Author's Note: Okay so gonna be busy for a little while if all goes according to play. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 45: The Collector Base Part 2
Of all the civilisations that they've had the displeasure of dealing with. Of all the horrors that the Reapers have destroyed, of all the races that the Reapers have preserved, they will curse this blasted Union until their final breath.
"Yoo hoo~! Over Here!" Especially that one!
Aliens of sufficient size to produce a Harbinger are rare enough on their own, one that meets the required quotient of intelligence on top of that even rarer, so naturally the Prethoryn had taken top priority, and the Reaper born from it the top priority after that. A priority that miserable bitch was now trying her damnedest to tear apart! Only the outshell of the newborn Colossi was made out of Neutron materials, the insides were still very vulnerable to smashing, slashing, telekinetics and good old fashion ship based weaponry. And so naturally as many undead synthorganic monsters as what they had available were sent out to stop them. The issue here is that the people deployed to wreak bloody havoc in their base and pet project wasn't alone.
A Salarian Scientist, a Human Mercenary, a Drell Assassin, and a dozen Krogan Kraant walked into a Collector base. No this was not a pun, it might just be a suicide mission though, provided that they make the wrong misstep.
"The AI says that this way leads into the chambers where they're keeping the people for 'processing.'" Zaeed stated, already pulling high explosives out of his own pack.
"Scans indicate doors reinforced with Neutron matter." Mordin explained waving his Omni tool around. "Explosives unwise."
"For the door maybe." Zaeed wasn't counting on Shepard's distraction holding forever, if they had to defend this corridor from a bunch of Collectors he wanted their unpleasant surprises waiting for the bastards in advance.
"If people are being kept on the other side then chances are they need life support running through here." Thane explained while he looked around the wall, and eventually found a panel crudely tacked onto the floor. One Omni-blade and some biotics later and the panel was ripped off, and got hit by a massive swell of heat in the process.
"Yes to Vent, no to life support. Heat Vent but for what purpose?" Mordin knelt down as he looked at the small tunnel, sadly he had something else entirely to be concerned about. "Vent access too small for Krogan or armoured mercenary, even if not the only one with technical expertise here is me. Would appear I am going to find out." Mordin quickly prepared to jump into the vent but Zaeed blocked him with a gift, a bandoleer of grenades. "In case the bastard's got something down there guarding their little chink in their security." Zaeed stated bluntly.
"Appreciate thought but unnessary." Mordin stated mind already running a mile a minute. "Grenades would kill me faster than Collectors."
"Exactly." Zaeed stated, memories of a fire breathing monster already going through his mind.
"Ah. Good point. But still unwise. Grenades would likely be accidentally set off by heat vent." Zaeed had to concede to that point. "If possible, would rather the Particle laser with the optional freezing setting." Mordin stated pointing to the weapon on Zaeed's back. Zaeed pondered the usefulness of a makeshift fire extinguisher, nodded his head in acknowledgement and swapped his grenades for the particle beam weapon on his back. "Much obliged, off I go." Mordin left, and not a moment too soon, a group of husks ran by the way they came, and one of them spotted them, then a good portion of them followed their way into the hallway.
"Checkout the fresh meat!" Grunt stated grinning nastily at the creature higher above everyone else.
The Chozo's feathers didn't survive the husk process, leaving behind a pair of bare wings that the Collector's replaced with two grafts of union issued flight packs. The legs on the other hand had been transformed, not from necessity this time, but to make way for a pair of massive Collector styled particle bream that looked like it would be more at home attached to the forward bow of a corvette than a soldier, a Raptor, a bird of prey who rains death from high above. Both of the creature's feet lit up with a crackle and released electrified particle beams at the mixed group of Council and Union forces. Similarly Collectors moved into position in the hallway and loosed a hail of slug fire at the omni-shields.
