Why yes, those were Collector troopers from Mass Effect 3. This story uses the whole Collector roster (emphasis on the Collector part of the faction), with the possessed replacing Harbinger. I wanted to include the adept from the multiplayer as well, but eventually I just spread its abilities around.
Also yes, that is indeed the Greek plural for the word xenos despite canon using xenos as uncountable (one xenos, two xenos). Honestly, aside from being another thing with which to differentiate the narration's point of view, I chose to use it out of annoyance at people who insist on using "xeno" as the singular (it is a prefix). Having an S at the end doesn't always mean the word is a plural (one species, two species; a piece of news, news). Apostrophes don't make a plural either (you know who you are).
The Trap
They climbed to the top of the storage building and from there onto the cliff face.
It was terribly exposed, the only cover being a pair of old picnic tables. Hannah had helped place the tables several months ago, but couldn't remember a time anyone had used them. There had even been plans to build a fence to prevent anyone from accidentally falling off the cliff, but if no one ever came near the cliff what was the point? Plans to build a ramp up the cliff so people didn't have to climb a ladder down from the roof of the storage had similarly fallen by the wayside. There was another way up, but that involved going around the hill until they reached a slope.
The colonists moved quickly to the door of a house that formed a small dead end with a large rock and another building. The door was unlocked, and they entered quickly. Hannah lingered in the doorway and looked back at the stranger. He lagged behind, his drone hovering above him, and looked around, seeming agitated by something.
"Hannah, come on," said Kristoffer and tapped her on the shoulder. They left the door open for the armored man.
The house was bigger than the previous one they had gone through. A small greenhouse had been built next to the door, taking up a quarter of the house. The rest was similar to other houses - a small kitchen, a couch, a table and a bed. Fredrik had disappeared into the kitchen, while Nikolai was kneeling down next to the greenhouse, peering intently through the glass.
"I think there's someone-"
Nikolai clamped his mouth shut when the stranger closed the door and walked past them. The sight of him pointing his weapon at Nikolai's face when he had refused to accompany them wasn't something they would forget.
Hannah knelt down as well and saw what he meant: a spot of red that stood out vividly against the dull grey surroundings, a person hiding behind a large table in the middle of the greenhouse.
"Do we know who?" she asked.
Kristoffer shook his head beside them. "Doesn't matter. We don't have any guns to spare."
He had a point; they only had four Lancers, what were they going to give to whoever was hiding in the greenhouse? They couldn't afford dead weight at this point. They weren't supposed to go this far to begin with. No matter how much Hannah wished she could find Adrian, she also knew the risk they were taking by coming to this part of the colony. The danger they were in was immense, but no one had dared to protest after the stranger had pulled his gun on Nikolai.
"He's right," said Hannah and sighed. The thought of leaving someone behind galled her, but there was no choice. At the very least, the greenhouse seemed a safe enough place to hide in. They could pick up the person on their way back to the garage - if they survived.
Fredrik appeared from the kitchen, looking nervously over his shoulder at the drone that kept staring at him. The stranger took one last look out of the house's other door, closed it and turned to face them.
"I, uhh, I poured us all a glass of water before we go."
Hannah spared the greenhouse one final glance and caught a glimpse of black hair disappearing back behind the table.
He opened the door slowly, wary of xenoi lurking just out of sight. He looked both ways then at the rock ahead and rooftops before exiting and walking up to the door at the end of the small dead end. He had not seen a xenos after the scout he had gunned down, but he held his weapons at the ready all the same. The Emperor alone knew when they would attack again.
He looked back at the cliff where he had spotted the xenotech pods earlier and clenched his hands on the grips of his laspistols. He had an idea what they held. He didn't know when they had been taken away, but he should have been there to stop it. Heathens the locals might have been, they were still the Emperor's people. The raiders would pay hundredfold for every life they took.
The door behind him opened.
The xenos was as surprised to see him as he was to see it.
He quickly elbowed it in the chin and put a lasbeam into its face as it staggered back. He saw the door on the opposite end slam shut and another xenos raise its carbine. The first xenos lurched forward and grabbed the curved blade on its hip. It was too close to him for its clumsy swing to be effective. and he simply raised one arm to block it. As he slammed the xenos into the door frame, he saw the other one rushing forward, unwilling to fire with its fellow in the way.
He shot the oncoming xenos in the head, grabbed the other as it tried to recover, pulled it along and flung it down the small alley. He stepped out of the doorway, slid the door halfway closed to block a burst of autofire and aimed at the stumbling xenos. An autogun opened fire and finished it off before he could.
