Were it So Easy

by Sigma0327

Six's life was a giant war. Every battle was a test of sheer tenacity and stubbornness against insurmountable odds. Every moment, every bullet fired, every Covenant, Insurrectionist, and Flood spore killed has led up to his last fight. Once again he was one of the few that stood between Earth and her enemies. This would be his final battle, and nothing could change that, right?

9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the Halo and Mass Effect universe.

Rated M

Chapter 9 - Boarding Party

•••

Commander Shepard watched in silence as the last of the Collector dropships hastily withdrew from the surface of the ruined Human colony. By all rights they had won. They had successfully driven out the Collectors. They had survived.

But it certainly didn't feel like a victory. This city alone was home to tens of thousands of people, and they had yet to find a single civilian that had survived the Collectors' wrath. The hundreds of Alliance marines had been cut down to a paltry few, most of them shaken by the horror they had been subject to. In Shepard's mind, they didn't win, they simply survived. With the Collectors making it abundantly clear that they'll go through great lengths to wipe out the Normandy crew and with the much more powerful Reapers on the horizon, Shepard has begun to question how prepared they truly are.

"Think there's still Collectors down here?" Shepard turned to the source of the voice on his right. Before the attack, Phoenix had a burning hatred for the former Alliance commander, and frankly Shepard didn't blame her. Now, it seemed that her hatred of Shepard had been reduced to just a strong dislike. The fact that Shepard and his team had helped keep her and her troops alive helped immensely in that matter.

"The Collectors have always been adamant about staying out of the galactic spotlight." Shepard responded bitterly as he watched the surviving Alliance marines and his team search the remains of their most recent combat zone for survivors both friend and foe.

"Still, the Collectors don't seem to care much for each other, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were left behind." Shepard sighed and then closed his eyes. He tried his best to ignore the feelings welling up in him, the feelings of sadness and despair. They had been lucky, so lucky that no one on Shepard's team had been killed in the chaos. Most of the crew had some form of injury but none life threatening.

They had been lucky. But now Shepard felt lost, what were they going to do? Of course, first thing is to get back to the Normandy and then recover, but what then? Where would they go? What was the plan? With the Collectors breathing down their necks, it was hard to imagine that they'd be able to do anything without the potential to be immediately blown to smithereens by a Collector ship waiting in ambush or who knew what else.

Shepard took a deep breath.

We'll figure something out, we always have and always will.

Phoenix nodded, seemingly unaware of Shepard's demeanor, before she keyed her comms. "Keep an eye out for any surviving Collectors, no telling how many they left behind."

The Alliance Lieutenant turned to Shepard again. "What will you do now? If what Six says is true, then it seems like you're on the Collectors' shit list."

That revelation really threw a monkey wrench in Shepard's plans. He knew that the Collectors would eventually notice them, but he didn't think it would happen so quickly, and he certainly wasn't expecting them to go through such lengths to take out the Normandy crew.

"I'm not sure yet." He admitted. "We may have to lay low for a bit and be more cautious whenever we take the fight to the Collectors."

He wasn't sure if what Six said to him was true. But something told him that he should trust him. Whoever this enigma is, it seems like he knew what he was talking about. Shepard found that suspicious. It seems like he spoke from experience.

"I can't believe that bastard threw his life away like that." Phoenix muttered dejectedly. "Idiot." She whispered. Shepard frowned, he completely understood how Phoenix was feeling. Even though Six was the reason why the Normandy crew was thrown into this situation, even though he hurt his friends, it was clear that the Spartan did not truly harbor any ill will towards him and his friends. He saved the lives of his friends by throwing himself up against the entire Collector invasion force without any hesitation.

He didn't like to admit it, but that giant soldier was more effective than the combined efforts of his team and the surviving marines. He shook his head as he recalled the battle. The Spartan's strength was a sight to behold, the way he effortlessly tore off limbs and crushed exoskeletons was a testament to that. But it was the speed that was truly unbelievable. The way he blurred out of existence, moving so quickly that no eyes could track him was simply incredible. It would have made things so much easier if Six was with them right from the beginning of the invasion.

"I wouldn't be so sure." Shepard said.

Phoenix gave him a strange look. "Shepard, I will defend the fact that Six was the best soldier I have ever or will ever see. But not even he can survive being onboard that massive ship, alone, and with thousands of Collectors breathing down his neck."

Despite the situation and everything that has happened, Shepard smiled as he gazed up towards the sky, now turned a beautiful orange color as the sun began to set. The Collector ship was now gone, having withdrawn from the planet's orbit carrying with it the remaining Collectors and their doom which existed in the shape of a man.

"Call it a gut feeling, but I suspect we'll cross paths again. All I ask is to stay hopeful."

Phoenix scoffed and rolled her eyes. "You're way too optimistic, Shepard."

"I'd like to think I'm more of a realist."

"You're delusional, does that come standard with all the dirty Cerberus pukes?"

Shepard rolled his eyes, choosing to stay silent instead of engaging in a pointless argument. The past few events have marginally improved his stance with Phoenix, he didn't want to ruin that progress.

"I'm not interrupting anything am I?"

"No not at all Garrus, find anything?" Shepard inquired.

"Yeah, survivors." Shepard felt his heart skip a beat in hopeful excitement at the mention of possible survivors. Garrus gestured for Shepard and Phoenix to follow him. They stepped over the remains of the recent engagement, taking care not to step in the gore from the Collectors towards the large apartment complex that Tali, Jacob, and Kasumi had been holed up in not too long ago.

"So who are these survivors?" Shepard asked.

"Alliance marines." Garrus said. "But they look very young, probably recruits that just made it out of bootcamp." They walked by Jacob and Grunt as Shepard listened to Garrus talk. The former was crouched on a knee, examining a Collector rifle discarded during the fighting. Good, Shepard thought, if they could get their hands on the Collectors' technology, then it might help even the odds if Mordin could figure out a weakness or even a way to reverse engineer that hardware.

Grunt on the other hand was busy inspecting the corpse that had dropped the weapon, he picked up a severed arm, curiosity evident in his reptilian eyes.

Damnit, not now.

The krogan brought the limb closer to his snout and sniffed it like a dog. His eyes widened in alarm and he reflexively threw the appendage to the ground. "These Collectors smell terrible." He declared, disgusted with this new revelation. "I don't even wanna know what they taste like!" Shepard rolled his eyes and Phoenix made a noise of disgust. Shepard and Jacob exchanged nods but otherwise remained silent as the trio continued towards the building.

"We did have several trainees just about finished basic." Phoenix confirmed, quickly forgetting about Grunt's antics. "If I were in their shoes, I'd be doing my damn best to stay hidden too."

"Yeah, I would too." Garrus admitted. "What a messed situation to be thrown into as a kid."

Shepard frowned, feeling sympathy for those kids. It was never easy being a member of the military as a young and inexperienced recruit. Their very first real engagement pitted them up against the Collectors in a planetary invasion where no mercy was given to the residents. The Commander can't imagine how they must be feeling right now.

They entered the main lobby and the first people that Shepard noticed was the trio of teenagers standing in the middle, two boys and a girl. They looked like they were only eighteen years old, too young to be fending off a Collector invasion. The armor that they wore sported some battle damage, but none of them seemed to be injured. Flanking them were two of Phoenix's marines on the left and Zaeed on the right.

Shepard looked into each of their eyes and could see the despair in them. Despite their military equipment and training, they looked so helpless, like calves exposed before a pack of wolves. It was clear from the wide eyes, heavy breathing, and twitchy movements that they had been through a lot.

They looked at Shepard expectedly, waiting for him to say something.

"Glad to see some more survivors made it out." Said Shepard. "Are you guys alright? Any injuries?"

One of the boys stepped forward. "Y-yes sir." He stuttered. "We're good, no one's injured."

Shepard nodded. He took off his helmet and smiled, making sure it reached his eyes. "I'm glad to hear that. If you don't mind me asking; what happened? How did you find your way here?"

The boy frowned. "W-well, when the alarm sounded we followed everyone else to the armory, got our weapons and left the base with some marines to round up civilians. It seemed like an easy job." The boy paused and Shepard waited patiently for the boy to collect himself.

"But then they came for us…" The teenager whispered. "Dozens of them. We did what we can, tried our best to fight them off. But it seemed like no matter how many we killed they just kept coming." He looked up into Shepard's eyes, and the Commander saw the trauma in those wet eyes. He was just a boy, a boy thrown into a losing battle against thousands of genocidal aliens. Shepard wondered how many friends this boy lost today, how many lives were snuffed out in front of his eyes.

"Most of us were killed. The rest went into… hiding." He stumbled over the last word as if it were a curse, hoping to avoid being judged for what he thought was a cowardly act. But Shepard knew better. He would never expect inexperienced recruits to stand firm and unflinching in front of a menace like the Collectors.

"We were holed up in a corner store, almost out of ammo. The Collectors would have killed us if they didn't decide to retreat… we got lucky." Luck. Luck of the battlefield, that was why they survived. That was the simple reality of the situation. Oftentimes, it isn't skill or experience that determines survival, sometimes it's just luck. Shepard is intimately familiar with that. The difference between being grazed by a bullet or getting hit in a vital organ, how close in proximity you are to an explosion, or who in your team an enemy sniper chooses to shoot first.

It was why Kaiden stayed with the bomb… that felt like a lifetime ago and the phantom pain still exists within Shepard's mind.

"What are your names?" Shepard asked.

The rookie that spoke to Shepard looked momentarily surprised. "I'm Jericho, sir." He answered.

Shepard turned towards the female. "Maya, Sir." She answered shyly.

The third recruit answered a moment later. "My name's Eric, Sir."

Shepard nodded. "You guys have been through a lot." He said bluntly. "Much more than anyone with your experience and youth has the right to go through. No one can expect a couple of rookies to hold back a planetary invasion like this."

"With all due respect sir." Jericho began, now more angry than scared. "We ran from the fight and let innocent civilians die. We could have done so much more."

