Part 2: The Longest Day

March 13, 2177
Day 2

Shepard sleeps; someone is screaming. This does not bother her (for the last seven years, her dreams have often been punctuated by screaming)- but now her hardsuit's display greets her open eyes and the noises do not stop. She springs up off her cot and reaches for her guns, sliding the shotgun along her back until it holsters with a click but keeping the pistol drawn, and gives the other three soldiers sharing her tent a quick shake before darting out through the flap into the pitch-dark night.

Every member of the middle watch is crouched along the eastern barricades, firing steadily at-

"What the fuck is that?" Cooper stumbles out of the tent, staring up alongside her at the clusters of vivid blue lights thirty meters above them. One of the watch lobs a grenade into the darkness and the flash illuminates something massive, a reddish column rising in a sinuous curve from the edge of the field.

"I think we found what killed those colonists." Even as she says the words, the rest of the unit come pouring from the tents- and, with a shriek that rattles her helmet, a second set of lights bursts from the ground into the sky. There's more than one of these things?

Lieutenant Roberts, finally, starts shouting orders. "Get to the transports! Try to surround them and hit them with everything you've got at close range." Shepard turns and sprints toward the Grizzly; behind her, there's an odd sound, almost a splash. The screaming picks up again, higher-pitched this time, but she doesn't turn back to look- with so many untested soldiers, someone's bound to panic in the heat of combat.

By the time the initial roar of engines fades, the screams have stopped. Carpenter moves to close the latches as the rest of the team settles into their seats, then pauses. "Chief? We're short one."

She glances back to count her crew as she tightens the harness straps. Thompson's seat is empty; she checks her hardsuit reads, where she's programmed the computer to report on each member of the group. Seven suits with full shields and life support, hers included- and one flashing warning: SUIT NOT FOUND. "He was on middle watch, right? I'm not reading his hardsuit." She checks again. SUIT NOT FOUND.

Roberts' voice comes snarling over the speakers. "Get your ass moving, Shepard. I need you backing me up out here." Damn.

"I'm short a man, Lieutenant. I'm not leaving until I know my whole team's safe." The engine idles; she waits.

"Move it, Chief. That's an order." The speakers click off and she slams her fist against the seat in frustration, but kicks the Grizzly into gear as Carpenter snaps the latches shut. The tank's lights illuminate the field and Roberts' and Phillips' vehicles ahead of her as they start to circle around- and finally she sees what it is they're fighting as a third creature erupts from the ground directly beneath the lead transport.

The noise over the radio is awful- screams and shouts and the grinding of metal on metal- as the thing lofts Phillips' Mako into the air like a child tossing a ball. What looked like clouds of deep blue fireflies in the earlier darkness are exposed in their headlights as its eyes and tongue, the latter lolling from a gaping maw that dwarfs the Mako even as it plummets back toward the ground. She gets a better look at the rest of it, too- less serpentine than she'd thought from her first glimpse, with overlapping plates covering its length and jointed, waving.. are those tentacles? What are these things?- then loses sight of it entirely; the Mako hits the ground with an impact that rattles Shepard and her team from fifty meters away and explodes in a shower of red-hot metal and blue-white flame.

Oh, God.

She chokes back a shout and flinches back from the viewscreen. Over the clamor of shocked voices streaming over the radio, she can barely hear Roberts. "I'm going to ram it while it's disoriented. Get ready to fire on it when it goes down."

"Lieutenant, I don't think that's a good-" but he is already accelerating toward the closest of the creatures, so she brings the Grizzly around to find a line of sight not obscured by wreckage and fire. Behind the smoke she can still see it, rising straight into the sky and unmoving even as the lieutenant's Mako impacts it at full speed and ricochets backward. Well, that didn't work.

She starts to turn, to tell Doran to fire up the guns- then suddenly, the thing whips around so fast she expects to hear the sound barrier break and slams down headfirst onto Roberts' vehicle. With another bone-piercing scream, it curls back on itself and disappears beneath the surface. The Mako, flattened and distorted, sparks warningly for a moment; then it, too, erupts in flames.

"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Roberts, can you hear me?" There is silence over the speakers; six teams of soldiers, wordless, await a response that Shepard knows in her gut will never come.

