A/N: At very nearly 20k words, this one is a monster. In ME2 Horizon was important, but left me somewhat less than impressed by the Collectors. I hope to rectify that.

As usual, a giant thanks to the Editing Gang for their efforts, corrections, clarifications and fixes. They deserve more credit than I do.

MonkeyEpoxy, the conclusion of this chapter can be laid at your feet.


'I've often found that the various clowns who threaten the security of the galaxy hold unrealistically high opinions of themselves and their so-called plans. When these are foiled, most have a tendency to throw a temper tantrum... but a few, the dangerous ones, take it as the keening of a vakar and get serious. I hate it when they get serious.'

-Saren Arterius, 'Dying for the Cause'


Yashana Jackson stared out the thick armaglass windows at the carnage beneath the central colony tower, eyes wide and hands wrapped tightly around her daughter. She was one of a tiny handful of asari who'd chosen Horizon to live on. She'd made the decision when only a young maiden to leave the endless drudgery of water refining on Praxos in pursuit of a more exciting life – and it had seemed so easy, for a life of adventure and fun. And she'd found that and more – a fulfilling job, a human mate, and a child.

For all of the fun and satisfaction she'd experienced, though, she now wished she'd listened to the rumors and left for the Systems Alliance proper. Sure, getting in would have been a pain, but they would have been safe – instead of having to face the nightmare now upon her small family.

Her bondmate, a captain of the militia, was out there fighting, possibly dying against these horrible things that had come boiling out of the sky. And it was clear that the forces attempting to protect Horizon were losing. Yashana was not sure what was going on in space – flashes of terrible light cracked across the sky, and twice now bits and pieces of clearly human ships and wreckage had come tumbling down in fiery trails to smash against the ground.

On the ground, things were worse.

The ranks of the enemy seemed endless, hordes of shambling, defiled corpses goaded on by flying monsters with weapons unlike anything she'd ever seen. The small tank group of the Horizon Militia had gone out and been blown to bits - by single hits from the rifles of the flying ones. The first time it had happened, the militia had watched frozen in disbelieving horror, and the tanks that tried to counter-fire were blasted apart by more greenish blasts.

As dreadful as the flying things were, the corpse-soldiers were even worse. The zombie-like things took multiple shots to kill. More than once she'd turned away from horrible scenes of militiamen borne down under a rush of monstrosities and torn to pieces, limbs and blood flung around in unthinking savagery.

Even the Blue Suns could not drive the enemy back, although the heavy weapons and battle-suits had at least slowed the advance of the enemy. But those suits were all destroyed now, piles of burning wreckage, and the heavy weapons teams had been forced to fall back. All that held the enemy back now were the heavy defense turrets upon the colony tower, firing in long streams, barrels glowing red hot under the strain of such constant fire.

The sky was defiled by vast clouds of swarming things, like giant bugs the size of a fist. Tens of thousands of colonists, unable to make it to a shelter in time, had been caught by the swarms and somehow paralyzed. The colonists were immobilized where they stood, some crashing to the ground in mid-step. The city itself was in ruins, from where the bug-creatures had fired directly into it as they landed.

The mossy ground cover of the hills beyond was blackened with fire, as the Blue Suns force fell back in shaky echelons toward the city proper. On the horizon she saw a huge and towering column of smoke from the direction of That Place, the next closest city. Tucked up against a mountain, most people had felt it was safer than Crash Landing in terms of being attacked.

The enormous pillar of smoke that rose into the sky put an end to that notion once and for all. Light but persistent tremors could be felt under their feet for more than an hour now - the aftershocks of orbital bombardment. Hope was dying. She could feel it in the frightened motion and troubled whispers of the other horrified spectators beside her.

She glanced behind her, at the tightly packed crowd crammed into the tower. No one knew what was going on. The Horizon Chamber of Control was burning brightly in the distance, and the local communications network had been severed. Every computer was corrupted with some kind of VI-driven malware that was trying to kill the environmental support systems – the frantic motions of a team of Blue Suns engineers and a few civilian data engineers the only thing keeping them running.

The tower's kinetic barrier shuddered as more incoming fire slammed into it. More of the bugs crashed against it in seeming fury to get at the defenseless people inside. A thin line of battered, bloodied SA Marines, militiamen, and Blue Suns held the entry portal, shielded by a weakly glowing blue barrier.

Her daughter, Sania, clutched her mother's torso more tightly, turning away from the images she could barely understand, and Yashana felt helpless tears slip from her eyes. She glanced around a second time, seeing human mothers clutching their own children, helpless males holding weapons with grim, beaten expressions, and felt herself despair.

Suddenly, one of the militiamen standing at the far window overlooking the city proper gasped. "Holy shit!"

She arched her neck to see what was happening, only to see a gleaming ship of hard black and bright, shining gold burst through the heavy cloud cover, searing beams of energy lancing out, carving into the lines of the bug-creatures nearing the tower. The misshapen things gave screams of agony audible even from inside the tower as they were blasted apart, and tumbling figures erupted from the ship, falling below to land heavily on the terrain. These shapes unfolded into war robots, clutching heavy weapons and firing back at the invading bugs. Dozens of the vile creatures fell to the ground, torn apart by explosions, plasma and heavy slugs.

The figures in insectile armor shot back, blasting several of the robots to the ground only for the automatons to rise once more, with an almost dreadful slowness, as if the powerful weapons that had hit them were nothing more than inconveniences. The corpse-like creatures rushed them in a vast wave that simply came apart when a group of the robots leveled fully automatic, cyclical assault cannons and began laying down torrential streams of explosive shells, parting the things like a scythe through a wheat field.

More of the black ships tore across the sky, even as one of the strange enemy vessels on the ground began rising into the air to meet them. A lance of golden fire erupted from one of the cylindrical ships, slamming into a low-flying black ship and scoring the hull deeply seconds before the entire frigate exploded, crashing to the ground in fragments. Even as it did so, however, two more ships opened fire with sprays of missiles and powerful guns, sending detonations racing through the enemy ship and forcing it to fall back.

Words began to percolate through the crowd, as more ships descended, one of them instantly recognizable from the footage from Omega, emblazoned with a name that once before had represented home and vengeance.

Normandy.

O-TWCD-O

Lieutenant Tyrone Cole cursed as another one of his Marines went down to a flash of green energy, the blast coring the man's chest and blasting a hole clean through the tower's heavy steel walls behind him. He fired back with his heavy Crossfire rifle, the burst stitching a neat row of holes into the Collector that had fired, and it fell to the ground, but two more calmly walked forward, firing as they came.

The 'simple mission' to help prepare Horizon had turned into a hellscape.

Cole had been in charge of half of the Kazan's Marine complement, sent down to reinforce the militia and help train them to do more than hold rifles and wear pretty uniforms. Williams had been placed in charge of the other half, dealing with some of the more experienced milita. The colonists were standoffish at times, but they learned quick and paid close attention to the training.

Cole had his own opinions on the need for wildcat colonies, but he was forced to admit the people of Horizon were tough bastards. None of them quit the drills and training and most of them would stack up decently against a B-rate Marine in a fight. Things had been going well.

Until now.

When the comms call came in from Captain Delacor warning of an attack, he'd gathered up half his men and headed at top speed for his assigned defense location, one of the GTS Defense Command Towers, and instructed the other half to help get people into the shelter. He got fragmented comms from the fight in orbit, and it didn't sound like they'd have much time.

Twice the Collectors had fired from space down onto the planet, incinerating a pair of cities with their weapons. Why they did so when earlier strikes had been almost surgically devoid of clear evidence of violence was unknown - Cole wasn't paid to theorize.

Then again, it wasn't hard to figure out either. The bugs were leaving a message.

He'd set up his force in-depth defense around the GTS tower - what few snipers he had towards the back, riflemen in ranks around the front, shotgunners near the low cover available further out. The towers themselves were simple - a laser-link system hardwired to a targeting VI and sensor array - but the tower was heavily armored and boasted its own defensive turrets, meter-thick cover walls curving around the entrance and a dedicated comm network powerful enough to at least allow for local comms.

His men weren't alone. A handful of militia were already at the tower, and more trickled in as the shelters filled up. Some Blue Suns had joined in along the way as well, forming up with them just as the Collectors landed. Without anyone else giving orders both groups had deferred to him, which surprised him, but he wasted no time in adding them to his defense line.

The presence of the asari among the Blue Suns proved to be a saving grace, as clouds of fist-size bugs came from the sky, buzzing wildly and flitting over everyone they could get to. Anything they stung was hit by a green flare of light and then locked into stasis. Three of Cole's Marines, slowed by something in the city, were caught in the open and frozen in mid-step, along with thousands of panicking colonists still not able to get to the shelters.

The Suns mercenaries, mostly asari, had put up a huge biotic bubble of some kind around the forces defending the tower, which kept the freezing insects away from them. That tied up six asari, who knelt in the doorway of the tower, guarded by their mercenary sisters. His own mission was equally clear - keep the bugs away from the Tower and hope the guns could blow the Collectors out of the sky.

The GTS trucks nearby had ripple-fired off their payloads quickly, the volus manning them being panicked by the attack. It had done some damage, but had also drawn attention to them, and a thick band of enemy soldiers, brown and insectile-looking, had rapidly approached the city.

The militia had sent out their tank unit - a pack of up-armored GRIZLI's and a pair of old FCW-era Merkava tanks redone with modern weaponry. They were hardly top of the line models - the tanks were over half a century old at this point - but they should have been able to crush infantry easily.

Except the Collectors weren't normal infantry. They'd taken to the air, dodging the heavy blasts from the armor units, and opened up with their rifles. The tanks and APCs had been blown to pieces in short order, and the Blue Suns heavy battle-suits sent in to support the tank strike hadn't fared much better.

The Collectors led the assault with a bunch of what looked like to Cole's untrained eyes, goddamned zombies. Shambolic fuckups, wearing worn-out clothing over pasty-gray and dessicated skin, with sunken eyeholes filled with blue light. They ran fast and a single burst from the Avenger rifles some of his marine's had wasn't enough to put one down.

Cole had ordered short, targeted bursts to the legs and the use of grenades, while the Suns had opened up with Spear of Athame plasma rifles that hit a lot harder than his weapons. For a short while, they'd dropped dozens upon dozens of the zombies, but were eventually swarmed, the things closing in to grapple, electrocute, and choke their victims.

The Crossfire was always poor at melee-range fighting. Luckily, Cole's father had always drilled him to carry a shotgun at all times, and he'd done the same to his Marines. Even so, with Collectors flitting about blowing people in half, and the lines being borne under a tide of gray things, he figured his time was about up.

He put his shotgun into the face of one of the zombie-things, blowing its head clean off and killing two more behind it, before four of them leap-tackled him, crackling with electricity. His armor smoked and he screamed as they knocked him down, although he managed to fling one off through sheer hysterical strength.

Ice-cold fingers wrapped around the armor at his throat, squeezing hard enough the metal began to deform. In his flickering vision he saw men go down, screaming - some fell back in terror, the Blue Suns mercs already running.

A flash of red and black crossed his vision and the corpse-thing atop him was flung away. A stream of fire erupted, setting several more ablaze, thrashing about crazily and scattering. Cole sat up gingerly, reaching for his weapon as he stared at the grim features of Commissar Jiong, neural mace in one hand and flamer in the other.

A pair of Collectors rushed in, firing, but Jiong simply sidestepped out of the way with blinding speed, dropping his flamer to pull out his oversized Zeus III heavy pistol, which roared twice as he fired. The Collector to Cole's left shrieked and fell from the sky clutching its shattered face, and the other one dove, a long and lethal looking chitinous spike on the end of its weapon slashing at the Commissar.

