Shepard’s squad had just finished dealing with another group of Drones and some kind of special Drone that was stronger, tougher, and deadlier than its counterparts. The Spectre was actually a little worried about the other squads running into another one of those. It had taken heavy weapons to break through that thing’s armor and Miranda’s squad didn’t have much of that. Revan would probably be fine, but Shepard was worried that the others on her squad would run into the new Drone before the Sith could kill it.

“Hey, Shep. Check it out, that door still has power and it’s locked down.” Kasumi pointed at a mechanical building that hadn’t been left open by the Collectors.

Shepard followed the thief’s finger to a large building that, just as she said, was locked down tight despite the Drones leaving every building they had come across so far completely open.

Was this similar to what happened with Veetor on Freedom’s Progress? Or had the Collectors not gotten around to it yet?

“What do you think, Kasumi? Can you break it?”

The petite woman scoffed. “A standard lock on a remote colony? Shepard I’m insulted. I thought you had more faith in me than that.”

Shepard fought down a smile. “Yeah? Then why is it still closed?”

She and Garrus chuckled as the thief started mumbling to herself while she started hacking the door controls. Unsubtle complaints about ‘ungrateful bosses’ and ‘demands for a vacation’ reached both of them, perfectly pitched so that both of them could hear them, but not so loud that it might draw attention.

Even when playing around, Kasumi was a professional.

Barely fifteen seconds later, the fireteam was through the door and carefully moving through the building. Just because one door was locked didn’t mean another one hadn’t been opened.

A shadow moved on the far side of the room.

“Company.” Shepard warned her teammates and pointed at where she saw the movement.

Guns were raised, Garrus and Kasumi looked for more hidden threats, and Shepard took a couple steps forward.

“Get out here. Now!” She ordered.

The shadow moved hesitantly before an older man in mechanic’s clothes and a baseball hat inched out from behind some machinery and got a look at Shepard’s team.

“You’re…you’re human! What are you doing out here?” The mechanic looked at the now open door and a panicked look broke out on his face. “You’ll lead them right here!”

Shepard looked at the man with slight disdain. The entire colony had been attacked! Hiding in one room wasn’t a guarantee the Collectors wouldn’t check here eventually, especially since a squad of them had been right outside a few minutes ago.

She wasn’t going to expect every person to throw personal safety out the window, but instantly blaming others who could be looking for a safe place themselves was cowardly. It also didn’t say great things about what the mechanic was doing considering no one else was in here and he had been hiding in a corner even before they walked in.

“We cleared a path right through them! You’re lucky you're not in the hold of a Collector ship right now.”

“Those things are Collectors? You mean...they’re real?” The man asked with a tone of utter disbelief. “I thought they were just made up. You know -- propaganda. To keep us in Alliance Space.” he began to shake. “No! They got Lilith. I saw her go down. Sten, too. They got damn near everybody!”

Shepard wasn’t unsympathetic to the man. He looked like the kind of person that hadn’t really done much with his life and left to join a small colony to get out from under the more structured regulations enforced by the Alliance. He was clearly a civilian through and through and likely hadn’t ever been in a situation more dangerous than a bar fight in his life. The situation was clearly overwhelming him.

“What’s your name? What are you doing here?” She asked gently, trying to calm him down.

“Name’s Delan. Mechanic. I came down here to check on the main grid after we lost our comm signals. Then I heard screaming.” Delan started to calm down slightly as he talked.

“I looked outside and there was...swarms of bugs. Everyone they touched just froze. I sealed the doors.” The guilt in his voice told Shepard he probably closed the doors in the faces of some of the colonists.

“Damn it, it’s the Alliance’s fault! They stationed that Chief Williams here and built those defense towers. It made us a target!”

This guy was a piece of work. It was Shepard’s fault he was in danger. It was the Alliance’s fault the Collectors had attacked. He probably was going to blame the colonists for something else once the dust settled. It was always because of someone else and never his fault or because of random chance.

“We’ve confirmed over half a dozen colonies have been attacked. None of them had any Alliance presence.” Shepard snapped. “This is not their fault!”

Delan flinched back but didn’t apologise. “This is just a small colony. No one bothered us before we started building defence towers and drew attention to ourselves. I left Council Space to get away from the Alliance. Nothing good comes from getting mixed up with them.” he said mulishly.

Shepard took a deep breath and slowly released it.

“Tell me about Chief Williams. What was she doing here?”

