I wouldn't say it's coming soon, exactly, because that would be hubris, but I thought some of you might like to know that Shepard's 11 is still in the Pile of Stuff I Want to Get To, and a fair bit of Act 4 actually exists.

Just for fun, here's a fragment (which a few people might recognize as a reference to something I mused about on the Forum, ages and ages ago).

Two bells in the midnight watch, and all was quiet aboard the Surprise. James Vega, still a little too wired to sleep, was heading down to where the ship's computer had told him there was a small gym, figuring he'd pump some iron and take the last of the edge off. On the way there he passed the compartment where the ship's laundry machines were located. The door stood open, sounds of a washing machine filtering out into the corridor. Vega glanced automatically in as he passed, then paused, backed up, and took a more deliberate look.

Commander Shepard was in there, sitting on the little bench built into one bulkhead, staring dully at the window on the front of the washer, watching suds and clothes go around. It took her a couple of seconds to notice Vega's entrance; then she looked up and sort of reverse-nodded to him, elevating her chin slightly with an almost inaudible inhaled-"hey."

"Commander," he said, saluting. "You're up late."

"Too tired to do anything useful and too pissed off to sleep," Shepard replied. Returning her gaze to the washer, she added, "If I went to my cabin, all I'd do is pace up and down and keep Liara awake."

"Ah," said Vega awkwardly. "So... you and the professor, huh?"

Shepard glanced back at him, her expression very slightly wry. "Yeah," she said. "Thought you'd have figured that out by now."

"I don't like to assume," Vega said. "Good to know where things are, though."

"That's not gonna be a problem, is it?" Shepard asked, sounding like she didn't really give a damn if it was.

"No ma'am," Vega replied. "Not my personal scene, but I'm not the judging type. Besides," he added with a slight smile, "your ship, your rules."

"Damn right," Shepard replied mock-firmly.

"That being the case, though," Vega went on after a moment's hesitation, "kind of day we've had, I doubt she'd object to the company. You know?"

Shepard glanced at him again, making him wonder for a moment if he'd stepped too far, but then she looked back at the washer and sighed. "I'm right in the middle of my whites now," she said.

Vega stepped fully into the room and put a hand on top of the machine, saying briskly, "Don't worry about a thing, ma'am, I spent six weeks working in the base laundry at Camp Ermey. I assure you I am fully qualified to both fluff and fold." He grinned. "Hell, even Esteban appreciates my creases. And he doesn't let just anybody, 'cept his husband—" He paused. "Anyway, I'll handle it. You go ahead and rack out. You might surprise yourself."

Shepard sighed and hauled herself to her feet. "Starting to remind me of my mother, Lieutenant," she said wryly.

"Captain Shepard's a fine officer," said Vega with something comically like primness. "Man could do worse."

Shepard chuckled. "OK, I'll give it a shot, what the hell." She stepped past him into the hall, then paused and looked back through the doorway with a tired smile. "Thanks, James."

"De nada, Commander," Vega replied. "Pleasant dreams."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

G,
Thanks for that! As usual, I was immediately taken back to the games and could almost see it play out as I was reading it.

Fine work!

Thanks!

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes

Really? 500+ years in the future, and we still have to worry about sorting whites and darks before doing laundry?

That said, it was these little conversations and character interactions that brought the Mass Effect series to life. I keep hoping that another game studio will somehow manage to capture the magic that Bioware has obviously lost.

>Really? 500+ years in the future, and we still have to worry about
>sorting whites and darks before doing laundry?
>

(lie) They left that feature out on the Surprise to get another 500 megawatts from the wave-motion engine. (/lie)

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>Really? 500+ years in the future, and we still have to worry about
>sorting whites and darks before doing laundry?

The supply of nanite-infused, color-safe Tide Ultra-Plus won't arrive til Tuesday.

