Chapter 32

"Kallen, we've got a big storm inbound, already feeling the effects," I reported as the snow made its way in through the open hatch of our shuttle, drenching everything it touched.

"Do we abort?"

"Negative," he replied. "You need the extra cover to stay out of visual range as long as possible. Don't worry, you should be inside before it gets too bad."

"Easy for him to say," Nalar muttered as another gale force wind picked up our ship and rocked it from side to side for a moment before hurling it aside like a child with a tantrum. Beside him, Melnar nodded mutely.

"What was that?" Kallen asked, through the comm system.

"Sorry I just had to get up to adjust the ship's temperature regulator by half a degree. It was getting a bit chilly on board."

"If we get out of here, we're feeding him to a Thresher Maw," Nalar remarked darkly. The shuttle juddered again under the external forces on its hull and Melnar nodded again, this time fervently.

I was about to add in my own agreement when a break in the clouds altered my priorities.

"Target in sight. Be ready."

At my words, the team jumped out of their seats and began final readiness checks before deployment. Below us lay my father's research compound, surrounded by a blanket of white snow. The facility had been built into the side of a glacier, a huge ice ridge cutting right through the heart of the base, creating a north-south divide. On the north side, I could see the shuttle landing pads, the garage, the control tower, and the main command center. A single ice-covered road led over to the southern side where I knew the majority of the research labs and scientist's living quarters would be, though the ridge obscured my view.

I stepped up to join my crew who had assembled at the edge of the hatch. As I went I consciously tapped each item I would be taking with me on the drop. Rifle, sidearm, knife, torch, grappling gun, wingsuit. I looked down for a moment, checking that my jet boots still seemed to be in working order.

"Wait for the Alliance marines to begin their attack. Soon as we get the signal we move. "

I shouted, trying to make myself heard over the roaring winds.

"Are we sure about this?" Nalar asked, looking out uncertainly at the fierce conditions.

"Storm's only getting worse. If we abort we may not get another window for weeks. We have to go now or not at all."

There was a brief pause before Nalar stepped up to the plate.

"We go now then."

Melnar nodded in agreement. I took a moment to convey my gratitude before turning round to face the pilot one last time.

"Once we jump you know what to do."

"Yes ma'am. Signal is green, you are clear to jump."

She needn't have bothered with that last part, even from here I could hear the distant sounds of explosions and canons firing. We waited a slow count of fifteen seconds and then finally, we jumped.

The next few minutes were difficult to keep track of. We were half-blinded, at times even almost drowned by the constant sheet of falling snow pressing against our faces like a heavy blanket. The wind buffeted us about somewhat but our speed in free fall meant that we cut through the turbulence on our route straight down into a frozen hell.

As we fell I was listening closely for an explosion that would indicate the shuttle had taken out the overland road as ordered but to my surprise, the first big bang took an entirely different form. I saw it before I heard it. An impossible flash of blue, so bright and powerful and flashing on and off so that my first thought was that I was somehow staring into the heart of a police siren. It was only after the glow had faded and I heard the powerful, all-encompassing rumble that I realised it had been a lightning strike. Perhaps the first of many.

Desperately I tried to orientate myself against anything, but the sky was all in flux and the ground was a meaningless blank void of whiteness. Even the large ice ridge was in motion, a cascade of snow and ice coming down to block the main road as intended. If that was already in motion then it was nearly time to slow our descent. I waited as long as I dared but eventually I had to active my jet boots and start flaring my biotics to make the final leg of the journey.

But if anything this only made my situation worse. I'd known the winds would be worse as I slowed down but I hadn't been prepared for how savage they would actually feel in the moment. I fought with all the tools I had for stability, but even with all the tech and biotics I possessed I still felt I was being toyed with. As if any moment I could expect to be seized by this overwhelming force and hurled against the glacier. Nearby I saw Nalar and Melnar engaged in similar battles for survival. I did my best to extend my biotics to cover them as well but in truth, I was in danger of failing myself.

Then we hit the ground, no more than eighty or ninety feet from our target according to our nav point. We'd have to rely on the word of the computer since even I couldn't see it through the storm. We crawled through the freezing snow, to gather to our rally point, just thirty meters from the compound. Even here the building was no more than a dark shape, hiding behind a veil of mist and snow.

"No more waiting," I yelled, confident that even here the guards wouldn't be able to hear me over the sound of the storm.

"Move in quickly and watch each other's backs. If all goes well we should be halfway to the control tower before they realise what's happening."

In fact, we got even closer than that, our progress more hindered by the weather than it was by the enemy. According to our information the main entrance was normally guarded by a force of twenty guards but under normal circumstances, the other side of the base wasn't under attack by Alliance marines. The five guards that were left didn't even have time to call out for help before we silenced them.

The way in was clear but it hadn't been our intention to enter from there, we'd simply wanted to mop up any prying eyes before we began our ascent. Standing at the base of the control tower, we now deployed our grappling guns to latch onto the upper roof and began scaling up the side.

There were more sentries that would be watching from the lower roof once we rose high enough but as Kallen had noted, during a storm they were pretty much useless (examining our orbital photographs he had noticed an old storage unit that had been modified into a makeshift barracks that he fancied the guards were using to secretly shelter from the weather while they should have been at their posts). The guards inside the control room saw us from the wide glass windows that seemed to cover every side just as we were clambering up onto the walkway just outside. But by then it was far too late.

