Author's Note: Off to play Hogwarts Legacy. Gonna be a busy week. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 40: Collectors Part 2
The Hood was one of numerous ships sent to corral with the Prethoryn, the introduction of the Chimera fleets had not changed protocol for dealing with the creatures one bit, opponents who refuse to negotiate or continue to attack get put down like wild dogs, or worst. Hence the Hood's protracted battle against the Prethoryn. Now just because the giant space cockroaches were tough it didn't mean that they're invincible. The first thing you have to realise is that their acid ignores shields and melts armour. Thus it was pivotal that any ship that gets into knife fighting range has a way of repelling physical projectiles, in other words telekinetics to push the mass away. Telekinetics are rare though, so experimental Mass Effect deflectors were being developed, which the council was working on, though there's are designed to repel small solid masses instead of wide liquid ones. So the simple solution was to stay far away from them, maneuver around the acid.
Thus small ships was the answer, hence The Hood is equipped with vast bays of fighter, strike, drone and missile crafts to weave around the large bursts of acid and through the swarms of Prethoryn Shriekers. Seeing as how they are organic, the logical solution would be to blast the Prethoryn with Radiation, but this is a stupid thing to do, the Prethoryn lives in space where there is lots of radiation. What isn't there a lot of in space though? Fire. Thus point defence largely consists of small exotic plasma turrets burning away anything that gets close and scattering their ashes on the solar winds. This was another such brutal battle to take place, with the heavy losses suffered by both sides now drifting through space. All that was left now was to collect the dead and wait for pick up. The Cargo bay had been turned into a makeshift morgue where broken fighters were being taken apart and what was left of the corpses inside were being pulled out and laid out for identification, and afterwards loaded into crates to be sent back to their homeworld's. Then the lights went out, the entire ship hit by an electronics frying ion pulse.
"That was the last of what we were able to pull out of the Ship's black Box Shepard." EDI stated after the footage was cut off and Shepard sighed. Gathered together in the meeting hall of the Normandy Shepard's blatant displeasure was plain to see for the entire ground team. That said, some simply didn't care about their Squad leader's emotional state, having problems all their own.
"I'm confused." Grunt stated as he scratched the side of his head. "Why not make the rest of the ship outta the same stuff as this box if it stops the stuff inside the box from getting destroyed."
"The reason why the files inside of the Black Box are intact is not because the box is made out of a special material but because it shut down the moment that the ship sensed that it was being hit by an ion pulse. The Ion pulse excites electricity in electronic devices. No running power, no electricity, no damage." EDI explained bluntly. "Which now leads us to the current situation." The holographic balcony came to life, depicting the scene of carnage and what was left of the Hood floating in space: no Prethoryn either. This was the third such 'battlefield' that they've been through, no corpses, not even the Prethoryn's, were left behind just the remains of a destroyed ship, which was another sign that they were dealing with the likes of Collectors, after all the synthorganic aliens didn't get the name from leaving behind an excessive amount of information.
"Huu. EDI. See if you can plan a course on the path that they're taking?" Shepard asked as she looked up at the AI in question. "Based on the last few ships they chewed up and spat out they appear to be skimming the battlefields where the Union and Prethoryn are clashing." A holographic map was laid out of the Prethoryn front, several clashes had already been crossed off indicating where the Collectors had already struck, with several battles ahead of them yet to go with EDI having already plotted out where she figured the Collectors would strike next several spots in advance. That said... "Chasing after them from behind is pointless, especially in this giant floating factory. We will go here." Shepard indicated a spot two or three steps ahead of the proposed route EDI had plotted. "Power down the ship, wait for the first Ion pulse, and then when the Collectors move in to act on their name sake, we hit them with everything we've got."
Grunt became alert and snarled.
"We hide like cowards!?" Grunt asked clearly not amused.
"No, we lie in wait for the cowards that are scavenging the battlefield for scraps, shrug off their first attack, then move in when they come to deliver what they think is the finishing blow." Shepard stated choosing her words carefully. "There is a difference between acting cowardly and acting smartly Grunt. Or do I need to remind you that the key point of this plan is to sit down in the middle of an active war-zone for an unknown period of time?"
Grunt's lip curled slightly in approval. Garrus just shook his head in response to overhearing Shepard's latest comment, she already had the kid wrapped around her little finger and near as he can tell she didn't even use psionics.
"The Kruban is too large for a suitable ambush, and shutting down power for even a short period of time would likely lead to the deaths of thousands of the Krogan in stasis on board." EDI reminded the group.
