Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now. Off to write the Next Chapter. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 41: Collectors Part 3
The Collectors were much like insects, in their appearance with synthorganic chitin exo-skeletons, their use of swarm tactics, their use of a centralised breeding unit in the form of a massive cloning factory, and a central commander, a general. The creature in question was shorter, a wider head, it's limbs replaced by several long insect like spindly legs that stabbed into individual pools of black fluids, each of them connected to and acting as consoles. The Creature's widened mass of grey matter and multiple limbs contributed greatly to it's mutli-tasking, case in point, the general was managing a scavenger operation across entire chunks of Union Territory acquiring specimens from this Harbinger forsaken region of space. Then one of the traps that the Collector's had put into place was activated.
Reaper's lace their technology with traps, as their slaves so to does the Collectors, the more important the technology the more vicious the trap. Few pieces of technology was more important than the IFF, if the Citadel was the focal point of the Mass Relay network, a main hub holding it all together where, the IFF is the key, unlocking all of the network's hidden secrets and realising it's full potential. Thus the device was filled with a vicious computer virus, overwhelming enemy systems, disabling ships, spreading itself through the enemy network and transmitting its location. Infected pieces of technology would soon start to transmit indoctrination signal, but the accursed Union has long since been working towards it's nullification, given time they would beat the virus as well, the opening created by the disabling must be utilised to destroy or retrieve the IFF. The Beacon gave away the location of the ship that attempted to install the IFF, Union territory of course, thus more Collector ships were deployed in order to retrieve it. And then the signal from the Collector ship disappeared, and the beacon was still on.
Shepard looked out a view window from the room she had rented aboard the station. Well rented, technically it was a military base not a hotel. Taking a reasonable number of precautions the Normandy was isolated to a degree, locked inside of a massive isolation room until such time as the Reaper Virus that was planted inside of the IFF device was thoroughly scoured. In the mean time said device was attracting all kinds of attention, the first Collector ship to appear was in for several nasty surprises, a one two punch of a the natural pulsar star which much like the ion pulse they used to attack Union ships fried their shields and other electronics. The star emits these pulsars with enough regularity to be timed, so that's exactly what the Union does using multiple thick layers of shielding to block radiation and regularly disabling all electronics in time with the pulsars, because of this the station was able to function smoothly.
The Collector's ships on the other hand didn't have the proper shielding or the advance knowledge of the pulsars, thus it was effectively dead in the water after the first pulsar. The Kruban on the other hand was already on its way over to take the now derelict ship. Why? Because this was likely one of the same Collector ships that had been bush-wacking Union ships and there still could be people on board alive, but also, They had one Reaper IFF, and soon they'll have more as well. But right now fighting against the Collectors wasn't at the top of Shepard's priority list, by orders of her commanders, the big bosses want more people to have the experience fighting against Reaper forces and they want the people with the most experience on stand by ready for the offensive.
The First group has Zaeed, Grunt and a bunch of Vorcha on the offensive, Shepard wasn't afraid of them getting bush whacked by the Collectors and even if they were? The newly created Dragon's Teeth protocol EDI made after what happened to the Hood would have the head decapitated by their armour the moment that the Husk Spike skewers them. No heads, no husks, no chance for the Grey Box's to be corrupted by Reaper nanites, and as long as they can bring the head back then their minds could be put back into new bodies. So Shepard started her day.
"Your under armour has been cleaned and is waiting for you to put on commander. Would you like breakfast before you're deployed?"
"Something fast would be nice, can't expect the Collectors to be courteous enough to wait." Shepard replied as she let out a stretch as her attention turned to Liara. The Shadow Broker had yet to get dressed that morning, based on the way that she was tapping on the space in front of her it looks like she had Shadow Broker Business to take care of. "Need anything Liara?"
"A Detailed schematic of how to build a Mass Effect generator using Neu Eezo as a core would be nice." Liara admitted as she let out a sigh. "The Salarian's have already lost three laboratories." Course they recently got an influx of prison labourers to do the risky grunt work of the experiments but that was hardly any consolation to the facilities that had been torn apart already.