Jiong smoothly parried the heavy blow, and then brought his mace down in a split-second strike, crushing the creature's skull, sending it to the ground in a crumpled heap. A second later and biotic fire wreathed it, making it thrash about before Jiong put three more shots into it.

He turned to the frightened handful of militiamen, remaining Marines, and Blue Suns mercs, his expression hard, greatcoat torn and bloodied, and his voice was like iron.

"These things are not demons or gods. They are not invincible. They can be hurt, they can bleed, they can die. You are the only defense the innocent people inside the city have - the only thing stopping these monsters from turning off the defenses and slaughtering these helpless families, burning their homes."

One of the Blue Suns mercs, a grimacing salarian, shook his head in despair. "They're too powerful!"

Jiong snorted. "They are no such thing." Even as he spoke, black and gold ships swung down from above, launching missiles as they came, incinerating a band of Collectors headed toward the city proper. "...You see? They burn. They scream. They are not invincible."

He swapped the heat sink on his pistol and set himself into cover. "There is no retreat - for there is nowhere to run and be safe. It may be we are all to die. But you are able to choose the manner in which you do so. If you are to die, then at least die on your feet. Die with a weapon in your hands, die with vengeance and defiance on your lips."

He glanced back, looking at the one turian among the Blue Suns. "Die for a cause."

The turian grunted thoughtfully, and nodded. "But how do we fight them if a single shot will kill us?"

Cole snorted. "Stay low, stay mobile. Don't get hit. Try to catch the bastards in a crossfire when you can." He glanced at his own Marines. "Vhael, Smith, Cordoba - there's a Typhoon in a kit on the far side of the tower. Let's get it set up and dig in. Perkins, see if you can't hack your drop kit to project a heavier kinetic barrier." He took a deep breath. "Eyes downrange, fingers on the triggers, and we'll all go home when this is over."

Jiong smiled thinly as the soldiers grimly began to dig in, even as more hordes of husks appeared on the horizon. He picked up his flamer, checking the fuel level before holstering his pistol and taking it in both hands. His mind was troubled.

Husks meant the Reapers were involved. He'd not thought much on that issue, even after seeing them on the video from Freedom's Progress. But now, staring at the broken corpses scattered about on the ground, the ugly reality of it all hit him.

As he watched another one of the Butcher's ships drop a heavy tank off to the ground, he only hoped this Butcher could live up to her reputation and namesake, or, despite his brave words, there would be no triumphant ending to this day.

O-TWCD-O

The inside of the HAMRHEAD tank was cramped, which was, in part, by design of the SA, who envisioned it as a dedicated armored fighting vehicle, not a transport. In the heavy armor Shepard wore, it was almost too tight to fit, but she'd made it.

Now as the ship soared toward the drop-off, she gave one final go-over of the plan in her head – such as it was. They'd only had the time it took to leave her base of operations and transit here to plan, but Shepard had already decided some of how to react to any Collector invasion.

Her primary concerns were keeping her people physically safe, gathering Collector information, and not letting the cat out of the bag about her - and now Garrus's - true identities, and to a lesser degree the rest of her people. She'd instructed her Marines to use only shortened forms of their first names on the comm-link, and discovered Garrus's team already had nicknames they used to keep comms security.

Grunt's identity was secure, and she decided to amuse herself by referring to Zaeed as 'old man'.

Vigil's ships had lead the charge into the system, driving back the Collectors where they could. They'd arrived too late to save most of her former Battle Group, however. The Kazan was a burning wreck, but still fighting hard, although the portside battery was destroyed and it was missing an engine. Two destroyers were barely moving, one mostly undamaged except for the engines, while the other had lost all life support but was still putting up steady fire. The battle group's frigates were all destroyed. If Delacor had deployed the Kazan's small fighter wing, they were almost certainly shot out of the sky by the swarms of spherical drones buzzing through space.

The Collectors had not won without a cost, though. Hundreds of drone wrecks littered space. The large, cylindrical cruiser was smoking in multiple places, huge glowing craters blasted clean through the hull in several locations. One of the longer ships, which Vigil identified as a drone carrier, was totally wrecked and burning from stem to stern, and several other smaller ships had been destroyed.

Vigil surmised the Collectors only had a tiny handful of the muon-packet missiles that had so cleanly taken out one of the Butcher's frigates, and had been choosing to use more normal weapons against Delacor. Why they lacked larger amounts of such weapons was something they'd think on later, but it was clear they had not expected her fleet to show up.

Landing on the planet and stopping the Collectors there... that would be trickier.

The first problem, dealing with the stasis-inducing swarm drones, was the most concerning to her. Mordin Solus, working with Vigil, had created a signal that Vigil claimed would confuse and misdirect the swarm creatures that inflicted stasis on humans and also prevent them from attacking the alien members of the team. It relied on spoofing old Prothean pheromonal commands based on Vigil's understanding of how the Protheans controlled the devices.

But there had been no chance to test its effectiveness – they had no samples of the current version being used. While Solus was certain it would protect non-humans when paired with pulse disruption devices, for humans the results were still hypothetical.

Thus, Shepard had decided to play it safe. Given her own biotics and the fact she was a lot stronger and faster than any other human, she planned to drop to the ground in the hovertank, which would also be manned by Angel and Sergeant Ownby. She would exit the tank and see if the countermeasures worked before allowing the rest of her force to drop.

If it didn't, she could always defend herself with a biotic field - a barrier, maybe a wall. Although the length of time she could keep it up was not a sure thing, it would certainly last long enough for her to get back to the tank. The HAMRHEAD's sealed environmental cabin would protect Angel and Ownby from any of the bugs.

The second and more pressing problem was the horde of enemies they had to fight. Early scans by Vigil's ships fighting the Collectors showed several enemy types - thousands of husks, a large number of Collectors, and a small handful of fucked up looking things they had no clear ID on. Some were almost nine feet tall, misshapen and lumbering humanoids that looked like a pile of husks fused together and slapped into armor. Others were crawling things that were like giant centipedes with weapons systems implanted across their backs.

They knew that the husks could stun humans with electrical charges, and the Collector weapons - particle beams - made a mockery out of both kinetic barriers and armor. But what other tricks the Collectors might have was unknown, which made her nervous. Vigil had dropped over five hundred war robots into the mess below, just before the Normandy had hit the mass relay along with her support ships - so far, the only nasty tricks they'd learned about was that all Collectors could fly, and that they could laugh off small arms fire from lesser weapons like Avengers and most pistols and light rifles.

She hoped that was the only surprise they had in store for her team.

She tapped her omni-tool as the Normandy screamed past the naval action toward the planet's surface. "All teams, this is Butcher. From here on out maintain strict radio discipline. Once we hit the planet's surface, don't use my name or Garrus's - use Butcher and Archangel if you must. Everyone else - abbreviated first names only. I doubt any Alliance people will be listening, but it's not the time to be sloppy."

She took a breath. "As for the Collectors, you all heard Vigil's briefing. Once we get on the ground, shut off the VI routine on your weapons. Don't trust your comms - Vigil isn't sure if they can crack it or not - and kill your suit VI, the Collectors can, and will, hack it. Makes deploying medi-gel a pain, but it's better than your shit blowing up around you."

"We're dropping near Crash Landing, the capital. Vigil says two other cities have been overrun and a third totally destroyed, so there's no point trying to rescue them. We hit hard enough to drive the Collectors back, and then link up with Delacor's people on the ground, if he has any, to secure the GTS sites."

She took a deep breath. "Miranda's team is medical support, but their primary goal is samples – Collector corpses, samples of the Servility Devices, and if possible Collector weapons and armor systems. Our overall goal is to try to drive the Collectors back, not save people – as cold as that sounds, we don't have the lift or capacity to evacuate people from Horizon, and even if we did we could only save a few hundred at best. I'm banking that if we can cripple the remaining ships and kill their ground forces, they'll draw back and cut their losses."

She held on tightly as the Normandy began slicing through atmosphere. "I'm leading Team One – Grunt, Zaeed, the tank guys here with me, and the DACT. Garrus, you're leading Team Two – Mierin, Sidonis, Tali, Kiala, Jack, and Dost. Taylor, you're BDO for the Normandy boys as Team Three. Miranda is Team Four."

She paused. "Team One lands first, and I'll test out the field Mordin came up with. If it doesn't work, then we'll modify the teams. If it does, we're a go for what we already planned. Team One will punch through the main body of the Collector lines to reinforce the secondary GTS control station. Team Two will flank and cover Team Four, and provide heavy support – biotics, drones, sniping – while making their way toward the primary GTS station. Team Three will augment the main defensive line at the colony tower. Team Four will cover the east side near the primary GTS control tower, where it looks like the most Collectors have already fallen and some people have been put in some kind of caskets."

The Normandy bucked and she slapped her helmet controls. "With the exception of the DACT, we're going in shuttles so we can clear out in a hurry if things go bad. They've shifted all GTS controls to those last two comm centers, so if the Collectors take them out then things will go to hell. Don't let that happen."

"Senior Chief Vega? Get the show on the road, Cole-style, if you would."

The Hispanic's voice came across the comms with a chuckle. "Marines, as the Master Chief would say, it is time to fuck up some bugs. Tell me, apes, are you hot?"

The Marines roared in unison. "HOT, LOCKED, AND READY TO ROCK, SIR!"

"Ma'am, the detachment is ready, and unfortunately all out of bubblegum."

The cargo bay doors split open, and Angel gunned the accelerator of the tank, sending it screaming down the ramp. Shepard tapped the control panel in front of her, bringing up the missile armament, while Ownby manned the main gun, which immediately fired on a group of Collectors.

The blast shredded three and sent the rest flying away. A few recovered in mid-air, wings flapping angrily as they returned fire. Greenish blasts slammed into the tank, making displays flash red here and there.

"Mother of God. There's twenty centimeters of flash-forged titanium on this bitch and they just holed us with a fucking rifle! What are these things?" Angel's voice was strained as he slammed the tank into an evasive slide, while Ownby fired again, taking down another group of Collectors.

Shepard grimaced. "They can die, but they hit hard. Get us behind that ridge so I can test this shield thing out, and then fire for effect. The DACT will come down hot in a few more seconds." She popped up out of the tank and triggered the device on her belt.

A pack of the swarming insect-like things approached her, bobbing in the air, then soaring overhead as if she wasn't even there. Shepard grinned. "Looks like our shielding trick works, boys and girls. Commence landing ops, and keep to the plan."

Angel slewed the tank off at an angle as a shuttle touched down, disgorging Grunt and Zaeed, even as the DACT thundered to the ground, landing heavily and bringing up their heavy weapons. Grunt's wide eyes flickered around the area even as the shuttle took off, while Zaeed immediately shifted Jessie into a heavy-weapons configuration.

Shepard drew her Harrier and sighted in on the secondary GTS control tower, under heavy assault already. "Grunt, no charging - stick with me. Old man, flank me. Angel, cover our approach with the tank. Jump lunatics, come down in a DFA at the edge of the Collector lines and I'll take it from there."

Florez's armored head dipped as he prepped the BRKR cannon in his hands. "Time to get vertical, bro." WIth a roar of mass effect jets the two DACT launched themselves into the air, angling down to crash into the Collectors using a low ridge of rock for cover as they fired at the GTS control tower.

Shepard broke into a run, shifting all her power to reflexes. The only safety against particle beams was to dodge them and throw off their aim, after all. She wasn't sure how well Grunt would do at dodging, but Mordin was confident the young krogan could literally regenerate the damage to a degree that would make it ultimately irrelevant.

She saw Collectors lifting their weapons in the distance, and did a rolling slide into cover. She needed to snipe some of them down - blindly closing with an enemy with one-hit kill weapons was the epitome of stupid.

