Semper Vigilo

by CunkToad

Due to a drive core malfunction, a human vessel arrives just in time to save the Council Envoy from the yahg. What happens when humanity enters the galactic stage not as the race that got attacked by the turians for breaking a law they weren't aware of, but as the race that saved a turian platoon from certain death? M for wartime violence, pre ME1 - ME3, no OP humanity.

124. Memento Mori

Chapter 124. Memento Mori

Six Minutes Later 13. May 2417 AD, HSASV Normandy, Conference Room

As the final member of the ground team, Garrus, shuffled into the room and the door closed behind him, Shepard prepared herself for the final address of the people who'd volunteered for this mission.

The IFF was installed and the Normandy was currently skipping through the que at the Serpent Nebula Relay. According to Joker, they'd be ready for the Omega-Four transit in less than four hours.

That was plenty of time for both a rousing speech and silent contemplation of the fact that they might be riding to their death.

Before starting to address her team, Shepard allowed herself to consider their predicament for one final time.

'It should work, at least the math checks out'.

That was the final verdict on whether or not the modifications made by Cerberus were going to allow their ship to make the transit.

'It should work' was the kind of phrasing you'd be okay with hearing when someone talked about having fixed the issues with hot water boiler or the extranet connection… not when you were talking about the difference between being disintegrated or not.

Normally she'd insist on sending a USV through first, that way if the probe survived, they'd be reassured… but since the IFF was one of a kind and there was no guarantee that anything sent through the relay wouldn't get intercepted immediately and subsequently lead to the Collectors modifying the relay again and thus making it impossible to bypass all over again… the drone idea wasn't an option.

If she hadn't done equally (or more) insane things in the past… this might have been the first time she'd flat out refused to carry out an order. But since she had driven a Mako through an experimental prothean relay with no guarantee of it working either… this wasn't going to be where she drew the line.

Besides, the plan was already set into motion anyway. Too late for second thoughts now anyway.

"Thank you all for coming this quickly," the commander began as the lights of the room dimmed and a hologram of their flightpath appeared in the middle of the table curtesy of EDI, whom she'd already quickly briefed earlier. "As you've all heard by now, the IFF's online and we've received the green light to go ahead with the operation," as she finished the sentence, the AI of the Normandy replaced the image with one of the relay. "Once we're there, our task's pretty easy. We make the transit, conduct stealth recon on the other side… see if we can figure out if there's a way to undo the sabotage of the Relay on the other side and, if given the opportunity, figure out if what we're looking at beyond the Relay is the Collector's main base of operations."

Since they knew for a fact now that the Collectors were essentially just prothean husks, the likelihood of them finding an entire world of the things had drastically decreased. They were anticipating a base now, or maybe a mothership kind of vessel that hopefully wasn't going to end up being the Reaper Bau had tried to warn her about.

"If we can undo the sabotage, we retreat through the Relay, give the all-clear for the cavalry to move in and sit back and watch the fireworks," now the image of the relay was replaced with a mixture of HSA and Hierarchy vessels. In addition to the small Blackwatch-led task force that Lieutenant Callius had been a part off initially, Shepard had been told that a 'sizeable' portion of the 15th Fleet was currently 'anchored' around the Council closest to the Terminus System. If the Normandy reported the all-clear, the 15th, spearheaded by a Kilimanjaro-Class dreadnought, would violate Terminus soil, come through the Omega-Four Relay with guns blazing and quote 'bring the full might of human engineering to bear down on the Collectors and blow a hole so deep into their home that even the Reapers are going to feel it'.

Truth be told, she'd really would've liked to be there when … whoever had pushed that idea past Arcturus had done so.

Then again the images of the colony Vuori being consumed in a nuclear blast at the hands of its own garrison had probably been a rather convincing argument. Nothing was as good at changing the mind of a parliamentary representative as the images of their voters dying at the hands of a hostile alien race.

It had been pictures and clips like the ones from Vuori and New Canton and all the other colonies that had cause the last HSA expedition into the Terminus, so it made sense that Arcturus had signed off on this as well.

"That'd be the ideal solution," she stated before throwing a knowing look at the assembled team. "But since things rarely work out for us that way, I'm now going to tell you about the less ideal solution, namely the one where we can't undo the sabotage and somehow have to figure out a way of solving this issue permanently with nothing but the Normandy," once again the hologram changed, this time showing a lone human frigate with the hull identification number 'FC-118'. Next to it, the sigil of Cerberus popped up and with it, memories to the rest of the conversation she'd had with Harper just now.

"Before we enter Terminus space, we'll receive three delivers brought to us by a Cerberus combat vessel. The first one's a mass-produced version of your counter-measure, Mordin. That should keep us save from the worst of the Seeker swarms, if we run into any that is," Shepard stated before nodding at the salarian. "Cerberus apparently managed to create enough for the entire crew of the Normandy with the schematics you sent. So thanks for your contribution," the salarian nodded his approval.

"The second one I'm told is a highly classified airborne agent that was developed specifically to kill any Collector it comes into contact with. Apparently, it's in spades based on the bio-weapon they deployed on Omega. So talk about karma, I guess," as she said that, the image of a modified missile pod appeared on the table. "The third one's… a bit more drastic. And purely human engineer,," next to the pod, the image of two Mk. 81 Deterrent warheads appeared. They had a rather fitting nickname in the vocabulary of the HSA's armed forces. It was…

"… fucking Blank Slates?" Leng muttered after letting out a low whistle. The name indicated what you got after the (theoretical) detonation of a Mk.81 on a planetary target. An ashen blank slate.

Deployed alongside FTL capable long-range missiles and carried by stealth ships, the Mk 81s were first and foremost just what their name implied, a deterrent.

They'd never been used in actual warfare, not even during the Skyllian Blitz.

Sure, there'd been a theoretical retribution plan designed to force the batarians to retreat from human space if the tide of war tipped that involved blanketing batarian frontier colonies with half of all Mk. 81s built up to that point but those had been just that: plans.

Outside of live-fire testing on some uninhabitable Fringe World moons (which had been stopped reluctantly after the HSA had been notified that the Deterrent violated the WMD section of Citadel Conventions in every conceivable way because of its capability to render inhabitable worlds permanently uninhabitable), the Mk 81s had never been used in an actual war.

Instead, they'd slowly been replaced by FTL and kinetic-bombardment weaponry, which both funnily enough also violated parts of the Citadel Conventions depending on how you used them… but since they didn't leave behind radioactive isotopes, no one appeared to care.

"Yes," Shepard confirmed with a nod. "If we can't undo the sabotage and have to deal with the Collectors by our own, we're under orders to use Cerberus' weapon first to try and see if we can neutralize the Collectors that way," she made a throwing gesture at the hologram and the missile pod came apart to show hundreds of smaller warheads. "If it works, great job team and we just gave Cerberus a treasure trove of intel if they ever figure out how to cross the relay," then the smaller warheads disappeared, leaving only the Mk. 81s. "But if it doesn't…"

Shepard trailed off right as EDI showed the Mk. 81s turning into a blind flash. "Scorched earth," she let that sink in for a moment. "Now I know what you're probably wondering. Why's this a job for the ground team? Why not just fire the missiles at the base and watch," she'd asked that question herself. "Well, plain and simple… we don't know anything about the counter measures the Collectors might have deployed on their end. So if things end up going to hell once we're past the relay, say because none of our guidance or delivery systems work all of the sudden or there's some other kind of obstruction, our job is going to be to deliver those weapons to their intended target," after the flash, the image of a series of Kodiaks flying back to the Normandy appeared. "In and out. We plant the warheads and then we leave. No matter what happens, we don't stay any longer than we have to."

Deploying biological and nuclear weapons against untold numbers of lifeforms… Normally she'd have an issue with that but since they were talking about husks, there weren't really any doubts in her head.

Well maybe except for one, the final icing on the cake.

"I want to make one thing clear," she said, looking at the humans in the room in particular. "If it's the second alternative and we end up being on our own, Arcturus has made it clear that this is not a search and rescue mission. Given our current intel, there is no reason to believe that anyone captured by the Collectors is still alive so we aren't supposed to go looking for them either," she paused. "If that changes while we are on mission… our orders are to see if we can find a way to evacuate the survivors. Whether it's a planet, or a station or a ship… living captives turn this into a search and rescue mission… with one condition," she sighed. "If it becomes evident that we can't save the captives, neutralizing the Collector threat becomes our main priority and if that ends up being the case, it's clear what's expected of us," she really hoped that wouldn't be the case… mostly because she wasn't quite sure if she could use a nuke on a target containing human captives. "Four hours," she threw into the room. "That's how long we've got until transit. Any questions?"

The faces of her team were stoic and silence was the only answer she got in return.

They were all prepared for this, had been for days.

"Dismissed."

---

Nearly Four Hours Later, 13. May 2417 AD, Sahrabarik System, HSASV Normandy, Helm

"How's it looking, Joker?" Shepard asked while walking up to the helmsman after crossing through the buzzing CIC. Since they were about to jump into hostile territory, the Normandy was flying under battle conditions. That implied a certain business for the crew and for the same reason, she'd put on her armor.

In response to her question, the bearded man stopped wiping across the holoscreens for a second and turned in his chair.

"QRF's reporting that it's on stand-by, Cerberus' packages are loaded, transit calculations are finished, engineering's reporting all systems green, the IFF is working as intended, CIC's ready for some action," he said. "We're ready. Just waiting for your go," he added casually.

