Join the Systems Alliance, Susan thought, see the galaxy. Homeworld tunnels a specialty. Not that she particularly minded in Tuchanka's case. The networks of tunnels they traveled through were dim, but built for krogan scale and thus felt plenty spacious to the humans. They also provided shelter from the near incessant windstorms and blasting heat. The squad remained on guard though; in the nine hours since they'd disembarked from the krogan transports and entered the tunnels they'd had to deal with three feral varren packs, two flocks of flensing shrikes, and one particularly violent pyjak.
The weight of her pack sat snugly on Susan's hips and shoulders. Each of the squad carried a measure of supplies and deployable microshelters, but the bulk of their burdens were the Leviathan devices. Susan felt her spine tingle as she thought of them. They'd been told the devices emitted no signals until activated, but did the Collectors have some other means of detecting them? Were they walking into an ambush even now?
Finally, they came to a ledge overlooking a large chamber that dropped away beneath them. She guessed it had once been a cistern, but the thick layer of dust covering the cracked ochre stone floor showed it had been long dry. A narrow stone bridge crossed the chamber from their ledge to another on the opposite side.
"We're past the more active zones now," Tharnok said. "Should be fewer pests ahead."
"What are these tunnels for?" Susan said.
"The ancestors built these during the nuclear winters, hid underground. Still fought each other even then, for scraps of rock. We used them again during the early stages of the genophage."
"Fallout shelters?"
Tharnok grunted. "These smaller tunnels were meant to connect the real shelters."
"For communication and trade?"
"Hah! For war."
"How far do these go?"
"They won't take us all the way to the Collector ship," Tharnok said. He motioned across the bridge. "These tunnels end in Kirrick District, and we'll have to use the surface the rest of the way. Maybe another eleven hours."
"Is there cover on the surface where we're going?" Elijah said.
"Plenty. Ruins, highways, we'll stick to the shadows. Avoid the worst weather that way too. Just need to watch out for bleeder vines."
"Bleeder vines?" Lisa said from behind Susan. "I'd forgotten how much I love worlds where even the plants try to kill you."
"If you do run into some, try not to shoot them," Elijah said. "Let's not announce our presence here."
"Thank you for that revelatory piece of advice. Don't worry, I wasn't about to go popping off rounds at hungry plants." The squad finished crossing the stone bridge. "I was going to throw grenades at them."
"Right, sorry. You know what you're doing."
"I wouldn't go that far."
"Quiet," Tharnok said. "We've already seen Collector forces this far out."
"How often?" Susan said.
"Maybe once a day or so. Just sightings. Not very often, but enough to be trouble."
"Got it," Lisa said, her voice icy.
"The tunnels get darker here too. More of the light channels have collapsed."
"Story of our lives."
As the tunnels finally angled upwards, the ambient light levels grew as well. More dust lined the stone floor, and up ahead Susan saw the walls opened up into a chamber of some sort.
"That's the exit," Tharnok said. "We head out to the surface from here." Light shone through from the open tunnel mouth. Ash and dust blew past the exit, obscuring anything that lay beyond. "Looks like a storm. At least we'll be harder to spot."
Susan gave a mental sigh; walking into a Tuchankan ash storm was not conducive to survival. Neither is assaulting a Collector base with four people, she thought. She steeled herself, tucked her head, and pushed forward out of the tunnel.
She grunted as a flying pebble soared at her with enough force to trigger a barrier response from her armor and ricocheted off her helmet. Her internal helmet readouts flashed warnings as ash and grit, propelled by the storm, battered into her with enough impact to feel through her armor. The roar of the storm filled her ears, a howling, grinding screech of wind and impacts.
"We can't stay here long!" Maiena called, her features obscured by the recon hood she wore. "We need shelter!"
"That way," Tharnok said, pointing. "Head for the buildings!"
Susan took it on faith there were buildings that way; she couldn't see past a handful of meters in front of her. She leaned forward, struggling against the headwind as debris and ash continued pelting her. She wasn't even certain she was walking in a straight line, and had to use the tactical positioning displays for the rest of her squad as references.
It felt like they'd been struggling through the storm for hours when she caught sight of the skeletal outlines of the building ahead. Somehow, her mission clock showed less than ten minutes had passed since they'd emerged from the tunnels. Through the swirling field of ash she saw the outline of metal spars stabbing into the sky, a squat angular shape beneath them of stone and steel scoured smooth by storms.
Hoping at least some of the walls were intact, Susan redoubled her pace towards the derelict building ahead. It felt like another hour before she reached an open doorway and threw herself into the darkened building. Whatever the building had been used for, it was long gone. Time, scavengers, and the environment had erased everything portable, leaving them a square room of pitted red stone with stone pillars interspersed throughout and a collapsed doorway.
Tharnok was already inside, crouching behind the innermost pillar. He laid his rifle down, drew out a cleaning kit from his pack, and began scrubbing ash and dust from his weapon. "We won't be moving while that storm is active. Might as well get some rest. Check your weapons though. And no heat sources."
Susan shrugged her pack to the floor gratefully. She dug into it and drew out a microshelter, deploying it behind a pillar as the storm continued raging outside. "Tharnok, how long will a storm like this last?"
The krogan scout looked up from his rifle. "It varies, but something this strong? Probably at least seven hours. We're lucky it wasn't worse when we came out of the tunnels. Don't worry about getting behind schedule; the assault team can't move in this either. Even Tomkahs would be a bad idea."
"Thanks." Susan looked down at her microshelter. Calling it a tent would be overly generous; it was essentially a flat tube just large enough for one person. She decided against crawling into it just then and sat back against the stone pillar, disconnecting her faceplate. The air smelled dry and charged, with an oddly smoky tint, like she was downwind from a bonfire. The sounds of the storm nearly doubled in volume; the dry roar of the winds, the susurration of ash and dust against the stone walls of their shelter, and the sharp little cracks of impact from larger debris pieces.