Inwardly, Shepard couldn't help but smile. Jericho reminded Shepard of himself when he was young; a hot-headed perfectionist.

"That's what you think, but you need to look at the bigger picture. You can't be everywhere at once, you can't face down an invasion force by yourselves, and there's only so many civilians you could realistically save." Jericho hung his head dejectedly.

"A military campaign like this has many moving parts, and no single squad can handle everything on its own."

"Sir, that's easy for you to say." The other recruit, Eric, said. "You're Commander Shepard. You're literally a legend."

Shepard smiled. If only they knew.

"I had a lot of help. I can't do everything alone, and there's only so much my team can do. The point that I'm trying to make is that you shouldn't put too much shit on yourselves. Your very first engagement put you up against the Collectors and you survived. In my opinion, that makes you more of a soldier than most."

"I don't know…" Jericho muttered, conflicted. "You could be right, but it doesn't feel like it… all those dead people."

Phoenix suddenly appeared next to Shepard and replied. "That is the cost of war. Oftentimes no matter what you do, innocent people die." She locked eyes with Shepard, and he could see that pain in her eyes as she spoke; she spoke from experience. "You blame yourself and that's normal. We all do it. But don't make the mistake of dwelling on those feelings, otherwise you lose control of yourselves."

Jericho nodded in understanding. "It's not easy to do that."

Phoenix smiled. "No, no it's not. It takes a lot of effort, and it takes knowing yourself. At the end of the day it's a skill that needs to be learned. It will come with experience."

"I understand… thank you." Phoenix nodded.

"So." The other recruit, Eric, spoke up. "Did we win?"

Shepard nodded. "The Collectors are pulling out. So we can ease up a bit." The teenagers sighed in relief.

"Are we at war?" Maya asked.

Phoenix sighed. "Officially, no. The Alliance doesn't believe the Collectors are causing these issues, not yet anyways."

"We've got the evidence now." Zaeed said, throwing in his two cents. "Past few times those fuckin' bugs left no survivors or evidence behind. But this time they fucked up. Now we gotta somehow tell the Alliance."

Shepard wished it was that easy. But as with everything else, nothing is.

"That's the tricky part." Shepard responded, rubbing his temples in frustration as he spoke. "Dealing with the politicians and their bureaucratic bullshit will be difficult."

"They won't listen to you." Phoenix said. "I can give it a shot but… no promises."

Shepard nodded in appreciation.

"Why wouldn't they listen to you?" Jericho inquired innocently.

Shepard frowned, thinking it would be best not to tell them that he got involved with a human supremacist terrorist organization.

"It's… complicated." Shepard said, choosing not to elaborate further.

"Huh, fair enough." Jericho shrugged, knowing better than to pry. Shepard was grateful, because he had no idea how to justify his choice to work under the Illusive Man without making himself come off as a complete nutcase.

"Joker to Shepard, you there?" The sound of Joker's voice both surprised and relieved Shepard.

"Go on Joker." He responded.

"Fuck me…" The pilot sighed, relieved. "Good to hear you, you crazy bastard. Looks like the Collector ship is leaving the system, buggering off to who knows where. Shepard… do you know anyone called Six?"

Shepard smiled, the enigmatic soldier did mention he would try to get in contact with the Normandy. "Yep, don't worry, we spoke briefly. He told us he'd contact you once he got off world."

"How did he manage that? Nevermind, I'll ask once we get your asses off world. Dropship's on its way now. Best make like a quarian at an asari orgy and get the fuck out."

Shepard chuckled to himself, glad that the Normandy was in one piece and in system. He knew that Joker wouldn't be far behind them. The Normandy has the best stealth systems in the galaxy as far as Shepard was aware so the chances of the Alliance finding out that they were being tailed was very slim.

"Time to go?"

Shepard glanced at Garrus. "Time to go." He responded. Garrus nodded and left to gather the rest of the team. Shepard gestured for Phoenix to follow him, not wanting the recruits to hear what he needed to say and then get suspicious.

"Where are you going?" Jericho asked.

"Collector problem won't fix itself." Shepard sighed. "We gotta find these bastards before they cause more damage."

Jericho raised his eyebrows, then smiled. "You're just like how they said you'd be. Goodluck sir."

Shepard chuckled, he waved farewell, and then followed Phoenix outside the building.

"I'm sorry." Shepard said, his voice softening considerably.

"What for?"

"I didn't want to join Cerberus." Shepard said. "But it's not like I had much of a choice."

Phoenix opened her mouth to speak, but Shepard held up a hand, already knowing what she was going to say. "I know you're going to make the argument that I always had a choice but it certainly didn't feel like it." He stopped walking, and Phoenix stood by his side, listening intently.

Shepard sighed. "You've now seen for yourself what the Collectors are capable of." He gestured to the devastation around them. Rubble lay strewn all over the streets, buildings were reduced to piles of rubble, and the dead were left in cruel twisted mockeries of their original forms.

"This," Shepard said, as he gestured again around them. "This is what war looks like. We are at war, Phoenix. A war of genocide." Phoenix clenched her jaw at those words.

"Yet the galaxy still has yet to acknowledge this fact. We've seen what batarian pirates do to human colonies and they sure as shit can't pull off the type of devastation we've seen from the Collectors in such a short time."

"My duty… our duty, is to protect the innocent lives of this galaxy, and sometimes that involves doing questionable things… things we are not proud of. It's a fucked up galaxy we live in where Cerberus are the only ones taking the Collector threat seriously and giving me some sort of support."

Phoenix sighed. She turned away from Shepard and looked up to the sky.

"Ever since Tokyo… I've never seen those assholes as anything but murderous psychopathic monsters and you know that. They've killed so many innocent people including children. They've killed so many of my marines too."

She turned to look Shepard in his eyes, and he could see the burning hatred in her eyes. "Even now, years later, it still keeps me up at night."

"I know." Shepard said softly, he knows that feeling well.

"I can't forgive you for your choice… but maybe I can understand why you did it, at least to a certain extent."

Shepard nodded, and inwardly felt relieved: they were making progress. He didn't want Phoenix to hate him, she's a phenomenal soldier, belonging to a small cohort of soldiers that stand above the rest of their peers.

"I don't expect you to forgive me." Shepard said. "I completely understand why you wouldn't. All I ask is for you to understand." Phoenix nodded.

The sound of aircraft engines suddenly interrupted their conversation. Shepard looked up towards the source and felt relieved at the familiar sight of the Kodiak dropship descending from the sky.

Shepard keyed his comms. "Everyone aboard, we're getting out of here."

He regarded Phoenix one last time. "Listen Phoenix, things are only gonna get worse. We don't know when and where the Collectors are gonna attack. I'll work something out with my team but for now we're dead in the water. I need you to talk to someone, anyone, that will listen and has authority. We need the Alliance to get on board with this and deploy forces to every human colony they can."

Phoenix frowned. "A lot of those colonies don't want us around, and they're not even under our jurisdiction."

Shepard scowled. "To hell with what's under our jurisdiction and what's not! Those are innocent people at risk and I sure as hell am not willing to let them die because of the restrictions laid before us by some clueless politicians."

Phoenix was visibly taken aback by the sudden venom in Shepard's voice. It was clear to her that this was a sensitive topic for Shepard.

"I'll do what I can, Shepard. But no promises. You know how it is."

Shepard sighed in frustration. "Don't I know it. It's the effort that counts and I appreciate it. I'll see you around." He turned around and jogged towards the landed aircraft, now filled to the brim with his friends.

"Shepard!" The ex-spectre glanced behind him, Phoenix hesitated a moment before she spoke.

"Watch your back." Shepard nodded his thanks, and hastily entered the dropship.

It was only when Shepard finally felt like he could let his guard down in the rapidly ascending dropship that he now felt the adrenaline dissipate from his blood stream and the immense fatigue set in. The last time Shepard was this exhausted was after defeating Saren, the constant fighting took a toll on his body after fighting almost non-stop through wave after wave of Geth and then fighting an almost invincible Saren.

"What now?" Miranda said.

"If what Six said is true, then the Collectors are gunning for us. We're gonna need to lay low for a bit and figure out what to do next."

"You seriously trust him?" Miranda asked, surprised and more than a little irritated.

"No, but something tells me he knows what he's talking about."

"I think Shepard is right." Tali mumbled. "He didn't have to help us, but he did. He fought dozens of Collectors by himself just to save us and then stayed with us until you arrived. He didn't need to do that, but he did." Shepard nodded, Tali was right. Six could have simply just left them to die.

"All I ask is that we take what he is saying with a grain of salt."

"I am, but I'm not completely disregarding this possibility either. It did seem too much of a coincidence that the Collectors suddenly go in guns blazing and destroy a colony that we just happened to be imprisoned on."

The rest of the team murmured in agreement, and how could they not? From the very first Collector attack, it was clear that they operated in a very specific manner. They'd disable communications and then deploy seeker swarms to immobilize the colony's inhabitants. Once all resistance was eliminated, Collector troops would capture the disabled humans and take them to their ship, leaving before anyone was the wiser.

"If we're gonna lay low, where are we gonna go?" Kasumi inquired.

Shepard scratched his chin in thought before answering. "I might have a place in mind."

•••

Insurrectionist ships, Covenant ships, now Collector ships. He's done this so many times that they all just seemed to blur together. Shipboarding was something that was covered extensively during Yuri's training. There are many, often dangerous ways that one could board a ship. Discrete infiltration, Yuri's preferred method, was often the most effective way of accomplishing this. The enemy rarely expected enemy combatants to silently infiltrate their vessels by hitching a ride on, in Yuri's case, a dropship.

The large, almost organic looking vessel grew larger and larger in the inky blackness of space. Besides Yuri's calm, measured breathing, it was complete silence out here. His objective was quite simple, though not necessarily easy: destroy the Collector ship and acquire any potential intel on this enigma.

Simple, but the fact that he'd be facing hundreds if not thousands of enemy troops in close quarters made this a dangerous operation.

