“Give me something EDI!” Shepard shouted as she traded shots with the Collectors. Her teams were doing incredibly well so far, but ammo was slowly becoming a concern and they were currently stuck hoving hundreds of feet in the air while more of the insectile aliens accompanied by Husks tried to overrun them. Thank god Revan had decided to just start throwing the Husks over the edges of the platforms.

The shambling Scions had been too heavy for anyone but Jack to do the same with and their shields messed with Jack’s biotics until enough gunfire could bring them down. The Sith didn’t have those problems and freed up the other biotics to focus on the drones.

Too bad the Collectors had wings or they could have solved most of this mess by simply tossing their enemies over the edge.

“I need to finish the download before I can override any systems.” The AI’s calm voice was particularly irritating at the moment.

“How long!?”

“Forty one percent complete.”

Not even halfway. Fantastic.

“Another platform coming in, Shepard!” Tali called out. “They have another of those enhanced drones with them!”

“I have it.” Revan announced and jumped several stories into the air onto the still moving platform.

A part of Shepard, the one that had teamwork beaten into her repeatedly by her various instructors, still hated that Revan kept going off by herself. The part of her that lived on the battlefield could only admit Revan occupying the ‘Harbinger’ drones far away from the rest of the team was the only reason more of them hadn’t been wounded yet.

Grunt had been unlucky enough to catch one of the enhanced drone’s biotic attacks head on. The warp-like attack had quickly chewed through his shields and shredded his left arm. Only his natural regeneration and a generous amount of medi-gel was keeping him from bleeding out, let alone in the fight. Shepard felt a bit guilty she was glad Grunt had been the one to take the attack. Anyone else in the team would have probably lost their arm in similar circumstances.

So best let the Powerhouses fight where they weren’t going to accidentally squish one of her more fragile teammates.

Speaking of…

“Tali, on your right!”

“I see it, go get him Chikita!”

A round pinging off her shields forced Shepard back into cover. She would just have to trust Tali could handle it. The three Collectors that had just landed on another platform however…

Shepard’s shotgun barked several times, chipping at the armor and barriers of the drones before she staggered one and nailed it with a Lift field.

“Jack!”

“Got it!” Shepard didn’t look to see exactly what Jack did while she was frantically slamming a new heatsink into her weapon but the nearby explosion told her Jack had done what she wanted and destabilized the Lift field with her own biotics. The drones were torn to pieces in the explosion.

“We have a plan to get out of here Shepard? I can’t keep doing this shit all day!”

“Working on it!” She shouted back. “EDI?”

“Eighty-four percent, Commander.”

“Speed it up, EDI!”

“I am simultaneously fighting Collector firewalls in over eight thousand nodes. I am tasked to capacity.”

Dammit. At least Revan was holding her own.

-o-

While Shepard and the Normandy crew were fighting below, Revan was forced to admit she had made a mistake.

For the most part all the Collector drones were little better than battle droids in terms of strategy and tactics. Yes, the drones were capable of some basic maneuvers. But for the most part they acted both mechanically and rather predictably.

Right up until they didn’t.

If the Collectors had followed their normal pattern they would have landed the platform and tried to press forward to overwhelm the Normandy crew using their numbers to their advantage despite Revan attacking them.

So when the platform didn’t land she was forced to admit she had made too many assumptions about the enemy and fallen into a trap. One set by the thing controlling the enhanced drones. Half a dozen normal drones had suddenly joined in a secondary ambush with more joining the frey every so often and Revan was forced to draw deeply from her Force connection to survive. The Collectors didn’t care about friendly fire. They barely cared to stop firing when she used their companion’s bodies as shields and likely only did so to make sure there was always another body for the controlling intelligence to take over when she killed the last one. Because once she did? Another drone would undergo the transformation. Every. Single. Time.

The Sith eventually decided to focus on the drones first. Both to deny the Presence additional bodies and to ease a bit of the pressure on herself. Force Lightning covered the entire platform with no friendly units to keep track of and her lightsabers hacked the drones to pieces.

”Your struggle only delays the inevitable.”

“Oh, you can speak after all. I had assumed you bred that out of your slaves since none of them seem capable of it.” Revan taunted the Presence. This must be the Reaper directing the Collectors.

”Tools necessary to maintain the Cycle. There is no reason for unnecessary dialog.” the malevolent voice replied. This was not just some speech hoping to discourage its enemies. Revan felt the Presence pushing on her mental defenses, clumsy and undirected as it was. ”You are an anomaly to the Cycle. Submit and you will be preserved. Struggle and you will be eliminated.”

