CW: Collectors doing Collector things. Roughing Joker up a bit more than in canon. Generally made the abduction sequence more intense.
"It's nothing, EDI. Just radiation bleed, white noise." Joker insisted even as he swiped through different readings, trying to hunt down what was happening and feeling worse about her observation every passing second. Something was wrong with his ship, and nobody could tell him what. All of the engineering crew were putting their eggheads together and monitoring the primary systems, waiting for something to break or give them a clue.
EDI was working full time as well, but all she had found was something that resembled standard radiation bleed. Resembled.
"I have detected a signal imbedded in the static." He freezes only for a moment, heart dropping to his stomach, before his hands are moving again to pull up her findings. "We are transmitting the Normandy's location."
"To who?" he forces himself to ask calmly, even though he wants to scream. His left hand twitches over the controls that will send everyone scrambling to their battle stations.
"I do not know." EDI tells him. "I am currently attempting a trace."
In the space between one blink and the next, there's a contact on LADAR with the Collector cruiser's profile. He hits the alert and starts to maneuver the Normandy to a more advantageous position for escape, and already has a plan to shove the Thanix down the Collector's throats if that doesn't seem feasible.
"Son of a tech witch." the obscure insult he'd heard from Crow a few times slips out of his mouth as the klaxons blare and the newly arrived cruiser passes over them. His mind flares with a thousand different combinations of maneuvers he could pull off, all the things he could do to run, hide, or fight, and just as quickly he chooses which ones will get them all out alive.
The Normandy dies beneath him. They're moving, but there's no propulsion, he can feel it. Alerts flood his screens. Errors, cripple systems. His girl was dead in the water.
"Propulsion systems are offline. Primary defense systems are offline. I am detecting a virus flooding the ship's computers." EDI announces, confirming what he's already deduced. The ship shakes, and the boarding alarms activate. "They have breached the starboard auxiliary cargo. We are being boarded."
There's... nothing he can do. They clipped my wings. What use was he without his ship? What could he do? He was a dab hand with an omni-tool, but a rifle would break his arm if he fired it. Maybe a pistol would be safe, but even that was a risk. Virus. He could work on the virus. Flush that nasty bug out and get his wings back.
"Let me guess, the damn IFF?" he clenched his fists and then shook his hands out before getting to work. "Why didn't you scrub that thing?"
"We can save the Normandy, Mr. Moreau, but I need your help." EDI told him instead of answering.
"Already working on it, in case you didn't notice." he said as he tried to cure his ship. "I could use a little help myself, you know."
"Give me the ship." She says, and he almost stops.
"What?" he shouts, a chill slipping down his spine. He and the ship cancer were getting along better these days, but he's not sure he would unshackle her. "You're crazy! You start singing 'daisy bell' and I'm done!"
"Your countermeasures are insufficient against a cyber-attack of this complexity, as are the ones I am currently capable of." She pointed out. "Unlock my sealed databases, and I will be able apply the appropriate force. The Maintenace shaft in the science lab would be the safest path to follow to the AI Core; corridors and elevators are no longer safe."
"How am I your first choice?" There were plenty of engineers and eggheads on board, even with eggiest of them on Shepard and Legion's life-changing field trip.
"Other qualified individuals have already been subdued." his blood turns to ice. "Even if they had not, you are a the most likely to succeed."
His hands hover over the screen as he hesitates. If he did this, it could be the worst- no, second worst, the worst was trying to save to the first Normandy- decision he had ever made. If he didn't, the Collectors would round them all up and take the only ship that could make it through their relay.
And I'm dead either way. He couldn't imagine them being very gentle with him when they tried to load him into one of those pods, they would probably kill him trying. And if EDI turned out to have been biding her time to kill them all anyway...
"Sure, fine, what's the worst that can happen." he got out of his chair, legs shaking as loud banging echoed from the front of the CIC. He started to make his way down the helm, priming a delivery of incendiary plasma on his omni-tool. Never knew when he might have to set something on fire.
"Shit, shit, shit." he hissed under his breath as he made his way down the stairs. Several of the other crewman were gathered near the elevator, ready to greet whatever was banging around with a firing line. Hadley had even broken out a rocket launcher that Shepard must have left behind. She going to be so mad that someone used that in her CIC. Hopefully it was just some smaller units, and no missiles would be necessary-
Bladed legs finally slipped through the seams of the elevator door and ripped it open to reveal their owner. A hard, insectoid carapace cradles the husked remains of what might have been dozens of humans, and four bright, glowing eyes take in the meager crew that have assembled to fight it. The praetorian screams, and for a moment Joker freezes, caught in the moment where his brain visually recognized something that was about to kill him. Goldstein exclaims something that he can't hear over the screaming, and he tries to shake himself out of it. The others shoot. The praetorian forces its way out of the elevator anyway. Hadley fires the rocket, and the amalgamations stumbles.