It was almost time, the dropship that Six had ridden was now in the process of entering the cruiser's expansive hangar. The inside of the vessel seemed to match the design scheme of its exterior. The hangar bay was large and dimly lit, with a cold, metallic atmosphere. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of sleek, black materials, giving the impression of a seamless and organic design.

Even after slowly entering the hangar from the silent void of space, the hangar itself was of an eerie silence broken only by the distant hum of machinery. The seamless design almost reminded the Spartan of the interior of Covenant ships, and yet the design was like nothing he had ever seen before.

It was so alien, which is odd because of his extensive experience with alien machinery of Covenant and Forerunner nature. With a thought, Yuri's armored form shimmered out of existence, leaving behind a ghostly form only those with the most keen senses could detect. He carefully stepped towards the edge of the large, insectoid dropship, and looked down over the edge. There were another seven dropships all lined up next to his. Dozens of Collector troops disembarked from their dropships using grav-lifts reminiscent of Covenant technology, but no doubt eezo powered. They then silently marched out of the hangar bay through the dozen doorways at the end of the large room a good two hundred meters across the Spartan's position.

The behavior of the Collectors elicited a frown from Yuri. They were so machine-like. No banter, no signs of stress or fatigue from combat. It served as additional proof that these things might not have chosen this path willingly, or at the very least, were somehow created by something else. But Yuri needed more proof of that.

The Spartan-III waited patiently for the Collector troops to leave; engaging this large number of troops in a large, open hangar isn't the best situation to be in, even for a Spartan. Fighting in the ship's corridors would help negate the numbers disparity.

The troops cleared out, leaving the Spartan alone within the bowels of the enemy vessel. Yuri waited for a minute longer, training his senses to the eerie environment. He couldn't see or hear anything suggesting the presence of left over hostile forces. Yuri checked his motion sensor.

Nothing.

Something felt off for the hyper lethal vector. Usually the hangar bay was one of the busiest parts of the ship, even when there weren't any deployments in progress. On UNSC and Covenant ships, there was always work to be done preparing aircraft for future deployments, organizing supplies, or making repairs. The fact that the Collectors had completely abandoned the hangar moments after returning from a planetary invasion was not only bizarre, it also made Six suspicious.

Was he detected? Were they making preparations to ambush the Spartan? How did they detect him already? What kind of strategies might they employ to combat the Spartan? This would be Yuri's first engagement with the Collectors on a ship-their ship, so he didn't know what to expect.

Regardless of what the case may be, Spartan B312 had a mission to complete, and that wasn't going to happen if he spent all his time in the hangar bay mulling over all the different possibilities on how the Collectors could detect and combat his infiltration.

Yuri shimmered back into existence, allowing his stealth systems to cool down. Keeping his magnetic boots active, the Spartan walked along the side of the wasp-shaped aircraft, his boots making almost no noise as he did so. As the Spartan scanned his sectors from this awkward position, he caught a glimpse of something below him, directly underneath the dropship.

Yuri froze, his augmented eyes immediately adapting to the low light conditions. There were nine of them, the chitinous humanoids stood as still as statues in a circular formation facing outwards from where Yuri believed the dropship's grav lift originated from. He wasn't surprised that his motion tracker didn't detect them: they hadn't moved an inch this whole time. Yuri crept forward slowly, making as little noise as possible until he had reached the underbelly of the dropship directly above the seemingly unaware Collectors.

The Spartan-III looked down towards the Collectors from his upside down position, suspended by the soles of his magnetically active boots. He looked to his left, then to his right and noticed that no other dropship had a contingent of troops hiding underneath them.

He'd been compromised.

Obviously the Collectors were smart enough to avoid placing troops under the other dropships as it would have been easy to spot them from the top of the vessel. Six easily deduced that this meant they knew he wasn't inside the dropship but rather on top of it.

But that raises the question: how was he detected in the first place? Perhaps riding the dropship might have been a mistake? It could be possible that some sophisticated sensors picked him up visually. Any other method is less likely as MJOLNIR was specifically designed to spoof as many different types of sensors as possible.

He didn't have his optical cloaking on during his approach to the cruiser after all.

Yuri logged this possibility away for further study; if it is true that stealth operations against Collector vessels are indeed almost impossible to pull off, then future operations will need to see the implementation of newer strategies.

It was interesting that they hadn't noticed the Spartan. However, with the already dimly lit conditions, Yuri's jet black armor allowed him to practically melt into the darkness now that he was shielded from the light sources by the dropship. The patch of darkness underneath the Collector vessel would make the Collectors very hard to see with normal human visual capabilities, but Six wasn't normal. They were right where he wanted them to be.

Yuri knew that things were going to get noisy soon, and the sound of his fifteen hundred pound bulk hitting the metallic floor wasn't exactly subtle. With that in mind, Six attached his M-8 rifle to his back, unsheathed his kukri in his right hand and clutched his last flashbang in the other hand.

Yuri made sure his helmet's camera was recording, before priming his flashbang and dropping it to the ground. It clattered against the metal, alerting the Collector troops, as they instantly turned to the source of the noise, rifles shouldered.

The stun grenade detonated, and the insectoid aliens stumbled to the floor, blind and deaf.

Yuri crouched and pushed off of the alien vessel as he turned off his magnetic boots. As he traveled the twenty meter altitude at break-neck speeds, the air-to-ground Spartan brought his legs in front of him before landing directly on top of one of the Collectors with a thunderous metallic boom, his left foot found purchase in its skull, crushing it like a grape.

He lunged forward, swiping the nearest alien with his knife and cleanly severing its head with the monomolecular blade. Yuri drove the kukri into the gut of a third, and then in the same motion brought the blade all the way up to its throat, effectively dissecting the alien and allowing several unidentifiable, almost cybernetic organs to pour out of the massive wound.

Five more of the defenseless enemies met the same fate as the Spartan dispatched them with inhuman efficiency and speed, slaughtering them with a mixture of lightning fast, precise incisions of his blade and bone shattering strikes that were just as fast.

The last survivor recovered from the flashbang's effects, faster than any normal human had the right to. It brought up its rifle in a desperate attempt to fight back against the Spartan.

Yuri simply disarmed the alien in a movement too fast to follow, before shattering its skull with a vicious knee strike.

The whole sequence only lasted four seconds at the most.

Then there was silence.

Yuri crouched low and then became motionless, waiting for an enemy response. Though none came. The Spartan briefly considered his options, before switching out for his MA5D: better to have a familiar weapon on standby in this unfamiliar environment.

No apparent hostile response came which made the Spartan even more apprehensive: he would have hoped that the Collector troops came pouring into the hangar to try and overwhelm the Spartan instead of sitting back and letting him come to them.

Without much of a choice, Yuri left the shadows underneath the dormant aircraft and moved towards one of the doors, lightning fast compared to a normal human despite his slowed pace.

As he reached the door, Yuri was unpleasantly surprised that the circular entrance opened at his approach with seemingly no resistance. He checked his motion tracker, found nothing, and then stepped inside, his rifle a blur to any outside observers as he checked all angles of attack blindingly quick.

There was nothing to be found, but this section of the ship was even more indescribable than the last. The large corridor, big enough to fit a UNSC Elephant, was just as dimly lit, permeated with a thick and oppressive atmosphere.

It was a twisted amalgamation of alien technology and organic material coating every square centimeter of the vessel that seemed to pulse and writhe as if alive. As the Spartan moved along the corridor with a silent catlike grace, the Spartan couldn't help but be reminded of his experience in the Flood infested High Charity. The abundance of tan-coloured biomass seemed eerily similar to the aftermath of the parasite's takeover. Billions of Covenant were broken down and converted into Flood biomass which transformed the interior of the massive Covenant capital into a twisted labyrinth that made navigation difficult even for the likes of Yuri, Thel, and the Master Chief.

That encounter elicited a rare instance of fear from the usually stone cold Spartan, and he had hoped to never face the Flood in combat again. The eerie similarity between this vessel and a Flood infested High Charity sent a brief shiver down Yuri's spine, a feeling that he almost never experiences.

The super soldier ignored the feeling: the Flood was gone. Now he had a new enemy to fight. The layout of this ship was confusing, it was a labyrinth with twisting corridors and sudden drops that didn't make sense. Yuri felt like he was trying to navigate through an anthill and not an enemy ship.

Worst of all, despite the eerie silence, Yuri knew that he was being watched. He could feel it. He scanned the environment with the muzzle of his rifle and checked his motion tracker but came up short. He felt a surge of adrenaline course through his veins, and he could almost feel time begin to slow down.

Six accessed MJOLNIR's systems, and then sent out a series of very high pitched frequencies. These frequencies zipped past open rooms and bounced off of walls, before being processed by MJOLNIR. This allowed Yuri's armor to construct a very basic three-dimensional map of his current location. It only worked locally, meaning only areas of the ship Yuri was currently present in would be mapped. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

Six also made a point to memorize his path, which was easy given his abnormal memory bestowed upon him thanks to his augmentations. This would hopefully help Yuri stay on track and not end up going around in circles.

Thankfully, MJOLNIR knew what part of the mapped out area Six was in: his position was marked with a small red dot, while the corridors appeared as a series of blue lines that bended and crossed over each other to mimic the ship's interior.

Despite the alien and eerie environment, Yuri was in his element. He knew this was where he was meant to be: in the darkness, killing humanity's enemies. He felt strangely alive in a place that could spit him out dead if he made a single mistake.

Several more minutes went by, but Yuri felt like he was no closer to finding the ship's engines.

Then, Six heard something, it was the first time the silence was broken since leaving the hangar.

A scream.

Yuri's body exploded in a blur as his legs sent him flying down the corridor. He did his best to follow the sound of agony, following the complicated corridors and passageways as the sound grew louder.

The Spartan-III knew that he was heading into a trap. It was less than ideal, but sometimes the only option was to walk headfirst into the fire.

Spartan-B312 ran through passages, slid down drops, and vaulted over odd mounds of biomatter left haphazardly along the passageways, all the while his weapon scanned his environment for potential ambushers. The screaming suddenly stopped, but it lasted long enough for the Spartan to know where to go.

