Shepard gathered her clothes in the dark of the night, letting only the light of the alarm clock guide her. The man asleep beneath the scratchy motel coverlet didn't stir as she dressed quickly, tugging her pants over her hips and pulling on her boots as quietly as she could. She left no note, uttered no goodbye. She'd already forgotten his name and, in a few weeks' time, the half-drunken romp with the random stranger from the bar would be a long-forgotten one night stand.
The silence of the room was replaced with the incessant buzzing of a nearby flickering light bulb when she stepped out into the hall. With a soft click, she secured the door behind her and pulled up her omni-tool. Shit! It was already oh-three hundred hours.
The soles of her boots pounded against the tiled hallway as she raced back to her barracks room. Skidding around corners and darting up stairwells, Shepard thanked god that few people were awake on the station at this late of an hour. She only had an hour and a half before she had to report for docking and she still hadn't finished packing. Or technically even started. The last thing she needed was to run into a high ranking officer and have to explain why she reeked of booze and sex the morning she was due to ship out.
"There you are!" Shepard's roommate sat on the floor among her scattered gear and looked up as the door to their room hit the wall with a bang.
Shepard slammed the door closed and dropped on to her hard bunk. "I thought you were gonna ping me?"
"Hey," Sienna grinned at her with a wide smile. "I didn't want to interrupt what was clearly a good time."
Shepard snorted. "Yeah, until we got back to the motel. Then it was wham, bam, thank you ma'am. You'd think a guy that could kiss that good would put his…talents to use elsewhere, but nope!"
"Shit, what a bust. Frankie wasn't much better tonight. I'm pretty sure he fell asleep at one point."
"Yeah, but Frankie's your boyfriend." Sienna and one of the other lieutenants had been sleeping together since they'd been assigned to the same unit. Shepard was the only one that knew, at least as far as the three of them were aware and that was only because she'd walked in on them. She knew she was supposed to care—fraternization regs and all—but it didn't stop the two of them from destroying each other in training sims. Shepard didn't see what the big deal was. Of course, she also wasn't about to get close enough to call anyone her boyfriend so maybe she just missed the point entirely. "It's the first timers that are supposed to still be trying to impress you!"
Shepard erupted into laughter as a pillow hit her squarely in the chest. When she finally was able to catch her breath, she slid off her bunk and rooted around under the bed frame until her fingers grasped the worn canvas strap of her pack. She stuffed her gear into the bag quickly, going off the gear list from memory. If she forgot a thing or two, well, she'd make due.
"You filthy cheat!" Shepard laughed and tossed her cards face down on the table. It was the third hand in a row that she'd lost.
It'd been a week since they left the Czarnobóg Fleet Depot for Akuze. The Alliance ship was scheduled to touch down on the planet in a few hours so the marines were killing time until then. The crew was itchy, anxious to be off the ship and doing something, even if that something was likely just repairing satellite towers.
The colony, in the early stages of development, hadn't been heard from in a few weeks. It wasn't uncommon to lose contact with pioneer teams settling new worlds. There were always complications when it came to colonizing new planets; usually storms or electrical surges that shorted out the equipment. The head engineer on the team should be able to adjust and overcome such issues but, sometimes, the equipment was damaged beyond repair.
Of course, lost contact wasn't always so benevolent. Sometimes the causes were much more sinister. Only a year prior, a huge band of batarian warlords, pirates, and slavers had banded together and launched an attack on the human colony of Elysium. Skirmishes between the batarians and Alliance were still in full swing. And one couldn't forget the lost colony of Mindoir. Slavers had ransacked and razed the colony to a man. Either way, when communications were lost, the Alliance sent in a unit to investigate.
Toombs, one of the corporals in squad one, grinned widely and pulled the pile of credit chits across the rickety table. "Double or nothing?"
Shepard shook her head and relinquished her seat. "I'm out."
"What's the matter, Shepard? Too rich for your blood," Frankie teased.
Shepard smirked at him. "I'm running out of chits, Culver. Of course, I could always gamble in secrets instead."
His face paled a little before he flipped her the finger. She'd never barter away secrets that weren't hers to tell. Selling people out was no longer in her wheelhouse and, honestly, she couldn't be happier about that. Still, she enjoyed watching him squirm, just a little.