She drew out her water bottle and took a sip before reaching for one of her nutrient gel packs. Elijah was conversing quietly with Tharnok while Maiena sat against the wall, idly scratching at her scalp fringe as she shook out her recon hood.
Lisa slid down next to her, removed her helmet, and sighed. "I never realized how much I took shuttle insertions for granted."
"It's almost as bad as the field exercises in Basic, isn't it?"
"Yeah." Lisa sat in silence for a moment. "So, what do you think about our chances heading into a Collector base like this?"
"I'm trying not to."
"Hmm. I know the feeling."
"You going to be all right?"
Lisa sighed. "I dunno. I thought I was okay on Thessia, but there we were running away. Now we're running towards them."
"Feels different?"
"A little bit, yeah. Before New Canton, Ishafan was so confident we could take them, no problem."
"Ishafan?"
"A… squadmate. Fellow sharpshooter."
"Lost on New Canton?"
"Yeah."
Susan looked sidelong at Lisa for a long moment. "I get the feeling this is one of those regrets you mentioned."
"Maybe. Yes."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"There's not much to say. There were some things we should have said to each other. We didn't. And by the time I figured it out, it was too late."
"I'm sorry."
Lisa shrugged. "It happened. You can't change it. You move on."
"Right."
"And kill the bastards responsible."
"… You drove the therapists crazy, didn't you?"
"Little bit, yeah." Her eyes hardened. "But I can handle this."
The Collector base stood out from the ruins of Tuchanka like an oversized termite mound. Lumpy spires that looked like they'd been encrusted in mud stretched for the blasted sky. A half dozen of the curiously bulging towers stood in a circle, like a distended crown twice the height of the nearest ruins. Partway down a metallic looking ring connected the towers, studded with slowly blinking orange lights. Further down at the base, it looked like the whole structure sank into the ground to an unknown depth. It might have been a landed ship.
Susan lowered the binoculars and the base shrank, kilometers in the distance. "Do you know what kind of defenses they have?"
Tharnok shook his head. "They shoot down air assets. Ground scouts have gotten closer, but not inside. There aren't as many patrols as we'd expect, especially for something that size."
"Seeker swarms?"
"Some. Lighter units, the troops. We haven't seen their heavier forces yet."
"Let's hope it stays that way." Susan turned back from the corner of the top floor of the ruined building they stood in. "Did you see that collapsed building on the east side? We might be able to get in that way."
"Dagger, this is Quadbreaker," Lurg's voice crackled over the comms. "Do you copy?"
"Dagger Team copies," Susan said.
"What's your distance from target?"
"We're about three klicks out. Getting ready to move."
"Quadbreaker Team is moving into position, about four kilometers behind you. We'll be awaiting your signal."
"Got it. Why are you called the Quadbreakers anyway?"
Lurg chuckled. "You'll find out."
"Hopefully not if everything goes smoothly. See if you can stay hidden, but take positions close. If things go loud, we're going to need you guys in a hurry."
"Don't worry; they won't know what hit them."
"Alright," Susan said, looking at the rest of her squad. "We're moving out."
Rizzi expected to encounter a Collector patrol every step of their trek to the Collector base. Moving through derelict buildings as much as they could, the squad had closed the distance to a kilometer from the base. Up closer it resembled a series of massive termite mounds even more, with visible weapon emplacements on the tips and the ring. She tensed at every clatter and rattle from the wind.
The status icon in her HUD for the assault team blinked twice and faded as they crossed a blasted street. "Dagger to Quadbreaker."
Static.
"Jamming again?" Elijah said.
"Must be." She looked back at Lisa, still back on the other side of the wide street. The Infiltrator looked back, cocked her head, and tapped two fingers against the side of her helmet. Susan motioned for her to hold position, raised her omni-tool, scanning the area as far as she could. "Our comms still work here, though."
Elijah held up his own omni-tool. "You seeing this field?"
"Yeah. It looks like the edge of it cuts across this street. Lisa's just outside."
They regrouped outside the invisible field to discuss options, and settled for Tharnok remaining at the edge of the field to cross it as needed. The Scoutmaster climbed another ruined shell of a building and began setting up an observation post as the operatives continued drawing near to the Collector base.
It loomed ever larger as they approached. The Collector facility sported a disturbing blend of synthetic and organic appearances. Buildings had been cleared from the primary entrance at ground level, leaving craters of stone and steel rubble where structures had endured ages of Tuchanka's elements. The squad swung around to the east, staying out of sight.
The collapsed tower Rizzi had seen leaned down into the closest spire. The tan-brown mottled material had already spread halfway up the steel gantry. Climbing up through the ruin, they saw that the collapse had torn a hole in the side of the Collector spire. Either the mud-like stuff was organic and spreading or the Collectors were building it somehow, possibly integrating the local surroundings. Neither possibility felt comforting to Rizzi.
She climbed up the leaning building section towards entrance, the weight of the Leviathan device on her back like a millstone in the whistling wind. The guns, pointing into the sky, stayed still and silent as she crossed. Rizzi took a tentative step onto the brown gunk; it felt like industrially packed earth beneath her feet, a substance that had no business traversing the stars.
The tower had punched into the spire interior, leaving a gouged trail of twisted metal and torn mud-substance. She gathered up her courage and plunged in.
The Tuchankan building ran another two meters in before she swung off and dropped down. Rizzi was simultaneously relieved and disappointed at the lack of response. A dull thud sounded behind her as Wu dropped down, followed by two more as K'Thane and Marx followed. The interior of the Collector outpost felt even more like an oversized insect hive. The corridor they'd entered curved away at both ends, and was roughly oval shaped with the mottled brown stuff coating the walls. Glowing orange sacs protruded from the ceiling, like massive compound eyes shining weakly.