He finally reached a door that seemed to be the apparent source of the screaming. Yuri readied himself for what he knew would be an ambush. As expected, the door opened upon his approach, and despite himself, Yuri's eyebrows raised in shock.

This new room he found himself in was massive, hundreds of meters in every direction. It looked like this massive chasm extended to almost the entire length of the ship. A hundred or so meters in front was a disturbing sight, something that made the Spartan clench his jaw in anger.

Bodies. Hundreds of bodies were piled up like trash in a landfill. This explains the piles of bodies that Six saw during the assault, why the Collectors were gathering corpses out in the streets. They were taking them back to their ship, but why?

Yuri looked around the expansive room, noticing what looked to be countless pods covering the walls of the eerie chamber from the floor level all the way up to the ceiling. Each pod had what must have been a glass door, orange in color, and organic looking just like most of the ship. There must have been thousands of them.

No. There were millions.

Yuri's visor zoomed in, and realized that some of these pods, the once closer to the floor, were occupied with some of the bodies that the Collectors had taken.

What was going on here? For what purpose would the Collectors be storing these people away? Some kind of experiment, perhaps? But that wouldn't require such a large number of people.

Yuri approached the mass of dead people piled on top of each other, feeling a rare sense of pity and sadness at the loss of life. So many innocent people. Six felt responsible for this. Perhaps if he had been quicker…

The super soldier shook himself from the distracting thoughts: not now, he had a mission to do.

Yuri inspected some of the bodies, most were relatively intact. Some had wounds from gunfire, some from shrapnel, others from blunt force trauma. A few were missing limbs. None were alive, and the Collectors certainly didn't discriminate. Among the dead were men, women, and children of all ages and walks of life. It reminded the Spartan of all the colonies besieged by the Covenant. Sometimes they'd pile up the dead for the Grunts, Brutes, and Jackals to feast upon. Sometimes they weren't dead.

It was like going back in time, a reminder of that war that ended only a few years ago, a reminder of Yuri's failures to protect the innocent time and time again as the unstoppable Covenant juggernaut cut a swath across human controlled space.

These people are gone, but they will be avenged.

Yuri's thoughts were cut off as the screaming returned, agonizing and blood curdling.

The Spartan bolted towards the source of the screaming, towards one of the pods. Inside was a young man, probably in his early twenties, desperately banging on the glass.

"Help! Please help!" The man shrieked. Yuri reeled back a fist, intent on punching through the glass and dragging the captive out, but then stopped.

It was difficult to notice at first, but one close look at the man showed that this pod was doing something to him. Yuri looked closely, and then froze, his breath caught in his throat in a way that was uncharacteristic for the steadfast Spartan.

He watched in disgust as the man began to essentially melt before his very eyes. Skin, fat, and flesh turned into a disgusting paste that dripped to the bottom of the pod in a way that would churn the insides of even the most hardened individuals.

As the man's agony intensified tenfold, Yuri realized that there was only one way he could help him, and he sent his armored fist through the glass as hard as he could, smashing the man's skull into dozens of pieces and ending his suffering.

The horrific machinations of the pod ceased immediately, no doubt a safety mechanism if the device was breached. While the process stopped, Yuri could get a picture of what was happening. It appeared the Collectors were processing humans into some kind of… paste. He could only guess that the tubes attached to each of these pods collected this material and sent it to who knows where and for some unknown purpose.

Seemed like the Collectors didn't care if the subjects were dead or alive. It seemed that they did indeed take some prisoners during their assault.

Yuri clenched his fist, angry that it seemed like humanity was at the mercy of an alien menace even in this galaxy. Angrier still that these things had no qualms about making Humanity suffer. But this? This was something Yuri had never seen before. Not even the Covenant did this to captured humans. Whatever was going on here, Yuri knew he needed to get to the bottom of this. Why did the Collectors have such an interest in humanity? Why are they subjecting people to this horrific process of melting them down into paste by the thousands?

Why would they need millions of pods in this ship? The answer was simple, just as Yuri had thought from the beginning, they were trying to wipe humanity out. All of it.

That was not going to happen.

Still, why go through this method of genocide? It was much more inefficient than the Covenant, which had perfected the ways of committing genocide against humans to a bone chilling art form.

Yuri was missing the bigger picture.

"Intruder appears human. Impressive muscular, skeletal, and nervous system augmentations. This development is unexpected… more information is required."

Six instantly brought up his rifle and scanned the open environment for the powerful, disembodied voice. He frowned: thousands of different pods, each a potential hiding spot for a Collector. He was in a bad situation, and a well coordinated attack from all directions could be the end of him.

"Unusual response to death suggests psychology atypical for humans." The monotone, robotic voice continued. It spoke as if it was a dumb AI dispassionately rattling off findings from a medical report. These bastards were studying the Spartan, and making no effort to hide the fact which at first glance seemed stupid. But it made sense: this was an intimidation tactic. They wanted Yuri to know that they were studying him, dissecting him, and trying to find out how he ticked.

Too bad for them that the Collectors had yet to learn how pointless such a practice is.

The disembodied voice spoke again, breaking the brief moment of eerie silence. "This is the fate that awaits you and your race." The monotone voice made way for something that Yuri almost placed as… mocking.

Suddenly, without warning the entire massive chamber, large enough to serve as the hangar bay of a carrier, became filled with the cacophony of hundreds of agonizing screams as the thousands of chambers, filled with the bodies of both the dead and the living, turned on all at once.

Yuri watched the unspeakable atrocity in silence as the hundreds of victims lived out the last few moments of their lives experiencing some of the worst pain imaginable. The Spartan clenched his jaw as his vision began to turn a blood red. The Spartan could feel his iron dense muscles violently contract and coil like a spring.

Control yourself.

They wanted to get a reaction out of the Spartan, whether it be fear or unadulterated rage. Any of those emotions would throw the Spartan off and make him less effective. But Six would give them nothing because he knew It would mean giving the enemy more control over the situation. He was steadfast and unbreakable and he would let the Collectors know that.

The Spartan-III, now fueled by a cold rage, could feel the adrenaline flowing into his system with a stronger ferocity than before. The passage of time slowed to a crawl as the super soldier braced himself for the enemy ambush.

"Remarkable level of emotional control, strong-willed, unusual behaviour for a human. It matters not. Your fate is sealed, you will perish, your body preserved and studied. Your secrets will be uncovered and humanity will be forced to embrace perfection."

They then came as one, a legion of Collectors. They appeared from behind the stasis pods intent on burying the Spartan under their numbers, just as Yuri thought they would. His MA5D locked on to the first target, and the weapon barked, sending 7.62x51mm projectiles downrange. They struck the target's barriers, downing them just as effectively as any other mass accelerator weapon he had used so far. Then came the advantage of conventional bullet weapons, as the large projectiles effortlessly tore through the chitinous carapace and put holes into the Collector's face, killing it instantly.

He felled a handful of additional targets before the rest of the enemy force was even in position to engage the exposed soldier. Yuri switched magazines and chambered a new round, but instead of opening fire on the enemy, he made a break for the exit on the other side of the room, knowing that he wouldn't last long in this position.

Yuri's audio receptors drowned out the sound of countless automatic weapons barking at once, his legs instantly propelled him to speeds beyond that of a sprinting cheetah. It was a good thing that MJOLNIR MK-VI allowed for Six to sprint at these speeds without injuring himself unlike the previous iteration where he probably would have torn his achilles tendon from the unimaginable strain.

Above him, several hexagonal platforms suddenly appeared, levitating above his position. Collector troops posted on these platforms opened fire down on the Spartan. Yuri pushed himself even further, darting across the massive room, covering a few hundred meters in just over a minute.

Despite his speed, rounds did find their mark, and his shield was completely drained before Six even made it to the exit. Rounds bounced off of the thick titanium alloy plates, failing to penetrate as the starship grade plates held strong. Even so, MJOLNIR was not impervious even to kinetic weapons. The titanium nanocomposite bodysuit, a highly sophisticated layer of flexible yet resilient body armor presented a weakness in the Spartan's joints, abdomen, and neck. The thick black body suit was more than capable of withstanding numerous kinetic impacts and even one maybe two impacts from a plasma weapon. Unfortunately, enough localized impacts can breach the armor.

It was because of this reason that Yuri kept on trucking towards the sealed door, and didn't stop as his shoulder impacted the door like a miniaturized mass driver. Without the benefit of shields, Six could feel the wind get knocked out of him as he punched through the alien metal, lost his balance, and then rolled, allowing himself to instantly recover from the impact.

The elite super soldier glanced behind him, taking note of the dozens of figures rushing the Spartan's position, moving as if through jello. He didn't have the luxury of picking off targets, Yuri knew that if he didn't stop moving then the Collectors would bury him.

And so move he did.

Yuri's legs carried him forward, as if on auto pilot. He glanced towards his motion tracker, noticing the sea of red behind him and the numerous red dots in front. It gave the lone wolf a significant advantage as the Collectors had no idea that the veteran soldier could easily pick out the positions of hidden enemies so long as they moved their bodies enough.

The first intersection was easy enough, Yuri's armored gauntlet reached out, crushing the barrel of the offending weapon, and an elbow finished it off. His ambushing friends were cut down by UNSC tungsten alloy projectiles.

The second two intersections fared no better: gunfire, vicious strikes of unimaginable power, and masterful blade work felled the enemies like helpless blades of grass. The Collectors' main strategy seemed to involve using a large overwhelming force to funnel the Spartan through a series of smaller ambushing teams-which was fine, until the combatant being ambushed can see the fastest Collectors move in slow motion and slaughter them before they can even react.

The Collectors made the mistake of keeping the main force behind the Spartan, as it allowed for the super soldier to run-and-gun through the paltry ambush positions whilst simultaneously outrunning the troops behind him.