"Chief, what do we do?" From the back of the Grizzly, Carpenter's tremulous voice is barely audible.

("Jacob, what do we do?" The shouts and the sharp crack of gunfire had startled them awake and there is still straw in her hair as they stare together out the half-open barn door. At the bottom of the hill, their houses are burning; their families have been next-door neighbors since before either of them were born and now the flames rising from the roofs twine together like their interlaced fingers.

He squeezes her hand, almost too hard, and then reaches to lift the shotgun from its pegs at the left of the door. "Get back up in the loft, pull up the ladder and hide, okay? I'll come back for you when it's safe. I promise." She has her pocketknife and knows how to use it- she could help him, she argues with all her strength. But he is stubborn, as he always was, and in the end he goes alone.

When she hears the shot, a minute later, the ladder slips from her shaking hands. It hits her, hard, on the forehead before she recovers her grip and lifts it among the hay bales.)

Shepard takes a deep breath, in and out. "We kill these things, Private, that's what we do. Help Gonzales keep the cannon loaded." She throws the gearshift into reverse as the machine gun roars to life.

The Grizzly doesn't maneuver well, and it's all she can do to keep from tipping into a crater- so she notices the burst of fluid only when it coats the starboard camera ports and the viewscreen goes half-dark. The radar's gone haywire, too, flashing anomaly warnings for two hundred meters in all directions. That can't be right. "Cooper, how are the shields holding up?" She has to shout over the proximity alarms and the rattle of the machine gun; Doran has her eyes locked on the targeting computer and lets go of the trigger only long enough to fire the cannon.

"Shields at one hundred percent, Chief- wait. What the hell?" Cooper's voice rises an octave. "Shields are up but seals are at twenty percent.... no, ten percent- hull breach! We have hull breach!"

"What do you mean, hull breach? Nothing even hit us- ow!" Gonzales lets out a yelp of pain and pulls his hand away from the cannon's open loading tray as Shepard slams on the brakes and turns back toward him; something green and viscous drips down into the tray and sizzles on the half-loaded rounds.

"Everyone, out!" She throws off the harness in one shove. With the guns silenced, the buzz of the alarm echoes off the Grizzly's walls. "Get your weapons out and stay close- we'll make a run for the camp and get behind cover." The side latches slide open without the expected hiss of releasing seals; she kicks at the panel with a booted foot and it falls outward even as she is shoving the first of her team out into the open.

She puts twenty meters between herself and the Grizzly before it finally blows, and even then the shockwave lifts her half-airborne; her hands and knees hit the dirt hard on the rebound and she loses sight of the squad for a moment in a haze of yellow dust. She counts them again when her vision clears- one, two, three, four, five- someone else is missing but she can't tell who or where, and she runs and runs until she sees grey against yellow and throws herself behind the barricade at the camp's edge.

"Shepard?" Someone grabs her arm. "Chief, help me- the medigel won't stick, she just keeps bleeding..." Corporal Toombs points frantically at four hardsuit-clad forms, pulled a few feet away from the barricade toward the center of the camp. She gestures at Doran, already crouched behind the half-wall with the others and aiming short, controlled bursts of fire into the flamelit field; the woman nods, and starts giving orders to the newer troops. It's Cooper missing, then- where the hell did he go? Toombs pulls at her arm again and she turns with him toward the wounded.

"What happened, Corporal?" On second glance, three of the four (she reads their nameplates- Kuryenko, Tanaka, Thompson- goddamn it!) are already dead, their hardsuits cracked and melted and the flesh beneath burned away. They are beyond her help and so she kneels next to the fourth.

He stumbles over the words. "We were on watch when we felt it- this vibration, like the hum of a generator but somewhere down under our feet. Smith and Winters walked out onto the field to see if something was coming and that thing... it just came up from nowhere. The rest of us were right behind the barricade when everyone started running for the tanks and when we turned to go, too- I don't know, I guess the thing spit on us or something. Lowe was running backward, still shooting, and she tripped over me. It caught her full in the chest- I tried to wipe the stuff off, put pressure on it. It ate halfway through my glove and she just kept clawing at her suit until it started coming away in her hand..." He pulls out another unit of medi-gel and opens it over the woman's torso, where bright green and bright red mingle and roil and devour the gel before it can knit together the muscles underneath. Toombs looks at her, helpless. "And she won't stop bleeding, Shepard. Oh, God..."

