32 – Calypso

One small step for a man was followed up by another, smaller step. Both the fine powder of the whitish ground and the lowered gravity ensured that when Gorman descended from the Shackleton's hatch, his landing was softer than a feather. He took a few cautionary paces forward. It was like walking on sugar. The beachhead was bare, but dominated on either side by extremes – an unwaveringly still ocean, and a more metaphorical sea of tall green plants.

The only things he could hear through his helmet were his footsteps and the wind. Both the water and reeds were silent. He couldn't feel the immense atmospheric pressure through the suit, but there was pressure all the same. His instincts were itching. It wasn't physically possible to be more exposed, and if that wasn't enough, his stolen helmet painted an invitingly bright red target on his head. He scanned the tree line for movement. No sights, no sounds.

Suddenly there was a zapping noise from behind. Gorman reached for the M16, swung his body around, dialed his vision through the sight and put his finger on the trigger.

The underside of the Shackleton was restored at Polaris to its original matte black glory, although with new jutting radiator panels to compensate. From between two such panels, a thick metal pole extended downwards towards the ground. The lower half of the pole was not extending, rather dangling from the top by exposed wiring and electrical jolts. That's where the noise came from.

"There's your problem!" came a familiar voice out of nowhere. Gorman jumped in fright, twisting around to see that the quarian had clambered down to join him. "…Are you okay, captain?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Gorman lied, standing up straight. His ribs still hurt. He looked at the broken rod again. "Does it look fixable?"

Saal'Inor's breather lit up as she chuckled. Her earlier sniffles had dissipated, but there was still a bandage near her waist from her wounds aboard the Siren.

"You should have seen me back on my old ship, captain!" She skipped forward and examined the rod. Her cowl flapped about gently. "The Arkona broke so often that when a day went by without anything to fix, we made our own problems. The amount of retro encabulators I had to repair…"

"What's it like, living on a ship your whole life?" Gorman asked, half intrigued and half needing a distraction. He resumed taking in the environment, checking the M16's ammunition again for emotional support.

"Not much different than how it's been aboard the Shackleton," she answered, inevitably flicking out her forearm and opening her omni-tool. "Always something to do, a problem that needs solving, someone to talk to – whether you want to talk or not. Only big difference is the crew."

"I take it you don't pick your crewmates willy-nilly."

"Willy…nilly?" Saal'Inor paused her tool process to shoot Gorman a look. This was the first time that both of them talked while wearing something obstructing their faces. He wondered if she too appreciated that sort of equalization. "I was okay with Sally, in fact I like it, but that's taking it too far." She regained her focus. "It's not about the types of crewmate on a ship that's different. It's the amount of crewmates. On the Arkona, which is about two or three times the size of the Shackleton, we fit about a hundred."

"A hundred people? That can't be true."

"It's absolutely true. I almost miss the bustle. Almost."

"And when your Pilgrimage is over, it's where you're going back?"

The quarian paused again, this time a moment longer.

"Depends on what I bring back," she sighed. Gorman crouched down and sat on the white dirt. Saal'Inor continued. "Remember when I told you about my mother's gift to the Fleet? It was the Arkona. If I could find something half as valuable as that, I'd be set for life, posted somewhere nice, preferably one of the liveships or an Admiral's command vessel. We've been to some…interesting places, but there hasn't been anything on that scale. Maybe I should cut my losses, and bring back some of the Shackleton's onboard data…if – if that's alright with you, captain."

Gorman picked up some of the sugary sand and watched it spill from his hand. He got an idea.

"What about this planet?" he said.

"Oh…wait…how…what?" the quarian stumbled over any response.

"Think about it, Sally," Gorman theorized, "Quarians don't have any planet to live on, attempts made, attempts failed, just like you told me. This rock, however, is unknown to star charts, sitting in unclaimed space, and has some nice…uh…water and grass. Nobody else, certainly no human, would want to live here, but you've got your suits to handle the pressure. You could survive as you are."

Another zapping sound was heard. Otherwise behind Gorman was silence. Eventually Sally replied.

"It's a nice thought, captain," she lamented, "But what non-quarians don't know is that really, we don't want a new home. We want our home. It's the official line from our government that we're capable of moving on, but in reality we've spent the last three hundred years waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting for the geth to show any sign of weakness. Then we swoop in and take Rannoch. Settling anywhere else for most means abandoning that dream, abandoning what our ancestors died for."

