Vega slithered into the openings of the hybrid ship, leaving behind small clusters of biomass colonies that turned into microscopic infested pustules. Within them grew a deluge of Indra microbes, not enough to create the great green clouds, but enough to potentially greatly affect the components of this ship. It was a last resort, though; Blacklight wanted the ship intact if at all possible.
Vega sensed the bioships on the outside of the ship prepare the Vorcha for their first real taste of Reaper Combat. Collectors, after all, were but another extension of the Reapers.
The shell of this ship was unique. It was capable of stopping most signals, making it nearly impossible for Geth programs to enter these systems from the outside, but Blacklight had thought of that.
The esoteric machinery of a truly alien design was a strange sight to behold. It was the epitome of function over form, strange considering the interior parts of the ship that was habitable by the Collectors and their Seekers.
There was surprisingly little room for James to slither through. Wires and piping were so packed together that Vega was but a single layer of cells high sliding through the space at a slow rate. Blacklight had seen construction similar to this from Geth ships, but not to this level.
'So... This is what toothpaste feels like.'
The many took note of those words, and agreed; even if the other minds were not really there, they could feel it all the same. For what felt like hours, the layers of cells slithered to where Vega was informed the airlock should be.
As the microscopic membrane exited the sparse cracks, it clumped together, forming small yet complex eyes on stalks to look around.
Huskified Collectors, some standing still as death in a perfectly spaced group against the walls, all in the same pose. Others moving through the room did so while marching in an organized and perfectly maintained alignment. Each movement was done in perfect synchronicity with any other Collector who was moving. The movements were so mechanical it was strange to see them from something at least partially organic.
It looked less like a disciplined army, and more like mindless machines.
The more complex eyes were discarded as Vega broke into smaller and smaller pieces, each roughly the size of an aphid. One good thing about incorporating the Rachni's hive mind into theirs was it was easier to control multiple bodies at the same time, rather than having to give each piece instructions beforehand.
The swarm of small insect-like creatures skittered across the corners of the ship, each one spreading to see if the airlock control panels could be found, or even the air lock itself. Problem was the inside of the ship was strange. The fusion of ship, stone, and hive made it difficult to figure out what anything really was. The swarms of seekers and collectors made it treacherous to move through undetected, but Blacklight could manage. At least they thought so.
Too bad no plan survives contact with the enemy.
Euphoria.
It is good, everything is good. I can't control myself, but I am content.
It feels good. What a nice feeling.
I am happy and content with life.
I can't remember my name... but everything is fine, and everything is beautiful.
I am happy and life is beautiful.
This is peace, it is better than everything else, this feeling makes life worth living...
I... What am I doing.
I can't remember.
I remember... Reapers... They are good, I love them, I love them so much that I will give anything and everything for them... Just make this feeling last.
I don't care about my artificial insectoid shell, I don't care about my mutilated arm, I don't care about the cold machines embedded inside of me, I don't care about the small feeling of those tiny probes moving around within my body, I don't care about the loss of will and choice and freedom... Just make the feeling last, please last... Just. Last.
I don't want to know, I don't want to know, I don't want to know... I only want to feel.
I… I remember.
Haze, infinite haze. That is all we know and all we will ever know. The dull tone of indoctrination rings in my very soul, becoming a cascading cacophony that vibrated in my very being and echoed around me to shackle us to their will. Those who sleep and rest beyond the stars and within the void of dark space, outside the galaxy where no life could exist, excepting that which is not truly dead, nor truly alive.
Please bring back the feeling.
Four eyes, my eyes, now implanted to allow me sight beyond what I once considered sight. For when idle, my and my brothers vision shifted through the spectrum. From normal, to infrared, to ultraviolet and back again.
It was when my vision shifted through these modes that I and the others seen something, not heat, but rather an absence of heat. A spot of cold, too small to see, but with our eyes we saw it.
When I see it, I know pain, but my body did not react, only my mind. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt.
Need to stop the hurt. Need to stop the hurt.
A stuttering chatter escaped my mandibles as we entered our combat stance. To kill that which causes us pain, the feeling will come back when that which causes torment is gone. That spot of cold, it needs to stop, and I feel again, I don't need to think. Just. Feel.
I prepared myself... but I heard a dread voice boom around me as my insides lit on fire, if I was capable of doing so, I would have screamed as another mind destroyed what remained of my awareness to hijack my thoughts and actions. I was fading, burning away.