"You couldn't resist, could you?" Sienna grinned at her.
Shepard hopped up on the long counter beside her friend and crossed her ankles in front of her. "He shouldn't dish it out if he can't take it."
Sienna smiled fondly at the towheaded marine. "You know he's all talk."
"Better watch it," Shepard nudged her slightly. "You're getting all googly eyed."
Four Kodiaks, each carrying a squad of marines, touched down and deposited them on the snowy tundra of Akuze. Low visibility due to the swirling winds carrying snow and sleet meant that they'd been unable to land less than a few kilometers out from the colony site. They'd landed on an empty patch of land instead and would make up the difference on foot. Each squad lined up in formation, nuts to butts, and started the trek towards the settlement.
Shepard tried to give a quick wave to Sienna, assigned to a different squad, but she wasn't sure if her friend could make her out behind the curtain of white that threatened to bury them. Whose bright idea was Titan armor in a winter wasteland, anyway? Sure, the gray camouflage would be great to hide them from enemies but it'd also do one hell of a job making them hard to spot by friendlies too, if they got into some kind of bind. At least the armor was broken up by black on the arms and neck area; it wasn't solid white.
Ice crunched beneath their boots as they set a brisk pace across the terrain. After forty-five minutes, the first lights of the settlement glowed like a beacon through the filtered grey light of the storm. Shepard shivered, despite the warmth she felt from the hike. A warm place to sleep, maybe even some hot food, sounded like a little slice of heaven right now.
The first sign that something was horribly wrong came from the absolute quiet that surrounded the small settlement. Tall spotlights lit the area. Many of them had been knocked over, their halo of light setting small patches of the snow to glittering. Prefab units wobbled in the storm in their various stages of completion, stacks of the sections piled haphazardly in groups around them. A few finished buildings huddled at the far edges of the area.
Major Major—Shepard still struggled not to snicker at his name when addressing him—was already on the radio, relaying information back to the ship.
"Shepard, Peake, go check those units for civilians," Gunnery Chief Dobbs barked.
While Shepard and the corporal closed the last few hundred meters to the two completed buildings, a few more fire teams began a circuit of the perimeter. Pirates or slavers would have likely made themselves known by now if they were still in the vicinity, but they all still readied their weapons, in the unlikely event that hostiles were lying in wait. You could never be too cautious.
"Nothing," the other young woman called back to the major after both units had been cleared. They hadn't found a single trace of life.
"Sir!" Shepard recognized Culver's voice as he called for the major. "You need to see this, sir."
Shepard hurried towards him and pulled up short as she came to the edge of a snowy dip in the ground. Bodies, at least a dozen judging by the different pieces strewn about, were frozen at the bottom of the depression. She choked down bile at the site of the carnage. Another marine yanked off his helmet and heaved violently as he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the snow.
"What the fuck?" Dobbs, even with his years of experience, couldn't maintain a passive face.
A quiet poof accompanied Staff Commander Kovach as she dropped to her knees in the snow next to the bodies. Her well-trained eyes scanned over the remains before she pulled on a secondary pair of gloves to begin her examination. Though her purpose with them was treatment of the wounded, the medic was fully capable of cataloging the dead as well.
"Milina, what the hell happened here?" Major crouched down beside the doc, mouth set in a grim line as he surveyed the mutilated colonists.
"I…I've never seen anything like this, Jared. Whatever did this, it did it with no compunction."
"Dobbs!" The major snapped to his feet. "I want sentry units set up immediately!"
Shepard jolted awake as a tremor shook the ground beneath her. She shoved the hood of her sleeping bag off her head and looked around. The rest of her squad had also stirred, but Shepard could spot no source for the quake in the dark of the night.
She tried to recall the briefing they'd been given on the planet the first day they'd been en route to the colony. Were earthquakes common on Akuze? For the life of her, she couldn't remember.
Shrieks, feral cries that were not human, pierced the air as the ground shuddered again, more violently than the first wave. Human screams followed closely behind.