Her filtered voice trembled slightly. Gorman knew when he was in over his head.

"Sorry, Sally," he apologized.

"It's still a good idea, captain," she also apologized, "Like you say, this planet is unclaimed and uncharted. Maybe it's got some resources that the fleet could use. Those plants, for example? I've never seen anything like those."

"You and me both," Gorman admitted, and kept quiet to let her keep working.

Time passed.

The star of the Kepler-87 system, somewhere through an impenetrably thick cloud layer, shone high above its second planet. The waves were calm, the reeds tall, and the progress steady. Gorman spent a solid five minutes staring at the ocean. No moons, no tides. Sally was much more productive, and managed to connect the two halves of discharge rod back together. Now all that was needed was to reinforce it with a little something called 'omni-gel' to make sure another breakage wouldn't be in the ship's future. Blanc radioed down to check in, and to inform the Commander that Don Bodewell's next interview with Zaz was raking in untold numbers of views, but to Gorman it might as well have been white noise.

The surroundings tried their best, but he just couldn't shake that gut feeling that something was off. He was patiently expecting a rustle in the reeds, a bubble in the water, a shiver in the sand, anything to vindicate his mood – and yet nothing came.

Another distraction was necessary, and he got another idea. He flipped out his own omni-tool and navigated to the extranet browser. Luckily for him, even on a planet as far away from the next populated place as it gets – a place so remote that not even the bravest Novaks nor Shepards would dare go – he was able to access its sites and pages, explained away by the display with a disclaimer about 'cached' content from the last 'buoy' in range. With a few more taps, a smile grew on his face. The question now was whether the same would happen beneath a nearby tinted visor.

He stood up, omni-tool screen open.

"Sally, check this out."

The quarian turned around and gave her usual stare to Gorman, and then to the screen and the image it was displaying.

"This is called a dog."

The light on Saal'Inor's breather remained dull.

"It's a common human pet," he continued, "Well, if we're being specific it's an German Shepherd. Used to have one back on Earth growing up. Name was Bobby. Mom and Dad were big fans of Kennedy. Robert Kennedy. Y'know, without his brother Jack, we might not be even having this conversation. Well, it's hard to say if the Moon landings and would have happened eventually, nor whether its success guaranteed further space program development, but…"

Gorman's incoherent rambling trailed off as he noticed that her gaze was firmly fixed to the Shepherd, an image he found of one sitting down with its quizzical head cocked to a side. When she finally spoke again, her voice was slow and clear.

"Captain…I need one."

"As a Pilgrimage present?"

"I don't care how sick it will make me, I don't care how rare they are, I don't care what it takes. I want one. Right now."

Gorman laughed.

"I don't know about now, but I'm sure the dog shelter industry's moved beyond Earth in the last couple hundred -"

"Are they friendly?" she interrupted.

"Man's best friend."

"Are they big?"

"About yay high," Gorman rose his free hand to his thigh. "Depends on the breed."

"There's more?" the quarian's pitch changed from flat awe to high excitement. "Show me more! Please."

Gorman was happy to oblige, and made to switch the screen to some of the other images he found when he searched for 'dog' on the extranet. However, as he did so, he noticed a disturbance through the screen's translucent corner.

There was a slight movement. He lowered the tool and looked in the same place. Sure enough, one of the reeds across the sand wavered very slightly.

His heart sank.

"You see that?" he asked, sharply and shortly.

"No, what?" Sally could tell that Gorman's senses were suddenly on high alert. She turned her visor left and right, but the Commander was laser-focused on where he saw the rustle.

Then it happened again. Some of the tall stalks in the same area gently vibrated. It was incredibly subtle, essentially unnoticeable if not for the eerie stillness of everything around it.

Without another word, Gorman strode forward cautiously and swapped the omni-tool for his rifle.

Another quiver in the reeds. Gorman could make out distance now – about ten, maybe twenty yards beyond the start of the alien forest. He took another few steps in the sugar. Sally was right behind him.

Another one. Same direction. This time, five or ten yards. It was getting closer. He raised the rifle, but only halfway up. The safety was flicked off. His heart started beating fast enough for him to take a deep breath and try to cool it down.