Then it lunges, faster than its heavy frame should have allowed. Joker barely makes it through the door as it spears Hadley on one of its legs, blood spraying out onto the deck as the man choked. He tries to block out the sounds of desperate gunfire and screaming. A passing thought crosses his mind; why weren't they using Seeker swarms? He dismisses it just as quickly, it didn't matter. They were on board now, it didn't matter how they rounded everyone up.
He should have been good enough to prevent it from happening in the first place.
"Shit." he says again, heart in his throat, as he stumbles into the lab. The maintenance shaft is fairly obvious. What if something followed him in? A husk or regular Collector could drag him out, right? An oblong device left on one of the tables catches his eye; one of Crow's smoke bombs. He snatches it up without thinking. The unnatural rattle of bladed legs pulling a heavy body through the corridor distracts him as he approaches the shaft. He sends the incendiary plasma speeding behind him and is rewarded with a pained screech.
He doesn't look back. There's a praetorian hovering inside the drive core, watching him through the window. They could fire lasers, right? He ducks and launches himself down the shaft as fast as he could, bones protesting, and locks the hatch above him tightly, hoping it would take a while before that thing could bring in its smaller friends to hunt him down.
Like ferrets in a rabbit warren. Gunny said they were having problems with rabbits back home. She was trying to convince their father to train a hunting ferret, but mom didn't like killing things. When had that conversation happened, again? Was it the last time they spoke? When was the last time he spoke to Gunny?
Did he tell her he loved her? He should have called while they were on the Citadel. Instead, he'd gone out for a burger.
His foot slips and he bit back a scream. He only slipped. Nothing was in here with him.
If felt like an eternity before he made it to life support.
"Warning: multiple hostiles detected on the crew deck." EDI supplied 'helpfully' as he made his way to an understandably tense Hawthorne standing near the door, knuckles white as he gripped his rifle.
"Betcha wish you were flying that shuttle now?" he quips, earning only a slight twitch of the shuttle pilot's mouth in return.
"EDI filled me in." he said, as Joker primed another incendiary blast just in case. "This deck is crawling with those things, I'm lucky they haven't checked in here yet. Stay close, I'll protect you."
With that, they made their way out. Joker let his hand hover over the smoke bomb he'd clipped to his belt. If worse came to worst-
Hawthorne screamed as he was thrown into the air by a biotic blast, and Joker was left staring at an elevator full of Collectors as Chambers was dragged inside by a scion, screeching and kicking desperately. Their eyes land on him. Their rifles raise, and one of them steps forward. Please be invisibility, please be invisibility! He activates the smoke bomb. If it was one of the disorienting ones he was dead.
It's like cool water washing over every inch of him, lingering instead of running off as gravity took hold. It wasn't a bad sort of cold; more like the kind that he sought out whenever he flipped a pillow over in bed. The kind of cold that was welcoming.
The Collector stops. Joker looks down at his hand and can't see anything. Yes!
But he knows it won't last long. Heart pounding, feeling like he's about to explode, Joker limps forward with as much speed as he can muster. He doesn't even check if Hawthorne is alive; he can't afford to stop. Chambers is crying for help, desperate screams ringing through the deck, but he doesn't look back. Crow said that looking back while invisible was dangerous.
He knows that certain actions will force him to become visible again. Jury was still out on whether opening the door would do it, but he bites back a stream of curses knowing that talking would definitely give him away to the confused aliens.
It hits right before he reaches the door; a feeling like all that cool water from earlier finally gave way to gravity all at once. He hears the shuffle of heavy feet far too close, a deep and guttural moan from across the mess, and he all but launches himself through the door. The muffled banging of a biotic shockwave as gravity compresses the air during its travel follows him, and there's a screeching of broken metal that can only be the door protesting as it takes the brunt of the attack.
"Main fusion plant offline." EDI declares, as if he didn't have enough problems. "Activating emergency H-fuel cells."
More banging. The glass explodes into the med bay, and he nearly falls over, managing to catch himself on one of the beds.
