Abduction of Freedom's Progress
From FABT
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4 August 2185 CE | ||||||||||||||||
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Tactical Collector victory
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- "Look at that...food trays full of food still warm. A video game left unpaused. Dishes left in the sink with the water running. It's like...everybody just dropped what they were doing and left. Got up right in the middle of dinner."
- — Jacob Taylor describing his thoughts as the Normandy Squad moves through the eerily silent Little Rock in 2185 CE.
The Abduction of Freedom's Progress, also known as the Little Rock Disappearance and the 15th Abduction, was the surprise attack and abduction of the Little Rock colony on Freedom's Progress by the Collectors during the Collector campaign. Continuing from a series of human colony abductions that had been ongoing for two years, occurring at random colonies at random dates, the Collectors chose the planet of Freedom's Progress as their next target, with a focus on its capital, Little Rock. At this point the Collector abductions were still an unsolved mystery with both the Systems Alliance and the rest of the galaxy, as the Collectors were meticulously precise in making sure not a trace of their attack was left behind: this came from a combination of advanced technology used to disable a colony before it could defend itself, and using their reputation to keep themselves from drawing too much attention. This, combined with a lack of interest on the Alliance's part in stopping the abductions (still recovering from the Eden Prime War), meant the Collectors were effectively imposing a state of total fear across the human colonies of the Attican Traverse and the rest of Alliance space, as nobody knew when the abductions would stop, who was behind them, how they were pulling them off, which colony would be abducted next and when it would be attacked. Prior to August 2185 CE, the Collectors had successfully abducted 14 colonies, capturing thousands upon thousands of humans who were never seen again and whose fate remained unknown. This knowledge greatly alarmed pro-human organizations such as Cerberus, who were dedicated to protecting human interests and the species as a whole, and as such took far more interest in the abductions than the Alliance did, actively waging a shadow war to discover the faction behind the abductions and put a stop to them. This started what became known as the "Collector campaign", albeit no major moves would be made as the Collectors continued to abduct colonies with impunity, with no real way to stop them or counter their efforts.
Having chosen Freedom's Progress as their next target, the Collectors deployed the cruiser Sojourner to the planet in order to carry out their 15th abduction. Unbeknownst to the Collectors at the time, the quarian pilgrim Veetor'Nara had chosen Little Rock as the location to carry out most of his pilgrimage, given an office by the residents of the colony and acting as their local technician and engineer, largely to help maintain their modest security force of RAGNAROK-series mechs, which the colony had purchased in response to the Collector abductions in the vain hope that it would protect them. Veetor'Nara, ever paranoid as a result of his neurosis and agoraphobia, had set up a series of screens and terminals he had synced up to the colony's surveillance cameras, allowing him to monitor the day-to-day workings of the colony and receive requests without really needing to leave his office: this would end up being his saving grace when the Collectors attacked. On 4 August, the Sojourner arrived over Freedom's Progress, entering the atmosphere at the same time that it activated its signal jammer to block all communications, then entering a stable position over Little Rock and immediately beginning its attack, unleashing massive seeker swarms that swept over Little Rock, stinging and freezing every colonist they came across: the security mech force was unable to respond, having been shut down to solve a programming error Veetor had discovered in the mainframe and which had been unresolved by the time the attack began. Once he realized the colony was under attack, Veetor quickly locked his door and, as an added measure, cut power to it all together, and proceeded to hide in a small crawl space below the floor, paralyzed by fear. Within a minute of the attack beginning, every human colonist in Little Rock had been stung and frozen by the seekers, signaling the Sojourner to land nearby and deploy Collector troops to begin collecting the captured humans into pods and loading them onto the ship. Breaking into Veetor's office, several Collectors gained access to the server mainframe and wiped the drive, believing themselves to have erased all footage of themselves before leaving the office again. Once all ten thousand colonists were loaded onto the Sojourner, the Collectors and Seekers retreated back to the ship, and the Sojourner departed Freedom's Progress, returning to the Collector Base with their shipment of fresh victims. To the Collectors, Freedom's Progress was yet another successful abduction, having captured ten thousand more humans for their Human-Reaper, and it was an uneventful, unnoteworthy addition to their long list of victories.
However, Freedom's Progress represented a turning point in the Collector campaign. The Collectors, using technology to detect humans, had failed to find Veetor, and despite wiping the colony's surveillance footage, Veetor was able to retrieve and restore much of it after the Collectors left, sifting through the footage to observe the monsters which had taken the colony. Gripped by fear and not understanding the horrors which he had seen, Veetor locked himself completely in his office, becoming convinced that the Collectors would return for him and that he needed to protect himself: he reactivated the security mechs and reprogrammed them to attack everything on sight, not caring who they attacked so long as they didn't get him. This action led to the 12th Explorer Platoon of the Migrant Fleet Marines, a unit sent to retrieve Veetor, being attacked by Veetor's mechs and forcing them to team up with a Cerberus squad that arrived shortly after, who had raced there to find evidence on who abducted the colony and was led by newly resurrected Commander Shepard. Despite a mutiny that led to the 12th being largely wiped out, the Normandy Squad finally reached Veetor and convinced him to stand down, leading to him handing over the footage that proved Collector involvement. This was vital for Cerberus, as it now gave them an identity for their mysterious attacker and, in their eyes, proved the involvement of the Reapers in the abductions. While the abduction had succeeded, the Collectors' slip up had finally exposed them, and they would soon be forced to fight an active conflict with Cerberus, one that would ultimately end in their destruction only two months later.