"I don't have a layout here," Marx said.
"We want to get these as close to the center as we can," Wu said, cocking his head. "That would mean… down out of this spire and further west. I don't want to use active scanning software if we can help it."
"Right then," Rizzi said. "This way." She turned towards the right, raised her weapon, and started moving. They followed the corridor as it curved and came to a hexagonal metallic door. The door split apart and slid open as they approached.
"That is… convenient," K'Thane said.
"Yeah."
No enemies waited on the other side. The door opened into a circular chamber about twenty meters across; packed rings of coffin-like pods formed a series of circles running up and down. The center of the room gaped open in a vertical shaft running through both ceiling and floor.
Marx moved up to one of the pods, peered into its frosted top half, and jerked back.
"What is it?" Rizzi stepped over to the closest pod and similarly twitched as the Collector trooper entombed in the pod came into view. It didn't react in any way, and a quick check around the chamber confirmed that all the pods were similarly occupied.
"Some kind of stasis pod?" Marx said. "Wake the troops up when they need them?"
"Maybe." Rizzi took a second look at the pods. Metallic arms craned out of the chamber walls into the pod bases. Their hinges and joints implied a potential for movement.
Wu looked over the edge of the downwards shaft. "If this runs all the way through this tower, we can use it to get to the bottom." He pointed to the bottoms of the pods, sticking out over the edge. Each pod had a single handlebar protruding from it, and together the packed pods created a ladder of sorts.
"You're kidding, right?" Marx said.
K'Thane grabbed the closest handlebar and swung herself out, began climbing down. "Hurry up."
"And you say we rush into things."
"Come on," Rizzi said, grabbing a handlebar of her own and lowering herself down. The pods didn't budge, nor did the Collectors within wake. It felt just like climbing a ladder, albeit one with its rungs spaced for something like a geth Juggernaut. So far, so good.
Rizzi's arms ached by the time they reached the bottom; the number of pods in the spire was chilling in its implication. Even if only half of them held Collectors, given the other spires, they could easily be dealing with a brigade-strength force. At last the shaft gave way to a floor, half-hidden by wisps of vapor. Coolant? Biological refuse? She didn't want to think too hard about it.
A similar hexagon door formed the only exit, but unlike the one earlier did not slide open at the squad's approach. A glowing haptic rectangle sat in the center of the doorframe.
"Green's good, right?" Marx knelt down at the interface while the others raised their weapons. "We might not even need the bypass program here. Got it."
The door slid open with a sound like grinding coffee beans. Rizzi tensed, expecting an alarm. They waited in silence for a moment.
"The security here is… lacking," K'Thane said.
"Maybe they're on some sort of… hibernation cycle?"
"In the middle of hostile territory?"
Rizzi shrugged. "They had to cross a lot of space. We'd need to dump drive charge and heat doing something like that. Maybe they have similar limitations."
"Let's figure it out after neutralizing this place," Wu said. "We still need to head west. That way." He motioned down one of the disturbingly organic corridors.
Each corridor looked pretty much the same as the others, but for the details of the organic surfaces and the glowing pods overhead. The only comforting thing about them was the fact that the mud-like walls formed natural ridges and cover so at least they didn't need to move down the corridors in the open.
On point, Marx motioned a halt as they approached an open doorway. Rizzi pressed herself up against the wall as she took in what she could see through the hexagonal opening. The doorway led to an open space of some kind, with banks of what looked like control consoles.
"I've got two hostiles here," Marx said quietly over the comms. "Hold position." She backed up to rejoin the others. "That room's roughly a circle, about ten meters across. Two Collectors near the middle, manning the consoles. We can take them quietly. I'll sneak up on the right one; Rizzi shoots the left."
"Got it." Rizzi shrugged off the bulky pack containing the Leviathan device and set it down as quietly as she could while Marx handed hers to K'Thane. She stole up to the doorway, peeked in. The Collectors stood at banks of broad triangular consoles; the configuration made Rizzi think of massive synthetic flowers. Three other doors sat at even intervals around the room.
"Moving." Marx vanished from sight and Rizzi lined up the sights of her Suppressor on the left Collector, placing them over the back of its bulbous head. She kept an eye on the figure to the right. It raised its head as if it sensed the scrutiny, half-turned, and- jerked as Marx flickered into view, one arm around its throat.
Rizzi squeezed the trigger twice and watched her target's head bloom into an expanding mess as Marx plunged the length of her omni-blade through the grappled Collector twice before lancing it upwards through its head. Both bodies dropped to the floor with wet thuds.
"Tharnok to Dagger Team. What just happened in there?"
"We just took down two Collectors," Rizzi said, "Why?"
"That whole place just lit up like the Shroud. I've got weapon systems activating all over here."
"Damn it."
"I'm calling in the cavalry."
"Alright. We'll activate these things and meet you at the front."
Wu and K'Thane stormed into the room, carting the other Leviathan devices with them. Wu set one down just to the side of the door and moved for the opposite end. "This probably isn't their primary control center," he said, "but it'll have to do. Marx, get on their systems and see if you can get a map or something."
"On it!" An alarm echoed through the hive-like corridors, a chirruping, fluttering thrum that sounded like beating insect wings magnified millions of times over. "That's a good sign."
Rizzi ran over to the pack Wu had dropped off, opened it, and pulled the device out. The heart of the device was one of the shimmering green orbs Akitaiko had referenced. A maddening array of supports, transmitters, security locks, and sundry parts encased it. The alien sphere was barely visible in the rectangular mass. She knelt down, flipped the power switch on, and brought her omni-tool up to key in her authorization code.
A shot slammed into the wall by her head, showering her with flakes of the organic matter. A second shot skipped off her barriers and she wheeled, device forgotten. Beyond the opposite doorway a shadowy form moved in the dim lighting of the base.
