Log 3

Date: 30TH SEPT 2186

Location: VANCOUVER, CANADA

Just to clarify, I hadn't intended to end that last entry there but I was interrupted before I got a chance to write any more. I'm going to do my best to keep this record up to date but you'll have to bare with me. This war leaves little downtime and frankly, though I've managed to reach a secure location for the moment I'm not sure how long it will stay that way.

So I left things just after Shepard departed in the Normandy to get help from the Council. I was left on my own to trudge back to the soldiers from the downed gunship we'd come across earlier. I grabbed what gear I could, including the radio and made my way back to them. One of them was in pretty bad shape from what I could see; he had a broken arm, a twisted ankle and several cracked ribs, all injuries from the crash I think. I have basic medical training so I patched him up as best I could, tearing apart the uniform of a fallen soldier just to make a sling for his arm.

Once that was done we hunkered down and I turned the radio back on, trying to get a sense of what was going on. With the whole city in chaos we desperately needed to contact someone in authority and find out where our military forces were rallying. At first all I got on the radio was static but eventually I managed to get through to a General Coburg who was attempting to establish a defensible fallback position in some sort of underground shelter near the center of town. Once he knew who we were he gave us directions to the base. Apparently it was our best bet, being one of the few areas in the city deep enough underground to be safe from aerial bombardment.

He also let me know about a group of civilians hiding out in the police station, it wasn't too far out of our way so he figured we could extract them. "Oh and grab any police officers and weapons that happen to still be there as well" was the last word we got out of him before he abandoned the comm to go deal with something else. I wondered briefly what his last slave had died of but there little sense in arguing, besides he was already gone.

So the three of us set off, one of which was injured and with just two pistols left between us. Not much of a rescue team by usual standards but there was nothing else for it but to get on with the job at hand. I helped the injured soldier get to his feet and asked for their names.

"It's Hetford sir, Corporal Hetford. My injured colleague over there is Private Daniels."

We trudged onwards, back inland away from the harbor. It was quieter here now that the Normandy had cleared the local area of enemies but back in the heart of the city the battle was clearly still in full flow. As we started to make our way towards the station I took my first proper look at my new companions. At first glance they looked very much alike, both dark-haired and dressed in Alliance regulation combat gear but while I'd guess Daniels was still in his early twenties the years showed much more heavily on Hetford's face (I couldn't help wondering why he was still only a Corporal really). To distract them from the horror I tried to get them talking.

"So you got any family Corporal?"

"Some. Got a girl waiting for me back on the Citadel. Parents retired to live on Elysium so I haven't heard from them in a while but at least-"

"At least they're safe for now," I finished for him quickly though I knew the Reapers would reach the Skyllian Verge quickly enough.

"What about you, Daniels was it? Where are your folks right now?"

"They were both in the Alliance too but Dad died years ago, back during the Blitz."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said quickly. The Skyllian Blitz had occurred about ten years ago when a group of pirates and slavers funded by the Batarians had attacked Elysium. We learned a sharp lesson that day that our colonization efforts weren't appreciated by everyone. They pushed back against our expansion hard but the defenders on the ground (including Sheppard who made a name for himself that day) managed to hold out until the fleet could arrive.

"What post is your mother assigned to?"

"She's on the SSV Madrid, fifth fleet."

Hackett's fleet in other words, another source of worry if less so. One thing I can say about Hackett is that he's a tough SOB even by military standards. He was out of contact but I wasn't prepared to count him out of this war yet.

"Actually I also have a brother in-"

"Quiet now Private," I warned as we passed into the shadow of the buildings, losing the clear lines of sight we'd enjoyed nearer the open water. He seemed confused by this warning at first, afterall everything still seemed calm enough around us. Thing about combat is, even when everything seems to be going to hell, in a lot of the world nothing is happening at all. It looked like the invaders hadn't deployed ground troops in this area yet but it would be stupid to risk falling into an ambush.

Myself and Hetford were on high alert as we crept through the abandoned streets but before long Daniels was approaching panic, unnerved by the lack of people and the evident destruction all around us. It should have been a busy area but it was clear everyone had fled when the Reapers first arrived. The burnt out skycars and smashed shop windows a testament to the "orderly" evacuation. Humans had many great qualities but tended to turn on itself in a crisis, doing the Reapers work for them. Maybe it's our diversity devolving into total chaos when we panic, I mused. At any rate I was just glad no one had been trampled here, Daniels seemed anxious enough without seeing a body.

Then we got the worst thing that could've happened at that point, the Reaper started making this strange noise like a fog horn. It was so loud it set my teeth on edge but it was worse on Daniels, he started shouting in alarm every time the horn blared out. Someone (or something) was going to hear him so I admit I put him in a chokehold until he passed out. Hetford helped me carry him and we started to make more progress.

