Author's Note: It has been a bad week for writing, hopefully the long week end helps to fix that issue. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 42: Collectors Part 4
Sparatus looked down at the moon that now had a massive crater in it that wasn't there yesterday. Yesterday it was a massive length of stone and dirt that was being torn out of the side of the planet by an experimental Neu Eezo core. Then the charge was reversed and this happened, it was only the fail safes that he insisted be installed into the device that kept the entire astral body from being turned into a black hole, and the fact that it was already a uninhabitable rock that kept it from going through a mass extinction event.
"Business is booming I take it?" The familiar voice of Admiral Shepard sounded from behind Sparatus, of course he expected to see her here.
"I could do with fewer booms." Sparatus admitted not turning to face the Admiral.
"A gift, two to be precise." The latest in heat sink technology, the stealth drive that would capture and contain the emissions from the ship rendering it undetectable to most censors in the process, the second a Reaper IFF Drive, scrubbed of malicious Reaper Coding after it was pulled out of the wreck of a Collector ship. Considering that they only had three of them giving one away was already more than generous. Hopefully with more people working on the task they can reverse engineer the damned thing and start mass producing them.
"So you can access the Collector's base now?" Sparatus asked sounding suspicious.
"We have three tries, including yours, we're hoping we don't screw up." Admiral Shepard stated as she handed the Turian a Datapad, an invitation on a datapad more accurately. Sparatus let out a sigh of annoyance.
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
Omega was unrecognisable from the days of yore, long gone was its streets stained with blood, it's strip clubs, drug dens, even vast chunks of it's Eezo mines were being stripped away. It was down right respectable. It took Sparatus mere moments to recognise the meeting room for the Union and Citadel ambassadors to discuss the impending attack on the Collectors base of operations from intel reports, Aria's personal hellhole Afterlife. The Council wasn't here right now, considering how badly their recent screw ups had affected their standing and all that, instead military leaders from each of the council races had been sent forward. Sparatus looked around at familiar and new faces alike.
Matriarch Aetheya was one of the few Asari he actually respects, a hardliner who had on more than one occasion spoken out for a more militant approach to Asari politics, and was officially laughed into self imposed exile. Unofficially however? Asari just love misdirection. 'Of course we don't have a sizeable military force, that's what we have the Turian's for' or 'What we aren't the ones spying on you, it must have been a Salarian.' From what he's heard of Aetheya the only reason why she would be doing this is because she was told to, and she was told to because of everyone within the republic's government she was the best at it.
Not like this slippery little Pyjak, the Salarian barely looked old enough to even be taking part in this meeting, it honestly wouldn't surprise Sparatus to learn that she was one of the rumoured Thorian hybrids the Salarian's were working on.
The Elcor was a good sight here, physically stronger than the Krogan with an actual organised military backing them up on top of that. You haven't seen artillery until you've seen a Elcor chewing through the battlefield with twin spitfires.
Ambassador Din Korlack stood at his side, the man could work magic with scrounging up supplies and you don't quite appreciate what that's like until after you've cratered a planet or two working on experimental technology with the Salarians.
The Hanar were in a corner, the tentacled bastards standing in a corner with one of their infamous Drell assassins. The Turian heard that many of the lizards were coming out of retirement, Kepral syndrome was a disease that occurs when the originally desert dwelling Drell breathes in too much moisture, causing their lung tissue to rapidly deteriorate. The Thorian probably took care of that, cantankerous bastard that he was he never passed up an opportunity to prove his 'benevolence.'
Thankfully he didn't see any Batarian's here, anything resembling their legitimate government was firmly stuck where they belong, their home-world turned prison world.
Urdnot Wrex was here as well, alongside his mate Bakara, The Quarian Admiral Raan was nearby trading notes about their respective infrastructure, a Geth Prime standing off to the side. The Vorcha Clan head at least was being a good host as he had several of his daughters serving drinks and food to the guests, he tried he really did, but the Vorcha were far from the Asari in what is effectively every conceivable way.