"You're pretty calm about this, aren't you?" Shepard observed in response.

"If you ignore the part where we might get disintegrated or die in some other horrible manner, it's really just another combat-condition relay jump, Commander. Done those a couple dozen times already and whatever's waiting on the other end can't possibly be worse than the whole batarian battlegroup I said hello to way back when I was still an ensign on the Waterloo," since she'd only met Joker during the mission to stop Saren, it was sometimes easy to forget that the slightly older pilot had already been a combat-tested and decorated helmsman way before the whole Sovereign situation. That'd been half the reason he'd been selected to fly the original Normandy to begin with. "Besides if you break it down, disintegration or some other horrible manner of death are always in the cards every time you jump a relay so like I said. Nothing I haven't done before," he added with a shrug. "The way I see this, we're either right and this works… or we missed something and it's instantly not our problem anymore."

"That's something EOD techs say when talking about battlefield disposals," the N7 pointed out.

"And they're onto something with that mindset," the helmsman said before spinning in the chair and pointing at the intercom hologram. "If you got any final words you want to say to the crew before we're all gonna be the big heroes of the galaxy all over again, now's the time," then he glanced back at her and scratched his beard. "Or you save it for the after-mission party and save 'em the suspense of knowing we're about to jump into making history. Your call."

Shepard's hand hovered over the hologram for a second. Then she drew it back.

She'd already said everything there was to say. No need to drag it out any longer.

"Get us through, Joker."

The pilot tipped his head. "Aye, Ma'am," then his hands started to dance over the holograms and before Shepard knew it, there was a bright white light collecting in front of the cameras that connected the Normandy's helm to the viewing screens in front of Joker.

She felt her hands tighten around the back of Joker's chair and she could swear her heart stopped for a moment right before the white light began to turn blue and red… She'd been in a lot of situations where seconds had felt like an eternity, yet this one was significantly worse, mostly because she was a just a passenger and didn't hold her fate in her own hands…

Her heart only started to return to its rhythm when the red and blue light disappeared and the transit finished.

After it did, everything else happened incredibly fast.

"What the-" she heard Joker curse, barely having time to comprehend what happened before their ship violently shook several times over, curtesy of the impossibly large debris field that had suddenly appeared in front of the Normandy

"Warning. Collision alert. Several minor hull-breaches detected." EDI's voice spoke calmly. All the while Joker's hands started to dance over the holograms in front of him, wiping away several red-flashing warnings. Shepard could barely keep up with the helmsman's speed.

"I can see that," Joker said through gritted teeth before the viewing screens in front of them allowed Shepard to see that their ship was turned upside down and was now diving towards the 'bottom' of the red mass relay, away from incoming debris.

"EDI, tell me what's going on," the N7 demanded, knowing full and well that distracting their pilot wasn't a good idea right now.

"As soon as we finished the transit, we appear to have entered a massive debris field."

"Obviously," Shepard said. "But where's here?" she inquired after looking around at the various screens in front of Joker and finding nothing that gave her even the hint of an idea of where they'd actually jumped to.

"I am attempting to calculate our position based on available quantum entanglement anchors," EDI replied as another violent vibration rocked the Normandy and another one of EDI's avatars repeated the 'collision alert' from earlier. The AI took surprisingly long to answer, which caused Shepard to become a bit impatient.

"Well? What system are we in?" she asked again just as Lieutenant Callius walked into the helm inside of her fully sealed suit of black and gold Blackwatch armor.

"The system we have entered appears to not be within range of any known QECs or comm buoys, Commander," the AI responded. "The last point of contact that I managed to log during the transit was the northern most part of explored salarian space," there was a brief pause where EDI's avatar blinked with a white light. "It would appear that we have left the Orion Arm in its entirety and have jumped into unknown space. I am sorry, Commander, but I am unable to tell you where we are. Where we are has not been explored or named yet."

… great.

"I take it that means you also can't contact the fleet?"

"All attempts to access the relay's comm network have failed. There are several hundred ghost signals still being transmitted by the ships of the debris field. Until we clear it, the interference will be too strong to send an understandable message via the relay's own communication channels," the AI responded before her avatar blinked several times over for a second time. "Commander, I have just detected an enormous, artificial Mass Effect field beyond the debris field. It is consistent with readings expected from an Arcturus-Class-sized star base. The frequency and density of the field appears similar to the fields exerted by Collector craft, only much larger," the AI paused. "I am also picking up unusually high amounts of Hawking Radiation and significant gravitational anomalies," EDI went on. "We are nearby an enormous black hole the size of which is only expected to be found near the true galactic center."

"So we basically jumped to the galaxy's core," Callius figured before exchanging a nod with the Commander. "None injured in the hull breaches, Commander," she reported.

"That's good," she said before looking back to EDI. "Any signs of other signatures besides the station?"

"Not at the moment. As I've stated, my ability to use the Normandy's sensor is severely obstructed be the presence of the debris field," the AI stated.

"Then crossing it and figuring out what that signature is just became our objective," the red-haired N7 replied before getting an idea. "Humor me, EDI. If it's a base, can we hit it from here?"

"Negative, Commander. The guidance systems of the weapons are not refined enough to navigate the moving debris field," EDI responded. "A ship-based delivery of the weapon is not possible at this time," the AI paused again. "I also have to report that I am not able to detect any sort of manipulation on this side of the relay that could be removed to allow for transits without an IFF. Reinforcements will most likely not be able to make the transit."

"Fantastic," Shepard murmured. "Scan as much of the station as you can and send it to the conference room. Lieutenant," she started before looking at Callius, "assemble the ground team," then she put a hand on Joker's shoulder. "Get us in as close as you can, even if that means scratching the paint."

The pilot scoffed in an almost offended, but still amused manner.

"Like that's ever going to happen."

Then he got to work.

---

Five Minutes Later, 13. May 2417 AD, HSASV Normandy, Conference Room

As soon as Tali, who'd just been busy helping engineering patch up a debris-related hole in the Normandy's exterior plating, walked into the room," Shepard dimmed the lights and brought up the hologram of the base EDI had found.

In the N7's mind, it looked like something reminiscent of an insect-hive, a scaled up, broader version of the Collectors' cruisers with the creep-factor dialed up to eleven that just hang in space like a forgotten relic of a bygone time.

"Here we are again," she greeted. "I'll get right to the point. As things are, we're cut off from communication for the time being. We also got no way to undo the relay's IFF lock, so there'll be no reinforcements even if we manage to get a signal through once we clear the debris field," she narrowed her eyes. "Moving on, we found this base," she pointed at the hologram. "But our missiles won't find their mark through the filed, so as I excepted, we're gonna have to do this for ourselves," she nodded at the hologram.

"Our objective appears to be a roughly five-kilometer-long, three-kilometer-wide space station. Good news is that EDI hasn't found any sort of exterior defenses. If I were to guess, they were probably counting on the relay and the debris field to protect them when they built that thing… but now for the bad news," she spun the hologram to show off the most worrying discovery that EDI had made. An intact, as of right now inactive Collector cruiser docked to the station's exterior.

"Even if they don't have any defenses, there's at least one operational warship docked to the station. And to make matters worse, while we got decent scans of the exterior… we're blind on the interior. The superstructure is too dense for our scanners, so we've got no idea how many Collectors are onboard. As far as we know, this thing could be an automated refueling station with a skeleton crew… or it could be their home. Either way, our objective remains the same," she deactivated the hologram. "Go in, conduct recon as far as apossible, figure out if this is their home or not… and then send it straight to hell," she looked at the assembled team again.

"We'll fly in with the Normandy this time around. The debris field's far too dangerous for the shuttles," she began. "On the ground, we'll divide into two fire teams for coordination's sake. Alpha and Bravo. Garrus, Jack, Thane, Tali, you're with me as Alpha," she received some nods and then looked at her XO. "Mordin, Samara, Legion and Kai, you're with the lieutenant and you'll be Bravo," they were the same teams as on Haestrom, albeit with the two additions last additions to her team added after the fact.

"There'll be no Charlie, Delta and Echo this time. While we've got enough of Mordin's countermeasures to the Seekers now thanks to Cerberus' tool shop, the marines will stay behind and hold the Normandy's LZ. They'll only follow us in in case we need help on our way out or it turns out there's someone left alive to extract from the station after all," Shepard folded her arms in front of her chest armor and looked at the turned-off hologram table.

Maybe now was the time for another small, rousing address.

Luckily for her, she'd always been somewhat good at improvising these things.

After considering the room in front of her for a moment and picking out a bunch of talking points that she felt would hit the right marks, she sat down her onyx black helmet and put on a serious face.

"With the IFF transit complete, the worst part of this mission's already over," she said, well aware that she was playing with fire with such a statement. "Now it's up to us to do what we've already been doing for the last three months. The Collectors thought they could hit us at home and that we wouldn't figure out that they're working for the Reapers or how to hit them back," she paused before looking at Garrus and at Jack.

The turian was here because she'd asked him to. Plain and simple, no strings attached. That was the kind of person Garrus was. If you asked him for help, he'd follow you through the gates of hell and the only prize you'd have to pay was that you'd have to listen to his dry comments and at times odd sense of humor.

Opposing him, Nader was here because Shepard had been asked to take her. Someone who earned a whole lot more money than the N7 had thought that Jack would be more useful fighting with Shepard than she'd be leading a regular unit. The young woman had her issues but underneath all the expectations that were weighing her down the N7 could see a promising soldier that'd go a long way after all of this was through.

