Tanda at least conceded to the necessity of spending the night in sickbay. It was a night spent locking down damage and securing systems for the jump through the relay the next day. In this, they could have no delay or hesitation. The end of months of frustration was at hand.
And yet despite her wounds, only eight hours of sleep sufficed to make Tanda seem perfectly recovered. She walked to Tali's side as if the day before had never happened. Tali was still busy, that morning, preparing for the operation of the Relay. It would be the first time a Star Destroyer had gone through one. And she didn't want anymore surprises. "Are you well? You seem distracted..."
"Tanda, I... I'm just... uneasy, I suppose, that's all." She turned back to her work.
Tanda was not going to take that as an answer, and ignored the encouragement to be left alone that was embedded within it. "You need to learn to embrace your confidence in the destiny that has been given to us, my love."
"I sometimes... feel a temptation, a pull, but... it has no hold on me, Tanda." She looked up, wide glowing eyes uncertain.
"This power has no pull for you? I'm not at all sure what to do about that." She folded her hands and started to pace. "Perhaps you need to settle down into somewhere safe, to be my lovely Queen... If you don't hold ambition in your soul like this... Well. Yes, I must keep you safe. I will not force anything of you. You... I love you, and my passion for you is for what you are. Just don't be foolish. We can have so long together, Tali-and today we are going to win a great victory for this galaxy."
Tali turned away. "I want to do well by my people, to see us safe, to see the galaxy safe... I... worry some-day your ambition and our love will conflict."
"But my ambition is for our love! How I can I love you as passionately as you deserve without eliminating your enemies?"
"Tanda, we could just be in love... Couldn't we... Just be in love?"
"Could we? What choice to I have! Let's do that- I take you and Thunderflare and flee back to my home-galaxy by hyperdrive, the two of us in carbonite to be youthful when we arrive, in some far-flung century? Let the Reapers consume all of this again?" She shivered. "Or can my passion for you flow forth in the creation of life, to create daughters betwixt us, if I may be only a backwater warlord, and those same daughters of our's will be treated like gutter trash when they explore the galaxy that is their birthright? Just because you have been forced to live like that for so long does not mean I should tolerate it for the future."
She spun, and stared out the windows into the dark of the stars. "How can my actions be called anything but necessary? What ambition do I have except to hold you forever? I am tilling the soil of this galaxy like a good farmer, laying the ground work for us to ravish each other a thousand times in peace, mother and mother and lover and lover... It is the law of nations that I must water the field in blood. And such worthy blood it is! Not even the Jedi would hesitate at killing these monsters."
"I... I..." Tali trailed off, looking very uncertain, feeling uncertain—and more than a little tempted by Tanda's vision of a galaxy where Quarians were respected. "... I worry you travel a path I cannot follow, my love."
"Do you need to follow it? You are the machinist, I am the Sith. Cannot we still also be wives? I've tried to train you, but it is a path you are unable to find." She spun back. "You know enough to fight. Call that enough for your heart's content. Don't seek more, let's create the beauty we both desire instead."
"...I... think I can do that." She smiled, hesitantly... Tanda sensed it where she could not see it, and her face lit up, her eyes seeing all through the force, staring out into the galaxy as a whole, lit in electric delight. It felt wrong for Tali, but the vision Tanda promised... Was very hard to resist.
"Then let me kill our enemies."
Tali took a breath and opened communications with Normandy. "Commander Shepard, I believe we are ready to transit the Mass Relay."
"Normandy is ready, Tali. Intentions on the far side? I expect at least another cruiser, and whatever... Well, planet or station, it's going to be impressive."
"I was going to engage it with long-range turbolaser fire," Tanda interjected. "A station can't manoeuvre like those light cruisers and we'll actually be able to bring our main batteries to bear. If it's a planet, we'll slag it."
"I'd like to lead a ground team to ensure there are no human survivors before you engage, Moff Pryl-and find out what they're doing with everyone they've taken."
"My crew has already suffered casualties as an outcome of this operation, Commander. The Collectors are an artifice of the Reapers, and devoted to evil. I cannot imagine the continued survival of anyone aboard their station... We have already rescued a hundred thousand when we took the one cruiser. You are exposing yourselves to indoctrination for a lost cause and risking the failure of the operation to delay the destruction of the station."