"Then we'll take the Normandy, power down before we get there, sink all the emissions into the stealth drive." Grunt moved to speak up again. "It's what it's called Grunt, it makes it harder for sensors to pick the ship up it doesn't turn it invisible, if the bastards are too reliant on technology and can't even see outside of their ship that's their problem." Grunt appeared to think about it for a moment, this time he accepted Shepard's point with far more reluctance. "As I was saying, Power down, Sink the emissions, drift into the battlefield and wait for the Collectors to show up."
"Should I prepare a signal for the Kruban to enter the battlefield?" EDI asked curiously.
"The signal will be that the ship has turned back on." Shepard replied bluntly. "Anymore questions?"
"I'll get the main gun ready for our offensive." Garrus stated as he went into Engineering.
"I should probably get down to engineering." Tali followed up.
"Liara take Grunt and get ready to board the enemy ship." Shepard stated bluntly as she got ready to get some work done.
"We're boarding?" Liara asked concerned.
"We have to assume that they took the people from the ships they destroyed alive, hence why they're called 'Collectors.'" Shepard reminded while she got ready to talk to people. Comms were off during the meeting, afterwards though Shepard needed to make plans with the rest of the people aboard the Kruban, and others still had business with her.
"Shepard its Okeer. I wanna try to wake up another of the Krogan."
"That was fast." Shepard remarked suspiciously.
"It'll accelerate the fine tuning."
"Fine. But this time I'm bringing my armour." Shepard stated letting out an annoyed groan as she went to the armoury.
"I highly recommend it."
It was hard to tell Krogan Genders, they're all burly and lizardly and most of their face is that big bone crest, but according to Okeer this one was a female, who he hoped would be more level headed than her elder brother Grunt. He hoped, if she wasn't then he was counting on Shepard to similarly 'talk her down' as she had Grunt. The various machines slowly powered down and adjusted as fluids drained away from the tank and the Krogan female's eyes snapped open. The gates of the Maturation tube swung open as the Krogan almost leaped out of the tank, arms forward and reaching Shepard's neck. It's a shame that Shepard already knew what she was going to do ahead of time. The Dragoon's fist snapped forward, Dragon Scale lined fist met bare Krogan nose and with a loud crack the Krogan was already on the floor, and followed shortly thereafter by a scaled boot slamming into the Female's gut with enough force to pin her there. Between the Thorian, the Medi-gel cables and Natural Krogan healing there was very little that would keep the angry female down for long. So Shepard did the sensible thing, she grabbed a Kishok Harpoon gun off of Okeer's wall and put a spike into the centre mass of each of the Krogan's limbs severing both the primary and secondary nerves in the limbs and leaving her paralysed. And once the threat of a blood raging Krogan was out of the Way Shepard implemented a little bit of 'discipline.'
"GGGAAAHHH!"
"This is gonna be a long couple of hours." Okeer stated letting out a sigh.
The appropriate coordinates were reached, the Kruban would stop 3.7 light-years away from the chosen battlefield before deploying the Normandy to intercept the Collector ship before it could take it's quarry. EDI thus sent Shepard's fellow Dragoons to pick up their field commander, though they were surprised to see several more Krogan sitting off to the side nursing their injuries and headaches.
"I am going to tell you what I told the last guy and the past several guys before him!" Shepard barked at another Krogan she had pinned on the ground before her, Kishok harpoons sticking out of her body. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way!" The Krogan made a effort to bite Shepard's ankle off, the Dragoon responded by slamming the palm of her hand into the Alien's throat and proceeded to tear through their mind with trauma's of Prethoryn acid and getting shot by mercenaries. The Krogan screamed in pain until the pain receptors in her mind were burned through before she calmed the hell down.
"Okeer, I don't think this is working." Shepard stated letting out a tired sigh.
"What you beat them up, shove spikes into their limbs and then fry their brains with the memories of whatever the void they put into you during your Dragoon Training?" Okeer asked looking at the crowd of cowed Krogan. "Looks like it's working to me."
"Why does it feel like the milestones have changed?" Shepard asked looking at the mad doctor whose children she has effectively mind raped into submission with an incredulous look on her features. Okeer shrugged in response.
"Ah Sis." Kaiden picked that time to speak up. "Collectors?"
Shepard let out a sigh.
"EDI, take these guys to the medical bay and find something useful to do with whatever Okeer taught them how to do." Shepard stated as she walked forward rotating her arm that she's wrung through several point blank rifle shots. "I'm going onto the Normandy."
