Chapter Twenty Three
Suicide Mission Part Two
"There's no easy way out,
There's no shortcut home.
There's no easy way out,
Giving in can't be wrong."
"No Easy Way Out" by James Tepper
The assembled strike teams exited the ship and split up after reaching an operational airlock. Kate could tell from Castle's body language that something was bothering him. When he removed his helmet to stow his pressure gear, he wasn't wearing the biotic amp in his ear that had been an ever-present part of his waking life for as long as she'd known him. It didn't take a former homicide detective to realize something was wrong in Denmark.
Kate kept her suspicions to herself and motioned for her husband to take point. They had little time for her misgivings, or Castle's uncharacteristic silence if they wanted to be in position when Tali met her first objective. To paraphrase the protagonist in one of Castle's favorite vid series, it was time to misbehave.
"I'm in the ventilation shaft now," Tali reported nervously. "It's a bit too warm in here for my taste, but I'm moving forward."
"Second squad," Kate stated after acknowledging Tali's report, "status report."
"In position," Garrus replied tersely. "Moving out now, meet you on the other side."
The two teams moved forward, Tali's progress was slightly faster in the vent, but only marginally so. Progress reports came and went until they began to meet first sporadic, then organized resistance and the assault plan hit its first actual snag.
"I'm stuck," Tali reported. "Something is blocking the pipe, looks like a gate of some sort. Possibly to keep solid contaminants out of the primary heat exchanger. Somebody on the outside needs to find a maintenance access panel so I can proceed."
"Understood, Tali," Kate noted. "Second squad, you read that?"
The first thing she heard over the open comm channel was small arms fire.
"We're taking fire here, Captain," Garrus replied, "but we're pushing forward. I'll send Thane ahead to look for it."
Not ten paces further down the corridor, Castle signaled a halt, but before he could explain, he pointed his assault rifle downrange and engaged a squad of approaching Collectors. Kate swiftly followed suit along with Miranda with her sub-machine gun. Before anyone could offer a word of commentary, Grunt barreled past them bellowing with blood rage, firing his shotgun with his right hand and smashing collectors with the war hammer in his left. The hallway got quiet shortly thereafter.
"Second squad moving ahead," Kate heard Garrus report over the comms. "No sign of a control panel."
"Found it," Castle stated into his comm pickup. "Running a bypass."
"Hurry Castle," Tali replied, averting her eyes from the maximum heat threshold warning flashing on her helmet HUD. "It's getting really hot in here."
The station's internal security was every bit as inadequate as Jenny suggested it might be. It only took Castle a little bit of convincing with his omni-tool to hack the console's firmware. Shortly after gaining root access, the barrier blocking Tali's progress lifted away, allowing her to proceed.
"That did it," Tali reported, noting her suit's heat indicator falling back to acceptable, if not optimal levels. "Moving forward."
Not much later, Kate received an "objective reached" message from Garrus on her omni-tool, but when her squad rounded the last corner, she was stopped short by a heavy Collector squad massing at the doors.
"Tali, have you reached the door controls?' Kate whispered over comms.
"Affirmative, Captain," Tali replied.
"Pop the doors on Garrus' side," Kate whispered, "Collectors are massing at my end of the intersection. Garrus, take cover and be ready for company."
"Affirmative, Captain." Garrus replied. "as you humans say, we'll nail the casket shut."
"First squad, weapons free!" Kate ordered.
The words barely out of her mouth before Grunt roared and charged the Collector line, killing six with the first sweep of his war hammer. Castle quickly followed up with his assault rifle. He covered Grunt's six aggressively enough, but if she had harbored any doubt that there was an issue with his biotics, they seemed to have been confirmed by his falling back on standard infantry tactics instead of his more devastating biotic attacks. As soon as they had a moment she and her husband were definitely going to have words.
"Garrus, we've got em by the nose," Kate hissed into her comm pickup, "It's time for you to kick em in the ass!"