"I owe it to those colonists to give them a chance, Moff. I'm not asking any of your people to expose themselves to anything."
Tanda closed her eyes. "I can't stop you, but the situation may therefore result where I am forced to fire on the Collector base while you are still aboard."
"Then that's a risk I have to take, Moff Pryl." She sounded so firmly certain about it, too, that Tanda could only wonder at the selflessness that drove her.
"I will try to cripple it with our ion cannon before you board. Make your preparations." Tanda closed the channel, and walked down into the crew pit. "Spacer Kilak, your station, please."
"Your Ladyship!" The man rose and stepped to the side. Empty in front of him was the main helm control.
"Stand ready to reassume your position on my order," Tanda answered. "Good show." She settled down into place, keyed into the console, and closed her eyes. Now she was ready to take up the controls of Thunderflare, personally. Just in case, you know, that the IFF doesn't work... "Commander Zorah, are we ready?"
"Ready, Moff Pryl." She replied back, bracing herself.
They would line up on the Relay, then, swinging towards it... Thirty thousand beings as tense as their lives could allow. Two ships, and the first time a Star Destroyer had traversed a Relay. Tanda cued the jump through the Mass Relay herself. She hated using them for Thunderflare, but now she could only concentrate on keeping her ship safe... Hands on the controls, she reached out through the force and waited for it to guide her. The relay, that great construction of the Reapers, bigger than an Executor, spun to life and bodily launched them.
They came crashing out of FTL only bare moments later, and Tanda's sense of danger lit up stridently, though not for the reason she had feared. The night before she had only dreamt of the end, dreams of every atom—torn apart. But instead the threat came from those dead around them. It was a massive ship graveyard... the wreckage of thousands and again thousands of ships in a great disc around the galactic centre black hole, and a great, massive base, dozens of kilometres long and centred directly ahead of them.
"...That is one hell of an accretion disk." Scolus coughed, flickered a nervous glance toward the helm pit. "Particle shields to full power!"
The order was given just in time, as the Thunderflare began to buffeting around them. Tanda locked the course down toward the massive base and rose. "Kilak, assume the helm."
"Aye, Aye, Captain." He flushed intently right after saying it.
Tanda just smiled, and rose out of the chair, leaving the crew pit. "Just stay steady, lad," she spoke without turning, and walked back toward the rear bridge holoprojectors and communications banks. "Normandy, you are clear to undock. Please confirm but I believe we are at the centre of the galaxy."
It certainly made the astrogation officers pale. Without the relay, they didn't have a hope in hell of escape from a Deep Core region... Tanda hadn't told them, of course, to avoid any kind of incipient mutiny, and considering that they had only been operating on the strong guess the galactic core had been on the other side—it could have been another kind of black hole.
"Understood, Thunderflare... we're ready for undocking, and we confirm, that's... the galactic centre. Can you move us clear of the accretion disc before we actually undock? Our barriers don't seem to be able to shrug that off like your shields do."
"I haven't seen this since the rubble left over from the Separatist attack on Eriadu," Commander Saukon muttered. He was old enough to mean it too, having mustang'd his way from enlisted during the Clone Wars.
"Right, hold position then and wait for further instructions." Tanda stepped forward, above the pits, the front viewscreen-windows enhancing her view of the truly endless array of wrecks, and then addressed the comment. "This looks like the aftermath of Fourth Vontor or some kind of legend of a space kraken, more like—Eriadu wasn't half as many ships. It keeps going well beyond the eye's sight."
"Might as well be that kraken, Your Ladyship, seeing this Relay led only straight to death, for all those before who us who sailed it."
Tanda glanced back to Tali, then forwards again. Took a breath. "Well, Commander. They weren't the Empire. And we're here to put a stop to it." It was pretty damned grand, and haunting. Thousands upon thousands of ships had attempted—and failed—this jump, and their wreckage spread out in a massive outer disc, the inner, glowing 'round the black hole at the centre.
"It is a terrible sight," Tali said simply. "Shields holding-weakened a bit by the initial surge - holding, still."
