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“Commander.”Shepard looked up from her terminal briefly, eyes narrowing. If there was one thing the Alliance could have changed on her damn ship it was making a desk that didn't have her sitting with her back to the door. Call her paranoid but after growing up in the streets, after spending years in the military, after dying she could be a little paranoid. Besides for her closest friends, people were not welcome to just enter her room without her authorization. And even her friends knew to chime first.So now, when she was faced with some Alliance pencil pusher strolling in with an open omni-tool and a neat suit that has probably never even been in the same room as a gun before now, she was not in a good mood. Saving the report she had been working on and closing her terminal, she turned around in her chair to face the officer fully.“I wasn't aware I had guests on board,” she said coolly.The man frowned and shifted. Well, he'd better be ready to deal with resistance, Commander Shepard had faced enough of it from every authority body in the galaxy that she no longer had the slightest qualms about giving it. Gone were the days of her eager salutes and dedicated military complex. A monster of your own making as it were.“I was to follow up several reports with you, Commander, regarding the running of the Normandy and its crew,” the man said stiffly.Her crew. It was a strange thing to get hung up on, but Shepard already knew she was not feeling generous towards this man, and something about referring to the Normandy as an it, a thing, grated against her. And it said very plainly that this was not a man who flew starships often, this wasn't a man who knew what it meant to fly one. This, she felt immediately and viciously, was the sort of person who watched numbers and statistics and percentages fly across a screen a thought it illustrated the entire galaxy, all for his perusal from whatever stuffy little office he sat in.So Shepard leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other as she regarded the man coldly. “And you didn't think of simply filing me a report? Heaven knows I get enough of them. Or possibly, I don't know, making an appointment?”“You're time at the Citadel is erratic at best,” said the man. “Especially since you rarely deign to file flight plans or boarding agendas,” he added pointedly. Shepard ignored him. When the Council could start organizing Reaper counterattacks she'd start filing shore leave plans. “Regardless, it was felt it would be best if I approach you regarding some small matters before you left. Your comm specialist mentioned that you were in your cabin.”Oh, she and Samantha would be having words after this apparently.“If I might sit to go over some things?” he continued.“Sorry, sir, this room isn't really made for formal meetings,” said Shepard, watching as his eyes flickered to her couch and table. “If this really is only a few small matters then I'm sure it won't take long. We can continue like this.”And so for the next hour Shepard sat at her desk, tapping her fingers restlessly on her knee as the secretary or whatever he was rattled off a list of numbers and performance read-outs. She was just beginning to think about what micro-managers could do with their pencils and how far her Spectre status allowed her to go when it came to removing obstructions to her work when the man concluded with, “And then there's just the matter of your data usage.”“My what?” said Shepard.“The amount of data you fill the comm lines with, that is,” said the man said primly. “They are currently strictly regulated – you of all people should understand that chatter should be minimized and priority lines like yours must be dedicated to helping the war effort.”“Helping the – I'm sorry, what exactly do you think we do here?” demanded Shepard. “Fast communication and the sharing of data is critical to the mission I'm performing. If I can't keep in quick, constant contact with any number of experts and politicians then the Reapers have already won. I can't 'reduce chatter' because the chatter is quite literally the job everyone on this ship is here to do.”“Of course I understand that, Commander,” said the man. “I meant that recent read-outs indicate a... rather high usage of personal calls. Specifically, to non-personnel related lines at Huerta Memorial Hospital.” He stared her in the eye, a gleam as if he'd somehow won some battle between them. “I have been informed to tell you that you really must cease filling the lines with non-critical–”“I'm sorry,” Shepard grit out, “but that is helping the war effort.”The man frowned. “Based off the information I've received, these calls all occur after you've signed off from active duty, after your waking cycle has concluded. More in line with family calls than a war effort–”“Sir,” snapped Shepard, “let me make something very clear. Over the course of three years? I was the war effort. Right back since Eden Prime, I've been one of the only people actively organizing 'the war effort'. Me and my team of an odd dozen men and women? We were the only soldiers. While the politicians were crying about fairytales I was damn well one of the only people fighting them. Putting both mine and my people's lives on the line. I was the one that stopped Saren. I was the one that organized forces during the attack of the Citadel. I was the one that blew up a Collector base and killed a Reaper in the making. Sir, you may have missed it, but I was killed as part of the damned war effort. I see more bullshit in a day than you've see in your entire life and, if you're lucky and I do my job, more than you will ever see in your life. So if I choose to take a few minutes of my evening once every so often to speak to my boyfriend and process that shit? I think that's my call.”“But the lines...”“Let me put it this way.” Shepard was standing now and crowding into the man's space. Even though he was a little taller than Shepard, he took a step back. Having lived a military life, Shepard's shoulders were broad and her muscles were big, and she had the face of someone who killed for a living – it took a bigger man than this to stand her toe-to-toe. “Let me put it this way. My boyfriend isn't in the hospital for some minor injury that I'm impatient to heal. He is dying. Slowly. With every breath he takes, he knows it, and he still chose to risk everything to face down the Collectors while the Citadel forces turned a blind eye. For months I was grounded, unable to speak to him, unable to find out if he was okay, if he was even alive. As it is, day to day, I don't know how long he has or if he'll pick up the next time I call. But I deal with that, I put it in the back of my mind, and I do my job. But let me make something very clear. If I am not given leave to speak to my dying lover then you can find yourself a new damn war effort because I'll be taking my ship and flying straight back to Huerta to spend whatever days I have left with him at his side like I fucking should be doing anyway, and I'll leave you to carry the brunt of your damned war effort for once.”For some thirty uninterrupted seconds, the room was silent besides for the burble of her fish tank.“Is that understood, sir?” she prompted.“Yes, ma'am,” he said hastily, punching something into his omni-tool. “It will be processed that a mistake was made, and all data usage seems to be critical usage only.”“Thank you. You may see yourself out.”With that Shepard turned back to her private terminal, only relaxing once she heard the hum of the doors opening and shutting behind her.“Would you?” asked EDI after a moment, over the comms. “Leave, I mean. If they cut you off from Thane?”Shepard shrugged. “Doesn't matter. He didn't push it, so neither will I.”