Almost immediately in response to her order, the door popped out and slid upward revealing Garrus and his squad who immediately selected targets and opened fire. All but two of the collectors were quickly cut down only to be unceremoniously yanked off their feet sheathed in blue as both Miranda and Jack slammed then into nearby bulkheads to the sickening crunch of crushing bone.
"Nicely done, Garrus," Kate affirmed.
"Do not congratulate Mr. Vakarian just yet, Captain," Jenny cautioned. "A general alert has been declared station wide. Additional units are converging on your location."
"You heard the lady," Kate ordered, "seal these doors behind us and move out. We have to push for the storage facility!"
After a brisk forced march, stopping periodically to manually seal other pressure doors to cut off pursuit, they reached their first objective, the storage area that Jenny had marked as potentially holding their missing crew. After Legion ran a bypass on the doors, they slid open to reveal a cavernous storage bay holding row upon row of stasis pods, connected to the floor and ceiling by power conduits and a network of tubes. The chamber was eerily silent, which did little to calm anyone present.
A brief search showed most of the pods seemed to be empty, but it didn't take long to find the pods they were looking for, near the back of the chamber, clearly the most recent arrivals. Tali and Legion wasted no time and began bypassing the stasis controls. What would normally be a subdued rustling inside the pods seemed much louder in the quiet chamber.
Their efforts had not gone undetected, however as one by one, red lights began to flash on the occupied pods, beginning with the one occupied by Vikram Singh, who's screams echoed off the walls, then fell silent as the caustic substance released into his pod reduced his body to a thick, black paste.
"Get these pods open!" Kate shouted. "Now!"
Everybody dropped what they were doing and began opening pods. They managed to save all but two others from sharing Vikram's fate. Kate was certain she would hear his screams in her dreams for weeks to come.
"Lanie, are you all right?" Kate asked.
"Kate… you came for us." Lanie replied dully.
"Nobody gets left behind," Kate admonished softly.
"Thank the Maker you got here in time," Hastings choked out as she dragged herself unsteadily to her feet. "A few more seconds and… I don't want to even think about it."
"The colonists were… processed, just like he was," Lanie added, doing her best to shake off the cobwebs and the horrors she'd seen. "Those swarms of little robots… melted down their bodies and pumped it out through the tubes in the ceiling."
"Why are they doing this?" Castle asked absently, not even his worst theories seemed to fit the facts. "What would alien machines need with human genetic material?"
"I don't know," Lanie replied, almost as absently, "I'm just glad you guys got here in time… before they did it to us."
"So are we," Miranda agreed, "but we still have a job to do here."
"Ryan, Jenny," Kate asked over her comm pickup, "Can you get a fix on our position?"
"Roger that, Captain," Ryan replied. "According to Jenny, those tubes lead into the main control room two levels up from your location."
"We found the crew," Kate stated, "is the Normandy capable of making a pick-up?"
"Affirmative, Captain," Ryan replied. "we've restored partial main power and thruster control, but the defense grid is still offline, so we'll have to land back from your position."
"Understood, Normandy," Kate replied. "Dust-off for immediate evac, we'll bring the wounded to you."
"Aye, Captain," Ryan replied, "starting the checklist now, e.t.a. fifteen minutes."
Kate stopped a beat to look over the scene while Dr. Solus began to triage the wounded, beginning with Lanie, who proved with gusto the old maxim that doctors make the worst patients before snatching one of his spare med-kits and getting to work herself. Her arched eyebrow and death glare practically dared him to comment, his only response being the salarian version of a shrug. He turned in the opposite direction and put as much distance between them as his triage work would allow.
While the two doctors sorted out their division of labor, Kate dragged Rick aside, far enough away for some privacy.
"Castle, give me one good reason why I shouldn't send you back with the wounded." She hissed quietly.
"While we were on the Serenity, I received a recall notice on my biotic implant." Castle replied, "I've complied with the recommendations from the notice, removed my amp and avoided using my biotics. Other than that, I am fit to fight. As your X.O. my recommendation is to send back only the people who are necessary to treat the crew and/or repair the ship. That means Tali, Legion, Dr. Solus and possibly Thane to screen them. You're gonna need every other hand on the ready line, including me."
