Tali was woken by screams.
That wasn't all unusual in itself - Jack sometimes woke up screaming in the night. When she was leaving for Grissom Academy at age thirteen, her father had taken her aside and quietly explained to her that Jack's nightmares were from before she had been rescued, when her brain was a playground for sadistic scientists. Whenever Jack's screams woke her in the middle of the night, she would slip her three fingers around her sister's five and squeeze them tight while Jack alternated between sobbing onto her shoulder and angrily cursing her weakness. Thanks to the intervention of the Geth she didn't require an exosuit, instead wearing only a thin nightie as she blindly reached out a hand for Jack on the lower bunk.
It took her a couple of seconds for her to realise the screams weren't originating from Jack. Instead, they were issuing forth from beyond the door of the dorm. From several people. Slipping out of bed, she pressed her ear to the door. The screams were occasionally interspersed with a strange clicking noise. She shuddered as she recognised the sound from the news. Collectors.
Rushing over to Jack's bed, she shook her sister awake, being biotically knocked on her ass for her trouble as the Human girl sat up. In order to emulate her Quarian family she shaved the sides of her head, her rich brown hair concentrated into a strip that extended from her forehead back to the long plait that extended to her lower back as per Quarian tradition.
"Huh? Wazzat?"
She hauled herself up.
"Ssh! Keep quiet! I think the Academy is being attacked by Collectors."
"Uh ..."
Her response was cut off by the low thrum of particle beams that had become a familiar backdrop to CNN reports since the start of the Collector Crisis.
"See!"
Jack climbed out of her bunk, reaching under her pillow and pulling out something that glinted ominously in the nightlight.
"You brought a knife?"
"Ssh! Wake the others."
Jack crouched by the door, listening for the approach of any Collectors as Tali crossed the room to the other bunkbed, shaking its occupants.
"Sam, Kelly, get up!"
The two Human girls crawled out of their beds, mumbling sleepily as Tali frantically recounted their situation. She was interrupted by Jack's frantic hand motions.
"Quick, the vents! They're coming!"
Following in their parents's footsteps, both Tali and Jack were military students, allowing them to bully the two brains up into the vents. Tali quickly changed into a pair of desert camo cargo trousers and a black T-shirt as Jack biotically boosted Kelly and Sam into the station's ventilation system.
Once all four girls were in the vents they huddled together, Tali and Jack looking every inch the professional soldiers in their uniforms, keeping an eye on the surroundings while Sam in her blue pyjamas and Kelly in her pink tank top and panties appeared to be on the verge of panic. Jack quickly put paid to that by drumming her knuckles on the top of their heads Raachok style.
"Get your shit together. You've got brains so use them. We need to make a plan."
Tali held out her hand.
"First things first, Omnitools. If the Collectors hack the signals they can track us."
The girls pooled their Omnitools in the middle, Kelly letting out a surprised squeak as Jack brought a biotically charged fist down on them, obliterating the tiny devices.
"Good. Now we need to decide on an objective."
She caught Jack's eye, the sisters wordlessly sharing their fear and offering each other support. Tali was right. Once they had an objective, they would all feel much better.
Jack made a sharp chopping motion with her hand.
"First objective. Weapons. We'll head to the service corridor in the vent system, then hack the door to the security office. I know for a fact Miss Sanders has her own personal armoury down there in case something like this ever happened."
She was distracted by a slight whimper. Glancing around, Jack saw Sam hugging her knees and staring blankly ahead. She crawled over to the British girl, shaking her slightly.
"Come on Sam, get your shit together!"
Tali gently nudged her sister out of the way.
"Let me."
She took one of Sam's hands in her own and tilted the girl's head up to look at her.
"Sam. Sam, listen to me. We're going to make it out alive. As long as you stay close and do what we say, you'll be fine. Do you know why? Because me and Jack are the daughters of Rael'Zorah vas Rannoch, and we're going to kick these Collector bosh'tets so hard in the ass we'll turn them inside out, okay? Just stay calm and they won't touch you."
After a moment Sam nodded slowly, still jumpy but able to think rationally, and that was what counted.
"Okay. Let's go."
Squashing down her fear, Jack led the way through the vents, Tali bringing up the rear. The crawl took about twenty minutes, including several nerve-wracking occasions where they had to freeze while a Collector patrol passed underneath their position. Eventually they reached the grille that would let them drop down into the service tunnels. They were about to drop down when they suddenly came face to face with a familiar bald head.
David Archer shook his head, putting his finger to his lips and pointing down at the grate. After a momentary surprised jerk, Jack signalled her roommates to halt and peered down through the grille to see two individuals deep in heated argument.
