Dearest Emily,
Originally, I intended to begin this missive with an apology. However, under circumstances such as these, I cannot bring myself to offer such a meagre gift. Honesty is all I have to give now and so it is with a downcast heart that I inform you of the failure of the mission. Not only has it failed, the ultimate cost of that failure has outweighed any price I could imagine being levied.
Ptolemny was lost during our initial arrival, of which I shall provide more detail anon. Monique and Fellson fell victim to the local fauna only a week or so later. Bradler is still alive, although no longer with me in any meaningful sense. The general crew, those who survived arrival that is, numbered three and have been worn away by illness, attack and exhaustion. It is with a heavy heart and even heavier hand that I pen this final missive to you as the sponsor of our mission. In my failure it may be that there is some lesson to learn, even if only that we should never have come here. Or return.
We arrived at Kimsec Dock as scheduled and, after making contact, replenished our dangerously reduced supplies. After presenting the record of our journey, the record of which I presume you to have previously received, we undertook the prescribed month of quarantine prior to transitioning to Garris. Events proceeded as envisioned immediately from this point. We recovered our health as best we could, aided by nourishment and exercise. Entertainments, previously sparse, were now freely available and welcomely indulged in. There were, and even now I feel the subtle shame of embarrassment, new-born relationships among us. In all, it was a time of peace that led us unknowingly in the mouth of hell.
Initially, everything was as expected and as predicted by our original observations. As pilot, Ptolemny took upon herself the responsibility of the landing. There was some initial concern as to whether this should have been left to the ship itself but, after consultation with myself and Bradler, Ptolemny successfully persuaded us to allow this against what should have been our better judgement. In the moment, we allowed our excitement and optimism influence us and made what would be the first of many errors of that same judgement.
As you know, the tides around Garris tend to the severe and can trouble even the most experienced of pilots. We had studied the patterns and, following previous successful predictives, knew that there would a relatively peaceful period resolving in the near future. With those precious days approaching, we readied the ship and Ptolemny proceeded along the calculated course. And here was our first failure. Our predictive techniques were ignorant of, and so could only fail to account for, some unknown element with the currents. Initialy, the tides did appear to ease, but as we entered the mid-stretch of our approach, they began to…
At the time, I did not understand what was happening. The tides initially remained consistent with our predictions. They then, and I only use the following terms with hindsight, they then reacted to our presence. At the time we had no comprehension of the sudden changes we were being subjected to, the sudden shifting of forces, but I can see now that the shift was powered by some form of intention, some Will. The tides shifted in an attempt to prevent us reaching Garris. The only reason we achieved even that illusion of success was due entirely to Ptolemny. She remained at the helm, even as the tides began to tear at the ship.
I am ashamed to write that the rest of us retreated to the core of the ship and proceeded to hope, wish, and/or pray to survive. After almost a day, the ship came to a grinding rest as we arrived at Garris. I made my way to the helm in the hope of finding our saviour still with us and uninjured, but no, she was gone. The only sign of her achievement and sacrifice being a few smears of blood amongst the keening wreck of our craft.
We survivors stumbled off the ship and found ourselves in Garris proper. The port, if not an offence to misuse the word to describe such a place, was a wreck also. The few buildings that we knew had been erected were mostly demolished, though a couple remained standing even in the face of the tides. These we adopted as sanctuaries and established shelters within. The shipwreck we tended to avoid, as memories of our journey and our loss haunted its remaining timbers. Only the central part of the hold retained any integrity (ha! How that word is a curse now) and we left in it the most important of our equipment, hopeful as we pretended to be that the wider mission could still be recovered.
Bradler took it upon himself to lodge with the general crew, who had set up berths in the second of the buildings. Monique, Fellson and myself took the first. Fortunately, what we thought would be our main problem, that of food and water, was resolved by those items gathered by the crew and that we were able to rig water production from the remains of the ship. To enrich the supplies recovered, we intended supplementals to be gathered from our surroundings. At that point, barring some as then unknown calamity, we should be able to survive relatively unscathed. Our only problem would then only have been how to raise a rescue ahead of the next scheduled arrivees who were some eighteen months away.
Our problems began almost immediately.
Again, the reality of our environment challenged our predictions. As far as we knew, no indigenous species held court here. The land was ours for the taking, whether those were necessities or what we had greedily calculated would be its riches. The land knew better. In first couple of days we experienced signs of life beyond our own. Items of equipment shifted place overnight and strange noises, subtle but strange songs, would drift through us during the day. Several of the crew noted that they had observed movement in distant places, a hillside or cliff top, but nothing that would allow us to fix our suspicions to something real. And so we were hunted by phantoms.
At the end of the first week, Monique and Fellson determined to rid us of our observers, to dominate whatever border had been setup by whatever forces to contain us. They left shortly after dawn on the last day of that first week. We watched them head out, our spirits buoyed with relief that we were not in their place, and offered a few cheers of encouragement. As they dwindled, we went back to our various duties.
We stumbled across them the next morning, both having been returned to camp. Monique was missing most of her left leg and arm. Examination showed the injuries to be of a particularly precise nature, the limbs severed by something sharp. Not exactly a blade, but disturbingly close. The conclusion reached was that she had been injured and then left to bleed out. Fellson had a variety of small injuries across his body, bite marks from several attackers we conjectured, with his throat torn open during the attack. And again left to bleed away into this strange earth. Unable to do more, we buried them. I hope that they now rest in some sort of peace.
The remaining crew were taken from us over the next few weeks. The first suffered some sort of illness brought on, I believe, by sabotage initiated by our observers. No other of us ever suffered such an affliction at that time or any other for that matter. The only grief we have suffered has been inflicted upon us by the world we find ourselves marooned upon. The illness that found us was of some alien nature. The man suffered a fever of the imagination, starting at unheard whispers, answering unasked questions, giggling at some childish utterance only he could hear. This culminated after a period of four days in his collapsing in exhaustion, begging whatever voice he could hear to stop. Over time the intensity, the urgency of his beseeching increased in response to his ever growing desperation. All came to a head when he suddenly stood, spoke in a quiet voice ‘We were fools to imagine we could. We are the imaginings of a fool after all.’. With this, he turned and smashed his head into the all too convenient wall once, then again, before those few of us thought to react. He was dead before we reached him.
The next crew member to be lost was killed a few nights ago by whatever is around us. His screams woke the rest of us during the night and, shaming though it is to admit, I did not leap up to help him. Both Bradler and I stayed in our bunks, staring into the dark as he died. Even he seemed to bore of the task at the end. In the morning, his remaining companion dragged the body out of their room and simply left it in the shade, covered by some fragments of wreckage. She did not even glance at us when she returned to the shelter and has been inside ever since, shrouded in silence and darkness.
Bradler has been a growing weight upon me and my soul. A constant and able companion previously, this now final mission has ruined him. He has become petulant and critical of me and our previous achievements. He considers them childish and the acts of egotists and idiots. At first I put his changing heart down to our latest and current tribulations, but I have come to realise that he has simply been revealed by them. The ravages of our time here have stripped away the pretences and the lies that had built up. I have come to suspect that he is somehow connected to our sufferances here. Is it possible that he set some scheme into action? That all this time he has been working against our work, against the mission. Against me. I would ask you to consider this when you assess the outcome of our journey. A failure it has been, that I cannot deny. But perhaps my conscience is clear after all. I should take this up with Bradler at the next opportunity. It may therefore be resolved to my satisfaction, even if only for my ear, but there will be a resolution of a sort.
Emily. Emily. Enemy. Emily.