"Contact!" Marx leaned out behind the console and opened fire with her submachine gun. "Hostiles west!"
Rizzi hunched over the device, frantically tapping at her omni-tool as more shots streaked in. After what felt like an eternity the thing finally accepted the code and chirped happily, asking for a final confirmation. She snarled as she hammered the YES button on the haptic interface. Stupid design.
The parts of orb visible through the surrounding structure doubled, then tripled in glow intensity. She felt an invisible pulse surge through her. For a timeless instant, she had an impression of a vast, dark, ocean abyss populated by immense beings of unfathomable age. Malevolent eyes glowed out at her from cephalopod forms that defied the scale of organic creatures.
Another shot snapped off her barriers and Rizzi shook herself out of the trance. "Device activated!" She slid away from it and moved towards Marx's device, set on the other side of the room. Ducking behind one of the consoles, Rizzi caught sight of another Collector through the south doorway and summoned a warp field around it. "Hostiles south!"
The warped Collector leaned out to loose a burst and collapsed as a Disruptor blast tore its head off. Rizzi rolled the intervening distance to the last Leviathan device and started the activation sequence.
"Hostiles north!" K'Thane called. The pulse-cough of her Falcon rifle and its airburst detonations joined the background chatter of weapons fire.
"I've got a map!" Marx said as Rizzi finished the start-up sequence. This time she knew what to expect and braced herself against the disconcerting pulse and vision. She turned, launched a biotic pulse at a trooper that gouged a fist-sized chunk of wall out as it ducked behind cover.
"Which way out?"
"South."
"Susan, down!"
Rizzi threw herself out of the way at Wu's call, blinking clear of the wave of biotic force. The ripples lashed through the eastern doorway and scattered the first batch of Seekers buzzing in. She finally registered the buzzing drone; deeper than the shrill alarm, but nearly disguised by it anyways. Not good.
A twitch of her arm brought her Annihilation Field swirling up around her and Rizzi stood fast against the tidal wave of Seekers coming through the east doorway. Individual bugs disintegrated in the ravenous tendrils of the biotic aura as she broke up bigger clusters with bolts of biotic force.
"Device up!" K'Thane said. "That's all of them!"
"Is it working?" Rizzi yelled as she blew back the last of the Seeker wave.
Marx jerked her head aside as a cluster of rounds chewed into the consoles beside her. "Does pissing them off count?"
"I was hoping for something a little more 'win the war.'"
"We should go," Wu said. "Head for the exit."
K'Thane's Falcon coughed twice more and she called, "Clear!" Marx loosed a final burst and called the same while Rizzi blinked through the wall into the south corridor and caught the last hapless Collector with a Biotic Throw. The pulse hurled it into the wall with enough force to leave a cracked outline as it collapsed in a lifeless heap.
The rest of the squad joined her in the corridor, Marx leading the way. "Come on!" The Infiltrator unlimbered her rifle on the run. "There should be another access shaft two corridors away."
Charging down the corridors of a Collector base had never been something Rizzi planned or desired to do. As it went, the experience was entirely too similar to what she'd imagined it would be like.
"Tharnok to Dagger. Quadbreaker is on the way. What's going on in there?"
"We're up to our asses in angry bugs!" Marx yelled, snapping a shot off. "What do you think is happening!?"
Rizzi threw herself against the wall as a trio of Collector troops filled the corridor ahead and opened fire. Most of the rounds soared by, though she heard Marx curse as she rolled aside. K'Thane's airburst round staggered the trio and carved gashes across their torsos. Aura raging, Rizzi hurled herself towards them alongside K'Thane. She heard the sounds of more Collectors behind them. The two biotics made short work of their victims as behind them the deafening roar of Marx's Widow drowned out all other sounds. Rizzi turned back to see Wu yank his blade out of a Collector with a pair of horn-like growths on its head.
"Twenty meters that way," Marx said, rising to her feet. "There should be a ladder; then three levels down."
They ran. The corridor curved past a door, smaller than the large hexagonal portals. An inverted trapezoid, the dark gray door remained resolutely shut as the squad sprinted up to it. Wu brought up his omni-tool. "I think we can crack it with-"
"Move." Marx raised her anti-materiel rifle and aimed at the door, prompting the others to scramble aside. Her shot tore through the center of the door, leaving a mangled hole the size of Rizzi's fists together. Wu and K'Thane each grabbed one side and hauled while Rizzi hurled more biotics down the corridor to deter pursuit. The doors separated with a wrenching squeal as a shot scarred Wu's shoulder plate.
"That is not a ladder," K'Thane said.
"Just go!" Wu said.
Marx leapt out into the access shaft, and Rizzi took a quick glance after her. Indeed, there was no ladder, just the rough mottled mud substance. Holes gouged out at intervals provided rough handholds, which Marx used to clamber downward.
"Go!" K'Thane called. She intercepted a burst on her Tech Armor, angry sparks dancing in the darkness, and answered with a warp field.
Rizzi jumped and caught hold of the shaft wall. Her HUD showed the bottom of the shaft as nearly ten meters away. She lowered herself; the holes were even enough that she wasn't in danger of completely missing one and falling. "Come on!" she yelled up the shaft. No response. As she kept climbing, she felt her entire body twitch with another invisible wave of force, like when the Leviathan devices activated, but on an entirely different magnitude.
She looked down, trying to ignore the sounds of combat raging above her. The metal deck was less than three meters away, easily close enough. Rizzi pushed off the wall and focused her biotic energy into a downward blink that deposited her centimeters above the deck. She landed into a crouch, grunting with the jolt.