The rustling got closer, and closer…

"Keelah…" muttered Sally. Gorman's was speechless.

From the lime green stalks burst a man.

He was drenched head to toe in what looked like blood, sweat and a sickly green substance, but mostly blood. The concoction covered all of his once-orange jumpsuit, save for boots frosted with sand and rolled up sleeves. There were burn marks the suit and on his gaunt face, highlighting his tanned skin, bewildered expression, buzzcut scalp and wild eyes…which Gorman noticed first.

Time seemed to stop for a moment to accommodate the insanity of who – or what – the Commander was looking at. By all logic and peer-reviewed field research, the man's helmetless head should be well and truly imploded, his body crushed like a soda can by the unfathomably high pressure around him. The blood would normally indicate such an outcome if not for the fact that other than the burns he looked relatively unscathed. He was also breathing air without a trace of oxygen, a feat even the legends of mountaineering could only dream of. Either the Shackleton's new fancy scanner was a dud or this man was the second coming. He looked to Sally for reassurance. Her face couldn't tell him that she was just as astonished, but her body language certainly did.

"Alhamdulillah, they finally sent someone!" the man spluttered, doubling over as time resumed its normal speed.

"They?" Gorman blurted.

"How are you not…dead?" Sally snapped to action, breaking out the omni-tool and frantically tapping away.

"It's a bloodbath, sir," the man cried between panicked breaths, "Bugs have us surrounded, Sasha and Thiago are dead, the Boss said no communications can get through the cloud layer…"

"Calm down," Gorman told both the man and himself. He lowered the rifle, but only by an inch. The man had his head in his hands, standing just at the edge of the greenery but no further. The Commander recognized some of the burns as the result of acid, not fire. His mind was asking more questions than it could handle, and his speech reflected that. "What's going on? How…uh…"

"Atmospheric pressure's still way too high, air composition unbreathable," Sally reported the facts from her tool with disbelief.

The man glanced up from his hands again, staring Gorman down with a terrified, then suddenly hopeful gaze.

"But you came for us!" he exclaimed, "You've got guns! And a ship!"

"There's a group of you somewhere in there?" Gorman enquired, pointing to the stalks.

"Calypso," the man nodded, as if he expected the Commander to understand, "Follow me. If we're not too late, we can still save the rest of the team."

"But how are you – Hey! Wait!" the quarian tried to pry some much-needed answers to no avail. The man gave the Commander and his ride a parting look before swerving back into the lime thicket, causing the stalks to bend and sway once more. "I…it doesn't…what…" She stumbled over her words some more, before locking glares with Gorman again. "What are we going to do?"

"I'll follow him," Gorman not only made his decision on the spot, but put together a hasty plan as fast as his brain could process it. "You need to get the crew. Whoever is ready soonest. Gear up, get them in the Bluntnose and have them chase my signal."

"Okay, okay, I can do that," she quickly agreed, but then came hesitation, "Are you sure?"

"No time to lose," he replied, and he broke off into a run.

Only a few strides, enhanced by lunar-like gravity, led him to arrive at the start of the stalks. Up close they were imposingly tall and dizzyingly bright. They were the color of a high-visibility jacket, having the same bright quality without any direct sunlight to reflect. They were also individually segmented upwards into what looked like tenths by outward bulges and lines.

He finally realized what it reminded him of. Bamboo.

Time was of the essence. He wasn't here on a botanical voyage, he had a trail to follow. Luckily his new acquaintance made it easy, leaving a route of askew sticks in his wake, some smeared by bloodstained, exposed hands.

As he clambered through the jungle, he was beyond thankful that such a trail existed at all. The plants felt enveloping, but somehow…relieving. He could feel himself taking a long, calm, breath as he went. Then he closed his mouth and the feeling remained. He wasn't taking a breath, he was hearing the sound of gas being filtered through his suit of armor, helmet included. Was the air actually different in here? He looked up, and past the tops of the flora was still the open, cloudy sky. He wasn't risking taking the helmet off anytime soon.

The strange invincible man's retreat from the beach was fast, but Gorman's armored sprint was faster. He could see the man up ahead, brushing bamboo aside at pace.