Other familiar faces were here too, Cherrel Kahn with a Mero woman in a watery wheelchair to one side, a Tebrid playing a game to another. The Three Lithoids of the Trade Federation were a little away from them. Xidre and a Flerkin woman were off to the side. The Draconic Monk that he had given a Codex of languages to, if he knew that it would give them control over their god he would've saved it for a better deal. A Baol sat off to the side, a formality, the Thorian was inside of the head of every person on board this station that wasn't a Turian or a Quarian, the Gestalt Hive mind had no shortage of representatives already.
Finally there were the Humans, Admiral Shepard was the head of the Expeditionary fleet, responsible for researching foreign objects, making first contact, and if necessary picking off distant threats, Admiral Hackett on the other hand is responsible for defending union territory, which meant that up until now he was the one dealing with Prethoryn, until their own civil war managed to reduce the space borne abominations enough that he could divert his attention and forces to dealing with other threats like the Collectors.
"We shall now begin this meeting planning the attack on the Collectors base." Xidre stated as he revealed their proposed first move, a single Custodian drone. "This drone has been prepared with a Quantum entanglement communications array. No matter where it goes it will be able to continue transmitting back to us." The other people in the meeting nodded their heads. There was a reason why this meeting was being held here. Omega was directly next to the Omega 4 Relay, that is to say the Collector's base of operations. Which meant that they were effectively parked on their door step and were now getting ready to go on the offensive. The Custodian drone was fired through the relay...
"It appears to be taking an abnormally long time for a transmission to come back." The Tebrid technician reported, until a few minutes had gone by. "There we go! No wait now it's distorted." Which should be impossible considering this was Quantum entanglement they were talking about here, unless... "Oh there we go." A video file started to play out on a holographic screen, or at least started to, but the only thing that appeared was a black void.
"Why can't we see anything?" Sparatus asked impatiently.
"Because the Drone is transmitting from inside of a black hole." The technician replied in a synthesised voice. Various groans were let out in the process.
"Defeated Sigh. No wonder no one has ever come back from the other side of the Omega 4 Relay, without the IFF anything sent through immediately lands inside of a black hole." The Elcor ambassador stated in the usual dispassionate tone the Elcor are known for.
"It also gives a vague idea as to how the Collectors are getting their hands on Neutronium to build their ships in the way they have been." Xidre stated as he tapped his fingers from the possibilities.
"So we send the ship in next right." Aetheya asked voicing the simple solution. "The Union already has the IFF installed onto a stealth ship anyway right? What's the weapons and defences on it look like?"
"Top of the Line of course, including the usual combination of Energy Siphons and matter disentegrator, as well as Dragon Scale armour and multiple layers of redundant shielding." Admiral Shepard explained bluntly prompting an impressed whistle. "Stealth technology only holds any value when the enemy doesn't resort to firing blindly into the void."
"That Just leaves the matter of selecting personnel to go on ahead." As the Quarian Admiral said that the black screen was replaced with a list of potential candidates from Union territory. As specified in their own datapads the various senators brought along lists of their own special forces to be deployed on the mission and plugged the information into the terminals significantly increasing the number of potential individuals to attend the mission in question.
Speaking of potential candidates, Grunt was having the time of his life. The Prethoryn had a plethora of planets under their control, which also meant a plethora of monsters that needed putting down. The vat grown Krogan were divided into groups of three and each individual group was sent out to lance a boil the size of a mountain. The Krogan fought wave after wave of Prethoryn, the words of Okeer speaking of their people's history in their ears as they fought, at the climax, a plasma lance released a half formed Prethoryn from the giant womb prematurely. Half formed, but still alive and able and now it was up to the groups of Krogan below to put the mad dogs down. Shepard observed their progress through a set of binoculars as she chewed on a sandwich.
"Are we sure this is gonna work?" Shepard asked as she chewed on her supper.
"With luck yes." Okeer was wearing his ceremonial shaman garb over his armour, hadn't worn it in years but they were short on people who knew the finer details of the rite, basic and bastardised as they are. "The Shriekers aren't exactly Varren or Klixen and that fetal Prethoryn is far from a Thresher maw but aside from that the important parts are intact. Kick the nest, fight the unexpected, get the battle rage under control." That last part was important. Shepard didn't want to have to cripple a Krogan every time that they wake one of them up. "Of course I will be relying on you in the future Battle Master."