There were about ten of them in total in the room, six technicians and four Centurions, all armed. We entered as a single tightly clustered unit, trusting our shields to hold in those first few seconds as we cleared the doorway. The Cerberus troops opened fire first with the technicians not far behind and for a moment our kinetic barriers were lit up like a fireworks display as the attacks rained in on us. Our return fire was more muted but precise as our combined attacks gunned down the nearest Centurion. Then we broke and ran for cover separately and the real fighting began.

The technicians stayed put, too inexperienced to do anything but sit tight and fire in our direction in the hope of pinning us down. Not that they were entirely ineffective in that, keeping both myself and Melnar in cover while the remaining Centurions advanced on Nalar's position.

Sensing their approach, he swore loudly and started to fall back. Staying low to avoid the constant hail of fire he retreated into the maze of desks and equipment behind him, the Centurions cautiously advancing after him. I tried to move across to cut them off, but I didn't get more than a few feet before my shields started warning me they were about to fail to the incoming fire. Falling back behind cover I turned to glance at Melnar.

"I've had just about enough of this. Ready to take the kid-gloves off?"

"Agreed," he replied with a nod.

I counted two seconds, then on the third unleashed my biotics to send a desk crashing across the room. It didn't manage to take out any of our opponents (though it was a near miss for some of them) but it did buy us enough time to stand up and take aim. Clean headshots did most of the rest of the work, cutting through the technicians with a few pulls of the trigger.

It didn't take the Centurions long to realize their rear was no longer secure. Well trained as they were, they were quick to find cover but even that didn't save one of them from being gunned down. A second trooper had actually reached Nalar and was grappling with him directly. He looked round to see us behind him and hesitated for the single second Nalar had needed to slip free and break his neck. The final two tried to make a break for it and fell to our crossfire. Not the toughest fight I'd ever been in, but there should have been more soldiers guarding the control tower really.

"I thought Kallen wanted us to keep the techs alive," Nalar grunted as he stepped over one of the bodies towards the nearest console.

"Only to save us time in this step," I answered calmly while making a final sweep of the room for any remaining resistance we had overlooked.

"If we'd wasted any more time trying to grab them it wouldn't have helped us in the long run."

Nalar just gave a noncommittal jerk of the head by way of a response. He was already far too engrossed in playing with the tech to absorb what I was saying. Without the techs help it took a while longer for him to break into the system but eventually the security gave way to his hacking skills.

"OK Kallen, I think I've managed to enable remote access. How's it looking on your end?"

"Eeerm, stand by just a minute."

There was a long expectant pause.

"Yeah okay, we're in. Camera feeds seem to be alright. Its gunna take a bit more time to access the door controls but we'll get there."

"You sure?"

"Yeah we've got this. The security they've got here's not terrible but it's built over a pretty ancient original framework. Should've overhauled it years ago."

I could almost hear Kallen's grin over the comm system.

"OK, I'll head back downstairs. Scout out any troops they might have waiting to burst in on us."

I turned to leave, opening up the trapdoor in the floor that led down into the tower itself.

"Miranda, wait!" Nalar called after me.

"You should take Melnar with you. Just in case."

I turned back to face him.

"I was going to leave him here for that exact reason," I replied, amused by the duality.

"You need someone keeping watch while you're working."

"Alright, just be careful," he answered stiffly.

"Always."

I headed back to the trapdoor, only to be hit with amused annoyance as my name was called again. This time it was Kallen.

"What is it now?" I groused.

"I can't spot your sister or father on any of the surveillance feeds," he replied urgently, his voice filled with mounting concern.

"Check again," I replied flatly.

"I've checked them all three times already. Based on the pictures you gave me the Lawsons aren't here."

Silence descended upon the tower like an axe. The storm outside was muted but I felt it inside me, like waves of burning ice pulsing through my body. In my mind, the same word started repeating over and over on a loop. Again. Again. Again, again, again, againagainagainagainagain. Again I had run into a dead-end, again my father was one step ahead of me, again I had let Ori down.

"Miranda, I'm-" Nalar began saying, but I silenced him again with a look.

"I'm going downstairs," I announced, before ignoring the ladder under the trapdoor and jumping down to the next level directly. At least they couldn't call me back again now.

After that, I don't remember as much as I should about the next few hours. I remember the plan was to use the design of the base to split the enemy forces up. The overland road between the north and the south side had been taken out and there were only a few tunnels through the glacier underground. The marines were doing all they could to misdirect them with their attacks and Kallen would use his access to seal off parts of the base, one by one, trapping groups of soldiers and keeping them out of the fight. I'm sure that was still the strategy they followed after I left but it didn't hold much meaning for me anymore.

For me, the battle took place in short bursts, from one room to the next. Taking the enemy unawares, surprising him. Hunting him. As I fought I let my conscious self fade into the background, allowing my training and battle experience to take over, becoming the weapon I was always meant to be. I killed ruthlessly and without mercy. It was how I'd always been trained. These Cerberus lackeys were no longer human in any case.

Time passed and gradually I became aware that I was running out of targets and those that were left were becoming harder to get to. I'd been hurt a little during the fighting but that wasn't the real difficulty. Everywhere I looked now doors were slamming closed, sealing away the last few who had eluded me thus far. To my surprise, it didn't bother me. I had expected to feel rage at being denied further outlets for my anger but I felt nothing. They were just out of the way now.

Eventually, I became aware that someone was pinging the comm installed on my omnitool. I had the impression they had been doing so for quite a while. Pausing from my now fruitless hunt, I responded, coming back to life as I did so. It was Captain Burke.

"Lawson here. What's up?"

"We're in the labs. If you've finished working off that stress you might want to come join us."

"Why have you found something?"

"Are you kidding? Looks like we've found just about everything Lawson."