>That said, it was these little conversations and character
>interactions that brought the Mass Effect series to life. I keep
>hoping that another game studio will somehow manage to capture the
>magic that Bioware has obviously lost.

They didn't lose it so much as it was extracted by EA with a pair of rusty pliers to be sold as DLC.

>Really? 500+ years in the future, and we still have to worry about
>sorting whites and darks before doing laundry?

It's not necessarily in evidence here that we have to, only that Virginia Shepard does. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Really? 500+ years in the future, and we still have to worry about
>sorting whites and darks before doing laundry?

Of course, no matter how much advancement there is in dyes that don't run and cleaning agents that prevent it: The one day you don't sort is the day you discover that the shirt you bought on holiday uses a 'traditional' dye that will tint everything in the first wash.

Aboard the flagship of the Earthforce Navy task group that had come to investigate the situation on Paragon, the commanding admiral and his temporary flag captain stood before the ready room's holodisplay, reviewing what little there was in the way of reports and video footage from the assault and its unexpected resistance. The Paragon City authorities were claiming that the counterattacks had been carried out by various local criminal organizations, and professed not to know quite how the city's security mechs had been co-opted into the effort. They seemed embarrassed about the whole thing and, as the captain's Psi Corps "advisor" pointed out, were so plainly hiding something that one didn't have to be a telepath to notice it.

None of that was particularly interesting to Vice Admiral Stephen Hackett. He was far more interested in, and kept replaying, six seconds of footage from one of the crippled mechs in the Blyde Square incident. It showed the square in the jumbled aftermath of the fight against those things Species 2214 had used in their failed last-ditch effort to dislodge the central resistance there, a few seconds after the aliens had cleared out, taking two captives with them.

Moments after that, several combat-armored figures amid the wreckage started to stir, then rise. One of them made gestures plainly indicating that she was on the com to somebody. A second or two later, one of the two very large one-off mechs that had taken part in the battle—the one that had legs—launched itself into the air. (Hackett knew from other reports that it had engaged the Collector vessel that was lifting off at that point, along with the mysterious untracked starship that might or might not have been a 3WA TroCon transport.) Seconds after that, with evident urgency, the individuals who had extracted themselves from the rubble grouped up into an instantly recognizable squad and moved out with a purpose, heading out of shot to the right.

As they did, they passed near enough to the wrecked mech that, with some careful manipulation, most of them were nicely in the frame. It lasted for no more than one second, but with patience and care, Captain John Sheridan had managed to get a freezeframe in which they were all fairly clearly visible.

"Well, that's something," remarked Sheridan's Psi Corps liaison, a supposedly commercial-grade telepath named Lyta Alexander.

Sheridan and Alexander had worked together for several years now, ever since he'd taken command of the Agamemnon, and though he didn't believe for a moment that she was really a P5 specializing in labor relations, he'd come to trust her—at least as far as one could trust a Psi Corps officer—and to value her judgment in many matters.

"Mm?" he asked now, glancing away from the frozen image at her.

"We can at least get some facial recognition off of this frame," she said, gesturing.

Hackett shook his head. "No need. I recognize most of them."

Lyta looked puzzled. "You do?"

Sheridan gave her a vaguely indulgent smile. "You're not a student of military history, Lyta." He pointed to one of the slightly blurred but recognizable figures. "See that turian? That's Garrus Vakarian."

Lyta studied the image for a moment. "Garrus..." She blinked, looking back at the captain. "'Archangel' Vakarian?!" she blurted.

"You did study," Sheridan said, his smile broadening.

Hackett ignored the byplay between the younger officer and the telepath, as had been his policy since he transferred his flag to Agamemnon. It was rare enough for Earthforce captains and the Psi Corps officers they all knew were undercover Psi Cops not to loathe each other outright. That these two actually seemed to be something like friends was enough to convince Hackett that Sheridan had the matter well in hand and didn't need a flag officer's interference. Besides, the ship's performance reports spoke for themselves about how well the combination worked.