Then the man stopped, just at the edge of another clearing. The Commander breezed through the last stalks and stood beside him, taking in a worrisome view.

There was a man-made structure – several, actually – jutting up on the other side of a wide, open, barren dune of the same sugary dust underfoot. The buildings were boxy, metal prefab structures with no windows, either a spartan colony on par with Feros or a relatively new one. The expanse between the Commander, his new friend and the buildings showed signs of chopped bamboo, but more curiously, several large craters. The caved in and kicked up sand made it look like the area had been the target of an artillery barrage. Gorman's reflexes kicked in the second he heard gunfire, and he held the M16 tighter. It seemed to be coming from the structures, but the other man's attention was firmly on the holes in the ground.

"Is that Calypso?" Gorman pointed at the settlement with the barrel of his rifle. No response, the man still transfixed elsewhere. The distant gunfire continued. "C'mon, we're wasting time," he sighed, and began walking forward. He stopped soon after, realizing that the man wasn't coming along this time. He turned and looked at the tired yet pleading look on his face.

"I have to go around, through the forest," the man gave his explanation, but it fell on confused ears.

"Why?"

"Hurry!" the man begged. "Just…avoid the craters."

Before Gorman could get anything else out of the crazed colonist, he darted back into the lime ocean. The Commander huffed, then turned back to no man's land. It was an Olympic dash from here to the metal huts, but he had to practice what he preached and waste not another second. One foot at a time he sprang across the little desert, trusting the man's parting advice enough to tread around the holes where possible. He couldn't help but glance inside one, to find that it was less of an impact site and more of a…burrow. Best not to think about it, he reasoned, with the sound of battle growing louder each step. He thought about something else – the forest. If the stalks had some sort of ability to affect the air around them, that would certainly explain how the man was alive without any protection, and why he refused to brave the more exposed zones. Such a miracle plant was an intriguing prospect, but then why were the stalks where Gorman was now reduced to mere stumps?

His thoughts were interrupted by the one feeling he was really hoping he wouldn't feel – a rumble in the ground. The sugar at his running heels spilled and rose erratically around a crater just ahead of him. He had made up some good distance, now a stone's throw to the closest building and the safety of tall bamboo around it, but something was happening in his way.

The ground shook violently, forcing Gorman to a halt. The last crater fell, then burst up in an explosion of sugar. A monster surged forth from the depths. He understood what the man meant by 'Bugs'. He was faced with a bug as big as a car. Standing on four pointy legs was a scaly, shiny exoskeleton, salmon-colored and curved like a question mark, long enough to support a head with tiny eyes and thin antennae, not to mention a sharp beak. The size wasn't the only thing that made this hideous crab strike a primal fear into the Commander, it also possessed two winding tentacle-like 'arms' at its sides, bent like hoses with sloshing sacs at their ends.

This wasn't a quarian greeting him after a medical incident, this wasn't an asari trying to fix his woes at an officers' club, this definitely wasn't a turian sitting down for a coffee and a chat; this was the other kind of alien encounter and Gorman acted accordingly. He pulled the M16 to his hip and opened fire.

Hot lead spewed from the barrel of the rifle, and spent casings floated away in the lessened gravity. Some bullets naturally ricocheted off the chitin, others sunk into exposed meaty bits with a sickening squelch and the release of goo. He held off the trigger for a moment – he had to, as the creature let out an absolutely earsplitting screech. It hobbled back on its limbs. Gorman gathered any courage left, planted his feet in a firmer stance and held the rifle higher. He pulled hard on the trigger.

The Commander's fears were being defined by the minute – but one of his biggest ones then came true. The M16 ran empty with a futile click at the receiver, but unlike any shield-less foe it had ever faced before, the bullet-ridden monstrosity was still standing. A murky green oozed out of its wounds. Gorman was starting to wish he'd brought the Phaeston.

The bug let loose another deafening cry, giving him vital time to reload. Out dropped the spent magazine and he fumbled around his armor's storage for a fresh one. As the noise in front of him died down, he caught the end of a new sound coming from the tree line.

"…one, left side!"

Gorman slapped a new magazine in and hit the bolt release just in time to see his foe lining up its own weapons. Two tentacles were pointing right at him, and their pods looked ready to burst.