Marx was already sweeping the corridor outside with her rifle as Rizzi leaned out and checked the other direction. A single Collector, almost surprised looking, stuck its head out and promptly lost it when she squeezed the trigger twice. She poked her head back into the shaft. "What's taking so-"
K'Thane floated down the shaft, aglow with biotic power and arms outstretched to her sides. She touched down almost daintily before reaching for the rifle on her back.
"Elijah!" Susan said.
"Clear the shaft!" he replied. K'Thane slipped out to the opposite corridor wall with a dash, hurled a Warp, and followed immediately with a Falcon shot.
Rizzi jerked back as a Collector landed facedown at the bottom of the shaft. She had just enough time to note the long diagonal slash across its back, where the wings were, before a glowing blue blur slammed into it from above. The impact reduced the trooper to something less than recognizable and smeared fluids across the floor of the shaft.
The discharging blur of biotic energy resolved into Wu's crouching form, who rolled aside and fired two shots back up the shaft. His gaze snapped to Marx. "Got any-"
She hurled two sticky grenades up before he finished and started running. "This way."
Rizzi followed, storming up the corridor as she kept pace with the others. The twin cracks of detonations echoed behind her. A portion of her mind noted the balance of elements in the architecture here swung in favor of the synthetic. Here, lined metal floors and austere, dark metallic walls dominated, with only patches of the unsettling mud material clustered in splotches, like the beginnings of a wasp nest.
They'd gotten partway down the corridor when it went dark. The orange sacs winked out, like thousands of eyes shutting at once. Rizzi's hindbrain kicked into overdrive. Instinctive reaction to utter darkness brought her to a halt in the unfamiliar environment; it took a painful fraction of a second for her training to kick in and force her legs to propel her to the corridor wall. Her shoulder protested as she rammed into the wall blind.
Her helmet switched over to night vision mode, revealing the others of her squad pressed against the walls. Rizzi looked further up; up ahead the corridor walls glared back in stark contrast, but she saw no Collectors. Instead, the corridor forked off in two directions about twenty meters ahead.
"Tharnok to Dagger. The front doors just opened and half the guns went offline. The other half are spinning in their mounts, trying to point at the base itself. Is that your work?"
"I don't think so?"
"I see movement at the main entrances."
"That's not us."
"Good. Quadbreaker's going straight up."
Marx motioned forward. "Left tunnel."
Rizzi pushed off and kept moving. Their footsteps clanged off the floors while she tried to listen for sounds of pursuit. The shrill alarm had finally stopped, but the low-pitched droning had grown even louder. She took up the rear position with K'Thane, backing up alongside the asari as they kept their weapons trained on the corridor behind.
A flicker of motion caught her eye and she sent a glowing pulse of biotic power at it. From behind her came the roar of Marx's rifle and the crackling shriek of Wu's Disruptor. A trio of the glowing red Abominations charged at them out of the darkness. Rizzi slammed the first into the wall with a Throw, then averted her gaze as K'Thane's airburst round detonated between the other two and whited out her night vision. Her armor compensated, but the bursts of exploding Abominations nearly washed it out again.
"There's another room up ahead!" Marx said, loosing another shot. "Exit's past that!"
Rizzi ran up the corridor in time to see Marx shove a Collector corpse off a console in the room ahead. The room opened out in a large oval; the close half held control consoles behind angled armor barricades facing the other half, an open semi-circle leading to a massive set of armored doors. Those doors, of course, were shut.
She hammered the panel by the doorframe without effect. A spray of shots lanced in and burst her barriers. She threw herself behind the frame, but not before another round slapped into her ribs and the cold wet sensation of medi-gel oozed across her chest. The orange sacs overhead suddenly resumed glowing, lighting up in clusters. Displays flickered to life across the banks of control panels.
"Gimme a moment here!" Marx said, working at the console.
"No need to be fancy," Wu said. He leapt off one of the barricades, strewn with dismembered Collectors. "Just use the Zorah program!"
"Yeah, gimme a moment!"
"Work faster," K'Thane said.
Rizzi leaned out, encased a Collector Captain in a channeled warp field, and ducked back from the return fire. A crackling blue projectile sizzled past her and she rolled aside. "There's a Scion coming!"
One of the heavy shots soared past Marx, close enough to set her shields aglow with discharging energies. Omni-tool aglow, she swung around and fired back. "Got it!"
The heavy doors unlocked with a metal thud audible over the firefight. A diagonal slit of light appeared as they slid open to the sides, growing as they retracted further to let the orange light of Tuchanka in.
A spindly form dropped from above, igniting in midair as the Abomination landed on the console behind Marx. She turned in time to intercept its tackle with an elbow, rifle forced aside by the grapple. Rizzi held her fire, afraid of detonating the volatile husk.
Marx tucked her chin and turned her shoulder into the Abomination, bringing it up and over her back to the floor while she snarled profanities. She brought her boot down on its head with a fierce stomp, then threw herself aside in anticipation of the explosion, but none came. She didn't attempt to puzzle it out there; just snatched her rifle up and retreated towards the opening doors. "Come on!"
Rizzi and K'Thane backed away from the corridor entrance as Wu sent another cascade of biotic force into it with a slash of his sword. They fell back towards the large entrance, but the pursuit was nowhere as fierce as Rizzi expected. She noticed the sounds of combat raging outside, however.
Her helmet flickered back into regular vision mode as they ran past the internal barricades for the exit. The doors were larger than she'd first realized; easily large enough for a Mako to drive through, or upon second consideration, for Praetorians.
The doors led outside to a concourse liberally sprinkled with corpses. They'd emerged from the rightmost section of a tripartite entrance; another set of identical doors sat forty meters across the way, while a larger entrance almost twice the size of the other doors sat between them. Burnished metal stretched out between the three doorways, dark like charcoal that nearly disguised the blood and viscera of shattered bodies. Collectors and krogan alike grappled at close quarters and emptied weapons into one another in short range firefights. Battle cries and chitters formed a harmony to the chorus of weapons fire.
