"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.