"Of course you will. Did you fix the problem with your conditioning yet?" Shepard asked as she got to her main gripe with the whole deal.
"Sadly any stimulation strong enough to impart my wisdom triggers the battle rage." Okeer stated bluntly while tapping his fingers. "The solution we reached then is to fix the tank rather than fixing the conditioning." Five inches of dura-steel wrapped around the tank seemed to do the trick, ten inches when dealing with biotics.
"Just so long as I don't have to cripple anymore kids." Shepard finished her lunch as she watched Grunt in action. Grunt dodged a swipe from one of the Prethoryn's clawed appendages and climbed onto the outstretched limb in question, using his biotics to propel himself further and farther up until he reached the creature's face, and then with a snap of it's jaws the fetus swallowed Grunt whole. "Great." Shepard let out an annoyed sigh. Grunt's armour meant that he would last a while, that just left Shepard and his Krant to dig him out before they'd have to clone him again.
The Prethoryn's throat suddenly exploded, a screaming/laughing figure grabbed hold of a strip of torn flesh and and swung around on it Tarzan style, a charge to propel himself out of the wound, and a lift to swing him up into the air. A cluster shot of Exotic plasma ensued peppering the creature's face taking out an eye in the process. This was then followed up by the rampaging Krogan slamming himself into the face of the Prethoryn with a wrestling styled side drop his already impressive weight between his own bulk and the armour multiplied several fold by a biotic field, all directly into the face of a creature that was already recoiling from the earlier volley of exotic plasma. A loud crack echoed out as the creature's neck was snapped, the corpse face planting and sliding back into the embryonic acid, Grunt left on the ground next to where the grotesque mountain of a zit resided roaring in celebration. And then the man of the hour passed out.
"The Dragoons are a must, we've frankly sunk too much time and energy into them to not at this point." The Highlord was the first to point out the obvious candidates here, they had more than enough genetic information for things to proceed smoothly from there, which to a degree makes Shepard and her siblings 'disposable' to a degree. That isn't to say that he was going to throw them into the jaws of death willy nilly either.
"The Brats Shepard's been raising should've had their rite by now." Wrex added in sitting off to the side. "We should see if one or two of them are suited to the job."
"Spectre Saren has worked more than adequately with the Dragoons before." Sparatus stated bluntly. "As has the officers of C-Sec." Sparatus didn't know what the inside of a Collector ship looked like but if they needed a shot made through a washer hole then he knew just the man for the job.
Garrus popped the heat sink on his rifle having just sniped one of the fetal abominations that was about to TPK a group of Krogan on their rite. Sadly they couldn't all be knockout successes. With that crisis temporarily averted and a group of Custodian's moving in for pick up Garrus turned his attention to the next crisis. The wailing of the infantile Prethoryn was attracting swarms of shriekers to their location, and he didn't have enough material in his weapon's fabricator for all of them, let alone heat sinks. Personally he liked the new heat sink clips for the guns, sure he was technically operating on limited ammo now that he has to load in new sinks instead of venting them, but he could fire more shots faster now, the words 'limited ammo' will make more people take careful consideration for their shots, and with the cooling and energy collecting systems on his suit he could just collect expended clips and reuse them later.
That said if he was just relying on his rifle as normal that swarm might overwhelm him a little, so instead Garrus switched over to the custom particle thrower that Shepard helped prepare for him. Tebrids love writing new programs, Garrus helped them improve their aim calibration ciphers, they made an upgrade to the standard particle thrower that Garrus liked to call 'Shriekers on the Rocks.' Shouldering the heavy weapon, Garrus fired a white beam out of the weapon as the Shriekers came into range, as they were hit the insects were frozen solid. Normally the 'Cryo Ammo' setting on a rifle was only really useful for immobilising a target, but when that immobilised target is a bat thing flying hundreds of feet into the air both suddenly can't move their wings anymore and has been turned into brittle ice, well guess the Thorian wouldn't have much breaking down of the old bodies to do at this point.
"If you want a Volus representative then my bodyguard is more than adequate." Korlack explained as he pointed behind him at an Volus in a bulky hard suit.
