Years ago on Anhur, I was put in command of a small reconnaissance team. Often, Observation Posts (OP) would get visited in the middle of the night from screaming civilians: There's been an ambush! Someone is lying in this area, bleeding to death! Help us! We've got to go and get him!
Sometimes I would say, "No. Stay where you are. Wait till the morning."
You run into the issue of risk versus what are you trying to achieve. OPs are typically manned by a sergeant, capable of assessing risk on their own, or sometimes even private soldiers, who trust you to make the decision for them.
I always based my decisions on an assessment of the risk to my own troops versus what I would achieve.
In one instance, I had been asked to go recover three bodies. It was night time on the confrontation line, and they were dead anyways. There was no sense of risking some of my troops for somebody that was already dead and would still be dead in the morning, as regrettable as that sounds.
Another time, it was somebody that had been wounded, who was in a mined area, who was in danger of dying and it was on the confrontation line, it was nighttime and it was a wooded area. I was taking tremendous risk to my own troops to go and get him. We might have saved him but who's to say my troops in the dark forest wouldn't be mistaken for one of the belligerents and get shot and killed. There were mines in that area. We weren't exactly sure where they were, we may or may not be able to save him and based on the people who came to see us and what we they were doing, there was no doubt he was a belligerent and our mandate did not involve saving belligerents engaged in fighting in their own war.
There were some cases where we did go. I remember once that some women and their children were in the forest foraging or something, and a the girl stepped on a mine, lost her leg, and all of a sudden you have women crying, "Help! Help!" In those cases my soldiers were very good. They knew to do the right thing and they knew aiding the local populace was good for the strategic goals of the Alliance. They told me afterward they went in the minefield, got the girl, gave her first aid and sent her to the hospital. It always came down to risk versus gain.
I rolled out of my bed at the first sound of the alarm. My body moved instinctively, conditioned by years of training. By the time my feet hit the floor, I was already awake and alert, my mind evaluating the situation. The alarm rang again, echoing off the hull to rebound throughout the ship. Two short blasts, repeating over and over. A general call to stations.
As I pulled my uniform on, I ran through the possible scenarios.
A general call to stations meant that we'd spotted an unauthorized vessel, or were responding to a general distress call. I hoped it was the former.
In less than a minute I had my uniform on, my boots secured, and was moving quickly through the narrow corridors to the bridge. Pressly was on shift, and I needed to get briefed on the situation as quickly as possible.
Invariably, crewmen would press themselves against the corridor walls in an effort to let me pass, snapping off awkward salutes as I squeezed past. The entire process was carried out with an efficiency and crisp precision, despite the confined space.
As I passed navigation, I noticed a pair of junior officers making rapid calculations and applying them to a three-dimensional star chart projected above their consoles. They each gave me a curt, respectful nod and I responded with a grim tilt of my head. They were plotting a route to the nearest mass relay. Meaning we were responding to a distress call. The brutal truth was that, more often than not, responses came too late.
Pressly was hunched over a small view screen, studying a stream of incoming transmissions. He snapped off a quick salute as he saw me approach.
"We've got trouble, sir. Picked up a distress call when we linked up to the comm relays."
"Where's it coming from?"
"Edolus. No voice recording, just an SOS. It's being transmitted on an Alliance freq. It's possible they were conducting general exploration…or maneuvers…"
I frowned as I leaned in to view his vid screen. As far as I knew, there were no operations planned on Edolus, few resources of note and exploration was unnecessarily risky.
But I was legally obligated to investigate any distress signal I encountered. I hoped the why could be answered if or when I found the Marines.
"What's our ETA?"
"Forty-five minutes, sir."
That was good news. It was pure chance that we were that close to a distress call. Most I had encountered were answered days later.
"Have Lieutenant Alenko assemble the ground team. Williams leads QRF."
Pressly responded with another salute, and an "aye aye, sir."
As I punched the button for the cargo hold and collected my thoughts.
Edolus' orbit was congested with debris thrown inwards by the gravity of the gas giant Ontamalca. Due to a high rate of meteor impacts, exploration was highly dangerous and even a Mako drop was risky. With no enemy presence detected, a shuttle insertion was most practical, but we would require the protection the Mako provided on the ground. Meteor strikes were a huge danger.
No enemy presence indicated several possibilities. The Marines were conducting general exploration and broke down, they were attacked by a mercenary band and were injured or wounded, or their ship or vehicle may have been struck by a metoer. Very rarely are squads inserted and simply left alone.
I boarded the Mako with Wrex, Kaidan, Garrus and two other marines in order to form three fire teams of two, and we landed without incident about three kilometers from the signal. From there, we drove.
There were no signs of fighting or ambush as we approached the distress beacon. It was quiet apart from the sound of meteors impacting in the distance.
The planet was dotted with massive craters, crests and hills most likely shaped by the constant meteor shower over an extended period of time. As we got closer to the distress signal I started looking for positions of cover and had Tucks settle behind a small ridge, large enough to hide the hull of the Mako.
"Sir. Damaged vehicle. Looks like a Grizzly." Sergeant Chase zoomed in on the area, and I saw three bodies. Distinctly human, scattered around the vehicle. It was difficult to tell how long they had been there.
"Bodies."
"I see them." I said, keeping my tone steady. "Looks like we're too late."
That part of it didn't surprise me. Responses to distress calls often came too late and all that was left were bodies and burning infrastructure.