"Assuming direct control." The sound of the now familiar disembodied voice seemed to shake the depths of the dark alien corridor. Yuri remained undeterred, and pressed on, coming face to face with something he wasn't expecting.

Normal human eyes couldn't make it out completely in the darkness, but Yuri could easily tell that it was a Collector, one that was most unusual compared to its brethren.

Its four eyes glowed a brilliant orange-yellow, like the high beams on a car. Its body was covered in pulsing veins that glowed a similar color, as if the energy within was cracking through its exoskeleton and threatening to escape.

"I am Harbinger." It shook the corridor as it spoke. "You cannot stop us." It stepped forward, keen on sandwiching the Spartan between it and hundreds of enemies no doubt closing in from behind.

"Your struggle is pointless." It's body suddenly started to glow an ebon blue, eliciting a feeling of suspicion from the Spartan, who readied himself for what he knew was an attack.

"Your species will perish." It lashed out with an arm, sending out a wave of energy that tore along the length of the corridor towards the Spartan. It was his first encounter with biotics, the ability for some individuals to create mass effect fields and manipulate the physical world around them. The Spartan-III paid special attention to this particular ability during his brief stay in Alliance custody as biotics represent an unprecedented tactical advantage.

Fortunately, there are ways to counter biotics. Biotics require enormous amounts of energy to use their abilities, so long term engagements can wither them down quickly, not to mention that most offensive abilities are not very effective at long range. Sadly, both of these weaknesses could not be exploited here in this close quarters environment with the enemy closing in on his position.

Luckily, Yuri was more than fast enough to calculate the trajectory of the attack, and dodged to the side.

Six shouldered his rifle and opened fire, intent on killing the threat. The slugs struck true, but were subsequently deflected by a thin blue film that enveloped the alien's chitinous carapace; a biotic barrier.

With the Collectors breathing down his neck affording him little time, the superhuman lunged forwards, hoping to pulp the Collector. The alien brought out a hand wreathed in energy, and the Spartan felt his body instantly come to a halt. Yuri strained against the invisible force.

"Your fate is sealed." The creature in front of him declared. "Why fight when you cannot win?"

Yuri clenched his jaws: if only this alien knew what he had overcome to get to this point. If only this alien knew what Yuri's life was. All his life, the Spartan had only truly known defeat, fighting against what seemed like an inevitable fate. The Human-Covenant War lasted nearly thirty years, long enough for an entire generation to grow up knowing nothing but defeat, nothing but loss, and nothing but suffering.

Yet, even as the Covenant juggernaut pushed on, leaving glassed husk after glassed husk in their wake, even as they slaughtered helpless innocents, humanity's defenders, even as they destroyed humanity's fortress among the stars, not once did Yuri falter. Not once did the Spartan think of giving up.

Why fight when you cannot win?

He had heard those words before numerous times from arrogant members of the Covenant, but their ignorant preconceptions of how the war was fated to end could not save them from the retribution brought upon them by the unshakable hyper lethal vector.

The answer to this question was simple really: fighting is all he knew. Besides, Spartans do not quit.

The taunting words, the dozens of Collectors that had approached behind him and were now in the process of surrounding him-the bastards were close enough for Yuri to reach out and touch-it all served to push the Spartan more and more. His muscles contracted violently as he physically attempted to wrench his way out of the stasis field.

Yuri flexed the muscles in his body, and the alien stumbled back. The Spartan pushed again, bringing it to a knee. Its lesser brethren raised their weapons, but did not fire, why?

It mattered not, Yuri felt the stasis field push back against him, as if the weight of a scorpion tank was pushing down onto him.

"This… should not be possible." The menacing, glowing strobe deadpanned, sounding more confused than anything else.

The Spartan felt the hold on him weaken, and then pushed one last time. The instant that Six felt the force on him give in, he acted, grabbing the alien that trapped him by the head. He then snapped his armored helmet back and then brought it forward, caving in the alien's skull, but the alien didn't die.

Yuri wasn't surprised, this thing seemed to be full of surprises. Before the dazed Collector could retaliate, Yuri struck its face a dozen times in the span of a second, effectively decapitating it.

"This form is irrelevant." The voice boomed once more, giving Yuri pause. This entity, whatever it was, is not dead? The headless corpse suddenly disintegrated, but that was the least of his concerns.

The Spartan did not have time to think as the Collectors, dozens of them, opened fire all at once. At such close quarters, it was hard to miss, and Six's shields started to deplete under the barrage of sand grain sized projectiles.

With the large number of enemies in the corridor and more on the way, Yuri acted quickly, lobbing a trio of grenades into the mass of enemies: they had made the mistake of cramming themselves in the corridor, making them more susceptible to friendly fire and explosives.

The grenades detonated and sent shrapnel tearing into their shields and carapaces. The explosions killed a dozen of them and injured many more. Still, there was more where that came from, and now rounds were striking his exposed armor for the second time.

As Yuri turned around to continue retreating, he realized that was no longer an option, and more enemies poured through the entrance, sandwiching him in the corridor between two large forces.

Yuri grit his teeth as defeat became more of a possibility. The Spartan felt a brief memory play through his mind, of an important lesson Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez taught him many years ago.

When you're backed into a corner, and you think there is nothing you can do, then you are lying to yourself. A soldier's best weapon is his brain, not his rifle, so use it. You need to think about your course of action, think about how to overcome the odds, think about how to use the enemy's weaknesses against them. You need to use that thing in there you call a brain!

Time slowed down as the supersoldier's brain moved a million miles an hour, concocting potential strategies, performing calculations, and making predictions in mere milliseconds.

He was trapped, enemies closing in on both directions, making escape difficult. Staying and fighting is not an option: there are too many to kill. He needed to find the ship's reactor, but how? The design of the ship must have been made such that boarding parties would get lost trying to find the ship's vital components.

But wait.

The ships in this galaxy, like everything else, use mass effect technology to function. Eezo allows for the manipulation of the physical world in ways that should be impossible, like lowering or increasing the mass of objects at will. It is by this mass lowering ability that allows ships to reach incredible speeds as well as to reduce the effects of planetary gravity.

This means that the ship's reactor would exhibit unusual gravitational fluctuations. The reactor would have a weaker gravitational effect on the fabric of space-time than the rest of the ship since it is the source of the ship's mass-lowering ability.

With a thought, Yuri tuned MJOLNIR to detect gravitational fluctuations. He simultaneously ignited one of his energy swords, the white-blue blade glowed harshly in the dark. Six vanished out of existence, momentarily causing confusion among the ranks of the Collectors.

Yuri capitalized on this hesitation, thankful for the time needed for his shields to recharge.

Yuri struck the first Collector like a viper ambushing its prey, completely bisecting it at the hip. The intense heat of the plasma instantly cauterized the wound. The plasma blade weaved brilliantly through the air, cleaving another two of the unsuspecting aliens in a single strike.

The Collectors, realizing the cloaked Spartan was still present, indiscriminately opened fire. The large corridor became filled with hundreds of high speed projectiles, some of which harmlessly impacted the metal of the vessel, some of which struck Six's shields, and many of which struck other Collectors.

The scene was one of complete chaos, and even Yuri was momentarily taken aback by the lengths at which these new enemies would go to bring him down. This was his first time fighting an enemy that would indiscriminately gun themselves down in order to secure victory.

It seemed that there were things that even the hyper vigilant Spartan could not expect.

This presented both a problem and a solution. The problem was that this new enemy would go through just about any length to achieve victory if they are so willing to sacrifice each other. On other hand, getting the enemy to sabotage themselves might be a possibility worth considering.

Yuri plowed through waves of Collectors, slicing and dicing them with his energy sword, batting them aside with his empty hand, shoulder checking them with all the force of a fifteen hundred pound armored behemoth, and otherwise trampling them under his boots.

His optical cloaking began to fail as he took hits from the enemy and moved too fast for the system to not be disturbed, but the chaotic result stayed. The Collectors simply could not keep track of the Spartan: he was moving fast enough that most of them could not keep track, while the few that did attempted to warn their brethren, speaking in that characteristic series of insectoid chirps and trills that were simply drowned out by the gunfire.

Just as the Spartan was about to escape the mass of enemies, he caught a glimpse of one of the last Collectors in his path, shouldering its weapon in his direction. Recognizing the design, he made an effort to move out of the way, raising his energy blade for the killing blow. At the last second, the alien fired, sending a beam of yellow energy towards the Spartan, striking his unshielded abdomen.

Yuri clenched his jaw at the intense burning sensation, focusing on beheading the Collector that injured him.

One headless corpse later, and the Spartan burst past the last of the enemies, scooping up the laser weapon at the last second.

He continued his deadly sprint through the enemy vessel, turning a corner to avoid any fire from the enemies behind him, allowing his shields to recharge.

The Spartan's motion sensor caught movement to his left, and Yuri primed a grenade. He zipped past the corridor in question and lobbed the grenade towards the enemies, not even acknowledging them. The grenade exploded, felling the enemy. Another squad of Collectors took position ahead of him.

Yuri's UNSC made rifle barked, dropping a handful of targets. As he approached hand to hand distance, the Spartan jumped, propelling himself five meters in the air.

As Yuri's momentum carried him over the remaining Collectors, he flipped over them, grabbed his magnum, and emptied its magazine into the heads of the remaining enemies. The fifty caliber semi-armor piercing explosive rounds burrowed into their skulls, killing them instantly.

This particular weapon went through their barriers easily in just a few shots.

Six landed moments later and continued moving, reloading his weapons in the process.

As the Spartan moved towards the source of the lower gravitational emissions, he ran through his armor diagnostics. His armor integrity came up yellow in the abdominal region: the beam weapon didn't breach his armor, but it did cause some damage. The burning pain persisted, and now the Spartan could feel the rest of his injuries from the Didact and non stop fighting against the Prometheans and Storm Covenant return.

The few days of rest he had been afforded worked wonders on his recovery, but he still wasn't at one hundred percent.

Six ignored the pain and pressed on, noting a large door at the end of the hallway.

He was close.

