The Redoubtable — Iera system, Attican Traverse

Nihlus stood next to the huge hologram projector that was the core of the combat information centre. David Anderson and Shilyna T'Perro flanked him, with Symmetra manning a side console.

All four of them had their eyes on the schematic displayed on the projector.

Anderson had waited for Nihlus to speak for several seconds now, but still he prodded him: "I take you're familiar with this."

The Turian gave a slow nod in response. "And I don't like it. This thing looks similar to the descriptions of Collector ships on our files. Too similar."

T'Perro did not take her relentless glare off the hologram. "Except that this one looks pristine. The ones we learned about always looked like wrecks. One of them even seemed to have been built right around an asteroid."

Symmetra was examining the ship's specs. "The armament is exotic. No mass accelerators or ferromagnetic cannons, but a directed-energy beam weapon. Not too dissimilar in principle to an upscaled laser."

Anderson asked her: "Should we expect that if we have to engage a Collector ship?"

"We don't have sufficient data to make that inference," was the clinically-voiced reply, "but a key point merits highlighting. Citadel spinal-mounted mass accelerators have a muzzle speed marginally higher than one percent C, with ferrofluid weapons being orders of magnitude more powerful. The main battery on Javik's ship strikes a middle ground between both, but with an unique advantage the others lack: directed-energy weapons hit at the speed of light."

Nihlus used a control pad to rotate the schematic of the ship and zoom in on the yawning maw. "If these ships are alike… which is a big 'if'… then we should be very careful. I wouldn't want to fight Javik's ship, not even with this one. If they see us coming they could shoot several times before we're in position to retaliate."

The asari Spectre looked at her colleagues. "I kind of expected either of you to ask why Javik would commission something so similar to a Collector ship."

Anderson had already considered that. "Thankfully we didn't have to fight Javik's crew to get this data, so that's a question for later. But I'll want answers for that too."

A voice rang on the speakers then: "Agent Nihlus, we just received a burst transmission," Moreau reported. "We're trying to trace it now."

"I believe it originates nearby," Stella added. "The transmission enclosed navigation and telemetry data. A ship matching the descriptions of Collector vessels passed Iera III by roughly seventy hours ago."

"Displacement?" Anderson asked keenly.

"Estimated to be in the higher end of cruiser range."

Nihlus straightened up. "Whether we want it or not, this is the fight we got on our hands now."

T'Perro took her cue from him. "Pilot, proceed to Horizon at best silent cruising speed. We won't help the colonists by rushing in."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

"New contact alert," Stella informed coolly. "Configuration broadly matches known Collector ships." Without being prompted, the AI displayed a schematic of the ship on a popped-up panel next to Moreau's main screen.

Joker brought up a map of the local sector. Apparently they had arrived just in time to see the ship leaving the Horizon colony world. Considering that ship headings were calculated off an imaginary axis running through the closest mass relay and the local star, Horizon was on the north-western quadrant of the sector, and the enemy ship had a heading of zero-nine-one.

Anderson raced into the bridge. "Where is it?"

"Hey, sir. It's about to enter orbit." He thought briefly and proposed: "We rush them, sir?"

Nihlus came in next. "Agreed. If we're fast enough, we can get into firing position before they detect us."

Joker rubbed his hands briefly. "Alright, girl… time for some rock n' roll. Let's punch it!"

"Let's just hope we're not too late," Anderson mused, then ordered: "Battle stations."

All over the ship the white lighting changed to a deep red as alarm klaxons rang and Stella's voice ordered the crews to man their posts. There had been enough battle drills already that Mei was not startled anymore by them, but she had been a scientist first all of her life — only compelled to take up arms in desperation or to come to the aid of her friends. She was not a soldier.

And Jacqueline could tell. "You okay, doc?"

Mei gulped. She was pale. "No. No, I'm not."

It was a rare but welcome perspective flip for the biotic. "Relax, doc. Anything happens, I got your back."

Mei wanted to believe her. But even Jacqueline, powerful as she was, would be of little help in a space battle. If anything, being on the hangar meant they were closer than most to the shuttles and other means of escape—

She shook her head: what am I thinking?!

Then a hand gripped her shoulder: "Doc!" Jacqueline said forcefully. "We're not in Erinyes this time. We came to save others from something like that. Okay?"

"Change of aspect on unknown contact," Stella reported. The distant humming of activating machinery reached them before she added: "Target is turning. Estimate new heading one-three-nine. It's almost certain they have acquired us. Powering up reserve particle barrier generators."

Nihlus clenched his jaw. "I wish we knew how… how long before we are in range?"

"Thirty two seconds at current heading and speed."

Joker warned, his hands grasping the handles of his seat: "Fasten your seatbelts, it's about to get wild… oh shit, what's this?!"