When I looked up I realized we must be close to the station; no more than a couple of streets away at most. I had walked through this area a few times in the past but I didn't recognize it any more. I could read the street name clearly enough but the smashed up buildings and ruins? It was like nothing I could identify with. Worse yet the way was blocked too, a pile up of skycars blocked the road, and several had scorch marks from the weapons fire that brought them down. I glanced up to see several small drones flying above (not Alliance ones). They hadn't spotted us yet but we had to duck into a building while they passed overhead. We made a detour and managed to reach the police station before we ran into more hostiles. But when we got there the station itself was a different story, it was under siege. The building was surrounded by Husks battering on the doors and windows trying to break in.

I knew it wouldn't be long until they noticed us but for the moment they were too focused on trying to smash their way in. I signaled Hetford to stay quiet and slowly drew my pistol with one hand while using the other to help carry the unconscious Daniels. Hetford followed suit and taking careful aim we got in a few headshots before they even saw us coming. The Husks we hit dropped instantly but there were plenty more starting to turn on us, shrieking wildly as they charged. Luckily our detour had brought us through a narrow alleyway that was now funneling our enemy into tried to pick them off as they closed on us but their savage speed made it impossible to get a clear shot (need to watch out for that in future, it's surprising just how difficult their wild, crazed movements make it to aim at them properly). We were already struggling to hold our own when Daniels woke up unexpectedly.

Startled to find himself being carried through the air while robot zombies charged at him down the street he woke in a panic and started thrashing wildly in our grip. Our efforts to hold him steady were only making things worse so I let go of his legs only to be rewarded with a kick in the gut that knocked me back against the wall. Desperately I tried to scrabble back onto my feet but there was no time, the Husks were already on us.

Two of them were still closing on me before I could fully recover while at least three tried to charge Hetford. I had a good vantage point to deliver a clean headshot at the first but the second dived at me a second later. We were so close I found myself staring into its glowing mechanical eyes that were almost like cameras sunk into its eye sockets. It's weight pinned me down while it clawed at me but the awkward position prevented it from ripping me apart as it intended. I managed to get my gun free and pointed it flush with the side of its head before pulling the trigger. Nothing. Just a small alarm from my gun warning me that I needed to reload but my thermal clips were at my belt, impossible to reach now. Behind the Husk I could see more enemies in the middle distance, not a threat yet but warning enough that I needed to end this fight right now.

In desperation I threw all my strength to the right and caught the Husk off guard, rolling us over so that I was now the on top. The hateful creature shrieked even louder and redoubled its efforts to try and kill me. I raised up my pistol and smashed it down on the creature's head, stunning it enough to stop it attacking for a moment. But I didn't stop there, I smashed my weapon against it again and again, ignoring the blaring Reaper siren pounding in my skull. I didn't stop until the back of its head cracked open like an egg and the blue light faded in its eyes.

It had felt like minutes (or even hours) of fighting but in reality it had only been adrenaline soaked seconds. Still I turned my attention to what had changed while I'd been distracted. Hetford was still on his feet with a knife, surrounded by unarmed Husks all trying to get past his weapon and murder him. My pistol was ruined in the brief fight and there were far too many to take on unarmed without help. Daniels was nearby but being dropped by us hadn't helped his injuries at all. He crawled away from the enemy as best he could, largely ignored by the Husks, certainly he was in no fit state to fight right now.

Instead I charged through the crowd towards the police station, making progress by throwing punches at anything that got in my way. I reached the doors with only a few scratches to show for it and started banging on the glass shouting at them to help us. I could see frightened, impassive faces on the other side; they were too scared to open the door. They all just watched me at first, some of them shouting at me to leave them alone, their voices muffled by the glass. Then I heard an argument, someone was shouting at the people at the door. There was considerable reluctance but eventually one of them gave in and threw a weapon out the window for me, a proper assault rifle.

Not exactly what I'd had in mind but I wasn't about to argue. Instead I snatched it up off the ground and turned to face our assailants. They'd managed to get past Hetford's knife and pin him to the ground, I couldn't even see him under the pile of bodies but I started firing anyway. All grouped up around the corporal they didn't really stand a chance. Some of them tried to get back up and charge at me but it was a futile effort. I was able to pick them off easily until the last of them fell. But when I got back to Hetford it didn't feel like much of a victory; they'd ripped him apart.

He was covered from head to foot in scratches, bite marks and worse, moaning in agony. I took a quick look at the state of his injuries. It didn't take a genius or even a doctor to see there was only one thing that could be done for him. Swearing and cursing myself in the privacy of my own head I did what needed to be done. Loading another clip into the gun I put an end to his suffering.

Then I turned away, hating myself, forcing myself to do it so I could focus on survival. In a combat zone there is no space for sentimentality so I helped Daniels to get up, knowing we needed to get inside before any more enemies arrived. I was so worn out at this stage I didn't think I could even reach the station with him in tow but thankfully some of the people inside were now willing to come out and help.