She lifted the custom-fitted sniper from her back, wishing she still had the exquisite rifle Ahern had given her on Pinnacle. Tapping her omni-tool to generate a sloppy visual omni-drone to act as spotter, she winced as Grunt continued to draw their fire. At least he had listened to her - even as they shot at him, rather than charge blindly he ducked behind what looked like a shattered landing shuttle, still on fire within.

Zaeed howled curses as a beam of green light lashed his leg, tumbling to the ground. He rolled with the fall even as he fired, heavy blasts roaring out A Collector was broken in half at the waist by the third shot, another one had its upper torso hollowed out, sprays of yellowish burning gore flung into the faces of its fellows.

Shepard's drone sighted her targets, and she locked the images into her automatic targeting systems linked to her eyes. She popped up out of cover fast, shooting as rapidly as she could, letting the autonomic controls do most of the fine aiming.

Four shots barked out in under a second, impossibly fast for a normal human. Two Collectors died before they even realized they were under fire, taking headshots and collapsing instantly. A third was struck by a glancing shot to the throat, tearing away a strip of brownish material to reveal pale gray skin before her fourth shot corrected her mistake, taking out one of its glowing yellow eyes.

A larger Collector, this one wearing black robes over his form, lifted a much heavier, larger weapon, firing it in her direction. She didn't even wait for him to pull the trigger before she kanquessed. She emerged from it to see an explosion behind her, as a ragged stream of pale gold bolts tore through where she had been.

"What is that shit?" she vocalized to the open comm-link she kept with Vigil.

The machine's voice sounded almost strangled. "Badly implemented Inusannon technology, re-purposed by those pheremonal Prothean hacks into a heavy weapon. Those are hyper particles - if you get hit, primitive, nothing can save you."

"Great, more super weapons."

Vigil's voice took on a worried note. "Hardly. These aren't even as powerful as military weapons were in the Prothean Empire. The closest equivalent would be civilian hunting weapons. Or perhaps light militia weapons - a Shear-class rifle could fire much further and longer. This is not even a military assault, they just planned to walk in here and take everyone without resistance."

Shepard watched as Angel slewed the tank around wreckage while Ownby drove the husks back with snapshots. "Fine. Grunt, I need their flank broken - old man, we go in hot on three, full auto sweep. Keep them pinned for Grunt to close range."

Zaeed snorted. "Fucking lovely." He sniffed over the comm-link, muttering under his breath "Level six."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Six, old man?"

"Six, you crazy bitch. Show this pile of guddamned bugs I'm nothing to be fucked with. Let's get to it, Butcher, not getting any younger over here."

She nodded, hurling a heavy blast of warp energy before moving to her right. As she expected, the bigger Collector in back countered it with biotics of its own, green rather than blue. The interaction of the two fields resulted in a biotic explosion that sent bits of terrain and loose rubble and trash flying in all directions, as well as dust.

Grunt moved ahead, crouched low, shotgun lifted, even as Ownby fired more shots wildly into the mass of enemies. The Collectors were now in a crossfire between the marines and Blue Suns at the tower and Shepard's team, and were clearly unhappy.

Two of them leapt into the sky, angling for sniper shots from above. Zaeed lifted his weapon, now with a large, expanded central chamber. "Got this idea from a job I did on V'Tas IX." The converted weapon spat a compressed plasma ball, badly stabilized and leaving a trail of ions as it whizzed through the air.

It hit the leading Collector in the chest, splashing as whatever held it together destabilized. Plasma flashed and one of the weapons of the insect warrior cooked off from the blast, exploding in turn.

That explosion - an ugly, twisting blast of green that reminded her of what happened when Okeer's pet had broken its built-in weapons - lashed out in all directions with bright sprays of green light. Several Collectors were struck and instantly killed by this, and then Grunt roared.

The youth performed a titanic running leap, slamming into the backs of three unsuspecting Collectors. One went down, broken in half by the weight of the krogan, and another one died when Grunt stomped on its head. The third, larger than the other two and also dressed in black, got to its feet and caught the wild krogan's follow-up punch with one hand, stopping it and making Grunt's eyes widen in respect.

Shepard frowned and fired her sniper rifle at the creature, putting a round in its head. Grunt shook it off and fired his shotgun at point blank range at the other Collectors now scrambling for cover. Six of them were hit by the cone of green light, and all six died on the spot.

The bigger Collector at the back who'd stopped Shepard's biotics flung some of its own, heavy green fields slamming into Grunt hard enough to send even his massive form crashing to the ground.

It lifted the heavy weapon to fire, and Shepard gritted her teeth. Dropping her sniper, she vaulted her cover and flew into the kanquess, slamming into the towering being and knocking it away with a hastily blown nova. It tumbled to a kneeling stance, some fifteen feet away.

"Grunt! Fall back!" She placed herself between the big Collector and the disoriented krogan, and he obeyed her instinctively as he stumbled away, shaking his head to clear it. The Collector got to its feet, black robes shrouding it, and tossed away the heavy gun as it spoke in a grating, vibrating baritone, its accent harsh and cold.

"To interfere with the Ascendance is death." It glowed green, hands lifting as it flung biotic fire at her, a wave of warpfire ten feet tall and almost as wide.

Shepard knelt, channeling the Wall of Athame around her, letting the energy sheet off to either side. Ownby slung the tank around and fired the main gun at the Collector, but the heavy blast simply bounced off its barrier.

"Hell, that thing just bounced a tank round, Boss Lady." Ownby's voice sounded a touch alarmed, and she couldn't blame him, but it was useful as it gave her a baseline for the big asshole's power level.

Shepard broke her Shield with a nasty trick Trellani had shown her, redirecting most of the warp fire back in the direction of the Collector. It blocked it in turn, stepping back a few paces as the biotic rebound faded, then glared at her. Up close, the thing's black robes were covered in barely visible green designs - ones that reminded her of the stuff on Okeer's armor.

Shepard let her hands fall, still in a half-crouch. "You seem to suck ass at killing me, bug-man."

The Collector's left hand formed a loose fist, and green light erupted, shifting and then hardening somehow into a single long shaft of green crystal. "You will make a fascinating addition to the Study, mortal."

It moved forward with surprising speed for something well over eight feet tall, and Shepard kanquessed to one side before it could slash her with the crystalline weapon. She was surprised to see the thing use a sword, but then again at such close range its big gun wouldn't do it much good.

Normally she'd pull her ODIN or Sunfire at this range, but seeing the thing's barrier block a tank blast showed that to be pointless. She instead came to her full height, drawing the warp sword and holding it in the first stance of the Dancer's Poise. "You know, the last time a Reaper fucker tried to kill me, he got his ass blown to hell. Recognize the metal?"

The Collector's eyes shifted from circular to squarish, and its voice was raspy with clear anger. "You dare defile the body of the Ascended? Miserable thing, I will burn your world of Thessia to ashes for this insult!"

It dashed forwards, swinging the blade, and Shepard circled back, parrying it with a sideswipe. She saw the biotic fire of her own blade snuff out as the green crystal hit it, and grimaced at the recoil of the contact of the block - not as bad as parrying Okeer's hammer, but the thing was very strong.

The Collector swung again,and she tried a second-stage move, blocking the blade and using her momentum to swing around in reverse, forcing more warp energy into it after the blade rebounded. The black sword slashed deeply into the Collector, drawing a cry of pain and seeping yellow fluids.

Then it raised its sword above its left shoulder, a telegraphed move that immediately betrayed the lack of training to the education Trellani had imprinted in her mind. Eroding tide around the cliff whispered the fallen matriarch in her mind.

She blocked with a rising counter-cut, her off-hand on the forte of her sword and safely channeled away the momentum of the strike, before imparting a Throw through the blade to score a deep, vertical gash in the Collector's chest.

She was about to push her sword deeper when the Collector, wreathed in green, put the palm of his hand on her chest and pushed her away. She rolled with it, coming up in a cross-block, but the Collector pulsed its biotics instead of charging her again, a lift field sending her stumbling, and then leapt through the air, driving down with the blade.

She sighed at the thing's lack of insight and kanquessed in mid-air, coming out behind the Collector as it landed heavily, burying the crystal blade deep into the ground where she had been. She wasted no time, throwing herself into a full extension lunge, the sword crunching through the Collector's back. Then shifting all her power systems from speed to strength, she tore the weapon upwards, black metal and blue flames cutting unnatural flesh and bone as the blade erupted through the creature's head.

It collapsed immediately, the greenish crystal weapon evaporating into green biotic fire, and she stabbed it again for good measure. Coming back to her feet, she glanced around. Her DACT landed in the distance, having crushed the last few flying Collectors, and the tank fired a last pair of rounds at a group of husks, finishing them off.

The remaining Collectors that had survived being flanked, run over or blasted apart had fallen back, but in the distance, more husks were now slowly headed towards the control tower. She sheathed her weapon and trotted over to where Grunt was standing. "You okay, big guy?"

The blue eyes found hers, and he nodded slowly. "Yes. That thing was stronger than I expected. And I begin to see why you told me not to charge - those weapons hurt." She saw several blackened streaks and holes in the armor he wore where he'd been hit.

"You did good, Grunt. That last big fucker was a biotic, though, and those are always a problem." She glanced up as the tank rolled up, turret slowly turning before firing a blast at the approaching husks, shredding them. "For now, find some cover near the tower."

She tapped her comm-link. "Angel, move back the tank towards that rise near the stone outcropping fifty meters east - that keeps your hull down to the enemy coming from the west and allows you to cover our rear. Old Man, with me." She glanced at the tower, where a very familiar man in a somewhat battered black long coat stood slowly, pulling his hat off as he did so.

Zaeed's voice was laced with irony. "Wonderful, a fucking Commissar."

She walked slowly towards the tower, pausing along the way to pick up her sniper, and as she drew closer she saw the big form of Tyrone Cole, wiping something off of his helmet visor, his Crossfire rifle on the wall next to him. Dead militia and Marines littered the ground, along with a few Blue Suns, but more than half of the defenders had survived.

A line of GTS trucks was smoldering in the distance, and the small, rounded forms of volus were scattered here and there. She was a bit surprised to see that, given the usual aversion volus had towards war and violence, but then remembered Marshal Marr and wondered if these were military volus.

Zaeed arrived at her side as she mused, and Jiong came to a halt about ten feet in front of her. She took in his appearance - he looked tired, strained, and somehow less sure of himself than she remembered.

She kept her voice cool and neutral, striving to sound 'asari'. "Greetings, Commissar." She internally triggered the high-level translation VI in the armor - Trellani's idea - and spoke to the group of Blue Suns asari to one side in High Asaric. "And greetings unto you, sisters. I fear this is no time for courtesy, but I rejoice in your safety."

One of the asari with feral-looking marks on her face grinned. "Greetings, war-sister."

Jiong eyed them and then spoke, interrupting. "I regret the need to interrupt your ritual greetings, but the situation remains dire. I presume you are the one known as the Butcher?"

She nodded. "Indeed, Commissar. We have watched the border worlds closely since the abduction at Freedom's Progress, and arrived as soon as possible to drive the Collectors back."

His jaw twitched. "I see." He seemed to struggle with something internally before speaking again. "We still have a large number of civilians trapped in shelters and the colony towers of the city. Do you have means to evacuate them?"

She shook her head. "Sadly, I do not. My people believe that inflicting enough damage on the Collectors will drive them off."

Jiong arched an eyebrow and spoke in a sarcastic tone. "And by 'your people' you mean Cerberus, yes?"

She laughed. "It is but a name, Commissar." She was going to continue, but Zaeed tapped her shoulder.

"Not to be a guddamned downer, but more fucking zombies and bugs are incoming. A lot more. I think you pissed them the fuck off."