"I meant for breakfast."
"Oh." Liara considered the situation briefly, concluded that swallowing Shepard's bodily fluids didn't affect her negatively, and followed up that conclusion with a lack of knowledge of Union cuisine. "Anything's good."
Shepard went to the Station's mail system. Two Blueberry muffins with butter, considered how much she really had to eat considering her size and metabolism, and followed that up with an order of bacon, eggs and a milkshake. In the bowels of the station, a kitchen stove dinged indicating that it finished a batch of several different types of muffins. The oven opened up and several mechanical arms pushed the muffins onto a conveyor belt, a pair of mechanical arms sucked two of the muffins up and put them into a plastic box. At the next stop eggs perfectly fried sunny side up along with bacon were loaded into and sealed inside of a paper tray before being loaded into the container. At a third stop milk and ice-cream had been loaded inside of a blender and was now shaking slightly as it liquefied it's contents before pouring it into a paper cup and sealed it with a paper lid before being secured inside of the box. The Box continued on it's way through the Conveyor belt and was loaded into a pneumatic tube and shot through the station's numerous layers of conveyor belts and elevators before being dropped into Shepards rented apartment. The Dragoon opened the box, gave Liara her muffin and started to eat breakfast.
Zaeed only ever worked with one Krogan before, got some good results out of him at the time but the old lizard didn't like following orders very much, but that's because he was experienced enough to make snap decisions and powerful enough to take on the monsters that they were fighting with. Zaeed anticipated he would have the opposite problem with this brat. Some of the Vorcha worked with Krogan before, as a rule they measure how much battle experience their would be masters have by the condition of their crests, They start out as individual pieces, harden as they reach adult hood, and continue to grow throughout their life accumulating damage as they go into battle. Based on his size this one should be an adult but his crest indicated he was still a child, then he got an explanation from the Kid's 'Father.'
Clones. Worse than clones, genetically engineered super clones. It's one thing when the bloody skeletons take war vets and put their consciousnesses into the body but it's another thing entirely to throw actual literal newborns into the line of fire and expect them to give the same results as grown men. Give him synths any day, at least they know how to follow orders.
"Y'all should already have some idea of what we're dealing with from your quote unquote father. But we'll go over it again. The buggers we'll be dealing with are called Collectors, they're synthorganic zombies made in the image of another lot that you lot know as Protheans by a lot we call the Reapers." Grunt grinned at that, as did the several other Krogan that were aboard the boarding vessel with him. Okeer attempted to give them knowledge of the Collectors, but Shepard burned her clashes against the Reaper's forces from Feros, Noveria, Therum and the Citadel into their minds. "The main takeaway about the Collectors is that all of em are psionic and biotic and can fly, aside from that though they fight like normals. The real issue here is that we don't know what else they have up their sleeves." Shepard gave them the rundown on the Revenants before they boarded, so that's the answer of what they've been doing to the humans solved, but there's also Tebrids, Draconics, Flerkin, Chozo and Lithoids that have been taken as well. "We all have two objectives, the first being rescuing anyone that the Collectors have managed to take captive on their ships. The second, getting all of you fighting experience against the bastards." The Krogan cheered at that, the Batarians and Vorcha less so. "So the basics, no going off on your own, no showing off, and look down before you go anywhere. You get skewered, and we're popping your heads off so that we don't have to deal with anymore husks then we have to." Everyone nodded eagerly in response. Not a single one of these Krogan brats were listening to a single thing that he said, Zaeed might be in for a rough time. "Go time people."
The Shuttle shook as it landed on the outside of the ship, helmets folded over their faces as the group went on the offensive, their objective to enter via the air lock. It wasn't as easy a task as they had planned it to be, the bug people were already on the move outside of the ship, and what's worse is that they came armed to the nines.
