Shambhala, temple ruins on Shanxi
Cavalry Scout, Corporal Camila Vasquez
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Her friend laughs, and laughs, but it isn't enough to cover that wet wheezing that spills out from her. "Hey C-Cam." She rasps, "Not a scare-scaredy cat 'nymore, mm-I?" her words slur. Red on the sides of her mouth, red on her lips like in another lifetime it might've been girls' night out, red on her sides, in her eyes and ears.
Cam trembles.
"Cam…C-aaa-m." She draws in a long, shuddering breath, "Told-told you. 've got…your….back." Her eyes roll to the sun overhead. "'s a nice day…'innit?"
Cam presses her hands harder into her companion's sides, trying to staunch the blood more. It's everywhere but where it's supposed to be. "I'm getting you out of here. I am. We're going home. Fuck the ruins. Fuck the war. And fuck those aliens. We're going home."
Her friend's head lolls almost sleepily, turns to look at her with half-mast eyes. "Take my tags, yeah?"
"Vicky, Vicky eyes open, eyes open." Cam chants like it'll make a difference.
"Always…always got your back…"
Movement at her left woke Camila, startling her into cocking her pistol.
Her unorthodox companion looked at the end of it warily. Raptor.
She tightened her lips and flicked the safety, tucking it back in its holster. She was careful to not meet its eyes while she hated herself a little for feeling so threatened by the alien. Earlier, it had said its name, rank and platoon identification and had waited for her to do the same.
Camila gave him her full name and quieted thereafter. It wasn't really out of complete impoliteness; their situation called for as little hostility as possible for the sake of survival, but the fact of the matter was that she didn't have a squad anymore and was probably considered KIA so she didn't have a rank either.
That and the different translators made it difficult at times for their languages to sync up. She had no idea what the Raptors used or indeed how it exactly functioned, but human-made translators were based heavily off of Prothean design. A small synth-organic chip inserted and integrated with the cerebrum that had some sort of connection running to the parietal, temporal and frontal lobes. Or something.
Camila didn't make a habit to read up much on anything except the side-effects. The chip had a huge rise in popularity when First Contact came about; surprise, surprise.
In any case, it was only explained that these ruins were currently supposed to be under surveillance until the fly-by turian patrol had effectively chased off the scientists and lab-geeks. Shambhala was some sort of structure for worship, but remained unlike any Prothean design humanity had encountered. It was the possibility of more aliens that had preceded them; a relic of a long lost empire. Excavation had been slower since it didn't seem to have the amount of useful technology the Prothean archives had yielded.
Strange.
It was so strange.
Humanity had reached for the stars and found the dead remnants of a race they would never fully know or understand. Humans had anticipated the idea of aliens, of other sentient life forms in the galaxy.
The possibility of contact: humanity's dream, something once thought of as a pipedream. The ruins had assured humans that it was not just a possibility – it was the truth, fact. The dream was real.
It turned out to be a nightmare. Shanxi and her smoking remains saw to that.
Her squad witnessed firsthand the end of that dream.
So did Vicky.
Camila tried to not let the smell of the hole, for lack of better word, she was stuck in bother her. It smelled damp, earthy in a way that dead foliage did, and the air itself was heavy with humidity. Overhead the slim shaft of light projected from small opening, barely the size of her head, taunted her. It was over about four and a half stories above them, and too small to boot. It was the closest they would get to the outside again.
She could hear the Raptor – Aquila - breathing next to her and sighed.
She was tempted to ask how long they'd been down here. How long ago had it been since they'd been forced to stop firing at each other? How long had they been waiting to die of starvation or dehydration? How long were they going to wonder whether or not those things would find them, hidden in the dark?
Camila opened her mouth and looked to her companion. He stared straight ahead, tightening and relaxing his grip on his assault rifle. His mandibles moved outwards slightly but he never spoke. Corporal Vasquez let the air escape her quickly and leaned her head back against the stone wall behind her.
"I never should have come here." She rasped. The soft snort to her left told her he agreed.
The light overhead illuminated half of her face and left the other half in the dark.
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1.3 km from Shambhala excavation site
Approx. 14.5 hrs ago
Corporal Camila Vasquez
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Camila started running before she'd planned out a destination.
Shots fired out blindly behind her and she zigzagged. Her cloak had malfunctioned when one of the Raptors got smart and tossed an electronic pulse grenade in her vicinity. The bastard had heard the mud sucking at the bottom of her boots when she'd tried to move to closer to hear them.
The grenade had gone off, and the delicate tech of her cloak reacted by shorting out completely right with her near a small encampment of Raptor soldiers. So much for scouts never being seen or heard.
Camila had paused only long enough to toss out a flash grenade in the middle of the five soldiers before she booked it in the opposite direction.
Scrambling to the side when a flurry of bullets landed close to her left, Camila made for the temple ruins ahead. Her thighs were cramping from being crouched and still to sudden explosive activity. Her calves were beginning to burn but she pressed on. She didn't dare turn to look behind her when she heard the commanding officer snarl off in the distance.
They'd recovered quicker than Camila expected them to.
Exhaling quickly, the corporal forced herself to speed up – she'd seen those bastards run before; long-legged, quick strides that could outpace a sprinter unfairly fast.
If she could make it to the trench that led down to the ruined temple, she might be able to shake the enemy there and figure out her cloak. At the very least, the recording she took of the soldiers speaking was sent off to Communications Office Brant.
She'd unwittingly come across a gold mine when she'd tailed one of their wounded back to a camp that they must have missed before, or they'd newly moved in. It was an infantry squad, she'd give the aliens that; they were damn good soldiers, fast, strong and hard as hell to kill and keep down.
She had been lucky they'd been discussing the small squads stationed just on the outskirts of Shanxi, collecting information and patrolling for technology or survivors.
Then the bastard with the red markings had started glaring suspiciously in her direction when she'd shifted her weight after the first hour. She should've left when she had the chance.
Her luck ran out around the time one of the patched in to another, what she assumed, squad.
It all went to shit after that.
Up ahead, she saw that the flat terrain was beginning to slope down; she was close.
She kept running and hoped her knees wouldn't lock, hoped she wouldn't slip while she bypassed the slow lift to the level ground below. She braved the steep incline of the sides of the pit. Loose dirt crumbled around her.
The ruins of what the xenoarchaeologists were calling "Shambhala" hadn't been excavated thoroughly since it had been found shortly before the First Contact War had started. The temple itself was virtually unexplored.
There had been a report that some of the tunnels in Shambhala looked as though they had previously collapsed but some seemed in working condition when they tossed a probe down. Camila reasoned she stood as good a chance as any to lose the aliens in the underground tunnels.
She primed and tossed another flash grenade behind her. They hadn't shot her in the back yet, so they probably wanted her alive.
In front of her the enormous black dome of Shambhala rose up from the excavation pit and it might've just been her nerves but Camila felt her gut clench from the sight of it.