Olasie stared on at the low lit morning sky. It was barely dawn, but the light was enough for them to wordlessly watch the collector ship hovering quietly over the city. Olasie didn't know much about what the collectors were (aside from Tali's stories and the low quality video Veetor had pieced together back on Freedom's progress). But seeing this was enough to send a restless shiver down her spine. Unlike Tali's first contact, Olasie knew what she was getting into. While some would argue that made things worse, she couldn't even begin to imagine what it must've felt like being stranded without help and then to witness firsthand the horrors the collectors thrust upon them on Ullipses.
"Get enough footage of the ship?" Juel murmured.
"…Yes." Garrus finally replied as he adjusted the lens, "Let's move."
Juel just stood up to follow Garrus with Olasie and Talukh trailing behind. As they got closer to the city, they could start to make out the occasional collector bug flying around.
"Think the countermeasure's working?" Juel asked as he cautiously watched a seeker pass by, "They're just flying past us."
"Don't think there's enough of them yet to know for sure." Garrus answered quietly.
They took a road down to a small neighborhood and stopped by a bent traffic sign. On this intersection was a long line of empty cars with their doors ajar. With a thousand yard stare, Olasie remembered the stuffed animal on Freedom's Progress absent of its child in the backseat of a car. How many children had been taken this time?
"I'm expecting to see the collectors soon." Garrus said quietly to them, "Do not engage unless you have my explicit permission. Even if your life depends on it."
Unsettling as the order was, they understood why and nodded to the turian. They followed the bend in the road and continued in a single file line.
"Anything you'd like to mention about the collectors?" Juel asked Garrus, "Aside from what we've been briefed on?"
"They're unlike anything I've ever seen, Juel." Garrus answered, staring resolutely forward, "Fighting them is like getting ready to watch yourself die."
Olasie and Juel share looks.
"Keelah."
"Keelah is right." Garrus mumbled. They kept walking with silence to keep them company.
Between the alleyway of two buildings was enough for Olasie to get another fleeting look of the collector ship. Whatever lay inside those walls wasn't leaving much to the imagination. Olasie didn't doubt it was something akin to a type of hell best left in a story book. And people were being loaded into it by the tens of thousands.
"Say we get these defense guns here to work," Talukh spoke aloud, "What then? Do we just point and shoot? What of the colonists on the ship?"
Garrus took a breath and steeled himself a moment to look him in the eye. "They die."
The implication didn't give him pause. With a solemn look, he stared distantly off into the sky toward the standing column of hell.
They came across a school. And that's where they crossed paths with their first victim succumbed to the collector's paralytic effects. It was a girl, no older than eight, with mud on her face and hair laying in a puddle of muddy water.
"Oh Keelah." Olasie said between a suck of breath as she rushed to the girl's side, "We've got to help her."
"Olasie? Focus on the mission." Garrus growled, "There are thousands more like her that are already on their way to the ship."
Juel knelt down, rolled the girl out of the puddle, and gave the turian a ghostly look. "Garrus. What the hell is this... What in the world are we going up against?"
"Let's move." Garrus hissed disappointingly, "Now."
"I'm sorry, young one," Juel whispered to the girl with a small lilt in his voice, "I'm so sorry."
He didn't know if she could hear him or see him, but he dragged her to the grass, put a lock of hair behind an ear, and caught back up. Olasie stayed for a moment longer and had to fight back the tears that were beginning to blind her. She turned away from the girl and started to catch back up.
A minute goes by and Garrus took notice of Olasie's change in behavior; enough to know what it was about.
"Are you good?" Garrus asked kindly. He kept staring at her, so she nodded stiffly.
"Olasie," Garrus said, stopping fully with a long frown, "Look at me. I need to know if you can do this. We're here to help these people. Even if that means leaving kids like her behind."
Olasie clenched her teeth and only briefly glanced at the girl lying on the ground behind them. "Yes, Garrus. I know. I'm good."
Garrus nodded once and resumed their pace.
Nearly an hour passed with total silence between the four.
They crossed fourteen blocks, climbed over a felled freight truck, and took a left onto a small dirt road surrounded by a stretch of prefabricated buildings.
They arrived at their objective.
Garrus pointed. "Look. The power station. Olasie. Juel. Keep security. Talukh will clear the building before we go in and figure out if the power's still on. I'm going to get a better vantage point. See if we can get an idea of what's around us."
After Talukh disappeared into nothingness, they separated and took their positions.