“Option three. I crush you entirely.” Revan rejected the Reaper. “I am Darth Revan, Empress of the Sith. I don’t submit.” The Sith closed the distance to the last drone and with a final swing, bisected it at the waist.

”Destroying this body gains you nothing. I will return.”

“And I’ll kill you again.” Revan said to the corpse as it disintegrated to ash.

As good as it felt to finally be rid of the annoying Reaper and it’s swarms of disposable bodies, Revan had no time for standing around. She sprinted to the edge of the platform and looked down at the rest of the battle. It was going better than she feared but worse than she hoped.

More platforms had connected to each other down below, but the amount of room to maneuver had shrunk if anything due to the piles of Collector corpses covering the floor. The insectile species had thrown dozens of drones at her teammates trying to overrun them. It was a testament to Shepard’s leadership and how Force-damned deadly her team was that they had managed to hold with only three members wounded so far.

Grunt was still unable to use his left arm, but was doing his best to stay in the fight. Garrus had taken another round, it seemed going by the medi-gel patch on his torso. And Shepard herself was limping, although Revan couldn’t see an immediate wound from her perspective. That didn’t mean the other two were completely fine though.

Jack was no longer using her Biotics to any meaningful degree. She must have overtaxed them at some point and was limited to her physical weapons.

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Tali’Zorah wasn’t firing back at all. She was either out of ammunition or her weapon had broken because she was relying entirely on her omnitool and the combat programs it used. She had also been slightly isolated from the rest of the team and no one was aware of the injured Collector dragging itself across the floor to reach her.

Revan dropping on its spine with some light guidance from the Force and planting the ignited blade of her lightsaber through its head fixed that issue though. The quarian jumped at Revan’s sudden entrance but once she saw the dead drone merely nodded in thanks before focusing back on the battle.

Not that the battle lasted long after Revan rejoined the group.

The Collectors must have decided funneling in a handful of Drones at a time wasn’t going to work and stopped sending in reinforcements. Without those, the remaining drones were torn apart by the Normandy crew in seconds.

“Okay, that seems to be the last of them for now. EDI, what’s our status?” Shepard panted into the comm while the rest of the team either stood guard, patched eachother up, or went scavenging for salvageable heatsinks.

“Download complete, Shepard. However, you will need to manually reestablish my link with the command console.”

“Tali…”

“On it.”

It didn’t take long for the Quarian to get the link back up and running. EDI’s avatar appeared over the holo-panels within seconds.

“I have regained control of the platform, Shepard.” the AI said simply.

“Great, did you get what we came here for?”

“I found data that could help us successfully navigate the Omega 4 relay.”

“Excellent work, EDI, I knew you wouldn’t let us down.”

“I have also found the turian distress call that served as the lure for this trap. The Collectors were the source. It is unusual.” EDI continued, ignoring Shepards praise.

“Seems logical to me they would have sent the initial message as bait.” Garrus added his opinion.

“The source of the transmission is not the unusual part. It is unusual because turian emergency channels have secondary encryption. It is corrupted in the message. It is not possible that the Illusive Man would believe the distress call was genuine.”

“So Cerberus stabbed us in the fucking back? This is my shocked face.” Jack spat.

“Why are you so sure?” Revan asked the AI. Even if the Illusive Man would not believe the call, it was still possible an underling had been fooled.

“I found the anomaly with Cerberus detection protocols. He wrote them.”

And just like that, betrayal seemed the most likely option. Disappointing. She had been hoping to use that connection for more Credits before she split off to make her own group.

“He knew it was a trap? Why would he send us into a trap?” Joker questioned.

Garrus crossed his arms. “Sounds like something they would do.”

“The Bosh’tets” Tali’Zorah added.

Every single member present seemed unsurprised about a potential betrayal from the organization. They all seemed determined to voice their complaints as well. The only one trying to mitigate things was Miranda, who joined the call and was insisting there had to be another explanation.

Revan didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying, she knew most of them were taking the opportunity to shake off the effects of the last firefight, and pulled Shepard’s shoulder a little closer so they wouldn’t be overheard.

“We don’t have much more time left. You should get them under control soon.”

“They need to vent a little.” Shepard replied, though Revan could feel the anger rolling off the Commander as well. Clearly there was little love between her and the wider Cerberus organization and she was happy to encourage her team to distrust them.

“Venting doesn’t do them much good if we end up trapped here because of it.”