Anderson watched the pilot go pale and felt shivers: "What—"

"Proximity alert!" Stella interrupted him: "Multiple strike craft detected at very close range!"

"They just appeared out of nowhere!" Moreau added. "Hold on to something!"

Nihlus ordered next: "Scramble our own fighters to intercept!"

The voice of Stella warned through the speakers: "All hands, prepare for evasive manoeuvres!"

Mei paled further, her back ramrod stiff. Next to her, Anika and Jacqueline had already secured themselves to their seats. Blue wisps sparkled slightly around the biotic—

—which expanded into a bubble large enough to envelop all three of them as the ship brusquely turned—

—and then quaked violently, lights sickeningly flickering for a moment. Jacqueline's shield muted the deafening thunder that filled the corridors of their deck, but not the cool alert on their earbuds: "Damage sustained on deck 6. Damage control crews stand by for orders."

Jacqueline's fists turned white. "That's right above us."

Mei stumbled, barely able to control her panic: "What—what do we do?"

Anika's immediate impulse was to tell them to stay where they were, but the surge of adrenaline that had flooded her had caused her mind to zoom at lightspeed: having Jacqueline with them meant they could rush to help right now. "Let's go, girls! We're needed!"

They raced out of the small depot into the hangar, and then towards the stairwell. Again the ship swerved abruptly, but being protected by Jacqueline's bubble meant they were able to ignore the worst of it. The door to the stairwell swung open violently as they approached it: there were two crew members sprawled on the floor next to the first steps and Anika raced towards them—but then they started floating: "Not here, doc!" Jacqueline hollered. "Let's get them somewhere safer!"

"Danke schon," she said, grateful for her quick thinking.

A deep, thrumming, thundering rumble coursed through their bodies as the ship's batteries returned fire — and then a strident alarm call echoed on their earbuds: "BOARDERS DETECTED ON DECK 6. REPEAT. BOARDERS DETECTED ON DECK 6. ALL HANDS, PREPARE FOR DECK VENT."

"Ignore that!" Jacqueline yelled as she ran: "You can breathe inside my bubble!"

"But that's not going to last us for long!" Mei argued. "The oxygen in here is good for twenty minutes at most!"

"Shit, you're right," the biotic admitted.

"We need some zero-g gear!" Ziegler noted as they ran up the stairs—

—only to see the pressure hatch sliding closed.

"Or not."

Anika stood dejectedly in front of the sealed hatch for a moment, then turned around to assist the two crewmen they had found on the stairwell. She did not bother asking either man how they felt, as she would not get answers from bodies knocked out cold, so instead she used her omni-tool to scan them. "Some nasty concussions, they have," she noted worriedly, searching for signs of internal bleeding.

Jacqueline stood next to her. "Well, doc, if you can't help them, then nobody aboard can."

"I can, rest assured. What I don't know is how soon they'll be back on their feet."

Mei was frozen into place, listening. Other than the alarm klaxons ringing all over and the whirring sounds of working machinery, she heard no voices—

—then again they almost jumped out of their skins, when the main batteries unleashed another salvo and again they felt coursing through them the deep humming vibration of the powerful guns firing.

For a moment, Mei felt tempted to call the bridge, but thought better of it. If no one had called them then it meant Stella was aware of them and they were doing the right thing.

Then there were heavy footsteps racing down the stairs above them, and Shilyna T'Perro and a squad of marines appeared: "You alright?" she asked on the spot.

"Except for two casualties," Anika answered without turning, still tending to the unconscious crew.

The Spectre turned towards her squad. "Secure this stairwell and help the doctor with the wounded!" Next she told Jacqueline and Mei: "We've got to clear deck 6. Get ready!"

"Give 'em hell, girl!" Moreau snarled. Almost on cue, the whole ship vibrated a third time, and a lance of light hurtled after their target—

—and everyone who was watching or listening clenched their fists when Stella reported: "Direct hit. Enemy ship losing engine power."

"AMF, you sons of bitches!" Joker shouted.

Symmetra was still connected to the sensor suite of the Redoubtable. "Target is losing speed… Dark energy emissions decaying. It's safe to assume its shields are down."

"General power loss detected on target," Stella reported next, then gave her assessment with a final note on her voice: "Enemy ship appears to be disabled."

Anderson sighed and closed his eyes. "Board status."

"The hull has been breached on deck 6. 14 casualties sustained, 3 of them serious but no fatalities. The compartment has been vented to space. Agent T'Perro has a team ready to clear it."

"Send a team to the colony the moment she completes her sweep," Nihlus ordered next.

Anderson commanded: "Position us behind the enemy ship, then run a complete scan of it. I want to learn everything about it."

"Aye, sir," Moreau acknowledged. The Redoubtable obeyed his mental commands at once, accelerating to close in the distance and then turning to stay out of range of whatever point defense systems the enemy could have, disabled or not.