I know what this is, this is the great pain, and it is glorious, not while it's here, but once it's gone... Yes once it's gone, I won't feel anything anymore. Yes, please burn me away. Take me as your vessel.
"ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL!"
'Fucking shit slingers!'
While James' choice of words were hardly descriptive of the situation at hand, it was enough to help understand his current thoughts on the collectors as they fired emerald beams from their Prothean rifles.
The beams incinerated cells as the hive of once-Protheans slid out wings from their backs and they took to the skies.
What parts of his body remained quickly reformed, gathering together to create more complex creatures. They scattered as the infested pustules within the hull burst open and birthed the Indra, whose bio-electric capabilities caused the air to spark and glow a faint green.
Parts of James were taken over by other minds, allowing him to concentrate on his task, to find a way for more biomass to enter the ship.
The plan had failed before it even started, and they were spotted. It was time to improvise.
A collector, one who was glowing with a fey light skittered across the field, sending out a biotic reave at a larger infected being vaguely reminiscent of a crab, though many times larger.
The Reave attack caused the nerves built into the crab like thing to flare all across its body at the same time, causing the biological construct pain, so much so that it began to lose cohesion and fall to a pile of inert biomass that was quickly reforming into thousands upon thousands of ant sized insects.
Blacklight analyzed this and reworked their own biology as they did away with a nervous system all together so that Reave would not have an effect.
Eventually the chaos around the ship grew as millions of Indra grouped together forming visible green clouds above the battle.
Collectors fired at anything their augmented eyes could see and identify as Blacklight, but as the creatures got smaller and smaller, it became that much more difficult to keep up at their current rate.
"YOU HIDE? IT WILL NOT WORK."
The voice of Harbinger rung from the biotic and glowing Collector who was flying above the battle as biotic barriers formed around it.
Then its eyes flashed, and every other Collectors eyes flashed with it, before they all began to float in the air.
The biotic corona began to burn the air as the combined Biotics of the Collectors caused a familiar Biotic power to be created around each and every Collector.
The Annihilation Field.
From every collector, shadowy tendrils of burring biotic energy emanated and fried any cells that came within a certain radius of the Collectors.
They lowered to the ground as they resumed their attack.
"FEEL OUR MIGHT!"
Millions of insect sized blacklight infected were incinerated, burnt to a crisp, however, during the fight, a few of the Collectors noticed dead Seekers falling to the ground, twitching unnaturally as the air above began to glow.
"WHAT IS THIS?" Harbinger voiced curiously.
From green iridescent clouds within the sky, Bolts of lightning were vomited forth to strike the Collectors, whose Annihilation field were much too short range to hit.
Even with their ceramic armor, the lightning interfered with the fiber-optics that had replaced their nerves. The ones who escaped however looked upwards, and began to fire uselessly into the sky, before they detonated their fields as a biotic explosion was forced upwards by hundreds of Collectors.
While the cloud above did fade as millions of Indra died, many yet remained, and sparks began to arc between them, painting the inside of the ship blue with lightning.
Vega, or what parts of himself he still controlled, skittered across the walls, avoiding the battle as he observed the world through the sensory abilities of what infected and Indra remained. With such a mass of Blacklight life here, he had located the Air Lock, and was making his way there.
All that remained of him was a small multi-legged tendril, vaguely reminiscent of a centipede with several tentacles for a head.
'Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!'
He made it to the console, and his tendrils began to fly across the alien surface as thousands if not millions of minds looked to the console in an attempt to find a way to open it.
The tendrils flew as he went through several possible combinations that would lead to the doors opening, but thus far, nothing seemed to have changed, other than a silent alarm going off all across the ship that he was unaware of.
Doors opened as thousands of other Collectors entered, and millions of seekers buzzed in.
There was not enough Biomass to keep them distracted for long, and if Vega failed, then this mission was a bust. There would be no way to get the others inside the nigh impenetrable fortress of this ship, and what remained on the outside, clinging to the side of the Cruiser, would be an easy target to dispose of.
Luckily enough for him, on the outside of the ship, the Bioships were shifting what parts of themselves they could into small, but still powerful Brain Hives. Neural pathways truly alien grew as Blacklight ensured that they would not take away any of the biomass used to keep the Vorcha alive.
