Gabriella Daniels
From FABT
- "When he got the Cerberus offer, I insisted it include me. He'd fall apart without me."
- — Gabriella on her motivations for joining Cerberus.
Propulsion Engineer Gabriella Daniels, often nicknamed Gabby, was an engineer in the Systems Alliance Navy (and later the Systems Coalition Navy) and Cerberus Navy, and a brief member of Cerberus. An American born in Greenland within the European Union on Earth, Gabriella was an incredibly talented engineer and starship enthusiast, thrilled by the concept of space exploration, and thus her desire to join the Alliance began at an early age. When she was 14, her parents moved to the United North American States and settled in her mother's home state of Ontario, where Gabriella spent the next four years of her life. When she was 18 she received a scholarship from the Neptune Academy of Engineering and Technology which he happily accepted: it was here that she met and befriended a fellow student, Kenneth Donnelly, who would soon become her best friend for the duration of the time they spent at the Academy, both of them going on to graduate summa cum laude at the top of their class. Prior to graduating, Gabriella had told Kenneth of her desire to join the Alliance and, after years of convincing, Kenneth finally agreed to go with her and sign up once they graduated. After graduating, they signed up to the Alliance Navy as engineers, and upon doing so they were assigned to the light cruiser Perugia. During her service on the Perugia, Gabriella's performance, in stark contrast to Kenneth's, was one of unparalleled excellence, her colleagues highly respecting her skills and her ability to keep Kenneth in check, who was reprimanded on numerous incidents for insubordination and wise-cracking. Gabriella would continue to serve on the Perugia right into the Eden Prime War, participating in the Battle of Armstrong and later during the conclusive Battle of the Citadel in 2183 CE. Shortly after the battle, Gabriella became disgruntled with Alliance leadership over their attempts to backslide on the Reaper issue following Commander Shepard's death, but largely kept her grievances to herself which, again, was in stark contrast to her friend Kenneth, whose vocal support for Shepard and criticism of the Alliance finally landed him a severe reprimand and he was placed on unpaid leave. Respecting her friend's decision to not remain silent on the issue, and fed up herself with the Alliance's betrayal of Shepard, Gabriella took a paid sabbatical to join her friend, effectively leaving the Alliance.
Kenneth's insubordination caught the attention of Cerberus, who subsequently offered him a place in their organization, with an opportunity to take the fight to the Reapers and eventually serve under Commander Shepard, who they were attempting to bring back to life. Whilst Gabriella was skeptical of such a claim, she actually encouraged Kenneth to accept the offer, insisting that she was included so they could stay together. Both were assigned to Project Avenger to assist with the installation of the Normandy SR-2's improved Tantalus drive core, and when the ship was officially launched in 2185 CE, they joined the ship's crew as engineering staff, later placed under the command of Tali'Zorah when she was assigned as the ship's chief engineer. Gabriella would continue to serve on the Normandy throughout the Collector campaign, developing romantic feelings for Kenneth that were left unsaid, largely due to her annoyance with Kenneth's constant, sexist comments regarding other female members of the crew, feeling ignored by him. When the ship was attacked and disabled by the Collectors later during the conflict, Gabriella was one of few crew members who were able to arm themselves and attempt to resist the attack, although she was ultimately abducted with the rest of the crew, placed into a pod and taken to the Collector Base where it was planned to melt her down and use her as organic matter to build the Human-Reaper with the rest of the captured crew. However, the Normandy Squad arrived and assaulted the Base in time to stop this, rescuing Gabriella along with the rest of the crew. Gabriella would later join the rest of the crew in defecting from Cerberus to join Shepard in going rogue, and continued to serve on the Normandy right up until the Bahak Incident, after which Shepard decided to turn himself into the Alliance along with the ship. Gabriella decided to turn herself in as well, and Kenneth agreed to go with her, both of them being arrested and taken into custody by navy military police to be interrogated. Charged with treason for working with Cerberus, Gabriella and her friend only narrowly escaped trial thanks to the intervention of Steven Hackett, who had the charges dropped due to a plea agreement Shepard accepted to take full responsibility. Regardless, Gabriella was barred from Alliance service and formally discharged along with Kenneth, and the two of them left for the Citadel, not knowing what to do. Shortly after, the Reaper War began and Earth fell, and Shepard would use his Spectre clearance to have Gabriella and her friend fully reinstated and assigned to the Normandy as its engineers again, this time under Chief Engineer Gregory Adams.
Gabriella would continue to serve on the Normandy throughout the Reaper War, at which time she finally grew up with Kenneth ignoring her and called him out on his sexist behavior, at which point the two of them became romantically involved. She proceeded to protect Kenneth during a Cerberus attack on the Normandy towards the end of the war, and helped EDI get her systems back online so she could fully retake control of the ship and help it escape the Cerberus ambush. Gabriella would survive the final battle over Earth and the subsequent crash of the Normandy, returning to Earth with Kenneth pending reassignment after the war: during this time, Kenneth proposed to her and she accepted, and they were married shortly after. In 2192 CE, Gabriella and her husband were picked by Tali'Shepard to serve as engineering staff for the RNS Revengeance, where she would serve throughout the Border War and Post-Apocalyptic War until the ship's capture by the Krogan Confederacy, where she was held captive on Tuchanka until the end of the conflict where she was released. Gabriella and her husband would continue to serve on the Revengeance until 2237 CE, at which point she retired from the military, along with Kenneth. With the outbreak of the Dominion Civil War in late 2252 CE, Gabriella convinced Kenneth to come out of retirement to join their second-time resurrected commander, Shepard, in rebelling against the Galactic Dominion and joined the Dominion Dissident Front, serving again on the Revengeance for a month before transferring to Urdnot Wrex's flagship, the TMCS Temperate Martyr. Gabriella would be present on the Temperate Martyr during its visit to Titan to treat with the Anointed Prophet of the Titan Covenant to establish a peace: instead, the DDF diplomats were caught in an ambush and murdered, with the Temperate Martyr destroyed shortly after by Titan's external plasma cannons, and Gabriella was killed in the process.