"Warp ammo!" Zaeed called out and the Vorcha responded in kind their weapons glowing with the familiar might of biotics. "Snipers-!" A loud explosion echoed as one of the Krogan fired off a plasma shot gun, colliding with biotic barriers as people started scattering into the air. Bloody amateurs. "Thrust packs now!" Zaeed shouted as he looked at the damage, one Krogan, six batarians and nine Vorcha floating off into the void. "Get the idiot back onto the ship! Snipers take position where you are, biotics give cover now!" The Vorcha threw up a biotic barrier as thrusters on their belts activated, and just in time to block particle beam fire from the Collectors too. The Batarian's also stabilised their position and opened fire on the Collectors, letting their years of boarding ships play in for a positive contribution to the galactic community for once.
Batarian state arms had been dismantled and absorbed into other companies, their flagship product, the Kishock harpoon rifle was redesigned from the ground up, the basic design goal was 'more' larger calibre ammunition, more power behind the shot, the power to cycle through multiple redundant high quality heat sinks to increase the rate of fire. Between the cybernetic enhancements that the Batarian's received and the Union issued hard-suits they were wearing they could take it. The rifles made no noise as they fired, the void of space allowed none, instead the tubes of fabricated on the spot and spat out with a combination of exotic gas propellant and mass manipulating fields ripped through the void and nailed the 'unfortunate' Collectors caught in the path of the shot to the side of their ship. While they were being taken care of Zaeed turned his attention to the lone Krogan who had drifted off into the void after misfiring their weapon. Said smoking heap of a weapon sitting in the Krogan's hands with the individual in question looking like they lost their favourite toy.
"Mass Effect fields are destabilised by Exotic Plasma." Zaeed reminded as he took the machine gun off of the back of the individual in question. "Something that I would've hoped was covered in your tank!" Zaeed shook the weapon into proper machine gun shape and handed it back to its owner. "If you're going to charge in with biotics use this." Unloading a clip into a target at close range was a pretty good approximation of a shot gun blast. "That said don't charge in around this ship. These Cloaca Reapers love to booby trap their mot, so blindly stumbling around is a good way to trip a booby trap. Less yah want a Reaper Stake to get shoved up your Cloaca!" Bloody universal translaters, can't even swear properly.
As Zaeed was talking a nearby door opened up on the ship, the Airlock.
"So when you were talking about traps just now..." Grunt asked off to the side.
"Yes. This is a good example." Zaeed removed one of the grenades on his bandoleer and pulled the pin. "Slam this for me one of you would yahs?" Zaeed threw the little packet full of the promise of violence into the airlock before Grunt slammed down on it into the hole. The exotic plasma grenades went off, mixed with the biotic slam field that Grunt had produced and a massive explosion was let out, significantly widening the air-lock and destroying any nasty surprises in the process. Around that time a second Collector ship appeared from FTL, followed by a third.
"You guys have a lousy sense of timing." Zaeed stated as he looked down at his arm bracer. "Get into the Collector's ship and power down your electronics unless you want them to be fried from the Ion Star pulse." Zaeed stated as he entered the ship proper.
The Station entered a state of dormancy again, the neutron pulse passed, the Collector ships were left smoking husks of their former selves and by the time the ship had reactivated it's various systems the next two ships were ready to deploy. Zaeed led the team as they looked for the people that were taken captive. Sadly, they found some. The Carcass of a Tebrid was crawling along the ceiling, lines of cybernetics connecting them to Custodian Tendrils and two Mass Effect field generators.
"Well that's unfortunate. Ready." Guns cocked throughout the hall. "Fire!" A hail of gun fire was unleashed, and halted. The Generators whirled to life on the Tebrid as orange and purple spewed forward, a large wall shaped biotic barrier formed, and was supplemented by a layer of Omni-gel in the likeness of a sentinel's tech armour, a tech barrier if you will.
"Cowards!" The Krogan weren't going to waste ammunition on this foolishness. The Krogan pulled out the telescopic rods at their sides, clubs much like those used by Shepard and the other Dragoons. The Krogan ran up to the barrier as Zaeed came to a disturbing realisation. "GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!" Without also deploying a means of retaliation the only thing the Carcass could do with the wall is stall. So that meant one of two possibilities, that the Barrier was thrown up so that the Collectors could set up a trap or ambush, or the wall was the trap. A loud explosion echoed out, the Tech Barrier was turned into shrapnel and the Krogan were thrown back as the new figure introduced itself.