"Should we go pick them up?" I felt Tucks take his foot off the brake as he prepared to jockey.
Something didn't feel right.
The Grizzly had been badly damaged, it looked as if there was a hole torn right through it and I could only see three bodies. Most exploration teams work in groups of sixteen or higher. The sight was also way too open. Open spaces make Marines nervous. They leave you exposed, vulnerable, and visible. There were options for cover around them. There was no reason that they should have been parked in the middle of an open space.
"That's a Thresher nest." Wrex's deep voice stated very matter of fact.
Garrus leaned in to get a better look on the crew screens.
"How can you be sure?" He asked.
"Been in one before. Decades ago. Look at the way the earth is disturbed. Look at the hole in that vehicle. No ammunition I've seen can melt anything quite like a Maw." He said flatly.
"I'm not seeing any signs of activity now." I said, looking back at Wrex. "Maybe it left."
Wrex shook his head.
"Maws are pretty territorial. You won't get a thermal reading or anything. Bastards live underground. Deep." He moved switched his camera view to observe the entire area. "Only one way to really find out though…"
"Which is?" Kaidan prompted.
Wrex shrugged. "Bait."
In 2177, Akuze was in the early stages of colonization when all contact was lost with the pioneer team. An Alliance Marine unit was then sent in to investigate, but found only the intact settlement and no survivors. When the unit camped for the night, they were set upon by thresher maws. Not knowing what they faced, the unit was slaughtered almost to the last man; fifty Marines were lost, no one made it out alive. Standard operating procedure when encountering a Thresher Maw is to run as fast as you can away from the area. Pick up sticks. Get the hell out of there.
The Marines on Edolus were dead. There were clearly no survivors and secondary scans of the planet showed no signs of human life anywhere. I would potentially risk the lives of my crew, my vehicle and jeopardize the larger mission by confirming whether or not the Grizzly and its crew were sitting on a Thresher nest. On the other hand, I might have retrieved the bodies, found intel on the situation and returned those soldiers to their families.
The risks were greater than the gain.
"Target the beacon." I said.
Chase did as she was ordered, targeted the distress beacon and fired.
"Normandy this is Shepard. Sitrep: Encountered distress signal inside possible Thresher nest. Beacon has been destroyed. Proceeding to extraction point."
As the Mako departed, the feeling inside the vehicle was palpable. They, my Alliance personnel, were disappointed, a little hurt and probably feeling a little betrayed.
Every soldier wants to believe that no one gets left behind. In a spiritual sense, this is entirely true. However, physically, sometimes it's just not possible. Piling up bodies doesn't solve anything it just creates more grief. It wasn't worth it and I've had to live with the fact that I left those soldiers behind. That Thresher nest was their grave.
Kaidan could barely stand to look at me, but I knew he would come around. As a soldier, you understand the risk. You are fully prepared to face a violent end to your life, but it's hard to realize that as a soldier, you may continue to sacrifice even after you've paid the ultimate price.
As soon as the Mako docked, I stripped off my armour, threw on a fresh uniform and made my way to the bridge. My mood had gone from hopeful to disappointed to downright pissed off.
I thought about those soldiers and their families. More than that, I thought about the idiot who had sent his squad into the middle of a Thresher Nest. He had paid with his life, but I was no less furious about the entire situation.
I moved with a determination and sense of urgency fueled by my anger.
"Link to a buoy and connect me to the Fifth Fleet. Those Marines were dead and in the middle of a Thresher nest. I want to know why."
"Sir." Pressly tried to get out a few more words as I turned towards the galaxy map. "Sir, I think you want to hear this first."
I hadn't noticed Tali standing beside him.
"What is it?" I sounded colder than I intended.
"Well…on a hunch, I took it upon myself to deconstruct the signal." She brought up the distress signal on her omni-tool. "Notice that this simple non-linearity introduces new harmonics with frequencies and phases that are correlated. These correlations simply could not have been introduced through a linear transform. "
My head was swimming. "You're going to have to dumb it down." I said.
"The signal is forged. Our goal now is to try to detect these "un-natural" higher-order correlations as a means of detecting the presence of the non-linearity."
I lowered my eyes and furrowed my brow, impressed with Tali's technical skills.
"You can do that?"
"With enough time, and data…I can do just about anything." She propped her hand on her hip and was standing rather confidently in front of me on the bridge.
"Excellent work, Tali. You're now officially tasked."
I turned to Pressly. "No change to our course for the Citadel. I've got a few people to speak to. Orders group at 1000 hours in the mess."
He saluted me and I went back to my quarters. I sent a quick message to Anderson requesting a meeting and one to Udina requesting the same.
The forgery of an Alliance distress signal had serious implications and a face-to-face de-briefing felt appropriate.
I quickly washed up and prepped myself for my orders group. With no conference room to speak of, most orders groups and briefings occurred in the mess with myself at the head of the table, Pressly to my right, Ashley to my left, and the remainder of my primary team around the table. I always liked to be a little early to get sorted and settled.
Pouring myself a cup of coffee I sat down and reviewed my points for discussion.
I casually sipped my drink and my eyes were drawn to movement inside the med bay. Liara was working at one of Chakwas' stations, no doubt researching one of the many artifacts we had recovered during various ground missions. We locked eyes and I smiled, giving her a friendly nod of my head.
She stared at me a split second longer, did not return the smile and returned her gaze to her console.
I started to assess risk versus gain.