In the station I found a crowd of about twenty or thirty people, about half of them civilians that had escaped to here when the attack began. Many of them were just sitting in the corners crying quietly to themselves but one woman with bright red hair marched up to me an introduced herself as Maria.

"You look like Alliance, am I right?"

I sighed already completely exhausted and drained emotionally by everything that had happened. I'd been awake for... Well I'm not exactly sure, roughly 29 hours I think (I didn't have a watch handy to tell me the exact time). I nodded and took a seat on a nearby chair trying to regain some small sense of normality before replying.

"Admiral Anderson."

"Admiral, huh? Some big shot?"

"You could say that. Thanks by the way."

"For what?"

"I assume it was you who helped us just now."

She shrugged. "All we did was throw you a weapon, not that any of this lot would've even thought of that if I hadn't suggested it. Seem to have lost their wits when this invasion started."

I looked up at her, she looked as scared as anyone but she was defiant and trying to be brave in the face of all this. I admired that while the whole world was going to hell she still had the strength not to give in to despair.

"Listen I've come to get you all out of here. We've been told there's a military base nearby where the Alliance is regrouping. Hopefully you should all be safe there."

"How do I know I can trust you? These people are my officers or under my protection. They go where I say they go."

"Maria I stayed here to fight those things out there. Could've gotten out if I'd wanted to but I'm here because I haven't given up. I need people like you who can stay strong in all this; can you do that for me?"

She seemed to calm down at that, a little at least.

"What the hell are those things?" She asked, gesturing towards the window.

"They're called Reapers; If you watch Citadel news coverage you might've heard Shepard trying to warn people about them in the past. It's too much to explain right now but as you can see they're a very real threat. We have to find a way to stop them."

"Alright, how can I help?"

I was surprised at that, I was just trying to calm her down, I wasn't expecting her to volunteer to wade into a war.

"Uh I think it's something best left to the professionals."

"From the looks of things your "professionals" seem like they could use a little extra help."

I chuckled at that a little, it wasn't very funny but nearly being torn apart by husks will do weird things to your sense of humor an in any case maybe she could help. I could see several of the other survivors watching her and it was obvious they looked up to her as a leader.

"Good point. Look we need to get out of here, can you find out who knows this place best? We need to grab everything useful and find a way out of here."

"As the chief around here, I know this place better than anyone. I'll have some of my men clear out the armory and then we can sneak our way out the back. I can have someone grab a stretcher for your friend too."

"OK grab everything you need, we'll move in one hour."

Frankly I'd need that hour to recover. I slumped down against a wall like many of my fellow survivors ruing the loss of fitness that had come with age. Not to mention promotion which if anything was worse. It pained me to realize that despite thinking of myself as a soldier first and foremost I'd still let things slide as my career forced me off the battlefield and into politics. Time was I'd have been fit enough to make it to the station in half the time, even carrying a wounded soldier.

Maybe I'd have been able to save Hetford if- No I can't let myself think like that. There's no way to know what we would've run into if things went differently. Change one thing that we did and there's no way of knowing how things would have turned out or if any of us would have made it. I've lost a lot of men under my command in my time (saved more than my fair share too mind) but sooner or later you lose someone. In this war casualties were always going to be inevitable.

I knew all this well enough, seen it more times than I like to recall but the knowledge never helps. Each lost soldier gets lodged in your mind, a permanent reminder of your failure. The only way to keep the ghosts at bay is to solemnly promise to do everything in your power to stop anyone else joining them. That helps a little but do it enough times and the words taste bitter in your mouth and almost seem to mock you. Laying a fresh promise over all the old broken ones like covering over an old wound. Even though I'd only met them today I still thought of Daniels and Hetford as being under my command. They had followed me here at my order and one of them had died.

I sighed and tried to think of something to distract myself with. I remembered I'd brought that datapad with me, trying to document evidence the Reapers were real. I nearly threw it away, they were here now, we had all the proof of their existence we could ever need. But having pinned my hopes on it yesterday I didn't feel able to destroy it so soon despite the rationalist in me telling me that it had become worthless.

In the end since I didn't have anything else to do and didn't feel able to sleep I started writing, got as far as Shepard's escape in the Normandy before the call went out and we had to move. So now you know why I had to break off earlier before while I was still out in the open. I don't think it'll be the last time I'm interrupted but maybe the journal will help make sense of all this carnage. Or stop me from going mad.

Luckily the journey to the base wasn't nearly so eventful as our trip to the police station. Possibly because we sedated Daniels this time and carried him on a stretcher. We marched through the streets in silence, just taking in the view of the devastation. Every street seemed to be smashed; we saw empty shells of office blocks blown up, skycars and shuttle craft crashed in the middle of the road. Half the streets we came across were blocked by debris, or our scouts would spot the machines in the distance and we'd be forced to pick another route.