The sensors were dissecting the ship in the meantime. Symmetra voiced what they picked up. "Our estimates were incorrect. The mass of this ship, discounting the slabs of asteroid matter, is on par with the lighter dreadnoughts on record. The point defenses present probably would not defeat a strike craft assault by themselves, but there are multiple hull openings consistent with hangar bays."

Nihlus eased a shoulder in discomfort. "So… this is a carrier. A very weird looking one."

"Scans hint at vast open spaces within the hull," the former Vishkar engineer replied, "but the exact interior layout cannot be determined in this manner. Sending in scout probes would be necessary."

Anderson beheld the monstrous hulk of the disabled spaceship before them for a moment. "I want to see what our shots did."

Ferrofluid cannons were the best weapon in the armory of the Systems Alliance, and the chunks of asteroid and armor plating that had been sliced off were proof. Still, only the last shot had truly hurt, punching a hole through the hull diagonally from port to aft. There were signs of recent and hastily repaired damage near the engine exhaust as well. Stella said mechanically: "Extended analysis is required to determine the effectiveness of our attacks."

Another voice rang then on the speakers: "Bridge, this is T'Perro," the Spectre called in. "Deck 6 has to be quarantined from sections 61 through 68."

"What? Why?" Nihlus asked. "What have you found there?"

Mei Ling-zhou's voice answered instead: "There are—er, we found unidentified nanites near the hull breach site. They don't match any kind we use, and they don't belong to any nanite entity we know."

That got her an immediate reaction from Anderson too: "Any danger of contamination?"

"We can't tell yet," the Chinese girl answered frankly. "We'll have to run some tests to make sure."

"Do it ASAP. But with extreme caution." Anderson turned back his attention towards the sensor feeds, trying to make up his mind about the hulk that lay apparently helpless before them. And failing.

Nihlus noticed this. "You seem troubled."

"If this is a carrier… then where are all the fighters?" The veteran officer shook his head. "One this big would have overwhelmed us with strike craft twenty times over. And even if it's a dreadnought and not a carrier, its spinal gun should have blown us to bits. We shouldn't have gotten off so lightly." He let out a strong sigh. "I'll breathe easier when this thing is in pieces."

A warning buzz rang. "You don't want to do that," Stella admonished him. I just picked up a transmission from the surface. I could tell you what it says, but I believe it would be best if you heard it."

Anderson took it to heart. "Play it then."

Instantly they recognized the soft voice: "Incoming ship, this is Liara T'Soni, formerly affiliated with the Compact. The Horizon colony has been raided by Collectors and most of its inhabitants taken captive. I repeat, we have been hit by Collectors and most of the Horizon colonists have been taken captive. We are in immediate need of assistance. Approach with extreme caution — proceed as if the colony was the epicentre of a biological disaster event."

Horizon surface — Main settlement

Jacqueline had her eyes on the feed Shilyna's omni-tool was playing: "What the hell happened here?"

Liara's warning had been taken seriously. Thus, they had not landed immediately on the main pad of the Horizon starport; instead, their Montauk, conned by Shilu'Vael, was circling around the colony at a distance.

"They fought back," Jaenna'Gisal muttered. "That's what."

And what they saw was sobering. Every building in sight was damaged, most only bearing scorch marks but not a few having been reduced to charred skeletons.

"Wasn't that a launcher?" Anika pointed at a crater on a hill north of the colony.

A wireframe model for a schematic appeared over the picture. "Correct. A M77 tracked multipurpose rocket launcher, part of the M91 anti-voidcraft missile system," a synthetic voice confirmed — Agleia's, the AI grafted onto Shilu'Vael.

Shilyna counted the wrecks. "They had a complete battery set up there… Maybe that's what damaged the Collector cruiser."

Jaenna'Gisal snorted behind her helmet. "For the good it did them in the end."

"Gave as good as they got, though," Jacqueline said gravely.

"Drop us on the starport, shoes on and buttoned up," Shilyna ordered.

"Yes ma'am," their quarian pilot acknowledged.

"Closed helmets, everyone," the Spectre ordered next. "I don't want surprises."

'Shoes on and buttoned up' meant T'Perro wanted Shilu'Vael to make an insertion without their craft touching the ground and all their defences and shields primed and raised — and that she did, their Montauk hovering barely half a metre over the ground as they jumped off it. The quarian cyborg relinquished command of the craft to Stella, who immediately had it take off again to patrol over the colony airspace in a racetrack pattern.

The Compact squad looked around themselves for a moment. Not a living soul was in sight. There were no corpses either.

The main administration building faced the airport exit. Its facade was blackened and scorched in places, its doorway a still-smoking ruin. Shilu'Vael inspected it: a hardlight screen had been installed there, but the raiders clearly had blown it off. "Whoever did this knew what they were doing."