When Juel took a knee and surveyed his surroundings, he glanced at Olasie who took to watching the other side of the courtyard. He opened up a private channel between them.
"Still thinking about the girl?"
"Keelah, yes." Olasie answered, peering carefully around her with a pained expression on her face, "It won't let me go."
"Me neither."
"Everything about this is so wrong, Juel."
"I know."
A sliver of motion passed by Juel's vision and his eyes widened. Swallowing his wave of panic down, he called it over the radio.
"Possible contact. Maybe seventy something meters at my south southwest. Think it might be a collector. Don't know yet."
"Copy." Garrus answered.
Several seconds pass without incident. Just when Juel started to lower his guard, he saw the collector pass by a building with a pod following. His chest tightened.
"Oh fu—I've got positive."
"Did it see you?"
"No... Definitely seventy something meters. Talukh, whatever it is you need to do, you need to do it faster."
"Roger."
Garrus threaded a suppressor onto his flash hider and took aim in the area Juel reported contact.
"Not seeing anything yet, Juel. Anything?"
"No. Disappeared around the corner going east. It's looking for something."
"Yeah. For more bodies." Garrus said with a mutter. Juel took a staggered breath and decided to flick the safety off his rifle.
"Building's clear," Talukh called out, "Get inside now."
"Juel. Olasie. Go. I'll maintain security outside. Please be fast."
"Moving."
"I'm going."
The two quarians retreated into the structure.
Juel closed the door behind them and gave Olasie a look. "...You good?"
Olasie gave him a trembling nod. "Y—yeah."
"Olasie. Look. Garrus is right. We can't get distracted seeing the girl like that."
If the woman could run her hands aggressively through her hair, she would have.
"Goddamnit, Juel. I know. I know there's more like her. And that there's thousands of them already on that fucking ship."
She felt revolted. Made her absolutely sick to her stomach. Watching this atrocity unfold around them while they scrambled to help in whatever capacity they could was frustrating on so many levels. The difference they were going to try to make here today wasn't going to measure to anything. Win or not, it wasn't going to be good enough. So Olasie bit her lip and choked up a small sniffle. "If this all works? We're going to kill good people. Tens of thousands of them." She crossed an arm around her chest and put a hand up to her face. "These guns were here to protect them. Not to kill kids and their parents."
Several seconds went by, which was enough time for Olasie to know that Juel hadn't felt any different about the issue either.
"Olasie. I'm right here with you on this. But I would rather die from a missile and not from being the subject of some fucked experiment."
Juel couldn't meet Olasie's gaze anymore, so he put his head down and began walking down the hallway.
So this is was what it was like. To be swept from your feet and bear witness to something you couldn't possibly hope to really fix. Tears threatened her vision and she felt a cloud of blackness press at her sanity from all sides. And to think Tali had known for years about what the collectors were and what they were capable of. Just thinking about everything that had befallen Tali was nauseating. Olasie wasn't around for the hard parts of Tali's life. But she was around for the aftermath. The coping she'd seen Tali do back home was heartbreaking and agonizing to watch. She'd even caught her one time drinking late into the night to drown out what she had so aptly called her 'emotional noise'.
Was this what Olasie was destined for? A cloud of darkness to follow her around like a disease? Olasie was a strong woman. But she knew she wasn't as strong as Tali was. Not by a long shot. She sniffled harshly at the dismal thought and blinked the tears away before catching back up to Juel. She remembered telling herself that her time on the Normandy was going to be the highlight of her career. But now? She didn't think she could give such a straightforward answer anymore.
"Olasie. Juel. Over here," Talukh said at the end of the hallway, pointing down a different corridor, "This way."
They followed Talukh until he opened a door to what appeared to be an office for an administrative electrician. Juel set his gun aside and sat down in a chair to go over what was on the screens. A few clicks and button presses later, Juel sighed deeply.
"What?"
"Power's being sucked dry from something. Don't know where or why. If I had to guess, the collectors are bleeding the grid."
"What? To cut power eventually?" Talukh wondered aloud, "Why not just EMP the city instead?"
"I don't know, Talukh. I couldn't even hazard you with a guess."
Olasie fiddled with the charging handle on her gun and bit her lip. "How many guns are operational?"
Juel clicked through some menus and frowned. "Uhm... not a lot. Out of the thirty six here... maybe eight."
"Shepard said one of them was enough to rip through a cruiser." Talukh added.
"Maybe a regular cruiser. Didn't Shepard tell you what the collector ship did to the Alliance when they came to rescue them on Ullipses?"