The Spartan stopped at the massive entrance, he brought out his appropriated Collector weapon, intent on melting through the door, when his newfound host decided to speak up.

"This level of combat prowess and persistence was not expected." It deadpanned. "But now it is your end."

Then, as if summoned by the entity known as 'Harbinger', Yuri heard what sounded like… the sound of dozens or hundreds of house flies.

The Spartan turned around to the source of the noise, and brought up his rifle, waiting as the noise grew louder. Six had no idea what to expect, the Collectors clearly haven't been using all of their cards, so the lone wolf kept his mind open and ready to respond to whatever was coming his way.

Seconds later, and much to Yuri's displeasure, a massive swarm of hundreds of large insects began pouring out of the corridors ahead and towards the Spartan. At first glance they didn't look natural, possessing a carapace similar in appearance to the Collectors themselves. They were also larger than anything short of a prehistoric insect or similar creatures living on planets with higher oxygen concentrations. They were about the size of a person's hand, but also fast.

With the adrenaline coursing through Six's veins, they moved as if through jello.

Yuri realized that the ship's reactor must be through this door, and so the Collectors were doing everything to stop him.

The Spartan attached his Collector weapon to his back, and glanced towards the door behind him.

He'll have to do this the old fashioned way.

•••

Shepard patiently waited in the Normandy's elevator, enjoying the peace and quiet that the starship offered. The past few hours had been hectic to say the least. Once the Normandy crew had been successfully extracted, those that were injured reported to Dr. Chakwas immediately to see to their injuries. Those that got off scot free went about their own devices once they left the ship's hangar bay. Shepard stayed behind, ordering everyone to rest while he unloaded the dropship and went about reorganizing the Normandy's equipment.

He was responsible for this fuck up.

"What the fuck was I thinking?" Muttered the Commander angrily.

It was foolish, foolish of him to jeopardize the crew in the way he did. In hindsight, they had no reason to land on that planet and conduct reconnaissance, the Normandy was more than capable of doing that with its sophisticated sensors. He shouldn't have deployed once it was clear that the Alliance had already amassed a sizable presence on the planet.

Yet he did. It was difficult to explain, but the veteran soldier felt like they needed to confront this enigma in person. The description that Prometheus, that enigmatic Cerberus agent, gave them was just too intriguing to pass up. But Shepard knew that he had no excuse to go through that reckless series of decisions. He had made the mistake of letting his desire to thwart the Collectors and Reapers cloud his judgment. The idea that they may have been able to convince an extragalactic civilization to join them was clearly too good to be true. Even if Six was telling the truth, it didn't seem like he came here by choice.

The elevator opened, momentarily distracting the Commander from his thoughts. He exited the confined elevator and made his way through the quiet and pristine corridors of his ship towards the infirmary.

Whether this 'supersoldier' came from another galaxy or not, Shepard had a sinking feeling that he was still alive out there, and that alone means that there was another potentially big player on the block. Shepard just hoped that the next time they meet, if they ever meet at all, that it is under better circumstances. Their last encounter with the armored behemoth was still fresh in his mind.

Shepard's train of thought was interrupted as he approached the mess hall, he turned the corner and was pleasantly surprised to see Garrus and Tali sitting across from each other at one of the tables. The turian noticed the Commander and waved him over, allowing a small smile on his face.

"Hey, Shepard." Garrus said. "You cleaned up quickly."

Shepard nodded. "How are you guys feeling?" He sat next to Garrus.

"Never better." Garrus shrugged nonchalantly. "Kind of disappointed that the Collectors only managed to give me a few scratches."

Shepard smiled, Garrus had always been a rock solid turian. Very few things managed to give him pause, and his escapades as Archangel only served to toughen him up even more. The marksman could take a beating like the best of them.

Shepard turned to face Tali expectedly. The quarian hesitated. "I'm ok, my leg still hurts but Chakwas said that I should be fine in a few days." Shepard nodded, but couldn't help but notice that something was still troubling Tali. She seemed subdued when she spoke.

"Something on your mind?" Shepard inquired. Tali has always been one of the more sensitive members of the crew because of her lack of experience and simply because that was who she was. But that didn't stop her from being one of the most valuable members of the team with her masterful technical prowess.

She was also a damn good friend.

"We almost died." She confessed. "We would have died if… he didn't save us."

Shepard nodded. Part of him was mad at the enigmatic soldier for putting them in this situation in the first place, but it was also Shepard's fault. Regardless, he was immensely grateful that his friends were safe and alive.

"Hey, you're alive now, right?" Garrus said. "That's what matters. Yeah we took a beating but we made it out in one piece."

"Keelah, I know that!" Tali retorted. "But the point is we were lucky. What happens when we face the Collectors again and our luck runs out?"

That was something that has been on Shepard's mind for some time now. Tali was right. They had no idea how powerful the Collectors really were or what they were capable of. Are the Collectors capable of always projecting their might like the way they had witnessed hours prior? Or was this an isolated case?

"We got caught off guard." Shepard said. "This was a unique situation that we'll make sure never happens again."

Tali turned to face Shepard and sighed. "How can you be certain?"

"Because there won't be an unstoppable killing machine to throw us in Alliance custody." Garrus commented absentmindedly.

Shepard frowned, he had been meaning to say something like that. After all, Six did throw a wrench in their plan, but he didn't mean to say it like that.

"He saved us!" Tali bristled. "He may have been the one to put us in this situation but he was also the one to get us out!" Then Tali lowered her head to the table slightly.

"He died for us…" Shepard did a double take, he didn't think that Six's supposed death had an impact on Tali like this.

Garrus raised his hands in a sign of peace. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I know he saved us and I am grateful for that. I was just trying to say that if we do meet again it won't result in us trying to kill each other."

Tali regarded Garrus for a moment, then Shepard. "What do we do now?" She inquired. "We barely held off the Collectors. It's obvious we can't fight them head on."

Shepard nodded, already well aware of that sobering fact. "No, we can't. I'm still working on the finer details. But I'll fill you guys in once we have something tangible."

His friends simply nodded, understanding that coming up with a solution to stop the Collectors was a monumental task.

In truth, Shepard wasn't yet sure what the best course of action was. They couldn't face down an entire Collector invasion force on their own. But what if they didn't have to? The Normandy in theory could be equipped with enough firepower to at least disable a Collector vessel. So, what? They'd have to find a way to intercept the Collector invasion forces? How? Shepard pondered that idea and realized that he might need to find a way to get in contact with an old friend to help out.

"Judging by the way your face just lit up." Garrus commented. "It looks like you have an idea."

Shepard smiled; Garrus knew him all too well.

"Don't get your hopes up." Shepard chuckled. "I gotta go and check up on Jacob. I'll see you guys later." Shepard stood up to leave.

Garrus and Tali bid him farewell, and the ex-Spectre left for the infirmary, now feeling better with the possibility of an actionable plan on the horizon. He didn't want to get too optimistic: this was just an idea, and it may not even work. Still, a little optimism was good to have in these trying times.

It didn't take long for him to reach the infirmary. He noticed Chakwas sitting outside, enjoying a cup of coffee. The weathered doctor smiled as she noticed Shepard.

"How's everything on your end doctor?" Shepard asked, taking Chakwas' expression as a good sign.

The older woman chuckled. "Considering you all spent several hours fighting off hundreds of Collectors, I would say phenomenal." She took a sip of her beverage. "Jacob's injuries were the worst by far, torn right quadricep and two fractured ribs. But he'll be fine with enough rest." Shepard exhaled in relief, glad that no one received any life threatening injuries.

Damn they were lucky….

"Everything okay?" Chakwas asked, her cheerful expression replaced by one of concern.

Shepard nodded. "Yeah, I'm good. Is Jacob awake?"

Chakwas nodded. "I'm sure he'll be glad to see you."

Shepard thanked the doctor before heading into the infirmary, the smell of antiseptic and the hum of medical equipment greeting him. The only person present was Jacob since everyone else had injuries minor enough that they weren't required to stay in the infirmary.

Jacob was stripped of his armor, instead donning a medical gown. His legs were wrapped up in bandages that were tinted a light red, suggesting that these were fresh bandages that had been replaced recently.

Jacob slowly turned his head to the sound of Shepard's footsteps, eliciting a smile from the half asleep soldier.

"Jacob." Shepard breathed softly. While Jacob's recovery was a guarantee, it still pained Shepard to see the veteran soldier in this state. "How are you feeling?"

"Better than I look." He chuckled. "Been put through the ringer more times than I can count. This is nothing." Shepard smiled, he pulled up a chair and sat next to Jacob's bed. For a moment, no one spoke, instead choosing to take comfort in the quiet atmosphere broken up only by the soft, rhythmic beeping of the infirmary's medical equipment.

"So." Shepard spoke, trying to find something to converse about. "Chakwas said you'll be good to go in a few days?"

Jacob nodded in relief. "Yeah, happy to hear it. Can't stand being confined to a bed while everyone else is out there in the middle of the action." Shepard agreed knowing that feeling all too well. No soldier ever wanted to feel like a burden to the rest of their team.

"Don't feel bad about what happened, Commander." Jacob assured. Shepard frowned; it seemed like he wasn't very good at hiding when something was bothering him.

"Everyone keeps saying that." The ex-Spectre grunted in frustration. "But why shouldn't I feel bad? It was my decision that we ended up in the position we were in, my decision that put us in arms reach of the Collectors, and my decision that led to members of the team getting hurt." Shepard knew it was his fault, and he didn't like it when people tried to tell him otherwise. The truth was the truth, and he had to accept that and work to improve as a leader.

"You made a mistake, sure." Jacob admitted. "But at the end of the day we wouldn't have been able to regroup if it wasn't for you leading the survivors through that Collector infested shithole. That counts for something." Shepard opened his mouth, hesitated, and then closed it.

He supposed that Jacob was right to a certain extent. But it still doesn't excuse what happened. He had a choice and made the wrong call. Still, Shepard was glad that everyone was alive.

"Thanks, Jacob." Shepard smiled.