Though she does not touch, she can see the swift flow of blood from Lowe's shoulder and chest- not the spurt of an artery but fast and lethal enough, regardless. "And this stuff dissolved through your suit, too, when you touched it?"

He holds up his hand. "Almost all the way through my glove- and that after the bandage packs from the medical kit, ma'am."

"Then we make her comfortable, Corporal, and we get back to the line." Even as Shepard speaks, the woman mumbles something too soft to hear and her right arm, unmarred except for bloodstains, gropes in the dirt. Toombs paws through the little box for a painkiller syringe. He takes one in hand; the needle guard flips back and he bends down toward Lowe. Shepard turns her glance back to her soldiers as a few shapes stagger from the field and join the group behind the barricade.

With her attention diverted, the pistol shot comes as a surprise and she spins and points her weapon toward the sound. Toombs rocks back on his heels from his place next to the body, syringe still in hand; Lowe's right hand now holds her pistol, nuzzled squarely under her chin, and her eyes stare sightlessly through her pitted visor.

"My terms, she said." He recaps the needle, stares straight at Shepard with an intensity that disconcerts her. "'I die on my terms.' I couldn't help her... "

She takes his arm and pulls him, ever so gently, toward the barricade. "We-" she emphasizes the word, careful and deliberate- "couldn't help her, Toombs, and I'm sorry for that- but we can still help them." With her other hand, she gestures eastward. "I need you to stay focused, Corporal."

He nods, and they fit themselves into empty spaces in the line; there are perhaps ten soldiers behind the portable barriers, still firing steadily toward the groupings of blue lights. She tries to track all of the creatures- at least three are visible at any one time and she shouts a constant stream of directions and warnings into her comm, hoping that anyone still in a transport can hear her and stay clear of the things.

But the damage is done, it seems. One by one, the transports not already burning grind to a halt, and then they are easy prey for the creatures' assaults. A scant few soldiers make it clear of their destroyed Grizzlies and come running frantically toward the camp- one lofts herself into the air and Shepard drops her gun long enough to help haul the girl over the barricade. Patel's Mako is the last to stop firing, some thirty meters from the camp, and only one figure emerges from the smoke surrounding it to limp toward them as a final explosion rips through the tank.

She keeps calling out over the radio for what seems like forever, even as the ruined shells of the vehicles smolder and the creatures disappear beneath the ground and do not burst forth again. The field is still, and the radio echoes back her own voice, and finally she gives the order to cease fire.

There are twenty-one men and women alive behind the barricades, including herself, when the sound of the last gunshot fades. She looks among them, searching for a superior officer to direct their next move- but they are all looking at her, and the realization hits her like a shockwave in the pit of her stomach.

I am the ranking officer.

She tries to speak but cannot find the words, and so Doran finds them for her. "Ma'am... what the hell just happened?"

"I..." She pauses, swallows, starts again. "We know now what killed the men and women of Akuze. We know why they couldn't fight back- and we had to figure it out the hard way. We lost a lot of good people out there figuring it out."

"How do we know they're all dead?" Carpenter asks; it is not a challenge, merely a question. "Shouldn't we go search the tanks?"

"From what Corporal Toombs tells me, the first one of these things only attacked when someone walked onto the field." But why not when we found the colonists- what was different then? She cannot make sense of it. "They only stopped attacking when we backed off the field, and with no transports I won't send you back out there again." Shepard sighs. "God help me if there's anyone still alive out there, but I won't risk the rest of you to find out."

Twenty exhausted soldiers simply stare at her. No one speaks.

"And now..." her hands fall to her sides. God, I'm tired. "We get the hell off this planet."

"I say we nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure," Private Raith mutters from the back of the group- but it's enough to lighten the mood.