"Good. Hold course. We'll release Normandy when we clear the debris field. Stand by main batteries."
"Moff Pryl, we have movement in the debris field!"
"Origin?"
"Multiple discrete sources... those attack drones, dozens of them, closing fast!"'
"All light and medium batteries are fire free. Commence action. We will just have to deal with them that way, snubfighters won't survive in the debris field." A pause, and she spun about on heel. "Maintain course and speed. We'll force our way through."
The drones started exploding from collisions with the debris, too. With full power back, Thunderflare started firing salvoes at range, destroying the larger debris to help open a path and to create a ricochet effect into the incoming drones. Once they had the range, the lighter anti-starfighter guns joined into the fray. Very rapidly, though, the drones carried through the fire and began their attacks.
As they went to point-blank range, the swarm abruptly ensconced them and buzzed angrily, their light weapons trying to find a way through the ISD's shields as her drive-tails cut through the great mass of accretion debris and carried her steadily closer to the vast station. Some slammed into their shields, attempting to release smaller probes to get through during the disruption of the collision to burn through the shields, reach the hull and wreak havoc in areas where the armour was thinner... Sacrificing themselves according to the dictates of their controlling Intelligence, for the sake of trying to obtain an advance. With the warning provided and the particle shields up, however, it wasn't working.
"Contact breaking away from the station, Your Ladyship."
"Give me a tactical readout." Tanda turned back to the holoprojector, which blinked from a local plot into the tactical display of information on the sensor contact. Mass signature, energy signature, yes, it was another cruiser that was departing the Collector station.
"Coming about now, Ma'am."
"They're clearing the station? Excellent. Main batteries to engage as the guns bear. Hold course. Give me a countdown until we're clear of the debris field..." For the moment, they were dealing with the level of fire directed against them, and with the main batteries not effectively engaged, the cruiser was a welcome opportunity to bring their enemy to grips.
Lashing with fire the countless wrecks around them, shattering history for the sake of expediency and survival alike, Thunderflare swept around the Event Horizon. Dwarfed by the twisting of light, spinning, swirling, descending... The Star Destroyer kept her curving course, every crewer acutely aware of the threat that the Black Hole posed to them. Dwarfing them, exceeding them, and around them the hulks of the dead, slowly drifting to their doom.
"Clear in twenty seconds, Moff Pryl..."
"Careful. We will be very close, then." The station maintained its orbit by power; it could only possibly be clear because it was closer, close enough in that the wrecks that neared it were sucked inexorably in, the moment where the orbits could not be sustained, and the black hole gained control.
As they cleared the field the drones had a free course to reach them, and successive waves raced in, ramping up the intensity of the attack. At the same time, it allowed the cruiser to open fire on them with its spinal cannon... but no weapons fire opened up against them from the station proper.
Then Thunderflare opened fire, too. She hammered the enemy from the first. All systems on-line, and open space between them. That beam remained in continuous contact with her shields, and the great Star Destroyer did shudder under it as it tracked back and forth, almost desperate to find a way through the barriers. But each quick salvo from the main guns disappeared into the black of space, green and red bolts, tracking back along the course of the beam. And these had no energy shields to block them, and ripped vast chunks of rock-armour from the Collector Cruiser, without which it would be even more surely doomed.
The spinal cannon on the cruiser was a real weapon... But it was just one, and their shields were holding. "Deploy Normandy from the docking bay and stand by to launch snubfighters." She opened the comms. "Commander Shepard, try to lure the droid fighters off of us, then once they're in open space we'll launch our snubfighters to catch them behind you. We're managing the cruiser adequately."
"Understood, Thunderflare!" Normandy completed her undocking protocols and broke loose, drives kicking in sharply. Pulling hard away from the Thunderflare, separating from the Cruiser's firing bracket before it could track over her hull, she at once opened fire on the Collector cruiser first, and after they got their bearings, the crew turned her into the drones and tore through them with her guns.
