Hi Mom,
The nightmare is back.
I have to sleep - you can't do the work I do without needing to recharge - but, when I sleep, the nightmare is always there. Waiting for me on the threshold of unconsciousness. Sometimes, I consider taking stims instead of sleeping. Not a good idea, I know. I just need you to know the temptation is there.
The nightmare starts the same as it did in real life: we're heading away from the deserted camp on Akuze. We're one of nine teams sent to investigate the pioneer team's disappearance. We find them easily enough: their corpses are scattered everywhere around the proto-townsite. They look as if they were tossed around by hurricane-force winds. Most are half-buried in sand with their equipment littered around them. Commander Hwong tells us it must have been a raid by biotic-heavy pirates, so we spend the day looking for evidence to support that theory. But we don't find anything – not even so much as a manifest to help us determine what might have been stolen. If anything was stolen.
There are no logs of any vessels arrive or leaving the planet before or after the attack, at least not according to the scans our techs manage to hack from the half-built radar tower. So, extrapolating from Commander Hwong's theory, that means that the pirates have to be holed up in a base elsewhere on the planet. This idea gives us focus: the potential for a tangible enemy is better than searching corpses.
But Akuze's twin suns are heading towards the horizon, and the officers need time to plot out the next stage of the operation. No one wants to set up camp in the deserted colony-to-be filled with corpses and debris, so the teams that aren't tasked with night patrol head out to a plain, only a few clicks from the townsite.
Forty-five marines total, plus our team of Special Ops who are there in case things go south. It's a massive operation. In my team, there are 30 N-levels between the six of us - a pretty decent mix.
Moosa opens up the throttle on the Grizzly once we reach the flat stretch: after so much slow-going through rough terrain, a couple of us let out some whoops at passing 90 clicks. We outpace the other teams: the eight vehicles spread out in a loose "v" formation with Moosa having just laid claim to the vertex. Moosa grins. And then this strange rumble shakes us in our seats. I barely have time to glance around at the others - my confusion mirrored in all their faces - before the world is upended.
We land, hard, upended. Gravity pulls at me from the wrong direction. My straps dig into my ribs as I dangle against them. Commander Hwong is shouting.
"Helmets on! Get out there. We're sitting ducks in here! Go! Go!"
There is a sharp, chemical smell, accompanied by a sizzling sound. The Grizzly's front panel beeps a warning: the shields have been melted away.
I pull on my helmet, hit the release on the straps, and drop down to the opposite wall – which is now the deck. The others follow - good soldiers, only a few paces behind me. We pile out into the sand. There is nothing to see. The other Grizzlies have slowed or are stopping – the general comm chatter too much for me to parse while I'm still trying to shake off shock. Commander Hwong barks an order and we fan out into defensive positions, our weapons raised.
Doesn't matter. The rumble comes again, this time accompanied by an ear-splitting shriek. To my right, Evans and Kamal disappear in an eruption of sand. Their bodies flying through the air, ragdolling until they impact the ground, limbs splayed at odd angles. Evans lands close enough to me that I can see the unnatural twisting of her neck. Time seems to compress around her. She is still screaming. She is already dead. All these things happen at once.
I empty my pistol into the maw as it stretches skyward, looming over us. I try a biotic warp - its segmented skin shivers, but there is no sign of any physical damage. The rest of my team are firing their weapons too, from all directions. In my peripheral vision, I am dimly aware of the other teams screeching into formation around us, other teams pilling out from their own vehicles to join the fight.
But then the ground shakes again. There are bursts of sand all over the plain. I lose sight of the other teams in a blizzard of sand. The maw that attacked us, no longer distracted by the fire from the other teams, turns back to us. It thrashes towards Toombs. But he has already dodged backwards, out of range of the splashes.
My pistol overheats. Again.
"We need more firepower," I scream at Hwong on our team's channel.
He nods at me.
"Grenade launcher," he snaps back, his voice clipped and cool, devoid of the hysteria I know is rasping through mine. "Still in its case. Back of the Grizzly."
I sprint back towards the Grizzly, its upside-door jammed awkwardly half-open. The others begin to form up around Hwong. A handful of marines from one of the other teams have made their way over to us. The maw pauses, rears back, lobs a green, sizzling ball of acid towards them.
It catches all three of them: Toombs, Moosa, and Hwong. The acid dissolves right through their armor. I keep running. I mute my comms to mute their screams. I will hate myself for that, but later, later, later. The maw lunges towards the second team of marines, diving down into the sand, but I cannot stop to make sense of what happens to them. I slide through the Grizzly's half-opened door.
In the back, the grenade launcher is strapped to the wall that is now the roof. I yank open the case: it's too heavy to lift down, but I do unbuckle one of the straps and awkwardly crane my arm into the case. I'm able to maneuver it out, squeezing it through the half-gap between the box and lid.
I power it up. It starts to run through its calibration software. I wish I knew how to bypass that. The twenty seconds before it beeps a "calibrations complete" chime feel like hours.
I open a second case and begin loading the grenades. I only get half of them in before the Grizzly shifts, and I am tossed against the roof-as it becomes the floor. The only remaining strap isn't enough to keep the grenade launcher's case secure: it tumbles onto my leg. Pain explodes. The scream that tears from my throat belongs to the pain, not to me. A part of the pain like the throbbing, like the tearing as some bone rips through some leg muscle, like the biotic aura surging to life around me, an autonomic reflex to the danger.
