. Sergeant Isabel Alves Shepard had been a Marine tanker, but even the top of the line Alliance tanks had been no match for turian air support. Shepard had been three years old, and what memories she had of Izzy were patchy and dreamlike.
“I am not like them. I see that your species has great potential, and I would like to see it realised.”
“Thank you.” I think. “With your leave, sir.”
“Dismissed, Commander.”
Whatever this was, it wasn't just another shakedown. Anderson wasn't telling her something.
Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko looked over the inventory of weapons and equipment that would hopefully keep him and his Marines alive over their upcoming tour. Hardsuits, replacement ceramic plates, rifles, machine guns, pistols, a couple of rocket launchers. Behind him, parked with its turret locked into position, was the Mako infantry fighting vehicle waiting to be loaded.
Scattered around him were nine of his thirteen Marines. No one enjoyed doing inventory, but had to be done before the Normandy left Arcturus Station.
Sergeant Amina Waaberi closed a can of heatsinks with a groan, pulling Kaidan’s attention away from the tech grenades he was counting. She was a tall, lean Somali woman with a runner’s build, quick to smile and laugh.
“Sir,” she said plaintively, “I think my brain is going numb. Can’t we reprogram Chou’s drone to do this for us?”
He smiled.
He’d known Waaberi for a couple of weeks at this point, the Marine Detachment being one of the last departments to be fully staffed. He’d come to like her during that time. She was good-humoured if informal, competent and hadn’t blinked an eye at having an L2 biotic as her commanding officer.
That hadn’t been the same for all the Marines, but that had been nipped in the bud by the Marine across from her, squinting his eyes at a rack of rifles.
For a long, terrible moment, Kaidan had thought he might have seriously injured Corporal Richard Jenkins after tossing him across the room with his biotics — and right in front of the chief medical officer too — but then Jenkins had popped up, delighted.
Since then Alenko had had a request to be biotically tossed across the room per day.
He just hoped that his new MARDET NCO, still out processing from his previous unit on Eden Prime, would be more like Waaberi and less like his last platoon sergeant.
PFC Fredricks appeared from behind the Mako — Teke must have just replaced him at the bay entrance — looking a little like a kicked labrador puppy.
“What’s with you, Freddie?” Waaberi asked.
“The XO is here,” he said and at that the Marines all perked up in interest, Alenko included.
Lieutenant Commander Emilia Shepard, N7 and Star of Terra recipient. As a twenty-two year old butterbar she had led her platoon in holding off an enemy battalion and protecting a ground-to-orbit defence battery, an act that had likely saved Elysium’s capital city during the Skyllian Blitz, and then she’d called artillery down on herself to save the survivors of her platoon.
Then Akuze happened and she disappeared out of the public eye. Until now.
“And I think I pissed her off,” Fredricks finished miserably.
“That’s got to be some kind of record,” Lance Corporal Nick Ki-tae said with a smirk, brushing straight black hair out of his eyes. “What’d you do?”
“She wasn’t in uniform,” the blond PFC came close to pouting, “How was I supposed to know who she was?”
Kaidan shook his head with a small smile as Ki-tae and Waaberi laughed at Fredrick’s expense. He needed to introduce himself to Commander Shepard - Anderson had said they’d be working fairly closely together.
It would also be the first time since Brain Camp where he’d be working with another biotic. Biotics were rare enough that the Alliance tended to spread them out across combat units.
Searching out Commander Shepard turned out to be unnecessary. The Marines’ chatter cut out abruptly and Alenko turned to find Shepard standing there. She was a good half a head shorter than him, black hair cropped short and looking like something off a recruiting poster. He did his best to keep his eyes on her face and not the burn scars wrapped around one of her biceps, the scar tissue pale against her dark skin.
“Ma’am,” he said politely and saluted.
She looked at him with eyes that were almost black and returned the salute. Her gaze was sharp and assessing, and he could feel her biotic field and the way it hummed through the gravity well before she spoke. It felt sharp and dense, more powerful than he'd felt from a L3 before. It felt almost spiky — a storm held in check beneath her skin.
He knew better than most how hard-won that sort of control over your own biotics could be.