She snorted. "I'm not impressed with them so far." She turned to face Jiong. "Commissar, I would not presume to command you or your people, nor yours, sister." She nodded at the asari in charge of the Blue Suns group. "However, I would strongly suggest digging in and letting my people do the heavy fighting."

Cole shrugged. "Your call, sir, but- " He gestured to the broken Collector corpses on the ground. "We'd be better off fighting with her than against her."

Jiong nodded sourly, placing his cap back on his head. "We will have further words once we have crushed the Collectors, then. Your assistance would be welcome."

Shepard smiled. It was good to see some of her people again, even in such crappy circumstances. "It would be an honor, cousin."

O-TWCD-O

Delacor stared bitterly at the combat plot - the part of it that was functional - in the dimly lit room. His bridge had been blown apart, and he was in the secondary command room, near engineering. The only living member of his bridge team, Ensign Li An, was slumped in the pilot seat, bleeding out slowly from shrapnel in her leg and stomach, gritting her teeth as she continued to pilot.

The initial fight had gone well, the Kazan's Kyle-class torpedoes crushing two of the enemy's frigate-sized ships. When the Collector cruiser had shaken off the first torpedo hit, though, he'd been unprepared for rapid counter fire. The entire bridge had been destroyed. The other pilot, Helmsley, was in pieces on the remains of what used to be the bridge. The navigator had been incinerated, and most of his command staff, except Traynor, were either dead or crippled. The comm officer had been lucky in avoiding serious injuries.

She'd helped them both get to the emergency bridge, and was now trying to act as a damage control officer in Engineering. It was a hopeless task.

The Kazan was dying.

Half his crew was dead, his torpedo tubes were jammed, and medical had been breached to space, killing his entire medical staff and the wounded being treated there. The core was at barely thirty-nine percent stability, with two broken framing elements and a plasma fire that couldn't be extinguished. His fighter wing was gone, the Kazan had lost an engine and had two more that were barely functional, and now the life support had failed.

The old girl could still fight - if barely. The arrival of the black and gold ships Delacor recognized from intel pictures as the Butcher's fleet had surprised him. They'd stormed out of nowhere, not even showing up on sensors until they swept past his ships in a V-shaped formation. Six frigates had acted to block incoming attacks from the cruiser against the Kazan, while nine more and some destroyer-sized ships opened up in slashing patterns of torpedoes and heavy guns.

The Butcher's crews and captains must have had ice-water for blood - they ignored counterfire as if it didn't matter, and even as their ships were holed and destroyed did not stop firing. They would only stop when completely blown to pieces - and in an act of insane bravery that would have done the Solguard proud, had ultimately crippled the first Collector carrier by firing their entire torpedo loads point-blank at the ship before ramming it at full speed, tearing the ship apart as their cores exploded.

Even now they fought on against the Collector cruiser, heavier ships finally joining the fight, and he watched in grim awe as yet another of the Butcher's ships kamikazed against the cruiser after being shot stem to stern with the heavy golden beams instead of standing off to abandon ship or wait for rescue.

What kind of maniacs did the Butcher have manning these ships?

For all their bravery, however, it didn't truly matter. A second Collector ship, a large carrier like the first, had come out of solar north, shielded from his admittedly damaged sensors by the sun's glare. It had much heavier weapons than the cruiser, and a horde of the orb-shaped combat drones that had wrecked his own ships.

The Butcher's people were brave. But as he watched the form of the second Collector carrier vomit out hundreds of combat drones, he figured bravery didn't matter much. Even if they won this fight outright - he figured his time was about up.

Delacor coughed, wiping blood from his lips. The hit that had taken out the bridge and nearly killed his XO had almost gutted him – his legs and torso were full of shrapnel, and a segment of hull had slammed into his chest, breaking at least three ribs. With a body full of shrapnel and a gut-wound wide enough to stick his hand in, he didn't imagine this was something he could just walk off, unlike the many other injuries in his long career.

The only reason he wasn't a pile of shredded meat on the ground was the Spectre armor he'd worn down to the planet's surface. Even so, it wouldn't keep him alive much longer- the medical systems aboard had been wrecked by the hit he'd taken.

He glanced to the left, where the injured face of Commissar Jiong scowled at him from the comm relay screen. "Commissar, status on the ground?" In the background he could see the surface of Horizon, burning buildings in the background, the image distorted by static and flickers from whatever the Collectors were doing to prevent transmissions.

Jiong took a pained breath, his uniform blackened from some explosions, his handsome features splashed with blood. "Not good. Squad Alpha and Beta under Cole were pinned at GTS Command Two with the GTS trucks. The trucks are gone; Cole fell back to the command center. He's lost over half his Marines and most of the Blue Suns and militia with him. I'm still at the city gates with the bulk of the Blue Suns forces and what militia heavies remain."

Jiong paused, wiping his forehead, then grimaced. "Williams... we lost contact, sir. She was at Command One which is being hit hard, but the Butcher's robots and forces seem to be headed that way."

Delacor nodded, watching as the Butcher's ships engaged the incoming carrier, wincing as two more frigates were blown out of the sky. He glanced at the haptic screen and told Jiong, "It doesn't look good up here, Commissar. The Kazan is barely working, and we've lost medical and life support. The Butcher's attack has at least cleared the bastards away from us, so while we have the chance, I'm going to abandon ship and have the escape pods set to immediate FTL. The crew will get clear of this mess - once that's done, I'll take out that carrier."

Jiong arched an eyebrow. "And how will you do that, Captain?"

In the distance an explosion sounded and the Spectre saw a pillar of smoke and fire raise somewhere behind the commissar. Jiong didn't even spare it a glance, nor did his face twitch; his full focus was on the comm transmission.

Delacor squared his shoulders, despite the pain that caused him. "Shepard isn't the only one who can go down fighting. If I ram this bitch into that carrier, it should take us both down."

The image on the screen was thready and lines of static and signal interference bisected the commissar's face every so often. Jiong was silent for long seconds, before sighing. "Your position is not hopeless. You can still—"

"Jiong, I've been in enough fights to know when I'm not going to make it. I've got half a hull spar shoved through my guts and rib fragments in my lung. And the Kazan is a burning wreck." He coughed again, wiping a dribble of blood away. "Medical faculties down there are going to be beyond overloaded, and I sorta doubt the Butcher is going to make saving my life a priority with Collectors everywhere."

Jiong's voice was quiet. "I see. That would have killed a lesser man, or even a Commissar. Iron Man, indeed." Jiong took a deep breath, then flinched as something exploded. "The carrier is their last functional heavy; if you can kill it then we surely will triumph. I will commend your spirit and bravery to the High Lords of Sol, Captain. Repensum est canicula."

Delacor nodded, pleased to at last hear respect in the man's voice. "Even my shitty luck had to run out sometime, Commissar." He paused. "Tell Williams she's a damned good soldier, and I'm sorry I ever doubted that. I recommend she be brevetted to Lieutenant Commander." He coughed again. "Now go."

Jiong gave him a single, respectful nod and killed the signal, and Delacor leaned back in the seat as a spasm of pain shot through him. His fist clenched as he mastered it, then tapped the control on his command chair.

"All hands, this is the Captain. Abandon ship. Proceed to the escape pods, I'm overriding the VI for immediate FTL launch. This ship is going down, and you don't want to be on it when it does. XO Durand is injured and being carried to the mid-deck escape pods, she's in charge if she awakes, if not Lieutenant Traynor is in charge. It has been an honor and a pleasure."

He clicked off, and engaged the VI. That it had not succumbed to the torrent of cyberwarfare attacks hurled at the Kazan thus far was mostly due to disconnecting the core from the transmission relays. "VI. Ship status."

"Shields at eleven percent and failing. Fires on decks two, three, five, and six. Hydroponics destroyed. Medical destroyed. Life Support destroyed. Forward battery malfunction. Starboard battery functional. Port battery destroyed. Heat Control systems destroyed. Hull at thirty-two percent integrity. Ship will lose habitability rating for human life in twenty seven minutes. Recommend abandon ship."

He nodded, glancing around the nearly empty room, and took a deep breath as his eyes fell on Li An. "Ensign..."

She half-turned, her face a pale mask of determination, one eye torn out by flying shrapnel. "If I try to move from this seat, sir, I'm pretty sure my guts will fall out, even if I could walk." She gave a ghost of a smile. "Besides, I've seen you in the sims, you can't pilot for shit."

He managed a laugh at that. "Alright, Sana. Take us around toward the fat bastard, maximum rated speed... or whatever the old girl can give us." He glanced upwards. "VI, transfer ops controls and weapons to my console. Arm core overload sequence and scuttling charges, authorization December-Bravo-Six-Six-Zulu-Romeo-November."

"Authorization granted. Charges set. Warning. Nineteen percent of charges not armed due to damage. Forward battery escape pods not engaged. Three life signs detected."

He frowned and tapped the comms. "Forward battery, report."

The tired voice of one of the torpedomen answered. "Conn, forward battery, Chief Garza here. Our escape pod is smashed, same hit that jammed the launch racks. And the exit corridor is full of plasma fire, sir. Petty Officer Danea is pinned by wreckage. We're not getting out of this one."

Delacor leaned back. "...Do we have any torpedoes left?"

"Yes, sir. Two Kyles, and twelve M/AM."

He gave a faint, sardonic smile. "Set the fuses to .01, sequence impact detonation."

There was a long pause, and then laughter. "Ramming, then? Least it'll be quick. Understood, sir. Setting to blow on impact and we'll see you in Hell."

A wash of pain fell over him, but he ignored it and glared at the hated image of the Collector carrier on the plot, watching as it blasted apart another one of the Butcher's ships. "VI, redirect all power to engines and forward nav deflector." He coughed and tasted more blood in his mouth. "Li An, set course One-One-Seven Mark-Six Tac Two."

"Course set, sir." She coughed up something on her console and wiped it away absently with her uniform sleeve. "You'd think the fucking BuShips would have put medi-gel in the emergency command center."

He gave a grim smile. "BuShips planners never have a combat TAB, Ensign." He glanced at the status board, then cursed as it was dark. "VI, status of escape pods?"

"Forty-nine percent of pods launched. Life signs detected in Forward Battery. All other life signs have successfully evacuated. Alliance Naval regulation one-one-six dash—"

He killed the audio, and smiled as he leaned back in his seat, feeling the ship shudder under him, wounded and dying but still game. Li An's hands were sluggish but still sure as she piloted the wounded cruiser forward, even as she began to hum the strains of 'By the Solguard's Light'.

He was amused at the sluggish turn the carrier was making, as if it could get away. Even half-wrecked, his ship would outrun that fat piece of junk. Drones slashed toward the Kazan, the VI firing the CIWS in desperate defense.

More hits rained down on them, but the stolid armor bands that had kept the Kazan from dying held together. He couldn't stop so many of the horrible things that had ruined his life. But he could at least take this bastard with him and hopefully save Horizon. Maybe that would shut Udina's fucking mouth up.

If nothing else, it would allow him to escape the creeping, eternal waking nightmare his life had turned into over the years. His musing on that was broken by the VI comms alert light flashing. He unsilenced it to hear the report.

"Communication signal detected, signal four-six-seven-alpha, Lieutenant Williams. Collector communication jamming signal strength is beginning to weaken. No video signal detected."

His bitter smile softened. "Williams... good to hear you're alive. Jiong lost contact. Status."

Her voice, he decided, was actually quite pleasant to be one of last things he was likely to listen to. "Still up shit creek, Skipper, but at least the Butcher's given us a paddle. Crazy bitch came down in a hover tank and broke the main bug line, then got out and is fucking them up on foot. The swarms are somehow avoiding her, and she just deflected one of their big weapon blasts with some kind of biotic bullshit."