Firing continuously and spinning in space for evasive manoeuvres, Normandy quickly got the drones to chase the frigate, concentrating on her rather thanThunderflare. In the meanwhile, the cruiser, with monomaniacal focus, continued firing its main beam in a steady stream at Thunderflare, having finally settled on the bridge with a high velocity stream of molten metal hitting the shields like a deadly firehose. The bridge crew ignored what was a splendid light-show, focusing on their duties, for now with the grand vision of the Event Horizon and the accretion disc behind it, the shields of the bridge were lit up with the continuously glowing splashes and back-flares of the cannon playing over them.
Of course, 200 meter long turbolaser bolts were flying back, surely the Collectors were not very happy about that, the cruiser's rock-armour now ragged fragments. A bit more firing and we'll have them! With the bait having been taken by the drones, Tanda had her entire wing hot launched in pursuit of the drones, attacking them from behind, catching them in two fires between the Normandy and the starfighters.
The battle joined at every point, Tanda maneouvred to keep her main batteries on the target. "Deviate from course toward the station. Pursue the cruiser!" If the Collectors didn't take action to preserve their ship, they'd lose it quickly. Space howled like it was a proper battle, the roar and flare of the turbolaser volleys giving strength to the ship's name.
The reports came in. Normandy being boarded by one of the drones as she spun and dodged, the starfighters suffering heavy losses as the drones darted back to engage. Casualties and damage to both, but Thunderflare's shields shrugging off the enemy fire—even as they did weaken ominously around the bridge. A real battle, but one she was still holding the edge in.
Tanda snapped a gloved hand into a fist. She would take no chances with her life nor Tali's and wanted the battle over immediately. "Helm, X-axis rotation, ninety degrees. Port thrust, five points. Fire control, stand by to concentrate port and starboard batteries on the cruiser."
"Roll executing, Your Ladyship." Thunderflare spun like she were conducting a Base Delta Zero and positioned herself relative the cruiser in a sharp motion to allow all the batteries to shift up ninety degrees to converge upwards on the same target. That would show them...
"Engaging with concentrated batteries," the dry voice from fire control echoed through the intercom feed. Outside, the splashing fire on the command tower shields ceased, the cruiser staggered... Flames erupting from deep within the mechanical mass at the heart of the rock... And then she silently exploded.
"They make quite the blast, don't they?" She chuckled, patted her own hip and folded her gloved hands back behind herself in an almost cocky display of surety. "Full acceleration, get us in range of Normandy to provide her and our wing support against the droidfighters."
Normandy swung, diving back into the debris field, both to approach the base and shake off the most stubborn of the drones—more than a few of the drones were lost in collisions with the debris—and then a second cruiser appeared from behind the base.
Scolus drew himself up. "Your Ladyship, they've got a bearing on the SR-2... Don't know why they didn't come in sooner!"
"Predictor barrage, keep them off the Normandy!"
"Too late, she's going in!"
"Dea help them... Fire control, lock down on that cruiser and await our mark!"
"Aye aye!"
Tali watched from the back of the bridge as the frigate, her substitute home and all of her friends, dove onto the cruiser and fired her thanix cannon again and again, as insane as it seemed. More insane was when she actually seemed to hurt it. The Collector cruiser staggered and Normandy leapt clear.
"Come about to engage the second cruiser!" She held up one gloved hand. "Main batteries - fire as Normandy clears." Dropped her hand, and wave after wave of turbolaser bolts swept across the cruiser, interposing with it in a series of flares and flashes that obscured the entire hull, vaporised chunks of rock spinning away.
Tali shook her head. "We're straining some repairs on the damaged control components with the intensity of fire, Moff Pryl. I'm keeping power up to give time to support Normandy." The way Thunderflare fought, so different. She was intensely concerned for her friends, though, and wouldn't think of dialing back as the frigate darted clear, having left the second cruiser afire.
With the second cruiser under heavy fire, the ship fired at the SR-2 for some reason, ignoring the Thunderflare. Whatever the objective was, Tanda didn't care much. It gave her gunners time to lay in again. "Maintain fire." Thunderflare finished another positioning roll and levelled off, turning inside the station and skirting close to the Event Horizon.
Slowly, the gravitational gradient began to peak along the hull. Commander Saukon stepped back to Pryl's side. "M'lady, there may be a danger..."
"It's holding at two hundred kilo g's gradient for now, Commander. But I'm going to close up with the station now."