"They were dead-wrong. Because despite all the effort they poured into hiding behind the relay, they made one glaring mistake," she narrowed her eyes. "They never thought someone was going to be either crazy or angry enough to find a way to follow them home. They didn't count on us… and today, they're gonna pay for it," next she glanced at Callius and Leng.

Callius reasons for being on the Normandy had started out as orders, plain and simple, but Shepard liked to believe that they'd grown on the turian. She'd certainly come to respect her XO and she was unashamed to admit that they wouldn't have gotten this far without Callius. Her experience was invaluable and her dedication to the cause inexplicable. In short, she was one hell of a soldier.

Leng meanwhile had been her companion way before any of the others, ever since their chance encounter on Elysium. For that reason, he'd been picked to accompany her by Harper himself. Truth be told, she really should've seen it coming that if she ever was to embark on a suicide mission, it'd probably be alongside one of her Red Squadron comrades. For all the Spectre fame she'd collected, she was still an N7 at heart, so it only felt right that it was an N7 who would be standing next to her when she got ready to stop this threat to humanity once and for all.

"Even if we're the ones standing here at the end of the road, it wasn't the effort of a single ship or a single team that got us here. A lot of people have worked damn hard to make this happen. Their effort's the reason we got this chance to begin with," then she looked at Tali and, ever so briefly, also her own reflection in the mirrored glass wall behind the quarian.

Tali had never been part of the initial plan, neither during the hunt for Saren where their paths had briefly intersected nor during their mission to stop the Collectors. Yet here she was, standing amongst practiced killers, ready to die for a cause that wasn't her own. It took a special kind of person to pick that kind of path and in that once decision, the young quarian had said more about her character than a million words ever could.

"We lost some good people to make it this far. Chakwas, Gardner, Tali's team on Haestrom and her father… in one way or another, their deaths are the reason why we're still here. There wasn't one event or one death that set all of this in motion… But without each of them making the choices they made despite the risks they presented, despite the prize they ultimately demanded from them… we wouldn't be here, plain and simple," next she moved to look at Mordin and Legion.

Pound by pound, Mordin had probably contributed most to the mission. His knowledge had carried them through a lot of hardships and was half the reason they could fight the Collectors without having to worry about getting paralyzed by Seeker swarms. But what Shepard valued most about the salarian doctor wasn't his scientific knowledge but rather his experience. Decades in STG made him dangerous to their enemies and an invaluable adivser to their cause… and he was a good listener with a much softer heart than most would give him credit for.

Compared to Mordin, who was at the end of his life, stood Legion. By his own account, the geth had only been activated recently. Sure, he had the collective 300-year existence of the consensus to fall back on… but Legion himself hadn't been around for more than a couple of months. Yet in that little time he'd already done the impossible, brokered peace with organics and proven to Shepard that a geth could risk his life for humans and befriend people like Callius-Lieutenant, something she'd considered impossible the first time she'd seen one of the synthetics through the scope of her rifle back on Eden Prime. Funny how the world changed when you spent two years on ice.

"We're unlikely allies brought together from opposite ends of the galaxy. If we'd met under any other circumstances, we probably wouldn't have talked all that much before things got violent," finally she looked at Samara and Thane.

The first was a justicar, essentially a space-knight who adhered to a strict code of honor and had sworn an oath of fealty to Shepard because she'd considered her cause a worthy one. In an ironic twist of fate, she'd also probably murder half the crew the moment that oath was lifted because they violated some ancient rite of said code.

The second was a hitman who'd stopped charging for his kills and considered this operation a good way to make amends now that he was dying from an incurable disease, hoping that the good he did here would somehow wash away the rivers of blood he had spilled. Yet despite all of that, Thane was one of the most selfless people she'd ever met. Only last week he'd risked his life to foil her own assassination from an inferior hired gun. Ironic.

She lingered on the two of them for a moment.

Thane and Samara couldn't have been more different from one another and in more ways than one the fact that they were standing here, next to one another, showcased that the fight against the Collectors and the Reapers wasn't just the problem of government x and organization y. It was a fight everyone was going to have to take a part in, that would require the galaxy to toss aside millennia of bad blood. That seemed daunting at first… but if Samara and Thane could do it, so could a whole lot of other people as well.

That gave her hope for the future.

"Yet despite how obviously different all our lives have been, we all made the choice to be here. Out of all the miseries we could've picked, all the paths we could've taken part instead of this one… this fight is the one we ended up with. Whether it's your own, personal conviction, or a sense of obligation to something larger than you or just a case of you simply not being able to look away when bad things happen to innocent people… every one of you decided that this battle was their battle," she gave one final look to all team members. "So let's finish this. Once and for all," she stated before putting on a smile. "The Collectors are overdue on an ass-kicking anyway." When she was done, her words hang in the air for a second. Then Garrus broke the silence.

"Damn right they are," the turian stated, his voice flanging through the room. "We'll be done by evening though, right? I still got plans…"

"Depends on how fast you outrun the blast, I suppose," Leng, who'd been sitting next to Garrus, retorted. "What sorta plans?"

"The 'I just survived a suicide mission and now I'll drink until I don't remember it anymore' kind of plans," Garrus offered. "You're all invited, by the way." The comment might've seemed silly and out of place for an outside observer, but the N7 was realizing what the turian was doing. He was giving them something simple to come back to. A perspective that went beyond the mission ahead of them. Textbook military leadership tactics from the C-SEC detective turned vigilante… who knew. "Especially you, Legion."

The geth's eye spun.

"We do not consume liquid ethanol," the platform offered.

"Then we'll find you some oil," Jack suggested before rising from her seat and nodding towards Thane, Samara and Callius. "The three of you have got some catching up to do anyway with you missing out on shore-leave and whatnot. You're coming too. After all, we really need to figure out who's the best biotic when drunk."

"I'm not sure that's a challenge you want to raise, Lieutenant. I've been drinking with turian soldiers since before you were born," Callius suggested.

"I … concur with Lieutenant Callius, Jack. My experience with celebrations could prove… overwhelming," Samara nodded formally. "I'd be happy to be proven wrong though," she added before looking to Thane.

"Drell assassins do not suffer from an alcohol-induced lack of coordination," he stated, plain and simply.

"Also claimed that drell couldn't sunburn," Mordin injected.

"Yes… but unlike with the sting of Haestrom's sun… I have ample practice with day-drinking. You can render me as intoxicated as you want, I'll still manage to nail a Zhrek to the wall with a throwing knife," Thane stated, strangely proud and probably unaware that no one knew what a 'Zhrek' was supposed to be.

"I'm not sure you should say that like it's something positive," Tali observed. "Also how come our only social interactions as a crew are always built around getting drunk? Why don't we ever just like… watch a movie or something like that?"

"… duuuh… because we're in the military?" Jack smirked. "This is going to be great. And you're joining too, Ma'am."

Shepard offered a polite smile.

"If the debriefing's not too lengthy," she replied, pushing the 'and we're all still alive by the end of this'-condition to the back of her mind. "I'll brief the marines on their jobs next. Lieutenant Callius, you can get the ground teams ready for action. Rally point's the hangar."

"Right away, Commander," the turian nodded before rising from her seat. "You heard her. Fall out."

---

Meanwhile, 13. May 2417 AD, Cronos Station

"They're through the relay then?" Harper asked, his unnatural, cybernetic eyes looking at the hologram of the path of the Normandy. The last time it had pinged had been beyond the northern-galactic border of salarian space, near the region where the Orion Arm of the Milky Way bordered the Central Bar. After that, all trace of the ship had been lost due to a lack of QEC buoys beyond that point.

"Yes. The Omega side of the relay appears to have logged a successful transit and the flight patch matches with the alignment of the relay. But since we can't hail them, we have to consider that the destruction of all vessels attempting to transit occurs on the other side of the corridor, not at its start or on its way," the operative in charge of the Cerberus vessel that had just transferred Solus' weapon to Shepard, responded.

Harper shook his head. The Normandy hadn't been destroyed. He was certain of it, mostly because he'd shot several hundred million worth of unmanned credits through the relay already and none of them had managed to ping as far out as the Orion Arm's edge.

"We anticipated the possibility of a full communication blackout. That's why we sent Shepard. She can be trusted to make the right decision without some higher authority to fall back onto," he pulled on his cigarette.

That was one of the reasons why they'd blown billions to bring her back from the brink.

For all her flaws, the commander was capable of fully independent decision making – even when the scale of the consequences became quite literally astronomical.

Soldiers like that were rare to come by.

"Keep trying to reach them. And notify me immediately when you get through. If that is all, you're dismissed," when, not if. He'd made a conscious distinction there.

The IFF worked.

The science checked out.

The transit had been successful.

"Understood," the Cerberus naval operative nodded.

After his hologram vanished, Harper dialed in another frequency, one leading to the fleet of proper HSA warships waiting on stand-by at the edge of Human-Terminus space.

When the connection had been established, a thin man with shortly cropped hair and a somewhat gaunt-looking face appeared. That would be Admiral Claude Dubois, the acting commander of the 15th Fleet and ,up to recently, the commander for the entirety of all naval assets concentrated around the CIP-based Operation Sentinel.

"Director."

"Admiral."

"I take it you're calling because I can't reach the Normandy."

"Exactly."

"Mission failure?"

"Not as far as we can tell. The transit appears to have been successful."

