Hello there,
If you enjoy my stories, you can read up to 15 chapters in advance per story on my Patreon page / patreon.com/Samael61.
If you like how Shepard is a total genius badass, you should check Arrival : Ruptures to enjoy more of the same.
—
The Collector Dreadnought
"Resistance is futile. Abandon hope and surrender yourselves." Harbinger demanded through the vessel it was possessing. Its laser cannon had just carved a deep line into the stony walls of the room, and the Reaper was now firing enormous biotic attacks, each chipping their covers away.
"You made a beefed-up clone of me to defeat me. I don't think I have anything to worry about." Shepard peeked out of the corner he was taking cover in to shoot at the clone, but just as was the case with his teammates, the laser bolt harmlessly dissipated on Harbinger's barriers.
"Your weapons are ineffectual."
Grunt pulled out the rocket launcher and fired while Harbinger was focused on Shepard. A white and red orb of energy slammed right on the Reaper's face, scorching some of the skin, but otherwise did not harm the clone vessel.
"Shepard, barrier too strong. Position untenable. Need a plan, urgently." Mordin called out. He wasn't a front-line trooper, and this was way outside his preferred parameters.
Not that the salarian didn't find the challenge enjoyable.
Shepard activated his anti-gravity generator and pushed himself into the air with his biotics. Immediately, Harbinger turned its attention to him, which gave the rest of the team a much-needed break.
"Come on, squid, let's see what you got." The number one Spectre in the galaxy released a beam of biotics, targeting where the rocket launcher had impacted, forcing the lesser copy to take a step back. Harbinger raised its arm, using the white-hot energy blade to block the stream, and fired its cannon.
Shepard rolled to the left, down, and up, causing Harbinger to miss and take another rocket to the face, ignoring it along with the continuous laser fire of the team.
"Shepard, the rocket is running out of energy." Grunt warned. It had proven to be the only weapon effective against the Reaper so far.
"Give me a minute; I'll figure something out."
"We have analyzed your fights, your patterns. This battle will not end in your favor."
"You haven't even left a scratch on me." But Shepard would admit that each pass of the laser beam came closer to hitting him.
One thing he noticed during the fight was that Harbinger never turned his back to the team, always pushing Shepard away with a barrage of dark energy blasts and the cannon.
Meaning, the clone must have a weakness on its back.
An idea came to mind, and Shepard lassoed Harbinger's left arm. The Reaper used it to swing Shepard to the wall, but using the extra velocity, Shepard blasted himself forward, getting through Harbinger's defenses.
Now behind the clone, Shepard turned off the generator, falling off the edge of the platform, but the lasso kept him in the air, with the added benefit of causing Harbinger to lurch to the left, exposing its back.
A shot from Garrus' rifle to the device strapped to the Reaper's back caused its almost impenetrable barriers to flicker, and several shots got through.
Garrus understood what Shepard was doing and capitalized on the opportunity. "Shepard, it's working. Keep pulling it back."
"Grunt, get ready."
"Got it."
Shepard climbed up and saw that Harbinger was about to use the blade on the lasso before he lassoed the right arm right above the blade, pulling the Reaper to himself. Harbinger stumbled, which gave the team more shots at its back, but it wasn't enough.
The vessel was physically stronger than Shepard, but quick thinking on his part stopped Harbinger from pulling Shepard close as he reversed the anti-gravity generator, anchoring himself on the spot.
"Now." Shepard ordered, and Grunt jumped out of cover, running at the clone with a thundering battle cry. Samara and Jack saw the biotics Harbinger launched at the krogan and raised a barrier, giving Grunt the crucial time he needed, but the backlash sent the human and the asari flying away.
Grunt slammed into Harbinger with all his speed and weight, forcing the augmented clone of his battlemaster forward and completely exposing its back.
Laser fire concentrated on the barrier generator overloaded the power source, and it exploded, sending out a golden field that threw Grunt away and down into the empty space below the platform.
The krogan held on to the edge of the platform, dangling dangerously close to his death, but as Harbinger was down now, Shepard pulled Grunt up and threw him back to cover.
Its barrier gone, Harbinger rose from where it was lying, and without a word, the helmet slapped into place, covering the clone entirely now.
"This achieves nothing."
"Coping much?"
Unlike the barrier, the armor was taking damage, but it was such a miniscule amount that chewing through the armor plate would take hours, which they could not waste.
"Your intellect is greater than any other we have faced, but it cannot match our perfection."