The other xenos shouldered the door open, and he rammed into it, shoving back inside and into a shelf. He put two lasbeams into its carbine and the hand that held it and kicked the xenos backwards. The weapon dropped to the floor, and the xenos grabbed its blade and swung. Just like before, the swing was clumsy, readily telegraphed and too close and slow to trigger his conversion field, so he stepped backwards and let it miss. The blade swung back around, hoping to catch him off-guard, but he simply took another step while firing both pistols. The xenos fell on the third shot.
He looked inside the building. It was a small storage, smaller than the one they had found their newest comrade in, but shelves had been neatly organised against the walls and there was a door on the opposite side. If they were quick enough, they could intercept the xenoi before they took their captives to their ship. He turned to signal the locals to hurry and saw the woman fire a quick burst towards the roof above him before quickly ducking back inside. She shouted what sounded like a warning or an order.
A beam of energy slashed through the spot her head had occupied a second later. It was followed by another that burned a crater into the wall.
He tried to see the shooter from the doorway, but could only see the long barrel of its weapon. He was ready to move outside when the xenos, aided by its wings, jumped onto the rock opposite the building the locals were in. He saw it was wounded, but not by the woman's autogun - a long and deep scar had been burned into the side of its torso, a wound caused by his las gauntlet.
It was the sniper he had hit from across the settlement. When it had fallen off the roof, he had assumed it was dead like its predecessor despite the distance. None of his weapons were long ranged, and while las gauntlets could fire further than laspistols, they were a poor substitute for a long-las.
The woman fired blindly at the xenos, causing a faint, purple haze to flare momentarily around it and block her rounds. A force field? But how could that be? He had hit right through it.
The xenos returned fire, blasting a beam through the open doorway, but narrowly missing the woman who leaned back into cover. Then it jerked as one of its eyes burst from a lasbeam. It turned towards him, but never got to pull the trigger. The woman fired again, and the haze reappeared to block a few rounds, then it was gone and more rounds hit dead-on.
Caught in the crossfire, the xenos died barely a second later, and its body tumbled behind the rock.
The woman peeked outside and met his gaze.
He motioned for them to hurry and sent his servo-skull up to the roof. He didn't dare let it fly too high for fear of it being shot down, but he saw no aerial activity. He could only guess what sort of an ambush was being prepared on the other side during this distraction.
As the locals made their way to the storage, he made sure there was not a sliver of life left in the xenos by his feet.
"Hmm, I think that's an SMG," Hannah mused to herself as she got a good look at the shorter Collector weapon. It could have easily been a carbine instead, but something about it made her think of submachine guns which had fallen out of favor during the advent of mass accelerator weaponry. Then again, who knew how aliens defined their weapons.
Behind her, Fredik turned to Kristoffer and asked quietly, "A what?"
"Machine pistol," answered Kristoffer without taking his eyes off the rooftops.
Nikolai was staring at the crater the Collector beam weapon had blasted into the wall. "Lasers," he said absently. "People always told me laser weapons weren't a thing, now everyone has one."
"Oh, it's just this guy," Hannah remarked as they passed the stranger and entered the storage.
They were pointedly trying to ignore that said man had just stabbed a dead Collector in the neck several times. His brutality was still shocking to see. He wiped his blade clean, sheathed it and closed the door behind them, leaving them in the dark for the moment. They decided not to flick the light switch.
"What? Then what the hell was that alien firing?"
"It, uhhh, huh..." Hannah hadn't thought of that. She had assumed the Collector sniper rifle simply looked like a laser weapon, but wasn't actually one. "I'm not sure actually."
The stranger walked over to the other door at back of the storage without sparing them a glance. His drone hovered over him as usual.
"Does it really matter?" Fredrik asked incredulously.
"To the Alliance, yes. They'll have to know what happens here. I imagine the rest of the galaxy will be interested as well. Collectors are a myth to most people. Handheld laser weapons even more so."
The others grumbled under their breaths. They knew she was right. The very idea of having Alliance personnel or more aliens visiting their colony set them on edge. The thought of the aliens getting their hands on laser weaponry made Hannah's stomach turn.
"Should have stayed a myth," Kristoffer said.
The stranger rested one hand on the door handle and looked each of them in the eye, Nikolai longer than the others.
The colonists took up position next to the door and waited with bated breaths.
He opened the door a crack, just enough to see outside.
The first thing he noted of the grassy, slanted area was a raised, square platform a couple metres across straight ahead of him. Close to a dozen pods were placed leaning on it or the ground around it. They appeared to be made of the same material as the xenoi's guns, only lighter in color, and had a murky, reddish brown cover that might have been glass. Was there a person in each one?