"Do any of you think the transport you were in might still be functional?" Each of the survivors shakes his or her head in the same insistent way. Whether destroyed by the creatures' direct strikes, dissolved by the acid she's sure now that they spit, or run headlong into a seemingly bottomless hole (there is no one from Chief Wu's Grizzly represented among the group clustered around her, but Chandler and Foster seem utterly convinced of what they saw and, certainly, there are only seven transports still visible of the eight that set out), their vehicles are destroyed. Wherever they go next, they will walk there.

"For now, everyone, get some rest. That's an order. I'll try to raise the ship, and we'll move back to the landing zone at first light. Anyone injured, see me or Gunnery Chief Adams." She lets herself breathe as the others nod and start to move- the fragments of the unit are still holding together.

They pull cots into the open and drag them a short ways up the hill, distancing themselves from the field and the dead; the four bodies within the camp are laid into the same black bags that hold the dead civilians and carried to the end of the nearest row. It is a relief to her to see them go- one less visible reminder of the others she has left to graves of metal and earth, at least for the time being.

Shepard, for her part, gathers as many of the small medical kits from the tents as she can find and sets herself up on one of the cots to wait for the wounded.

"Chief Shepard?" She turns toward the voice, somewhere in the darkness to her left. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Only if you come over here where I can see who's asking- but sure, hit me." She beckons into the dark and a shape emerges, recognizable as one of the newest privates. "Private Murphy, right?"

"Yes, ma'am." The girl takes a few steps closer, then lowers herself to sit on one of the flat-topped rocks that dot the terrain with her leg stretched out in front of her.

"You all right, Murphy? That leg looks like it's giving you trouble." It's as much for her own sake as the girl's that she asks; if Murphy can't run tomorrow, it will hold them all back. She can't quite get her head around being the ranking officer, not just yet- but all three lieutenants are gone, and she doesn't have a choice. No one else is going to die, not if she can help it.

The private shrugs. "Not really, ma'am. My ankle caught in the harness strap when Lieutenant Patel shoved me out of the Mako before he... before it blew. It just feels swollen, now."

"Normally I'd tell you to get that boot off, put your foot up with a chill pack. Tonight, Murphy- keep that boot laced. I need you on your feet tomorrow, and if you swell up so badly you can't get your kit back on..." Shepard sighs. I'll carry you if I have to. "But you didn't come over here for a lecture. What was your question?"

"How do you deal with this?" Murphy gestures vaguely toward the field. "I mean, we got the whole speech in Basic about grief and post-traumatic stress and all, but I..." The façade cracks a little; her lip trembles. "I've never seen anyone die before, ma'am. Does it get easier?"

"Yes. And no." Heads incline toward her. She pretends not to notice. "I've lost soldiers before- twice in five years- and it hurts. I won't tell you that you get used to it- you don't. I won't tell you that you'll forget about it in time- you won't. You'll remember. But you learn from your mistakes, and you keep fighting, and you keep looking forward even as you grieve."

She has spent enough time looking backward to know the truth of it, enough time lost to self-pity and self-loathing and sorrow deep enough to drown in- that time is gone, and yet she is grateful for it (as one kisses the hand that wounds, for the wisdom that comes with the pain).

"Does that start to answer it?"

Murphy nods. "Yes, ma'am... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take up your time."

"Don't apologize, Private. You need to talk, I'm here." But there is work to be done, and she turns her attention to the other wounded.

There are far fewer injured than she would have thought given the casualties the unit suffered; she needs only a few packets of medi-gel to tend the cuts and scrapes presented to her. Wounded and well alike, the soldiers settle back into the cots. Even those who volunteer to keep watch sit perched on stones, too tired or shaken to keep on their feet.

She gains nothing by delay, and so she pushes herself to her feet to walk toward the top of the hill.

The air around her is still as she stands looking over the fields; pillars of smoke rise into the sky like so many campfires. (She thinks of the burnt-spicy smell of Mindoir cedar, lets the memory build until she can taste it on her tongue. Better that than what lingers here now, the stink of charred metal and plastic and flesh that also reminds her of home- it threatens her nostrils even through the hardsuit's seals, though perhaps this is only her imagination.) She raises her hand to her ear, switching her communicator to the Montreal's primary channel.

"SSV Montreal, this is Chief Tana Shepard, service number 5923-AC-2826, of the Akuze investigatory unit. Come in, Montreal."

Please, let them be in range.