User blog comment:Garhdo/Plot hole?/@comment-1900300-20111226142854

Firstly the objective was Shepard, who died and was burnt up in reentry to the nearby planet. The Collectors and pretty much every sane man thought that was as dead as you were ever going to be. It was an annoyance since the Reapers wanted Shepard's body for study, but with it burnt to a crisp they decided to cut there loses and high tail it out of there.

There was a reason for this too: The ship's distress beacon had been lauched and the Collecters had no idea how long it would take for someone to find it. Not just Allaince but anyone. They did not want to make a scene. They wanted a hit-and-run job so that no one, not even the Normandy's crew, would have much of a clue what attacked them. The last thing they need is the Alliance going onto red alert looking for a kilometer long ship with advanced weaponary and a unque design in the systems, since they needed anonimaty for that period and did not want anyone connecting them to the "other" kilometer long ship with advanced weapons and a unque design that caused trouble recently. They did not have the time to blast individual escape pods for fun. And even if the crew was found they would only talk about how a ship came out of nowhere and owned them. They would give the Alliance little to go on. The Normady would be listed as killed by geth, slavers, pirates, rouge nation militaries etc, while the Collectors remain a myth of the Terminus.