The only Warrior who is truly victorious is the one who refuses to die.
- Krogan Proverb
The cratered ruin of the attack site has long ago dwindled and been lost among the sweltering, poisonous dunes of Akuze, and with it has gone anything by which to measure the passage of time or distance. The ache burning in every muscle says that she must have been walking for hours, must have covered miles of terrain by this point, but there is no way to tell. The never ending sand storms of Akuze obliterate the sky and sun, dispersing all light to create a dull, colourless twilight. The systems binary stars keep the light so constant that any attempt to gage the passage of time is a stab into madness.
Everything on Akuze is like that. It seems as if the planet, or at least parts of it, has been designed entirely to break down the human mind and body. The cool areas near the poles are the only places touched by darkness. Cool and fragrant, supporting a lush growth of native fauna, they were the areas being sampled for colonial development. But the equatorial desert was where the distress signal had been coming from, so they had plunged into this nightmare world of grey sand. The silicate is fine as dust, but every tiny piece is edged sharp as glass, and filled with aggressive microbial life that will eat holes in any organic tissue exposed to them in less than 12 hours. The eternal onslaught of the sun bakes all other life away. Her armour, with its onboard body temperature maintenance programs and filtration systems is the only reason she is not already dead.
But all the wonder of her armour is still just technology, a handful of circuit boards, a few clever vents and some prototype carbon fibres against all the rage of Akuze and its two vengeful suns. It will not hold out forever. She already feels that reality in the hot sweat collecting at the base of her neck and the burn taking root in her throat. The armour mods are designed for six hour windows of exposure, not this hellish voyage through the endless sand. They had been twenty nine miles out from the science teams base camp when the threshers hit. Even at her best, a trek like that would take much longer than six hours.
And she is not at her best. She sags against a rocky outcrop, seeking its shade as relief not from the heat of the sun but from the glare of the whirling sand. One hand scrabbles for purchase as her weary, nerveless legs threaten to give out entirely. She presses her helmeted head against the outcrop and closes her weary, throbbing eyes. A rasping moan she certainly has not authorized her body to make echoes through her helmet as she pulls her other fist away from the crusted blood and shattered, half-melted plates of carbon steel encasing her left side.
Flakes of dry blood mixed with silicate sand crumble off her glove as she flexes her hand and are instantly carried away by the wind. The wound expels a wet bubble of congealed blood, the foul smell of corruption clinging to the scrubbed air she inhales in shallow gasps as she examines the gaping hole in her side. Thresher venom melts steel, dissolves flesh and nerves on contact and then, when it finishes consuming, it settles in the wound and causes tissue necrosis and blood poisoning. The ragged, oozing wound in her side stinks of both so fiercely that she crams her fist over it again, stemming the flow of blood, and shuts her watering eyes.
The signal had drawn them right there. Right to the thresher maws. Eight mako tanks, packed with soldiers young and old, had not been enough to take down those monsters. Everyone had been screaming, firing wildly, thrashing on the ground as their flesh and armour sloughed off in bubbling sheets. Shepard had lain still, fist forced into her open wound as it was now, as everyone around her died. What could a gun do against a thresher maw? It was like taking on a dragon with an ice pick. Only when everyone else was dead did the threshers finally go silent, sinking back into their lairs under the sand.
She had pushed herself up, onto her knees and one hand. And she had crawled, very slowly, for three hundred yards to the stony outcropping that lined the canyon they had rolled carelessly down into. That entire time she had been completely sure that at any moment she would feel the shuddering surge of their presence under her and then their savage roar, sure that death was but a moment away.
She had made it to the stone, and then up the side of the canyon to the dunes beyond. When she looked back the bodies were like toys, limp shapes devoid of feature and tossed carelessly about the blood stained sand. Already the wind whipped the first layers of dried blood away. A few hours and the dunes would bury the bodies. A few days and even the mako's would slip under its grey veil. It would be like nothing ever happened here. She had turned away, and began walking. Her hard suit computer was fried, her omnitool useless. Only the magnetic compass installed on her left wrist gave her a direction, which was better than nothing. Northwest. She is going northwest.
A hiccough of hysterical laughter escapes her and she crushes it in the back of her throat. Now is not the time to lose control. Self control is the only thing that will keep her alive out here. She leans against the stone, clearing the frantic recitations of Alliance survival strategies and gibbering fear away. Reaches deep and finds that same, still pool of darkness waiting for her as it always has. She slides into the serenity of numbness like she had long ago. She has not been to this place inside herself for years. It has not been necessary.