"What the shit." He breaths, stumbling as he tried not to fall on shattered glass and break something in the process. Body stinging with new cuts and throbbing with microfractures, he finally makes it to the AI Core. He locks the door with a nasty virus of his own making and knows it will only buy him a little time. They had proven they could force their way in easily enough.
"Alright, I'm at... well, you." he told his ship's AI, even though such an announcement was redundant. EDI's avatar popped up in front of him.
"Connect the core to the Normandy's primary control module." she instructed. He brought up the interface and started blowing through all the protocols that kept idiots like him from giving EDI access to the primary control module.
"Great. See, this is where it starts, and when we're all organic batteries guess who they'll blame?" Joker muttered, unable to stand the sound of nothing but Collectors outside and the intrusive thoughts of 'I'm about to die'. "'This is all Joker's fault. What a tool he was. I have to spend all day computing pi because he plugged in the Overlord.'"
He did it. Something was scraping at the door. Something was rattling the maintenance hatch. Rabbit, meet ferret. His heart rate skyrockets as the lights flare and then go out, and for a moment the only sounds are those terrifying ones, joined only by the mortal metronome of his quickening breaths. He activated his omni-tool, trying to stop his hand from shaking, and pointed it at the hatch.
The lights come back on.
"Ah. Thank you, Mr. Moreau." EDI says. "On my mark, I will open the maintenance shaft. Please attempt to be precise."
"Nah, how about I miss and trash the place?" he shoots back. "Just do it."
"Mark." it opens. The stench of rotting flesh and the hideous moans of a husk only invade the room for a moment before they're replaced by the smell of burnt meat and the screeches of an enemy falling down a maintenance shaft. Joker has never wanted to vomit so badly in his life.
"I now have access to defensive systems." the AI informs him. "Now you must reactivate the primary drive in engineering."
"You want me to go crawling through ducts again? What about transmat?" he scoffs shakily. Her avatar pops up beside him.
"I enjoy the sight of humans on their knees." We're screwed! For a moment all he can do is stare in shock at her. "That is a joke. The transmat system is offline; I must recalibrate it in order to avoid scattering you, and the Collectors will likely breach this room before I am able to finish."
"Right." he says, unsure how much he believed it in these current circumstances. Collectors first, possible machine uprising later!
He locks the hatch behind him just as he had the first one, though he's wary of another husk being sent in. Just a little further. He tries to assure himself as he makes his way shakily to engineering. Just a little further, we transmat everyone back on board, and have EDI make an emergency jump. That should work, he could manage that. Hopefully the only enemy he had left was some stairs.
He nearly trips over the smoldering corpse of the husk he had killed. Wouldn't it be great, if he survived all that just to trip on the remnants of his own little victory and break his neck?
"Hostiles are present in engineering." EDI warned. Was it just him, or did she sound more... alert? Tense? Could an AI feel stress? Who knows what I just did to her. For all Joker knew, he just unlocked the secrets of the universe. "They are heading towards auxiliary cargo."
He shuffles carefully towards the stairs. Listening carefully and not hearing anything, he starts to climb up, only for the now terribly familiar sound of heavy shuffling and moaning to stop him. They were on the catwalk above him. Joker couldn't help but hold his breath. Now that he listened closer, there was a sort of sloshing sound as the scion moved as well, like all the puss and hanging flesh was moving independently of the monster. The insectoid chirping of the Collectors that followed was actually more welcome, in comparison.
All the same, the shadows casting a macabre puppet show on the wall would be no less menacing without the sounds to accompany them. It was hard not to feel like he was is a horror vid. I shouldn't have watched Talons last night.
Once the shadows are done marching by, he starts up the stairs again, as fast as he can manage.
"Engineering is clear of hostiles. Proceed immediately to minimize chances of detection." the AI tells him.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious." he hissed through grit teeth. "Is the transmat system up yet?"
"No. I require a minimum of thirty more seconds." he nearly trips again on the last stair; he really wasn't meant for this kind of activity. He used to wonder what it was like for Shepard and the others, to be in the thick of the action. To do things he couldn't.
Now he wishes he never wondered that at all, as he makes his way through engineering. His legs shook, and his hand trembled worse than before as he reached out to Tali's work station console. He notes a smear of blood along the wall as he walks past it, clearly make by a desperate hand groping for anything to stop the owner form being taken. His body aches like it never had before, cuts from the flying glass stinging and throbbing in symphony with all the breaks he's probably given himself from pushing his limits.