Without thinking, he dove to his side. A spit like a green fireball blasted from the sacs, scorching the spot the Commander had occupied mere milliseconds before. The splash zone started to bubble and burn with acidic intensity, a fate he was glad to have avoided.

Instead he found himself face-down in a crater, and starting to feel another rumble come on. He pushed himself up only to duck back down, another salvo splattering above and across the crater's edge. He could only watch in horror as the sugar melted away, noxious fumes rising up.

"Mo, is that you?" called out the same voice. Deep, male…British? "Stay down, we'll hold it off!" The sound of gunfire returned, but much closer and from the same direction. Sure enough, another screech filled the air.

Gorman was terrified enough to consider the offer, but staying down in the crater meant potentially being swallowed whole by any bug who called the hole home. He brushed the powder off his rifle and hastily clambered up and out.

He quickly scanned the surroundings. Ground still shaking, the bug still moving, but its attention had shifted to two streams of red hot bullets piling into its carapace from the building, between the bamboo stalks. He had the creature flanked, and as it spat another acid burst at the others, he had to seize the opportunity.

He kept a low profile, circling around to the bug's back – and firing controlled bursts of ammunition every chance he got. The beast recoiled, lumbering back and forth between its two enemy positions, before an unimaginable relief came to the Commander. Its legs buckled and the tentacles fell limp. It had finally succumbed to as many bullets as he could muster.

The ground's immediate rumbling evened out, then stopped altogether. Gorman was mentally exhausted, but he held onto the notion – no matter how ill-conceived – that his victory here sent a message to any others.

The sound of battle raged on, not too far away anymore, but it was joined by a heavy, brutish crash of thunder. It was a decibel louder than any Earth storm he could remember, and it was powerful enough to make him feel the very vibration. The heavens opened, the clouds darkened, and buckets of rain came clattering down.

Keeping a vigilant eye on the fallen insect, he jogged across the last inches of forsaken sugar, bending one last time through the reeds. This enclosed space might have been bordered by bamboo, but inside the plant population was sparser, although not by much. The powdery ground was paved over in some parts, connecting big metal infrastructure that looked, in a few ways, factory fresh; the sheen on every pillar, the pristine white color, the recently opened crates lying next to a pool of blood and acid. Scratch the last part, thought Gorman, this place was just as bad as any of the other worlds he'd had the misfortune to land on. It smelled awful. What demanded his current attention were two orange jumpsuits to his side. A man was kneeling over a woman with an omni-tool out on his forearm. The woman was wincing, probably due to the thick gel running down the side of her right arm and right leg. Neither were wearing any protection from the environment, unless you counted the Lancer rifles piled at their feet. The man looked up. Young, bright-eyed, pale, and when he spoke, certainly British.

"Mo?" he asked, before his eyes snapped slightly upward. His free hand pointed with urgency at where he was looking. "Your helmet! It's burning! Get it off!"

No wonder the smell was so bad – the top of Gorman's helmet must have caught some acid. The Commander hesitated. Sure, all these 'natives' were doing fine, but what if his head imploded the second it was revealed? The man leapt to Gorman's side, helping him to twist off the headgear with a hefty pull. With a puff of steam – and smoke – the helmet was practically thrown off his head, clattering to the ground and fizzing away.

"Wait…you're not Mo," the young lad was taken aback. "Who are you?"

Gorman took a moment to respond, coughing out smoke and raising his gauntleted hand to the top of his head a few times to sense any damage. His skull felt intact and his hair wet yet firmly undissolved. He also had to briefly appreciate that he was breathing unfiltered air.

"Mo's on his way, took the scenic route," Gorman put two and two together, "I'm Commander Gorman. Are you in charge here?"

"Commander? Oh thank God, the distress call finally got through!" the woman on the ground exclaimed.

"I'm Ralph, and this is Sabine," the man introduced, "Frankly, nobody's in charge. The Boss would be, but he's hunkered himself in the base while us poor sods deal with the mess he started." The man's disdain for his superior was already evident by his tone, but he spit on the ground for good measure. As for 'the base', he had gestured to the metal structure right next to them. Rain rattled off of its galvanized edges.

"I've got my team on the way," Gorman announced, much to the jumpsuits' relief. He was about to ask a heap of questions about just what exactly the colony was, how it was set up in such an environment, who the 'bugs' were, et cetera, but as shouts rang from further afield, he asked the most relevant question he could. "Sabine, can you stand?"

