Greg Adams: Normandy Chief Engineer

Gregory Adams was a human Systems Alliance engineer who served as chief engineer of the Normandy across both of its incarnations. Hand-picked for the role by Captain David Anderson, he was a calm and even-tempered figure who took things as they came, and a vocal believer in the rights of synthetic life. He kept the drive core running through the hunt for Saren and, years later, through the war against the Reapers.

A veteran of the engine room#

Adams was a career Alliance engineer who had served aboard every class of Alliance starship by the time he came to the Normandy. Before that posting he had served on the SSV Tokyo, which he remembered as a good ship that nonetheless could not, in his words, hold a candle to the Normandy. Captain David Anderson hand-picked him to serve as the frigate's chief engineer, and Adams grew openly enthusiastic about the vessel, calling her the finest ship he had ever served on and happily explaining her stealth systems and engines to anyone who asked.

Aboard the original Normandy he maintained an easy friendship with Navigator Pressly, and where Pressly fretted, Adams stayed calm and accepting. He showed no discomfort at serving alongside non-human crew. When the quarian Tali'Zorah came aboard he was deeply impressed by her technical knowledge, took her under his wing to make her feel welcome in the engine room, and the two often worked together stripping down the orbital probes and wreckage recovered during planetary surveys. When Commander Shepard took the ship into the Terminus Systems against orders, Adams alone seemed untroubled, assuring the Commander that the Normandy would carry them through whatever lay ahead.

Return to the Normandy SR-2#

After the destruction of the first Normandy, Adams and most of the surviving crew were reassigned. When a rebuilt ship was raised under Cerberus, some of his old shipmates signed on, but Adams refused the invitation to join them, troubled by the organisation and by the unlikely story that the Commander had returned from the dead. He came to regret the choice, feeling he had let his friends down.

When the Normandy SR-2 was turned over to the Alliance, Adams returned as its chief engineer, his experience with the original ship making him the obvious choice to run the engine room of its successor. There he was the first to recognise that the ship's intelligence, EDI, was a true artificial intelligence and not merely a virtual one. Adams was a firm proponent of synthetic life as a valid form of sapient existence and argued the point repeatedly with the rest of the crew, holding that EDI was inseparable from the Normandy herself. He oversaw upgrades to the drive core alongside fellow engineers Gabriella Daniels and Kenneth Donnelly, and as the final battle for Earth approached he reported the ship as ready as she would ever be, bidding the Commander a soldier's farewell.