Fourteen
It was a killbox.
Gwen crouched behind a cluster of crates while arcs of fire streamed overhead. The mechanic they'd encountered earlier had been no help at all, bitching about Ashley and the Alliance. If he had any balls, he'd be out here with a gun in hand, trying to save the people he claimed to care about.
They had fought to within thirty yards of the terminal where she could check the status of the defense towers, but the area was crawling with Collectors—all different types. She didn't know if the different breeds had names, but they looked like giant, four-eyed cockroaches, and they needed to be squashed.
When enemy weapons overheated, she popped out of cover and went full auto on the bastard across the yard. It was enough to drop him, not a precise maneuver, but a painful one. His head exploded in a rain of bloody chitin, spattering the one next to him. But the creature didn't react. A normal sentient being would show some regret or sorrow at a comrade's passing. The other Collector simply took aim.
She crouched again. Dammit. Two more pushed toward her position. Taking a deep breath, she broke cover and ran low for the next set of crates. When the monsters pursued her, they'd have no choice but to step into the open. Her crew killed one; she didn't see it die but she smelled the lightning cordite smell and the char of flesh. The other opened fire, nailed her as she moved again.
The hit rocked her shields; the energy shimmered around her. More. At least ten. More incoming. They were pinned down, and the odds weren't good. These Collectors seemed tougher than the ones they'd fought coming in, or maybe she was just tired. She spun on two trying to flank her, slammed one away, and shot the other in the head at point blank range. More spatter. The blood hit her armor in a messy gush, sizzling on her shields. Gwen swiped a gloved hand across her helmet.
"Oooh, that was pretty," Zaeed called, signaling his approval with a thumbs-up.
Crazy bastard.
"Scoped and dropped!" Garrus took out the one creeping up on her left, and she wheeled, pressing closer to the terminal.
"Direct intervention is necessary!"
One of the Collectors went rigid in a beam of light, glowing ever brighter, until it dropped back down, and when it did, its appearance had changed. What the hell is that? Some kind of transformative ray? Whatever, it didn't matter. She had to kill it. But heavy cover fire from the other Collectors made it tough.
"Focus on that one," she shouted.
"Affirmative," Garrus called back.
"This isn't my first time," Zaeed growled. "I know how to prioritize targets."
But he'd follow orders; he was a good soldier and a good merc. He hadn't survived all these years by disregarding battle tactics. Garrus and Zaeed unloaded twin concussive shots on the prime Collector, now screaming I am Harbinger, whatever the hell that meant. She'd have EDI do some digging when they got back to the Normandy.
The shields dropped, and she warped the armor. Not enough to strip it, but the heavy fire from dual assault rifles chopped the rest of it, and then she slammed. Gwen leveled her weapon for the killshot. Harbinger was on the move. She took fierce fire from the rest of the Collectors, razing her shields entirely. The shots kept coming. Blood dripped from a wound on her side.
Ignoring the pain, she finished Harbinger with a chest shot, and the creature dissolved into burnt sienna dust, the ashes drifting away on a wind that smelled of death and destruction. She was shaking when she fell behind the crates, injured worse than she'd realized. That didn't matter either. Soon, her implants would kick in and regen these wounds. That wasn't a human ability.
But then, she'd given up such claims when she accepted a second chance from Cerberus. Battle cries echoed through the courtyard: Impressive. This'll put 'em down. Bag 'em and tag 'em. By the time she felt strong enough to rejoin the fight, Garrus and Zaeed had cleared the remaining Collectors. Corpses lay strewn all around, but none of them were human.
No colonists.
"You all right?" Garrus came up beside her, but he didn't touch. His body language didn't even betray their personal relationship; he was that good.
"Took some hits, but I'll survive."
"Scars are sexy." He touched the side of his face with a playful cant of his head, a flex of his mandible. "Your armor's pretty torn up, though."
"You're a matched fucking set," Zaeed said, joining them.
"So we are." She strode toward the transmitter. With a few judicious keystrokes, she hacked the system and restored communication.
"Normandy, do you copy?"
"Joker, here. Signal's weak, commander, but we got you."
Turning, she curled her hands into fists, glaring up at the Collector ship. That's where our people are. The Normandy could blow the hell out of the enemy vessel, but it would mean killing all human hostages on board. Once, she could never have considered such a course. The Savior of the Citadel preserved innocent life whenever possible; but Shepard Mark 2 realized that sometimes you had to do terrible things for the greater good. It wasn't an easy insight; nor did it bring any comfort. Soon, she might trade her heroic reputation for that of a mad butcher because people wouldn't understand, and she'd be left trying to explain this bloody judgment to her prosecutors. Why did you kill all those people, Shepard?
I can end this now. If I order an airstrike, no more colonies will be taken.
The mechanical part of her, the part Cerberus had built, recognized this as the rational choice. But the human aspect, whose whole squad died on Akuze, screamed fiercely in rejection of pure logic. I can't do it. I can't. God help me. God help all of us.
"Commander, are you there?" Joker asked. "I think I'm losing her—" Static crackled over the line.
"I'm here. EDI, can you do anything with the colony's defense towers?" Choice made, she figured she could use Alliance hardware to help her clear out the remaining ground resistance. As long as the Collectors kept coming, she'd keep killing them—until they were gone or she ran out of ammo.