Kate nodded tersely, unable to refute his logic. Garrus and Castle were her most experienced squad leaders, and as much as she wanted to send him back anyway, she couldn't spare him. When they returned, it was obvious that Lanie and Mordin had finished their triage and managed not to kill each other as they compared notes.
"Everyone here is mobile," Lanie noted with only the barest hint of her usual snark as she nodded toward Spartan and his commandos who were scavenging weapons from dead collectors and a nearby weapons locker.
"Though Master Chief Spartan insists otherwise, neither him, nor his troopers are fit to fight. Dr. Cold Hands here and I do agree on one thing, though. We need to get them all back to the Normandy for medical treatment immediately. I'll prioritize the engineering staff and clear anyone else for emergency duty on a case by case basis."
Mordin opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish, but opted not to belabor the point and simply nodded in agreement.
"Tali," Castle bellowed, "you have the detail, get the wounded to the rendezvous point. Legion, Thane, you two have security. Get em up and move em out!"
As the crew rose unsteadily to make the slow march back to the ship, Kate snagged Tali by the arm.
"You and Legion get those repairs done ASAP," Kate stated sharply, "We may need to get the hell out of here quick and in a hurry."
"Aye, Captain," Tali whispered back. "Normandy will answer if I have to get out and push."
After the last of them filed out of sight around the corner to return to the ship, Kate got back down to business.
"Okay boys and girls, we have our target," Kate commanded, "Garrus, you have point, let's get it done and bug the hell out."
A short time later
Though no one wanted to admit it out loud, the lack of opposition as they moved toward the next objective had them all concerned. The station was massive and even allowing for full scale automation there should still be a lot of Collectors on board, but thus far, nothing. The idea that they might just vent the entire compartment into space, occurred to Castle, but he kept that thought to himself.
They turned another corner and found themselves looking at a mobile platform terminal beyond which there seemed to be nothing but a yawning chasm of open space.
"Dry-dock facility maybe?" Castle muttered, not realizing he'd spoken the thought out loud.
"Those collector ships had to come from somewhere," Kate offered, completing the thought, drawing quiet groans and eye-rolls from everyone else. Their shared brain thing still weirded everyone out.
"Jenny," Castle inquired into his mic, "Have Dr. Parish and the rest of the crew arrived yet?"
"Affirmative, Commander." Jenny replied, "Tali and Legion diverted to engineering as soon as they boarded. I have dispatched damage control parties to repair critical systems as quickly as Dr. Parish cleared them for duty. Since you last reported in, I have regained eighty-five percent of internal and external sensors. The secondary fusion plant is back online and operating at seventy five percent efficiency. The Tantalus drive core should be restored to nominal status within the hour."
"Understood, Jenny," Kate noted. "Now let's make it count. Where to next?"
"The transport platforms at your location should take you to the station's main control room," Jenny replied. "External sensors are reading a massive element zero power source at its center. If their layout is consistent with collector technology there should be fusion plant in operation nearby. If you plant explosives at key locations there, the resulting explosion should cause a reactor containment breach which will collapse the mass effect field canceling out the gravitational forces in this region of space. The extreme gravimetric shear will tear the station apart."
"I guess we have our target then," Kate noted.
"There is a further complication to your objective." Jenny noted. "A large concentration of Collectors is converging on your location. It will only be a matter of time before they break through."
"Understood, Jenny," Kate replied, "keep us posted."
Kate stepped up on one of the platforms, then turned to cast her gaze over the assembled strike team.
"Castle, Miranda, with me." She commanded, and the two of them stepped onto the platform with her.
"A rear guard could defend this position and keep the Collectors from overwhelming us while we set the charges. The Collectors and their masters, the Reapers, aren't just a threat to humanity, they're a threat to all sentient life. We've come a long way, but it all comes down to this moment. We win or lose it all right here. Show the galaxy what you're made of. Let's finish this!"
As the transport pod lifted away from the deck, the last thing Kate saw was Garrus motioning the crew into defensive positions. She couldn't help but wonder how many of them would be alive when they returned.