“You must be Staff Lieutenant Alenko, the Marine Detachment Commander.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You cut your hair,” Freddie burst out. That cool gaze swung to the PFC and she shrugged.
“Needed it. No hairdressers in the Terminus.”
“Uh...right. Ma’am.”
“Mind walking with me, Alenko?” she asked.
It wasn’t really a request. “Of course, ma’am.”
Alenko closed the lid on the tech grenades and followed her around the Mako. Both of their eyes were drawn to the frigate behind the windows of the bay, all dark sleek metal, her name etched in large white letters on her flank.
“Beautiful ship.”
“Joker is in love,” Kaidan agreed.
“Joker?”
“Our chief helmsman, ma’am. Flight Lieutenant Moreau.”
She nodded. “Anderson is very proud of the Normandy as well. I hope she lives up to his hopes.”
They walked in silence for a moment before that penetrating gaze locked onto him again.
“I suspect I may sometimes be on the ground with you and your Marines, Alenko.”
“Anderson said as much. It’d be a shame to chain you to the CIC, Commander.”
She smiled slightly. “I think the good captain knows that would drive me nuts. But the detachment — they’re your Marines, Alenko. Please let me know if I’m stepping on your toes.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” he rubbed the back of his neck.
“It might be,” she said calmly, “this is new territory for both of us. I want you to feel comfortable speaking your mind behind closed doors.”
After a moment, he nodded. “I’ll let you know if any problems come up.”
Another slight smile. “Good. I read your file on the shuttle to Arcturus.”
He stiffened a little, despite himself. Shepard was a biotic too — but there was no fear in the way her cropped hair left her amp jack clearly visible or the way she moved through the gravity well, letting her field tweak at it instead of compressing it down to a whisper. Most L3s he'd met tried to distance themselves from L2s like him, prove they were the good, stable biotics.
If she noticed his discomfort, she ignored it. “This is the first time I’ve really worked closely with another Alliance biotic. We should practice together, get accustomed to each other.”
‘Alliance biotic’. That was specific.
“That’s a great idea, ma’am,” he said with some relief. “I’ve read some papers — detonations could come in handy in the field.”
She nodded. “And if our fields are compatible enough, we could try combining our barriers.”
He felt some of the tension seep out of his shoulders. Kaidan smiled, "I look forward to testing it out, Commander."
The crew was uneasy around her, Shepard could feel it, see it in the way they looked at her, hear it in the way whispers trailed after her like her shadow and cut off when she looked at the source. She couldn’t blame them. They knew who she was, and the smarter ones knew that both Captain Anderson and Commander Shepard being present meant they were likely to end up in the deep end at some point. Add in a Spectre and you had a very jumpy ship.
Shepard just wished she knew what they were flying into. Shakedown cruise, her ass. No one brought Spectres along for test drives.
She'd kept her unease close to her chest, and clamped down on the officers who voiced similar thoughts — not because they were wrong, but because she had to show the crew a united front with the captain. The XO played bad cop. Even if it didn't come naturally to her.
Shepard stood with her shoulders squared and hands clasped behind her back, scanning the readouts before her. The Normandy's drive core thrummed faintly through her boots. She could feel through her eezo-laced nerves the way it reshaped the gravity well around itself.
Around her the bridged hummed with quiet efficiency, a choreography of murmured voices and quick hands on holo controls. She hadn't been part of most of their pre-deployment training, but she could appreciate the way they worked together like a well-oiled machine.
The calm still felt strange. The bridge and CIC of a warship was an exercise in almost mechanical function; Marines relied on shouting and profanity to vent out the stress of combat.
The space around Arcturus Station was crowded with a glittering array of starships: the predatory forms of the Fifth Fleet’s warships, yachts of the super-rich, utilitarian Kowloon freighters and stocky passenger shuttles. When she was a child, her mother had taken her out to the observation decks, pointing out hull types and thruster burns, teaching her what each different ship was and what they were for.
She still loved the flight of starships, but right now all she saw was the queue delaying them from going through the Relay.
Even warships had to wait their turn, no matter how much Lieutenant Moreau bitched about the fastest ship in the Navy being stuck behind a lumbering freighter.
“You are cleared for Relay approach, Normandy. Fair winds and following seas. Arcturus Control out.”