Then, a massive Biotic Singularity appeared at the center of the room, where the collection of Collectors and Seekers was most dense. Indra and other Infected were able to get out of the way beforehand as the ships on the outside of the cruiser were able to link with the senses of the biomass within the ship to correctly and accurately create a singularity of the needed size to stall for time.
"DO YOU BELIEVE THIS TRICK TO HALT US? ARE YOU UNAWARE OF OUR POWER? LET US SHOW IT TO YOU!"
From what Blacklight could tell, something abut these Collectors allowed them to link together to create truly devastating biotic attacks by using the power between them.
They increased the mass of themselves to such a degree that the Singularity could not pull them into it. It was a truly godlike display of Biotic might to resist a biotic singularity of this size, but Blacklight was quickly able to analyze how this worked, and saw a flaw. They dropped the singularity.
Without time to prepare, or reverse what they had done, the Collectors who had increased their mass collapsed under their own weight, falling to the ground, still whole, but prone. Then another singularity appeared as they reversed the change to get up. They floated towards it as they once again increased their mass, only for the Singularity to die out once again and the collectors fell hard to the ground.
"CHILDISH CANCER YOU ARE!"
Perhaps it was, but it bought the time Vega needed as he was rewarded with the sounds of the airlock opening. He melted into a semi transparent membrane as the doors opened to reveal a large wall of solid biomass functioning as a door, to keep the air inside since the doors were now open. Then, tendrils were formed as they became Hydra whose long snakelike tongue lashed out and threw Collectors around.
Seekers would come, but a sophisticated biotic barrier stopped the from coming too close as Infested Pustules began to grow on the viral mass.
"YOU ARE BECOMING AN ANNOYANCE!"
Evolved emerged covered in biological armor as Various infected created a stampede once they emerged from their cancerous wombs.
Several evolved initiated a Biotic Charge, smashing into a group of collectors before they reappeared and slammed their fists to the ground causing a shock-wave to blow the Collectors back.
James Heller stood there, one arm shifted into a long blade, the other a shield.
Standing next to him, Cross flicked his arm as a long needle-like spike slid from it, his other arm turning into a large modified Whistle Gun with chemical explosions ready to fire. The spike on Crosses arm danced with electricity as he charged into a group and impaled one of the collectors through their abdomen.
The needle easily slid into the membrane separating the ceramics as he laid his other arm across the impaled Collector's shoulder and fired a capsule of chemicals into a group. It exploded in a shower that became a napalm-like fire. The ceramics caused them to cook from the inside, but the multiple layers of protection protected many of the Collector Husks from death.
With ease, he lifted the impaled collector and threw it into the still standing group as he fired another shot.
James held out his bladed arm as he used a biotic charge to fly through the crowds, the blade slicing through some collectors, but for others the tungsten hard bones or powerful ceramics held and they were merely knocked over.
"So Cross, think you can take out more than me?"
Cross smirked as the beams that hit his shell like armor outfitted with cells arranged in pattern to reflect much of the heat, meaning the beams never fully struck. The damage that was done was easily healed.
"Loser has to wear a dress."
James exploded as a devastator attack of hundreds of tendrils exploded from his form. Once the tendrils were reabsorbed he smiled and nodded.
"Make it a tutu and you got yourself a deal."
"If you want to wear one that badly then fine. We have a deal", said Cross.
The initial plan may have failed, but there was still some parts that could be salvaged. Shepard began to awaken Shisk as the Vorcha was moved through the biomass into the ship.
Using color shifting abilities, Shepard moved Shisk's form to the initial location. Shisk had only just woke up to find himself and his fellow Vorcha crouching near what looked to be a large door of some kind as tendrils from his own wrist moved against a console on the side.
"Wat?!"
Confused at the sounds of battle, Shepard began to inform Shisk of what had happened.
'Yeah, the plan has changed. We've been discovered. We're doing this Rambo style.'
Shisk looked back to see what looked to be collectors fighting... a lot of things Shisk had never seen in his life. Just random odd looking creatures of various shapes and sizes and Evolved covered in armor, tendrils, and blades. No two looked the same.
Shisk was distracted as the door Shepard was working on slid open.
'Let's go.'
Shisk did not argue, he only ran, his pack following behind him.