“I dunno, all I heard was that she was some kind of hero. Didn’t mean nothing to me, though. Would’ve rather he stayed back in Council Space, but she was supposed to be helping us get the defence towers up and running.” Delan said, nervously running a hand up and down his face before removing his hat and running his hand through his thinning hair. “I got the feeling she was here for something else though. Spying on us, maybe.”

Shepherd wanted to sigh in exasperation but held it in. Hopefully she could find someone a little less biased later, but something the mechanic said did catch her attention.

“Defence towers?”

“A ‘gift’ from the Alliance. High powered GARDIAN lasers. Supposed to keep hostile ships from landing too close to the colony. Had to build a massive underground generator just to give them enough juice.” Delan explained. “Only we couldn’t get targeting systems online. So the Alliance gave us a giant gun that couldn’t even shoot straight! Stupid sons of bitches.”

Shepard ignored him. Those towers could be exactly what they needed to drive the Collectors back! If the only thing wrong with them was the targeting systems she even had the perfect person for the job with her.

She turned to Garrus. “You think you could get those towers’ targeting systems running?”

“If they are like the ones on the Normandy there shouldn’t be any issues.” Garrus said as he thought it over. “We’d need somewhere to calibrate them from, though.”

“Head for the main transmitter on the other side of the colony.” Delan volunteered. “Pretty hard to miss and the targeting controls are at the base.”

Perfect. And if Shepard was remembering the layout of the colony correctly, Miranda’s squad should be close by. With some luck they would be able to meet up there.

She suggested(ordered) that Delan stay behind since she wasn’t about to drag an unwilling civilian into a firefight, something he was more than happy to agree to, and set out deeper into the colony.

Now that they were past the fringes of the colony, they were running into far more Collectors and their forces.

Husks were everywhere and there were even a new variant of them as well. Some sort of misshapen mass that while slow, it was also biotic and pretty tough to take down.

Shepard was going to have to look into better weapons or upgrades for everyone after this. The stuff they had didn’t have enough punch for her liking. And considering the Collectors clearly weren’t expecting resistance at this stage, that meant bad things in the face of a full invasion since she had already kitted out her teams with some of the best off the shelf stuff she could get her hands on.

To make matters worse those enhanced Drones kept popping up every once in a while, usually leading another group of enemies like some damn harbinger of a horde. Though after a few run ins, her team had gotten a pretty good routine on how to handle the glowing bastards.

Shepard popped a heatsink and smoothly replaced it after they cut down yet another batch of Husks.

“How we doing? Any sign of Miranda’s squad?” She called out to her teammates.

“We got a signal nearby breaking through the jamming. I think they’re close.”

The Commander nodded. “Then let's get there fast. The sooner we get those defense towers online, the sooner we end this.”

-o-

It didn’t take long to catch up with Miranda, Jacob, and Grunt, though it did take a bit to explain what they had learned from the mechanic. Miranda also shared what her team ran into, which turned out to be ‘not much’. They hadn’t found any signs of the colonists and had only run into a small amount of Collectors on their way here. Something Grunt seemed a bit frustrated about.

“How come we don’t see more frozen people around?” the young Krogan asked after Shepard explained what Delan had described happening to the colonists.

“The Collectors likely already loaded them onto their ship.” Miranda answered. “We’re running out of time.” the before everyone else is taken went unsaid.

“About that...we got some more news from our civilian friend.” Shepard broke in. “Apparently the Alliance has a couple GARDIAN lasers set up but we need to fix their targeting systems. Gurrus should be able to handle that, but we are probably going to need to route power from a generator he told us about too. Any ideas how we do that?”

Miranda thought about it for a while before looking at the colony skyline. “If the colony’s main transmitter is right by the controls we might be able to contact the Normandy and have EDI piggyback the signal. We could use her to hack the generator controls and power those towers.”

“Downside is that much traffic is going to paint a big target on us.” Jacob pointed out. “We’re going to be crawling in Collectors while the guns are powering up.”

“Heh, sounds like fun.” Grunt added his thoughts.

“Am I the only one here who thinks getting the attention of every single bug thing here at once is a bad idea?” Kasumi muttered. “No? Just me? Fine, let’s get this over with so we can get out of here.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get used to diving into suicidal situations with Shepard. Eventually it just gets boring.” Garrus ‘comforted’ her.

“...I don’t know what to say to that.”

Shepard checked to make sure, but the thief really didn’t have too much of an issue with the plan. Kasumi just seemed uncomfortable intentionally making herself a target without it being a distraction where she could slip away later.

