The Renegade Adored

Memory: I am alone. (Something heard once, a long time ago.)

Hayden pretended that she was still working on the duty rosters while she watched Crown and Smith walk into the Mess. Crown was laughing, probably over the fact that Hayden still hadn't found the missing jar of peanut butter. Crown didn't realize that Hayden actually hadn't bothered looking this time.
Smith opened the storage unit, and there was a split second before he screamed in horror. It was exactly the wrong thing to do, and four of the rudely awakened wasps stung him before he could move. Crown ran up to help, and also provoked an attack. Hayden sipped her juice quietly, and put up a biotic barrier to keep them away while the rest of the crew ran around in panic and got stung repeatedly.
Captain Grey was furious. "I told you two knuckleheads that I have had enough of your practical jokes!"
Crown and Smith protested that they hadn't done it, but no one believed them. They were legendary on board for their pranks on Shepard. No one liked Shepard, not since she'd been assigned her own room instead of being placed in General Quarters. It didn't help that she never mixed with the crew and took no pains to hide the fact that she despised them all.
But no one thought that Shepard had anything to do with the wasps. After all, everyone knew Hayden never spent more than an hour on shore leave. Hardly enough time to find a wasp's nest and somehow smuggle it on board. Unless you had a friend back home who happened to know where a huge colony of yellowjackets could be found, pulled off a node for you, put it in stasis, and shipped it to you. If that was the case, an hour was plenty of time. It also helped to be a biotic who couldn't get stung.
"Now we have to take the entire ship back to drydock for a full overhaul because those damn things got in the vents!"
Crown and Smith continued to maintain their innocence. A routine check of their comings and goings for the last two shore leaves backed up their assertions. The source of the wasps remained a mystery, and the SSV Wandiwash returned to Pai Mârire Station for an overhaul and refit.
Hayden remained on board most of the time, being unsocial as always, but providing invaluable assistance to Captain Grey and the station crew doing repairs on the Wandiwash. She even helped with some minor repairs, something that should have made her tormentors a little more cautious, but didn't.
"You know," Captain Grey commented, "it seems that these wasps came from Earth."
"Oh, really?" said Hayden innocently. "That's a long way for a prank."
The Captain looked at her, and smiled.
The entomologist sent for cleanup found a queen, so the whole nest was carefully removed and sold to a terraforming company instead of being destroyed. The vents were cleaned out, the damage repaired, and the kitchen restocked. The Wandiwash returned to duty, patrolling colonial space.
In the long run, a defensive war is unsustainable. Hayden decided to provoke an attack of opportunity, and messed with the duty roster so that Crown and Smith were on opposite shifts for a week. They lasted for a day before they switched with someone else so that could sneak off and meet in their special corner of Engineering.
"I hate her so much," Crown snarled.
"Why does Grey let her get away with it? Do you think she blackmails him or something?"
"I have a great plan for getting even with her. I checked, the auxiliary G359 shaft for ventilation goes right past her room, on the right wall. If we could loosen a tile, and then trigger an airlock," Crown suggested.
"She'll get killed!" protested Smith.
"Well, she's such a hot shit biotic, I'm sure she can throw up a barrier in time."
Smith considered. "Well, we can close the airlock before she gets hurt, right? Oh, man, I bet all her yarn will go flying into space. That would be awesome!"
"Okay, well, let me plan out the best way, and we'll get this started tomorrow night."
Hayden cut the connection between her omni-tool and the spycams she had placed in Engineering. In later years, she would have gone right to the Captain. But she was still too young, too impulsive, and at the moment, far too angry.
Hayden went to the shuttle bay, and dug around in the piles of supplies until she found what she needed. This wasn't her area of expertise, but Charlie had given her a good grasp on the basics. She found what she needed, and went back to her room. The ship's schematics showed her which panel in her room connected to the shaft that Crown had mentioned, and she opened it up and began working. It took her longer than she thought to get everything right.
The next day was a bit of a chore, as she was tired from not getting enough sleep and cranky, but knew that she had to stay up so Crown and Smith would know when she went to bed. Finally her shift was over, and much to the relief of the entire crew, she retreated to her room.