Death by crate. It's too stupid way to die.
I direct my flare of biotics into a throw, tossing the crate off my leg. Maybe a mistake. I can feel my boot start to fill with warm blood the instant the pressure of the case is gone. The greave is shattered. Sections fall away, but I resist the temptation to pull more off and look. No reason to hasten the blood loss any more than I already have.
Acid splotches on the doorframe. The maw shrieks. The rumble following must mean it has dived beneath the surface again. It is trying to shake me loose from the Grizzly, like a kid rattling a marble out of a can. I try not to think about what this means for my team, for the entire operation, because if it's targeting me, the most difficult to reach…
I don't have much time. My instinct is to clutch the grenade launcher to my chest and never let it go, but, reluctantly, I place it beside me. I ignore my leg, telling myself that it is no longer a part of me, that the pain is not mine anymore. I use my arms to leverage myself up and reach the medi-gel dispenser behind my head. My armor is so damaged that I have to manually apply the gel. I rip open the package and, only now, allow myself remove the remaining pieces of the shattered greave.
My vision swims. I cannot pass out. I reprioritize, forget trying to remove the remaining pieces - who cares if I can't reach the whole injury, I can reach enough - and slap the medi-gel down. The blood congeals and the anelgasia kicks the pain down to a low throb. The leg is still useless to me - medi-gel won't knit the bone or muscle back together - but at least the bleeding won't kill me. At least, not yet.
The rumble starts again. I snatch the launcher and half-tumble, half-stumble out of the door and onto the sand. A second later, the Grizzly flies through the air as the maw emerges. I am pelted with sand. It is watching the Grizzly. It thinks I am still inside. It does not see me, on my back, close enough to be in its shadow.
My only chance screams at me to take it.
I fire the grenades. All of them. I do not wait to watch them burst before pressing the trigger again and again. There is a deluge of viscera that rains down on me. Some of it is acid - one last spiteful spitfull lobbed at me. It eats through my shoulder plate, oozes down my back, burning…
And then the sand jumps around me as the giant body crashes down.
I lay there for a long time. The acid on my back stings. I know I only got a wayward splash - otherwise, I'd be dead – but, since it is a dream this time, I can somehow already see the puckering scars the burns will become.
I unmute my comms. And the hiss of static tells me everything.
Sometimes, this is when I wake up.
Sometimes, this is where the real nightmare begins, and the dream makes me feel every second I spent among the corpses of my squad. Makes me feel every day pass just as slowly as it did in real life. Makes me relive the realization that the other teams were taken out by other maws. I can hear them screaming in the distance. I pull myself back into the shadow of the mangled Grizzly, afraid that even the smallest tremor will alert the others to my presence. I curl against the cool metal and turn the team's comm channel back on. Because I am sure I can hear the whispers of my squad in the static. Words they need me to hear, but I can't quite grasp them.
Sometimes, on the good nights, this is where the dream deviates its course from what really happened. As I lay on my back, gasping with the pain of the acid as it burns through layers of skin, one of my crew from the Normandy appears above me. Some nights, it's Williams or Alenko or Pressly or Joker. Sometimes even Tali, the quarrian, or Liara, her hand cool and gentle. They lower a hand, I grasp it, and they pull me up from the sand.
Tonight, it was Vakarian who appeared, muttering something sarcastic about thresher maws being my area of expertise. Typical. He did well with those missions with the geth. I pushed him and he rose to the challenge. The geth outposts have all been destroyed. It would have disastrous to let Saren get a toehold in this system – pass along my thanks to your boss for the tip, by the way. But, on the other hand, I had hoped we'd find something that could lead us directly to Saren.
You see, I don't like the option presented by Noveria – tracking down Saren through Benezia, Liara's mother, seems fraught with all kinds of risks I'd rather avoid. And Feros…we know the geth have attacked there already, and Saren must know that we know, too. It reeks of being a trap. I've been avoiding both locations in the hopes that a third option opens up – something more concrete and less obvious. At certain point, though, I'll need to make the call: Noveria or Feros.
All through the geth bases in Armstrong, I thought we might find that third option. Vakarian never spoke it aloud either – as if voicing our secret hope would somehow kill it – but I know he was thinking the same thing: he stopped at every terminal we passed and anxiously watched Tali as she scanned the remains of each and every geth we destroyed, looking for salvage.
We did get some data, in the end, but nothing that will help us with Saren. I'm hoping that, by sending the data with Tali, the quarians will consider it a "goodwill gesture" and might consider sharing any intel they can get from the data. Besides, Tali has worked hard – especially considering she could walk away from this mission at any time. And, I admit, it did occur to me that if I didn't give her something else to take back for her pilgrimage, she'd decide that the Tantalus drive core plans would have to do instead. The basic specs may not be classified…but I'd rather not have the galaxy know the exact specifications of my ship, thank you very much.
The only other thing of significance we found was this spooky old recording of the quarian equivalent of…Italian Opera, or something? The geth had it playing on a terminal in the last base. I don't know what it means – an attempt to communicate? Some kind of code? Either way, the signal died as soon as we took the base offline. A question I'll need to accept as unanswerable, I guess.
I need to get some sleep.
Love,
your daughter, Commander Camina
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