"Nazara told me I would be in command of this operation!"
The first individual was an Asari with a very deep purple complexion, a heavy cant to her surprisingly deep voice. She was clad in a set of armour that looked like it was made from Collector exoskeletons, a matching assault rifle cradled in her arms. The second individual was a Collector with strange red symbols painted on its carapace, two Collector assault rifles slung on its back.
"The situation has developed beyond your ability to contain. Nazara has placed me in command. The seeker swarms will be held in reserve."
"Why?"
The painted Collector didn't like that answer. It spun round and gripped the Asari by the throat, lifting her off the ground.
"DO NOT QUESTION ME!"
A moment later it relented, throwing her across the corridor.
"There is a ship on the way here. The crew are higher priority targets than the students. The seeker swarms will be used to board the ship while the ground team is surrounded and eliminated. Move two companies back aboard the cruiser and program the facility's shuttles on a set path to our vessel's main hangar."
As the Asari scurried off to do her master's bidding, a Collector squad marched up, two of them hefting enormous weapons in their hands while the others held up their assault rifles. Having seen enough, Jack motioned her roommates, plus David, back the way they came. Once they were deep within the ventilation system they came to a halt, huddling together again.
"What now?"
Kelly's breathing came fast and shallow and her eyes darted around, on the verge of a panic attack. Before Tali or Jack could do anything about it, Sam grabbed Kelly and kissed her full on the mouth. Tali glanced over at Jack.
"You owe me twenty credits."
Sam broke off the kiss with a sound vaguely reminiscent of a suction seal being pulled apart.
"When we get out of here there's more where that came from."
Jack snorted.
"I'm welling up with tears. Now can we think for a second here?"
Crawling to the centre of the little circle, Tali summarised the situation.
"Security office is out, shuttles are out. The way I see it, the only way off this station is on that ship the Collector mentioned was coming."
Sam vehemently shook her head.
"No way! If we try to join up with those guys we'll just get caught in the same ambush."
Their attention was suddenly caught by David, who had been up until that point happily square rooting under his breath.
"Shuttles go directly to Collector ship, inside its kinetic barriers."
Tali nodded slowly, unsure where he was going with that.
"Miss Sanders said I'm not supposed to make nuclear bombs in the lab but I think she'll make an exception, just this once."
###
The holoprojection in the briefing room really hadn't done the damage to the Collector ship justice. It looked like Godzilla had taken a chomp out of the side. The two ends of the ship were off angle to each other, as if the vessel's spine had been snapped and its bow and stern were drifting independent of one another. An enormous spray of debris like God's own shotgun blast was shooting away from the ship, larger chunks slowly spinning as the smaller pieces flew with the velocity of a mass accelerator round. The edges of the gaping hole were buckled and bent outwards, glowing cherry red as the slagged metal slowly cooled. Even as Lizzie stared, dumbfounded, a secondary explosion lit up the shredded gouge, throwing the jagged wrecked interior into sharp relief for a second before fading.
EDI's hologram popped up beside the ground team, looking out at the wreck.
"Based on the direction of the explosion and the high amount of radioactive isotopes in the vicinity of the ship I would estimate the damage was inflicted by a nuclear fission device detonated within the ship."
Garrus turned to her, incredulous.
"You're saying somebody nuked it from the inside?"
Any further conversation was cut off by Saren's sharp command.
"Team One, control tower. Team Two, main shuttle bay. Team Three, auxiliary shuttle bay. Simultaneous breach and clear. We're going in full stealth so the Collectors shouldn't know we're here until ..."
He was interrupted by Joker.
"Captain Arterius, something you should hear."
The comm channel abruptly switched to a hushed voice with a Quarian accent.
"Normandy, please respond? Hello?"
Saren was quick to reply.
"This is Captain Arterius of the Normandy. Who is this?"
There was a slight pause.
"My name is Tali'Zorah. The station is crawling with Collectors, they know you're coming. There's at least a hundred of them aboard."
"What happened to their ship?"
There was another pause.
"Miss?"
"Sorry, had to stay quiet. Collectors are scouring the station for us. We, well me and David that is, we made a nuclear bomb and put it on a shuttle."
She broke off as another voice was faintly heard over the comm channel, then the feed cut abruptly. Saren turned back to them.
"Alright then. Team One and Two, make entrances at the end of the longest wing and sweep for hostiles. Team Three, we're going to find this Tali and extract her, along with the jamming algorithm. We'll perform a ballistic insertion directly onto the hull then breach the nearest access hatch."
Lizzie gulped as she donned a mass effect thrust pack and faced the hangar bay door, settling into a position similar to that of a sprinter on the blocks. First jumping down a space elevator, now this - it seemed she was doomed to enter combat zones in the most insane ways imaginable.