Shepard said nothing for a bit before nodding and getting everyone’s attention. “We don’t have time to throw blame around.” She called over the general noise. “And we can question the Illusive Man when we’re out. Clear?”

“Uh…Commander. We’ve got another problem.” Joker announced immediately. “The Collector ship is powering up.”

Inside the ship the massive cavern was being buffeted by winds as life support systems powered up and air started circling again. Their trap had failed. Now they were going to

“You need to get out of there before their weapons come online. I’m not losing another Normandy!”

“Dammit. Alright, everyone back to the dropship. We are leaving. EDI? Give me a route.”

“I do not have full control of their systems. I will do what I can. Sending coordinates for shuttle extraction.”

“Better hurry, Commander.” Jacob’s voice broke over the comms for the first time this mission. “We’ve had some drones poking around down here. Won’t be long before they send a force to take it out.”

“Alright people, you heard the man. Let’s move!”

-o-

The two fireteams hurried through the Collector ship following EDI’s directions. Even though they were on a time limit they moved together rather than rushing blindly forward. And every now and then they encountered pockets of drones attempting to slow them down.

If it had only been a single team, the drones might have managed to delay them several times. But with a Krogan and a Sith leading the charge and several expert marksmen following behind the Collectors simply couldn’t do much. They didn’t have the numbers at the moment.

That didn’t mean they were allowing the Normandy crew to escape easily.

Several times the teams were forced to take alternate routes as the door they were meant to take was locked down. Twice they were forced to hold a corridor while EDI was forced to override the lock. And even then they were forced to backtrack when a flanking force caught them as they moved forward through the large open areas the Ship was made up of.

And they weren’t the only ones in trouble.

“Shepard, this is Samara. The Collectors are pushing heavily on the shuttle. Jacob was wounded in the last fight. You need to hurry, I don’t know how long we can continue to repel them.”

The Justicar’s warning was acknowledged, but there was little any of them could do beyond move just a little bit faster.

They were making their way through another open area when Revan suddenly stopped. There was a tremor in the Force. Something was coming, and it was…

Revan made a snap decision and thrust her arms out. The Force surged with her intent and an invisible shockwave sent the rest of the crew skidding over the ground. The lucky ones simply rolled to a halt, the rest bit back curses as they slammed into walls or barriers but they couldn’t exactly blame the Sith for her action.

“Praetorian!”

The call had every member of the fireteams scrambling to their feet as they focused on the giant enemy. The tank-like insect creature was identical to the one they had faced on Horizon and had fallen from the ceiling where it tried to crush them all in an ambush. Revan’s action had saved them, but now she was pinned under it struggling to push it back. To make matters worse even more enemies, including husks, started flowing in from additional doorways.

“Garrus, Jack! Crowd control!” Shepard hastily ordered. “Tali and Grunt, with-”

“No! Get moving, Shepard. We don't have time to waste!” Revan interrupted, still pinned under the Praetorian. “I’ll deal with these and meet you at the shuttle!”

“Dammit Revan, we aren’t leaving anyone behind!”

“You’re not! You’re getting out of my way!” the Sith shouted back. There was a great snapping sound as one of the large machines in the room suddenly snapped off its mounting and slammed the Praetorian off Revan. Large sparks of electricity started to crackle around her as she overdrew on her connection to the Force just a tiny bit.

A gesture sent a miniature lightning storm washing over a group of approaching enemies, killing them and giving the fireteams a clear route out of the room towards the shuttle.

“She’s right, Commander. We need to move!” Garrus grabbed her by the shoulder and started dragging her along, although he never stopped using his sidearm to kill a few of the Husks heading Revan’s way.

“Fuck it, Fine!” Shepard cursed. “Everyone get moving, and make sure you kill a few on the way out!”

The team grouped up and limped as fast as they could through the next door EDI opened even as it seemed a tornado of debris and lightning was forming behind them.

“The Collectors are fighting my control, Shepard. I will keep this door open as long as I can.” EDI reported.

“I just hope it’s long enough.”

“Did you see what the Ice Queen was doing? Even if they close the door she’s just going to rip the bulkhead off.” Jack scoffed, though there was a bit of tension in her voice.

“If she dies, she dies.” Grunt said callously. “And if we want to keep living we need to fight our way back to the ship.”

“You think some overgrown bugs are going to take her down?”

“I think she is going to kill a lot of them while they try.”

“Enough,” Shepard barked. “If we don’t have time to fight through that,” She waved an arm back the way they had come, “we don’t have time to argue. Grunt, how’s the arm?”

