I was going to hold off on this post until I had posted the accompanying videos on YouTube, but that will take until at least late tomorrow, so I figure I might as well write this now.
From the journal of David Shepard:
Today we traveled through the Omega-4 Relay to take on the Collectors. Not everyone survived. I wonder if I could have done better, if I should have done better; would they still be alive?
No sooner had we passed through the relay, we were attacked by automated sentries. Someone mentioned they looked like giant eyes, causing Miranda dubbed it "Oculus". This caused her and Mordin to argue whether the plural should be "Oculuses", "Oculusi", or just "Oculus" (like how "fish" is can be both singular and plural).
One of the sentries crashed into the cargo hold of the Normandy. I took Miranda and Thane down to deal with it. Sometime during the fight, our shields took a bad hit, causing our drive core to expend too much power to compensate, frying Kasumi who had wandered down into Engineering. Soon after that, the Collector Ship, my old nemesis, came out to meet us. Joker managed to dodge its fire and then fired our brand new Thanix Cannon. The Collector Ship was torn apart much quicker than the Normandy SR-1 had been. But the Normandy caught some debris and crash-landed on the Collector Base. Luckily, they Collectors did not seem to detect us.
In the meeting room, we pulled up the Collector Base schematics extracted from EDI's scans and came up with a plan. We split into two teams: my team would go up the middle while another team would go through the side. Some doors blocked our paths, so someone would have to crawl through some vents to get to the other side and open the doors. We needed someone with tech skills to open the doors, so I sent Garrus through the vents. During my time with him two years ago and hearing about his exploits with his team on Omega, he seemed like the logical choice. He had good tech skills and was used to infiltrating strongholds. Miranda offered to lead the second team, but no one wanted to follow her, so I chose Jacob instead. I figured his time in the Alliance -- particularly the Corsairs -- had made him suitable command material due to his extensive background with military structure and missions.
The infiltration went very smoothly until the very end, when Garrus was able to open the doors, but encountered problems trying to close them again.The Collectors were pushing hard to get at us, so Garrus abandoned the hacking attempt and tried to shut the doors manually. We managed to close them, but not before Harbinger's thrall chucked a biotic deathball at us, killing Garrus in the process.
We found ourselves in a chamber with a bunch of pods attached to tubes leading to some other chamber in the base. A colonist -- I'll never know her name -- was still alive and was liquefied before my eyes and sucked down the tube. We then rescued as many people as we could: our entire crew. It felt good to know that my crew was alive at least.
The next plan of action: we decided to split up again, keep the Collectors fighting on two fronts. I would lead a team straight through the heart of the station while another team moved alongside another route. The route I planned to go down was filled with seeker swarms. Mordin's counter-measure would not work with that many seekers, so we needed another solution. Samara proposed creating a biotic field, and Miranda said that any biotic could do it. I had witnessed Jacob's biotics first hand, and with his military (and personal) conditioning, he seemed the most logical candidate to create and hold the biotic bubble. With Jacob holding the bubble, I needed another leader for the second fire team so I chose Zaeed with his years of experience leading merc bands.
Tali was not looking too well. I felt a pang of guilt about that, since she had risked her own health to share an intimate moment with me before traveling through the relay. I wondered if perhaps I had been too selfish. I sent her to escort the crew back to the Normandy. Once back aboard the ship, Dr. Chakwas could take a look at her and treat any infection she might have.
The long walk was dangerous to be sure, but we managed to make it to the door nearly unscathed... until Jacob faltered and lost control of his biotic bubble. We ran to the door while Collectors dropped in, but Mordin fell behind and was carried away by seeker swarms. On the other side, the second fire team was pinned down; we opened the door to let them through, but Zaeed's shields went down and his armor couldn't stop the hits. He slumped against the door, swore, then died.
We were nearly at the central chamber, where we would plant the bomb. The Collectors were nearly upon us, trying to hack their way through their own door to get to us. I left Thane, Samara, and Jacob behind to guard the door while I took Miranda and Jack to the central chamber. The Collectors came in on platforms trying to stop us, but we took care of them fairly quickly and took the remaining platform to the central chamber.
And that's when we saw the Reaper. Well, Reaper Larvae actually. Seems the Collectors were constructing a Reaper using the captured colonists as... well I am not really sure. EDI told us that Reapers are techno-organic hybrids, although the purpose of the organic fluid remained unclear. It was also unclear why the Reaper looked... human. We managed to shoot the injection tubes -- a weak spot -- causing it fall from its moorings on the ceiling. Then we planted the bomb.
Then the Illusive Man called us, asking us to spare the base instead of blowing it to bits. He figured a timed radiation pulse would kill the Collectors to keep the base intact. This would allow Cerberus to study the base and its secrets to better fight the Reapers. I understood the logic, but after what I had seen I could not bear the thought of sparing the base, so I chose to destroy it. He was angry and ordered Miranda to stop me, but Miranda refused and resigned from Cerberus. I like her spunk.
We planted the bomb, but then the Reaper Larvae returned and tried to destroy us. It was big, but unfinished, and we managed to shoot it enough so that it stopped functioning and fell... taking the platforms were were standing on with it. Somehow we survived and I called the Normandy for extraction. We hightailed it to the Normandy and got out of there before the base exploded. It looked glorious. We left through the Omega-4 Relay.
I was glad to see that the crew holding the line had survived. Tali had also made it back alive with the entire crew. All total, the crew, Tali, Jacob, Miranda, Thane, Samara, and Jack had survived. But the loss of Garrus, Zaeed, Mordin, and Kasumi was crushing. I keep thinking back to the mission and wondering if there was anything I could do to get everyone out alive.
I talked to Tali after. She was running a fever, had a bad cold, and goodness knows what else. I felt terrible but she assured me it was worth it. That made me feel a little better but I still feel guilty for even having risked her life like that. Although I suppose we all risked our lives on the suicide mission. But it still makes me feel like a selfish jerk.
I need to take my mind off things. I think I will head out and rescue Admiral Hackett's friend, Dr. Kenson, from that Batarian prison. It would give Tali some time to recover from her infections. And we still have Project Overlord that Cerberus wanted us to take care of. That will at least distract me for a while from thinking about the people we lost... because of me.
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