"Understood Shepard." EDI's monotone had a hint of amusement to it.
As planned the Kruban dropped out of FTL mere light year's away from the intended battlefield, deploying the Normandy and allowing the machine to cruise behind the enemy as they were being finished off by Union forces. Some would aid in the process of finishing off the enemy, not they though no, they had their own tasks to accomplish. Thus The Normandy proceed with it's plan, all systems reduced to their minimum, even the various cybernetic implants were shut down, less they explode with a snap crackle and pop when the ion field hits. Time passed slowly, uncomfortably, as the group began to wonder if they got the wrong place, the Prethoryn put up a brave fight but were ultimately eliminated, the wounded Union ship's calls asking if the Normandy needed assistance went unanswered, and they had their own problems to deal with.
Then it happened, a ship appeared in the window of the Normandy, though 'ship' might be a stretch. The entire thing looked like a drawn out mass of rough, uneven and unrefined asteroid that someone had shoved various chunks of technology into, most notably a large pink 'eye.' The mechanical eye lit up, cycled with exotic plasma and fired a massive wave of crackling electricity, the various ship systems aboard the 'Bismark' was fried and shorted out, even it's plethora of self repair systems that moments ago were hard at work were now dead in the void. Shepard felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as the Ion wave passed her by.
"Welp that would be the Ion Pulse. EDI reactivate all ship systems and cycle the air. It's getting a little stale in here." Shepard hopped to her feat, throwing down the cards that she had been playing with moments earlier as she prepared to join the rest of the boarding party while the lights came back on in the ship.
The Ion pulse was a powerful weapon, devastating in it's effectiveness and wide reaching, as such it requires enormous amounts of power, hence the necessity to make sure that you get all your opponents in the first hit, because with the excessive recharge time for the weapon you won't get a second hit in.
"T Minus 3 Seconds to the Kruban's arrival Shepard." EDI informed bluntly.
"Noted. Joker you have your dance partner!" Shepard ordered bluntly.
"And a beautiful dance it will be!" The Pilot replied playfully.
The Normandy flew forward, the Collectors had been in the middle of trying to take the Bismark apart as they had previous ships when they saw that one ship was active. Two beams of particle lasers were fired out at once, glancing the shield of the Normandy in the process through between the shield and Joker's piloting no real damage was taken. Then the Collector's decided to start taking things seriously. Thousands of eye shaped drones were released at the same time filling the gap of space against the Normandy. A central pupil producing warped particle fire locked onto the Normandy pulling it towards rotating blades of neutron material, Ancient Mining Drones, a ongoing and rather massive pain in the Cloaca for the Union, at least now they knew where they had come from.
"So that's how you wanna play it eh?" Joker stated grinning nastily.
Joker flipped switches and then lightning started to fly. Energy Siphons, one of the two critical weapons for fighting against the Reapers, standard issue on every Union Ship. Lightning flew from the Ocular Drones and entered the energy systems of the Normandy, it's capacitors filled, there was no use letting the energy go to waste, especially with more targets to deal with, so the ship activated it's secondary weapons and unleashed the second most pivotal weapon for killing Reapers. The Matter disentegrator ripped through the Mining Drones like water washing away the sand, the Normandy flew through where the drones were the thickest, where theoretically the Collectors wouldn't fire on them, and when they did anyway they mostly took out their own drones. When they were in range of the Collector Ship the third most pivotal anti-reaper weapon was deployed, exotic plasma lances. Lances of Exotic Plasma crashed into the Biotic Fields of the Collector ship letting out loud explosions as the Normandy went hard to work on tearing open a path into the ship proper. And hit the minor snag of the hull.
"Looks like Neutron matter Commander, this might take a while without something with more punch to break through." On that note. Lances of super heated metals tore through the Drone swarm, the back thrusters of the Collector's ship was torn off and the ion pulser was accurately targeted and disabled. A massive hole was torn into the side of the ship from the repeated bombardment from the Union ship.
"Clear a landing area." The group was ordered from the Kruban's captain. "You'll be getting the rest of the ground team shortly. Let's get our people back and take that damned ship apart."
They didn't need to be told twice, if nothing else then they finally got away from the particle beams. In the Metaphorical Red corner The Normandy settled into the hole of the collector's ship, the fire team to 'clear the landing site' was soon deployed: Samara alongside two Fenrir clad Ardat Yakshi and Liara in her own Hugin Model suit, Grunt in the latest of made for Krogan by the Tebrid armour, Tali Marched out in her SCAV, a Space Construction Armoured Vehicle, Shepard, Ashley and Kaiden marched to the front in their array of Dragoon armour, and Garrus stayed onboard the ship, to be more accurate he stayed behind the Normandy's array of Energy Siphons, Matter Disentegrators and Exotic Plasma Lancers.