"So something on the other side of the relay's blocking the signal."

"Or they've left range," Harper said before extinguishing his cigarette and once more glancing at the terminal where the chancellor's message was still staring straight back at him.

It appeared that while he had been working Goyle to let Shepard perform a surgical strike, Hackett had been lobbying the chancellor to prepare a hammer-down option. The admiral hadn't had as much faith in Cerberus' approach as Harper and he wouldn't fault him for it. While they'd had their differences over the years, lately because Miranda had attempted to … pursue … his favorite army commando, Harper had always held a great deal of respect for the highest-ranking naval officer in the HSA, The feeling was most certainly not mutual, but that didn't he'd go around pretending that people like Hackett, the staunch and stubborn by-the-book career military types, weren't as much needed to keep the HSA on its path to a prosperous as the more subtle, less restricted Cerberus types were. "I assume you've also received your updated orders? As in what the 15th will be expected to do should the Normandy fail?"

"I did. And I can't say that I approve…" Debois stated plainly.

Harper dipped his cigarette into the ash tray.

"Why not?" Since he was just waiting for Shepard to call at this point, he might as well kill some time.

"Because War Plan Red Ring is supposed to be a fallback option meant to control Terminus aggression… not a means to lock down Omega's whole system when neither Omega nor the Terminus haven't done anything they weren't already doing thirty years ago," Debois's face hardened and his gaze became steely. "If we go through with this, it's war with the Terminus."

"And if we don't the Collectors and whoever else might be hiding behind their relay can continue to traverse the galaxy in which ever way they see fit and hit us where it hurts most," Harper retorted. "You've got the security clearance necessary to know that we're in one race against time already. If we fail in the Viper Nebula, we can hardly afford letting the Reapers open another front in our backyard. Omega's a means to an end. An anchor from which we can control the rest of the system. We've got no interest in the rest of the Terminus."

"An anchor with nearly eight million people living on it," Debois pointed out. "That's a lot of people and Arcturus appears to be under the impression that they'll just stand down…" the admiral muttered. "This isn't the CIP, Director. These people don't want us here," he summarized. "Have you considered for a second how the Terminus views us? What they think the HSA stands for? That the won't believe us for a second when we say we're not here for them?"

He was about to point out that these weren't his orders and that Debois was barking up the wrong tree… but since discussing a topic like this certainly beat waiting for Shepard to report, he'd indulge the man.

"I know that we stand for everything the Terminus hates. Rampant centralism, human supremacy, an authoritarian rule of law bordering on fascism," Harper listed off the top of his head. "That's what they think we stand for and while that's not further form the truth than possible, it doesn't matter. Like you just pointed out… they don't want us there, so they'll never care," in a galaxy filled with nations where the majority of (non-asari) people didn't even get to vote for the people in charge of them, Harper failed to see how the HSA was particularly authoritarian… or human-supremacist for that matter. The centralized state part he couldn't argue with, though.

"If you know that, you also know that eight million people won't just sit on their asses and watch while what they figure is an alien empire looking to turn them into vassals comes barging in their home."

"Of course I know that," Harper responded. "The 15th is just there for the lockdown, is it not? The actual peace-keeping will be the task of the expeditionary force trailing behind you," and of course the army, once a foothold was secured.

"Every ship that has guns on it is going to try and blow us out of space the second we come out of the relay and while I have no doubts that Omega can't stand up to a whole HSA fleet… I'd rather not kill thousands of people who've got a justified reason for attacking my ships," Debois retorted. "We're at the brink of a Reaper invasion, Director, and Arcturus is trying its hardest to push us into a war with the Terminus," Debois stated. "Ignoring the moral implications of this ordeal, I'd have to be a damned fool to approve of wasting our resources this way."

"That sounds like the kind of concern you should raise with Admiral Hackett and not me."

"Which is what I'll do… the moment I hear from you that the Normandy's failed. Prior to that being the case, me protesting an order I haven't been asked to carry out yet would just amount to creating unnecessary waves in what's already stormy times."

Harper crossed his legs. Dubois appeared to be as much a calculating politician as he was a soldier. In a society where most people holding any sort of high-level military authority came from what was essentially a conveyor-belt of institutions designed to create textbook, duty-bound officers focused solely on serving to the best of their abilities, that was a rare trait to have.

"Then it would appear that we both have very good reasons to wish Shepard the best of luck," he stated before all of the sudden the terminal which was reserved for transmissions from the Normandy lit up. His eyes immediately darted towards it.

'Transit successful. Communication obstructed by gravitational anomalies and debris field. Relay sabotage cannot be reverted. Space installation of Collector origin localized. Space-based delivery not feasible. Proceeding with ground reconnaissance,' it read in short, to the point sentences, as excepted from a message sent through long range QEC.

"It seems today's your lucky day, Admiral," Debois, who'd been looking at the side, presumably at his own terminal, nodded.

"And yours," he responded.

---

Ten Minutes Later, 13. May 2417 AD, Uncharted Regions, HSASV Normandy, Hangar

"Making our final approach now. Still no movement from the cruiser," Joker's voice came through the radio in her helmet.

"Understood. Bring us in nice and quiet, Flight-Lieutenant," she replied before looking at the suited-up team and marine fire teams waiting at the loading ramp of the Normandy. Since the Normandy was going to land at an open section of the station and not dock to it (docking was a commitment she wasn't ready to make) the marines had fortified the ramp of the frigate with portable barriers, heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.

To round things off, they'd even brought up the Normandy's sole Mako IFV, just in case they needed heavy firepower the moment the ramp dropped and also because the Mako was currently intended to serve as the carriage upon which they'd bring in the weapons to take the base down once it was confirmed to be a viable option.

In total, there were forty-five of them.

Ten members of her ground team- including herself, and the thirty-five marines serving as the Normandy's security team.

While she hadn't exactly been able to utilize her HSAMC comrades as anything other than an idle QRF during many of the operations that they had conducted up to now, the marines had only landed with the on Freedom's Progress and Haestrom, Shepard was more than glad to have them around now. And while they still lacked a formal platoon commander, the N7 figured that if push came to shove, she could just let the senior NCOs run the show, as usual.

"Alright, I'll just say it… if that cruiser's not moving by now, it's either because it's too broken to move or because they want us on that station," Garrus muttered from his position behind one of the barricades.

"You wouldn't happen to be worried about an ambush, would you?" Callius retorted from behind another barricade.

"No, an ambush requires concealment. What I'm picturing is more akin to a swarm attack the second we drop the ramp. If this is their homebase, there has to be thousands of them here. That's more than enough to just drown us in bodies."

"Had to be. Past tense," Leng corrected before explaining. "The Navy's been chasing and killing their chitin-asses across the Verge ever since they tried to take Vuori… and the army's been squashing them since they started getting cocky and attacking larger planets with proper garrisions," the Petty Officer rested the light machine gun he was wielding right now against his shoulder and glanced at Shepard. "Who knows, maybe they already killed most of them and didn't leave any for us."

"Let's see… the ship on New Canton was a total wipe-out, no survivors there… and the one that was attacking the Verge after it got clipped by the Kasongo-Wu's carrier group and then blown to bits Cerberus. So no Collector stragglers there either," Jack started to list. "Then there was the whole 'taking you with me' thing the Vuori garrison pulled on their Collector ship… so that's at least three Collector ships plus their crew down for the count, right? Unless I'm forgetting something that is."

"Your navy also engaged one trying to breach the Parnack quarantine zone," Callius pointed out from the other side of her hangar where her team was waiting. "That one got away."

"So maybe that's the one that's still docked? Last man standing…" Jack figured. "I mean those ships are big and there can't be that much docking space in this station, so who knows. Maybe they never had more than four."

"Possible," Mordin stated. He'd once again donned the full orange-white STG armor he'd worn during the Freedom's Progress operation and – much to Shepard's surprise – even opted to bring one of the modular salarian long guns. It was currently outfitted into a Venom-Pattern grenade launcher but she knew for a fact Mordin also carried the shotgun and DMR kits with him. He'd be a versatile base of fire if push came to shove. "Also probable that station is only one of several outposts however."

"Way to kill the optimistic vibe, Solus."

"Simply trying to qualm overconfidence," the salarian responded before Joker's voice popped back into Shepard's radio.

"We're in the base and I'm bringing us down, Commander. EDI says the scanners are still blind… looks super creepy through the cameras, though. Whoever called their ships massive hives should really see this," the pilot muttered before an audible thud went through the Normandy and the ramp started to hiss.

"Commander, exterior sensors suggests that the station lacks a unified atmosphere. I am however detecting heat streams coming out from further inside the station that indicate an airflow somewhere deeper within," Edis stated. "There also appears to be a very strong energy signature roughly one kilometer to the north, near the core of the station," they'd already anticipated that from what they knew about the Collector ships. "This energy signature most likely serves as the station's main power source and its nerve center. If the destruction of the base or distribution of the chemical is still your intended goal, I suggest that you head into its direction."

"Understood. Then we'll ready both packages for delivery," if there was no connected atmosphere, they couldn't deliver the bio-chemical weapon Cerberus had created. So first they'd go looking for something akin to a life-support system and if that failed, pull back to the Normandy and push the button to nuke the whole station from the safety of the debris field.

"I'll continue to monitor the situation from the ship," EDI replied. "Commander, I'd like to make another suggestion," the AI suddenly started again while the ramp finished lowering itself. "With your permission, I could re-calibrate our GARDIAN-system to target infantry-sized targets. They should proof to be an adequate anti-personal countermeasure."