"Permission to lay the course in?"
"Granted." She turned opened the comm line. "Command Shepard, pull back. I'm going to disable the station with ion fire before you land. We can deal with the second cruiser now by ourselves. Your ship is an eggshell with a hammer."
"Understood, pulling back..." She did dart clear-reforming with the fighters. The Collector Cruiser tried to swing around to engage them again, using the station as cover.
"We'll be exposing our ventral surface to the station, is that acceptable, M'lady?"
"Yes, if they haven't fired now, it isn't armed."
With that, Thunderflare spun and closed rapidly with the station while maintaining a concentration of fire against the cruiser, blocking it off from Normandy with a battering wall of turbolaser and ion cannon fire and hammering her relentlessly. Under that level of fire, the cruiser shifted to engage the Thunderflare instead, letting the beam splash against the bridge tower as the first cruiser had in hopes of getting a burnthrough and starting to carve through her armour plating, engines firing to close the range.
"Your Ladyship, I think there's a danger." Scolus looked up from one of the pits. "That trajectory isn't accounting for recovery from the Event Horizon..."
Tanda's eyes widened fractionally. "Tractor beams!"
Thunderflare violently recoiled toward the station as her tractor beams locked on to the cruiser and bodily slowed it. Gripping her in place as the enemy's reactors strained, a salvo of shots that disrupted her engines with good ion hits cleared the way for a quick fusillade of massed fire. The second cruiser exploded, close enough that the ray shields flared angrily with radiation in the incredibly violent explosion. Tali yelped as something sparked on her suit - mass effect fields being violently disrupted by the cruiser going down.
"That's odd... Tali, are you alright?" She turned sharply to the woman.
"Fine! Mass effect fields just... ow, failed, a bit of feedback, Moff Pryl!" She managed to keep decorum, at least!
"Normandy's weapons seem disabled," Lieutenant Scolus remarked.
"...Something about that core seems to have disrupted energized eezo—the other one was too far away..." Tali trailed off.
Tanda finished the thought for her. "...Normandy! Tractor control, lock onto the SR-2. She may have lost power."
"Working... she's into the debris field, Moff Pryl, falling into the station! Trying to get a lock...!"
"Commander Zorah-try to clear up the resolution on that lock. Transfer all reserve power to the tractor beams, stress them to the limit but don't let her crash!"
She was trying-hands flashing over the console... "I can make it a crash-landing, at least! Come on you bosh'tet of a computer, lock in... got her... she's down, but I don't see any major damage."
"Central battery director, lock all ion cannon that can bear onto the station and begin firing!"
"Firing." The four main ion cannon and about thirty of the light anti-starfighter models all peppered across the surface of the station with constant blasts. With the Normandy already disabled, there was no point in holding back.
"Transfer all weapons power to the ion cannon and maintain constant fire on the station. Let's see how much of the Collectors we can disrupt with it. And stand by the boarding parties and assault shuttles for launch."
"Your Ladyship?" Thunderflare's ranking ground forces commander, Colonel Trakha'Vereel- one of the newer additions to Thunderflare's crew, fitting that most of the spacetroopers were Quarian marines anyway-stepped forward toward Tanda. "Surely you can't be serious, Moff Tanda'Pryl, I thought you had no intention to board the station."
"Well, we can't let them lose. If they encounter serious resistance, we'll just clear the place, and I'll make the evaluation of that myself." She took a breath. "Prepare the landing."
"As it is just a commando operation, could we not limit ourselves to a precision rescue mission, at least?"
"Very well then. Stand by the Spacetrooper forces—Spacetroopers only."
"Understood, Moff Tanda'Pryl." With a salute, the Quarian Colonel departed.
Tanda watched the station flare and flicker under the barrage. "Tractor beams, work the SR-2 off of the station." She activated the comms. "Commander Shepard, we're trying to pull Normandy free now and have a full ion cannon bombardment of the station going to keep their electrical systems disrupted."
"Negative, Moff Pryl. We can deploy the ground team from our current position directly; there's no need to wait. Engineering says they should have power restored in about a half hour." Shepard's voice crackled back over the emergency comm.
"Then be about it, as I want to pull you off before anything else develops."