He ignored the obvious trap and looked to the left. He couldn't see more than the furthest corner of the watchtower and a large rock at said corner. He turned his gaze to the right, past the buildings further away - including a long one that looked like it had been placed atop two others as a bridge - to one of the two-storey buildings he had spotted from afar through his servo-skull. Up close, he could see it was actually two separate buildings that had been placed atop one another, making them look like the same structure from afar. A switchback staircase led up to the door of the upper one.
Flowerbeds had been built around two trees that grew near the staircase. Across a small street that led further into the settlement was another identical building, placed parallel to the first and dead ahead from his perspective. There was a small deck with low railings in front of its door. The hill sloped more to the right, and a wall was in the middle of being constructed. A barrier to separate the poorer citizens from the wealthy, he assumed; it was hard to be certain when the prefabs on both sides of the divide looked identical.
The xenos vessel loomed in the distance. Doubtless most of the pods were already being loaded.
He ordered his servo-skull to remain still and motioned for the locals to do the same. He opened the door all the way and rushed forward.
He came under fire immediately, rounds striking his conversion field and making it flash as it turned kinetic energy into light. Thankfully, the fire was not accurate or powerful enough to be a true threat. He saw five xenoi waiting in front of the wide, closed door of the watchtower. All of them were armed with rifles, and all bar one were kneeling behind pods that had been placed as cover. The building itself looked like a square prefab with glass windows had been placed atop a tall, non-prefab building. An antenna was set up on the rooftop.
He slid behind the platform. The xenoi stopped firing, but did not try to approach - something he confirmed with a quick look around the platform.
The woman called out, pointing her rifle towards the double building. The father was taking a crouched position on the opposite side of the doorway, partially blocking his servo-skull's view.
Xenoi were landing onto the roof. There were three of them; one with a rifle, two with carbines. The locals opened fire and managed to fell one xenos with a lucky shot. The rifle-wielder stepped to the edge of the roof, protecting the surviving carbine-wielder with its own body. The autogun rounds struck a purple barrier around its body - something he knew the others did not posses. It put down something, and a shimmering shield of yellow light sprung into existence, blocking all further attacks. The xenoi's return fire had no such trouble, and the locals ducked out of sight quickly, pulling his servo-skull along.
A squad leader or an officer equivalent of some kind, he realised, armed with a force field and a deployable one.
He stepped back to draw a bead on the xenos, half-crouched even though the platform was too tall for the ones guarding the doors to shoot over, and fired one las gauntlet. He reasoned that he needed to get through the shield as quickly as possible, but using both would have been too wasteful without knowing how strong it was.
Just like with the sniper earlier, the lasbeam went right through the shield like it wasn't there. The xenos stumbled back, missing half its face, tripped on the body of the dead xenos and fell off the edge of the roof. The xenoi by the doors opened fire again, while the surviving carbine-wielder jumped down to the landing at the top of the stairs.
He ducked back behind the platform, utterly perplexed. A force field that only affected kinetic weaponry? What foolishness was that? Why design a force field that could only block one thing in a galaxy full of exotic weaponry? Yet when he thought about it, it sounded exactly like something a xenos would do. He would leave the mystery for the Adeptus Mechanicus to ponder.
He leaned out of cover to have a quick look at the xenoi at the entrance of the tower, then ducked back to avoid another hail of fire. They still had not moved from their position, but the one in the middle had deployed a shimmering barrier to protect itself - another officer. Clearly they were expecting another force to flank him while they kept him pinned. He had an idea how to handle them. But first he had to take care of the xenos already moving to flank him.
He shuffled over to the other corner of the platform and leaned out, weapons ready. The xenos had reached the second landing, further away from his position, and was firing short bursts towards the locals. It noticed him too late to react, and he emptied the low-charge power pack of one laspistol into its head. It tumbled down the stairs and came to a stop on the grass in front of the lower building's door.
The other xenoi fired again, but he was already back in cover by then. He holstered one laspistol, reloaded the other quickly, put the empty power pack in the pouch where he kept all empty ones, picked one grenade from his waist and turned to the locals. He showed it to them and motioned towards the xenoi line. He pointed at them with his other hand, careful to point the barrel of his laspistol away, and then towards the building behind him. He nodded, asking if they understood, and got a hesitant nod in return.
He gave them a moment to get ready, then pulled the pin, stepped out into the open and hurled the grenade with all his might.
The xenoi were too focused on trying to suppress him to realise what was happening, and the grenade exploded just as it landed amid them. Two xenoi on the right were blown off their feet, and the officer staggered even as its force field tried to absorb the force of the explosion and the flying fragments. The shimmering barrier it had deployed vanished, and a pod started sliding down the incline.