She didn't need to hear that twice.

"Do it," she said before gesturing for her team to move down the ramp and into the scarcely lit interior of the station.

As soon as her first foot touched the ground, Shepard took note of the metallic sound her feet made while moving over the wet-sand-colored, jagged surface. She'd read about that in the field reports about the interior of Collector ships that both Kaiden and the Cerberus Strike Team agent had written.

The material looked organic, like it had just been randomly shaped through time and growth… but it was completely made of metal and there wasn't anything random about its form. Everything was designed and measured down to the centimeter, which explained why now that she was actually looking at it, her surroundings reminded her off a field covered in old tank-traps. Someone clearly wanted to prevent vehicles from boarding the massive station, probably to limit their firepower.

God dammit.

She'd kill to have a couple of Paladins now instead of the Mako. Sure, the thing could boost itself in the air a couple of meters… but if it landed poorly, it was still going to be stuck. A Paladin or two meanwhile could just waltz over to the way they needed to be going and annihilate everything that put itself in its path that didn't happen to be a tank or whatever passed as their analogue among the Collectors.

With that thought of the way, Sheaprd looked up at the massive wall in front fo her.

Additionally to being made of the same material as the cruisers, the base also appeared to follow the interior design philosophy of the Collector ships. It was constructed horizontally and not perpendicular and its artificial gravity was aligned in that manner too. So the base wasn't five kilometers tall and three wide, but rather five kilometers wide and three tall. Give or take at least.

After she'd made it several steps into the station without taking fire, the N7 opted to looked around even further. To her left she could see the debris field and the eerie orange glow of the space around it. Due to the aforementioned shift of gravity however, everything was turned on its side. Hence the Mass Relay and its glow looked disturbingly like a reversed, menacingly red cross instead of the comforting blue glow of a normal relay. To her right, gravity was back in order and the world hadn't fallen on its side just yet. The jagged exterior of the Collector Base was oriented as they were and everything 'made sense' from a strictly point-of-view perspective at least. The were of course still standing outside of an artificially created monstrosity mind you.

Speaking of.

Best she could tell, the Normandy had landed on a 'cliff' at the lower end of the station.

Whether this was intended as a landing platform or simply a product of the Collectors attempt to give the station a hive or rock like appearance was anyone's guess really.

As Shepard was making these observations, she realized something, while this wouldn't be the first time humans were fighting Collectors, it would be the first time for the Normandy's ground team to do so.

While they had been busy looking for a way to get past the Omega-Four Relay and had received every sliver of intel about them the HSA and its allies had managed to acquire, the actual fighting against the Collectors had always been done by someone else.

So while she had reviewed dozens of hours of combat and surveillance footage and read hundreds of pages of reports and could name every Collector and accompanying husk variant that had been observed in battle up to now (mostly during the New Canton engagement, which had been a literal treasure trove of solid battle-intel in regards to Collector tactics)… she hadn't fired a single shot at them up to now and neither had any of her crew.

"Damn. This place's massive," Garrus muttered while slowly moving his sniper rifle from the left to the right in an attempt to get a better look at the wall up ahead. "There's holes in the structure all over the place… perfect for would-be snipers," he concluded. "We shouldn't stay here too long if we fancy our heads."

"Matter of fact, staying here and making a plan's better than rushing over there and doing it when we get there. Right now we're still under the Normandy's kinetics. No sniper-rifle in the galaxy is gonna penetrate those, no matter how often they shoot it," Leng countered and when he did so, Shepard looked up to the faint blue shimmering of the dome that encased the stealth frigate. That was one of the benefits of landing with a large vessel. Additional protection.

"Garrus' still right though. We should use barriers for the crossing," Jack went on. "Keep our heads intact and what not."

"Good call, Samara, Jack, get ready," the N7 stated before making a hand gesture for the marines to follow them down the ramp. Just as planned they'd now go from defending the Normandy's immediate exterior to digging in around the ramp to avoid ground assaults from the 'blind spots' underneath the ship's hull while simultaneously readying the nuclear warheads for detonation. With the kinetic barrier of the craft still protecting them, this was a feasible tactic. "EDI, tell me you've got a way into the station."

"Affirmative, Commander. I have highlighted the heat stream coming from the base. By following it you should be able to penetrate the exterior," the AI replied. "Scans suggest that the path you're headed on trails alongside a thermal vent. While my signals are still being obstructed from within the base, an in-depth structural scan of this station suggests that the foot-trail will be blocked via a large blast door that we lack the ordinance to destroy," the AI paused. "The vent itself appears to circumvent this blast door. If used as a path of infiltration, it could provide access to the second layer of the station," EDI explained.

"However before you consider this strategy, you should be aware that preliminary analysis suggests that temperatures within the vent regularly rise to critical levels if not vented within regular, three minute intervals. The venting procedure itself can either be performed from a centralized controlling station or exterior maintenance panels."

As the entry to the vent was highlighted on her HUD, Shepard squinted. "What's that mean for us?"

"A member of the team will have to cross through the vent itself for the plan to be viable."

"That sounds dangerous."

"It is dangerous. Prolonged exposure to the rising heat will prove lethal. Haste is advised," EDI replied. "Commander, you before you decide you should also know that I cannot rule out a technical malfunction or other safety measures appearing once within the vent, I suggest that whoever you sent is capable of bypassing these counter-measures as they appear," so a tech specialist. Shepard looked at the group. Mordin or Tali were the people who came to mind when talking about tech specialists. But Thane also knew a thing or two about infiltrating things. Before she could say that out loud however, the bulky geth of her team stepped forward.

"Shepard-Commander, we volunteer to cross through the vent," Legion stated. "Our platform is more heat resistant than an organic one," as the Mako rolled down the ramp behind her, Shepard nodded.

"And you also happen to think much faster than anyone else here. Good call as well, Legion. That's how we'll do it," she said before gesturing at the payload strapped to the sides of the APC.

"Everyone grab one of the cannisters on your way out. We can't lift the warheads but we can bring the gas," well, Legion or any of the biotics could've but they needed their hands free. Besides, the Blank Slates were probably going to blow this base to dust even from out here. And they were a redundancy anyway, in case the gas couldn't be delivered. No point in slowing themselves down by dragging them around all the time. After giving the order, Shepard twisted open one of the missile pods and grabbed the cannister from within. She then strapped it to the metallic locks on the back of her armor.

"Bio-chemical weapons strapped to my back… you sure know how to make a field-trip appealing, Shepard," Garrus offered before handing one of the cannisters to Thane and then locking two in place on his own back. When she gave him a look, the turian shrugged. "Never hurts to have a spare," he reasoned all the while Shepard took note of the practiced manner with which Mordin opened up a completely foreign, human made missile before smoothly retracting the tight-locked payload from within. The sight was interesting, to be quite honest. Was it possible that he had been doing more for Cerberus than developing the counter-measure?

… what was it Joker had said?

The bad guys shouldn't have a monopoly on mad scientists?

If this was the consequence of that mindset, she'd wholeheartedly support it.

When everyone had loaded up on chemical warheads, Samara and Jack brought up domes of biotic energy for their teams and Shepard had them cross over to where EDI's map was marking their path. After following the AI's path down a jagged ramp and into a crammed, cave-like tunnel that appeared to be the only even-leveled opening attached to the cliff they'd landed on, Shepard was first and foremost glad to no longer have to worry about snipers.

"You can disband the barriers," she ordered just as they reached a half-way opened door placed next to a semi-transparent tube. While she'd love to keep up the protective doem, her biotics needed their energy, especially since they had no idea how long this mission was going to take. In response to her order the domes had dropped. Shepard looked at the vent.

True to the forceful organic appearance, the thing appeared to be closed through a membrane and not any other sort of traditional, mechanical lock. It seemed weirdly impractical, but who was she to judge.

After glancing at the map on her HUD and taking note of the eerie silence of the station as a whole as well as the fact that there was now an albeit nonbreathable atmosphere around them, she pointed at the tube.

"I think that's you, Legion. Everyone else, stack up on either side of the door. Legion, you give the go-ahead. As soon as you're inside, we flood the room," she went on before glancing at the silver pillars that stuck out from the now patchy organic-looking floor. They almost looked like the beacons on Eden Prime, only smaller and without the glowing energy field. As a whole Shepard was starting to get the impression that the deeper they got into the base, the less the Collectors appeared to have bothered with the whole 'hive' look.

"We are in position. Commencing advance. Exterior temperature nominal but rising," the geth stated. A second later, the two teams went through the half-opened door and found themselves inside of a perfectly hexagonal corridor that was closed off on the right side and opened to a much larger section of the station on its left.

By glancing through the opening, Shepard could see what she could only describe as a sea of orange lights.

They were clustered around thermite-mound like structures that hang from the ceiling and just after one look she was sure that these were the same abduction pods found onboard the Collector ships… only that there had to be millions of them.

If those things were filled, there were way too many people here for them to save, at least in one go. They'd either need to use the gas, kill all the Collectors and start a ferry system… or sacrifice a whole lot of people to bring down the station.

Shepard felt a chilly feeling in her spine when thinking about having to make that kind of call.

The rest of the corridor was a dark-grey to black metal construct with only small chunks of the fake-organic texture attached to its exterior.