Rizzi sighted in on an enemy before her as the squad dispersed. Before she could do anything else a bright blue projectile arched into its midsection and detonated with a sharp crack. Limbs went flying in separate directions.
She took two steps to the right and lost her balance as the metal plate beneath her shifted suddenly. Too late, Rizzi realized she'd stepped atop a trapdoor; it retracted and pitched her off her feet.
She rolled to her feet and found herself staring at the grotesquely swollen features of a Scion emerging from the trapdoor. Dimly glowing eyes glared out at her as the platform raised it from the base. Faster than she'd thought possible for something so twisted and swollen, the Scion lashed out with its left arm, still vaguely shaped like a human's. The first blow knocked her back down; it felt like somebody had dropped a skycar onto her and blew the breath from her body.
The Scion wasn't finished with her. It reached down, wrapped its oversized hand around her body, and slammed her into the ground again. Dazed, Rizzi watched it take a step back and bring up its other arm, swinging it up to crush her.
A braying sound caught its attention, and the Scion turned away from her just in time for a quadruped creature nearly its height to plow into it in a full-on charge. The creature bowled the Scion over, brayed again, then lowered its head and slammed it into the Scion, pushed it skidding a meter away. The stubby, meter long horn atop its ridged head glistened with gore.
A shotgun blast popped the sac on the Scion's back as it tried to rise to its feet, and for one ludicrous moment Rizzi wondered how the dinosaur-like beast before her could be using firearms. The answer came a second later.
"Burn it." A helmeted krogan head swung over the topside of the beast, and Rizzi finally noticed the saddle arrangement it sported. "You okay there? That one looked like it hurt."
Rizzi blinked up at the familiar helmet. "Lurg?"
"Oh good, you still know who I am." The violent hiss of a flamer at full burn sounded, somewhere close. "Didn't hit you that hard then."
"Hard enough for me." She coughed, then rose to her feet with a groan. "Thanks for the save."
Lurg chuckled as he patted his mount. "Ah, that was mostly Crunchy here." He raised his shotgun and fired at something Rizzi couldn't see. "Looks like we're about done here. They're pulling back to the-"
Rizzi waited a moment for him to finish. "What?" The gunfire faded away, leaving just the sounds of jubilant krogan, Crunchy's snorts, and the crackling pops of the Scion's remains still burning. She stepped away, looked around.
"The Collectors just died." Lurg sounded almost petulant.
"In a battle? That's one of the general outcomes, isn't it?"
"No, I mean the ones left just fell over and died."
Rizzi let out a long breath. Sure enough, the krogan assault team was standing around, making confused gestures back and forth as they inspected various Collector corpses. "I'm okay with that."
"I don't think Crunchy was finished yet."
She looked over the beast again; it stood taller than her, a reptilian monstrosity the color of wind-swept sand dunes. Its body was roughly shaped like an elephant, covered with smooth scales the size of her outstretched hand. A bony ridge covered the top half of its head, culminating in its messy horn. One dark brown eye stared placidly at her as it champed idly at its bit.
A glance around the battlefield revealed over a dozen other similar beasts prowling around. Some of them had heavy weapons mounted atop their saddles, a lethal looking assortment of machine guns and launchers. All had enthusiastic krogan astride them.
"Don't worry, I'm sure there'll be plenty more for… him?"
"Her. Heh, turns out kakliosaur females are the more aggressive one."
"Ah." Rizzi looked around again; Wu was wiping off his blade while K'Thane and Marx checked the Collector bodies. A vorcha walked around Crunchy's bulk; his welding goggles around his eyes and soot coating his front half.
He gave Rizzi a tooth-filled grin and a thumbs-up. "Ah, Rizzi!"
"Grahzshik? What are you doing here?"
"Assault team! Me fire support!" He looked around at the battlefield, then holstered his weapon and began fiddling with his leather bandolier straps. After a moment, he brought out a small package and withdrew a cigar.
"I'll be right back," Lurg said, spurring Crunchy forward. "Barnoz! Secure the kakliosaurs. Damak, get a casualty count!" He rode off, issuing orders to the assault team.
Grahzshik looked around again, then strolled over to the still-burning Scion corpse and lit his cigar on it. Susan grimaced. "That's just nasty."
"What? Cigar?" He shrugged. "Vorcha bodies repair damage, is no problem for us."
"I meant… never mind."
Grahzshik shrugged again. "So, long way since Citadel."
"Yes indeed." Susan stretched tentatively: no shooting pains, which was a good sign.
"How did mission go? At party?"
"Party? Oh, you mean that ball on the Citadel?"
"Rrr, yes."
Susan smiled to herself. "Um, quite well."
"Hrr. Also heard you were on Thessia."
The smile faded. "Yeah. That one didn't go so well."
"Am sorry me missed it. Was deployed on Palaven. Rrr. Is bad all over."
"I know."
"Still, can't mope all the time. Galaxy need saving."
Susan turned her head at the sound of footsteps; the rest of her squad was approaching. Elijah reached out. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, don't worry."
"I can't help it." He cocked his head and shifted his gaze. "You're… Grahzshik, right?"
Grahzshik nodded, grinned around his cigar. "Ah, Rizzi's party friend."
Susan heard Lisa snigger. Biting back her reply, she made introductions all around. They hadn't gotten much further before Lurg called Grahzshik back to the assembling assault team. Grahzshik left with a jaunty salute, cigar in hand.
Lisa set her rifle down barrel-first and leaned on it. "Where do you find all these people?"
"What? The cigar-smoking pyromaniac vorcha? Ehh, he's not as bad as who I usually have to put up with."
"Heh. No, wait. Hey!"
Maiena chuckled. "You placed yourself squarely in the crosshairs for that one."