Jacob suddenly chuckled to himself, Shepard raised a questioning eyebrow.

"You remember the time we fought our way out of that mess of criminals on Omega after finding out Garrus was Archangel?" Shepard nodded, smiling at the memory.

In the heat of the moment Shepard couldn't believe that the famed Archangel was none other than his friend Garrus. The turian had still been fighting the good fight for an entire two years after Shepard's 'death' and the disbandment of the Normandy crew. Shepard felt a bit of pride at that, knowing he had served and still continues to serve with individuals like that.

"Remember the end?" Jacob grinned. "Right when the last of us were loading up in the dropship?"

Shepard burst out laughing as the exact memory Jacob was referring to came to mind. Indeed, the fight was long and brutal. The army of pirates, mercenaries, and other misfits came in from multiple directions but they had fought through the opposition and reached the extraction point. Just as everyone was boarded, Zaeed, the last one to make it, received a good smattering of rounds that depleted his biotic barrier. It just so happened that one projectile to penetrate his armor landed right on his buttocks.

Jacob, still laughing, did his best to impersonate the old veteran when he was confined to the infirmary after the fact. "I swear, if one of you degenerates laugh one more time I will unscrew your head and shit down your neck!" That's right, Zaeed, one of the most feared mercenaries around, will forever be known by the Normandy crew as the mercenary that got shot in the ass by some two-bit batarian pirate too stupid to tell the difference between his ass and his elbow.

That was the stuff of legend.

The two men barked in laughter at the memory, momentarily forgetting about the troubles of the real world.

"Good memories man." Jacob chuckled softly.

"Yeah…" Shepard agreed.

Shepard was about to open his mouth, when the sound of soft footsteps got his attention. Both men turned towards the infirmary's entrance, and were pleasantly surprised to see Kasumi and Miranda, with the former holding a tray of food, arrive unexpectedly.

"Hey guys." Kasumi beamed in her usual enthusiastic demeanor.

"Kasumi, Miranda." Jacob acknowledged, grateful for the visitors. "What brings you two here?"

"I had some free time on my hands so I figured I'd visit you." Miranda admitted.

"Ah, nice." Jacob rolled his eyes sarcastically. "Nice to see where your priorities lie."

The Cerberus operative, to her credit, chuckled softly at the playful jab. Shepard smiled at the scene, glad that his friends were happily joking with each other after a very real near death experience for all of them.

"I wanted to visit too." Kasumi smirked. "Swung by Gardener and picked up some food for you." She held out the tray of steaming steak and mashed potatoes. Jacob accepted the offering, and immediately set about devouring the mountain of food.

"You're an angel, Kasumi." Jacob said between mouthfuls of food. "Feels like a lifetime ago since I've had a nice hot meal."

"So!" Kasumi exclaimed happily. "What were you guys talking about?"

Shepard chuckled. "The time that Zaeed got shot in the ass." He said matter of factly.

Kasumi giggled and even Miranda softly smiled at the memory.

"Yeah, poor guy will never be able to live that down. His poor ego."

"Say!" Kasumi continued. "Since we've been working so hard to fight the Collectors these past few hours, I think it's high time for a little vacation. Maybe pay the Citadel a visit?"

Shepard noticed Miranda frowning in the corner of his eye. "Kasumi we can't just go visit the Citadel after what happened down there."

Shepard hummed to himself in thought, which got the attention of everyone else.

Miranda raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Going to the Citadel might serve a purpose beyond just a small vacation." Shepard answered cryptically, still feeling the gears in his head turning.

"And what does that bloody mean?" The Australian women exasperated.

"We'll talk about that later, still need to think." Shepard stood up. "I'll be in my office, Miranda, I'll call you once I have something." Miranda glared at Shepard, annoyed that the man hadn't given her an answer, but otherwise relented.

"Fine."

Shepard left the infirmary at a brisk pace, nodding towards Chakwas.

He might just have a plan after all.

•••

Within the bowels of hell, the demon does not tire in his ceaseless work. It is the natural order of things that those that seek to oppose him and all he stands for must be purged with extreme prejudice.

Spartan B312 moved like an untrackable agent of death and destruction. Electrical signals moved from his brain through his nerves at blinding speeds, propelling his limbs and body to unfathomable velocities for a biological humanoid.

His combat environment was an immense, circular room, filled with alien machinery and equipment, that while unidentifiable to the Spartan, served a purpose. The soldier effortlessly danced and glided across the room, slipping behind Collector machines and technology.

The centerpiece of the room was the prize, the source of the gravitational fluctuations.

The ship's reactor.

It was of an alien design, the size of a relatively large house, and it dominated the room with its intimidating bottom of the device looked almost like a massive, metallic tree stump. The silvery metallic material shimmered in the dim light of the room. Dozens of large roots, what Yuri could only assume is some sort of circuitry, connected the reactor to the room's machinery in a seemingly illogical way. Some of this circuitry stretched all the way to the edges of the room, passing through the walls towards some unknown destination.

The ceiling had a structure that seemed to mirror the base of the reactor, with the difference being it was upside down. In the center was without a doubt the source of the gravitational fluctuation. It was a massive blinding blue orb of light, as bright as a star, and the size of a scorpion tank. Wrapped around the odd anomaly was essentially a grid of hyper strong metallic fiber.

It wrapped around the orb like a sort of cocoon, shaped like a pillar that connected the base of the structure with its ceiling. While it was difficult to see thanks to the blinding light, in between the cage were pieces of that strange orange glass looking material that Yuri noticed on the stasis pods.

Based on the design of the reactor, Yuri had a feeling that breaching the cage would spell disaster for the reactor, as it seemed that cage was there to contain the pure energy emitted by the reactor.

It could also spell disaster for Yuri.

Unfortunately, Yuri didn't really have the time to line up a shot. The Spartan dodged out of the way as the swarm of insects tried to bury him again.

Collector troops poured through the door constantly, but were easily dispatched by the Spartan. They weren't the problem, it was those damn bugs. Everytime the Spartan tried to line up a shot on the reactor with his strange Collector beam weapon, the swarm came down on him with increased aggressiveness.

It was obvious that these things either possessed some sort of hive mind that allowed them to form some level of higher intelligence like the Lekgolo, or there was something controlling them.

"Assuming control."

Yuri rolled his eyes as one of the Collectors transformed, taking on the appearance of some sort of demonic entity. It glowed with energy as it raised a hand, and let loose a ball of biotic energy. Yuri sidestepped the attack, diving behind some machinery, and circling around the biotic wielding alien.

The alien tried to turn around to face the flanking Spartan, but it was too late, Yuri lashed out with his kukri and lopped off its head.

"This form is as irrelevant, as your struggle." The disembodied voice spoke dispassionately. Yuri ignored it, and continued his rampage, killing Collectors and avoiding the ever persistent swarm.

Six did well to avoid over expending his own munitions, but with the way things are going now, it seemed like he wasn't going to have much of a choice. The Collector numbers seemed unending, and the enemy knew that they could just widdle him down through a long battle of attrition.

Yuri realized that he needed to act now. The idea he had in mind wasn't the best idea, but in the moment it was his best option.

The Spartan pulled out his Collector beam weapon and took aim at the reactor core. In one swift motion, he depressed the trigger and then locked his armor, diverting everything short of essential life support to prioritize shield strength. This would make Yuri immobile, but also give him remarkable durability as his shield strength was ramped up to significant levels of strength.

Yuri felt his body go rigid, and his shield indicator slowly turned green, indicating that it was overcharged. The armor lock prevents Yuri from moving anything, even his fingers. But it didn't matter as his finger was already squeezed around the trigger. The thin lance of yellow light began to burn through the reactor's casing.

The angry swarm of unnatural insects latched onto every inch of the Spartan's body, and even from within his armor the hyper lethal could feel the weight of the insects pushing down on him.

Yuri polarized his visor and cut off his audio receptors in preparation for what was to come. Seconds went by as his shield began to deplete, and Spartan B312 began to wonder if his weapon was even capable of breaching the cage.

Just when it seemed like the Spartan had made the wrong call, there was a deafening bang that made Yuri's ears ring despite the fact that his audio receptors were turned off. Blinding blue light pierced his polarized visor, forcing him to close his eyes.

An overwhelming force shattered Six's enhanced shields and struck the Spartan with so much force that it felt like his body had shattered into a million pieces. He could feel himself flying through the air, as if he were free falling from orbit. Another several seconds went by before he impacted the ground and violently skidded to a halt.

Six coughed up blood. With the adrenaline still pumping in his body and the knowledge that he still needed to escape, the supersoldier ignored the pain in his bones and muscles. He unlocked his armor and returned his audio receptors and visor to their normal setting before standing back up. Six stood up and discarded the Collector weapon that had been completely deformed from the explosion.

His attention was now back towards the reactor room, bathed in a blue light several orders of magnitude brighter than before. He had breached the reactor, and that explosion was a result of some sort of violent energy release.

Now that the Collectors and those bugs had been vapourized by the explosion, Yuri had more time. The Spartan shouldered his Spartan laser, hugging the corner of one of the corridors. This would allow the Spartan to quickly take cover from any more violent outbursts from the reactor. Six hoped that the few hundred meters between him and the reactor would tip the odds of survival in his favor.

Yuri's visor polarized again, and he switched to thermal. Most of the area in front of him glowed red hot, indicating that the entire room was hundreds of degrees in temperature. This wouldn't harm a fully armored Spartan, but it was a good indicator that the reactor was on the verge of throwing a tantrum.

Yuri aimed his laser at the glowing white orb in the center of the room and depressed the trigger. The targeting laser deployed, and the sophisticated weapon uttered a high-pitched whine that increased in frequency over a second. Once it reached the zenith of its charge, the characteristic spear of red light lanced through the air and towards its target.