She rested both hands on the railing on the captain’s podium, a turian thing instead of the captain's chair on every other Alliance ship she'd been on, a flicker of unease running through her and then ruthlessly extinguished.
Anderson should’ve been taking the ship through this, as boring as waiting in a line was, but he was off doing God knew what with Nihlus. She didn't like being kept out of the loop, especially not by Anderson and especially not when it involved a turian who kept watching her like a predator surveilling prey.
She keyed the ship’s intercom. “All hands, this is the bridge. Secure your stations for Relay transit.”
In front of her, little lights flickered from green to orange to tell her that the crew was switching off sensors and cameras to prevent damage, and that the damage control parties had been stood to. The deck went quiet and focused. They were like the old test pilots now, hoping the fancy new drive core didn't disintegrate them when they hit blueshift.
“Commander, all stations secure,” Pressly, the ship’s navigator and second officer, told her from his own station.
“Helm, begin Relay approach." The drive core's hum rose in pitch, tightening the fields around the Normandy. Shepard's nerves tingled as the gravity well shifted like a storm building, pressure folding around her until the moment the Relay caught them.
The power that twisted through the ship was vast and cold, like a god's hand closing around them, dragging them into FTL.
In the next moment they slammed back out of blueshift, Shepard blinking as the drive core's fields settled, gravity and mass snapping back to normal. She breathed out, feeling the moment of weightlessness fade.
"All stations report."
She felt eyes on her back and lifted her head from her displays to see the turian coming into the CIC, eyes that reminded of a large, dangerous cat scanning her, weighing her up, like every movement she made was being evaluated. Spectre Nihlus put her teeth on edge. She couldn’t read him; couldn’t decide what he wanted from her, or whether she’d passed his evaluation.
She'd never liked the idea of Spectres. She'd never trusted the Council that led humanity bleed in the Traverse. And here he was, a symbol of both and he just kept watching her.
Still, not pissing off the Spectre was the best way to keep her rank, and Anderson had told her to behave, so she’d play nice.
She watched out of the corner of her eye as Nihlus walked into the cockpit, and after a moment she followed, though whether she was going to save Moreau and Alenko from Nihlus or stop the pilot from starting a war with the Citadel, she wasn’t sure.
Captain David Anderson adjusted the datapads on his brand new desk in the Normandy’s captain’s cabin. It was the only private cabin aboard — unlike the Hastings class frigates that had cabins for the XO and Navigator as well. She was a small ship, every square inch packed with something practical like CO2 scrubbers or weapon systems or inertia dampeners . The only concessions to comfort were the recreation room and the gym.
Patrol frigates were heirs to the submarines of the old blue water navies, and this ship lived up to that with its cramped spaces and the racks and sleeping pods put in strange places.
A small ship, a cramped ship, a ship that NavComm constantly nagged him about.
A fast ship. A damned fine ship. His ship.
Even if he’d had to leave the deck to his XO in order to start writing the first of many reports that would describe almost every moment of the Normandy’s shakedown cruise and first covert mission for the Admiralty board to dissect. Even if some would say that the Normandy, prototype or not, was a step down from his previous command, the cruiser Tokyo and her hundreds of crew.
“Here’s your coffee, sir,” A young man dressed in blue and black Navy fatigues said, setting a steaming cup in front of him. The boy was nineteen, barely a year into his Navy career, and a bit starstruck now he'd gone straight from A School to a ship packed full of heroes and legends. He’d admirably restrained himself to only the occasional stammer when talking to Anderson.
He had, however, managed to drop all of his datapads the first time he’d come face-to-face with Commander Shepard, but the captain had high hopes that Yeoman Hector Emerson would be eventually able to look at the XO’s face when reporting to her.
“Thank you, Emerson.” The first sip hit the spot, dark and bitter. Perfect. The launch ceremony had been all pomp and politics, and exhaustion still clung to his bones.
“Sir, Spectre Nihlus wants to talk to you.” Emerson shifted from foot to foot.
Wherever the turian Spectre went, a wave of unease rippled through the human crew. If it disturbed the man, Nihlus didn’t show it. If anything, Anderson thought that it amused him.