Twenty Minutes Later
When the Transport pod reached its destination, they were met with a long passageway lined with multiple tubes feeding the black viscous fluid that the colonists had been rendered down to. Though he kept constant pace with Kate as they cautiously moved forward, each step closer to the doors at the other end seemed to have an increasingly negative effect on Castle. She rarely ever saw him this quiet.
"The tubes are feeding into some sort of superstructure," Jenny supplied over the comms. "It is emitting both organic and non-organic energy signatures. Given these readings, it must be massive."
Castle barely acknowledged outwardly that Jenny had spoken, though Kate was perfectly aware that his suit comm was active, she could hear his uneasy breathing in her headset. The one time she dared look back at him, his eyes seemed dead, focused on something a thousand miles away that only he could see. Not for the first time she regretted her decision not to send him back to the Normandy.
This nameless charnal house of a station in the darkest corner of the Milky Way had been the final destination of the Protheans and countless species before them. The echoes of trillions of beings suddenly crying out in terror, then just as suddenly silenced over and over again for untold millennia had become a horrifying white noise since they left the pod storage bay.
Though Castle had learned to tune out the voices of long-dead people over the last two years, so many voices overlapping at once had nearly drowned him and then... nothing. As suddenly as the waves of voices had crashed over him, the corridor had suddenly become as cold and sterile as a morgue.
The deafening silence left in their place only increased his sense of dread as the doors parted at their approach.
"Captain Beckett," Jenny noted, "if my calculations are correct, the superstructure is... a reaper."
All three of them were stopped dead in their tracks by what seemed to be a cross between a dry-dock and a birthing creche supporting the basic skeletal structure of a Sovereign class reaper, the tail section incomplete, but with what appeared to be a human shaped head and shoulders where the cuttlefish shaped arms would be.
"Not just any reaper," Castle replied, the first time he'd said a word since they boarded the transport platform. "This is a human reaper."
"Precisely," Jenny replied. "It appears that the Collectors have processed tens of thousands of humans. Given its unfinished appearance, significantly more will be required to complete this one."
"What do the Collectors hope to gain by turning human beings into this... reaper shell?" Miranda muttered, barely realizing she'd spoken out loud.
"They may be facilitating the reaper equivalent of reproduction," Jenny replied. "Or the organic DNA may serve an additional, unknown purpose. It is clear that the Collectors are merely pawns. The technology to build a reaper could not be their own. From what little data I do have, I can extrapolate the possibility that different species are used to construct each reaper. In this case, the Collectors are providing that labor."
"If that's the case," Kate asked, "why are their so many Protheans left to serve as a Collector workforce now?"
"The Protheans were subdued long ago," Castle replied dully, parroting one of the few voices who's language he'd been able to process. " They could not stop the harvest, but not enough material remained. The remaining units were repurposed."
No matter how many times Kate heard him do it, hearing her husband speak in another person's voice still chilled her to the bone.
"Commander Castle is correct," Jenny noted. "over time the Reapers adapted the Protheans to suit their needs. Turned them into little more than tools."
"But why build it to look human?" Kate asked.
"Reapers are sapient constructs," Jenny replied, "a hybrid of organic and inorganic material. Though the exact construction methods are unclear, each reaper's form would appear to be based upon the species used to create it."
"How many more humans do you think it would take to finish this one?" Miranda asked once she found her voice. Though she had been a Cerberus true believer for years, she was beginning to have her doubts in the face of such overwhelming evidence of human insignificance.
"This reaper is in the very early stages of development, an embryo in human terms," Jenny replied after a brief pause to parse data. "Given the available census data from the colonies harvested to date and using Sovereign as a baseline for comparison, I would calculate the number of humans needed to be in the billions, perhaps more."
"So it's not alive yet?" Kate asked. "Is there some way we can keep this one from coming online?"
Sovereign had destroyed the Citadel Fleet and most of the Fifth Fleet at the Battle of the Citadel. Both of which were still rebuilding nearly three years later. Kate knew that even without the bullshit the council had fed everyone, a fully operational Sovereign Class reaper would burn through the Citadel's meager defenses and open the gate to dark space before any sort of meaningful defense could be raised. It needed to be stopped here and now.