The instant it did so, Yuri backed behind cover and braced himself by locking his armor again. Milliseconds later, an earth-shattering explosion orders of magnitude more violent than the last shook the ship down to its frame. A wave of energy and heat rushed down that corridor of the ship. Some of it passed by Yuri, but in such a contained environment, some of the energy outburst changed directions and slammed into Yuri, once again flinging him down the hallway. MJOLNIR did its best to shrug off the damage, but the shields failed under the assault, and Yuri could feel the intense heat under his armor.

Luckily, MJOLNIR was designed to withstand impacts from Covenant plasma weaponry, so apart from a burning sensation that Yuri could feel all over his body, he was fine. It was the problem of the shockwave itself that resulted in the damage.

It felt like a brute chieftain had just struck him with its hammer. He could feel his skeleton and organs compress to the point that the Spartan felt like he was on the verge of emptying the contents of his stomach.

Six took a ragged breath, and stood up on a knee. A quick look at his armor's HUD showed that the ship's oxygen content was running out: the reactor explosion had just blown a hole in the ship which was why the atmosphere was depleting: it was being vented out into space. This meant that Yuri had a convenient means of escape.

The Spartan clenched a fist in resolute defiance, and despite his injuries now compounded with the trauma his body had sustained from the Didact, Storm Covenant, and Prometheans, he stood up.

Time to get out of here.

Yuri took a step forward, then another, until he had forced himself into a jog. Yuri shouldered his rifle, ready for anything trying to get between him and freedom.

"This vessel is insignificant, meaningless." Yuri ignored the voice as he continued back towards the fiery, hellish remains of the reactor room, he stumbled slightly but quickly composed himself as another explosion rocked the ship.

"We are legion." It continued monologuing, convinced that Yuri cared enough to listen. "The Reapers will come and not even you can hope to stop them."

Not even you? Six forced himself to focus, something else exploded, and the ship violently changed direction. This suggested uneven thrust, which suggested one of the engines had just been destroyed.

Time was running out. If Yuri lost focus or succumbed to the pain or injuries then he'd be vapourized.

That was not going to happen.

Six broke out into a sprint, moving as fast as he could, the mounting pain grew worse, but the Spartan didn't care: he did not come this far to die like this.

"You who have come from beyond the stars, beyond our reach." It knows? How does it know? Now that really got the Spartan's attention.

"You who have slain demons, and gods, and titans." Six stumbled again from his injuries. He was almost there. More explosions shook the vessel violently, indicating that there wasn't much time left, probably only seconds.

"Your fight is pointless." Yuri looked through the door leading into the reactor room, now completely unrecognizable.

"Demon."

The familiar title wormed its way into the Spartan's brain. Through means unknown, this thing had figured out where he came from, and what he had done. How? How could it do that? Telepathy? He was facing a race of aliens that could read minds? The possibility was concerning, as this represents a massive security breach.

Something to worry about later.

Yuri found a massive hole in the floor, meters wide. He looked down and was greeted by the familiar inky blackness of space. In the distance, was a planet, Earth-like in nature, yet different from the other colony he had expected to see. It was clear that this vessel had traveled to another star system while Six was busy causing chaos in its interior.

Still, he was grateful that he had a place to land.

Without a second thought, Yuri plunged into the unforgiving abyss, grabbing onto a protruding piece of metal. He pushed off of the ship with as much strength as he could muster from his legs, propelling him towards the planet.

The sounds of explosions and chaos were quickly replaced by the deathly silence of space. The Spartan looked behind him at the Collector ship, noticing that the damage had spread to encompass the entire vessel. Explosions began to tear the vessel apart as its systems and architecture failed until finally, the ship's engines and the remains of the reactor failed under the strain, and the cruiser exploded as if it were a miniature supernova.

Luckily, Six was no longer close enough to be caught in the explosion, and the debris catapulted into the planet's orbit was not close enough to pose a problem.

With the immediate threat neutralized, Yuri allowed himself to relax slightly as the Earth-like planet grew larger on approach. Light from the planet's star illuminated the side of the planet that Yuri would land on, providing him with a rough picture of what to expect. From the looks of it, he'd likely be landing in a forested area not too far away from one of the planet's oceans, not much smaller than Earth's Atlantic ocean.

Yuri decided to take the time to self debrief, something he had been doing for several years to help keep him focused.

His fight with the Didact had mysteriously sent him to a new galaxy, one much more different than his own. Humanity mostly seemed to be doing fine, they were part of a large galactic community of alien species that seemed to work together to run the galaxy and prevent major conflicts. This was good and bad. Good because humanity wasn't being genocided and bad because there wasn't much stopping the other alien species from using their power to bully humanity into submission, imposing economic sanctions and the like to prevent humanity from ever being significant on the galactic theater.

There wasn't much evidence of this being a significant problem but it was always good to be vigilant.

It was strange.

Sure, Six spent some time purging insurrectionist groups at the start of his military career, but there was only so much Ackerson could do to hide him from the upper echelons of ONI. Once they learned about his existence, ONI transferred him, and before he knew it he was slaughtering Covenant in the thousands. Understandably, ONI figured it would be a waste to dedicate Spartans to cleaning up Insurrectionists when the Covenant was rampaging through human controlled space.

But the point is, hostile interactions with genocidal aliens was the life that Yuri had lived. For Six to go from the galaxy he had lived in to this galaxy was shocking. The super soldier had never known a life where humanity was coexisting peacefully with aliens for the most part.

Even after the war there still exist factions that splintered from the Covenant who hold just as much animosity towards humanity. Yuri's post-war operations involved numerous engagements against such groups until he was reassigned to find Master Chief, something that Yuri pressed ONI about for almost three years after the war had ended.

Six found himself getting sidetracked again.

Let's focus back to what matters now.

His attempts to hack into the batarian computers afforded him some information but not enough, so information gathering was high on his priority list.

It seems that the Collectors are becoming a thorn in humanity's side if this encounter was of any indication. The fact that the Collectors seem privy to Yuri's origins was concerning. How much did they know? How did they know? Telepathy? Some of Yuri's research confirmed that the asari were capable of reading minds in a sense which didn't surprise the Spartan too much given his encounters with Gravemind.

So does this mean that the Collectors have a similar ability? The Spartan clenched his jaws at such a possible similarity with the Flood. This will require more study.

In the meantime, he needed to figure out where he was, how to get off this world, and where to go from here.

At the end of the day, Yuri's main objective was the same.

Find a way back to UNSC controlled space… whatever it took.

Six sighed quietly within the confines of his armor, disappointed with his current situation. Still, he had an objective, he had rules of engagement, and he still has standing orders from his superiors.

That was all he needed.

Nothing else.

Yuri locked his armor in preparation for the impact. His body heated up slightly as he entered the planet's atmosphere and reached terminal velocity. The ground below him grew closer and closer, and Yuri calmly waited to make landfall. He had a lot of work to do; an entire galaxy to explore and learn about and new enemies to defeat.

The other Spartans would envy him, he was sure.

The second he struck the dirt, Yuri felt his world go black.

•••

Phew, what a long ass chapter. So yeah, evidently I didn't have lots of time to write this chapter within a reasonable time frame. I'm just gonna need to find a way to incorporate writing into my daily schedule. Honestly not too much to say. Busy with real life stuff as always but I will do what I can to update whenever possible.

I noticed some criticism so I'll respond.

There was a comment on Shepard's behaviour with respect to him basically saying the Alliance should be responsible for colonies that are not actually part of the Alliance. My reasoning here is that I see Shepard as someone that takes his duty to the extreme. He is a soldier through and through, and takes his duty very seriously. In this case, the Collectors are a threat to humanity's existence. In Shepard's mind, it doesn't matter if the colony in question likes or dislikes the Alliance. Everyone should be protected, because that is what soldiers should do. It can be seen as a character flaw, because it shows that Shepard is willing to impose himself on protecting people that might not want to be protected. Look, if a character flaw is enough for you to drop the story, then don't read it. I care about the criticism. I do not care about people announcing they are going to stop reading my story due to something they don't like as if that is going to make me feel bad.

Don't say you're going to not read the story, just stop reading it.

Anyways, let's continue.

Noticed a comment about spoilers, specifically about chapter 3. The reason I foreshadowed the outcome in chapter 2 was to build suspense. Sure, it tips people off that Six is gonna do some killing but it doesn't give away exactly what's going to happen. So omitting the chapter wouldn't give the reader closure about how Six escaped the batarians. I could have made chapter 3 come before but I wanted to build suspense. Since most people liked chapter 3 I must be doing something right.

Not entirely sure what was wrong with Six's behaviour in chapter 4. I don't see anything high profile or oversharing about the way he conducts himself. I read over the chapter and saw no instances of him giving away classified information or anything of the sort. Yeah I could have had him find all the information he needed from hacking the batarian computers but that's lazy writing. I don't want the characters to have all the answers to everything, especially not so early in the story. Furthermore, Noble Six is a Spartan indoctrinated since the age of 6 into the military. The military is all he knows, so of course he is going to identify himself as UNSC to anything that isn't UNSC. Don't see the issue here.

As for his interactions with the Alliance. Yeah there is the possibility that the Alliance could try to lock him up but think of it this way. Six was thrown into a new galaxy on a planet filled with batarians that locked him up then tried to kill him. He is in a situation where getting off world with all of these freed civilians is a very difficult task considering that the world he is on could very well be filled to the brim with more batarians. The Alliance is the closest thing to familiar in the Mass Effect universe. So, really, the Alliance would probably be his best bet at escaping the planet. Sometimes you gotta take risks, right? Even though this went right for Six, future chapters may involve risk taking going wrong. I can't have everything go right all the time because that's just boring.

Please be more specific with future critiques. For example, if Six is acting out of character like "oversharing" or what not, maybe tell me exactly where this was happening? Like a quote from a chapter? It's sometimes difficult to pick out mistakes in your own writing so an extra pair of eyes is helpful.

Anyways, that's all I have to say. Reviews are very positive so I am happy. As always, let me know how I did. In particular, I'm worried that the fight scenes might be too repetitive and the dialogue scenes are too dry. If there are any critiques please be as specific as possible, it really helps.

Thanks!