"Sentinels! Phalanx!" The Krogan moved in groups of four, each of them forming a defensive line, each of them raising up Omni shields as they blocked the energised beams three in front and the remaining nine raising the shields above their heads to block the attacks that came from above. Then the cackling electricity stopped abruptly, Zaeed didn't need lights or whistles to know that the heat sinks on that bird brain just hit their limit. "Return fire!" Thane released a biotic lift to send himself into the air, if this undead cyborg is relying on the machines on its back to stay air born, then he'll just take them out of the equation. Aiming at the centre of the propeller on the right wing Thane landed a single shot. With a crack of thunder the propeller was shattered and the Raptor was sent crashing back into the ground. "Clear!" Zaeed pressed a button on his gauntlet and the Collectors were blown up, alongside their crashed avian opponent.
The Omni-shields blocked the fire from the blast while the reinforced walls channelled the force of the blast and minced the Collectors. Well that was one group down. Now to deal with the next one.
Temperature rapidly rising, hard-suit integrity currently holding. Thus far no use for the 'freeze ray.' Even though it was really more of a beam than a ra-
"Approached what appears to be a access point for the door." Mordin looked at the metal. Possible reinforced with Neutron matter, heat retention high, yet metal is visibly glowing with heat. Likely leads to the central power-source for the base, no matter, have crossed sufficient distance to have reached the other side of the door now. Mordin aimed the particle beam and set it for cryo. "Engaging." Mordin fired the weapon at the wall of the vent, a massive amount of steam colliding with the wall. "Difficult to breath." Mordin paused, activated his hard suit's helmet, watched as the heat visibly built back up with alarming speed, and resumed the deep freeze.
"We would appreciate some hustle yah gecko!" Zaeed snapped his patience running thin. Gecko? Mordin didn't know what that species was, was it a fTL race? Moving on.
"Compromising integrity of vent shaft via repeated freezing and thawing of material." Suddenly Mordin was hit by a realisation. Is this what the young Salarian's call a 'Duh' moment? "Should've brought a grenade."
"Say no more." A new voice, a slightly vibrating inflexion, the Drell then! Quickly Thane jumped into the vent and applied lift to himself, lightly propelling himself along the vent shaft until he caught up with Mordin. "Ice. Pity I was rather enjoying the heat." Thane stated while he held up a single exotic gas grenade. Mordin pulled the pin, froze the latch to the grenade then froze the grenade to the wall that he had been working to compromise.
"Lets go, don't want to be caught in explosion."
Thane grabbed Mordin, applied lift to him, applied a stasis field to the wall, and then propelled both of them backwards. In the mean time the ice that was acting as a makeshift timer rapidly melted and released its explosive payload. The Grenade turned into plasma, hit the biotic field, the resulting explosion destabilised and tore apart the entire vent shaft allowing access to the other side. Quickly Mordin and Thane rushed out of the hole that was made in the process. The Salarian immediately located the door on the other-side of which was the rest of the fire team. Overall security encryption was low. The Collectors must've never thought someone would make it this far. Other than that overall programming was quite similar to some of the more advance Batarian systems that he's had the displeasure of taking apart, so he quickly took this one apart too. The rest of Zaeed's fire team were walking backwards through the now open doors shooting at Collectors and husks as they went along the way, Zaeed tossing them a goodbye present in the form of a grenade as he went, Mordin closing the door as he lowered his pitching arm.
"Nice work for a couple of Geckos." Zaeed stated as he turned out his helmet flash light and had a look around the room they were in. "Oh yeah, that's not gonna haunt my dreams." The entire chamber was lined with countless pods, most of them filled with occupants, that stretched on as far as the eye could see and that included when he looked up. "Think they're still alive? Or did we just stumble into husk storage?"
"Unknown." Mordin walked up to the nearest pod. "Subject male. Human. Healthy. Near as can tell neither dead nor showing symptoms of husk conversion process." Well that's promising at the very least, anti indoctrination devices lighting up on their armours though, less so. "However, it would appear that they are receiving a very strong indoctrination signal." Which was absolutely not okay!
"So if we just start waking them up at random then they'll attack us?"
"Unknown." Mordin paused as he thought the implications over. "Should've brought a telepath." Or at the very least someone who had been well versed enough in using the Thorian's gifts to be able to decipher that the random people they bring out of these pods had had their brains melted yet.