The woman's right side was dripping medi-gel, but she was able to rise to her feet while grabbing the Lancers. Gorman checked his own ammunition and loaded a full magazine into the M16 – which naturally raised a few eyebrows.

"Lead the way," he said.

"Follow us, Commander," Ralph nodded, took his rifle, and started moving deeper into the complex.

Gorman raced forward alongside them. Running through the colony was light work, and he didn't have time to take in the sights, but the signs of catastrophe were all there. Some jumpsuits on the ground were not as fortunate as his new allies – and in some cases the jumpsuit was the only thing left to identify them. Whoever these colonists were, they had firepower of their own. Another fallen bug lay at the wayside, riddled with smoldering bullet wounds.

And there were people there, alive and running in their own directions. Gorman counted six, hurrying back and forth between sides of the compound just like he was. They gave him confused yet brief looks, and he responded in kind.

Past a little hangar filled with canisters, and past what seemed to be a kind of communication station, complete with a large antenna Gorman's subpar scanning skills failed to detect from low orbit, there was a peculiar sight. It was as if he had successfully gone back in time, but was off by a hundred years. Before him was a long, sunken barricade – part metal, part sandbag – manned by more than a dozen armed colonists. A chunk of the First World War-era trench was coated in acid. Some figures were being lifted out, and others were diving in, Lancer in hand. Sure enough, just beyond the line of irregular infantry was a similar stretch of sand dune, craters included.

There was a whole hive of bugs out there. One was enough to seriously ruin one's day, but across the sugary sand – which was slowly turning into sugary slush – there must have been at least twenty.

Ralph, Sabine and Gorman flung themselves into cover. Ralph tapped the shoulder of one colonist, the one now next to the Commander.

"And just who are you?" roared the colonist, an older man with a thick beard.

"His name's Gorman. He heard the distress call!" Ralph yelled back.

"About bloody time!" the man laughed, in between shooting a salvo over his sandbag. "Barclay, deputy chief of security."

This was no humble farming outpost if they had a deputy chief, thought Gorman. He braved a look over the trench, firing a burst in the bugs' general direction. Even at this distance the screeches were quite loud. The all-out fire from the colonials was not met by equal retaliation from the bugs. They were dodging and weaving across the dunes, dropping in and out of their hidey-holes.

"What's the situation?" he asked, knowing the answer but hoping to hear the local's strategy.

"It's a total shitshow, Gorman!" the colonist bellowed. "Damn bugs broke out of the crates from the Sigma-23 shipment, killed half my security team in a minute! We've pushed them back to the killzone out in the sand, but they've burrowed in and burrowed deep."

An acid splash fizzled somewhere down the line, accompanied by the cry of 'Medic!'. Ralph scrambled past.

"Is there any heavy ordinance available?" Gorman enquired. The man shook his head. "Mortars, grenades? More head-shaking followed. "Fifty-cals?"

"Fifty?" The man blurted, shaking his head one last time and continuing on. "Nothing with the range we need. Anything we had has either been used…or is in the Boss' private stash," he said, pointing at that same metal building from earlier. Gorman scowled. A word with this Boss character was a guarantee, assuming this situation could be solved in the first place. He had to throw the book at the problem.

"Do we have the numbers to flank them?"

"Are you kidding?" the idea was instantly killed, "We don't have the armor. Out in the exposure zone, we'd be folded like a deck chair. Not pretty."

Gorman was doing some mental timekeeping. How long had it been since he told Sally to rally the troops? Surely they'd be here by now, unless the dense bamboo was seriously holding them back. Communications might have been out beyond the cloud layer…but not here at ground-level. He gave his subdermal earpiece a couple decisive taps.

"Gorman here. Anyone read me?"

After a few tense seconds, the voice of Kalu came through.

"Reading you, Commander, Sally told me what happ -" he cut himself short, "Is that gunfire?"

"How far away are you from my position?"

"Had to take a route that didn't have as many plants in our way," Kalu explained, "Should be close."

"How close?" Gorman wasn't satisfied.

"There's a clearing coming up, so we…"

"What the hell is that?" the voice of Zaz burst through the radio waves.