The Draconic had been put on steroids, bigger built and thicker muscles, it's horns curved and elongated giving it the appearance of one of the Demons of yore, and yet it was hunched over and struggling to move for the weight on it's shoulders, a Sloshing sack of skin carrying a payload that was bigger than some aliens. The contents of the sack made themselves known as the monster's nose sparked and exotic plasma was spewed forward.
"RRRAAARRRGGGHHH!" And yet these two undead monsters were the least threatening creatures here. The Krogan might not have been given Dragon Scale armour but Durasteel is nothing to laugh at either, certainly not by the relatively fragile omni-gel, the real damage done was from receiving the force of the blast which was able to knock them back. Already Thorian spores, natural Krogan regeneration, and a sophisticated Medical VI program backing Medi-gel and a redundant cybernetic vascular system was working to heal their bodies, but it still hurt, and that meant blood rage. The Krogan caught in the blast charged forward, already the Carcass slinked off into the air on a cloud of biotics while the Demon took their football tackle head on further down the hallway.
"Huu. 'Don't run off on your own, don't use biotics and plasma.'" Zaeed looked at the Batarians and Vorcha that were still present with a dead pan stared, immediately they proceeded to salute Zaeed as if waiting for orders. "Come on. If they're going to be suicidal gits then we're going to take advantage of their initiative." Saying that Zaeed proceeded to chase after their wayward squad members.
The Krogan was everything that Okeer hoped that they would be. Strong, powerful, ripping apart all the obstacles that got in their path, but sadly stupid as a pile of rocks. The Demon lured them over a pit of stakes and the spikes shot out like telescopes and skewered the first Krogan that had charged over. It was an odd sight seeing a Collector confused, watching as the Krogan's own implants garroted him and his severed head roll free of his body that was in the midst of transforming. They would think about it more, but there were several more Krogan that were charging over to rip them limb from limb, so they got over it pretty quickly and instead decided to see if it would happen again instead they were disappointed as instead the blood raging monsters were Lifted into the air by biotic fields. The Demon looked down in time to receive a rather nasty surprise.
"Fire!" Glowing streams of purple light, Particle Beam weapons and Warp Ammo, ripped through the air and through the sack of liquified exotic gas on the monster's back that lit up and detonated in a conflagration of fire and plasma. Zaeed tapped his fingers as he waited for the Krogan to calm down, before he had the Vorcha lower them back down onto their feet. Zaeed glared at Krogan who at least had the common decency to be ashamed for their actions. Zaeed picked up the head of the one Krogan who nearly got turned into a husk before he died and took out his knife. "They say your brain keeps functioning and receiving information after you die. I hope you can feel this you useless pain in my Cloaca!" Zaeed proceed to use the knife to cut open the head and pull out the Grey Box inside before stashing it away and holding the head up. "If you punks don't want this to be you-" Zaeed was interrupted as a the headless body of the Krogan twitched, as if the stake had only now realised it was working with a headless specimen. Zaeed shoved a grenade inside of it and kicked it over, then it blew up and took a bunch of other stakes waiting in the floor to skewer them out in the process. "-FOLLOW BLEEDING ORDERS!"
The Krogan nodded their heads as Zaeed calmed down.
"Okeer give any of you Sentinel implants?" A few Krogan nodded their heads. What the rest of Council space calls a sentinel they know as a warlord, a Krogan who has lived long enough and acquired the suitable training and technology to use sentinel techniques. They are the highest ranked Krogan in their social hierarchy, to the point that many clans do not even have one, and hold little patience for matters of honour instead having to be the ones to make the most ruthless and pragmatic decisions as heads of state. Naturally Okeer was already working to set up the next generation but Zaeed had no patience for Krogan politics. "Download Sentinel training."
