Bab 30: Infiltration
Shepard delivered the come to Jesus speech in the cargo bay and I found myself unable to pay attention. We were on our way to the Omega 4 Relay, a destination I'd been waiting for all my life, and all I could think about was the odds of this going like our first two encounters with the collectors. Both times they flooded us with more bodies than Bioware would ever dare to send at their players, chipping away at us like a discount krogan horde but without any of that reptilian swag that makes it work for us.
Cerberus had assembled the greatest squad to ever fight across the stars, but at the end of the day we were thirteen people against an endless supply of cyber bug men backed up by a tentacle monster machine race that had cyclically wiped out all advanced life in the galaxy for millions of years.
We'd see soon enough if the team packed enough heat to burn through to the end.
As people shuffled away to commence their final preparations, I held Jack back as she sat on my lap.
"Come on big guy." She nudged me to get up, "Momma needs a roll in the sheets before we stomp all the nasty bugs."
"When the shooting starts, just stay behind me." I told her, "You're riding my ass from start to finish, and if I go down you use my body as cover, or pick me up with your mind and turn me into a fucking shield. Whatever you do, fuck everyone else and take care of number one out there."
Jack held my face, a less delicate gesture than between humans considering my head is as wide as her shoulders, and looked me in the eye, "You're number one now."
Damn, this woman hits me straight in the hearts. Do we do tender? This feels tender as hell. Are people seeing this? Is the sun seeing this? Screw it, this feels incredible and I don't care who knows it.
The wife led me by the hand back to my nest up in the port cargo area and we found Tali furiously disinfecting everything inside.
"You looking to clean anything in particular, Cobra Kai? Cause the wife and I were hoping to use this room… for sex." I asked our quarian companion as she continued spraying everything with an anti life concoction.
"There is no way in hell I am going on this mission as a virgin!" Tali declared, "So I am doing my best to prepare the area before you both fuck me. Here." she handed us both some special soap and mouthwash, "Please decontaminate, then come crush this cherry."
Jack and I didn't get the chance to respond before Miranda showed up and said, "So we doing this or what?"
Thus kicked off the greatest four way the galaxy ever saw.
I armed up for the final confrontation with the collectors feeling like a god of death and debauchery. Miss Hips herself joining us had been a big surprise having rarely shown any chemistry with us, but I guess the available stock of males dried up pretty quickly after Shepard nabbed Garrus for a rendezvous. Her options were an old grizzled mercenary, a dying drell, an asexual amphibian, and Jacob. I can see why she'd choose option E the hot married couple.
Oh, I forgot the guy who'd break his hips during coitus.
I am sure Joker is fine with me nailing Tali rather than him. He'd say something to me if he felt otherwise. He's brave like that.
So there I sat watching some Adventure Time, waiting to kill a bunch of bug men, when this giant robot eyeball looking thing busts in like the kool aid man and destroys my TV. I don't know what exactly happened next as a blinding red haze descended and only lifted after I sat on the smoking wreckage of what was once a boss battle in a video game.
While I mourned the destruction of my TV, Shepard got a big helping of revenge when the Normandy's upgraded main gun took down the collector cruiser. It would have been far more epic if the resulting explosion didn't send us crash landing into the collector base.
Any landing you can walk away from, I guess.
Interestingly enough the collectors lacked any kind of internal security grid and had relied entirely on the location keeping invaders out. Because of this, the team had no problems creating a plan for our assault with the help of data hacked and scanned by EDI.
We would launch an three pronged assault with Legion passing through a thermal vent to one of the station's main control centers supported by a team of infiltrators in the form of the Commander, Thane, and Kasumi traveling along the maintenance line to ensure he encounters no obstacles. Meanwhile the rest of us, led by Garrus, would kick the front door in and launch an assault on the control center's standard approach.