"So you said this thing was a heat vent right?" Zaeed asked as he looked into the vent that Mordin had destroyed in order to break into this part of the base.
"Based on high temperatures? Yes." Mordin stated feeling like he was pointing out the obvious at this point.
"Where do you think it leads to?"
"Several possibilities. The Energy core of this station, a massive processing plant for materials, stealth unit similar to the Normandy." They can probably cross that last one off, considering how thoroughly the Collectors had hidden themselves already. Then Mordin saw Zaeed getting ready to chuck a grenade into the tunnel.
"If that is the base's central power unit..." The Salarian wisely stopped Zaeed's attempt to induce a localised apocalypse.
"Recommend attempting to learn the purpose and progress of this place before we make any attempts to release these people."
"The purpose of this facility is to deal with the blighted Thorian that you all insist on infecting yourselves with." All weapons were immediately trained on a voice above, a creature identical to the Raptor that they had already killed. However this one was glowing a fiery orange. The Salarian was already silently working to decode the controls for the pod. "To our rapidly mounting anger. Not only does your Thorian consume the dead tissue of those affected by Indoctrination, but it is also rapidly regenerating from the damage and is becoming resistant to the effects of indoctrination. From what we can tell, a by-product of the blasted Fungus adopting characteristics from the Vorcha. As a consequence, we cannot allow a single being here to leave alive!"
The tanks all sprayed a corrosive liquid all over the occupants inside of the tank. Mordin finished his hacking job and all the people inside of the tank in the immediate area were released at once, the flow of corosive fluid stopped dead. However Mordin was then treated to the sight of... something erupting out of the faces of the people that had been released.
"Thorian appears to be mutating significantly!" Mordin shouted as the people that had been released roared angrily with the faces of the Adjutants. "Infected with genetic material from Reaper monsters! Appear to be Adjutants!" The rapidly mutating monsters began teleporting around, already scattering as they proceeded with hit and run tactics.
"Tell us something we don't know Genius!" Grunt shouted going ham with his Shot gun before one of the mutated monsters pounced on him and disappeared with him.
The Krogan and Reaper monster reappeared several dozen meters into the air before making a rapid descent. The only consolation was that Grunt was able to kill the monster before it could get away, crushing it's skull in his hand. That was the good news, the bad news was that Grunt was now rapidly falling out of the air like a miniature meteorite, what's worse he was directly above Zaeed's group. Thinking fast Grunt took a page straight out of Shepard's book, aimed his shotgun into empty space and fired. Sadly the recoil of the weapon wasn't enough to push him out of the way like he had planned, the loud bang was enough to warn the group below him however and everyone quickly scattered out of the way. Then, because the universe, or maybe just the reapers, truly hates them more of the Adjutants appeared, grabbed the rest of the members, and teleported them into the air again.
"I hate this place." And then an impromptu dog pile landed directly onto Grunt.
"Culture?" Grunt asked looking down at the contents of the datapads Shepard had given him for 'homework.' Downloading memories into Grunt's greybox was one thing, but the contents of the memories are useless if he doesn't understand the context of what he was learning.
"Culture." Shepard stated bluntly using a holographic chalk board to illustrate her point. "Is the manifestation, of a race's intellectual, artistic and social achievements."
"That sounds boring." Grunt stated letting out a sigh.
"Do you consider the Knights, Samurai, Monguls and Apache that you like reading about so much to be boring?" Shepard asked mildly amused by Grunt's sentiment.
"That's considered culture too?" Grunt asked looking suspicious.
"Tactics = Intellect, Weapons and Armour = Art, Battle = Social. In Medieval Europe Knights were clad in heavy armour and would dress themselves in bright and colourful armour so that they stand out and attract the attention of enemies and away from their subordinates, who were in turn ready to surround the enemy and strike them. In pre-colonial america the Apache believed that the greatest insult you could inflict onto a enemy is to touch them with a feather, as a way of saying 'if I wanted you dead you would've died' and tormenting them like that. In China's flat-planes the Huns combined cavalry and Archery to create the ultimate in hit and run tactics. All of this is culture. On Surkesh the Salarian's fought their wars through sabotage, spying and infiltration, because if they had fought their wars 'properly' then they would have wiped themselves out." Grunt slammed his hand down and stood up at that.