The hangar bay door slid open and she activated her armour's oxygen supply.
"Team one go!"
The first team launched themselves out of the hangar bay, mass effect thrusters propelling them towards the distant station.
"Team two go!"
Lizzie braced herself for the inevitable.
"Team three go!"
She had only ever done three ballistic insertions, all three of which had been under strict supervision in a controlled environment. The US military took the view that the odds of their soldiers ever needing to execute a battlefield ballistic insertion were astronomically low and that training hours were better spent elsewhere. A shame that a certain insane Spectre thought differently.
The principle behind a ballistic insertion was simple. The launch ship, in this case the Normandy, would project a sudden mass effect impulse that would propel the soldiers towards the station at a terrifyingly high speed. The mass effect thruster packs on their backs would then kick into overdrive in order to decelerate them to a more dignified speed and enable them to land on the surface of the station without either overshooting and spiralling off into space forever or colliding with the station's hull, being vacuumed off said hull and buried in a jam jar. One time, Lizzie had made the mistake of letting James show her a ballistic insertion fail compilation on VidStream. She would never look at tomato salsa in the same way again.
Approximately half a second after she heard the word go, she blacked out. When the world returned to her she had covered almost three quarters of the distance to the Academy and was feeling a constant two G deceleration. The blacking out was supposed to happen - despite some of the most powerful personal inertial dampeners in existence the force experienced on launch peaked at fourteen G, enough to knock out anyone who wasn't Krogan.
Taking control of her thrust pack, she steered herself towards the station, pulsing the thrust unit to nudge herself onto the trajectory projected in her HUD.
"Was this really necessary?"
Glancing around, she saw an armoured Turian shape about fifty metres to her left, her HUD helpfully labelling him as Ctn. Vakarian, G. Another Turian shape came swooping in from above, this one labelled as STR Arterius, B.
"You're not having fun, Vakarian?"
"No, sir. Definitely not."
Lizzie heard a flanging chuckle over the comm link.
"When I was a kid I used to do this for fun with the other Spacer sprogs."
Lizzie joined the conversation.
"I never knew you were a Spacer too, Captain."
"Born and raised on the Spirit of Digeris. Brace for final deceleration."
Tensing her muscles, Lizzie hauled back on the thrust pack, briefly experiencing four Gs of force before weightlessness returned. She was drifting towards Grissom Academy at a relatively sedate twenty metres per second, another pulse of the thrusters reducing that to seventeen, then fourteen. She twisted in place to land on the surface of the station on all fours, the slight jolt being dissipated by her armour's shock absorbing underlayer. Garrus, Saren and the Atavira on their team, Taeri Bussoi, touching down moments later. Saren crawled crabwise along the hull to an access port, beckoning the rest of the team over.
"Here we go. Shepard, Vakarian, you're down first. I'll follow and Bussoi on my six."
Lizzie and Garrus drew their weapons of choice and stacked up either side of the hatch, waiting for the word.
"Go!"
The hatch popped open and Lizzie fell through, landing in the airlock in a crouch. Garrus squeezed in beside her and the hatch sealed, cycling the airlock. Once oxygen had filled the tiny room, the inner door opened, Lizzie and Garrus surging through, weapons drawn.
They had emerged into a narrow maintenance corridor with no enemies in sight. Saren and Taeri emerged behind them and they started slowly stepping along the corridor until they reached the access to the academy proper. They slipped through the door silently, advancing two by two up the main corridor. Their destination was the lab where the jamming algorithm was stored.
It wasn't long before they ran into a squad of Collectors. They were the unit tentatively identified by the emergency joint command as Soldiers, their biotics limited to personal barriers but heavily armed with assault rifles and some sort of particle shotgun. The two groups caught sight of one another at the same time, both diving for cover as rounds started to stitch glowing lines through the air. They were outnumbered three to one. This would be interesting.
###
The drone hunkered down behind cover as organics started firing at it, observing its two partners taking cover either side of it. Somewhere behind it the Captain sent out an order and the drone summoned a biotic barrier, extending it outwards and linking it with the barriers of its two partners, feeling the feedback rush and cycling the excess power back into the shared barrier. Standing up, it drew its assault rifle from its back, noting the bullets pinging harmlessly off the shared barrier as it targeted one of the organics, sending a steady stream of bullets towards the pillar she was crouched behind. Its partners joined it, rifles flashing as the lethal barrage of suppressive fire pinned the Atavira behind her rapidly eroding pillar. At another command from the Captain, it loaded a rifle grenade into its rifle and took aim, sending the self propelled projectile arcing round to smash into the woman behind the pillar.