Dobbs was the first to scramble to his feet. His hands gripped the radio tight enough that Shepard could see the white of his knuckles from her position ten meters away as he tried to raise any of the other squads. Eleven more marines rushed to follow his lead, tripping over sleeping bags and pulling on boots as fast as they could over their double layers of socks. Each of them grasped wildly for the weapons they'd had tucked at their sides as they struggled to stay calm against the steady wave of terror.
"We're under attack!" Dobbs' comm crackled to life. "It came out of nowhere! …argh!…it's, oh God!…"
Gunfire, the same that could be heard off in the distance, echoed over the channel. The squad raced across the snow as fast as they could, praying to god that they didn't stumble in a snow filled hole and break a leg in their rush. One of the marines ahead of her lurched and screamed before firing off a dozen rounds in rapid succession.
"Cease fire! Cease fire, damn it!" Dobbs screamed. "What the hell does that look like, Bagley?"
The young marine—a private on his very first mission—gulped and looked down at the bullet riddled stone at his feet. "A rock, sir."
"A rock! Did that rock do anything to you, Private?"
"N-n-no, sir."
"Then save your fucking fire for something that needs killing! Move out!"
The hilarity of the moment died as more terrified howls and distant gunfire reminded them of their urgency. They resumed their harsh pace across the snowy terrain.
Another depression—one that hadn't been there before—marked the origin of the attack. A large…thing loomed out of a hole in the ground. A long, tubular body towered over them, lit by the thinly filtered glow of the small moons. Four marines remained of the twelve-man squad that had been camping here.
The worm thing slammed its powerful body to the ground with a terrifying screech, crushing two of the marines under its thick plated armor. Muzzle flashes lit up the night sky as Dobbs' squad opened fire on the creature. They only succeeded in pissing it off. Shepard watched as the huge mouth split open and a glittering cerulean tongue launched a volley of viscous fluid towards them. Peake and Bagley screamed as acid splashed over them, melting through the best sub zero armor the Alliance had to offer and disintegrating their flesh in mere seconds.
Dobbs' radio, locked onto the platoon's channel, crackled as the third and fourth squads screamed and reported attacks at their positions as well. Suddenly, the worm crashed down again and, this time one of its thick tentacles latched onto a marine's legs and dragged her backwards. Ellers grasped at her legs, trying to wrench her out of the tight grip but he only succeeded in being pulled along as well. With a cry, he released his hold on her and both marine and worm disappeared into the dark hole.
"Toombs, where's the major?" Dobbs asked as he rounded up the few remaining men from squad one.
The corporal, the cocky confidence he'd had on the ship absolutely shattered, pointed with a shaking hand to a liquefied mass of armor. Dobbs swore under his breath. The death of their platoon commander left him in command. Before he could issue his next set of orders, the earth rippled and churned as the thing moved like a wave beneath their feet.
Behind them, the ground erupted in a geyser of snow as the worm burst towards the heavens again.
"Fire!" Dobbs shouted.
Bullets ricocheted off the creature's thick hide though a few rounds must have pierced through weak points. Its monstrous screams carried through the still of the night. More acid rained down over them, mixing the acrid scent of gunfire with sizzling human flesh. The thick body crashed into the ground again, tentacles ensnaring the waist of another marine.
"Toombs!" Shepard shouted and flung herself towards him with an outstretched hand. Too slow, the ground swallowed him and, once again, the night was silent.
Shepard shrieked and clawed her way across the ground when something touched her shoulder. Her sucking breaths quavered as she realized the touch was a hand, helping her to her feet. Dobbs pulled her up and ordered the retreat. They had no idea what they were up against or how to take it down. They needed to fall back and regroup with the rest of the squads. If anyone else was still left.
Nine marines raced back in the direction they'd come from. Nine out of the twenty-four there should have been. A deafening crack, followed by an inhuman shriek assaulted their eardrums as Ellers went down. Shepard and Leck—the only remaining marine from squad one—pulled short and turned back to their fallen comrade. Ellers sprawled face first in the snow, his leg twisted at an unnatural angle out of the hole he'd stepped in. Moonlight illuminated the stark white bone that protruded from his shin through the layers of his armor. He thrashed and tried to pull himself from the hidden crevice, terror overriding his pain receptors momentarily.
"Ellers! Ellers, stop!" Leck knelt beside the corporal. "We'll get you out of there! Just hold on."