With the xenoi disarray, he stepped out from behind the platform and fired a las gauntlet at the officer. It took a shot from a laspistol to kill it, and a quick burst with both dropped one of the survivors. The locals ran past him and reached the small deck outside the door while he dealt with the last survivor before it could do more than raise its rifle belatedly. They entered quickly, the settlement's poor security once more saving its people.
He was about to follow when two snipers appeared from inside the upper building and took aim at him, while a rifle-wielder hurried down the stairs. He dove back behind the platform before they could open fire.
A local fired at the snipers from a window, and one of them moved back inside and fired back from its own window. Another local shot at it from a window further along the building, so it switched targets, and the sniper on the landing turned to fire at the first window. The rifle-wielder kept the doorway suppressed as it descended the stairs.
It was the same tactic as before, keeping the humans pinned until a flanking force could show up. The sudden relocation of the locals might have caught them off-guard, but more would be on the way. He wouldn't spare a grenade this time. He didn't need to.
He gave their predicament one last glance and charged out to meet the xenos.
Collector fire punched through window frame next to Kristoffer's head, and he dropped flat on the floor with a curse. On the side of the same window closer to Hannah, Fredrik ducked as well while keeping an eye on the outside.
"Heads down, all of you!" Hannah yelled, though she hardly needed to remind them.
Nikolai tried to ask her something before a beam blasted into the floor through the window and he flinched. He was standing right next to her, leaning on the wall between the door and the first window of the house. His finger kept tapping the trigger nervously, though he had the presence of mind to avoid pulling it by accident. Under any other circumstances she would have never even considered giving untrained civilians firearms, even activating the assault rifles for Nikolai and Fredrik had made her hesitate, but they really had no choice.
Part of her wondered if they should have stayed in the storage building. They would have stayed further from the action, sure, but she wasn't certain it would have helped; the Collector snipers had a clear line of sight to the door and could have easily stopped them from getting out that way. Their only option at that point would have been to retreat and hope the aliens didn't pursue.
Hannah headed for the door to get ready for the approaching Collector and saw the stranger charge out of cover. The suppressive fire cut out, and Hannah peeked outside just in time to see the man shoot the alien he had knocked over in the head and run up the stairs. Hannah quickly switched her Lancer to a left-handed grip, stepped up to the doorway and fired at the sniper on the landing. Most rounds were stopped by the thick, metal railing, but some hit their mark, making the alien's barrier flare. She stepped back inside when it turned towards her. A hole was blasted into the deck outside the door.
Nikolai took the opportunity to lean out of the window and fire a single shot at the other sniper. He clearly wanted to fire more, but the recoil surprised him. He ducked back into cover before either alien could return fire.
"More of them!" yelled Fredrik, pointing with his Lancer.
The first xenos sniper was just starting to turn to face him when he reached the landing outside the door. He rammed his shoulder into it midturn and fired at the other sniper who was starting to turn as well. He moved the first xenos between him and the other one and kept firing. The beam from the xenos weapon struck its fellow's force field, revealing it was actually a kinetic weapon of some kind; his lasbeams struck the creature in the chest and face, but it only flinched slightly.
The first sniper tried to shoot him, but its weapon was too long and unwieldy to be used this close, and it ended up firing into the railing and landing. He retaliated by shooting out one of its eyes and slamming it into the door frame. The second one fired again and hit his conversion field before he had moved completely out of its line of sight. The locals opened fire with their autoguns.
He killed the first sniper with a lasbeam through its ruined eye, shoved its falling body backwards and checked his flanks and the remaining charge of his weapons. When the autoguns went quiet a second later, he leaned into the doorway and opened fire on the remaining sniper.
The xenos had backed away from the window, intent on cutting its losses and retreating. It turned to him, the side of its head smouldering, and his next shot killed it.
He waited a moment, but no more xenoi appeared and the guns remained quiet. Whether the flankers were still coming or had thought better of attacking, he could not say; he would remain on guard regardless.
He took a look inside the building as he reloaded one laspistol. He noted the small, low table in front of a sofa, an empty bookshelf against a wall and a small culina made of a worktop, a sink, an oven and drawers. There was too much empty space for the size of the building; he could fit two, maybe three families in it yet there was only one bed by the far wall next to another open door.
The second sniper's weapon caught his eye. It was slowly venting steam. Curious, he looked down the first sniper's weapon for a better look. Like the other xenos weapons thus far it was made of some organic substance that resembled the xenoi themselves. Unlike the other weapons, its long barrel lacked the two upper jaws and terminated in a small, metallic cylinder with a larger one set into base of the barrel. They were the first clearly metal weapon parts he had seen.
The locals exclaimed something. They were exiting the building they had taken shelter in. Through his servo-skull he saw the woman urge the others back and fire at the xenos he had knocked over earlier. The others hesitated until the father joined her, though his shots were slower and unsure. An upright pod hid the xenos from the servo-skull's sight, but he could see a familiar glow and hear the creature grunting. Since it hadn't done anything after he had shot it, he had assumed it to be dead. It was time to rectify that.