The Captain was happy with the results. All four enemies were pinned by unending barrages of suppressive fire to be eliminated at his leisure. The Sovereign Collector commanding the operation would be pleased.
A small metallic object rolled out of the Turian biotic's position, coming to rest at the Captain's feet. It frantically ran through its tactical options. The grenade exploded.
As chunks of the Captain splattered across the room, the drones abruptly lost their direction. Unsure what to do, they fell back on their basic instincts, dropping to a crouch, weapons held at the ready to fire on anyone who moved into their line of sight.
With a blue flash, a biotic attack arced out from behind a pillar, the waiting Collectors analysing the field and dismissing it as a threat. Their dismissal turned out to be premature as the attack penetrated the linked barrier of the closest trio, latching into the central drone and yanking it sharply out of range of the other two. With a sound partway between a thrum and a pop the barrier collapsed, all three suddenly exposed drones falling to a hail of bullets as the Atavira stepped smartly out of cover, her shields holding just long enough for her to cut all three down with the LMG in her hands. Reacting purely on preprogrammed instinct, the drones dove for cover, linked barriers popping like soap bubbles as they spread out. The Turian at the back of the formation took advantage of their sudden exposure, executing two clean headshots before the rest made it to cover. Even that wasn't enough to save their unshielded selves as the biotic Turian flicked his wrist, a Shockwave cascading like a freight train through the room and knocking the drones flying.
The drone rolled onto its front, crawling over to its rifle. Wrapping its hand around the weapon's stock, it performed a quick damage assessment. Extensive damage to the lower limbs and torso from the Shockwave. It raised its weapon.
The Human standing over it pointed her sidearm at its head, her foot stamping down on its wrist and pinning the weapon to the floor. The last thing the drone ever saw was a muzzle flash.
###
Lizzie shook black Collector gore off her leg. Although her helmet hid her facial expression her voice telegraphed her disgust to the other members of the squad.
"Son of a bitch! This pistol's messy."
Chuckling, Saren waved them on, pausing to ram a fresh heat sink home in his shotgun. Collectors were tough and those linked barriers were a neat trick, not to mention their infinite ammo guns, but once the Captain was down they were about as smart as a brain-damaged Vorcha.
"Alright, new marching orders. Vakarian, as soon as you see a Captain I want you to burn a clip into its head. Let's move."
They moved along the corridor, occasionally pausing to aim their weapons into a side corridor or closet. They were almost at the lab when Taeri signalled a halt. They immediately ducked into cover, keeping their heads swivelling. The Atavira stalked along the corridor until she was standing underneath the vent system. Her arm shot upwards, strength boosted by the synth-muscle underweave of her armour, and punched through the ceiling, yanking down again to reveal her hand clamped around the ankle of somebody. That somebody immediately found themselves pinned to the floor, a sidearm shoved in her face.
"Wait! Stop!"
A grille clanged onto the ground, a young Quarian dropping through and holding up her hands. The first entity, an Indian girl in baby blue pyjamas, sobbed in relief as Taeri holstered her sidearm. Behind the Quarian came three more individuals, a tattooed Human girl, a redhaired Human girl and a bald Human boy. They all shrank back as four versions of Yorick fixed empty eye sockets on them.
Lizzie tapped her Omnitool, making her helmet's faceplate transparent. At that the kids visibly relaxed. Saren and Garrus followed suit although Taeri kept hidden behind Yorick's smoky grey visage.
"Are you Tali'Zorah?"
The Quarian girl started wringing her hands nervously as she looked around.
"Um, yes. Are you Mr. Arterius?"
Saren nodded and gestured to his team.
"That's me. Our team is looking for the Traynor tightband jamming algorithm. Do you know where it is?"
The Indian girl spoke up from her position flat on her back.
"I'm Sam, er, Samantha Traynor sir, my algorithm is stored on my workstation in the signals lab. We already tried getting it, the room's got this thing in that shoots anyone who gets close."
Lizzie narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"What kind of thing?"
Tali was the one who replied. It appeared she was the ringleader of the little gang.
"It's very big, um, with four legs and it shoots particle beams from its eyes. They had to smash a wall down just to get it into the lab."
Saren glanced over at Taeri, who swung her rocket launcher off her back and loaded a fat missile into the end of the tube like weapon. The redheaded girl immediately shook her head.
"You can't fire that thing in the lab! You'll blow up Sam's workstation!"
Taeri fixed her gaze on the girl who cowered under the gaze of Yorick's empty eyesockets. The Shar Atavira stood at seven foot two and was built like a championship boxer, making her naturally the most intimidating member of the squad. The distortion the helmets applied to their wearer's voices didn't make her any less terrifying.