"I have got to get me some Decent armour." Garrus muttered as he locked eyes ahead.
In the Metaphorical Blue Corner, Husks began to emerge one after another, first there was the first wave of attackers, armoured brutes leading the charge, behind them a group of Harvesters carrying a payload of Abominations, and behind them were Collectors with their own array of fire arms providing sniper support.
"Ladies! Make a hole!" The Main Guns on the Fenrirs armed themselves, the Energy Siphons were working to drain power from the Collector's ship, and weapons fired. Mots, Exotic Gas and Mass Effect Fields mixed together into a deadly combination as the the Warped guns of the Fenrirs went to work, and indeed a hole was made straight through the bodies of the Brutes before the deadly cocktail exploded in the middle of the formation of Volus and Hanar Husks, leading to a chain reaction of similar explosions. "Switch to Thermals!" Shepard shouted and the others tapped their helmets giving them a read on the enemy forces through the smoke. A wave of biotics swept aside the smoke like Moses parting the red sea as a familiar silhouette walked through. "New Guy. Not even a face a mother can love." Shepard observed bluntly.
Little over eight feet tall, most of it being legs that had been stretched way too thin, still wearing the remains of a Union issued hard suit attached to either shoulder was a large missile launcher on the end of a mechanical arm, from the looks of things repurposed Union tech. Most disturbing of all: a gaunt human like face, a Revenant made in the image of the Crew of the Hood.
"Looks human, or like it used to be." Tali stated fabricators already whirling as she cranked out drones.
"Looks like a target to me!" Grunt charged, biotics covering his body as he sped forward, already a warp was loaded into his graal thrower as he fired mere feet away from his target. The Revenant jumped through the air, it's union issued jet pack still fully functional as two missiles were fired out of the weapons strapped to the back. A singularity caught the two missiles in it's orbit, and Grunt wasted no time in shooting a lance of plasma into the ball of artificial gravity, the explosion encompassed the two missiles and produced a smoke screen in the process. The Revenant punctured the smoke screen as it pounced on Grunt, arms quickly trying to put him into a submission hold, in the mean time more of the Revenants emerged from the Collector's ship, however much of it was still left.
"Play time's over Grunt!" Shepard shouted, shouldered a sniper rifle and fired, accurately puncturing the former human through it's centre mass and leaking exotic gasses all over the area as Grunt tore the undead monster off of him.
Taking one look at the creatures Grunt Deactivated his mag boots, jumped about a foot into the air, and fired his Graal thrower a second time, the force of the recoil sending him flying backwards. In the mean time the hollow spikes Grunt just released punctured another Revenant leaking gasses all over the area while another was pinned in place with a stasis field at the same time he tried to take off with the rocket thrusters. A loud boom echoed out as the combination of biotics and exotic gas went off, in the mean time Grunt was pulled back to Shepard's side, already getting ready to charge off again he was stopped by Shepard's finger in his face plate.
"Do not break formation again!" Shepard warned with an uncompromising tone in her voice. "They literally baited an obvious trap and you fell for it hook line and sinker!"
Tali's drones zipped forward, each of them carrying a payload of rare crystal lasers. From there the drones began scything through the Collectors cutting them down as if they were wheat. The Collectors seemed to recognise a losing battle when it made itself known, and so set their ship to self destruct, and to their great disappointment learned that their energy core had already been drained dry. The Kruban appeared, a drop team was deployed of Vorcha and Blue Suns Mercenaries being supported by a Lich. The Missile touting human husks aboard the ship were a surprise, but they were ultimately dealt with in swift order. For now the group could feel satisfied that they had ended the threat that the Collectors represents once and for all.
Is what they would like to say.
"Shepard. We've lost contact with Five more battlefronts." Ever the buzzkill, EDI picked that time to ruin the mood. "Draconic, Lich, Tebrid, Lithoid and Chozo. Additionally we've conducted an 'inventory' of the Collector ship, and over 70% of the people taken by the Collectors from the battlefields that they've invaded are unaccounted for." Shepard, coffee in hand and sitting in the meeting room let out a sigh.
"Alright lets have all the bad news then. Show me the autopsy."