Volus claim godly power with their biotics, many are skeptical of the claim. What are facts however is that there is a dedicated Volus Sentinel corps in the Turian Hierarchy, if the L4 Print on the side of his helmet was more than just boasting then he even went through the surgery to have a L4 Refit, on top of that was the unique Biotic techniques that his people developed specifically to compensate for their small size.
"The Gestalt does not have anyone specific to contribute to the operation." Which given the fact that they were a collection of hive minds, kind of makes more than a little bit of sense. "If you all insist on our presence there anyway, we can prepare an organism to act as a medic for the operation." The Others nodded their heads in approval, given the Thorian's healing prowess a specialist at the scene might be extremely useful.
"My Grandson, Gryll." The Vorcha Hostess gestured off to her side, where a Vorcha in a hardsuit clasped his hands together and bowed before the audience.
"The Hanar Ascendancy is honoured to present Thane Krios." The Hanar ambassador gestured to the lizard like man standing next to him.
The Drell were grateful for being rescued by the Hanar, the lack of compatibility between Hanar worlds and Drell biology be damned. Some took advantage of this gratitude and resulted in servitude. The Drell's extremely potent photographic memory makes them excellent spies, and their surprisingly agile and athletic builds makes them terrifyingly effective assassins, on top of those advantages Thane was a Biotic, making him hideously over qualified to 'remove' unpleasant threats to the Hanar Ascendancy, like Collectors.
"Yeah, tell your daughter leave her new girlfriend off of her ship before she jumps through the gateway to nowhere." Aethyta stated bluntly, said girlfriend of course referred to her daughter. "Aside from them? Samara and her daughter's seem eager enough, bring them along." Having apparently finished her piece the Matriarch went behind what use to be Aria's personal bar, doubtlessly in search of booze.
Not all of the Prethoryn were being dealt with by the Krogan on their rite's of passage, and the more enemy Prethoryn that died here the easier the Gestalt could take over these planets and clean them up of Prethoryn, they still had to transfer them over to the Slag worlds after all. Currently Samara stood on the backs of one of the two Fenrir's she was escorting, both being piloted by her daughters.
"Fire at will." Samara watched as the poles of tungstun were lifted out of the torpedo-esque slots of the Fenrir's and hurled into low orbit, before the glow of psionics took over and guided them above where Prethoryn were being born in mass, before the glow of biotics once again took over and slammed the rods into the fetal Prethoryn with force usually seen in nuclear bombs.
An uncomfortable silence took over the group of politicians and military figures as they came to the sudden realisation that two among them weren't paying any attention to the meeting at all.
"Ahem!" The Salarian let out a sigh as she paused the game console that the science fleet admiral had given her. "Just send doctor Solus. He seems to be the only Salarian you people trust, especially to be on the same ship as Krogan." Wrex looked up into the air ponderously, nodded to the side but remained silent. "What about you?"
The Tebrid's six eyes blinked stupidly for a moment before shrugging his upper appendages as if saying he didn't know.
"High priority target, huge risk of death, just send someone from Valhalla, it's what we keep them around for." The Admiral's synthesized voice echoed out, ignorant to the landmine he just stepped on. A loud obviously fake cough echoed throughout the room in that moment, everyone turned their attention to Admiral Shepard who landed a glare on the head of the Tebrid as if she intended to bore a hole through his brain.
"Who from Valhalla?" The Admiral looked to be a hair's breath away from completely losing her mot, luckily high scores in social sims were required for Tebrid's to be promoted to such high ranking positions as head of the Scientific fleet so even he could tell what needed to be said here.
"I dunno, there's a high ranking Tebrid in the medical and cybernetics department isn't there?" With Mordin and the Gestalt Hive there would already be plenty of medics on the mission, no one mentioned this fact less the topic of resorting to other high ranking Valhalla operatives came up.
"Tali is supposed to be hanging around Shepard's crew right now isn't she?" Admiral Raan asked sounding amused by the whole notion. "She's more than capable of handling herself in a fight, I know from personal experience."
"Cold Stone's finest will be here within the week." The CEO of the company in question spun around in the air, his crystals glinting in the light, though thankfully not firing off as they often want to do.
"That should be more than enough time to get everything in order." Admiral Hackett clapped his hands together above his head. "This meeting is adjourned."