Instead of looking like the inside of an insect hive, the most defining feature of the corridor were the protruding, obviously artificial rectangular metal pillars and the octagonal-shaped ceiling lamps that illuminated the inside. As a whole, the corridor looked unfinished, like something should've been built on top of those pillars but the Collectors never got to it and then just decided to leave it like that. Underneath the first lamp, a silver pillar with an orange hue to it appeared to be attached to the transparent tube and further down the corridor she could spot more of the same.

"I take it that's the release, EDI?" she asked, knowing the AI had access to her helmet's telemetry.

"Affirmative," the AI responded. A second later the other artificial being of the Normandy also spoke up.

"Shepard-Commander, the vent has just activated a counter-measure. Circumventing now. Temperature rising. We request an exterior vent release to ensure the continued operational integrity of our platform," what a fancy way of saying 'help I'm being cooked'.

"Tali, Mordin, get to it," she instructed before gesturing for the rest of her team to take up covering positions. Not a second after they'd done so, the first shots and call-out rang out.

"Contact front!" she heard her fellow N7 shout before following his bursts of LMG fire to a section of the hexagonal corridor's wall that now had openings from which brown-plated, humanoid insects with tapering, four-eyed heads were jumping out of.

Their eyes were a sickly yellow, almost similar to the glow of the weird weapons they were carrying and as it turned out when Shepard but the first burst through one's barriers and head, their blood was dark-orange and surprisingly chunky. They looked creepy… but they died like everything else when you shot it enough and that was very reassuring.

"Venting completed," she heard Mordin state over the squad intercom before a bright incendiary projectile shot over their heads in an arc and clung to a pair of unfortunate Collectors, cooking them inside their chitin armor.

If these things weren't husks jammed full with Reaper cybernetics, she might even feel bad for them.

But as things were she simply finished off the last stragglers alongside the rest of her ground team and waited for Legion to announce that he had advanced.

When he did, Shepard pulled both teams forward to the next obvious venting mechanism only to once again be informed by Legion that the thermal vent had deployed a counter-measure. Due to its semi-transparent nature, she could now see that this measure was simply a door that shut itself in front of the geth and his way of circumventing appeared to boil down to smashing it down via brute, mechanical force. As she watched the geth fold the metal in half, Shepard decided that a geth like Legion had definitely been the right guy(s?) for this assignment.

"Temperatures are once again rising, Shepard-Commander, requesting exterior release," the geth repeated. As she was about to give the order to Mordin and Tali, she could hear distinctive clicking coming from the open side of the corridor. A second after registering the sound, yellow-traced shots started to impact around them and the team had to dive for cover. Despite the quick reaction, Shepard's HUD still started to flash red due to her barriers having registered several hits. A second later and she might've taken a couple of those rounds to the armor.

The Collectors didn't look the part… but their aim was as accurate as that of a synthetic…

Not Good.

"Hostile flyers engaging from the left," she heard Callius report before several bursts of Phaeston fire and biotic thuds could be heard. Shepard herself rose from her cover as well and engaged the first Collector she could see. It had landed on the ceiling of the corridor and was clinging onto the wall with its second pair of arms and feet while shooting its weapon with its primary pair. As soon as it noticed that Shepard was shooting at it, it tried to shift its aim… but the N7 and her Valkyrie were faster and much like the rest of the swarm, it dropped to the ground.

Well… all except one of them.

While Tali and Mordin reported another vent and Legion announced its continued advance, one of the Collectors just seemed to shrug off the collective fire of the squad thanks to a dark-orange, biotic-like barrier.

Its brethren had fought hectically but accurate… but this one just appeared to be standing still, calmly waiting for the team to stop its attempt to try and kill it (which obviously wouldn't cease).

As Shepard was about to decide if she should order Mordin to give it a taste of explosives or let Jack and Samara show it what biotics could do, the Collector suddenly jerked into the air rather violently and rays of yellow light started to appear below its chitin-armor.

Its head tilted to the back of its neck and the eyes began to shift from yellow to orange and then, at the seeming apex of the glow that was coming from somewhere inside of its own body, it suddenly tensed up and stared straight at Shepard.

… she remembered this part from Arterius' helmet camera.

"Assuming direct control," a baritone voice not at all unlike the one Sovereign had used during their conversation on Virmire declared before the Collector dropped to the ground and flung its weapon her way with a burst of yellow biotics despite the rounds still hitting its barrier.

Shepard, more thanks to luck than anything else really, managed to duck just in time so instead of taking off her head, the rifle exploded against the metal wall behind it.

"Your interference with the cycle ends here," it declared before a large stream of purple energy exploded against the protective field in front of it. The Collector leaned into it, as if to support the shield with its own weight, and as it did, Shepard lowered her weapon.

"I'm afraid we are merely getting started," Samara, who in between the shooting and talking had left her cover and holstered her weapon, replied before making a forceful shoving gesture with her hand and looking at Thane. "Quickly! While it's distracted!"

The drell didn't do as much as nod before leaping to action. Instead, he simply turned into a purple blur and reappeared behind the stream of biotic energy.

Shepard didn't see what their household assassin had done… she only got a glimpse at the aftermath. After Samara's biotic onslaught ceased, a headless Collector corpse could be seen dropping to its knees in front of Thane. The drell himself was covered in a spurt of dark-orange blood that clashed with his trench code. He was standing behind the directly-controlled collector, a triangular-shaped head in one hand and a monomolecular blade in the other.

Before she could compliment the coordinated manner of the maneuver the two most different members of her squad had just pulled, Legion reported in. "Shepard-Commander, we apologize for the distraction, but we require assistance at the third venting terminal. The internal heat-build-up is accelerating and quickly reaching critical levels."

Shit.

"Mordin, Tali, go! Everyone else, cover!" she declared before leaping over her cover, stepping past a Collector corpse and dashing for the third of four pillars. The time intervals were getting shorter… did that mean…

"EDI, the heat's starting to build up quicker… is the base waking up?" she asked into her radio while taking positions next to Garrus and Leng.

"I am detecting increased activity from within the central energy signature," the AI responded. "Something within the base appears to be powering up."

She thought back to what Bau had told her about the Collectors' possible motivation.

"Can you clarify that a bit? What kind of signature are we talking about?"

"There appears to be a second, mobile mass effect field that's starting to manifest itself within the base."

Shepard, confident that her team could hold the overwatch for a second, dropped into cover. "Like that of a space-ship?"

"Yes."

She frowned behind her visor.

"It's not a Reaper, is it?"

"While the interior of the base itself is not large enough to house a Leviathan-Class Reaper like Sovereign, the signature I am detecting shares a similar frequency to those observed during the battle of the Citadel."

"Are you kidding me? There's a freaking Reaper in here?" Jack injected from her left.

"Venting process finished," Mordin also threw in.

"We don't know that yet," she replied to Jack, "Legion, are you good to move?" she added in response to Mordin's statement.

"Affirmative. Be advised, we can already see the entrance point on the other side of the door. It appears to be reinforced."

Shepard looked at the vent.

"Can you break through, or do you need us to open up the vent?"

There was a brief pause.

"This platform is equipped with the means to breach the entry-point."

"Good," Shepard nodded before looking at the sealed door in front of the last venting terminal and taking note of the lack of enemies. "Let's get in there."

"Shepard-Commander, the process of breaching the final obstacle will require some time," Legion spoke up again. "We have calculated the exact point at which you need to activate the exterior venting. It is imperative that you do not activate it prior to this point. Otherwise the temperature build-up will become too high again," the geth explained, once again making Shepard glad that she'd sent Legion in. Anyone else probably wouldn't have been able to do that or gotten cooked while attempting it.

"Understood. Mordin and Tali will trigger the vent when you give your go ahead, not a second earlier," she ordered to which the salarian nodded. "The rest of us are going to hold the perimeter," she added before checking her own heat-sink. While they'd brought plenty of spares, she'd rely on manual cooling for now instead of ejecting. As long as the circumstances allowed it, she'd do everything to preserve ammo-

Before getting a chance to finish he thought, Shepard was torn from it by the sound of metal hitting metal which was followed by an unnatural howl, one she remembered rather distinctively.

"Incoming husks!" she declared just before the first pale-blue humanoid head peaked up from beyond the drop of the open side of the corridor.

Using one of its claws, the monster tried to drag itself into the hexagonal corridor only to receive a headshot for its trouble courtesy of Lieutenant Callius. Sadly however, it was just one of many. Before the creature had slipped back into the abyss it had quite literally crawled up from, at least ten more pairs of clawed hands appeared from both the top and the bottom of the opening. While the ones coming from below tried to climb in, the ones coming from the top simply swung down and hit the ground running.

"Initiating breaching sequence, stand ready for venting procedure," Legion declared over the sound of the crew's combined gunfire. With both Tali and Mordin out of the count, they were was just seven of them to fend of an increasingly larger number of husks. While Thane, Jack and Samara managed to hold them at bay with biotics, Garrus, Callius, Leng and herself simply did what they were trained to: engage the husks with controlled bursts and drop them in as orderly as a fashion as possible.

"I'm dry. Switching to the rifle!" Leng declared first. Since he was using a gauss LMG, he actually still had to carry ammunition and supply the weapon with boxes of rounds. And since reloading it wasn't exactly an option in a CQB setting, the N7 simply witched to the Valkyrie on his back and kept shooting them all the while rhythmic displays of biotics held of the brunt of the attack. Even so, the tide was slowly turning on them and their techs seemed to realise it.