"The process can be stopped," Jenny replied, "but it is unclear how much it has developed. I cannot, for example, tell you if it is aware of its surroundings."
"This thing is an abomination," Kate stated harshly. "How do we destroy it?"
"The large tubes feeding into the construct are a structural weak point," "Jenny noted. "destroying them should cause the support framework to collapse under the proto-reaper's mass."
Castle straightened up and began to show some of his usual swagger as he collapsed his rifle and stowed it, then selected the cobra missile launcher to unfold into his waiting hand.
"Four collapsed structural supports coming up," he quipped before locking each of the four guided rockets onto the feeding tubes. When he had tone he pulled the trigger. Four rockets streaked upward and engaged their targets, detonating with a muffled rumble, followed by the shriek of tortured metal.
Kate smiled broadly, but she could see the hollow look in his eyes behind his swagger. She could tell it was an act, but he was clearly trying.
It didn't take long for her smile, and Castle's swagger to disappear however when a massive clawed hand gripped the edge of the deck followed by another as the massive embryonic reaper heaved its bulk back into view. The three of them scrambled for cover just before an incomplete version of the reaper's primary weapon opened fire.
"The eyes," Castle shouted, rolling to avoid another shot as he switched the selector from sabot to high explosive anti-tank to reload the launcher. "They target right before it fires!"
Kate and Miranda popped up to supply covering fire. Each of them aiming for an eye on the proto-reaper's human shaped skull. Their accurate fire quickly produced results as one eye, then the other exploded outward.
"Castle!" Kate shouted. "Now!"
Castle popped out of cover, waited for the tone and fired. Each rocket slammed into an eye socket, buried themselves into the reaper's skull and exploded. He lowered his aim, targeted a secondary explosion lower down the torso and fired the last two rockets.
Everybody ducked for cover as a series of explosions wracked the reaper and it fell backward toward the chasm. One clawed hand ripped through the platform Kate was hiding behind, tipping it wildly and it began to tumble, taking her with it.
Kate scrambled to get a grip on the falling platform, but her fingers couldn't find purchase as she slid inexorably toward the yawning empty void below.
Time seemed to slow for Richard Castle as his hand drifted to the belt pouch where his biotic amp was stowed. Without a second thought he attached it to his ear.
"No, Castle don't..." Kate choked out as she saw her husband's form shimmer in blue just before he burst forward. He grabbed the back strap of Kate's combat harness, turned and charged back to the safety of the platform dock. The ticking time bomb in his head all but forgotten.
Castle put his amp back away, turning away to avoid Kate's death glare. There wasn't time for them to hash that out, however as they still had a mission to complete.
"Beckett, to Garrus," Kate snapped into the comms, she would deal with her husband's self destructive behavior later. "situation report."
"We've got them pinned so far, Captain," Garrus replied, Kate could hear the sound of gunfire in the background, "but they keep coming, we cant hold them much longer."
"Understood," Kate replied, signaling Miranda and Castle to begin setting up the demolition charges. "Fall back to the Normandy, it's time to blow this taco stand."
"We've cleared a landing zone back from Garrus' position," Ryan reported. "Chief Spartan and his commandos are setting up a perimeter until they arrive."
"Understood, Normandy," Kate replied. "Setting the charges now, be ready to haul ass ASAP."
Kate turned and visually confirmed that her husband had indeed found the coolant system access ports for the fusion reactor and the element zero cores and was hard at work setting demolition charges.
"Captain," Ryan stated, "I have an incoming transmission from the Illusive Man over the quantum entanglement system. Jenny is patching it through to Miranda's omni-tool."
Miranda stepped closer and patched in the signal from the Normandy.
"Captain Beckett, you have done the impossible." he stated without preamble.
"I didn't do it alone," Kate replied. "I had a good crew, some of them gave their lives for this mission."