The assault team took up an arrow formation, with me at the tip to capitalize fully on the collector's simple threat assessment and reactions. Shoot the giant glowing guy with the machine gun was about the limits of their tactical prowess. Garrus, Zaeed, Samara, and Jack took up the rest of the arrow head protecting the shaft of Miranda, Jacob, Tali and Mordin. The ethos of Beta Team to armor up and carry big guns never made it over to Alpha Team, but their tactical use of tech and biotic powers would help soften up and crowd control the mobs we'd be mowing down.
The fireworks kicked off with a barrage of purple streaking from our guns, the holographic indicators on our weapons indicating a full squad warp ammo mutation being broadcasted to us by Jack. The collectors, who based their entire defensive strategy around barriers and armor, were easily overcome by the warp rounds. My machine gun fire caused them to explode like insects hitting the windshield on the highway, filling me with intense satisfaction.
The wide open spaces worked well for the flight capable species who could quickly deploy their numerous soldiers from anywhere across the station, and our advance became slower and slower as the number of enemies constantly increased. Take note Hydra operatives, this is how you do the whole one head dies three pop up schtick.
While the collector's made sure to always stock up more bodies between us and their control center, they had more than enough forces to land behind us and engage the squishies from Alpha Team and Tali. The quarian wisely deployed an omni shield followed by Mordin, the tech centric pair providing us enough mobile cover to reach the walled off control center without taking too heavy an ass pounding.
With our objective reached, our combat focused team turned to lay the smack down on the bugs as they attempted to swarm us with their husk forces and crush us against the fortified position. Jokes on them, I love melee combat. I sparked up a blazing hot omni shield and crackling electric warhammer. The first batch of husks to rush us got a taste of Mjolnir's explosive electric discharge, their corpses catching fire as I swung my shield around so that the edge slammed into another cyber zombie, charring his throat before sending him flying into the oncoming horde.
While I couldn't lock down the entire approach, the team only had to deal with the cyber zombies that made it around me and anytime the collector presence got too thick a quick volley from my over the shoulder grenade launcher thinned them out beautifully.
I felt like I was really hitting my stride as a barbarian warrior when the control center doors opened and the team retreated inside. Once more I cursed my lack of middle fingers as I backed into the center behind my shield.
I turned to see many members of the team pulling off their helmets and breathing heavily.
"I fucking knew this team was slacking on PT." I grumbled loudly, "Those pansies didn't even drop my shields, and here ya'll are bent over sucking wind. Pathetic."
"We aren't all genetic super soldiers." Tali wheezed, "Some of us get tired when forced to fight non stop for a half hour."
"Don't let me getcha down, you lavender minx." I growled at her, "But we know I've put in the work to earn this body. I am so much more than Okeer could have ever dreamed."
"You got that right, Lizard Daddy." Tali zealously agreed with me.
"Are you fucking serious right now?" Jacob screamed, "This mother fucker is drowning while I am dying in the desert!"
"Get your head on straight or you'll be dying in this bee hive." Zaeed chided the angry black man.
"True enough." Miranda spoke up, "Lizard Daddy isn't your concern right now. The people in these Goddamn pods should be."
Shepard wiped some condensation off the glowing yellow stasis pod and revealed a human woman. Interestingly enough the woman came to, started screaming, and liquified. The resulting concoction being pumped through the station to the baby reaper growing in its depths.
Shepard ordered everyone to break the people out of the pods and we rescued the crew of the Normandy. It was quite convenient, but I wasn't going to complain.
I pulled Dr. Chakwas from her pod and laughed, "Debt repaid Doc."
"I do believe I have never been more happy to see you, Chief." The veteran health care provider smiled, "Now if you don't mind I have a few things to say to our valiant Commander."
Shepard organized the evac of the crew - headed by Jacob - while Jack loaded up my grenade launcher for fresh destruction. The way forward would require it. The only viable path contained too many of the collector's seeker drones for us to bypass with Mordin's countermeasure, requiring a powerful biotic to maintain a barrier while a small team pushed through to the next control center. Miranda offered to be the biotic in charge of the barrier, the objectively wrong choice, and Shepard denied it.
"Jack." She stated, "You and Grunt will come with me through the swarms. The rest of the team will provide a distraction under the command of Garrus."