Within the Shanxi system, orbiting over the planet itself, a truly unusual Bioship watched. It was shaped like an obese stingray with a reptilian head and rivaled the Destiny Ascension in size. Within the Bioship however, were large vein like tunnels, large enough to walk through. At the center, a massive organ housed the Rachni Queen, whose workers and soldiers moved within the ship, sharing biomass as they needed.
With their connection to the Blacklight Hive Mind, which was effectively their own, they worked quickly and efficiently on a ship they could mold like clay.
Superficially, this ship resembled the Rachni ships of old. Only this one brought the power of Blacklight with it.
The queen and her children knew of the troubles on the Collector ship, and prepared their offense.
At the moment, the new Queen was vulnerable, no new Queens had been born, but the small workers and the intimidating warriors were countless.
A single Brood lead by one of the queens own Brood Guards moved to the side of the massive bioship as it began to split like a cell.
The massive ship bisected itself, each piece forming into a smaller, but still powerful ship.
The one who held the queen remained behind, the other moved towards the Relay.
Shisk released his Omni-blades as he sliced at the Collector and leaped past the walls snarling like an animal. A blue glow from his Biotic armor, crafted by Shepard, made this all seem trivial. In fact, Shisk could say he had never felt as strong in his life as he did after he woke up within this strange Collector Vessel.
He ignored that for now as he focused on the task at hand. At the moment, the others were off to attend to their own tasks, though Shisk could easily communicate with them through Shepard, but he did not feel the need to.
On his omnitool, all the Geth Programs scanned his surroundings, looking for where they were to be.
"Take a left in seventy meters, from there, we should be able to reach the hypothesized location of the Reaper IFF."
Shisk sniffed loudly as he ran on all fours making leaps and bounds across the ground, walls, and floor thanks to the Blacklight suit.
Orange glowing Omni-claws shot from his hands as he dove into a Collector right as it aimed, and the instant the blades pierced the seems between the armor, he clicked his teeth. It was a curious thing how being in this suit of Biomass made everything seem so sluggish, but the Vorcha did not mind. The second the body he impaled hit the ground, Shisk prepared another leap, and with a roll his claws sunk into the ceiling, holding him in place for but a moment before he pounced forward, twisting mid air before landing on all fours right near the hall he was to take.
Shisk again wondered why he felt so strong. Even considering the suit, this was not the same as when Chakwas was in command. In fact, a lot of this felt like it was from him, not the armor of Biomass over him. Had Blacklight strengthened him while he slept? Perhaps, but Shisk knew one thing: he liked it. Liked it a lot.
With a careful gaze, Shisk peeked from around the corer down the hall to the Reaper IFF, however the moment he did he recoiled as several emerald beams from the Collectors energy weapons nearly seared his head off. He watched the beams dim and dissipate as he clicked his teeth together.
"Idea?"
'Not at the moment...Hmmm... Those are Prothean rifles, built not long before the Protheans fell. Powerful, pushes the limit of Mass Effect weapon technology... However it does have one disadvantage: it overheats... I have an idea. Just wait.'
Shisk blinked as his armor slowly shifted to become iridescent, it gleamed and shined like a metal, but still distinctly organic.
'We are now heat resistant... Not completely, if you let that rifle shoot you from its cool state until it overheats, it will burn through and kill you but you can get hit by it without instant death. Just make sure to keep the hit short. I can use various cooling methods to make it last a bit longer, but anything too drastic will freeze you... You would survive and heal, but not long enough until the Collectors come to finish the job. Either way, I got you time, take them out.'
Shisk sniffed as he saw the biotic glow around him intensify. He leaped out and took off into a sprint that would make an Olympian jealous. The emerald beams hit him, but he simply jumped and moved in seemingly random directions. After a moment, the biotics shield fell, but the armor held as he moved erratically down the halls.
They were only about thirty feet away, and as he got closer, the beams seemed to intensify, becoming much stronger. He could feel the heat, and Shepard's attempt to cool it at the same time. The simultaneous sensations of heat and cold was odd, but Shisk paid it no mind as he leapt up and down, left and right, but always forward.
Twenty feet away and the Collectors kept hitting him, but never in the exact same spots and Shepard was able to heal those spots. The seemingly random movements Shisk chose on instinct kept their fire hitting parts prepared for the beams, and Shisk felt alive.
Ten feet away, Shisk prepared his legs for a long jump into the middle Collector. There were seven in this hall, and his gun had just seemed to overheat as the thing beeped in an annoying fashion, and the others couldn't be far behind.