He moved to the railing and fired straight down with a las gauntlet. The lasbeam bored into the creature's head as it tried to rise to its feet. The force field that protected it from the autoguns failed almost at the same time. The xenos slumped back down as if simply giving up and disintegrated.
He turned around, weapons at the ready, and a xenos appeared in the doorway on the opposite end. He put a quick burst into its chest before it could react. The xenos took cover, but stepped back into the open a second later with a black disc in hand. He remembered seeing one on the waists of previous carbine-wielders. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but as the xenos hurled the object towards him he recognised it for what it was. He leapt down the stairs to the other landing and shouted a warning to the locals who were already running back inside.
The grenade rebounded from the railing and landed next to the sniper's corpse. The grenade detonated a second later, throwing the sniper's corpse through the doorway and blasting its weapon apart. The stairs creaked ominously, and ragged hole had been torn into the landing. The curved force field on the rooftop turned off at last.
He fired at another xenos moving along the roof. It returned fire with its carbine, making his conversion field flash where a round got past the thick railing he had put between himself and the explosion. An autogun opened fire as well, catching the xenos in the crossfire. A second autogun joined in as the xenos tried to turn, making it spin and fall over.
The light he had quickly come to hate shone from inside.
There was a pause before the autoguns barked again, followed by the quieter sound of a xenos carbine. It was coming from the lower building.
He glanced quickly at the rooftops of the buildings to his left. He saw no xenoi, but knew all too well how fast they could appear. Another xenos carbine opened fire, and the locals were forced to take cover. Knowing now the xenoi were armed with grenades, he hurried down the stairs with his weapons at the ready.
He opened the door and fired at the xenoi inside. The nearest one was reaching for the grenade on its waist, and its weapon steaming; the other tried to return fire before a wild spray from an autogun forced it to duck behind a sofa. The one round it got off glanced off his conversion field. He moved inside and riddled the first xenos with lasfire. As it died, the second decided to make a run for it, dashing out of the open door on the far end. Autofire chased it until the door slammed shut behind it.
Through his servo-skull, he saw the glowing xenos make its way down the stairs. He turned and extended his hand. The xenos stepped into the doorway, carbine at the ready, but he was faster. Las gauntlet's beam struck it the upper chest, but it quickly twisted out of the way and back behind the wall.
He cursed to himself, checked the remaining charge of his laspistols and glanced at the other door behind him. There was no telling when the other xenos would return, and he did not intend to sit still and wait.
A local shot at the xenos, and it fired back.
He jumped out of the nearest window without delay and landed with a grunt. He was surprised when he noticed a dead xenos at the far corner of the building, one he had not seen before. He locked eyes with the local men peeking from the windows and pointed his pistols in the direction of the corpse. He did not know if they understood to keep a lookout, but seeing as they had already killed one xenos, it might have been a given.
The glowing xenos fired inside, and he rounded the corner and blasted it with a las gauntlet before it even realised he had vacated the building. It jerked from the lasbeam burning into the side of its head and threw its carbine at him. He batted it aside, but it gave the xenos time to lunge towards him, blade swinging. The swing was wide, too wide, like with the previous xenoi, and he raised his arm to block it. The xenos was stronger than its predecessors, however, and the blade clanked against his shoulder guard. He noticed its arm was injured; the beam of his las gauntlet had burned across it as it had spun out of the line of fire.
He shot it in the face with the laspistol in his other hand, and the xenos grabbed him by the wrist before he could fire again. Its grip was like a vice, and he was surprised by the strength of such gaunt limbs. It growled something that might have been words, its glowing eyes locked with his. Had it a mouth, he was sure it would have mirrored his hateful grimace.
A warning of increasing temperature caused by the creature's continued proximity appeared on his helm display.
The xenos stepped back suddenly, pulling him along and then twisting so his back was in the open doorway. Autoguns opened up in haphazard bursts. One of them was aimed at the glowing xenos. Its force field stopped the bullets, and a few struck his own due to their proximity. The shooter wisely slipped back inside to help the others. He didn't need to turn around to confirm the other xenos had returned. It fired a quick but futile burst at him as it ducked behind the same sofa as before, shrugging off multiple impacts to its side.
He pulled back his trapped arm, pressed his other against the creature's side and shifted his weight as the xenos threw its arm wide in preparation for another swing, catching it off-balance and spinning them around. The creature's back slammed against the wall, and he pulled his hand free from its slackened grip.