The going was slow, forced to make a detour every few minutes, but we were zigzagging our way towards the base. We searched for survivors where we could, ducking through people's houses to help us stay out of sight. We came across more bodies than living people and some of those that were alive were beyond help. We came across some more scattered survivors though and persuaded them to come with us. It felt good, like I was helping to build something, the start of this resistance I was planning. I wasn't sure what we would find at the base though. It worried me that I might be leading them into a worse hell than the one they'd just come out of and I couldn't risk using the radio to try and contact the base. Then one of our scouts signaled to us that our goal was up ahead. I hurried forward to get a look but I already started hearing the gunshots before I saw it.

I couldn't see much of the base when we got there, wasn't much to see at all. We saw a ramp leading down to a big metal shutter, above it someone had set up a couple of mounted turrets that were cutting down anything that tried to get close. Most of the base was underground we'd been told but it looked like some soldiers had been left topside to hold this entrance against any invaders.

The Reaper forces were throwing themselves at the door, but the mounted turrets were picking them off easily. It seemed odd to see the Reapers fighting like this. They had to see the attack was hopeless, not one of them even got close to the base but they kept throwing husks at it. It seems the Reapers don't care at all about their troops; they weren't soldiers to them just cannon fodder or tools.

Our main concern was not being blown away by the guns when we tried to get close ourselves. We were still some distance away and the soldiers were firing at anything that moved, if we went out there we might not fare much better than the Husks. The others yelled at the soldiers, trying to get their attention but it was no use, they couldn't hear us over the noise of the guns and the shrieks of the enemy.

Maria grabbed my shoulder to get my attention and passed me a flare gun. First flare didn't get noticed either, but I aimed the second so close to them it nearly singed their eyebrows. That got their attention and they finally spotted our group waving their arms and yelling themselves hoarse. As I saw the main doors open I knew we had to move so I grabbed Daniels and started making a run for the base. A few stray shots came my way; clearly the Reapers had brought other troops than Husks. Some of us took a bit of fire but we ploughed straight on, not stopping until we piled through the entrance and into the base.

When we made it inside we did think we were safe, all we could think of was getting some rest, time to take stock y'know? In truth it felt more like a cave than a military base not that we were feeling particularly fussy at this stage. Ahead of us stretched a long passageway carved into the earth, the walls were jagged bare rock barely lit by the feeble and often flickering strip lights set at intervals along the corridor. So there we were, about thirty of us by that point, filthy from the crawl through the streets with several of us bleeding from wounds we'd taken to get here. Standing in front of us was some lieutenant in shiny armor with about half a dozen soldiers all with their weapons raised at us.

"State your name and rank." The lieutenant called out.

"David Anderson, Admiral, former Alliance representative on the Council."

Yeah I may have left out that part; I used to have a seat on the Council myself to represent humanity as part of the galactic community. I resigned when the other Councilors refused to take my warnings about the Reapers seriously. Hell when I tried to push them to investigate they blocked me at every turn, they held meetings without me and basically shut me out. I got so tired of all the political bull, of not being able to get anything done that I left Udina in charge and went back to Earth to try and get us ready. Point was this lieutenant damn well knew who I was, most humans did and standing on ceremony or protocol wasn't gunna help us win this war any faster.

"I need to speak to General Coburg immediately."

"Sorry sir, standing orders are to take all survivors that arrive for processing and reassignment to roles of tactical value. Besides he's not seeing anyone at the moment."

"I think he might make an exception in this case."

"I was specifically ordered to allow no exceptions. You have to go through processing," he said but hesitated when he saw the look on my face.

"Look I'll have your friends sent to the Med Bay for treatment before processing sir but that's the best I can do."

I was about to make it an order when I realized that his men weren't in uniform, they were just civilian militia. The lieutenants uniform wasn't Alliance either but, exhausted as I was I couldn't make out any insignia. Stymied I decided that I'd make do with what I could get for the time being.

"I want to see the General as soon as he becomes available."

We were led away down the endless corridor that took us further and further down beneath the city. Eventually we arrived in a large underground cavern, packed with hundreds of refugees all doing their best to make themselves at home in these cold, cramped, uncomfortable conditions. I had a brief look around before I was hurried into a small office for 'processing' which was just as pointless as I'd expected it to be. Just a bunch of forms to fill out before being shown to our 'temporary accommodation' which was just as depressing as I'd expected it to be. Not that we had any complaints given the tragedy of what had happened today.

I'm lying on a bunk right now surrounded by dozens of others in similar sleeping arrangements (to be honest I was one of the lucky ones, there's crowds of people sleeping on the floor). Not sure if there's still guards outside the door but I think there might be. Tomorrow I'll have to sort some things out with the guy in charge.