Delacor nodded. "Get the Butcher to evacuate you if possible. And say a prayer for me, if you find the time."

"Sir?"

He clicked off. "VI, range to target?"

"Approximately thirty-six thousand meters, closing at one hundred twenty meters per second. Impact in two hundred ninety-five seconds." The VI paused, and then as it determined that yet again humanity would die rather than kneel, it spoke words from the Message, themselves taken from some older work. "To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!"

Delacor laughed quietly at the Alliance's dark and ironic choice to have the VI say such things. Li An's voice was soft and gentle as she sang, and he found himself joining in.

O-TWCD-O

Aboard the Normandy, Pressly watched the plot with no small amount of awe as the Kazan stubbornly refused to die, charging dead-on at the slowly turning bulk of the Collector carrier. He turned to the floating orb next to him. "Direct our heavies to finish the cruiser, and clear out the last of the ships in orbit."

Vigil's voice was unusually somber. "The human is going to suicide his ship? You people are even more determined to chase death than the Protheans were, primitive."

Pressly lifted his chin. "Maybe so. Then again, sometimes a man knows when his time is up. It's not the choice I'd have made, but that carrier's guns are heavy enough that I'd have to risk our cruisers or the Normandy herself to take it out." He shrugged. "Assuming he can do it, more power to him."

Vigil gave a bobbing pulse Pressly knew by now was the equivalent of a shrug. "I am more concerned at our own losses, to be honest. Our weapons systems are effective enough against the smaller ships and drones but are doing nothing much to the bigger ships. And while the Collectors on the ground are not very well equipped, these Collector ships are using full-power particle-stream weapons - we do not have the shielding to stop a direct hit from those."

Pressly nodded. "Hence all the kamikaze tactics?"

Vigil circled the plot. "The ships in question were already damaged to the point of being useless otherwise. And I am less concerned about the losses than the disparity between the quality of ships and the Collectors on the ground. It implies these ships are not their best, or even close to their best."

The sphere pulsed again. "Taking one intact may be more difficult than expected. Perhaps we should have focused on that task instead of ground combat."

Pressly shook his head. "Abandoning the people on the ground would have sent a bad message to the Council, not to mention we need more data on the Collectors to determine how to fight them once we actually do board a Collector vessel. Not to mention the whole Prothean angle."

Vigil mimicked a human snort. "Still unproven at this point, primitive." It circled. "Odd. There was a streaming data pulse coming from the surface, and now it has stopped."

Pressly glanced at Vigil. "Could you figure out what it was?"

Vigil was silent for several seconds. "I believe it was most likely some sort of instructions or guidance. Shepard may have destroyed whatever leadership the Collectors had down there."

Pressly brightened. "So things are going well."

Vigil's voice was sour. "Perhaps. Or perhaps the Collectors now know she is a threat."

O-TWCD-O

Despite all of the desperate fights on Omega, fighting in the open was something he'd lost touch with. After all, Garrus had been operating in an urban environment for the past two years. As such, he'd forgotten the visceral terror of an assault landing. Streams of weapons fire crisscrossing about in every direction, crazy course changes that flung you to-and-fro, and, of course, that moment of storming out of a landing craft and coming immediately under fire.

At least Shepard isn't driving, he thought sourly to himself, as the team hustled for cover. Already the brown, armored forms of Collectors approached, cresting some outlying ruined buildings and opening fire. The weapons were unlike anything he'd seen before - greenish streams of energy in coherent beams.

He tumbled and flung himself behind some kind of farm machinery, even as the shuttle took off. It got perhaps fifteen meters into the air before it was struck by multiple blasts of green fire, punching through the hull and sending it crashing back down to the ground.

Tali's voice was tense over the comm-link. "Don't let those things hit you. We fought one of Okeer's experiments that had weapons like that - shields won't do a thing and they'll go right through whatever they hit."

Jack sourly chimed in. "Even a close miss hurts, trust me."

To his right, hunkered down behind a shelf of rock that had been cut into in preparation for some kind of building, Sidonis shook his head, his voice laced with irony. "So, this should be an easy and wonderful little fight."

Mierin, next to Kiala and Dost, lifted her sniper rifle and fired, the shot striking an oncoming Collector in the head. Yellowish fluids sprayed out in a spurt as it collapsed with a cry, and her voice was cool and professional. "Less whining, more shooting, lover boy."

Garrus scanned the wide strip of terrain between him and his target, the primary control tower for the GARDIAN towers. He could see Miranda's team touching down further away, and decided the only approach that made sense was to keep pressure on the Collectors, to drive them away from the tower while distracting them from Miranda's people.

"Alright, move in pairs. Mier, Lover Boy, overwatch. Tal, Ki, drones and missiles, heavy suppressive fire on those Collectors. Big Man, stick with Jack and cover her - Jack use your biotics to do as much damage as you can and keep them corralled."

The human biotic gave a nod, holding a lightweight shotgun and tapping a belt full of grenades. "And you? You just gonna hang out?"

Garrus tapped the controls to his armor and went active, omni-armor panels springing up. Shepard's techs had augmented the suit somewhat, repairing damage that had accumulated over the years and plating it in a thin coat of Silaris. He figured he had the best chance of surviving a direct hit from the Collectors.

"I'm going to spit in their eye." With that he launched himself out of cover, lifting the form of the lance cannon he'd brought along. While he could always snipe, he didn't want to test how well Collector rifles could breach cover - he wanted them pulled away from their own cover so his team could hit them.

The auto-targeting reticle from his visor, now incorporated into his armor, lined up his first shot, and he let loose with the lance cannon. The compressed beam of white light hit the target dead in the chest, sending the insectile-looking creature flying backwards to land in a smoking, broken heap. He was already firing again as he triggered the jets and omni-wings, using mobility to make himself a hard target.

Six Collectors fired at him, five missing. The one shot that connected was a glancing hit, but even that blew out the omni-armor panel and vaporized a thin line across the bulky shoulder unit. He returned fire, the lance cannon's blazing impact shattering two more Collectors. He smiled as their ruined cadavers struck the ground in sprays of yellow blood and trails of smoking meat, as fragments of blasted pieces of their bodies tumbled around on the ground in all directions.

Four of the things spread gossamer-like wings and rose into the air to challenge him, and he smiled. A second later, two sniper shots rang out, taking out two of his pursuers, while biotic flames raged around a third before something pushed the burning Collector to the ground toward the others still in cover.

The biotic explosion that followed was beautiful, flinging half a dozen of the enemy in all directions and out of cover. Tali and Kiala wasted no time, drones firing sprays of mini-missiles at them. Dost joined in with heavy Revenant fire, using hammerhead rounds, carving gory craters into the front of two more Collectors before they fell back in shredded ruins.

Garrus had no time to admire the kills, though - two more airborne Collectors were coming at him, firing in short bursts. He dove into an arc, dodging streams of death, and triggered his suit's own mini-missile swarm. As expected, they didn't do too much to his pursuers, but one was staggered and turned around by the force of the blast in mid-air.

He snap-fired, blasting that one in the back. The shot crumpled the Collector, its delicate-looking wings coming apart in burning chunks of flesh and a splash of yellow fluids, screaming as it plummeted down to the ground to land in a satisfying crunching impact.

The other Collector, less affected, fired several times at him, striking the suit in the leg and lower torso. The thick bands of armor should have at least resisted the impact, but pain and shock flared through him as the shots still punched completely through the suit and his body.

He killed his flight unit, slamming down into the heavy cover of an overturned cargo hauler, having dropped his weapon in the shock of the hit. The leg hit wasn't too bad - it had gone through his cybernetic leg, and it was still working. The shot to his torso was nasty, though - cleanly cauterized, but painful as the Depths.

He tapped his omni-tool, injecting himself with stimulants, and then fished a pack of medi-gel from a small container on his thigh, pushing it into the hole left in his torso. He had no idea if that would do anything, but it was better than nothing. He pulled out an omni-gel slap-patch from another spot on the armor and slapped it over the breach, then pulled out his Talon pistol.

The Collector that had shot him soared overhead, swiveling to find a target. The coughing boom of the Talon pistol sprayed out a cone of armor-piercing flechettes that tore the thing's weapon arm right off its body, and it fell to the ground, still moving feebly.

Garrus leapt up and came down in a jet-assisted trample, the heavy stomp crushing the Collector's chest and face. He was surprised to see the brown material he thought was the Collector itself was some kind of... biological armor. Torn off by his landing, the thing's helmet had split, revealing a horribly emaciated, four-eyed face with deathly white-gray skin, strange nostrils leading to lines that traced upwards, and a mouth replaced with some kind of cybernetics feeding tube. Strange green circuit-like traceries infested the skin, and the thing's four eyes were a sick, pale yellow.

He gave the disgusting thing another stomp for good measure, then clicked his omni. "Status?"

Mierin's voice was curt and serious. "Nine down. Four more withdrawing. Currently moving west, towards your position in good cover. These things are bad at fighting - they have really strong weapons and can take a good hit or two, but they don't employ cover properly and they don't have any other weapons."

Kiala's voice, as always, seemed irritated. "Don't bother with drones. The filthy k'vastar managed to hack even ours; I had to remote-detonate them. Explosives work better than guns, they are not very good at dealing with concussive force or over-pressure."

A titanic flare of blue light and a devastating explosion that made Garrus sway on his feet lit up the area to his left, and Jack's voice was full of dark excitement. "Ha ha, fucking bugs can't handle biotics for shit! Burn, you fucking termites! Teach you to fuck with me!"

Dost's voice was softer. "Jack was hurt, they shot her in the knee and she can't walk, so I'm carrying her. I knew Tali said their weapons were dangerous, but holy hell..."

Garrus nodded dryly, as he moved forward, ducking behind the relative cover of a blasted air-car, the driver still frozen by stasis inside, visible through the shattered cockpit. "I noticed." He triggered the magnification in his visor, zooming in on the control tower. "Looks like husks are swarming the tower; we'll need to hustle. Dost, bring Jack over to where I'm at. Tali, Kiala, south - Mierin, Sidonis, north. We'll pincer and meet at the tower. Move!"

The group moved out as one, moving in cover and firing to suppress enemy movement. Only a few Collectors were still in the air - many of them were falling back toward their own ships, but still fighting with ferocity.

Mierin cried out as Sidonis was hit as he moved from cover, a Collector particle blast hitting him in the left arm, which fell limp, his weapon dropping in the shock of the hit. She fired two shots, the first spinning the Collector out of its cover and the second striking it directly in the chest, killing it. Two more Collectors winged into the air to try to take out the exposed turian but were harried by a spray of homing grenades and micro-missiles from the quarian ladies.

Garrus hit his comm-link. "Jack, Lover Boy is exposed."

Jack's voice was laconic on the comm-link. "Yeah, yeah, I got it." Even as one of the Collectors fought free and fired at the turian, a blazing wall of blue energy formed in front of Sidonis. The blast struck it and it shattered, but the blast angled away crazily.

Jack was panting but sounded triumphant. "...heh, I don't even know how that works, but I'm taking credit." Garrus snorted as he put away his pistol to draw his sniper rifle - he'd lost track of where he'd dropped his lance cannon and it took too long to aim anyway.

Sidonis had dragged himself to cover and now Dost and Jack had reached him, the big human having set her down to pull out a Typhoon heavy machine gun and spray suppressing fire into the air. Garrus and Mierin fired in near-unison, shots tearing through the air to strike both Collectors and send them to the ground.

Loose packs of husks at the edge of the crowd attacking the control tower shambled forward, but Sidonis drew his Phaeston combat rifle and began laying them out with devastating accuracy. Garrus moved forward as rapidly as he could with his damaged cybernetic leg, and frowned. His approach plan to pincer the attackers at the tower had failed due to Sidonis being shot - Jack and Dost were out of position.