"Understood, Thunderflare. Normandy clear."
Tanda watched quietly. Inside, she knew what they would find. Another black, horrifying concentration of death and destruction and despair. The Reapers and their creations seemed to be built out of it.
Somewhat amazingly, by their communications, Shepard's team was advancing despite it all, though the noise of gunfire was almost constant... pushing forwards into the station over a period of some minutes, then they could hear Shepard's voice clearly on the comms feed as the station's jamming went down under the sustained ion barrage. "No survivors... damnit, she just... liquified, what the hell is this place...?"
Then there was that conversation... A report that stiffened glares and clenched fists on the bridge for want of anything else to do. A human Reaper.
"Pull out and let me open fire with the turbolasers, Commander Shepard. You yourself have seen there is no hope." Thunderflare was pelting the station with ion cannon fire... Hopefully disrupting the electronics.
"Attempting to fall back!" She shouted back. "Little busy right now! I had better count on you to blow this up!"
"You most assuredly can! Main batteries stand by for maximum firepower. Hold orientation to allow all main batteries to bear on the station. Stand by for turbolaser fire."
What followed was a lot of shouting and shooting on the ground team channel, then a long silence...
"Ground team is aboard. Please bring us clear." It came from EDI, that time.
"Tractor beams, full power. Pull them off."
Normandy shot off the station as the ion cannon shifted fire to avoid interposing with her course.
"Maneouvre her to be protected by our hull from the blast."
"Trying, Ma'am," Tali gritted in exasperation. Sometimes the ice blooded Imperial attitude in combat and endless open-ended orders were a bit much for her to take, but... "Got her in the shadow, Moff Pryl."
"Main batteries commence firing!"
The station was slammed again and again by massed fire worthy of a Base Delta Operation. It held out at first, armor and barriers alike having to be battered to bits... and it resisted quite well through it all.
Well, this will take a while. "Lock tractor beams on. Let's disturb its orbit if we can't fully pound it to rubble..." The engines would strain in their mounts, as they started... Both firing and shoving the station down... Toward the black hole.
"It might take centuries to finish falling, Your Ladyship," Scolus interjected.
"Good enough that we wreck it thoroughly, though. Keep firing, we may yet hit something critical."
It took time to blast through... some secondary explosions became to tell that heavy internal damage was being inflicted. Even so, it withstood the firing for near to twenty minutes before, with little warning, it violently erupted.
"Bring us about! All ahead emergency flank-back for the gate!" This explosion was substantially larger than anticipated...
Tanda and the rest of the bridge crew watched the steadily growing blast wave looming up. "Double the shields aft."
Normandy was streaking away with power back up, damaged, scorched, but keeping pace... trying to help the fighters re-dock before they were wiped out. The shock wave was rolling out... consuming a vast number of those endless storied hulks in the accretion disc. Normandy was lining up for her jump... and then she was gone. Thunderflare was annoyingly slower, as the first waves of superheated plasma started to lap at her aft shields.
"Can we safely calculate a microjump?!" Now there was some real tension in their voices. Under their feet, the Thunderflare was buffeting.
"Not safely, Your Ladyship!"
Tanda shook her head, a last glance at the vastness of the accretion disc, of the wrecks of countless species, the last remnant of their works, now being consumed in the destruction of their destroyers. A funeral pyre at the centre of the galaxy. "Tali, try to get us through the Mass Relay on the run. Take the helm yourself."
She didn't question it, just leaped down into the pit at the run to attempt it... ...and then they were through just as the aft shields collapsed. She hadn't even done calculation, Tanda realised as they passed through. Instead, she had used the force.
"...We didn't transmit our mass to the relay..." Scolus muttered.
When Tanda heard that, she just smirked in bemusement. You have learned more of the force than you let on, my beloved.
The Quarian girl's faceplate 'clunked' to the console. "Keelah, that was close..."
"But we did survive, and a great threat to the galaxy has been ended." They flared back into reality in the Omega system, Normandy ahead of them and Quiberawaiting for them. It was over.
"...Delayed." She sighed, and on wobbly legs stood to let the helmsman re-take his seat.
"Regardless. To my office, Commander."