The frown Talukh had been wearing got a little worse. "Well. Eight is better than none."
"That's up to John." Olasie said finally. She gave them both a look and decided to radio Garrus.
"Garrus? We've only got eight guns capable of running."
"Acknowledged. Anything else?"
"Yeah, and the power is starting to run out." Juel added, "We've got maybe half the day before the city's power is gone completely."
There was a moment of silence over the radio before Garrus finally replied. "That means we need to hurry. Let's bug out and head a bit deeper into town. We've got to test our immunity against the seekers."
The three quarians all exchange anxious stares before heading back outside.
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The amount of people that littered the streets was enough to give even Garrus pause. Omega brought about the absolute worst in people. And that, by obligation alone, was reason enough for Garrus to become Omega's infamous archangel. And in the two years Garrus had lived on Omega, he'd seen it all. Torture. Murder. Rape. Addiction. Overdose. Disease. Starvation. And most common of all, occupational safety hazards from plain ol' negligence. But in lieu of the sight before him, never would he consider, even for a moment, that an evil like this could compare, even remotely, to the atrocities that occurred daily on that shit hole.
As he passed by, he stared at some of the faces and swore by the spirits their eyes would follow him.
The quarians behind him seemed dazed and stricken with what Garrus guessed to be hopelessness. While it was an appropriate reaction, Garrus remembered that feeling on the first Normandy. They weren't here long enough yet to start measuring success. At some point, they'd realize that the Normandy was the best chance for change in the galaxy. Olasie would come to realize it too, given their recent incident with the death of Iwia'Vara. The fact they were even here in the first place was testament enough.
Something caught Garrus' eye, so he peered closer and saw a pair of collectors turning the corner with a limp human in their grasp.
"Hide. Collectors. 40 meters ahead."
They disappeared into the shadows and waited for them to walk by.
Turians didn't exactly sweat. But seeing the aliens up close again after all these years brought feelings he thought he'd buried. As for the quarians, this was their first time getting such a close up look. Garrus might have not seen it, but their faces turned pale.
Their yellow and sallow eyes...
The brown chitin skin...
Some moments go by before they resume their steady pace.
"And the cat's out of the bag," Juel said with a frown, borrowing a metaphor from the humans, "That's what they look like?"
Garrus stared emptily down the road as they walked. "They're scary. But they still die."
Talukh nodded. "Any other tips on taking them down?"
"Aim for the head. Damn biggest part about them. Biggest difference is the way they—" The words died on his tongue when he stared down a passing alleyway. There, just above a dirty dumpster, was a large bundle of vibrating seekers crawling idly around without a thing to do.
When Juel, Olasie, and Talukh caught wind of what Garrus was looking at, they all gulped.
"That's disgusting." Olasie uttered.
"Stay here," Garrus warned before stowing away his rifle, handing them the camera, and taking a moment to collect himself, "Only one of us needs to go. If anything happens, run."
Leaving the quarians behind him, Garrus took a hesitant step forward, closer to the swarm of collector flies, and readied himself for the chance that this might be it for him.
Knowing better than to just stare, Juel and Talukh took up positions to keep their perimeter secure, while Olasie watched with the camera rolling.
When Garrus approached the nest, he looked once to Olasie, and held his breath.
Aside from the low hum of buzzing, they did nothing.
So he slowly extended his hand with outstretched fingers until he was within reach of easily being stung.
Still, nothing.
"It—it's working." Garrus murmured before looking up at Olasie with a dumbfounded look, "Mordin did it."
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Twenty-five minutes later.
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Two kodiak drop ships vaulted over a hill and made headway toward the colony of Horizon.
"This is Shepard," John called over the radio as he stood up to address everyone in both kodiaks, "Two minutes, ladies and gentlemen. Two minutes before we rain ungodly hellfire. Remember why we're here: To get those guns back online, no matter what it takes."
The determined stares from the ground team didn't make Tali feel any better about what was about to happen. To her, it didn't matter if they were prepared this time or not. They're chances may have improved since the last time she'd fought the collectors, but they were still outnumbered and had only an inkling of an idea of how to take them on. So, to keep her mind occupied from the anxious anxiety and building fear, she kept chewing on her lip and tongue before inspecting her shotgun for the umpteenth time.