Jack and Garrus nodded their heads in acceptance, and the pair of us walked up to the Commander who silently acknowledged us. Without a word, we three began the Long Walk.
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA 
JManM
JManM How is the final battle agianst the collector's going? Let me know of any questions or concerns before I get back to writing this on Saturday. If I don't respond to your comment, know that it isn't because I don't care. Webnovel has some pretty heavy censorship and if your comment contains certain key words it gets taken down.
I'll take any feedback I can get to improve the next chapter which might include the final boss battle against the baby reaper. I am thinking of one shotting it with a precision Cain strike, so if you don't want that speak now or forever hold your peace.
Bab 31: Christmas Time is Once a Year
"Come on. Let's move!" Jack urged after she put up a shimmering shield around us to keep out the fist sized seeker drones swarming constantly through this darkened area of the collector station. It wouldn't stop anything small as bullets out or slow moving as a person, but for the constantly moving bug shaped robots it was just right.
We moved through an area that must be used for storing materials, because I honestly can't imagine why the collectors would purposefully set up their station for perfect cover shooting gameplay. Either way a flight of bug men flew in front of us to stall our progress, one foolishly stopping to erupt into the Harbinger 'Assuming Direct Control' glow. I tore him to pieces with superheated machine gun fire for his trouble, having switched to incendiary ammunition after Jack could no longer broadcast her warp mutation.
After tearing through the weakly manned collector squad we hit a small wave of husks, followed by another team of collectors and would you color me surprised, another wave of husks. The fact that the collectors weren't hammering our smaller team with all they had to stop us just goes to show the collectors inability to think tactically and the reapers general disregard for lesser beings. Instead they had proportioned their forces to match ours, likely falling for the false logic that we would place more people on the more pressing objective. They showed a distinct inability to think and learn considering the most important objective in our last assault was carried out by an individual.
"Fuck it was a good thing we bought this armor that helps power my barriers." Jack commented as she jogged along, still strong despite close to five minutes of non-stop under assault barrier usage.
We quickly joged down the last stretch to the literal light at the end of the tunnel exit to this depressing and kinda wet looking section of the station. As a final fuck you Jack pulled her barrier into an attack that sent all the bug men and their drones flying up the ramp we just descended.
Closing a blast door behind us I couldn't help but wonder if my memory of this section of the mission was faulty or if it really was such a quick jaunt. Either way we got the second blast door in the room open and allowed the rest of the squad into the chamber before closing it again to buy us some breathing room.
EDI let us know that we needed to take a nearby mobile platform to get to where we needed to go to plant the big ass bomb strapped to my back. The only problem being the massing of collectors hacking through the blast wall hoping to pincer us between them and whatever defense forces awaited us at the center of the station.
"Jack," Shepard asked our fellow Spectre, "are you up for finishing this off with us?"
"Miss my man's first genocide?" Jack rhetorically asked, "Not for anything."
"Alright." The Commander confirmed while we climbed up onto the hexagonal mobile platform the collectors seemed to have such a hard on for.
Zhaeed handed a multi-rocket launcher up to Jack.
"Just in case you need something extra dead." he chuckled.
"Good call." I told him as Jack and I stood next to Shepard.
"The collector, the reapers -- they aren't a threat to us. They are a threat to everything -- everyone. Those are the lives we are fighting for. That's the scale." Shepard began her rally speech, "It's been a long journey, and no one is coming out without scars. But it all comes down to this moment. We win or lose it all in the next few minutes. Make me proud. Make yourselves proud."
"We'll do our best." Miranda answered the call to arms, "Good luck, Shepard."
I activated our lift and chuckled, "Just three Spectres off saving the galaxy."
"Please stop reminding me that you two are Spectres." Space Momma pouted.
"Don't like the idea that we are the law?" Jack teased.
"You two wouldn't know the law if it came down from the heaven's on stone tablets." Shepard disparaged our status as members of the highest law enforcement agency in the galaxy, "Or respect it."
"We are known to violate the statutes of the Council, and not a few of the laws of the Almighty." I laughed at our blatant outlaw ways.