I won't hurt my own people, even for the greater good.
"Errors in the calibration software are easily rectified, but it will take time to bring the towers to full power. I recommend a defensive posture. I will not be able to mask the increased generator output."
"I bet the Collectors will try to stop us," Zaeed said. "Which is good. I wasn't done shooting them."
"Defensive posture." She sighed. "Do you have any more useful suggestions, EDI?"
"Just one: enemy reinforcements are closing in. I suggest you ready weapons."
"If you say 'I was born ready', I'll shoot you." Gwen winked at Garrus, more to reassure him than because she felt like bantering.
"Promises, promises."
"We've got incoming, nine o'clock," Zaeed called. "Find some cover."
"On it."
Quickly, she scanned the courtyard. They had to fight close enough to the transmitter to keep the Collectors from jacking it, but there was no good cover nearby. Fighting beside it was out of the question. So she chose a spot in the southeast corner, behind a row of supplies. Garrus and Zaeed followed her orders, forming a triangle of fire. So long as all three of them held, there was no way the enemy could penetrate.
Collectors and husks came in hordes. Why the transmitter was so important, she had no idea. They had never destroyed a colony before, so why did they want control of the defense towers? Probably to keep us from using them. But that seemed like an inadequate answer. The sensible solution was to take the captives and bail. It made no sense to fight for ground you had no intention of holding.
Three husks ran toward her. Slam, warp, shot to the chest. It took four more to drop that one, and the other two reached her. They stank of technology gone wrong and rotten; they were techno-zombies, and they raked at her bloody armor with claws, snapped with black, sharp teeth. Gwen pistol whipped one in the face and then kicked it back so she could shoot it. She unloaded while taking hits from the other.
Garrus shouted, "Get down," and she dropped without hesitation, giving him a clean shot, and he took the creature through the head.
"I love this rifle!"
She heard Zaeed answer, "Yeah, yeah, we know. Get a room with it already," but she didn't have breath to laugh because the enemies were still coming.
Reload. Aim. Fire. The wave felt endless. Crates exploded. Monsters died.
"GARDIAN anti-ship batteries at 60%. Synching targeting protocols to Normandy's systems. Continue to protect the tower." From across the courtyard, EDI updated them on the charge of the defense towers.
Percentages weren't mission critical. She just had to keep killing these things until EDI took over when the towers came online. Her eyes burned from the chemical fumes wafting in lazy spirals, but she couldn't spare the time to dash away the tears. They collected on her chin, damping the bottom of her helmet. Four wounded burned in a low constant: shoulder, left arm, thigh, right flank, but she couldn't rest long enough to let them heal. She had to hold her end of the triad, keep the Collectors away from the terminal.
"We're on it!"
Gwen laid down heavy fire, shooting to ward the Collectors away, while Zaeed and Garrus did most of the killing. The trickling blood should've clotted by now, but at least some of her wounds were cauterized, coming from laser fire, not rending husk claws. Her vision got fuzzy, and still, the monsters came on. Four more husks converged on her position.
Goddamn, how many of these things are there?
She lashed out with a kick, but her weak leg buckled. She went down hard, the three husks ready to rip her apart, so she popped shields that forced them away. Concentration made her head wink black spangled with the old gold of ancient stars interspersed with white hot sparks. Can't keep this up.
Garrus and Zaeed's gunfire sounded distant, but she kept the pistol in her hand, even on the ground. Dropping the shield before she passed out, she swept with her good leg and knocked a husk down. Prone, it was clumsy, buying her time to shoot it. It died writhing like a worm on its back. The other two lunged, and she rolled, then crawled around the side of the crate. When the next one popped into sight, she blasted it. Again. Again. Until it was a smoking corpse. The other should've had some self-preservation, some awareness that she was Gwen fucking Shepard, and she was the bitch who wouldn't die, but that cognition had been stolen from these creatures. They had no will anymore, only programming. Warp. Slam. Reload. She took a hard blow across the face but she ended the husk with a shot to the head. With both hands on the crate, Gwen hauled herself to her feet.
She stared down at the husk, swiping blood from her eyes. Even on my knees, I'll still kick your ass. That much hadn't changed, at least. Even if she was meat laced with wires, she still had that core of determination that had forced her to drive a damned Mako through a mass effect relay, rather than admit defeat.
It was then she noticed the rifles had gone silent. She hoped that meant all the enemies were dead.
Gwen stepped away from the crates and limped through the courtyard, around abandoned supplies, husk and Collector corpses, and piles of tires. She found Zaeed on the ground, bleeding and dazed, but she pulled him to his feet, checked him over, and decided he'd live. Together, they located Garrus, who looked as though he'd done some hand-to-hand with his rifle butt. Husks were bastards at close range.
"You both okay?"
Zaeed nodded. "I'll live. That—that was a proper fight."
"There must be more incoming—" Garrus started to say, but a mechanical rumble stopped him.
The construct that dropped of the sky was like nothing she'd ever seen: a black-shelled mech-thing that looked like a cross between a crab and a squid. Purple energy undulated from it; the rays struck the tires, which smoldered, melted into a pool of dark liquid.
"Holy shit," Gwen breathed.
"What the fuck is that thing?" Zaeed demanded, diving for cover.
"I have no idea," she answered. "But we gotta kill it."
She got out the grenade launcher.