"Garrus, keep this bastard occupied for a minute."
"On it."
Once again, biotic power gathered in Shepard's hand, this time denser than ever before. He kept compressing it to a singular point, putting every ounce of his strength into it.
"Shepard, you must stop. You are creating a miniature black hole."
The biotic power distorted time and space around it, causing Shepard to see a faint copy of him, and the fight slowed down in his perspective. With a scream, he launched the singularity at Harbinger.
The Reaper's scanners noticed the gravitational anomaly, and it immediately launched a stream of dark energy to stop it but was too late. The singularity pulled the platings off the platform and cracked the stone walls, even pulling the light around the room, plunging the entire place into darkness.
"Back through the door, now!" Shepard ordered as the singularity warped the Reaper around it, bending the dreadnought-class armor as if it were tin.
—
"This exchange is over." Harbinger's voice called out from the intercoms after the shaking stopped, which allowed Shepard and his team to open the doors.
"Shepard, are you alright?"
"Yeah, what about you guys?"
"Nothing to worry about. What the heck was that?" Garrus would have preferred to have an early warning about an attack like that.
"Just created it now."
"Why don't you guys save your bro talk for later? We need to find a way to cross this room." Jack grumbled, because Shepard's bullshit attack just destroyed the entire room, leaving nothing but an empty space in the ship.
"I'll carry you to this side with biotics; hang on."
—
The bridge itself only had one occupant, a Collector general frantically trying to overload the fusion core of the dreadnought before Jack Biotic slapped it to a console and Tali stabilized the core.
—
Omega
Afterlife
"This can't be right." The salarian rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't just seeing things because of all the stimulants.
Aria got up from her seat, frowning. "What is it?"
Convinced that he wasn't hallucinating, the Salarian's throat bobbed. "For a second, the scanners read the formation of a black hole before it disappeared."
The Queen of Omega blinked for a second before screaming, which startled her underlings. "What the fuck is Shepard doing there?!"
A black hole so close to Omega? She didn't care if Shepard was dabbling in weapons of mass destruction, as long as it was away from her home.
"We are getting hailed by the Collectors again." A batarian informed Aria, and the asari frowned.
Did Shepard screw up?
"Shit. Put it on." She had stalled for enough time, and if the Collectors wanted a fight, she would give it to them.
The asari tensed, waiting for the ugly bug to appear on the screen again, but floundered when she saw Shepard on the screen. "Hey, Aria."
"Shepard. Why did our scanners just pick up the creation of a black hole?" If the human won the battle and took the ship, it meant he was the one who caused that black hole formation, not the Collectors.
"You guys weren't watching the live stream?"
"What live stream?" Aria asked, mouthing to one of the salarians to find what it was about.
Shepard snickered. "Doesn't matter. I have the ship, and we are recalling the Oculi; Omega should be safe now."
"Never thought I would hear those words from you." Considering he was about to assault Omega years ago, it was irony at its finest.
"Don't get used to it. We are taking the ship and every drone out there."
"Whatever. I don't care as long as these bugs don't threaten my station anymore." She, in fact, did care about getting her hands on Oculi and their laser tech, but it wasn't worth the trouble with Shepard here.
—
The Collector Dreadnought
"I don't believe it." Tali sounded giddy.
"What did you find?" Garrus could imagine the technology that could be learned from this ship alone, as the cruisers did not even come close to it.
Tali used the console to pull out a jumbled mess of a recording, which showed protheans screaming something over the comms. The video itself would be worth a fortune alone, but with the rest of the data? This was the greatest discovery related to proteins ever. "This wasn't some random Prothean dreadnought; it was their flagship during the Reaper invasion. The translator puts the name as Height of the Twilight." Damn, Liara would have killed to be here.
In fact, she just might, so Shepard would recommend her as a researcher for the dreadnought.
"Let's go with Penumbra Apex, the same thing but in Latin, so it sounds cooler." It rolled off the tongue better too.
"If you say so. Anyway, it had been taken over by indoctrinated forces in the Battle of Shelter, which is the closest word the translator could get to. That is why the ship is in one piece." The coordinates of the Shelter were corrupted and would take a long time to piece together before any meaningful lead could be discovered.
"The Council is going to love this." Garrus grinned, imagining the leaders of the galaxy salivating at the sight of a Prothean dreadnought.
Shepard chuckled and pressed his omni-tool. "Joker, get me the head honchos at the Citadel."
