When the message had arrived a few days ago, Claire had, above all else, been surprised. Being chosen to join the Spectres was a high honour, even though her gut knew it was going to mean killing more humans, but to be the XO for the [i]Normandy[/i] - that was frankly ludicrous. Everyone and their dog had heard of the [i]Normandy[/i] and their crew's vital role in the Reaper War, but the thought of being tasked with having to match the XO aboard the Normandy - Presley? - was a daunting prospect. When the fateful morning came, Claire had been grateful for a night of uninterrupted sleep; when she stirred, Claire was pleased to find herself rested and warm for a change. Tossing back a thin grey blanket, she pressed her right hand against the side of the metal cot and swung her weight around until she was sitting with her leg reaching down to the floor. Beside a dark blue-grey bedside table, her leg sat, folded up against itself, with the curved foot-plate slotted into a recess in the back of the thigh, the inner workings shining from the light of the glow-tubes embedded in the ceiling, while her hand sat on top of the desk next to a dog-eared notebook about two palms' width apart.[i]That notebook.[/i] For a moment, Claire thought she might read through it, but as she reached out she changed her mind and instead went for the metal skeletal hand, alloy bones surrounded by myomer fibres, with a circular section almost like a bracelet at the base of the hand, matching a similar plate on Claire's left wrist. Grabbing the cool prosthesis, Claire held it by the middle of the palm and held it near the wrist-plate, before several metal fibres shot out from the hand and linked in to the interface ports on her wrist. snapping down hard onto her wrist with a series of electrical whirring noises before she flexed her digits, servos whirring as the fingers rolled back and forth. It was a bizarre sensation - the Major couldn't feel the fingers, but they moved exactly as those on her right hand; seeing the two clench into fists side-by-side without having any sort of sensory feedback from the mechanical one was almost otherworldly, and she still doubted she was ever going to get used to it.

Sticking on the leg was a less dignified procedure; she had left it just out of her reach, and so was forced to balance on one leg and hop over in a seriously undignified set of moves until the same wire-inject system fired in control cables into the interface, which connected the limb to her nervous system, clamped shut, and the workings behind the clear plastic began to work their mechanical magic. After a minute or so, she stood up, feeling the balance of weight on each leg, testing the feel and reaction from the limb. "Still works," she muttered, before turning around the room looking for her fatigues. It was silly, really - they were always in the same place, in the footlocker at the base of her bed, but that early in the morning, even Shepard would have had a hard time getting dressed. It occurred to Claire, as she was straightening the beret with her rank pin in the mirror, that she probably should have been in her dress uniform, before an acerbic "Bugger that" passed her lips and she turned to face the door. "Not getting tarted oop fer some bloody interview panel." The door hissed open, and Claire looked over her shoulder - she'd probably never be back here. The Citadel's barracks for Alliance soldiers weren't exactly salubrious, but they were the last Alliance digs she would be staying in for some time. [i]Maybe ever. Engine could go during the first run and I could get spaced.[/i] With that cheerful thought in mind, she grabbed the bag she had prepared the night before, with just the bare essentials, scooped up the notebook and turned her back on twenty years of service. [i]In half an hour you're going to be a Spectre. Looking forward to being the Council's bitch yet?[/i]

The journey was pretty uneventful - one last chance to shoot a dread gaze at a pair of corporals who seemed to be doing rather less than they should have been - before the Galactic Museum of Stairs loomed into view, stretching over the Presidium like some over-polished monolith. Hopping out of the transport, she gave her thanks to the salarian pilot and started the long march up towards the Council chamber, starting to question the wisdom of bringing her crap in a bag slung over her shoulder to an official assembly, as well as turning up out of dress uniform. [i]I told you, Claire, but you'll never learn,[/i] moaned a sort of internal matronly voice in her head, as she took a few tentative steps towards the long arm extending over a chasm before the Councillors; as yet, very few of the prospective Spectres had arrived, but that didn't stop the 'esteemed' Councillors from beginning their little show. As soon as the Salarian started talking, Claire was immediately reminded of why she had such a deep-seated dislike for political authority; the exact mechanics of how the Council was chosen was a mystery to the Major, but she was certain that none of these people - with the possible exception of the Turian - had ever seen military service, except perhaps to brown-nose the right defence officials. 

"Major Moore?" probed the human, sitting to the far left, with a dark beard and less hair on top of his head than a 20th-century chemo patient. Her first instinct was to salute, but there was no way in hell that she was going to give a salute to a pencil-pushing bureaucrat. 
"Aye," she replied, with her hands held together behind her back, holding herself as high as she could. 
"You are aware of your appointment as executive officer, should we choose to endorse your nomination?"
"Aye," came the same flat response.
"Would you care to explain why we should allow someone with a physical impairment to serve as a Spectre, Major?" growled the Turian, those damn silly-looking flaps at the side of his mouth waving like the wings of a distressed gull. Gritting her teeth, Claire did her best to remain diplomatic for all of half a millisecond, before her plain-speaking bluntness came to the fore. "I am not bloody impaired, you cu-" A pause. A breath. "Councillor. I have spent nearly ten year in field operations with prosthetics and at no point ha' any of my superiors, or more importantly, t'men and women under my command complained that they lack confidence in my ability t'command or fight. If this Council was of the opinion that I could not perform my duties adequately I wouldn't be 'ere, so can we please stop larkin' aboot an' stop wasting time?" Moore didn't have enough experience with Turians and their flappy faces to tell when she'd pissed one off, but she felt that she had struck a nerve there - and too bloody right. Cheeky bugger.

"Ahem, Major, your record doesn't indicate any experience working with non-humans," interrupted an Asari. "How do you think this will affect your performance as part of a diverse team?"
"I don' think it will t'all," replied Claire, but the silence left after she was finished suggested they wanted more from her than a statement of fact. "Any soldier who performs their duties in a professional manner will get all t'respect they deserve. Don' see why it makes any difference what they 'appen a be, so long as they work as I'd expect from any other soldier." That seemed to placate them a little - or perhaps they were just eager to be rid of her. Secretly, Claire hoped it was the latter; the thought that she'd got under that Turian's skin brought a barely concealed smirk to the good side of her face, and a sort of twitch to the roasted half. "Very well. Major Claire Moore," began the Asari, before rattling off a lot of propaganda about the privilege of the position and protecting the Council - all that hung in Claire's mind, as the other Spectres arrived, was the grim question of just how many more people she was going to have to kill - and how many of those she was responsible for wouldn't be going home at the end of whatever mission this little soiree had been prepped for. [i]There's always more room in the book, and there's always more names, Claire.

Always more names.[/i]