Tremors shook the ground around them again as the thing made its way towards the easy target. Shepard grabbed Leck's arm, trying to move the private out of the way.
He shoved her back with a snarl. "I'm not leaving him!"
Shepard looked back. Tunneling dirt streaked towards them at a rapid pace. Armor that was supposed to camouflage them did nothing to hide their presence from this predator. She turned back to the stubborn marine, bent over the injured corporal. Her heart dropped out of her chest, knowing what she had to do. If she died here now, she died for nothing.
Sucking in a deep breath, she pumped her legs as fast as they would go, moving perpendicular to the churning dirt above the worm. A terrifying roar accompanied the worm as it erupted from the ground, knocking her to her feet with the force of its reappearance. Dobbs caught her arm and hauled her back up. Five other sets of hands squeezed five triggers, unleashing a barrage of gunfire.
A rumbling buzz answered. Shepard looked over her shoulder in time to see a gob of acid sailing straight towards her. Dobbs saw it too. With a yank, he pulled her to the side, toppling the both of them to the ground. Her head slammed into a rock, hidden between a fine powder dusting of snow, and her vision went dark.
A searing pain coursed through her veins, bringing Shepard back to consciousness. The beat of her heart hammered in her chest, drowning out any other noise around her. She willed her heart to slow, terrified that the creature could find her by those beating pulses alone. She couldn't move, could barely breathe; out of fear or pain or a combination of both, she wasn't sure. She grit her teeth against the pain and recited the phonetic alphabet over and over in her head, the comforting familiarity of the words used as a method to distract herself.
She laid there with her eyes squeezed tightly shut for hours, or maybe just minutes—she couldn't know for certain—before she realized it wasn't her heartbeat that deafened her. It was the world around her, absolutely silent. The air was still. No screams pierced through the chill of the morning.
Finally, she peeked her eyes open. The edges of the horizon were streaked with orange as the sun's rays announced the arrival of morning. One by one, the stars overhead winked out. A thin blanket of snow covered her and the rest of the ground around her, hiding the bodies of her fallen friends and the scars in the earth the worm had left. The glittering snow was deceptively beautiful, masking the horrors that lived below the surface.
Chilling cold seeped through to her bones, disregarding the warmth her armor should have provided. Her breath coalesced in thick plumes of frost above her face. The pain sharpened and morphed into agony and, unable to remain immobile any longer, Shepard tried to push herself to her feet. Her legs wouldn't move. Her legs wouldn't move! She thrashed, no longer caring about the noise she was making as panic settled in the pit of her stomach.
Snowflakes slid and shifted under her erratic movements, revealing that she was trapped beneath something. She groaned and tried to pull free of the weight atop her. Gunny. The shape morphed into something familiar as more of the snow shook free from on top of them.
"Sir? Sir, are you alright?" she whispered, cringing as the sound carried over the open terrain.
When Dobbs didn't respond, she tried to rouse him with a firm shake. His body was stiff; rigor mortis having settled into his limbs. He toppled off of her, rolling until he was supine in the snow. His face was gone, burned away and melted down to the bone.
Shepard swallowed her scream and scrabbled backwards, biting back a curse as the movement intensified the pain that had woken her. Glancing down, she realized the acid that had caught the chief in the face had dripped slowly on her as she'd been trapped under him. The droplets had accumulated, burning a hole in the side of her armor. It had reached skin, sizzling her flesh. She yelped and searched for something to scrape the acid from herself.
Her pockets were empty. She had no medi-gel. Her pack was back wherever they'd made camp. She heaved into the snow as a fresh wave of pain coursed through her at the sight of her puckered, inflamed flesh. She balled up a handful of the fluffy powder and pressed it to the acid eaten skin. Over and over she rinsed, trying to remove as much of the viscous fluid as she could.
With her wound cleaned as best as she was able, she rose shakily to her feet and trudged through the morning light, looking for survivors. All she found were puddles of goo and half melted bodies littering the landscape. She was lucky enough to salvage an assault rifle still in good condition from one of the corpses so she wouldn't be defenseless. Though with one assault rifle against the towering monsters, she might as well be. Pockmarked holes dotted the earth in places where the snow hadn't yet accumulated. Shepard gave each depression a wide berth, despite knowing the creatures could move and appear wherever they wanted. Any sound she heard left her cowering in the fetal position in the snow in an attempt to make herself as small a target as possible.