"Mordin, I can do this myself, go help them," she heard Tali suggest. As soon as she did, the STG veteran of their crew appeared next to Shepard, shooting a series of the Venom's sticky grenades at the entrance point of the husks with one hand and throwing an overload charge at another one climbing along the ceiling. Moments later, Legion spoke up.

"Requesting exterior venting," he said, suggesting that he was about halfway done. When he did, Shepard heard a hiss and then saw that Tali was joining the fight as well the second she could.

The quarian, while not biotic or a rifleman with the skills of Garrus or Leng, started off by deploying a combat-drone protocol and then unloaded several shotgun shots at the approaching husks.

While other foes, the kind interested in self-preservation, might've focused on the incendiary-slinging device now hovering at their flank, the husks simply kept charging at them and while their progress was slow and they were starting to climb over their own dead… the line of blue cybernetic fluid on the floor was quickly closing in on them.

As her own Valkyrie overheated, Shepard ejected one of the spent thermal clips and put another pair of shots into the chest of an approaching husk. After receiving the deadly hits, the corpse of the things stumbled for another couple steps and then hit its head squarely on the metal block behind which the N7 had taken cover.

That one had been a bit too close for comfort.

"You can open the door anytime now, Legion!" she said over the radio before watching as a significantly larger, significantly more deformed arm appeared from beyond the abyss and started to drag itself up.

She'd read about those too. The ground troops had dubbed them abominations because they were especially nasty and extremely hard to kill.

As soon as its bloated upper body, which consisted of several fused human bodies, and the gun that had replaced its right arm (which again seemed to consist of several fused human bodies) became visible, Shepard grabbed a grenade off of her chest-rig and flung it at the thing, hoping to maybe catch it off-balance and let the drop do the rest.

"Fire in the hole!" she called, all the while the creature was extending its arm at the vent where Legion was currently trying to break through.

The grenade flew through the air, past the charging husks, and exploded right as the abomination was trying to take aim. A cloud of smoke and shrapnel extended from the source of the explosion and a beam of red energy shot into the ceiling above, sending chunks of debris falling on the already dead husks. The explosion had thrown off its aim at the last possible second and for a moment, Shepard was hoping that she'd nibbed the problem in the bud with her quick thinking.

That wasn't the case.

When the smoke cleared, the abomination was still standing and already lining up another shot. And to make matters worse, behind it in the distance she could see a swarm of brown, humanoid insects heading their way… at least one of which was glowing with a yellow-orange hue.

"Infiltration completed, opening the door now," Legion stated to which Shepard grabbed another grenade with the intention of throwing it at the charging abomination.

Before she could do so however, she had to one-hand hip fire her rifle at a husk that had managed to cross the kill zone and had attempted to leap at her. The rounds struck the monster mid-air and Shepard had to jump to the side to avoid being hit by the forward momentum of its jump and its still extended claws.

The action saved her from a collision with the sharp weapons flying at her, yes, but it also left her without cover and the Collectors that were now landing at the gap sought to exploit that.

She could see a line of rounds skip from the ground, coming right her way… before stopping in front of her face, curtesy of a purple field of biotic energy projected by her XO.

"Cover fire!" she heard Callius order. One of the turian's hands was holding up the barrier that was protecting them, the other was wielding a Carnifex and delivering clean headshots at the charging husks. While the sight was something to behold, Shepard had no time to admire it. Instead, she jumped to her feet, tossed the frag grenade over the turian's head and dragged her XO into cover before the second grenade exploded in the abomination's face. It still didn't kill it, but at the very least it seemed to make it lose its balance. The monster dropped on its back and clearly struggled to get up for a moment, earning them some respite.

"Thanks for the save," she said quickly, to which Callius only nodded before both rose again to open fire.

"Opening mechanism circumvented. We suggest a tactical retreat," the geth on the other side of the door suddenly chipped in. Shepard's head spun left, to where the door was opened just a gap and Legion could be seen firing his strange geth rifle at the abomination. The pulse rifle flickered blue and all of the sudden, the monstrous fusion of several people that had just managed to get back on its feet now dropped like a wet sack, a chunk of its head missing.

Whether the grenades had exposed a vulnerable spot and Legion had simply finished what she started or if the geth had simply done a better job at aiming than her didn't matter to Shepard right now. All that counted was that the enemy's heavy was out of the fight for now. Judging by the ever growing number of husks climbing up the abyss, that wouldn't matter for much longer though.

"Get ready for a barrier retreat! Samara, you first!" she ordered just as another one of the glowing Collectors landed and a dome of purple energy wrapped around Bravo team.

"You die here, Shepard," the glowing Collector announced while landing. The fact that it knew her name unnerved her. So did the violent jerking up and down of its head and the yellow field of energy that engulfed and seemingly burned it. Personally, the N7 was getting the impression that this possession wasn't all that beneficial to whichever host it affected. Maybe they could exploit that later on, but right now they needed to move.

"Bravo move, Alpha cover!" she instructed, watching as the team around Callius, so Leng, Samara and Mordin started to move towards their fifth member, Legion.

All the while, Thane and Garrus kept pouring rounds at the possessed Collector and Tali appeared to sic its drone on it. All of those attacks appeared to only serve as distractions though and while it was good of them to try and suppress the most powerful foe on the battlefield, their attention being focused on it meant that only Jack and Shepard were gunning down husks or tossing them back via biotics. Just as it was starting to seem like they were being overwhelmed, Bravo reached Legion and started to relief the pressure off of them.

"Alpha go! Get through the door! Legion make sure that you're ready to seal it behind us! No one's getting through after us!" she ordered just as more flying Collectors were starting to appear on the Horizon and taking shots at them. In addition to the rifle-like yellow flashes that had been thrown their way the entire time already, they now also seemed to have brought the snipers Garrus had been worried about earlier. Just after Jack brought up her barrier and the team started to move, a powerful 'lance' of dark-yellow energy exploded in front of Shepard's face. It spread itself around the bubble of energy and cracked like lightning when it did so. There were two distinctive impacts that she registered.

She recognized that weapon from the reports too.

It was a hand-held, two-shot railgun carried by something the troops had taken to calling a Collector 'assassin'. It fired two barely delayed projectiles with one pull of the trigger, so in a way it was similar to the complicated maingun of the infamous IFS ship New Dawn. Or at the very least the principle was the same. The first shot disrupted the kinetic barriers, the second one hit the target. All armor-grades below a Paladin had proven pretty much useless at stopping it and since she wasn't wearing a mechanized exo-suit, she'd have been dead if not for the biotic field of Jack.

Those were two brushes with death in one minute.

Better not to try her luck on three.

"Move, move!" she commanded while grabbing Tali by the collar of her suit and moving her to the front of the formation. "Cover her, make sure she gets through the door," she told Garrus. In retrospective, it might've been better to not drag the quarian into this… but if she hadn't brought Tali alone, Mordin would've been left alone with the vents and couldn't have helped them out of the pinch back there. Furthermore, Tali seemed to be quite the fierce fighter, even if she lacked the situational awareness of the trained commandos she'd assembled around her. So maybe the decision hadn't been all that wrong. "Thane, we're covering the back," she added, dispatching husks and somewhat nervously looking at the glowing Collector that was slowly and calmly walking towards them.

"Understood," the drell stated before firing several precise submachinegun bursts at a pair of husks.

"Running from your destiny will only delay the inevitable," it announced before extending its hand towards them.

"We're at the door! Go through, go through!" she heard Garrus call from the front of the formation before a hand, probably Garrus', physically dragged her through a narrow, already closing gap.

As that was happening, Shepard popped off a final shot. Her round struck its target and in the same second the Collector dropped, so did the field of biotic energy that had protected them.

A blink of an eye later, just before the door shot in front of the barrel of her gun, their enemies took one final shot at her.

Shepard reflexively ducked as another one of the energy lances shot over her head, ensuring that she'd just gone three for three with the grim reaper in one battle.

Truth be told, she wasn't sure why her body had done that, maybe she'd seen something in her peripheral vision and flinched on poor reflex, maybe it had been divine intervention… or maybe it had just been her instincts telling her to do what she'd just done…

Whatever it was, she was damn glad that war's luck seemed to have been on her side just now.

Those railguns were going to be a problem, she could tell that much after two encounters.

Although the door had already closed and it felt like she'd just gotten a haircut from the energy weapon, she kept up her aim for another couple of seconds, halfway expecting the door to pull open again and for the onslaught to continue.

When it didn't after another moment, she lowered her aim ever so slightly but never dropped her guard. Her focus was solely on the direction their enemy had come from, which was probably why she only heard half of the sentence being muttered behind her.

"-it Man down! Man down!" she heard someone call behind her.

It was Leng's voice and just as she spun on her feet to check what was happening, her HUD synchronized up with the new data and started flashing a flat-line report… for 'LT. Nader'.

The blood froze in Shepard's veins and for a split second, she hoped that the hit had simply taken out the tech on Jack's suits. That could and had produced a false flat-line in the past.

As soon as she'd aligned herself with the rest of the group, reality crushed that hope though.

There, lying on the black, metallic ground, was Jack. The biotic lieutenant, who'd just covered them with her own biotics and as such probably hadn't brought up her barriers when the railgun shot hit her, wasn't moving and the reason why was immediately obvious.

There was a large, yellow scorch mark at the base of her spine and a pool of blood was quickly collecting below her neck.