"I sorta did, huh?" Lisa cast another look around. "So, what do you think killed the last ones?" she asked, nodding at a group of corpses just within the open door.
"Maybe it had something to do with that big pulse we felt before it went dark inside?" Susan said.
"I thought they said the Leviathan devices made them turn on each other?"
"But the Collectors aren't direct Reaper creatures, right?" Elijah put in. "Maybe it was a… side effect?"
"I can live with that."
Susan frowned. "I don't like those devices. Did anybody else get a… a flash, or a vision, of-"
"Immense creatures, lost to time?" Maiena said.
"And water," Elijah said. "Dark places, underwater."
"I don't know if I should be relieved or alarmed that it wasn't just me," Susan said.
"We should probably just be glad our brains didn't explode or anything," Lisa said. "Oh, heads up."
"Rizzi." She turned at the call to see Grahzshik and Lurg approaching them on foot; Lurg moved stiffly.
"You okay? Take a shot there?"
"Uh, no. The saddles came from your Alliance procurement. They uh, they pinch pretty bad after a while."
"Ohh…" Susan stifled a grin. "That's why you're the 'Quadbreakers,' isn't it?"
"Heh heh heh." He leaned in. "It's kind of an inside joke. It sounds all mean and hardcore to other units. We let them think that."
"Gotcha."
"Anyways, Grahz here suggested your team go back in first."
"Why us?" Lisa said.
"You know the inside better than us."
"Not by a whole lot, but I suppose we were inside, at least."
Grahzshik beckoned behind him to the mass of spires spearing towards the sky. "This rare opportunity. Collect intelligence, get samples. Bodies, tech. Not send krogan first. Too much smashing when krogan first."
Lurg nodded. "Yeah, what he said."
"Alright," Susan nodded. "We're not equipped for a full recovery and analysis mission, but we can make a preliminary sweep."
"I'll get the boys to set up a perimeter. Tharnok, get down here. Let's go while things are still fresh."
"Got some more thermal clips?" Lisa said.
"Yeah, plenty." He waved a hand towards the assembling pack of kakliosaurs. "Help yourselves."
Susan nodded at the scattered Collector corpses. "Leave the bodies, especially the ones that seemed to die on their own. We should study them; see if we can determine what killed them."
"Fine, trophies from Collectors with bullet holes only."
"Alright," Susan said. "Let's restock, and get back in there."
Going back into the Collector facility wasn't any easier than the first time. Rizzi wasn't sure if all the Collectors were dead, but each one they'd encountered so far was utterly lifeless. The first group, behind the armored barricades in the open entrance, lay sprawled around still clutching their weapons.
The orange sacs were even brighter than before, and in the absence of gunfire and shouting she heard a quiet thrum of active power. Collector corpses strewn throughout corridors and rooms only exacerbated the eerie stillness. Some rooms back she heard the advance elements of Quadbreaker team making their way through the facility. She felt like they were moving through a giant hive.
"Any idea where the primary control room might be?" Wu said as they checked the map Marx had downloaded.
Rizzi shrugged. "Do we even know if they have one?"
"Not unless you speak bug," Marx said. "And I wouldn't bet that just going for the biggest room on the map does the trick."
"This place is just too large for a team our size," Wu said. He pointed to a chamber on the map relatively close to them. "I don't think we entered this chamber earlier. Might as well check it out."
"Sounds good." Rizzi opened a channel. "Lurg, Grahzshik? We're going to investigate a chamber down this fifth corridor."
"Alright, we're close to that position. We'll come with you."
"Meet you outside."
As the squad moved through the curving corridors a single thud came from up ahead, prompting them to spread out into a combat formation. They advanced slowly around the bend towards the position marked on the map, weapons raised. Rizzi's armor systems showed signals for Grahzshik, Lurg, and two other krogan up ahead.
The other team came into view, moving around a corner of their own. Lurg's helmet stared at them with faceless implacability. "Did you make that sound?"
"No." Rizzi narrowed her eyes, then jerked her head at the door sitting between the two groups. Lurg nodded once, turning his shotgun on the door.
"Whoa there, big guy," Marx said quietly. "Let me try the doorcracker program." She brought her omni-tool up as Wu directed an assault layout with swift gestures. Once the teams were stacked up outside the door he held up one hand with three fingers extended, balled them up one at a time. Upon clenching his hand into a fist Marx hit the program engage and the door ground open angrily.
Rizzi held off making an immediate entry; her plan had been to let whatever defenders occupied the room give their positions away by opening fire. Pressed against the wall, she tensed, anticipating the snapping buzz of Collector weapons.
Nothing happened.
A moment passed as the teams waited for hostile action, any action.
Marx held up a finger and vanished from sight. A moment later, she said, "Huh. No active hostiles." She reappeared several seconds after that by Rizzi's side. "It's just more of those pods."
The teams stormed the room anyways. Marx was right; the chamber was a narrow oval some five meters wide and nearly twenty deep. Upright pods, much like the ones they'd climbed down earlier, lined both walls in packed rows. All told there were about forty of them. A Collector filled each pod, making the room look like a macabre gallery of heads and torsos.
As they moved deeper in a clack like dozens of assault rifles being readied echoed through the chamber. Rizzi's blood froze as all the pods opened. The front halves of the pods separated with dry exhalations and slid up through ports into the ceiling.
Collector bodies collapsed limply out of the pods. She stepped towards the nearest one, weapon aimed as she checked it. There were no signs of any life, but she wasn't sure that meant anything. The operatives went from body to body, inspecting the corpses.
"Looks just like the others," Lurg said.
"Hopefully all the pods are like that," said Marx.
"Wait." K'Thane pointed down near the end of the chamber. "One of them just moved."
"They're just settling," Lurg said. "All the ones we've seen have been dead."