"It's what makes us such perfect crime fighters." Jack assured the moody Commander, "We can smell guns and drugs a mile away."
Our playful ribbing of the uptight do gooder came to an end when the collectors locked our platform down with another, the hexagonal edges locking up. It really showed just how many collectors we had killed considering the lack of personnel arriving on the inbound platforms to combat us. A few brief firefights later and we disconnected the last platform to arrive and continued on our way.
We arrived at the womb of the reaper, the malformed bio-synthetic construct in the shape of a skeletal human upper body.
Shepard and Edi had a fascinating conversation about the possible how's and why's of this thing while I charged the Cain - the sound system I placed on it began playing a song, 'Christmas time is once a year, every critter hold it dear' - and shot the damn thing in the eye, blowing the internals of its head to bits and shattering the four feeder tubes holding it up and it fell into the cavernous chamber floor.
Fortunately the camera's on my helmet have incredible low light capabilities and I was able to fire my second Cain shot at it's head again before I consumed all my heavy weapon ammo. I then fired all three volleys of my incendiary homing grenades at it before asking Jack for her rocket launcher, which I also emptied firing upon the broken and burning pieces of the reaper fetus.
"Are you fucking done, Grunt?" Shepard asked unamused by my violent interruption to her conversation with the Normandy's AI.
"Unless you want to give me your grenade launcher, I am pretty sure this abortion is done." I told her.
"Please warn me next time you want to abort a reaper." Shepard ordered petulantly.
"Can't." I denied, "It would give away the element of surprise."
"Whatever." Shepard groaned because of her adolescent lizard son's antics, "Lets just set the bomb and get out of here."
Unlike in the game -where the collector station had a convenient self destruct system in place - we had to lug our own WMD to this spot and set it up. After a few seconds working the device, a holo of the Illusive Man lit up off a projector on the bomb.
"Oh no." I groaned, "Our bomb has bomb cancer."
The smooth voice of Martin Sheen tried to convince Shepard to convert the explosive into a radiation pulse to kill the collectors and keep the base intact for research, but Shepard wasn't hearing any of that bullshit and armed the device to destroy the base.
Leaving the collector base turned out to be just as much a fight as entering it, but we convened with the delaying team and fought our way out, Shepard's speech about shooting and blowing stuff up once again on full display. We watched the collector base explode using monitors on the Normandy, wiping out the collectors without losing a single person.
"So much for this being a suicide mission." I complained while everyone celebrated, "Even Jacob survived. Couldn't the collectors even do me one fucking favor before we turned them into space dust. Fucking stingy bastards."
"Don't be so down, babe." Jack grinned, "We need you up and at'em for the post genocide four way."
Seeing her walk away to the elevator where Miranda Lawson and Tali Zorah waited pushed any thoughts besides those needed to get me into the zone far away from my mind. Fuck the collectors and the reapers. This is my Super Bowl.
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA
JManM
JManM
So, the Long Walk was disappointing as hell. It's got its own wiki section, and when I was watching a let's play of it the whole section was six minutes start to finish. I remembered it being longer from when I played though it as a teenager.
Anyway the Collectors are finished, and I am not rezing them for a multiplayer DLC in ME3. Those fuckers are gone.
It was an incredible ego stroke that the only requests I got when I asked if anyone wanted anything more from the story was for graphic sex scenes and more Tali screen time.
Only one of those had a chance of happening and unfortunately for the guy who requested it, Tali won't be getting more screen time. She will be leaving the Normandy alongside a slew of other characters next chapter and Grunt and Jack are going to be doing their own thing for most of ME3.
On the upside, Lair of the Shadow Broker is next. I have been waiting for this yahg fight since the start of the story. In the game it fucking sucked. We have the biggest, strongest, meanest sentient species in the galaxy getting smacked around by a human. A cyborg admitadly, but a human that is at least four hundred kilos lighter than him. Fuck that.
I'm going watch Colosus vs Juggernaut from Deadpool 2 to prep for it.
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