Joker used to wonder what it would be like to be one of the badass door kickers, saving the day.
"Activate the drive, and I will open the airlocks as we accelerate." EDI instructed. "All hostiles will be killed."
"What about the crew?" He pauses, flicking his hat up and wiping sweat from his brow, only for his face to sting and the back of his hand to come away red. Figures.
"I have attempted to activate transmat. It seems the collectors disarmed them of their omni-tools. I have retrieved them to prevent the Collectors from finding our transmat tech " she said, voice almost gentle as he authorizes access to the main console. His hand drips blood onto the console. "They are gone, Jeff. The Collectors took them all."
"Shit." Another sound plan blown out the airlock. He makes his way to the primary console and reactivates the drive core. The Tantalus lights up like a Christmas tree.
"I am sealing the engine room." Joker steps back and lowers himself into a nearby crash seat just in case. Past the barrier that has come up between him and the rest of engineering, a Collector screeches, and for a moment, his heart leaps into his throat.
"I have control." Then, as he looks it in all four of its glowing eyes, a new emotion takes over.
He's pissed. They clipped his wings, took his crew, and made him crawl through maintenance shafts while riddled with microfractures and lacerations. He's pretty sure there's glass sticking out of his arm. His friends are in Collector pods, Hadley was dead for sure, his ship was trashed and there was blood everywhere as testimony to what happened.
So as the tantalus grows brighter, he does the only thing he can really do at this point: he flips the Collector off.
The ship jerks violently, and for a moment he really thinks EDI is trying to kill him. He wouldn't be caught dead making an FTL jump that rough. He undoes the safety harness gingerly, areas where he had jerked against it throbbing painfully. Breathing hurts, but not enough that he's worried about a collapsed lung. The wise thing to do would be to stay put.
"Purge is complete. No other life forms detected on board. Sealing airlocks and cargo bay doors." his hands are still shaking, though at this point he's not sure it's from the adrenaline or the residual rage he had felt. A thought occurs to him; an inane one, really, considering the situation.
"Wait, no other life forms- did you kill Fred?" because why not end the day by killing Shepard's hamster while they're at it?
"No other sentient life forms detected on board." EDI corrected. He leaned back into the seat.
"Call Shepard's shuttle." he ordered, closing his eyes. He could feel blood running down his face, with his arm being a similar story. Spots on his uniform that were warm and wet. Nobody ever mentioned how irritating the feeling of blood was; human flesh was sensitive to the tiniest displacement of a hair in relation to all the others. Certainly, he was in pain, but it also itched in a way he wasn't anticipating. "Tell her what happened."
"Message away." she confirmed near instantly; she could probably type something like that up in less than a millisecond. "Are you feeling well, Jeff?"
"No." he snorts, staring at his bloodied hand. Yeah, it was probably best if he stayed put until the other got back, let Crow work that flaming healing magic of his. He always kept some medigel in his pocket, should be enough for the worst cuts if he used it sparingly. "But thanks for asking."
He stares at his hand for a long time before he actually uses the medigel.
So you know how they say the crew is ALL fine after the suicide mission? Are we just going to forget that the elevator praetorian freaking stabs Hadley? At least, I think it's Hadley that gets iced.
Also Guys, Lethan Abundance is cracked and I'm in love with the new Iron Banana mode. It's like gambit and supremacy had a really violent baby and I love it.
BiazarKaiser: Shepard said no, and she already has to worry about the Cain.
Guest: Not necessarily, she just wants people to avoid the vortex grenade if they see it. Everything else is fair game. Sol Light would preform pretty much the same as fire would in zero gravity, I thing, it's really interesting. Electricity has no mass, and even though arc light it technically fusion, I'm treating it like electricity because I don't want to mess with fusion energy+mass manipulation= รท0.
JGThorncross: Joker spends the whole sequence voicing our own inner thoughts during that first run, lol.
Odstrules: I have no idea. I've checked myself and can't find any issues. If anyone else reading thisgetx errors with chapter 32, let me know.
djmegamouth: Legion's is right now. Grunt's was done before Crow joined.
I hope everyone enjoyed the To Trails End renovation. That being said, I woke up this morning and remembered a plot hole I forgot to plug, so I'll probably go fix that real quick. I also noticed the word count was low and discovered that part of chapter four was missing. Like, one of the middle parts, how does that even happen? Anyway, like I s aid last chapter, the early chapters of this fic will eventually get the same treatment, if only to keep the new continuity intact.
Fare Thee Well!