The ground was still beneath her feet, urging her forward. Maybe those things only hunted at night. Maybe she wasn't enough of a threat on her own. Either way, she felt little comfort at their absence.
She came to an abrupt halt. Tears welled in her eyes and immediately froze as they spilled down her cheeks.
Frankie's body was collapsed over Sienna's, the torso of his armor eaten through. Thick globs of acid split his skin and spilled what remained of his intestines bright red upon the stark white of the snow. The unnatural splay of Sienna's body indicated that she'd been crushed and likely already dead, but Frankie had still died protecting her. Shepard sank back to her knees next to them, a wail building in her throat. Sienna had been the closest friend she had since…ever. And now the both of them were just gone.
Shepard cried until her throat was hoarse and her eyes had no tears left to shed. The likelihood of Frankie surviving, even if he had abandoned Sienna's body was slim. Still, anger replaced her grief. You fool, she cursed at his corpse. He'd sacrificed himself, dying for the tiny bit of hope that he might be able to save his girlfriend. Shepard couldn't—wouldn't—ever put herself in his shoes. She was a survivor.
As soon as she had the thought, white hot guilt surged through her. She'd left Leck and Ellers to be crushed. Toombs had slipped through her hands. Dobbs had died protecting her. As far as she knew, she was the only one left. She had to survive, if only to be the voice to carry their memory. She had to keep going.
Dawn's beauty of shimmering snow morphed into full on snow blindness as the sun crept higher into the sky. The white landscape reflected the mid afternoon sun directly into her eyes, turning the terrain into one giant mirror. She'd seen no one since she'd discovered Sienna and Frankie. Maybe she was the only one still alive. Maybe the rest had already been rescued and she had been left behind. Odds were she was probably just wandering in circles.
As she trudged along the desolate terrain, she licked her lips, trying to wet her mouth. The dry feeling grew steadily stronger the longer she walked, becoming harder and harder to ignore. At least she knew better than to eat the abundance of snow laid out before her. Even if she'd wanted to risk a fire to melt some of it, she had nothing to boil the snow in.
When the sky finally grew dark, Shepard silently thanked whatever gods might be listening. She could finally see again. But…Her body trembled at the thought of the monsters coming back in the dark of the night to finish the job. Until she realized it wasn't night falling but the tumultuous clouds of another snow storm gathering overhead. Visibility dropped down next to nothing.
Should she keep moving, should she wait out the storm? Nothing seemed like the right answer. She hadn't eaten in close to twenty-four hours and, even if she did find something that looked remotely edible, she had no idea what on this damn planet was actually safe to eat. Between the hunger and thirst, and the exhaustion left behind by fear and adrenaline, Shepard felt on the verge of collapsing.
A dark shape appeared in the distance. She froze in a complete standstill and watched for movement. Maybe it didn't matter why it was dark, just that dark had settled across the sky and now the worm was back to crush her. The shape stayed still. She crept slowly forward, little by little, stilling every so many meters to pause and wait before continuing towards it. When she was close enough to make out the mass through the swirling ice, she realized she'd stumbled upon one of the Kodiaks that they'd left behind when they landed. She wrenched open the door, hoping to find survivors huddled inside. There was no one.
She crawled in and closed the door tightly, grateful to shut some of the cold behind her. All the supplies, including water and rations, had been hauled to the colony but the dry, relative safety of the shuttle was still comforting. If only she knew how to fly the damn thing.
"Shepard to third platoon. I've made it back to a kodiak. My position is," she pulled up her omni-tool, noting the coordinates and relayed them over the radio. She waited, listening for something other than static. "Repeat. This is Lieutenant Shepard. Is anyone else out there? Over."
The radio crackled to life under her palm. "Lieutenant Shepard. This is Flight Lieutenant Christin Twiggs, of the SSV Antietam. We've got your position. Await extraction. Twiggs, Out."
Shepard slumped on one of the seats of the Kodiak and tried willing her body to relax. Help was on the way. And when her saviors arrived with rocket launchers, Shepard thought the fiery explosions were the prettiest things she'd ever seen.