"Change things up. Lover Boy, dig in where you are and provide overwatch. Big Man, see if you can't fix his leg up, Jack, keep them protected. Mier and I will move ahead - quarian ladies, stay on your south approach."

Something heavy exploded to the far north, and Garrus glanced in that direction. In the distance he could see Grunt moving away from Shepard, while the DACT wheeled in the air, leaping all over the place to counter the equally mobile winged Collectors, and Zaeed was moving from cover to cover, blasting away with his weapon.

Shepard herself had run riot through the bugs and was battling one of the bigger ones in black robes in some kind of biotic fight, and the tank was busy laying down suppressive fire.

He cursed as his distraction made him not see a Collector landing behind a pinnacle of rock, and green fire scored his armor, this time missing his flesh at least. He shifted his cover, firing the heavy Widow rifle, blasting a shot right through the rock to knock the Collector from its perch. The thing gave a cry but recovered itself, landing in a roll behind a burning air-car, and continued to rake his position with fire, pinning him in place.

Jack gave a roar as husks rushed her position, and Garrus winced as a literal firestorm of blue energies radiated out in all directions for almost thirty feet. Husks were flung away and up in the air as spears of warpfire jutted out in a burst, so bright they left afterimages in the vision of his natural eye. Dozens of husks fell back to the ground on fire, and more were burning in the huge circle of now blackened ground around Jack's location.

"Fuckin' lightweights." Jack's voice had a sneer in it and Garrus chuckled. He turned back to the sniper pinning him in place with heavy fire, returning fire and managing to make it duck down and move into new cover. That exposed it to a shot from the north. Garrus smiled, tapping his comm-link.

"Lover Boy, I'm pinned here. A little help?"

"Wow, even with a suit of fuck-all armor and a giant gun you can't equal up. Sure, old man." The other turian sighted in and fired, resulting in the Collector toppling from atop its elevated perch, tumbling bonelessly down the shallow slope to land in a heap at the bottom.

Garrus tapped his comm-link, glancing about. The husks at the tower had been hit heavily with micro-missiles from Kiala and Tali, giving the defenders a chance to rally, although they were still under heavy attack. He saw Dost lift Jack once more and Sidonis limping forward, and figured one good hard push would clear the husks.

"Butcher, this is Archangel. Secondary approach is mostly clear. Preparing to clear the tower. What's our next move after that?"

Shepard's voice came across distorted by static, but understandable. "Keep up the pressure and push any reinforcements back away from the GARDIAN control center. Doesn't look like they're paying much attention to Team Four, so keep it that way."

Her voice hardened. "My group is okay - although both of my DACT are pretty much out for the count due to damage - but Taylor ran into heavy opposition. Three of my marines are dead, including Chief Haln."

Garrus shook his head, remembering the usually cheerful human male, and the battles he'd survived. "My team is okay, but both Lover Boy and Jack are severely wounded and have limited mobility. I'll comm you when we clear the tower."

Garrus clicked off and motioned Mierin to follow him, keeping in low cover. Kiala and Tali moved in from the north, somewhat ahead of them, covering themselves behind their oversized omni-shields and keeping up a steady stream of hurled grenades and micro-missiles to distract the remaining husks.

A thick scrum of the things was mobbing the defenders, although their numbers had been lessened by the attacks of the quarians. They were held back by desperate hand-to-hand fighting and wild shooting, and more than a few of the defenders were dead. Garrus tapped his comms - "Jack, clear the way. Tal and Ki, cut loose with the party favors."

Jack grimaced and hurled out a spear of biotic energy that dived toward the ground, erupting a moment later into a burning wall of warpfire that began to flare outwards. Dozens of husks burned away, more simply falling where they stood. Tali and Kiala triggered a program, generating a large incineration field, creating a wall of fire between the defenders and the husks. Most of the creatures stupidly ran into the field anyway, collapsing as they did do, as the defenders drew back.

What few husks that remained were picked off with rapid-fire by the trio of Garrus, Mierin, and Sidonis, snap-firing as the latter two ran. The last husk leapt through the wall of fire only to catch a rifle butt from a tall, heavily built Marine female, who snarled a moment later and smashed its skull with her armored foot.

She straightened a moment later, looking at Garrus and Mierin as they stood up. "Thank God you guys showed up. Lieutenant Ashley Williams, SA Marine Corps."

Garrus was never more glad for the fact that his Skytalon had a voder component, masking his true voice. "Impressive work holding your position, Lieutenant."

One of the battered militiamen looked at him in awe, at the white painted symbol on the chest of his suit. "You're the Archangel."

Garrus inclined his head, and Ashley glanced at the rest of the team, frowning a moment at the sight of quarians and an asari. "Intel said the Butcher was tied up with Cerberus, but you're mostly—" She trailed off, seeing the Cerberus insignia on Tali's shoulder and Kiala's chestplate, and Kiala laughed.

"Aliens, pr'vesta? Yes, we are. The name is about all that remains. But this is no time for talk. Ship-sister, help me set up the defense barrier and turrets. Beloved, set up your guns." She said the latter to Dost, who had walked up holding Jack and half supporting the limping Sidonis.

Mierin glanced at Garrus. "...more incoming husks. Positions?"

Garrus pointed to a pair of elevated sniper's platforms halfway up the tower, currently unmanned. "Mier, you can cover Team Four from one of those. Lover Boy can't climb with that leg, so stay down here and dig in. The quarian ladies have their own setups and Big Man will help with that. I'll go active and take out what I can from the tower top."

Mierin sketched an asari salute, while Sidonis merely shook his head. "Careful, old man. Oh, and I'm up by two on the kill count."

Garrus mock growled. "Young ass punks, thinking they're all that."

Williams abruptly laughed, and then winced. "Sorry. Nothing's funny about today, just kind of hit me."

Garrus merely nodded, turning to Tali as she approached. "You have scouting drones out?"

She nodded. Garrus noted she'd turned on her own voder, altering her voice to sound much like Kiala's, and that she had her facemask set at the darkest shade of black. That made sense - Williams would be the one person most likely to recognize Tali, although the Cerberus insignia on her arm made it pretty unlikely that she'd connect the dots.

"Telemetry is being uploaded." She grunted as she set up a portable kinetic barrier protector, even as the groaning of husks could be heard in the distance. "Collectors are falling back rapidly to the one ship they have on the ground, carrying some colonists with them. That ship has some kind of heavy artillery units near it, big black things hovering in mid-air. The war robots got incinerated trying to get close."

Garrus nodded. "Nothing we can do about that. Get set up, and call if things get too hot down here." He turned to leave, but Williams put a hand on his arm.

"Wait. I mean... look." She shook her head and held her hand up. "I'm glad you guys are helping out down here, but we need help in the space battle too. My commanding officer's about to kill himself to ram a carrier up there – can't your ships do something?"

Garrus wasn't clear on what the picture was in space – that was supposed to be managed by Pressly. "Our fleet isn't invulnerable, Lieutenant. We've already absorbed more losses than we expected in frigates alone. Our mission is simply to drive the Collectors off and gather intel."

Williams voice was sharp. "That's it? What about the people?"

He sighed. "We're not here to rescue people, either. Just to gather intel on the Collectors so we can find a way to strike at them where they are operating from – and stop more attacks like this in the future."

The expression through the clear visor of Williams's helmet twisted. "And the lives of these people don't matter?"

Garrus gritted his fangs. "Of course they do. But defending them is your job. For what it's worth, you've done better than we could have expected. As for your CO, that carrier is the last big ship they have that's undamaged. If it's taken out these Collectors will probably withdraw."

He exhaled. "Now, dig your people in, and hope that the husks don't rush us again."

O-TWCD-O

Shepard gritted her teeth as she dodged the scything arm of the abomination in front of her before slamming it away with a biotic push, followed by a strong blast of warpfire that caused a biotic explosion. It slowly came to its feet again. The heavy thing, looking like a mass of husks and gray flesh fused together under misshapen armor plates of black metal, didn't exactly have a head so much as a hump studded with writhing, faintly glowing stubs of flesh and bands of cybernetics.

It moved forward again, the heavy cannon fused to its shoulder tracking her as it fired. She rolled out of the way, the ODIN barking as it tore craters into the thing's chest and legs, and came out of her roll with a snarl, focusing her power into a singularity.

The glowing sphere shot forward, crunching through the plates of black metal and stopping the brutish monster in its tracks. It shuddered as she grit her teeth and poured more power into her singularity, remembering how its initial attack had blown a hole in her HAMRHEAD tank, killing Sergeant Ownby and seriously wounding Angel.

With a groan of tortured metal and what may have been husks screaming, it suddenly imploded, and she let the power go, the singularity destabilizing with a powerful blast of biotic energies that raged through the air for several seconds before snuffing out.

She glanced around, recovering her breath as she did so. The two DACT were still in the fight but were on the ground now, having taken too many hits and both seriously wounded, using their heavier weapons to pin back husks and counterfire on the occasional Collector. With Ownby dead the tank was little more than cover, although Angel was planning on moving from the driver's cabin to the gunner's cabin when the firefight cooled off.

Grunt gave a roar as he blasted away a rushing group of husks, the green light of his shotgun lashing out to leave nothing but dust and severed, tumbling legs behind. Zaeed was tucked into the shadow of the HAMRHEAD tank, sniping Collectors. Both of them were now littered with shallow wounds, and while Grunt's were slowly closing, Zaeed's were not. His mobility was limited and the one serious hit he took was thankfully to his cybernetic arm. That robbed him of much of the power needed to handle Jessie's heavier firing modes, though, leaving him to snipe.

Cole had taken another hit, and was now propped up against the tower in cover, firing as best he could. Jiong was literally as thick into the fighting as she was, crushing husks with his neural mace and roaring defiant SA combat slogans as he fired his flame pistol with the other hand. Seeing him in the fray had steadied the shaken morale of the remaining defenders, but it was still an ugly fight.

She watched the battered, weary figure of a Blue Suns merc, dragging along another wounded Marine to the relative safety of the comms tower. The repeated rushes of husks had made Shepard grimly admit what a terrifying weapon they were - they sucked up incoming fire, never fell back, and if they closed on you were much stronger than a human. The handful of Collectors that remained in the fight could tie up all the defenders with husks and take potshots at leisure, countered only by the sniping of Zaeed and her own occasional biotic attacks.

Still, the guns were firing away, the space battle seemed to be nearly won, and the bulk of the Collector ships were done for. The main body of the Collectors on the ground had fallen back to the single remaining grounded Collector ship with some of their husks carrying humans. Pressly had just told her the Kazan was going to ram the second Collector carrier, which would probably destroy it completely.

She smiled grimly as she sighted another group of husks approaching, followed by a small handful of Collectors, then frowned as one of them began to glow a dim, ugly yellow. She didn't have time to think on what that meant as the husks rushed forward, mouths open and moaning. She dropped three with her ODIN before they leapt over the makeshift cover near the tower to try to tackle her down, and ducked under the wild charge of one of them before punching the thing with all her cybernetic strength, sending it flying backwards with a crushed skull.

Zaeed shouted as he shot two more husks coming down on her, and she drew her warp sword as still more came barreling toward her. She could see masses of the damned things coming from all directions and as she cut down yet another husk heard Jiong's iron voice chanting the Litany of Hate above the sound of their moaning.

"I am the hammer, the wrath of humanity! I am the point of the spear of the Lord! I am the gauntlet protecting the innocent, the flame that burns away the criminal, the light that illuminates the darkness. I am death, I am the end!"