“Well, send him in then,” Anderson said, a touch sharply.
“Aye, sir!” Emerson practically sprung out the door. After a moment, the Spectre darkened the doorway.
“We need to speak to Shepard,” he said without preamble, green eyes inscrutable.
Anderson glanced at a stack of datapads on his desk. Personnel records. A good crew to go with a good ship.
Marine Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, the type of company-grade officer every commander dreamed of having at their disposal. Sergeant Talitha Draven, thrice decorated for valour. Master Chief Monica Negulesco, one of the best Master Chiefs Anderson had had the pleasure of serving with. Lieutenant Greg Adams, who could keep a ship running with some duct tape and gum.
Lieutenant Commander Emilia Shepard. Star of Terra, N7. Obstinate as a mule. A quality that was both her worst and best character trait.
Anderson nodded, grimacing slightly. “It’s time we let her in on it.”
“You know her far better than I do, Captain,” said Kryik. “How do you think she’ll react to her candidacy?”
He considered the question, sipping his coffee again. Emerson should get a commendation just for his coffee-making.
When David Anderson had been a young man, he’d realised that to be a damned good officer he needed more than tactical acumen and a measure of raw nerve under fire. That got respect from the particular breed that was the Marine, sure, but leadership also required empathy. To know what made the people under his command tick, and when to give a sympathetic ear or a boot up the arse. Anderson had a carefully cultivated, well earned reputation as a hard arse, but he knew when to gentle his touch.
Some of Anderson’s colleagues in the Navy had questioned his choice of Shepard as his executive officer. She didn't have the experience in SWO positions, she was a N7 through and through, they said, that she'd gone to SWCOT was only proof she was ambitious, not that she enjoyed shipboard assignments.
Nevermind that if he gave her a week, she'd have the whole crew wrapped around her little finger.
“She’s ambitious,” Anderson said at last, setting his cup down, “and that can cut both ways. She might see the opportunity — and the challenge — being offered here. Or she might be royally pissed off.”
He was betting on the second reaction, personally, but he was keeping that to himself. Becoming a Spectre would mean Shepard would never be able to return to her beloved N7 teams in the Traverse.
But humanity needed this, and Shepard was their best choice. He only hoped she'd come to see that it that way.
Nihlus’ mandibles flared thoughtfully. “I’d like to speak to her for a moment, before you come in.”
Anderson considered this, and the worst case scenario of his Executive Officer throwing a highly decorated Citadel agent into a wall with her mind. “Alright. I’ll call her into the comms room.”
Shepard was not happy. Shepard was not happy at all.
She stared at the Spectre with a carefully blank expression, her chest squeezed with a sense of impending doom. The impending doom of her naval career, specifically.
Her eyes darted to Anderson in the hope that this was a joke, but the captain had his arms folded and he nodded at her in a vaguely paternal and encouraging manner, the same look he'd given to steady her after Akuze, when she's been all shrapnel and shock.
She realised, with a pit in her stomach, that not only did her mentor approve of her candidacy for the Spectres, he may well have had a hand in it from the start.
This hadn't been a reassignment, it'd been a carefully planned ambush and the man she trusted the most had his fingerprints all over it.
“Humanity has been waiting for this for a long time…” Anderson’s impromptu speech told her that this was politics mixed up with the military, the sort of thing she’d gone to N School to get away from.
“Your actions during the Blitz showed not only great courage, but an impressive amount of individual skill and initiative. That’s why I put your name forward for the Spectres,” the turian explained. She blinked at him. She had never even heard of the man before she'd come aboard the Normandy.
It was a great honour. It could be someone else’s great honour, damnit. Shepard was confident in her skills as a special forces officer, but she knew where her loyalties lay — and where her ambitions did. She wanted to be an admiral one day when she was too old to fight, so she could train and direct her people, the members of the insular and secretive Special Operations Command, in their efforts to protect Alliance space. Gallivanting around as a Council special operative, playing assassin-cop, was not part of the plan.
She'd become a N7 to regain control over her career, back when the Alliance had wanted to put her on display, and Anderson had been the one to help her. Now he was signing her away to the Spectres.
“Respectfully,” she said carefully, “I don’t believe I’m the right fit for the Spectres.”