"Arc rocket. Kills K-barriers and biotic effects, does jack shit against everything else."
While Taeri scared the bejesus out of some teenagers, Lizzie checked over her weapons. She had seven thermal clips left on the band around her upper left thigh and six lift grenades on the bandolier across her chest, as well as the combat knife strapped to her boot and her biotics. Beside her, Garrus was doing the same, his weapon loadout almost identical to hers save for the sniper rifle instead of the Arkbuster.
"Hey Lizzie, you got any spare clips? I'm running low."
She glanced at Garrus's leg, seeing only three clips in the holster.
"You are running low. What have you been doing?"
He patted the stock of his sniper.
"This baby burns through them quick."
She passed over two clips.
"This is all I can spare. I'm thinking of getting my sidearm fitted with venting equipment, save on clips."
After a moment Garrus nodded.
"That's not a bad idea."
Saren waved them onwards.
"Come on you two. We've got a laser eyed beetle to squish."
###
"Laser eyed beetle my ass!"
Lizzie rolled under the flickering particle beams, ducking for cover behind a pillar. The good news was that they had successfully lured the heavily armoured unit referred to as a Praetorian out of the signals lab. The bad news was that it was chasing them. The students had snuck into the lab while they were leading the Praetorian on a merry chase, secured the algorithm and made their way to an auxiliary shuttle bay being held by Teams 1 and 2. They had received word that a Soviet cruiser was on its way to secure the station. The only thing that remained to do was eliminate the Praetorian.
Easier said than done.
The Praetorian smashed down on the ground, mouth hinging open to reveal the array of Husk heads inside it. Unlike normal husks the heads inside the Praetorian's mouth had their own mouths replaced with the squat barrels of smaller particle beam weapons, each one lighting up with an ominous glow. Twenty four particle beams leaped out, sweeping over surfaces and generally turning the entire corridor into a killzone.
"Now!"
Lizzie and Saren both projected biotic barriers around Tauri as she stepped out of cover holding her rocket launcher, the weapon loaded with her last rocket. The barriers held just long enough for her to sight, fire and dive behind cover again, the rocket streaking through the thicket of particle beams with its ablative armour protecting it just long enough to reach its target. Lizzie whooped as the mutated monster received a mouthful of shrapnel, metallic shards cleaving through husked heads as it roared in pain and spewed black ichor across the corridor. Tauri cackled evilly as she replaced her rocket tube on her back.
"Chew on that, sharachi!"
As the Praetorian staggered, opening its mouth to spew up another torrent of black ichor, Lizzie drew her Arkbuster, pumping three Lift grenades into the monster's face and making it briefly lift off the ground before slamming back down. Then all four of them drew their weapons of choice, filling the air with bullets.
The Praetorian's eyes lit up blue, making them scurry back into cover as particle beams raked up the corridor. Saren waved his hand.
"Fall back! Don't let it flank you!"
Cursing, Lizzie sprinted to another cover position further away from the monstrous creature. She briefly felt the heat of particle beams on her back as her shield counter dropped alarmingly quickly, diving out of the way and rolling the last couple of metres to one of the convenient support pillars that lined the hallway.
The Praetorian slowly advanced on them, scuttling forward on four spiked legs and leaving little dents in the deck with every step. Lizzie waved her hands, catching Saren's eye, then held up a closed fist and abruptly opened it. He nodded, confirming his understanding, and threw a Warp at the Praetorian. The biotic field played over its armour, cracking it as the creature hissed. Lizzie waited until the carapace was fully warped before sending a Throw at the monster.
The resulting biotic detonation blew huge chunks of shell off the creature, making it hiss angrily as it rounded on her. Saren and Tauri came up in its blind spot, shotgun and LMG firing point blank into its severely weakened armour as Garrus kept up a steady barrage of sniper fire. Waiting until the particle beams were recharging, Lizzie leaned out of cover and Reaved the Praetorian, the extra energy flowing into her used to construct a biotic barrier that shielded her well enough to step out of cover and join in the furious fusillade on the Praetorian. After a twenty minute running battle along the corridors of Grissom Academy it felt good to turn the tide. The monster fell, acid capsules disintegrating it from within as Saren stepped over the melting corpse's leg.
"That was some fight. Head back to the Normandy."
###
The Citadel's AI network was just as crowded as ever, Alan slipping through easily. He activated a masking program of his own design, hiding his entry into the sub level that contained the cold code.
The other AI regarded him as he approached.
"Alan."
The original Earth bloc AI lowered his white code in submission.
"Catalyst. What are your instructions?"