He crushed his mace through the skull of another husk, kicking it out of his way, and glared hard at the wave of onrushing husks. "Come and die at the hands of justice!"

Shepard shook her head at his antics, but they were keeping the marines and Blue Suns, and what few militiamen still lived, from bolting in fear. Shepard didn't like her odds if that happened, and really hoped Taylor would hurry up from the west with what remained of his squad to reinforce her.

The one Collector with glowing yellow eyes in the distance suddenly flared sun-bright, casting shadows in all directions, and Shepard wondered what the hell that meant.

Nothing good, she figured.

O-TWCD-O

Vnad Ishan was displeased at the reports he was receiving.

The planned assault had gone more poorly than expected, even with additional forces assigned to the strike. Every Rapture so far had gone flawlessly and not properly ensuring Freedom's Progress was cleansed of all life had not been a serious error. After all, sooner or later the natives would come to the understanding that slavers could not take worlds like Freedom's Progress without leaving evidence.

But his projections of resistance had been flawed, or he had failed to see something. The Broker had assured him Horizon would be weak - shipped malfunctioning weapons systems useless in the atmosphere, a flawed VI with a backdoor, and no real military forces. The Council Rulers had, for reasons yet unknown, sent a fleet under one of their elite warriors to protect the world.

Even that would not have been a crushing blow. The Collectors were not currently on a war footing - the weapons were mass-produced and very low power, the ships hardly more than transports with guns strapped on. Ishan had not bothered to make proper warships as there was, until now, no need.

Likewise, the ground units were not even Seekers - the force was mostly Drones, with only the Strike Overseer and a handful of the Chosen sent along as leadership. What weapons they had would be of the lowest quality, to ensure that if anything was captured it would not reveal their true technological level.

But the arrival of the one known as the Butcher had not been anticipated, and had resulted in what could only be called a resounding defeat. Thousands of Pale Guards had been wasted, all of the Seekers sent along on the mission had fallen, and most of the ships were destroyed or heavily damaged. It was all but assured that this harvest would yield far less humans for Lifeblood conversion, and even the Strike Overseer was dead.

The prey had not been cowed by the might of the People. They had fought back, even with weapons so primitive that they could not cleanly kill a Pale Guard, and they had survived. This rejection of Ascension was hardly surprising - one did not expect mortals to understand the honor they had been chosen for, one denied even to the Sethani.

But it would complicate and slow the path to Ascendance. Ishan slowing the process for his own purposes was one thing. If the Masters felt that he was not up to even suppressing these primitives, however, they might take action earlier than he expected and reveal his own plans long before he was ready.

Even worse, unified resistance shorn of fear would make completing the Process almost impossible, perhaps even requiring them to waste vast amounts of energy and biomass on building an actual war-fleet. Reflecting on his half-measures in motivating the Strike Overseer, Ishan was sorely irritated the fool was dead - he would have enjoyed personally overseeing his recycling of biomatter as punishment for unacceptable failure.

Steps had to be taken immediately to rectify the problem before it became insurmountable. A proper application of force and might would cow the primitives. For such technologically impaired cultures, they were highly advanced in understanding politics. As long as he kept the People's predations to the hinterlands, he expected little action from the Council itself, as long as the price was more than they were willing to pay.

Given how badly events on Horizon had gone, the punishment was fitting. Nothing defied the will of the Sethani, in life or in whatever passed for their current state. He paused to muse on the next steps - they had enough genetic samples from various races now, that he could bring tailoring plague agents to clear out and weaken the empires in the hinterlands of the galaxy, which had more than enough humans to provide enough Lifeblood to complete the new Lord.

Better yet, weakening such criminal cultures would probably distract the natives, inciting them to conquest and infighting over available resources. And he could also muddle the waters of wisdom with other actions - the hanar had indicated they were interested in the natives under the sway of the handful of Old Ones near the Alpha Relay. Carefully shaping events might lead to the Council deciding to act against these batarians lest they take advantage of chaos in what they called the Traverse, solving two problems with one neat ploy.

Still, there were obstacles to clear before that happened. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he focused upon the here and now. He needed additional information about the situation on Horizon, and in particular to determine the threat level of this so-called Butcher.

The Strike Overseer's last information pulse had been stating his intent to kill the Butcher, and the cessation of infopulses since then spoke to his failure at even performing that surely simple task. Ishan was almost certain that, based on the information provided by the Broker, this Butcher was little more than a front for the human group Cerberus. Even so, they knew very little about her, and she could be a threat.

Javik, after all, had nearly triumphed before falling into despair, and that one started out as little more than a simple soldier. Shepard had proven to be an incredible menace, orchestrating her efforts and managing to bring down one of the eldest Ascended. Ignoring powerful and charismatic leaders was never efficient.

Additionally, if she could be easily killed, that would aid in sending a message as well. For a race of such relative youth, humanity was surprisingly resilient - as demonstrated by the defiance of Logain in the face of the Creche. But all military forces would falter if a charismatic leader was slain, and Ishan knew the humans already found the Butcher to be inspiring.

Given his only instruments on the field of battle were already dead or dying, Ishan had no choice but to perform a lesser connection to the Ascension Protocol. He had tested this once before, and it had sufficed to grant him real-time information from half a galaxy away.

He focused his will and concentration and made the mental connection to the Godchannel creature he'd prepared for his masters to enact the Ascension Protocol. The connection itself was easy to forge, but he had to be extremely careful while using it. Being killed while still connected would only cause physical backlash to the Godchannel creature, but the mental shock would possibly kill him.

He focused, driving lances of form-thought deep into the misshapen creature's mind, and then forced his mental strength into the connection. While he certainly was no Ascended, he could still puppet one of the Drones and gain firsthand insight into the nature of the enemy - and perhaps kill this Butcher if she was exposed.

The drone in question shook as the energies filled it, forming an ansible link over tens of thousands of light-years in a second. The rush of the power would burn it out, of course, but it was only a Drone, not even sapient anymore, guided by the will of the Chosen. The Drone's body responded, stored energies expanding within it, powering the various devices and reinforcing the connection further.

His senses expanded as the Ascension Protocol took hold, albeit sluggishly. He had no Godpower to infuse the creature with unnatural strength, or to power the nanonic wiring that would make it invincible – he just needed eyes and sensors on the field.

Vnad Ishan brought to bear what sensors he could, relying on the biomechanical armor the Drone wore to generate most of the scans needed while he glanced around. Anomalies already stood out, some of them automatically recorded by the bio-armor. He ignored these and focused, finding the ravaged, broken form of the Strike Overseer on the ground in the distance.

The fool was dead, but his bioarmor had not been destroyed. Ishan triggered a data-link and downloaded the more expansive results and recordings from the leader's armor. Yellow-glowing eyes in two places in the galaxy both shifted in shape as he took in the results.

Scans of the ships flitting through the air and fighting in space were inconclusive, but within expected tolerances for technology - although at the very highest end of those expectations. What was not expected was that not a single ship of the Butcher's force had fallen to cyberwarfare attacks of any kind - and that almost all of them were generating the subtle but clear multiphase data channels associated with the Inusannon AI Vigil.

Ishan snarled. That stupid device had used the Protheans for its own purposes, then tricked them into a situation where they had no choice but surrender or death. Javik and the rest of the Avatars, including his own father, had been lost to its scheming, and now it had somehow survived.

Seeing multiple links to every ship meant the AI was either controlling the ships or at least assisting, and explained how cyberwarfare attack was a pointless tactic. The ships themselves were nothing special.

The ground forces were another story. The natives and what looked like Alliance soldiers were well within expectations, perhaps even below them. Many of them had been neutralized at the beginning of the fight by the swarms, along with tens of thousands of civilians. He was pleased to see at least some of them had been recovered.

The presence of asari, using biotic fields to hold back the swarms, explained why any of the natives were even capable of putting up a fight. The tactic was hardly new - slave revolts in the Sethani Empire had often run afoul of such a thing - but had not been employed by the handful of asari on other colonies they had struck.

And the humans currently finishing off the last of the husks, who all wore some form of white armor - the Butcher's soldiers - were projecting some kind of jury-rigged Severance field, protecting them from the Servility swarms. And the Swarm was equally useless against the alien members of the Butcher's group, their seeking being spoofed by the same sort of jamming that was protecting the humans.

Clever... too clever for the natives. Most likely, more meddling at the will of Vigil. That also explained the sudden use of biotic shielding and answered a litany of other questions about how things could have gone so poorly here.

Perhaps the Strike Overseer was not incompetent, just unfortunate.

He turned his attention to the nearest enemy combatants, finding more anomalies. The krogan was using a weapon created with some kind of lesser matrix of old Prothean shearing crystals. Such technology was something they should not have been able to master. Okeer had been given samples, and the Butcher had taken out Okeer - had he betrayed them before he died, or was this yet more of Vigil's meddling?

Locating and destroying that accursed device would be his top priority - the Ascended would be pleased if he was able to do so. He flicked his senses over each one of the defenders, finding nothing else amiss until he turned his attention to the one they called the Butcher.

And then he drew back in shock.

There could be no mistake. The signature was the same – despite being augmented by what had the clear emission of filthy Inusannon corruption... it was definitely her.

O-TWCD-O

Shepard slashed apart the last pair of charging husks, grimacing as they tried to grapple her even in death. She stepped free of the tangle of limbs, looking around and seeking additional enemies.

The only thing left standing was the Collector on the ridge in the distance with yellow-glowing eyes, as the rest of the husks had been thrown down. She smiled as Zaeed shot at it, then frowned as the shot bounced off a yellowish-green barrier field. A BRKR round from Florez was equally ineffective, although this at least seemed to wake the thing up.

It took a small leap down from the ridge, landing smoothly. The brownish hide was split open in many places, revealing a deep orange-yellow glow and sluggishly moving wires.

Shepard tightened her grip on her sword, even as the glowing Collector took another step forward and spoke. Its voice was a muted growl, reverberating and cold, and yet sounding almost irritated.

"You."

She turned to face the thing, smiling underneath her helmet, bringing her warp sword around in front of her. "What, scared of little old me?"

The glowing figure stared at her. "I do not know how you survived, but the oversight will be corrected... soon. Enjoy your victory for the rest of your short existence." The Collector twitched, jerked, and then collapsed, leaving behind a ravaged, smoking corpse.

She glanced around one more time, seeing no enemies close by. A handful of husks on the horizon had suddenly stopped in their approach, swaying in place and twitching. Shepard frowned, and then scowled as her omni-tool lit up with a call from the Normandy. "Status?"

Pressly's voice was strained. "Secure, but something strange just happened, ma'am. Just before the Kazan was going to impact the carrier, it suddenly just... blinked out. So did the badly damaged cruiser. We're scanning now for drive traces or anything, but they just seemed to vanish."

Shepard glanced back up. The Collectors were taking to the sky en masse, falling back rapidly to the one remaining ship, completely ignoring counter fire in their haste. The larger creatures fell back as well, while the husks on the horizon were now falling back, forming packs to block any pursuit.

Shepard suddenly had a bad feeling about this.

"Something's not right. Fuck."

Pressly's voice rang out. "Reacquired the cruiser, ma'am! It's on a course for high solar orbit, nineteen light-minutes out. It must have done some kind of crazy in-system FTL jump - across half the damned system. What the hell are they doing?"

She tapped another comm-link. "Vigil, ideas?"

The sphere's voice was muted. "Unknown. Although probably nothing good. Did anything happen on the surface to have caused this?"

She licked her lips. "I think one of the Collectors knew who I was. It said it didn't know how I had survived but that it would fix that problem. It was, ah, glowing, and had wires moving around inside it - sort of like Benezia and Saren."

Vigil's voice was grim. "Glowing is rarely a good thing, undead primate... and the Collector ship is accelerating beyond our capability to match speeds with."