"Acknowledged." The Revenants did not go down easy, what few they were able to bring down in one piece didn't stay that way for very long. A hologram was showing the table, showing the body of one of the Revenants. "Private Kelly Ryan. Female. Age 23." In terms of fast and dirty identification toe prints held the prime standard among humans. The extra thick material and solid mass of the boot does it's intended job of protecting the foot very well, so it was usually possible to get toe prints out of them. That was also pretty much the only thing left of Private Ryan. The Revenant was holographically pulled apart, limbs, muscle, bones and other organs cleanly separated from the armour and ordinance that had been fused into the body by the Collectors. "Over 90 % of the body's cells have been directly installed with Reaper Nanotech. The Thorian appears to have resisted valiantly but was ultimately overwhelmed." So they still need to come up with a counter to Reaper Husks. "Bones have seen massive accelerated Osteofication, growing at an alarming rate and increasing height by thirty percent." Thus EDI began showing each organ off as she explained them. "Muscle, synthetic and organic, has been torn apart and reshaped into a spring shape enhancing strength by 80%. Stomach has been destroyed and replaced by a Zero Point Module and a nanite fabricator, now inactive." Great, that's all they needed. Well now she knew how these things were being powered. "Eyes have been hardened into a crystal and laced by nano-circuitry. Settings include heat sensitivity, night vision, ultrasound, geiger vision-"
"They can see in a lot of different spectrum's I understand." Shepard stated having grown impatient.
"The Hardsuit has been hardwired into the existing cybernetic lattice of the body via synthorganic tissue, with two electrolosis arms, Custodian Standard issue, having been integrated along with two Union standard issue M-16 Hellfire Missile launchers." Because it wasn't enough that the bastards were repurposing their bodies, now they were shoving bits of their own technology into the mix to use against them. Should she be flattered? Because she really wasn't, and Shepard sincerely doubted anyone else would be too. "I've isolated the Greybox on a closed server and conducted a manual data analysis on it. The Greybox has been thoroughly infested by Reaper Coding, I'm afraid that Private Ryan is permanently dead." Shepard stood and gave a salute as she downed the last of her coffee. "Up to the last moments of Private Ryan's existence as a husk she was still uploading and downloading memories. I've managed to isolate the files in question and the Grey Box Network is being thoroughly examined for malignant Reaper coding. I'm also writing new programs to make it so that if the host is infected with reaper technology then the Greybox will immediately shut down and permanently sever its connection to the network." Great, another mess that needs to be dealt with.
"Is there anything else?" Shepard asked letting out a sigh.
"In terms of Bad news? No." The hologram of the late Private Ryan went away and was soon replaced with a hologram of the Collector ship, that was similarly torn apart and dissected. "We've identified the over all material composition and technology of over 80% of the Collector Ship. The hull appears to be composed of unrefined neutron mass, the main weapon appears to be a scaled up version of the particle beam weapon. The main energy source is a anti-matter vortex. We've also managed to locate the Ship's IFF Drive."
"Is it just me or does all of this seem like a..." Shepard made rotating motions with her hand as if she was trying to find the right words.
"Downgrade over the Sovereign?"
"Bingo!"
"That would appear to be the idea commander. The Collectors come into contact with the denizens of the galaxy more often then what the Reapers do, they even conduct business with them, so it's only natural that the Reapers would take measures to prevent the Collectors business partners from figuring out their technology. We still aren't sure how Sovereign was able to power itself for instance. The only worthwhile salvage that we were able to find was this." A data drive and transmitter combination was revealed. "The IFF Drive. The Identify Friend or Foe Drive constantly emits a signal to any nearby technology identifying it as part of the Reaper's forces. If this signal was sent to the Mass Relay's for instance we believe that the ship transmitting the code would be given priority to use the Mass Relay Network, as well as unlock systems intentionally hidden by the network." It sounded suspiciously like EDI was actually excited about the drive.
"So this can bring us to the bug's hideout?" Shepard asked looking at the holographic data-drive suspiciously.
"Correct Commander."
"And how soon can we install it into a ship to go bug hunting?" Shepard asked sounding even more suspicious about the highly convenient thing that they had been handed.
"Immediately Commander." Everything that they know about the Reapers tells them that they never leave a piece of technology not booby trapped in some way and Shepard was inclined to believe that this was no different.
So if the Collectors were going to ambush them, then Shepard was going to ambush their Ambush.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: Grunt likes Sparatus's ship, not the man himself. I have a few ideas.
Gianfranco Cembran: Glad you like it!