With a mighty roar, Shisk revealed his Omni-claws and shot forward like a bullet. He didn't see it, but Shepard coated the blades in a dim biotic glow, to maximize damage as they hit the Collector armor, and the biotic aura around the blades began oscillating rapidly like a biotic chainsaw, and sliced just deep enough into the armor for small microscopic tendrils to quickly move to the seams in the armor, and inject various debilitating viruses into the Collector.
This all happened in the span of a few moments, and right when Shisk was satisfied, his claws swung out to hit the Next Collector.
On his shoulder blades, long fleshy tendrils tipped with bone and neural fibers shot out, and hit two more Collectors to administer their viral payload.
Shisk's Blades hit with pin point accuracy as they sliced through the Collector's rifle, before changing trajectory and going for the eyes.
Shepard, and All of Blacklight, began to concentrate on this even as they fought elsewhere. They focused on a favorite of the Asari, a biotic reave. Nothing Fancy, but with a direct attack to the nervous system, one of the collectors found his leg bent when he did not mean it to, and he fell as a spike aimed for the seams and injected many very nasty viruses.
Five down, two to go.
With ease, Shisk sliced outward with a snarl before the first Collector downed began to change.
Its artificial parts fell off as its miniscule amount of biomass birthed Indra swarms that escaped from the confines of the Husk armor, to send small sparks of lightning at the other Collector whose rifle just finished cooling, though the sparks were small, as more Indra created their conductive plasma channels and fired more bio-electricity through it, the voltage grew and grew. The air turned green as the orange glow of Shisks talons sliced at his target, who aimed, and found himself impaled through a wall before his talon could even so much as twitch.
Blacklight was somewhat surprised that Shisk's Omni-claws could pierce the dense ceramics of the Collectors armor, but they quickly got over it as Indra swarms free flew to the wound to breed more Indra from the Collector's biomass.
Shisk turned quickly to see the last Collector on the ground, twitching as lightning shot from seemingly no where towards the pitiful husk, its rifle at its side, abandoned. Shisk clicked his teeth as he lifted it and admired it for but a moment, before pointing the end at the downed Collector and pulling the trigger. He watched as the parts atop the rifle moved back and forth as the green beam hit the Collector.
In his attempts to down the Collectors, he could not fully see what the rifle was capable of, but watching the beam become larger and larger appealed to Shisk as it burned through dense ceramics. When it finally overheated, Shisk held it away from himself as it beeped loudly. He sniffed once it cooled and looked down at the collector.
Interestingly enough, while most of it was gone, the bones remained. It was to be expected however, as the bones were coated in tungsten.
Shisk glanced back to the particle rifle in his hand and smiled a toothed smile.
"Shisk like 'dis."
"ORGANIC LIFE IS A GENETIC MUTATION, A MISTAKE. YOU ARE LESSER, A CANCER. A PARASITE. YOU ARE CHAOS, WE ARE ORDER, AND WE WILL IMPOSE ORDER UPON YOU. ACCEPT YOUR PLACE."
'Do they ever shut up?'
Hunters and Fliers flew into the steadily growing swarms of Collectors as more and more Seekers fell from the Indra Storm that crackled with electricity. All the while, the Collectors fought, and the swarms got larger s more and more Collectors came.
By this point, the bioship holding the door had used over a quarter of its biomass to birth more and more infected.
Seekers flew in chaotic swarms and erratic patterns as they attempted to leave the sphere of influence of the ever growing colonies of Indra. Emerald beams from the Collectors fired everywhere as they tried to hit the agile Hunters and Evolved who attacked with tooth, claw, bone, and blades.
Blacklight regenerated most damage, and as for the Collectors, if Blacklight missed the Collectors weak sots, they remained undamaged. Effectively, the fight was progressing very slowly, but the battle was as chaotic as could be.
Neither group could make any real headway, Blacklight could only pull on so much biomass, and the Collectors had so little to consume, and the Collectors had seemingly endless numbers of soldiers that came in droves.
In the cockpit of the Collector ship, the Collector General skittered around his room as he analyzed the information being sent to his systems from the sensors implanted in the Collectors, however the Indra's electrical interference was causing errors in the process. In fact, unknown to the Collector General, the electrical activity was also altering the sensors outside of the Collector Cruiser, and they did not notice the Bioship that just entered the system.
The Rachni had arrived.