Hayden made herself a bowl of instant noodles (or as Charlie called them, "Salt with some starch floating in it") and sat cross-legged on the floor, watching the wall and waiting. There was a horrible creaking noise, alarms sounded, and the wall seemed to buckle. Hayden started in shock. That was not what she had expected to happen.
Hayden poked the wall curiously. The seal was holding, but there was definitely vacuum behind it. Confused, Hayden opened her door and looked around. The automatic locks had shut down the hallway forward of her room, indicating a hull breach. Hayden frowned, and put her ear to the wall and listened. Crown was screaming and sobbing hysterically, repeating Smith's first name over and over. Hayden was totally confused. Shouldn't Crown have been the one to get hit by her trap? She didn't know enough about Engineering to be able to guess what had happened. She shrugged, and went back to her room to finish her noodles. She would probably find out at the inquest.
As it turned out, there was no inquest. Crown ended up committing suicide a few days later, still wracked with grief over the death of her boyfriend. The Captain had an informal investigation, but didn't share the results with the crew. It was officially listed as an accident.
"Shepard, could you come to my office please?" asked Captain Grey politely.
"Of course, sir." Hayden followed him to his cabin.
"Have a seat," said Grey with a kind smile. He was trying to set her at ease, which meant he was afraid he was going to upset her.
Hayden sat down, and looked curiously at the Captain.
"Shepard, Crown confessed that she was actually trying to kill you when the accident happened. Smith was helping her, under the impression that they were just playing another of their pranks. But somehow, one of the upper tiles came loose in the ventilation shaft, and cracked the internal plating when it fell. That caused a rupture in the tubing that ripped open much faster than it should have, causing a general breach. One of the more curious results was that the tile that fell initially came down a lot faster than it should have, almost as if it were being pulled down to the hull."
Hayden pretended not to notice the item in the Captain's hand, and waited for him to continue. After all, rare-earth magnets weren't really rare at all.
"Smith pushed her out of the way when he realized what was happening."
"How romantic," said Hayden calmly. "He must have really loved her. Too bad it was wasted."
"Yes," said Grey, trying not to frown. "She was a little traumatized after seeing her boyfriend shredded by flying metal in front of her eyes."
Hayden shrugged. She wasn't really sure how she was supposed to respond to that. "People get killed in the service all the time." Hayden folded her hands in her lap. "It was an accident. Probably just something left lying around by the shipyard. I mean, who opens the shafts anyway? What did they think would happen?"
Grey let the two magnets in his hand snap together a few times, trying to decide what to say next. He accidentally missed, and the unbonded neodymium went flying, and slapped itself to one of the studs in the wall.
Hayden stared. "What was that?"
Grey sighed. "The Alliance uses neodymium materials all over our ships. It's usually bonded, so specific parts can only interact with other parts. However," Grey wrested the unbonded magnet from the wall with difficulty, "unconnected neodymium causes a huge problem, as it can attach to anything and," he didn't look at Hayden, "break the bonding between two connected parts. It can also shatter," he commented.
"Oh," said Hayden quietly. "That is dangerous."
Grey sighed. "Still, as you pointed out, it was an accident, and has nothing to do with you. No, I have a different reason for calling you in here."
Hayden tried not to react to her escape from a career-ending reprimand, and waited for the Captain to continue.
"As much as I love having you on my crew, I think it's time you got an independent command, Shepard. You're a valuable asset, but your skills are being wasted here, and let's face it, you just don't jibe with the crew of the Wandiwash."
Hayden sighed, "I understand, Captain. And thank you, for the compliment."
"Don't worry, I think you'll really like this assignment. It's not some backwater posting," Grey smiled. "You probably won't run well with Major Kyle, but you'll be operating independently most of the time anyway, and for this particular mission, his approval isn't actually necessary. He's just coordinating the various forces for the attack."
Hayden perked up. "Attack, sir?"
"I thought you'd like that," mused Grey. "I can't tell you much just yet, but I can tell you that the Alliance and the colonial investment corporations are getting sick of all the slaver attacks, and plan to give the Terminus Systems a good message about messing with our colonies." The Captain handed her the datapad. "Take it, Shepard. You'll like this job. You'll be good at it."