The xenos inside rose again, a grenade in hand, and turned towards the other building. The locals realised what was about to happen and tried to run for the door. He tried to shoot it, but the glowing xenos swung again, forcing him to dodge. A panicked burst from an autogun struck the xenos, but it was too late.
The locals cried out, and an explosion rocked the building.
Hannah cursed loudly as she dragged Nikolai out of the door and into safety. Fredrik was barely out of the door, tripping on the threshold, when the grenade detonated. Kristoffer, however, was still inside. His scream of pain was barely muffled by the explosion.
"Kris!" Nikolai yelled and moved back inside, keeping his head low. Fredrik crawled after him, too dazed and scared to stand up. His Lancer lay where he had dropped it during his tumble.
Hannah hesitated at the door, turning back to the stranger in time to see him kick the glowing Collector away from him, sending it stumbling towards them. He shot it once, then stepped into the doorway and fired at the Collector that threw the grenade, lasers illuminating the shadowy interior.
"Fire!" she yelled and pulled the trigger. "Fire!"
Nikolai joined in from the window, firing full-auto until his weapon overheated, struggling to control the recoil. Their combined fire broke through the biotic barrier and perforated the alien. It managed to turn and glare at them before it turned to ash. The other Collector was also dead by then.
Hannah rushed inside. "Kristoffer! Are you alright?"
Kristoffer was sitting on the floor, leaning against the drawers of an L-shaped kitchen counter that jutted from the wall. His right leg was bleeding, lacerated by pieces of a small chair the grenade that blown apart and shards from the grenade itself. Knowing he couldn't make it to the door in time, Kristoffer had tried to take cover behind the thickest object he could reach. It had saved his life, but his leg had still been out in the open when the grenade had detonated.
"In the so bra," he hissed through gritted teeth.
"What?" It took a second for Hannah to realize Kristoffer wasn't speaking English.
"Not so good," Fredrik translated. He looked utterly helpless as he pressed a towel on the wounded man's leg, trying to stem the bleeding, but the wounds were too spread out and numerous. Hannah had to stop him from pulling anything out and making the bleeding worse.
"Yeah, that. Sorry," said Kristoffer and flinched when Fredrik pressed too hard. He tried to put up a brave face, but couldn't hold back the tears of pain.
"There has to be medi-gel somewhere," Nikolai said to himself as he rummaged through every cabinet and drawer he could find.
The door on the far end slammed open. The colonists nearly jumped out of their skins, Kristoffer more so as he couldn't move to see past the drawers. The stranger shut the door behind himself and rushed across the house to close the other. His skull-drone flew in before the door went shut. After a quick hand gesture and voiced command it floated over to them to inspect Kristoffer's leg, heedless of the discomfort it caused. It moved the towel aside with its stubby arms to have a better look. Two seconds later it let go and flew back to the stranger who had moved to the window to keep an eye on the outside.
"What do we do?" Fredrik asked quietly. "We can't stay."
Nikolai knelt down next to them, looking Kristoffer in the eye. "Old Carl's clinic." The colony's old doctor was actually named Carlos. Were nicknames Nikolai's thing? "It's basically next door. We can treat your leg there."
"No," said the injured man. "I can still keep going." He tried to rise despite the pain, but the others stopped him.
"Like hell you can! We're taking you to the clinic even if I have to drag you there myself." He glanced at the stranger. "He can point his guns at me all day, but I'm not budging."
"I said I'm fine!" Kristoffer tried to rise again despite their protests. "Have to keep going. There might still be someone out there. Have to..." He trailed off and slumped back down, staring blankly at the wall. He was clearly thinking of his daughter, all alone in a garage at the edge of the colony. Once again Hannah felt a stab of guilt in her heart.
"We are leaving, Kristoffer," said Nikolai and hooked one of Kristoffer's arms around his neck.
The older man tried to protest until a bang reverberated through the house. The stranger spent a moment staring out of the window before he withdrew his fist from the wall. He set his drone to watch the outside for him and walked over to them. For a second Hannah thought he was angry, but when he knelt down beside them he looked dejected. He put one hand on Kristoffer's shoulder and shook his head. Kristoffer in turn sighed, defeated.
"See? Even he agrees."
Fredrik wrapped the towel around Kristoffer's leg as best he could and took the other arm. Together the men helped Kristoffer to his feet, careful to avoid aggravating his injuries. The stranger stood up as well and crossed his hands across his chest in imitation of the two-headed eagles that covered his armor. Hannah felt useless, standing there with an assault rifle dangling from one hand as her fellow colonists started to make their way to the other door.