She opens her eyes. The pain is less severe now, the exhaustion less palpable. Feeling returns to her legs, if only somewhat, and she pushes herself away from the outcrop she has been leaning against. Blood seeps around her fist, trickles down her leg, as she takes first one step and then another.
This place is not so different from home, she reasons. The blowing sands of Akuze look very much like the polluted skies of Earths lower cities, clouds of grey death rolling ceaselessly across a shattered, hopeless landscape. The deadly apathy of the world around her is also similar, more in spirit than appearance. The only thing missing is the tribes of feral children, dull, homemade knives hanging heavy in their hands. It is an absence she does not mind overmuch.
One foot in front of the other. She took courses about desert survival in Command School. They all told her to stay with the vehicles, seek out shade, drink water and rest ten minutes of every hour. All of that is useless now, with the punishing intensity of Akuze all around her, nothing and no one to help her. She has no options. She must make it to the base camp, where there will be water and antibiotics and radio communication. They will not be declared MIA for twenty four hours after losing contact. An Alliance investigation team will not arrive for at least seventy two hours after that, probably longer. Their fifty-strong force of marines had been sent out here to investigate in the first place, after all, drawn from every barracks in the system. A much more substantial force will no doubt have to be mustered to investigate their disappearance in turn. All that matters right now is putting one foot in front of the other as she heads northwest. This is the only thing that can save her.
Dunes pass, featureless, numberless, on all sides. She stops and realigns herself, making sure to avoid the natural turn in her stumbling steps that will send her in the wrong direction. There is intense heat, then cold that wraps itself around her sticky, sweat-slicked skin and makes her shiver. Her lips go numb, when she sticks her tongue out to wet them she realizes that they have cracked and begun to seep blood down her chin. She tastes copper on her tongue, but there is no pain. She grits her teeth and surges forward, over the crest of a dune and looks out across the billowing expanse of desert.
There, that horizon looks familiar. A sloping pillar of stone amidst the rolling, geometric dunes of the desert. Maybe. It is hard to tell, her eyes will not stay focused. As she takes a step forward the sand slides under her foot like a living thing and suddenly nothing in the world makes sense. Her shoulder strikes the ground and she slides down the side of the dune, thankfully in the direction she wants to go. She comes to a stop at the base of it, face down. Her side throbs and burns, the white fire spreading through her body with every pulse of her heart, scattering through her body in jittering bursts that obliterate rational thought.
She pushes herself back to her feet, stumbles again and almost falls. The sand has collected in her wound, clotting the old blood and staunching the fresh flow. That is good. She leaves it alone as she begins to claw her way up the side of the nearest dune, going down on her hands and knees occasionally. She coughs into her helmet and tastes more blood. It leaks over her broken lips onto the glass of her helmet, runny and still mostly transparent as it mixes with her saliva. She claws the filter out its bracket on of the front of her helmet and beats it against her arm, shaking clouds of silicate dust out of it before she slides it back into place and allows herself to breathe again. The deadly sands of Akuze taste like ash and rock salt, they burn all the way down as she swallows the thick tar congealing at the back of her throat. She coughs again, and there is more blood, smeared with thick columns of grey. She is back on her feet, moving forward again.
Four more dunes and she is on her knees again, trembling. Drawing air is difficult, every lungful rattles in her lungs and escapes after a few seconds, as if her body is too exhausted to maintain the simple act of breathing. Her tongue is swollen now, pressing out uselessly against her cracked lips. Her entire body feels dry and as she tries to push herself back up her muscles spasm weakly and she collapses entirely, her face smashing down into the surprisingly unrelenting carpet of sand. Her shoulders tremble for a moment and she turns to the side as the blood from her cut tongue pours down her grateful throat. Even that cannibalistic bit of moisture feels divine, soothing some of the rapidly sharpening pain in her chest and belly and wounded side. She closes her eyes and there is sudden, merciful darkness. Her eyes throb in their sockets and she moans wordlessly and lets her limbs go slack.
She could give up right here. No one would fault her for it. She can feel the poison in her blood, the froth collecting in her lungs as creatures smaller than a pin prick chew her apart from the inside out, and the pure deadly exhaustion she had pushed herself into. The human body was not meant to endure things like Akuze. She could die, and people would probably call her a hero just for making it this far. However far this is.