The krogan lifted his arm easily enough but his hand would no longer open and close.

“You’re in the middle then.” Shepard ordered. “I’ll take point, Jack and Tali have the flanks and Garrus is on overwatch. Come on…”

-o-

Shepard didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad one that they seemed to be coming across much lighter resistance as they got closer to the shuttle.

They were making good time now, but she was worried that was only because the Collectors were focusing everything on Revan.

A Husk jumped her from the side and its head exploded before she could even react.

“Focus, Shepard. We’re not out of here just yet!” Garrus called as he cycled his rifle before swapping to his secondary. He was out of ammo.

And that was part of the problem.

They weren’t far from the landing zone at all and they hadn’t heard anything from Revan. Squad vitals told her the Sith was alive but any attempts to contact her were met with static and silence.

EDI was also keeping a running analysis on the state of the Collector ship and its power levels. At the rate it was going, they would have almost no time to spare if they wanted any hope of getting away. Which meant no waiting for Revan at the landing site.

“Uh, Commander? I hate to rush you, but those weapons are about to come online.” Joker’s strained voice crackled in her ear. “Might want to double-time it. You know, so we can leave before they blow the Normandy in half.”

“I know, Joker! We’re almost there.” Shepard could hear the gunfire from the guard squad just up ahead along with the groaning rasps of a large number of husks. “Alright everyone, final push! Don’t hold anything back!”

“You better be right about that, Shepard. After this I’m spent.” Jack briefly glowed with a biotic aura and unleashed everything she had left at the mob of techno-zombies. Dozens were crushed under the assault and even more staggered from the massive Shockwave. The tattooed woman stumbled before getting dragged along by Tali of all people, the quarian letting her combat drone cover her zones while she made sure Jack didn’t faint on them.

Grunt let out a massive war cry before charging headlong into the horde, clearing a path behind him and moving towards the shuttle. The rest of the fireteams made sure to follow behind and keep his back clear.

“Samara, heads up we are inbound. Check fire.” Shepard made sure to announce. It would be damn embarrassing to get through this mess only to get shot by her own crew.

“I hear you, Shepard. And I can see the krogan coming. We will be ready to leave as soon as you are onboard.”

“What about Revan, Commander?” Garrus asked. Part of Shepard hated her friend for bringing it up but the rest of her knew she had to make a call.

“We’ll have to…wait, do you feel that?”

The Normandy crew had made sure to protect themselves from being exposed to the environment, but even through her hardsuit Shepard could feel the air was being ‘supercharged’ almost like there was a storm inbound…or a very angry Sith!

“We’re out of time, Commander! We have to go!” Joker warned again.

“You heard the man, everyone back to the Normandy! That means you too, Revan, move!”

Revan’s answer was a torrent of force and lightning that swept through the Husks like a scythe. Shepard could see her fellow squad leader was in bad shape, burns covered the little armor not covered in Collector blood and other liquids but she was making good time.

The Spectre made sure that everyone else was on board so when Revan made it into the Kodiak, she slammed the bay doors closed.

EDI took it from there and piloted the craft back into the Normandy’s hanger with a precision only found in the most elite pilots but that was far from Shepard’s mind at the moment. She was out of the shuttle and running towards the Normandy’s cockpit the second she was able, overriding safety protocols in the process just to make sure she made it in time.

Crew were frantically manning stations and securing any unsecured items, but everyone jumped out of the way as she ran by.

She made it up to Joker just in time to be nearly thrown off her feet as the pilot juked the ship to the side, narrowly dodging the massive beam weapon the Collector ship fired that lit up the viewport.

Two more shots barely missed as Joker frantically manipulated the ship controls, doing everything he could to buy just a little more time and space.

“I can’t dodge this guy forever, EDI. Get us the hell out of here!” The ship lurched again, another narrow miss.

“Specify a destination, Mr. Moreau.”

If they lived through this, Shepard was going to ask someone to make EDI a little less goddamn literal.

“Anywhere that’s not here!”

The sensors screamed that the Collector ship had a target lock. It would take a miracle for them to miss their next shot.

“Very well. Engaging mass effect core.”

A low vibration hummed throughout the deck, the core powered up, and with a soft ‘whump’ the Normandy jerked and accelerated into FTL.

They had escaped.

Shepard released a breath she felt like she had been holding for hours. “That was far too close.”

“Yeah no kidding, Commander. I think I need a vacation. Or a drink.”