"You want to compare the Honourable Krogan with the cowardly Salarian's!" Grunt snarled glaring at Shepard angrily. The Dragoon stared back unamused.
"The Krogan bombed themselves back to the stone age after inventing nuclear weapons. You didn't build your temple bunkers during the nuclear winter either did you? No they would've had to have been in place before the bombs went off. So tell me where were all the 'honourable and brave' Krogan and what were they doing when the bombs dropped?" Shepard stepped forward one hand gesturing off to the side and the other behind her back. "So where were the great Krogan then hm? 'Bravely' hiding in their bunkers 'Honourably' slamming their faces into launch buttons?" Grunt growled as he stood up. "Sit your Cloaca down!" And with that Grunt sat back down in his chair, panting heavily at having every fibre of his being wrung through the ringer. "Ahem. Now then." As if she had just let out a light burp Shepard politely excused herself and went back to her lesson. "The Turian's see the beauty in war more than anyone else. Their warriors learned how to fight alongside one another, entire groups, entire armies, were treated as one person, their warriors mastered fighting with shield, with spear and with gun. The Draconics treated their pyrokinesis as an art form as well as a weapon burning complex patterns into the battlefield against each other and against the wildlife." The Draconics have never been in a state of war with themselves. Thuban didn't let them. "The ancient Asari were extremely limited in their reproductive ability, on average one in five Asari were capable of reproducing, and even then they had to be very selective with their couplings, usually through trial and error. So if given the option they do not go to war at all." Or they just ripped through the woods chasing after their local equivalent of Varren for 'partners' that train of thought had conjured many an amusing picture of ancient Asari, Grunt saw no shame in admitting. "If you keep poking around porn sites I'm going to revoke your extra-net privileges." Shepard warned darkly.
"So why are you telling me this?" Grunt asked as he failed to understand what was happening.
"So that you understand something. The Galaxy is full of warriors: They might not take forms that you currently recognise or acknowledge, but you will, in time. And once you have learned about them, once you choose to acknowledge their way of war and learn about them, even if you do not use their tactics yourself when you face those same tactics in the future then you will be prepared to fight against them at that time instead."
"'Culture.'" Grunt stated letting out quotation movements with his fingers.
Grunt pushed the people around him off of himself as sat up, his legs crossed to the best of his ability, the Thorian was already suppressing the blood rage while his natural healing, the Thorian, and Medigel all went to work to counteract the damage that had been done to him.
"In ancient Japan, the masters of the ninja clans could remain seated in the lotus position and at the same time have the strength and flexibility to fend off a attack against them from any possible angle of attack."
Grunt slammed his left elbow into his eight-o-clock position and sent his opponent flying backwards their neck snapped. A second Adjutant came at Grunt from the front so he crushed their skull with his fist. The third was grabbed by the tentacles and slammed into the fourth crushing both. The Fifth appeared from above and was quickly sent flying with a straight punch. By now the Adjutants took a step back judging. Husks by no means have any sense of self preservation, only the ability to understand profits and gains and even then only at a bare minimum level, an effect that gets increased when there's a nearby possessed watching the battle unfold to give direct orders to the husks. So instead the Adjutants switched targets from the still active Krogan to the prone raid team members on the ground.
"RRRAAAWWWRRR!" Grunt immediately stood up into a standing position and shoulder checked a Adjutant, he pulled out the folded up mace that was being kept on his waist and swung it around, the weapon flying over all of his unconscious allies and pulping the Adjutants that were going after them. The final Adjutant appeared above Grunt at which point in time she quickly swung his weapon upwards along with all the momentum pulping the creature in question. Grunt slammed the butt of the weapon into the ground as he looked up at the possessed Raptor glaring bloody murder. *Clap* in response the Reaper smacked stolen hands together, slowly. Ah, so the ancient eldritch war machine understands sarcasm. The Raptor waited a few moments, then looked at a group of the pods before looking back at the group.
