Thank you for reading! Particular thanks to Oleander's One for her sharp editing eye!
Horizon was empty. Deserted. Except that evidence of life was everywhere—half-eaten food, children's homework lying on desks, projects in the labs still running without their originators there to collect the data. It was as though each and every soul in the colony had simply winked out of existence all at the same time.
But the Collector ship was still here, which meant the Collectors were still here, which meant there might be a chance to save the colonists. Also here, according to the dispatch Shepard had read, was Kaidan Alenko. She tried to put that out of her mind; she couldn't do her job if she was worrying about him, after all, and chances were he was somewhere with the rest of the colony. Save them, she would save him. Or so she told herself.
Mordin had made some upgrades to their armor that should protect them from the Seeker swarms they had seen on the young quarian's vids on the last colony; at least, he said they should. He said a lot of other things, too—he was hard to stop once he got on a roll—but Shepard tuned him out for the moment. Too much else to concentrate on. If Mordin thought the upgrades would work, at least in theory, she'd trust him.
Garrus had apparently been listening to the salarian more intently than she had. "In theory?" he drawled. "How reassuring."
"No test, no certainty. Have to test them in person. Should be exciting."
"Your definition of exciting and mine are not the same," Garrus told him.
Mordin shrugged, no doubt more than used to that attitude.
The Collector ship was above them now. It was huge. How many of the Collectors were there? Shepard thought with a sinking heart. How many colonists were already aboard? Was Kaidan one of them?
In her ear, Joker's urgent voice came to life, surging in and out of clearness. She couldn't make out what he was saying, and eventually turned the volume down, the broken-up voice more a distraction than a comfort.
"Collector ship causing interference," Mordin said.
"Yeah. We're on our own for now," Shepard agreed. It was less than optimal not to have Joker and EDI at her command, but she'd been in this situation before—she'd make do.
The first attack came shortly after that—armored bipeds with guns, mostly, but some husk-like things, too. Just like the geth had used.
"So, hypothesis correct. Collectors working with Reapers." Mordin shook his head. "Very bad."
Shepard agreed, wondering if the Council would believe in the existence of Reapers now. Probably not; probably they'd call it a coincidence and demand still greater proofs.
Well, she'd go get them, then, she thought grimly. "Let's keep moving."
Halfway up a set of stairs, they came on a pair of colonists, a man reaching down to help a woman up. Clearly these were living people, but they were held in stasis. Immovable, unreacting.
"Victim appears conscious, fully aware. Trapped in stasis," Mordin said, walking around the pair and studying them intently. "Fascinating."
"Let's hope we can save them," Shepard said. She reached down and patted the woman's shoulder, hoping she could feel that someone was there to help. Thinking, much as she was trying not to, that somewhere on this colony maybe she would find Kaidan trapped in stasis, not already aboard that enormous ship that hovered above her head.
There were more colonists scattered about now, frozen in the act of running away. The Collectors hadn't taken this group yet. Shepard was going to see to it that they didn't get here at all.
But the Collectors had other ideas—a mass of them was suddenly ahead of her. She and Garrus and Mordin took heavy fire for a bit, under cover, poking their heads out only to take a shot, but at last they took out the Collectors.
Off to the side Shepard had noticed a closed door—the first closed door she'd seen so far on Horizon. She led the others to it, finding it locked. Garrus studied the locking mechanism, fiddled with it for a few seconds, and the door opened. It closed again behind them as soon as they were through, locking itself once again.
A man stepped out from behind some drum barrels. "You … you're human!" he said to Shepard, after an apprehensive glance at her turian and salarian teammates. "What are you doing? You'll lead them right to me!"
"They were coming after you already. It's hard to hide from the Collectors."
"Wait, the Collectors are real? I … I thought they were just rumors, you know, to keep us in Alliance space." He shook his head, trembling. "They—they got Lilith. I saw her go down. They got damn near everybody!"
"Tell me what happened."
"We lost comm signals a few hours ago, so I came down to check on the main grid. While I was in here, I heard screaming. I saw these swarms of … some kind of bugs. Everyone they touched just froze! So I closed the doors, and locked them." He scowled. "It's the Alliance's fault! They sent that Commander Alenko here, built those defense towers. We're only a target because of them!"
Shepard pretended her heart didn't leap at confirmation that Kaidan was here, pretended that Commander Alenko was just another Alliance officer. "Defense towers?"
"Yeah. They're supposed to protect us against enemy ships—only we could never get the targeting system online. So the Alliance gave us a giant gun that can't shoot straight. Typical. Stupid sons of bitches."
"And the Alliance rep? He showed up to build the towers?"
"Most of the way through them gettin' built, yeah. He was supposed to be helpin' us … but he didn't seem to know anything about the towers. I kinda got the feeling he was here for somethin' else. Like maybe he was a spy."
Kaidan a spy? Hard to believe. He was so open. But that didn't mean there wasn't more to his presence here than defense towers. "Can we use the towers against the Collector ship?"
"You'd have to fix the targeting controls, which means goin' back out there."
"Well, I have to do that anyway," Shepard pointed out.
"Better you than me, lady. Head for the main transmitter on the other side of the colony—targeting controls are at the base. I'll be locking these doors behind you."
Shepard nodded, putting the frightened man out of her mind. He would be safe enough in here, and hopefully she could get to those controls in time to save the rest of the colony.
On the way, she and the others managed to get through more Collectors and husks than any three people should have been able to take out. And once they reached the base of the tower Garrus was able to hack the computer and reconnect with the Normandy.
"EDI, can you get the colony's defense towers online?" Shepard asked.
The AI responded affirmatively, but warned that it would take time, and the Collectors would know what she was doing.
"Collectors will respond with force," Mordin pointed out.
"You think?" Shepard snapped. "We got it, EDI—get started!"
The Collectors came in wave after wave, while EDI's maddeningly calm voice kept giving the percentage of completion for the targeting system—percentages that weren't climbing fast enough for Shepard.
"Hurry up, EDI," she muttered under her breath, jamming a new clip into her gun.
At last, just when Shepard thought she and the others couldn't hold out any longer, EDI managed to bring the guns online and start attacking the Collector ship. After a few moments of that treatment, it lifted off the ground and was gone … with a significant number of the colonists still on board.
Shepard felt sick. She had come here to save them, not to lose them to the Collectors. She had failed. She couldn't even allow herself to think that one of those colonists might be Kaidan—what was her potential loss compared with those of the others here today, parents and siblings and children and friends? She had let them down. If it was the last thing she did, she would hunt down the Collectors and try to get these people back.