Suddenly, the stranger drew his weapons and rushed out of the door, leaving his drone at the window. He opened fire as he ran for the platform. Hannah moved to the door, her weapon at the ready, and saw a pair of SMG-wielding Collectors who had appeared while their attention was elsewhere. The stranger had clearly caught them off-guard as one of them was still out in the open while the other was taking cover behind one of the weird pods they had left lying around.
Hannah opened fire, knocking the first Collector off-balance as it tried to get to cover. Having moved to the far side of the platform, the stranger finished it off with a laser to the head. The alien slumped against the pod its comrade knelt behind. Hannah ducked back inside when said comrade began to move out of the stranger's line of fire and turned its attention to her.
"What's happening out there?" asked Kristoffer anxiously.
"Collectors. Two of them," Hannah answered and flinched as a round flew in through the open doorway and punched its way into a cupboard. She looked at the stranger, waiting for him to handle the alien, but he was looking towards the stacked houses instead. He raised one arm and fired the vambrace gun at an unseen target. "Make that three."
Outside, the Collector ceased fire, but the stranger didn't take the opportunity to shoot. He seemed to be waiting for something. Hannah peeked outside just in time to see the Collector hurl a grenade.
"Grenade!" she yelled on instinct and heard the men behind her shuffle away in fear. But the grenade wasn't aimed at them. The second it left the alien's hand, the stranger charged out from behind the platform, guns blazing. Hannah backed away from the door to be safe, and the grenade detonated harmlessly. When she moved back, the thrower was already dead.
The stranger came to a stop by the pod the other Collector was leaning against. He kicked the dead body aside and took a look inside the pod. Hannah could barely see his grip tightening on his pistols, and her thoughts turned to the Traynors and Giorgio, frozen and helpless. A terrible realization dawned. It would certainly explain the pods and the stranger's reaction. The skull-drone flew over to the man as he holstered one pistol and drew a knife.
Hannah knew what would follow and turned her gaze upwards towards the control tower that loomed ahead. The control tower was the tallest structure in the colony. It was meant to help direct and communicate with supply shuttles, like any other air control tower. The landing zone ended up being set up further ahead, behind the tall buildings at the top of the hill the colony was built on. Just one of the many things that hadn't being thought through in the colony. She looked at the antenna on the roof and turned back to the others who waited with bated breaths.
"Nikolai, did anyone turn the emergency beacon on?" Without the beacon no one would know anything had happened before the supply ship arrived. She decided not to say anything about the conclusion she had come to regarding the pods.
The man shook his head. "No one had the time. We just ran."
Hannah looked outside again. The stranger had just sent one of the pods sliding down the incline. She wanted to go with the others, her house wasn't far either, but that beacon was vital. She had to admit there was no way Adrian was still be at home. He was a smart boy, he would know where to hide.
"Get to safety," she said. "I'm going."
"Are you serious?" Fredrik asked, aghast. "Will it even work? Aren't we being jammed?"
"Even if the alert doesn't get through, it'll be on repeat until someone turns it off," Nikolai explained. "That's assuming the aliens didn't blow up the comm buoy, of course."
"Won't know until I try," Hannah said and looked outside briefly. The stranger stabbed his knife into throat of a dead Collector. "I'll come back as soon as I can. Hopefully with him in tow."
"We'll check on Adrian for you," Kristoffer said and tried to smile encouragingly, a worried parent to another. That smile was quickly replaced by a grimace as he put too much weight on his injured leg.
Hannah nodded. She expected no less. That she was worried sick about her son would have been blatantly obvious to him despite her attempts to hide it.
"Right, we have to get going," Nikolai said and started awkwardly turning the three of them around. "The controls should be labeled. Guys always said it was idiot proof. Stay safe out there."
"You too, guys." Hannah watched the men head for the opposite door for moment. She took a deep breath, exited the house, checked the rooftops and jumped over the railing.
The stranger caught sight of her as she landed. He had just kicked the last pod down the incline. He seemed surprised to see her, though it was hard to tell due to his armor. He nodded, then turned to a Collector lying on the ground beside him. The pod bumped into one set against the platform and came to a stop right next to Hannah.
She decided to take a look through the murky cover to confirm her suspicions. Her breath hitched when she recognized Dylan, the nice old man who lived few houses away. He looked like he had been running for dear life when the Collectors had caught him. She looked at the other pods, wondering how many more there were. They looked more like coffins to her now. Were they all occupied? Would she find Adrian in one? No, she refused to even consider the possibility.
The whip-crack of a laser pistol sent her running onward.
He sent the last pod sliding down the incline and saw the woman landing on the grass.
He had expected her to go with the others, he certainly would not have blamed her for it. It was foolish of him to ever expect a small group of scared settlers without proper training or equipment to have a chance of beating back the invaders. At the very least they had helped save several victims and lived to see another day. A child would see her father again, though the medical scanner built into his servo-skull had revealed that the father still required medical attention if he wanted to save his leg. He regretted not taking any of his medikits, not that they would have helped much in this case.