She forces her eyes open again, and that is no mean feat in and of itself. Her hands clench into fists and push her chest off the ground. Her knees dig into the sand. She does not try to stand, standing is beyond imagining right now. A hand moves forward, dragging through the fine sand. Then a knee. Every movement is agony to her tortured, exhausted muscles but she sets her jaw and forces them to move. She refuses to relent. Refuses to die.
If she must die she will not do it like this, alone and inglorious on some god forsaken piece of rock like Akuze. There has to be something more for her out there. There has to be something better than this.
She reaches the top of the next dune and slides down the side to its base, rests for a moment, and then pushes herself up the next one. Squinting through the glare of light reflecting all around her she lets out a wordless sob as metal rooftops materialize, nestled snugly in the cool valley between two massive dunes, drifts of blowing sand building up against the walls. Her weight sags and she slides down the side of the dune again, coming to rest twenty feet from the doors, sprawled listlessly on her back and staring up into the grey clouds. She is absolutely paralyzed, incapable of movement. Her fingers twitch and she feels her limbs jerk spasmodically, but they are not under her control. Her eyes roll back in her head and she feels the mindless black of unconsciousness rearing its ugly head.
No. Her jaw snaps suddenly shut. Her eyes refocus themselves, as completely as they can at least. Her jaw locks and she plants her right fist in the sand beside her. Pushes herself over, onto her stomach. Her knees take her weight, trembling. She begins to crawl toward the door. She will not die, not here, not like this. Twenty feet feels like twenty miles but eventually the cool shadow of the science buildings covers her, the door senses her weight and slides silently open on its rubber airlock. She crawls through the door, sand pouring out of every crack in her armour onto the scrubbed steel floors of the lab. Delirious, she grabs a nearby table and manages to push herself to her feet.
Her helmet comes off, crashes against the floor as she makes her way to the sink. There is bottled water in the fridge, ice cold, but it is much too far away. The hand washing sink is to her left and she sags against it, gripping the edge of the counter with her elbows and claws at the knobs with one blood soaked hand. The pipes moan and pure water gushes forth. She shoves her whole head into the sink, opening her mouth and letting it run down her throat as she chokes and swallows desperately. She is half drowned, coughing blood and sputtering by the time she can finally pull herself out of it, pull her gloves off and cup her hands in it, lifting handful after life-giving, glittering handful to her chapped, peeling lips.
Water. Antibiotics. Distress beacon.
Thought is still difficult. She lurches away from the sink, but leaves it running. For some reason she just needs to know that water is always available all around her. She licks the last drops of it from her fingers as she makes her way to the first aid station. Her legs can take her weight again. There is still a miasma of pain exploding in every cell, but for the moment she is back in control. She finds three doses of medigel and slips all three directly into administration tubes. Needles pierce her, distributing the cool healing agent to her various tormented muscles. The pain fades, very slightly, and she continues her thrashing, pitching pilgrimage. The office. The computer.
The chair creaks and threatens to collapse under her armoured bulk but she does not spare it any thought. Her fingers are huge and awkward on the keyboard, her voice obliterated by the burning feast of the microbes in her throat. It takes her ten minutes to log in, longer still to initiate the emergency distress protocol. When she leans back in the chair she feels like she has done something much more immense and difficult than her walk here in the first place.
Darkness drawing close again. She has no more strength to fight it off. Slumping back in the chair, her eyes slide closed and even she cannot force them to open again.
"Hello? Akuze Garrison? This is Theta 1252 Garrison responding to your SOS. What is your status?" The voice crackles over the computer console, a face appears written in the orange light. She does not see or hear it, as it orders her to respond and then realizes that she is dying right here, in front of it.
"Oh my… listen to me, soldier! Just hold on! We can have doctors there in two hours!" It shouts, and she almost hears that. Two hours? Such a long time. Can she linger in the darkness for two whole hours after all of that? Is the concept of survival, now that it is so near, really something worth pouring so much effort into?
Not really. If she does die, it will change nothing. She realizes this now, as she slides backwards into absolute nothingness, all sound and light dissolving and flickering out around her. Nothing about her matters. Nothing is worth this sharp agony, the burn of her body dissolving from the inside out.
But she will hold on for two hours, if they can really get here. She decides this, with her last sentient thought. As long as life is possible she will cling to it, with every fibre of her being, every shred of fight left in her.
Why?
Because that is what she does. She survives.
This is her last thought. The darkness swallows her, and she is gone.
I`ve actually had this chapter done for days, but felt like there needed to be something between it and the child gang chapter. Next up we`ll probably be going straight for the Normandy or at least her recruitment for the Normandy.