Inside, the power was still on, a slight smoky haze in the air. Anika tapped into the local network and pointed down a hallway. Shilu'Vael fished a scout drone from a satchel and deployed it; the spherical flying robot circled once around them, then flew down the hallway Ziegler had indicated.

"Keelah—!"

"What?"

The quarian cyborg was frozen with shock. "I… I found Liara, and—"

Jacqueline's eyes blazed: "What happened to her?"

"No, no, she's—she's okay, but—!"

Agleia took charge: "There's someone else with her. Shilu'Vael is surprised because of who this person is. They're both safe."

A few seconds later, the younger quarian recovered. "Come!"

The quarian cyborg led them to the overseer's office. Liara was there, sprawled on a chair—and next to her—

Anika went as white as the ablative armour plating of her Valkyrie suit. "Shep… Shepard?!"

Aaliyah briefly opened a single eye. "I'd say 'in the flesh', but… you know."

Liara craned her neck to look behind her, and gave the visitors a very, very tired smile. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes."

T'Perro stared at the young asari quizzically. "The message we got said nothing about you."

Liara snorted at that: "Typical of Sombra."

"She's here?"

"In a manner of speaking…" She weakly waved a hand around her.

Ziegler was in overload. "This… this isn't right… We… I… I was right there… at the Citadel… I… I was—I was at your funeral!"

Shilu'Vael stepped forward. "Well… considering what—what she's made of…"

"Stands to reason she could be brought back." Her mother surprised the exhausted Shepard by offering a hand. "It's good to see you again."

Aaliyah shook it as if in a dream. "You never liked me much."

"I never realized just how important you were for the Compact," the older Quarian admitted. "And I was worried mad about my daughter, but you, the doctors—Ziegler, Chakwas, Palukhina… you were right. I was wrong." Jaenna bowed her head in a curt apology.

Jacqueline smirked broadly instead. "Well, fuck me! Just what does it take to put you down?"

"This," Shepard let out in a tired sigh. At once their omni-tools rang with a new message.

T'Perro managed to overcome her surprise and opened it first. The message contained first-person footage of what had transpired there. "Reyes… No, this one is Reaper—"

—then Reaper was possessed by something and became a diabolical red-eyed wraith crisscrossed by glowing cracks. Jack blurted out: "What the fuck!"

Shepard again closed her eyes. "Whatever that is, it's relentless. We had to fight it over and over and over and over. For days." Then she opened them and stared sightlessly at the ceiling. "And it knows me. It called me by my name… when it first possessed Reaper."

The Compact squad was hypnotized by the footage. Jacqueline in particular was pale: "This fucker—it ignores biotics?!"

"To some extent," Liara answered quietly, her voice lazy. She had again closed her eyes. "Most of the, eh… techniques… we would use to impair movement are useless."

Shilyna was dissecting the record frame by frame. "As if he was shielded."

"As if," the younger asari agreed. "Except that he's not… At least… he's not using any shields we're familiar with."

Ziegler still could not speak. The quarians' reasoning was logical, even if it left some big questions unanswered, but to her this whole scene still seemed like it had been ripped straight out of a fey dream. Shepard noticed this through her exhaustion: "Anika, didn't Tali talk to you…? We met in Freedom's Progress, she… had gone there on a rescue mission."

Jack frowned. "She sent some stuff about what happened in Freedom's Progress, but didn't mention you."

Aaliyah blinked. Then recalled how she had told her she was not sure about going back to the Compact yet, and understood. A shrug, and she stretched. "I'll have to… ask her when I see her again."

Something then pierced through Anika's shock. She stumbled with words: "Mei—she stayed on the ship. She said—she said she found something weird there. After we, er—engaged the Collectors. Some strange nanites—they don't match any she has seen before—"

"Tell her to quarantine whatever she's found right the fuck now!" Aaliyah sprang to her feet at once, urgency in her eyes. "We fought a Collector in Omega that was made of nanites too!"

Shilyna took that to heart, and contacted the Redoubtable on the spot: "Actual, tell Zhou that the stuff she's working with is even more dangerous than we thought."

"You have excellent timing," Anderson replied from orbit. "We have just made contact with some new arrivals. I need you to confirm something… is there someone matching the late colonel Shepard's description there?"

T'Perro looked at Aaliyah. "I have eyes on her right now."

The reply came after a couple of seconds. "I'll patch you through. Hold on."

"Nice to hear from you again, agent T'Perro," Miranda Lawson's voice said. "I came to answer a distress call sent by Sombra, but I see you have already dealt with it. I have two guests on board, members of Shepard's team."

Author's note: "AMF" is fighter pilot lingo for "Adios Mother Fucker".