In his anger over the realisation the xenoi were intent on capturing people alive he had forgotten to use said scanner on the stasis-locked people in the lower settlement. Perhaps he could have learned something of the strange haze, perhaps not. The pods prevented scans of their occupants, and he did not have the time to figure out how to open them. Many of them were damaged by the xenoi's suppressive fire or by his grenade, but thankfully most were empty.
He could not back down, not when there were still people to be saved, not when xenoi still defiled the settlement with their presence.
He offered the woman a respectful nod and turned to the xenoi that had been knocked off their feet by his grenade. One had lost limbs and was definitely dead; the other lay on its back, its exoskeleton lacerated. He stabbed his knife into its throat, and the xenos, merely unconscious, jolted awake. It grabbed at him, gurgling incoherently, and he twisted the blade before yanking it out. His laspistol had enough power for two more shots, so he fired into the wound. The xenos went limp.
He quickly backed up against the wall, dropped the knife and reloaded while keeping his eyes on the rooftops.
The woman ran up to him and stopped in the doorway. She checked inside and pointed insistently in and then up. He looked up at the top of the watchtower, understanding that there was something important that she needed, and they exchanged another nod.
The watchtower turned out be a communications centre of a sort. There was a pillar in the middle with access panels on every side, and several consoles and cogitators were around the place, including one against the pillar itself. A small table, on which a card game of some kind had been left, and two stools were placed in front of the window overlooking the lower settlement. There were no other chairs or benches, leading to an awkward working space.
The woman was going through the consoles, looking for something. His servo-skull watched her while he crouched nearby and peered warily out of the window.
There were several buildings ahead: one to the left was raised slightly and had a deck that looped behind it; further ahead was the long building that had looked like it had been placed atop two building, but in reality only the right end was atop another building, and the left was raised high with long poles; building below the right end was about the size of the storage he and his impromptu retinue had walked through earlier; further on the right were two small buildings that had been placed atop one another. As with the prior double building, a switchback staircase led up to the door of the upper one.
The ground had been covered by a wide metal deck, save for the side of the building on the left where a gap had been left, exposing the large rocks. Two tall trees grew from between the rocks, their tops reaching higher than the buildings, and a much smaller third tree was planted into a square planter near the middle of the deck. Several larger planters were placed along the sides of buildings ahead. There seemed to be a plaza further on, but he could not see properly.
There had been no sign of activity, but he was certain he caught movement behind the buildings. The xenoi had to be lurking just out of sight.
The woman exclaimed in triumph as she found what she was looking for in the console set against the pillar. She pulled a small lever and pressed several buttons. He wasn't certain what she had accomplished, but believed it was related to the antenna on the rooftop and that she had managed to send out a distress call. He did not know how long it would take for a response force to arrive, but, whether from off-world or simply far away, they would not be here in time to drive back the raiders. He also didn't know what to think of meeting more heathens who couldn't understand him, armed heathens at that.
He realised he was tapping his fingers anxiously on his holstered laspistols and forced himself to stop. His thoughts shifted to the outside again. A dozen xenotech pods lay abandoned between the staircase and the small tree.
He couldn't sit by any longer.
He stood up and walked to the floor hatch through which they had climbed. The woman called out after him and tried to follow, but he raised his hand to halt her. He pointed at himself and outside, then he pointed at her and gestured for her to stay put. He didn't wait to see if she understood before descending down the ladder and closing the hatch. He needed her to stay safe while he checked the situation, and if things took a turn for the worse she could provide fire support from a vantage point.
He crossed the gloomy, almost empty storage and stopped at the other pair of wide doors opposite the one they had entered through. He took one last look behind himself before opening the doors and drawing his laspistols.
The doors opened to a grassy patch of land with a wall ahead and on his left. Cargo containers of different sizes were piled all around, a few on small trolleys; all of it looked abandoned in haste. He kept his head low as he moved behind a smaller, rectangular container that was leaning on a larger one, one end on a trolley. There was enough space between them for his servo-skull to stay out of sight while maintaining a mostly unobstructed view of the area. He moved his servo-skull into the space and commanded it to remain still.
Still no sign of activity. What were they still waiting for? The previous trap had a firing squad at the ready, and the reinforcements had been quick to arrive.
The xenotech pods were a dozen meters away, yet it felt like light years.
He slowly made his way to the pods, vigilantly keeping his eyes on the rooftops and windows.
He reached the nearest pod, leaned in for a quick look at the occupant and recoiled.
Empty.
He jumped back, raised his weapons and stared at the horde shambling towards him.