"I know." Wood replied, "their sacrifice will not be forgotten. Your performance exceeded even my expectations by securing the Collector Base. I'm looking at the schematics Jenny uploaded. A timed radiation pulse from their fusion reactor would kill any remaining Collectors, but leave their machinery and technology intact, this is our chance. They were building a reaper, that knowledge of their inner workings and their technology could give us a fighting chance."
"They killed people, liquefied them and turned them into something terrible," Kate replied as she handed Rick the demo charges from her own belt pack. "This place is an abomination and I'm sending it straight to hell."
"Don't be shortsighted," Wood shot back, "Our best chance against the Reapers is to turn their own technology against them."
"You didn't speak to Sovereign, I did," Kate rebuffed. "Using their technology is how the galaxy got into this mess. It's what doomed the Protheans and countless species before them."
"Ignoring this opportunity would be a betrayal of every life they've taken." Wood reiterated. "They were working through the Collectors, there's no telling what sort of information is buried in their computer banks. This base is a gift, we can't just destroy it."
"You ruthless bastard," Kate snapped, her patience completely gone, "what are you gonna do next? Build your own reaper?"
"You died fighting for what you believed in," Wood shot back, "I brought you back so you could keep fighting, but if you won't make the smart play, I'll work around you. Miranda, do not let Captain Beckett destroy this base!"
"Or what?" Miranda replied, "you'll replace me next?"
This was clearly not the response that either Kate or Mason Wood expected.
"I gave you a direct order, Miranda." Wood replied angrily.
"I noticed," Miranda shot back. "Consider this my resignation, effective immediately."
Before he could utter another word, Miranda cut the channel and handed Castle her own explosive charges to finish the job. Castle wired in the charges to the detonator, checked his work and closed the two access panels.
"Once I pull the trigger on these, we have ten minutes, then boom," Castle stated. "Five minutes after that, the fusion and eezo reactors breach, then big, bada boom. We won't want to be anywhere near here when that happens."
"Saddle up people, we are leaving." Kate commanded, "Castle as soon as we get off the platform on the other side, drop the hammer."
Castle nodded and they boarded the transport platform. No sooner had they reached their destination Ryan was on comms.
"Captain, all other squads but yours are aboard," he reported, "Collectors are closing on the landing zone, you need to get here fast or we'll be overrun."
"Understood, Normandy," Kate replied. "Castle, hit the timer and lets move"
"Clock is ticking," Castle replied after tapping the detonation code into this omni-tool.
"Captain, there are collectors massing near your location," Jenny noted. "They appear to be heavily armed."
"Here they come," Castle interjected, opening up with his assault rifle.
"Suppressing fire!" Kate commanded, waving Castle and Miranda through the bulkhead, "Fall back to the L-Z!"
They rounded the corner at a run, Stopping only to turn and fire. As they approached, the ramp to the landing bay lowered. As they neared the ship, they didn't see the bridge airlock swing open. Ryan stepped through, sniper rifle in hand. He snapped on the tether to the inner lock, knelt painfully and took aim at the Collectors.
"The righteous stand before the darkness," he muttered, not realizing he was speaking out loud, "and the maker shall guide their hand."
His rifle spoke twice, the rounds whizzed within an inch of Kate's left shoulder and the collector nearest her toppled over, its head exploded. Three more dropped under the muzzle of his sniper rifle, all head shots before Hastings appeared behind him and dragged him back inside.
Kate slapped the override and the ramp closed.
"CIC, we're clear, five minutes " she barked into the pickup, "hit it!"
Normandy lifted, retracted her landing struts and pulled away under small arms fire from the Collectors.
Kate burst from the emergency stairs.
"Demolition charges have detonated," Jenny noted, "Four minutes fifty nine seconds minutes to fusion core breach."
"Ahead flank," Kate ordered.
"We are in the pipe, relay spinning up," Ryan reported, "three minutes to jump point... two.. one, Jump!"
Thirty seconds after the Normandy was slung back toward the Omega Four relay, the null-g zone around the collector base disappeared. Seconds later, the gravitational forces in the galactic core tore the station apart.
Author's note: Yes I'm still alive. I know it's been a while.