Anderson looked put out by her reluctance, but she ignored him. There was a tendril of anger towards him beginning to unfurl in her stomach.
The turian’s gaze lingered — not predatory, just assessing. She recognised it. People were always trying to work out what made her tick. “I disagree. Elysium is proof of your skill and determination. You can get the job done.”
Elysium. It always came back to Elysium. The ghost of a battle trailing after her wherever she went. She was glad he hadn’t brought up Akuze. Small mercies.
“I’m a Marine,” she said sharply, “not a police officer nor an assassin.”
Nihlus examined her closely. “So N7s never ‘eliminate high value targets’?”
His tone wasn't quite mocking, more curiosity. Like he was cataloguing a new human brand of hypocrisy.
That’s different, she wanted to say. Battlefield kills of terrorists and enemy commanders. She’d killed or captured High Value Targets for an organisation she believed in, as one subset of her duties in the special forces. Special reconnaissance and direct action were still different to the mixture of intelligence and investigative work a Spectre did.
How could she do that for the Council? She didn’t believe in the Council. Time and time again they had refused to mediate or intervene in the undeclared war between the Alliance and Hegemony, the conflict in which so many of her brothers and sisters, first in the infantry and then in the Special Forces, had died. How often had Spectres intervened to save human colonies or civilians?
Shepard saw a great deal to admire in the governments and societies of other species, particularly the Hierarchy and the Republics, but she didn’t see the benefits of a body that separated species into those who had a say in galactic affairs and those who didn’t. She’d never agreed with Parliament’s single-minded focus on achieving a Council seat. The volus had built the galactic economy and still didn't have a seat. Fairness in galactic politics was just a pretty lie people told to feel civilised.
“This isn’t about you, Shepard,” Anderson said, almost gently. “Humanity needs this. We’re counting on you.” There was a hint of pride in his eyes that stung. He really believed this was for the best.
She was being voluntold, then. She felt a sharp bite of helplessness in the face of the System that she hadn’t felt since she’d been a Lance Corporal and she’d been ordered, along with three other grunts, to paint rocks. Of all the endings to her career that she’d imagined, this hadn’t been one of them.
“You’ll be leading the Marine Detachment to retrieve the artifact for transport,” Anderson continued, as if she hadn’t protested. “Secure it and get it onto the ship ASAP. Nihlus will accompany you to observe the mission.”
“I’ll go get the Marines ready to jump,” she said shortly, jaw tightening. “With your permission, sir.”
“Granted, XO—”
They were interrupted by the voice of the comms technician on duty, “Captain, it’s Lam. We just got a vid message from Eden Prime on the priority emergency channel. You’ll want to see this.”
Nothing was ever simple.
CODEX ENTRY:
Space Warfare Command Officer Training (SWCOT):
Modern warfare is fought across multiple domains, and the modern admiral or general must coordinate starships, aircraft, armored vehicles, and infantry operating simultaneously in space, air, and ground environments.
Although the roles of Marine and Naval officers differ significantly, the aftermath of the First Contact War revealed that ground commanders required a working knowledge of spacecraft operations. The Alliance’s answer was Space Warfare Command Officer Training (SWCOT) — an intensive course designed to bridge the gap between planetary and spaceborne command.
Officers are trained in astro-navigation, ship-handling, and naval systems operation, and are required to complete bridge watches under supervision. Graduates are qualified to stand duty as Officer of the Deck (OOD) aboard corvettes and frigates, though actual assignment remains at the discretion of a ship’s commanding officer.
Advocates argue that SWCOT improves interservice cooperation, enhances Marine proficiency aboard ship, and allows for lateral movement between the Navy and Marine Corps. They point to officers such as Captain David Anderson, who transitioned from Marine to naval command following completion of the course, as evidence of its success.
Critics contend that SWCOT circumvents the Navy’s traditional system of vetting and developing Space Warfare Officers, placing command responsibilities in the hands of personnel lacking years of bridge experience. They argue that no classroom course can substitute for time spent underway.
Today, most SWCOT graduates are Marine officers or Navy pilots. Completion of the program is a prerequisite for carrier command and is effectively mandatory for any Marine seeking general rank.