Strange times make for stranger company as the saying goes. Once upon a time no Krogan in their right mind would let a Salarian anywhere near them, let alone a self professed monster who reinvented the Genophage. Now?
"HAHAHAHA! You should see it doc! OW! Two Krogan took the bastard by his horns? Those are horns on your head right?" Grunt was in the middle of being treated for his acid burns by Mordin, a task made more difficult by his refusing pain killers and desire to talk about the morbid images inside of his head.
"I only have one, but yes this is a horn." Mordin elaborated indicating the sharp point on his head.
"Yeah! Two Krogan picked the bastard up by his horns and both of them gave a yank ripping him clean in half!" Grunt let out a hardy Chuckle at what he apparently saw. Mordin recalled the incident in question, it sounds like the death of one Padok Jath, one of the original scientists to work on the Genophage.
"I understand your mirth but do please try to remain still for both of our sake." Mordin might not have long to live but that didn't mean that he wanted to shorten his life span further by having his neck snapped by a blood raging Krogan.
"Bet it caused a generation of revenge for his clan. What's that like for you a week?" Grunt asked having not picked up on Mordin's request, the pain killer blended into the Medi-gel might be kicking in then.
"Two to Three years approximately." Mordin corrected, even he was offended at the thought that a Salarian generation lasted only a week, and he just sat through Grunt laughing at the horrific murder of his species.
"Yeah and one of those Turian Bastards? You know those things they have on their heads? What do they call those again?" Grunt asked indicating the back of his head, but he didn't ask Mordin.
"Those are fringes Grunt." Garrus stated his disassembled Particle weapon on a crate next to him as he went over every piece with a fine tooth brush, good equipment was worth the extra mile after all.
"Yeah that! A Turian got his fringes peeled off of his skull like those fruits Shepard likes-"
"Banana."
"-and bit the back of his skull clean off!" Grunt broke into laughter again as Garrus shot Mordin a concerned look.
"We appreciate that you are sharing your revelations with us, however we lack the context Okeer gave you." Mordin explained and at the same time requested for more information.
"The People responsible for breaking us? For taking our culture away from us? For making us circle the drain for the past two generations? They died horribly! In excruciating agonising Pain!" Grunt laughed his head off, at the idea that the people responsible for the Genophage got a taste of what it's like.
"Nothing for the Asari?" Garrus asked looking at Grunt curiously.
"I'd prefer if you didn't." Samara was off to the side, attempting to meditate with Rila and Falere. Attempting to being the Key word. "And while I do understand your people seeking justice for what has been done to them I would appreciate peace and quiet."
"Which is completely understandable." Tali was off to the side, performing routine maintenance on the Fenrirs Rila and Falere had been piloting. "From both points of view really. If I had the chance to meet the Bosh'tets who started the whole bloody morning war."
Shepard looked over the group of people down below, at the people she's fought alongside, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters. And into the depths of true hell once again.
"We're being called over to Omega, there's a strike team being put together to raid the collectors base and put a end to the Reaper's non-sense for the immediate future, and we're all on it."
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: From a story perspective? I like the idea that Shepard and company aren't the only ones out fighting the reapers, but that is somewhat ruined by the fact that you the player has to be the one to rack up high-scores to get things done. For Andromeda's multiplayer, I would like the idea of a PVP mode featuring mutliple groups of enemies fighting for control of the Heleus cluster.
Guest: Chapter 39: Citadel Part 4 and I believe the exact paragraph was: To Everyone's surprise, Din Von was even able to convince the Lithoid Trade Federation to 'Donate' a sizable chunk of Eezo to the project, and in the process an important discovery was made when the Eezo refinery the material had been sent to was suddenly torn apart by a biotic pulse. For the convenience of transport, the Eezo had been left in the ultra high density form that the Lithoids had pulled it out of the black holes in, which meant Neutron Density Element Zero, or Neu Eezo for short. With the Molecules shrunk down energy could now pass through thousands of times the amount of Eezo as it could before, producing Mass Effect fields at thousands of times of strength. Of course these 'Neu Eezo' cores would have to undergo extensive fine tuning to see usefulness, but in the mean time the Kwunu was taking form. Next time, just re-read some of the chapters, or you know just read the story, either will work.