"And you think that makes her..." Lyta said to the admiral, nodding toward the black-haired, black-armored woman in the lead on the frozen image.

Hackett nodded. "Has to be."

"But she's dead," Lyta protested.

"The universe is not only stranger than we suppose, it's stranger than we can suppose," Sheridan paraphrased playfully.

"So... what then? They're some kind of deep-cover WDF operation?"

"Or something like that," Hackett agreed. "Probably. Or IPO. She was part of Gryphon's inner circle in the old WDF. Grew up a couple of doors down from his quarters, flew in his Valkyrie squadron. He gave her her first command. If anyone could get her out of wherever she's been keeping herself all these years and back into action, it'd be him."

"What are we going to do about it?" Sheridan asked.

Hackett considered the question for a moment, then said firmly, "Nothing."

Lyta blinked at him. "Nothing?!"

"Look at it this way," the admiral told her. "If that really is Virginia Shepard, and we get in her way, she'll just go through us. If she isn't, and we let her keep doing what she's doing, she'll be killed." He shrugged slightly. "And therefore no longer our problem."

Lyta glanced at the frozen, blurry image of Shepard again, then shook her head with a resigned smile. "As you say, Admiral," she said.

Hackett cracked his first smile of her brief acquaintance with him and replied, "Trust me, Miss Alexander. This isn't my first rodeo."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yessss~ *fistpump* I loves me some Shepard's 11.

Hey, look at that! Admiral Hackett is there, and just like in Mass Effect, he's not a dunce. Nice to see Sheridan isn't the only Earthforce officer who's not Styles. Besides which, if Hackett's smart he realizes that, if that is indeed Shepard, he can just watch what they do. They already clearly had intel Earthforce didn't, simply because they were there in time.

As for Lyta Alexander, I rather like the idea of Sheridan thinking she's obviously an undercover Psi Cop, all while Psi Corps thinks she's a mole for them...and what she really is only the Vorlons could say.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

ohh yeaaaah gots me some Shepards 11... it's happy dance time!

>As for Lyta Alexander, I rather like the idea of Sheridan thinking
>she's obviously an undercover Psi Cop, all while Psi Corps thinks
>she's a mole for them...and what she really is only the Vorlons could
>say.
>

I don't know enough about the source material(s?) to tick off my playbill properly, so I assumed that Lyta was an original character. Your comment here plus my google-fu says I was mistaken.

EEEeeeeenteresting! I really need to get around to watching Babylon 5 someday.

--sofaspud
--not as if that's the first, or even twenty-first, time UF has made me say that about some show...

>I don't know enough about the source material(s?) to tick off my
>playbill properly, so I assumed that Lyta was an original character.
>Your comment here plus my google-fu says I was mistaken.
>
>EEEeeeeenteresting! I really need to get around to watching Babylon 5
>someday.

All three of them, along with the Psi Corps and William Clark, are all from B5.

Which is on Amazon Prime Video right now - all five seasons!

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

>All three of them, along with the Psi Corps and William Clark, are all
>from B5.

Wait, all three of whom? Admiral Hackett is from Mass Effect. You never actually see him in the first game, he's the voice (of Lance Henriksen, IIRC) that occasionally gives Shepard missions to do for the Alliance.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I confused Hackett with the admiral who tells B5 that Clark is Up To Some Shit.

Carry on.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

LAST EDITED ON Dec-25-19 AT 03:34 AM (EST)
 

>
>"Look at it this way," the admiral told her. "If that really is
>Virginia Shepard, and we get in her way, she'll just go through us.
>If she isn't, and we let her keep doing what she's doing,
>she'll be killed." He shrugged slightly. "And therefore no longer
>our problem."
>

It's nice that the admiral doesn't bother pointing out the obvious value of letting if-it-is-Shepard continue on her way; to wit, that she'll solve the shit out of the problem at hand. It shows some respect for his listener.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.