“So what about Revan’s squad? Any news on them?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“We’ve been too far away to get a signal through whatever is jamming communications. We might be able to get a message to them when we reach the transmitter or they might notice all the Collectors heading our way.”

Shepard frowned. Two of their heaviest hitters were in Revan’s squad so they were probably fine, but things would be much harder without them. Hopefully they weren’t too far away to notice when the party started. She wasn’t looking forward to trying to deal with an entire colony’s worth of Drones with just six people.

“Well we can hope, I guess. In the meantime, let’s get this done.”

-o-

Concerningly the fireteam mostly only ran into pockets of Husks and the new biotic version Miranda was calling Scions. It seemed like all the Drones had moved out of the area which meant they had already cleared out the area of colonists and had left behind the stupider techno-zombies only as a potential trap for anyone coming to investigate later.

It did mean that Shepard’s expanded team was able to make good time to the plaza where the main transmitter was. Something she was glad for, since the Drones seemed like they were reaching the final stages for extracting everyone out of the colony.

“Garrus, you get started on the targeting calibrations. I’m going to try and raise the Normandy. Everyone else, defensive perimeter.”

The scarred Turian made his way over to the terminal and immediately went to work correcting the errors in the system. The rest of her team expertly set up so each one of them had overlapping fields of vision and plenty of cover. While they were doing that, Shepard patched into the transmitter and tried calling back to her ship.

“Normandy? Do you copy?”

“Joker here. Signal’s weak, Commander, but we got you.” the pilot’s voice was tinny but still recognisable.

“Great, EDI, you think you can get the generator feeding the colony’s defence towers online?”

”Firewalls around the generator’s controls are easily bypassed, but it will take time to bring the towers to full power.” the AI replied. ”I recommend a defensive posture. I will not be able to mask the increased generator output.”

“Got it. Can you contact Revan’s team at all? We could use the help.”

”Negative. The interference coming from the colony is still preventing us from communicating with anyone on the ground.

Shepard cursed. ”Well keep trying. If we’re lucky they’ll show up on their own, but who knows…”

”Affirmative. I will attempt to make contact. I have also bypassed the generator failsafes and am ready to attempt an emergency power-up on your signal.”

“Garrus! How's the targeting systems looking?”

“We aren’t going to be bullseyeing fighters anytime soon but I’ve got them ready to shoot straight. We’re good to go, Shepard!” Garrus called back.

Shepard joined the rest of her squad and gave a few last minute orders, but they were about as prepared as they were going to get and trying to micromanage her team was pointless since any plans they made now would likely need to change in response to the enemy.

So Shepard activated her comms and contacted the Normandy again. “Okay EDI, we’re all set down here. Start powering up the generator.”

”Affirmative, Commander. Generator powering up. Please hold the defense tower.”

Nothing happened for a while, but eventually the Collectors detected the increased power and began to converge on their position. Groups of Husks and Drones attacked in waves. If they had remained in the standard three man squads things could’ve gotten really dicey, but with some clever use of cover, combination biotic attacks, and a whole lot of gunfire they were holding pretty well.

Not even the enhanced Drones could do much when two or three of the ground team were free to engage them while the others focused on the surrounding enemies.

EDI kept them all up to date on how the towers’ charging rate and if nothing changed they would be fully operational in just a few minutes.

Naturally, that meant the Collectors decided to throw a curveball and fuck everything up.

A massive four-legged armored form fell from the sky and landed in the middle of the Normandy ground team. It immediately burst in a spherical biotic explosion that threw nearly the entire team to the ground.

Shepard dragged herself off the ground and got her first good look at the new flying tank-like enemy and at first she couldn’t tell if it was Collector tech or something worse. Then the thing opened its mouth, revealing dozens of husk heads all crammed together on the inside and confirming that this new enemy was Reaper tech despite the primary ‘face’ looking like a Collector head and the main body looking remarkably insect-like.

Shepard screamed for everyone to focus fire on the new arrival. Anything with that much battlefield control needed to be taken down fast before it could do another one of those shockwave attacks. They were lucky the first time it did it the rest of the enemy forces were far enough back to give everyone time to recover. If it did it again and a group of Husks or Drones were nearby someone was going to die.

“Shepard, do we have any heavy weapons left? We’re barely scratching this thing’s barrier!” Miranda shouted over the sound of gunfire.

“We’re out! We used the last of it on the last Enhanced!” Shepard called back. Ammo was actually starting to become a concern. They were able to recycle a couple heatsinks, but several others had warped from the heat of their weapons firing near constantly. Pretty soon they would be reduced to biotics and melee weapons. “EDI how much longer?!”