As for John, he was well aware that it was all bravado too. Their first fight with the collectors had him spaced with over half the Normandy's original crew dead. But reminding everyone of their failure wasn't going to be particularly encouraging. When he sat back down in his seat, he stared at the faces of his team and wondered whether or not they'd all wind up dead as well. A morbid check of perspective, John had often reminded himself.
Tali pat John's shoulder to get his attention and set up a two-way call between them. John donned his helmet and accepted the call.
"Hey." John said quietly, sensing that Tali was worried about the mission, "What's up?"
"I'm scared."
He stared into her eyes with a straight, but steadfast face. "I know. I am too."
She couldn't help but be pulled back into a dark and terrible place. A place that she'd tried so hard to bury. John's hand on hers forced her back to reality.
"I'm right here, hun. Did you load your incendiary block?"
She only nodded. And even though she was doing her best to hide it, John could tell it was more than a crestfallen look.
"This isn't going to be a repeat of what happened on Ullipses. You have my word."
"It better not be." She mumbled, still mulling slightly over the past, "I don't think I could come back from that."
There was a moment between them and it reminded him of the damage his death had done to her. They might have been reunited with a new lease on life, but it came at a cost. Which meant he had to face the risk that doing what they were doing might take his life once more. More worrisome, at least to John, was that it didn't even come as a forethought to Tali that she might lose her own life. She'd jump in front of bullets if it meant saving him. Something she had definitely done with a laser and definitely something John wasn't keen on her repeating.
"Don't even think about it. We're the best of the best, remember?"
She didn't say anything, but the look in her eyes was enough for John to know his words somehow worked.
"I love you. Just in case." She murmured eventually as the doors to the kodiak opened. Tali peered down to the moving landscape below them and sighed. The sun touched her face and she closed her eyes at their fleeting moment of peace.
John took in the sight, stared at Tali with a soft look in his eye, and stood up. "I love you too."
"Touch down in thirty seconds." John announced after he ended their call, "Helmets on. Get your gear ready."
Tali momentarily watched Kylie'Pass load a belt of heatsinks on her crew served weapon. Chair by chair, Tali looked at the faces of the ground team. Aside from the people she knew, she didn't really know much about anyone's story, so to speak; except maybe a little of Thane. That being said, she knew enough to recognize the people she'd been sitting next to had some missing screws in their head. Granted, it wouldn't have been all that surprising to think someone else probably thought much the same of her. Her relationship with John alone was enough for anyone to take a second glance at.
The two dropships came down to a steady descent and offloaded their cargo before taking off again back from where they came.
The platoon of people split up into their respective teams and headed out to where they needed to go.
Garrus' team, currently being lead by Sidonis, took to their left flank, while the Cerberus detachment took the right. John's team, backed by Olasie's squad, took the middle.
"How long do you think it'll take to get to Garrus?" Tali asked.
"Half an hour, if we don't run into anything." John answered, "But that's probably not going to happen."
They moved forward with his team following behind.
"Spearhead-1, this is Hellfire-1, how copy? Over." John asked over the radio.
"Hellfire-1, this is Spearhead actual," Garrus answered, "We copy all, over."
"Acknowledged, Spearhead. We're on the ground from the east. No contact insofar. Adjustments to plan will follow. Construction around here has changed the terrain. ETA thirty + ten minutes."
"Copy all, Hellfire-1. ETA thirty minutes. We needed those guns running yesterday, over."
"Affirmative. Out."
John looked up at the early sky and grit his teeth. For a long moment, he recalled faintly the day he'd shouldered the responsibility of Spectre. He also remembered the time he'd sat for a long while wondering if at some point, he'd have to start gambling away the lives of people he didn't even know. He was responsible for enough as it was, with the Normandy and her crew. You weren't pulling any favors to remind Shepard of the hundreds of thousands of lives riding on their success today. Nor would it be good to point out that part of that success meant killing some of them too.
Be as that may, everyone knew what needed to be done. There wasn't an alternative option that they could take here. You either make an effort to take out the towering ship, or lose the whole city.
'You can't save everyone, Shepard.' He heard Garrus say in the back of his thoughts. John realized that a long time ago, on Akuze. He was aware, probably above anyone else, that you couldn't save everyone. But never would you ever catch John thinking it was an acceptable assertion to make. He knew there was a reality that he had to keep in touch with. Which meant he knew the reality of war and above all, the reality of their enemy.
So was it something he would eventually come to accept and become complacent with, given the foreseeable future? The optimistic part of him wanted to say it wasn't ever going to come to that.
The times ahead would tell him enough.
Perhaps time would tell him today.