"I assume the Salarian is responsible for this?" Mordin had been playing dead after his fall, partly because of his agonising broken ribs, but mostly because he needed time while he worked on hacking the systems in the room to prevent the birth of more Adjutants.
"Eat it and like it you little bi-" Zaeed's final word was interrupted by the sound of a grenade launcher flinging a project with a crack of thunder, the Projectile in Question was interrupted by a particle beam fired from the foot of the Raptor.
"Alright." The possessed undead monster stood up from where he was standing. The rest of the team followed suit. "Amuse me!" The Bird monster landed in the middle of the group, with a swing of one of his wings Grunt pushed back several feet. The squad's slug fire was absorbed in a biotic barrier, which was then followed up by a snap of the bird monster's fingers as the projectiles scattered against the group of armed thugs, and with considerably more force than they had hit the field with.
"RRRAAARRRGGGHHH!" In one arm a Omni-shield, not a wall to hide behind but a piece of armour and weapon in one, and in the other a club reinforced with Neutron matter and augmented with a weight manipulating Mass Effect Generator.
With each swing Grunt was throwing around the raw mass equivalent to a pick up truck, the possessed monster wisely gave a wide berth as he took to the air once more, and was subsequently stopped mere feet into the air, caught up inside of a Mass Effect Field that kept him immobile, not for long though but that had less to do with his own strength and more to do with the Grenade that was thrown at him by way of follow up. A loud explosion rattled the group's teeth as the ball of green hot plasma exploded and filled the area with smoke.
"Did we get em?" A wet sound of a neck snapping indicated the negative. Most husks aren't this durable, is it the cybernetic enhancements that the Union puts into all of their people or is it the effect of being possessed by one of those ancient monsters? Well one way of finding out then. Grunt charged into the undead bird monster in front of him, spiked shield first and mace soon following.
Possibilities were flying through Mordin's mind, only mildly encumbered by the ongoing agonising pain that was his broken and dislocated ribs, leading him to make a mental note to look into a full suite of medical implants if he got the chance. Right now he need to think of a way to get these people to safety as soon as possible, preferably without getting killed by the undead monster in the process. He knew that whatever he did he would have a very limited amount of time to be able to do it, and less by the minute, because Grunt could only hold that thing off for so long, or worse he would kill it and then the Reaper would possess an even stronger monster instead. No Mordin needed this situation resolved immediately, that in turn led to a series of relevant questions like for instance the make and construction of the pods containing the Reaper's victims.
If they're airtight, and if the schematics from the Collectors database can be believed they are, then that means that even if they were jettisoned into the void of space then they would be okay. Next question, the construction of this base. If this were a normal space station it would be assembled out of various materials and components creating structural faults where the pieces were bolted or welded together. Unfortunately, that isn't the case here, Collector construction favours taking a singular mass of Neutron matter from the nearby Black hole and hollowing that out in order to build a base or ship inside of it it seems. Thus there's not such existing structural weaknesses. There are however a variety of tools that exist specfically to take neutron matter apart, and the good news is that some of them are flying around this very base.
Mordin's hands flew across his omni-tool as he set about hacking once again, quickly he seized control over one of the mining drones outside of the base and redirected its target. It wasn't hard, taking apart slabs of neutron rock like this was it's primary purpose. So the Drone started tearing apart the section of the base they were in, and soon the entire section of the base that they were in was disconnected from the station proper and sent floating off into the void of space. Everyone had acted quickly, helmets folding around heads as their suits hermetically sealed themselves, the possessed husk made due with a strong biotic field to maintain pressure on it's entire body. Zaeed grinned as he used a grenade launcher to fire directly into the husk's abdomen, and Grunt followed up with a home run swing sending the undead bird monster flying before it exploded. 1 down, 2 to go.
Author's Note:
RonaldM40196867: True.
Guest: I didn't really get attached to Universe that much.