A process that only took a few moments. It's difficult to ask Vorcha and the Batarians to screen shots for the Krogan. Aside from the potential waste of lives from sticking people into the crossfire of Krogan and Collectors it was also bordering on the edge of being impossible with the sheer size difference between Krogan and the other normal' sized people. So instead the Krogan were in the front, newly downloaded instructions on how to manufacture tech armour gave them an extra layer on top of Durasteel armour, biotic barriers and general Krogan hardiness. They were spread out so that the other mercenaries could fire shots in the gaps between them. So long as nobody get's point blank Tech barrier shrapnel again the rest of this mess of a mission should be relatively easy. Of course, that's built on the presumption that they don't run into anymore of those blasted plasma spewing demons.
"We release a singularity once every 20 feet." Zaeed informed as the group moved forward. "Try and trip up those undead bastards and get them caught in their own explosion."
When dealing with enemy territory full of traps, it's better to go with the mine sweeper methodology. Take a log and roll it down the hill where you think the mines are, and when that gets destroyed you use another log. Because of that they were able to catch the next of the stomping fire, brimstone and plasma demons by surprise. The one after that though ended up catching them by surprise, but that was because it managed to become even more fire and brimstone like.
"Did it amuse you Union? To traipse through wherever you like flaunting your meagre victory as you have been?" The latest of the Draconic Husks they've had the 'pleasure' of encountering was lit up, it's entire body glowing a ghastly orange as if the entire thing was on fire, or to be more accurate it was possessed.
"Yeah Little bit." Zaeed admitted while he checked the sights on his weapon. "How does it feel knowing that you lost the spare key to the front door of your little base of operations?" The monster's mouth glowed as if he was getting ready to breathe fire, and then snapped shut. "See the problem is that everything we can tell from the level of technology of Sovereign compared to the Collectors is that the Collectors are vastly inferior, hell they don't even bother building proper ships, they just make due by hollowing out chunks of unrefined neutron mass pulled outta a black hole. Which means you basically consider them to be disposable. So what the Shroud do the Collectors have now that you're putting up this much of a fuss?"
The Union wanted information, which meant that they investigate, part of that investigation was taking apart the Collector's Ships, but it also included talking, trying to get a rile out of them to see what would anger them the most. The reverse was also true, that to get information by this method you have to give information first. Not that they were intent on telling them this, but if the Collectors lost one of their IFF's prior to Sovereign's destruction then it wouldn't be enough of a matter to be worth getting involved personally. The Collectors by themselves have nothing that's worth protecting that's more potent than existing union or Citadel technology, what they're making on the other hand...
"Take your pathetic victories and flaunt them as much as you want if it offers you some comfort before you're taken, for they will be among the last. But you will not be the ones to tell your allies."
The Ship started to rumble, whatever power source it operated off of was rapidly destabilising as it's self destruct sequence was initiated. Immediately Grunt cast a stasis on the possessed monstrosity as the rest of the Mercenaries began to evacuate the ship, Grunt following closely behind. The Neutron shell of the Ship would absorb most of the blast, the issue was getting out in time. Luckily there was a high number of biotics there, with lift they were able to reduce their body weight so that they could move faster, with their booster back belts they can speed up but the issue laid in turning, thus Zaeed came up with the solution.
"Singularity 3 o'clock, ten meters!" Zaeed already memorised the layout of the rock the Collectors called a ship on his way over, he's thus fully away of the number of turns taken, the distance walked between each turn, and thus knows where each tunnel meets. Thus while they're flying through the tunnels he's setting up the ship for demolision work. "Plasma shot gun now!" One of the Krogan fired their weapon at the field and the explosion collapsed the wall. Their total escape time was less than a minute, a minimal amount of turning and only a few explosions and the group was flying out of the ship, and just in time too as it soon exploded.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: I believe I've talked at length about my dissatisfaction with the third game's ending and how I would've changed it at length already.
Guest: Okeer has a Kishock Harpoon rifle, which like all the weapons from the Mass Effect games manufactures it's own ammunition automatically, no reloads required.