Next to her, Leng and Callius were kneeling. While the former was just observing, seemingly in a trance, the latter was in full care-under-fire mode and about to bring up a syringe of medigel. As she flicked open the cap of the syringe with a practiced motion, the petty officer opposite to her stopped her by grabbing her hand and shook his head.

"What are-" Callius started.

"It's a through and through spinal shot," the N7 reported coldly before turning Jack on her back and revealing a much larger exit wound that had pretty much removed the front of her face. While the helmet was hiding the worst of it… the scorched, somewhat dark-red mess that was visible through the cracked black armor plating gave away the lethal extend of her injuries.

Shepard swallowed at the sight.

"You'll waste your medigel. She's already gone," Leng went on before suddenly snapping open the pouches on the biotic's chest armor and starting to retrieve ammunition and other mission relevant gear with a cold demeanor that made it seem like this was just an exercise where said behavior was expected from him and Jack hadn't just been killed in action right in front of them.

Shepard immediately suspected what was going through Kai's head right now and could sadly relate rather well.

With a lack of an opportunity to process what had just happened, Kai was falling back into his training like he'd done a dozen times over already. They were N7s. Veterans of the Blitz and the post-Blitz campaigns in the Verge. They were no strangers to violent death in firefights.

"Post security and check your ammo," she ordered, if only to give herself and Leng the moment she felt they needed. "Kai…" she started, knowing full and well that the two had been close. She'd have to be a blind idiot not to notice. "I'm sorry."

Leng paused his salvaging for a second and looked at her, or rather his onyx-black t-shaped visor stared back at her own onyx-black t-shaped visor. After a moment of pause, he handed Shepard two thermal clips and a grenade. Then he snapped of the id-tags attached to the collar of Jack's BAR hardsuit and pushed it into one of the pouches on his own chest-rig.

"Soldiers die in war. Mission comes first," he stated with an ice-cold voice and in that moment Shepard knew that she couldn't (and wouldn't) say anything to Leng in this regard. He was seeking refuge in a cold, mission-focused mindset and there was no way she'd drag him from there while they were fighting for their lives. If she did, he'd die next.

So instead of telling him to take his time and process the traumatic loss of life that had just occurred in front of him, Shepard put a hand on her comrade's shoulder.

"We'll finish it. For her," she promised.

"Course we will," the N7 nodded before turning Jack on her side and grabbing the gas cannister she'd been carrying. "Legion, can you hold on to this?" he said, holding the gas the way of the geth.

"Affirmative, Leng-Petty-Officer," was the only response the geth gave before grabbing the cylinder. Shepard meanwhile raised EDI.

"EDI, we've got a KIA… Jack's dead," she started to report, the words feeling foreign but also familiar. This wasn't her first casualty… that sad privilege went to Private Jarkow, the marine who's head had exploded in front of her during the battle of the Northern Territory back during the Blitz after she'd ordered him to evacuate a casualty (back then it had haunted her but now she understood that she'd had no control over it whatsoever). Hell, in between the Blitz and everything since, she was probably way past the fifty KIA mark at this point. Yet this part never got easier. "Mark my position. We'll try and retrieve her body later-"

"Understood, Commander," the AI responded coolly.

Leng pulled her hand down from her radio built into her helmet to get her attention.

"Her amp's definitely busted, but if we can't assure that the Collectors won't grab her while we're gone, we have to destroy the body. Corpses of human biotics can't fall into enemy hands. They've got OPSEC rules in that regard. Jack told me so herself," the N7 said before holding up an incendiary grenade. Shepard wasn't going to ask when they'd talked about that particular topic, but it reinforced her impression that they'd been close.

"Belay my last, EDI, asset denial protocols need to be applied here," she said, the phrasing rolling off her tongue like led. Asset denial was the correct military-term, yes, but it also made it sound like Jack had just been another weapon in an arsenal of countless of people like her.

"Affirmative Commander. Editing your last orders," EDI responded again.

Shepard made a gesture for Leng to hand her the grenade.

She wanted to take this task of the hands of her friend.

No one should have to burn the body of someone they'd been close with.

But instead of handing the grenade over, the N7 rose to his feet. "it's fine. I'll do it," he insisted before lifting the reloaded gauss LMG off the ground by its handle and placing it further away from the body. "We need to get a move on anyway. They're probably already forming up to block us off further down the way. No use in giving them anymore prep-time," he said before pulling the pin on the incendiary, clearly waiting for Shepard to walk away.

When she did, he planted it on Jack's chest and immediately followed his commander, never looking back at the burst of highly concentrated thermite that turned quickly Lieutenant Jennifer Nader in an unrecognizable, unsalvageable patch of asset-denied ash.

Unlike Leng, Shepard threw one look back at the scene before they climbed down a ramp and followed EDI's map to the energy signature.

When she did, the fire was just starting to swallow the armored arms of Jack's body and she thought back to her earlier speech, about how everyone that had died along the way was making sure they'd stop the Collectors.

They'd pay for this.

This ended today.

Even if it killed her.

---

Codex: 'Collector Racket'

The Collector Racket, named after the 'Collectors' (a space-faring species of four-eyed, insectoid aliens which supposedly inhabits the unexplored regions beyond the Omega-Four Relay but has never been proven to exist beyond a level of reasonable doubt) is a name used to describe a specific kind of racketeering crime practiced by selected, Terminus-based group.

Believed to have first been popularized by krogan mercenaries following the Krogan Rebellions, the racket-scheme is based on the concept of one (usually batarian – hence the four eyed description) group cleverly disguising themselves and their ships to pose as the Collectors.

After the deception is finished, the 'Collectors' pick a target of their choice, usually a wealthy outpost or small independent colony not affiliated or protected by a Council nation, and go about their abductions until their undisguised partners appear in the system – seemingly by coincidence.

Following their timely appearance, the non-disguised group fends of the disguised Collectors, usually in a dramatic but surprisingly casualty-devoid battle, and then goes on to offer its protective services to the afflicted colony.

The scheme is a well-known criminal practice in Council Space and carries a heavier-than-usual sentence due to being specifically listed as a '1st Degree case of Racketeering with high potential of uncontrolled, life-threatening dangers to an uncontrollable number of individuals'.

Over the centuries since the discovery of the Omega-Four Relay and the rumors following it, there have been several Council-sponsored information campaigns within the Terminus Systems to prevent the continued operation of such gangs.

Even so, it should be noted that despite most colonies being well aware of the fact that they are not actually being attacked by 'Collectors', the victims of the gangs applying this technique still lack the opportunity to refuse contribution.

Due to the abductions occurring prior to the reveal of the scheme and the mercenary outfits rarely asking for permission to occupy the planet, it is of little consequence for the colonies as to whether or not the Collectors actually exist.

Formal Addendum (added 31.12.2028 / 01/01/1779 CE) (Sponsored by Citadel Security Service Travel Advisory Agency):

While commonly accepted to be a part of Terminus (and particularly Omegan) folklore, the existence of the Collectors, (or 'Omega Entities' as they are referred to in Citadel-Space works) and hostile actions originating from these entities has never been formally disproven.

Although most mass-abductions attributed to the Collectors could later be traced back to mercenary outfits, several cases of Citadel-Council craft being abducted within the region have never been solved and remain classified as hostile, alien actions against the Citadel Council.

Similarly, reports of a nomadic, insectoid species which semi-regularly engages in trade with pirates and slavers (trading exotic technology for captives with rare genetic makeups or diseases) have also been collected over the years.

Consequently, the existence of a hostile Omega Entity cannot be ruled out beyond a level of reasonable doubt.

Hence the C-SEC TAA advises to avoid unprotected travel throughout the Terminus.

Formal Addendum (added 13.05.2417 AD / 14/05/2158CE) (Sponsored by Human Systems Alliance Ministry For Alien Relations):

Starting in February 2415 AD, a disproportionate number of human vessels have been abducted within the region referred to as Attican Traverse. Investigations of the situation pointed to an organized, previously unknown space-faring species being the culprits of these attacks

These actions were henceforth considered an act of aggression against human sovereignty and interests and treated as such.

Starting in February 2417 AD; the species behind these abductions began targeting human colonies and violated sovereign HSA-space.

To safeguard human interests and not disrupt public safety or endanger the success of their mission, selected parts of the military and the intelligence service began covert operations to counteract these continued attacks on the Has.

Following the Battle of New Canton (Citadel Codex Application Notice: Entry lacks a formal Codex section, click here to be redirected to the official HSA-MfAR extranet page to view detailed information on the subject) the species behind these links has, in the eyes of the Human Systems Alliance, been positively identified as the Omega Entities henceforth redesignated as Collectors.

With the parliamentary ruling of 11.05.2417 AD, the actions surrounding the Battle of New Canton and subsequent attacks on Vuori and other Fringe Colonies have retroactively been deemed an act of war against the Human Systems Alliance.

Measures to ensure the safety and prosperity of all mankind are being enacted.

Until the threat to human existence has been stopped, unprotected travel around the frontier of the Fringe World is no longer permitted.

For more information and ongoing updates on the war effort, please refer to the official extranet page of the HSA's Ministry for Defense.

To find out how you can help the effort, please refer to the enlistment link at the bottom of the page.

(End of sponsored messages)

---

A/N:

To be quite honest, I think I'll just let you sit on the end of this one.

It's a suicide mission.

People are going to die.

Suddenly too.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

For the record, we're at 923 reviews, 1513 favorites and 1584 followers.

I'll try and see if I can get part two of the suicide mission out quickly, but no promises.

See you around next time.