Pressly spoke. "At its current speed the Collector Cruiser will be in solar orbit in nine minutes. It will take us at least twenty-five minutes to try and intercept it – pursue?"

She glanced to the south, where the Collectors continued to fall back, the exhausted defenders not even trying to pursue them. "No point if they can jump around like that. Bring the Normandy down, now that the bad guys are pulling out the last thing I need is the SA trying to arrest me or something."

Pressly's voice was firm. "Not much chance of that. The Kazan is turning, slowing acceleration, and coming back towards the one remaining SA destroyer that is still intact. Do you want comms with the ship?"

She glanced over her shoulder, as the two DACT walked over. "In a minute. Out." Sheathing her warp sword, she walked over toward the control tower, Grunt following in her wake as she did so.

Lieutenant Cole was still propped up against the wall of the tower, with medi-gel packets around his stomach and right leg. Commissar Jiong stood next to him, the neural mace in his hand stained with Collector fluids, his uniform ruined.

She walked to about two meters from them before stopping. "The Collectors are falling back, gentlemen. They're up to something in space, but they look like they've given up down here. My own people are going to be pulling out as quickly as we can – I trust we aren't going to have any problems from your people?"

Cole looked at her, at the pile of bodies she'd blasted and carved apart, at the giant krogan standing behind her, and then back at her. "That would be a fucking-aw-hell-naw, ma'am."

Jiong was less sanguine. "You are wanted for questioning by both the High Lords of the Systems Alliance, as well as the Citadel Council, in regards to your connections to Cerberus."

She smirked, although they couldn't see it behind her helmet. "I already told the Council I'll meet with them when I'm damned good and ready." She paused, then tilted her head. "And really, Commissar... your High Lords wouldn't like meeting me in person."

Jiong arched an eyebrow. "That may be so. But Cerberus is a human organization, one well within our purview - and one your namesake was involved in destroying. Your actions at the very least require explanation."

She shook her head. "Was a human organization, Commissar. I'll be more than happy to explain my links to them – they're the only people who were interested in stopping shit like this," She waved her arms at the burning countryside, "from happening. Your Alliance claimed it was 'pirates' without even bothering to check for themselves, and when I wiped those 'pirates' off the face of the galaxy, the Council pulled more bullshit out of their crests without hesitation."

She folded her arms and shifted her weight to one leg. "I don't wish to kill you, Commissar, but don't think it would be much of an issue. Your call."

Cole grimaced and stood, placing a hand on Jiong's shoulder. "We can't take her like this. I'm not even sure we could take her with the Captain down here and us not busted up."

Jiong nodded stiffly. "I would suggest departing swiftly then, Butcher. The Kazan sent a distress call and reinforcements will be arriving shortly. I have no wish to engage in hostilities at this time."

Shepard nodded. "That is appreciated. Go with the will of the Goddess, Commissar." She tapped her comm-link to transmit to her own people. "All forces. Fall back to shuttles and pickup points. Trigger Meltdown on any hard-downed mechs and let's get out of here."

She turned away, but stopped as Jiong grabbed her arm. "Yes?"

The hard features of her friend stared at her. "Sara Shepard was more than mindless violence, asari. She was more than revenge."

With a sad smile Shepard removed his hand. "I know that better than you do, Alfred." He dropped his hand in surprise at her knowledge of his name, and she kanquessed away.

Cole frowned. "You notice how she was standing at the end? The Boss Lady used to do that all the time. And... something about how she moved when she was fighting..." He trailed off, not sure what to think, and then sighed. "Now I sound crazy. Sorry, sir."

Jiong nodded, thinking much of the same thing to himself. The motions, the fighting, even the phrasing was strangely - and upsettingly - familiar. The idea that this asari was Shepard reborn was ridiculous on its face, but he began to comprehend why the High Lords were worried. If some asari had ripped information from Shepard's mind...

Clearing his mind of such useless thoughts, he tapped his comm-link. "Kazan?"

A voice answered. "Lieutenant Daniels here, sir. The Kazan has been evacuated, Captain Delacor and Ensign Li An, and a handful of torpedomen are all that's left. We're moving them now to the Hudson, as it's the only ship with working medical."

Jiong nodded. "Escape pods from the Kazan?"

"Already FTL'd out, sir." A pause. "Captain von Khar is in critical condition and unconscious. Captain McDaniels is dead, and the XO of our ship and the Kazan are both badly injured. You're the ranking officer – orders?"

Jiong paused, then shook his head. "Ascertain the status of remaining Collector forces. We're going to need disaster relief teams here, send messages to the Citadel immediately. What is your medical capacity?"

"Collector carrier is gone; the cruiser is headed for what looks like a solar orbit. Most of the other Collector ships are destroyed, or being towed by the Butcher's ships. Medical bay is full, but we have two engineers building additional dockets in the crew's mess. The Butcher's fleet is standing off from us, but have powered down their weapons."

Jiong nodded. "I'll have our more critically injured sent upstairs then. Not sure what kind of conditions local medical systems will have, but they will no doubt be completely overwhelmed, not to mention there may still be Hades units down here. For now, hold position and await reinforcements, and do not engage the Butcher's ships."

"Understood, sir. We're trying to clear the shuttle bay now; we should have some shuttles working here in a few minutes."

Jiong killed the connection. "Lieutenant, get me a medical status on our survivors. Seeing as the Horizon Chamber was probably all killed, I strongly doubt we'll be able to do anything meaningful here. I'm going to check on Williams's team."

Cole nodded, slumping back down and tapping his omni. "Yes, sir."

O-TWCD-O

Ashley Williams watched the Butcher's people load up their shuttle with Collector bodies, weapons and armor. They didn't communicate with her – or even pay her or her people any attention. The fight had just stopped for some reason, all the bugs falling back at top speed to their ship, which even now was lifting off.

Ash would have preferred to keep firing at it, but the damned colonists decided not to. She guessed after watching their world get its shit wrecked, they just wanted the entire mess to stop. Besides, the Collectors had definitely learned today that humanity was not to be fucked with - the lesson needed someone to take it back to Bugfuck Central, or wherever they came from.

She glanced back over her own people, living and dead, and told herself this was worth the death of nine of her people and God knew how many Blue Suns.

The form of Archangel dropped from the tower's roof to land heavily on the ground in a flare of mass effect jets, coming out of the landing crouch to stare upwards. Another shuttle in white, black, and gold landed, and the big turian battle-suit motioned several of his people to get on it.

She walked forward, her rifle slung. "So, what now?"

The Archangel turned to look down on her, the night-black suit hulking over her. "Now? Now we leave. We've done what we came to do."

She wondered what that meant even as she spoke. "And you're not sticking around to help."

The armored figure made a spreading motion with his hands. "Not sure I like it either. But like you, I'm simply following orders. The Council has made a lot of noise about the Butcher, most of it unfriendly, and the fact that we saved your lives may or may not sway them to think differently."

He turned away. "But we'd rather not stick around to find out." He glanced off in the distance, where a single figure in a tattered greatcoat approached. "You are an excellent leader, Lieutenant Williams. I doubt anyone else could have kept your people alive in the face of such an enemy."

With that, he turned toward the shuttle, and she grunted, turning back to her own people. "Looks like the Butcher's gang is headed out of town. Sharps, Talei, keep an eye on 'em until they leave, just in case."

The two corporals nodded, and she turned back to watch the Butcher's people load up. She still didn't know what to think of the Butcher, but she had to give credit where it was due - the Archangel was definitely a badass. As he got on the shuttle, she noted he carried a large-bore Talon pistol - she immediately thought of another turian, now dead, who carried one. Garrus Vakarian.

She sighed. As much as she disliked turians and aliens in general, she had to admit - Vakarian would have never left these people to fend for themselves. She turned back to her people, pulling up the software on her omni-tool to write up the casualty reports, and hoped she could get back to the Citadel and her son quickly.

Seeing all the dead here made her wish for some peace and quiet, oddly enough.

O-TWCD-O

Aboard the Normandy, Pressly stared hard at the combat plot.

The fleet had lost eleven frigates and two destroyers, with heavy damage to several other ships and a light but fairly serious hit to the Normandy's port outboard engine. Vigil was already preparing the self-destruct routines on the downed ships, at least those too damaged to tow. Given that the ships were unmanned and they could always make more, it was not a crippling loss - but replacements would take time, and limit Pressly's options in any future battles until replaced.

What worried him, after he thought about it, was Vigil's mention about how easily even heavily shielded and Silaris-reinforced ships were taken out by the Collector weapons systems. That boded very ill for future clashes with the Collectors.

Based on what he'd seen, the Collectors were nasty customers. Their ships were basically immune to all but the heaviest mass accelerator fire, and their hulls and armor slowly regenerated as time passed. Their cyberwarfare meant guided torpedoes were difficult to land, forcing enemies to close range engagements with GARDIAN broadsides and missiles - which brought one neatly within the range that dodging their particle beam weapons was almost impossible.

The drones were also a very serious threat, equipped with a version of the MHD weapon used by Nazara. Although each bolt was tiny, it ignored kinetic barriers and generated explosive, burning damage within ships, starting fires and shorting out electrical systems. Luckily, most of Shepard's ships were manned by war robots - being hit with that in an oxygen-rich atmosphere like on most ships crewed by actual people would be ugly indeed.

Still, for a first round, Pressly thought they'd done well. The Collectors had lost a carrier and taken severe damage to their other two capital ships and lost most of their frigates. This would allow for the examination of the Collector technology up close.

Already, the Collector carrier destroyed in battle was being force-towed by most of the remaining Butcher's destroyers. The Collector frigate-class vessels were far too damaged to gain any intelligence from, and were left for the Council to pick over, and as proof. The single working Collector frigate on the surface had lifted off. Pressly had units ready to kill or cripple it, but it pulled the same vanishing stunt as the second carrier and cruiser had.

It wouldn't be long before relief ships arrived – Vigil estimated no more than an hour. They needed to be gone from the area before then, and Pressly's mind was already going over the details to make sure everything was cleared up when Vigil pulsed.

"We have a serious problem, meatbag."

Pressly looked up. "What is it?"

Vigil bobbed over the combat plot, shifting the display mode to sensor interpolation. "It has taken a while, given the wretched nature of your primitive sensors, but I believe I know what that Collector cruiser is doing. They are destabilizing the star."

For several long seconds, Pressly just stood there, before shaking his head, voice growing incredulous. "What?"

Vigil's voice was grim. "They are bombarding it with some kind of dynamic symmetry breaking... beam or field, accelerating the core fusion process of the star, force stepping elemental conversions at an incredibly rapid rate. There is also some kind of energy to matter conversion going on, forcing accretion of matter - specifically, pure elemental iron - on the star's surface."

As a navigator, Pressly was required to have a deep understanding of stellar physics. What the device was describing was clear and horrifying. "They're going to make the star go supernova?"

Vigil bobbed. "Some sort of forced runaway nuclear reaction, accelerated fusion into heavy elements ending in iron spectra, yes. While the force will not be as powerful as a true supernova it will pulverize everything in the system. Nothing will survive."

Pressly swallowed, feeling sweat erupt across his brow. With an effort, he steadied his breathing. "How long? Can we stop it?"

Vigil circled the plot. "Stop it, no. At top speeds we would now need thirty-two minutes to overtake the ship. The process will be irreversible in eleven minutes and completed in nineteen, so it is unlikely we could even interfere before the Collector ship escapes. As for how long until it detonates? Far less than a day. Estimates are completely impossible to gauge accurately, but I would suggest no more than four or five hours, perhaps seven at the outside."

The XO stabbed the comms button. "Ma'am, I... we have a problem."