Rizzi moved towards the back, stepping between bodies on the way. She snapped her weapon up along with the others as one of the Collectors near the end rolled its arm and clutched at the floor with its claw-like fingers.
"Hold your fire," she called. "If we can subdue one it'd be a lot of intel."
The Collector pushed itself up; its mottled brown head turned towards them, six eyes glowing dim yellow. It chittered at them, sounding almost confused. One of the krogan behind her shifted. The Collector got up to its knees, extended both arms slowly towards them, crossed them over, and clasped its hands together upside down.
"Just kill it already," she heard.
"No, wait." She held up one hand. "I think we can take it alive."
Another chitter came from the kneeling Collector, and it shoved its arms towards her. It bent its head down.
Rizzi kept her weapon aimed at its head as she approached. "Can you understand me?"
Another chitter.
"What are you doing?" Wu said.
"I think it's surrendering," she said. "Anybody have restraints?"
"We're an assault team, not C-Sec," Lurg said.
"Okay." Rizzi stepped to the side, ensuring that all the others had clear lines of fire, and booted up the fabrication module on her omni-tool to create a pair of basic cuffs. She held them up before her as she approached the prisoner, and it stared up at her.
"We should just kill it," one of the krogan said.
"I'm inclined to agree," Marx said.
"It's a prisoner, and it could be useful." Rizzi shook her head. The Collector unclasped its hands, held them out towards her. She reached out and grabbed its right arm, slipping one band of the cuff over its wrist. As she did, the Collector gently placed its free hand over the back of hers.
White, hot pain exploded behind her eyes into radiating starbursts of static. She had the sense of looking through another's eyes, centuries and millennia of pain distilled into moments.
She watched the cycle. Reapers swept across the cosmos, an unstoppable hurricane of galactic extinction. She watched the last of her civilization crumble; tenacious resolve eroded away to despair, and finally to a burning desire for nothing more than dragging as many of the enemy to oblivion before the inevitable end.
She felt the horror of fighting those who'd once been comrades; their minds overwritten by malevolent entities, their bodies twisted by synthetic violations. They fought and killed, until finally it felt like there were more in thrall to the Reapers than those still free.
She remembered the terror of her capture. The crashing assault skiff, the endless waves of enemy soldiers while in the distance one of the Reapers turned towards their position…
The pen, where they'd been kept with less regard than cattle. The prisoners, wills broken, knowing what awaited. And all the while, that abominable whine in her head, like her brain was trying to swell to twice its size, like an itch inside she couldn't reach, couldn't scratch…
Darkness.
Her memories grew hazy, as if looking at a painting through a dirty, fractured window.
The Cycle finished, as it always did, as it always would. Then, into space, the dark reaches beyond the galaxy. Sleep and rest for some. For others, watching, waiting, and tending to myriad needs of machinery over the long, dark eons. And always, under the guidance of fathomless intelligences, the god-machines.
She died.
Yet that wasn't the end. She returned in another body, one grown instead of born, with cybernetics in place of redundant organs. She started another cycle, one of her own. She slept, was awoken, and performed the tasks she was driven to do until her body failed.
Over.
And over.
Until the Cycle began again, and the minds of the god-machines called them to return to the galaxy which had once been her people's. She remembered climbing into the pod to sleep away the journey back from the dark depths.
And then, the song. It was not beautiful, it could not be. Yet it was stronger than the melody of the god-machines, older. It drowned them out, shouted them down. It called upon her to fight, to hate the god-machines. The rage and the hate grew, so strong that it severed her from the god-machines.
So strong, that for the first time since an age that was now nothing but myth and legend long-suppressed elements of herself rose to the surface. So strong, that she knew what had been done to her. And the anger was no longer just because of the aberrant song. The anger stemmed from within.
Her mind finally settled on the most recent memories. The darkness, the smothering confines of the pod. Consciousness, fading in and out. Movement, and her pod opening. Noises. The chatter of younger species. She pushed herself to her knees.
There before her, eight of them, familiar enough in general form, in armor she didn't recognize, aiming what were obviously weapons at her. She extended her arms slowly, contorted them in the gesture of surrender that signified the ones performing it wouldn't draw upon their biotics. One of them, in a hood, stepped towards her and babbled in its strange tongue-
Wait, that wasn't right. Susan's mind tried to process the memories, tried to reconcile herself with the memory of watching her body step towards her, weapon outstretched. She snapped back to her own body, but everything was dark. A single long scream pierced the air; she realized it was her.
Her vision returned as her eyes snapped open. The Collector stared up at her as it released her hand. Her head felt like she'd downed a gallon of ryncol. She staggered back a step, finally managing to stop screaming after-
Impossible. She'd witnessed the death of a galaxy and the intervening fifty thousand years of enslavement in less than a second, according to her HUD clock.
She heard angry shouts and exclamations behind her. Steps and jostling weapons. She spun, fighting the wave of dizziness that ensued. Elijah was rushing towards her, hand reaching for the blade on his back. Marx was moving sidelong, getting clear as she sighted in. The trio of krogan shouted at her to get out of the way while Maiena glowed with biotic power-
"Wait!" Susan threw her arm up. The force of her shout halted all activity in the chamber even as she swayed on her feet. "It's not attacking!"
"What?" Elijah said.
"It's communicating!" Her stomach heaved from the experience of speaking. "It… it was trying to communicate with me. It's okay; don't hurt it."
"It doesn't seem okay." Elijah lunged forward and caught her as she collapsed. "Susan!"
"It's not… its fault. Please."
"Okay." Elijah nodded past her and she turned her head enough to see Maiena securing the cuffs on the unresisting Collector.
The action made Susan's head spin with sudden nausea. She was just able to reach up, disengage her facemask, and drop to her elbows on the floor before violently heaving the contents of her stomach out. She had enough time to be thankful she'd gotten her mask off before she collapsed onto her side and the world went black again.