"They are waiting for you, Commander, relaying the connection to the dreadnought now." Huh, they certainly didn't lose time.
Tali accepted the relay, and Shepard sat on the captain's seat as the faces of the Councillors appeared on the holo screen. "Commander Shepard." Tevos greeted, looking mighty disturbed like her colleagues, except Udina, who was trying, and failing, to hide a smug smile.
"Councillors, you won't believe what I just found." Shepard asked as if his bosses had no idea.
A war was waging inside Valern, between his mind as a politician and his heart as a historian. "A prothean dreadnought, you mean."
"Not just a Prothean dreadnought, but Penumbra Apex, their flagship, and it's in good condition too."
"We watched the livestream, Commander. Congratulations to you and your team. You have once again proven to be the foremost soldier in the galaxy." Udina buttered up Shepard, and the rest of the Councillors could merely nod.
"I know. Could you send a Citadel research team consisting of all the races to take over the dreadnought? I like it and all, but it's a bit slow for my tastes, and the interior is so dreary." There were tons of bodies to clear up, blood to scrub off, and holes to repair, not something Shepard was willing to waste his time on.
"That won't be a problem, Commander. We'll keep you informed." Now, Tevos looked relieved.
The galaxy would need everyone ready for the Reapers, and Shepard wasn't a human supremacist like Cerberus, so there was no reason not to share the dreadnought with everyone.
"Thanks, I won't keep you anymore. I am sure you have work to do." That is, cleaning up after him.
—
"That is near the galactic core. There is nothing but exploding suns and black holes, and certainly no habitable planets." Jacob might not be an astrophysicist, but anything living near a black hole was a bad omen.
"Could be an artificial construction. Space station protected by powerful mass effect fields and radiation shields." Mordin reasoned. He read the examination reports of Sovereign's wreck, thanks to using Shepard's name, and the advanced technology of the Reapers was more than enough to make the theory a reality.
"Reapers have the technology, and seeing as the Collectors are their tools, we now know where their base of operations is." Shepard spoke the words on Mordin's mind.
Miranda frowned, still stuck on a different matter. "What I don't understand is the reason for this attack. They had a dreadnought with the capability to kidnap entire colonies and the firepower to push back any defense forces. Why attack Omega and wait so long? Why not go after a lone colony and make us chase after them?"
Her words made sense, because the Reapers followed logic, a twisted version of it, but logic nonetheless. Attacking Omega made no sense.
"Holding the clone aboard illogical. Serves no purpose in abducting colonists. Here for a different reason." Mordin sniffed. "Shepard. Harbinger wanted him dead. Collectors created the clone. Harbinger assessed Shepard, threatened humans. Shepard came. Fought the clone. Final biotic attack was unknown. Harbinger failed, clone destroyed."
"A trap for Shepard makes more sense than a stupid attempt to kidnap humans from Omega. There aren't that many on the station to begin with." Garrus was intimately familiar with the station, having fought there for months.
Now that the reason for this attack was evident, they could turn their attention to more important matters. "What about the IFF?"
"My analysis is ready for you to peruse. The IFF will get us through the Omega 4 relay." Shepard nodded at the AI. It would still have to be tested, but EDI wouldn't make a mistake like that.
"We can take the one here, right?" Grunt suggested. Ships weren't something Okeer taught him about, but he was learning, if a bit slowly since it didn't include any action besides taking them by force.
"No, the ship will need it to be transported to Citadel space. I want to check that Reaper anyway. Cerberus lost contact with the team onboard, which means it's still functional and aware of what is happening. I'd rather not have an enemy in our backyard." In the usual Cerberus fashion, they must have gone inside the Reaper unprotected and gotten indoctrinated.
"There are still several matters the crew needs your help with, just to have a clear mind when proceeding beyond the Omega 4 relay." Jacob reminded him, and Shepard looked at the crew. Samara with her fugitive, Jack with that Cerberus base, and Grunt was angry these days, though the battle had calmed him down a bit.
Tali received a very concerning communique from the fleet, Miranda was worried about her sister, Zaeed had that job with the refinery, Mordin had found one of his former teammates from the STG days was missing in Tuchanka, and Thane received word that his son was doing something he should not have.
"We have time; the Collectors took a blow, and I don't think they'll be staging an attack any time soon."
First, he would have to wait for the Citadel teams to arrive and take the ship before leaving to help his crew solve their problems.