The flying tank focused on Shepard, its eyes glowing electric blue, and fired twin particle beams that chewed through the thin metal barriers the Commander had been sheltering behind. She dove to the side but even that glancing contact was enough to shatter her shields and set a suit warning blaring.

”GARDIAN anti-ship batteries at 100%. I have control.”

Well, at least there was a tiny bit of good news Shepard thought as the now active defenses began to hammer into the distant Collector ship. Now they only had to not die to the ground forces and they would win.

The insect-tank decided Shepard was too mobile and shifted its attention to the rest of her team. It rose through the air and crashed into the ground practically right on top of Grunt as he was dealing with another group of Husks. To make matters worse, when it used that biotic burst to knock everyone away it managed to send a previously invisible Kasumi slamming into a wall.

Thankfully despite being thrown into a pile with a bunch of techno-zombies, Grunt was still perfectly capable of dealing with them as he ripped, tore, and shotgunned his way back to his feet. Kasumi was a bit slower to get up but Garrus was keeping an eye on her and was picking off anything that focused on the downed thief.

Shepard unloaded shot after shot into the insect-tank hoping to take it down even as she sent blasts of biotic Shockwaves into the hordes of Husks to trip them up. So much so that she actually lost situational awareness for a second and didn’t realise until a lucky Husk tackled her from behind.

She wrestled with the enhanced strength of the zombie, doing her best to keep it from getting its hands or teeth on her before managing to wrap the damned thing in a Lift field and freeing herself.

Losing focus was a mistake, potentially her last on considering the insect-tank had noticed her struggle and was preparing to fire its particle weapons again. Time seemed to slow down as adrenaline surged and Shepard tried to come up with a plan to get out of the way. Her gut told her to move forward and Shepard followed that instinct without thought.

The powerful blue beams just barely missed the Spectre as she dove closer to the insect-tank but she wasn’t safe just yet. She was now close enough that a swinging forelimb caught her in the ribs, breaking shields, armor, and bone at the same time.

Shepard was on the verge of blacking out and idly wondered if this was the end for her. Not how she wanted to go out but at least she was confident her team would keep going without her. The Commander could only watch helplessly as the floating creature raised a pointed leg and prepared to impale her. She tried to move, trigger her biotics, anything to get out of the way but she could do nothing. Her plight didn’t go unnoticed by her teammates either as they all shifted fire in a last ditch effort to drive the insect-tank off. The pointed limb came down and Shepard closed her eyes, expecting a burst of pain. When nothing happened sh cautiously opened her eyes and saw the insect-tank’s limb inches from her chest held in place by an invisible force that it was still struggling against.

A relieved sigh exploded from Shepard’s lips as she looked past the gathered enemies and saw the last missing ground team making their way into the fight. Jack was ripping through the last of the Husk hordes in a biotic rage, Mordin was rapidly assisting anyone injured and falling back into a support role, and Revan…

Revan was calmly walking through the chaotic battlefield like she was fucking untouchable.

Her left hand was clawed and pointed at the insect-tank, presumably holding it in place, while her right had her glowing red lightsaber held casually at her side. Any Husks unfortunate to get close enough were instantly dismembered with ease and any Drone that tried to focus on the advancing Sith Lord found all of their shots blocked by a wall of light. Hells, the ones with the particle beams found their shots reflected into their companions.

The insect-tank was slowly pulled away under Revan’s telekinetic grasp despite it trying to escape. Shepard could see it’s limbs and body straining under the effort to escape but instead of making progress it was being slowly crushed as the Sith increased the pressure of her hold.

“I’ve seen many examples of Sith Alchemy producing twisted creatures such as you,” Revan said to the tank. “And each time I can think of fewer things that I would enjoy than seeing their perversions wiped from the galaxy. You might not be a product of Alchemy, but I think I’m going to enjoy this just the same.”

Revan closed her fist and the tank shrieked as tortured metal gave way and the creature was warped into a ball of scrapped metal. Finally the creature, after being the focus of several concentrated assaults, died as the eezo inside of it detonated from the crushing forces of Revan’s attack.

The death of the insect-tank seemed to be the last straw for the Collectors. In the distance the Collector ship finally ignited it’s main engines and launched away from the colony.

Shepard watched the fleeing ship with mixed feelings. On the one hand they had driven off the Collectors and protected the colony. On the other hand, the attacking aliens had managed to escape with all of their captives and there wasn’t much she or her team could do about it. Time would tell if this was a victory or just the Collectors deciding continuing on simply wasn’t worth it.