Somewhere over the rainbow, Arc 5 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 50 Light in dark places

Hanshan

Peacemaker, Normandy, and Nairobi hung at the synchronous zenith point for Port Hanshan, running silent and (in the frigates' case) stealthy while a reconnaissance in force unfolded thousands of kilometres below.

First to enter the dock portals was a drone. Two more frigates then hovered before the Port Hanshan docks, which amounted to a row of steel portals set in a mountainside. Local gravity of Noveria was around four fifths that of Earth, well within a frigate's surface hover envelope.

The doors had suffered the indignity of a two megaton whack centered four kilometres off. On the other hand it was comparatively clean fusion, the blast had stripped a vast quantity of ice and snow off the port surrounds, and the warhead had been directed downwind.

"Radiation negligible. Phase one, Beachhead dock. Proceed."

Shepard had said "Whatever you do, do it fast, do it with backup, do it with an exit plan." Pegasus came down like the wrath of god, Thanix primed, Overlord covering five hundred metres behind. Lemaes' shuttle dropped her squad of four commandos plus herself, and Liara – two combat triads. The little troop ran down the dock and took cover. Nothing happened for thirty seconds as the Pegasus shuttle returned to her open hold. The shuttle doors opened again and four engineers ran out – two asari, two human – carrying portable breaching packs.

"Ingress powered down but standby telltales are up." One of the engineers pried open a maintenance panel and clipped cables to emergency supply points. Green access lights appeared on the doors, which the lead engineer opened. "Layer-1 Accessed." Lights came on in the dockway. All but two then ran back behind Lemaes' covering squad. Another thirty seconds passed. "Layer-2 up."

After two minutes: "Layer-3 unserviceable, proceed."

"Phase two, breach."

A second shuttle appeared from Overlord and dropped off Miranda's combat triad – herself, Jack, and Toombs. Over the next ten minutes nearly eighty of Nairobi's Alliance marines, mostly Russian or Kazakh, filed out of the shuttles and prepared combat shields. (To minimize combat comm problems, large combat groups were usually all one mother tongue or nationality, except for the anomalous 'foreign legions' of France and Spain.)

The Russian marine captain snapped "Phase three. Dock two."

Immediately, the teams began entering the base, setting up combat floods as they worked to gain access to the neighbouring portal. This took three minutes.

The shuttles again withdrew but not to the frigates; they powered out of atmosphere and began loading more marines from Nairobi.

This would take thirty minutes. In that time, troops already in place would remain on the docks against emergencies, unless given permission to enter.

Permission from the NDC administrator would not happen quickly. Thermal exhaust blooms indicated the Port Hanshan reactors were still operational so at least their VIs were up, but no-one knew whether anyone alive was supervising.

"Phase Four. Recon one and two."

Both frigates entered the (now operational) docks. Their cores idled; they would be ready to leave at seconds' notice. More engineers sallied forth; work began on the security console in "Plaza access", while Liara's and Miranda's triads (personal security detachments) moved to Port Hanshan's Plaza access elevator.

It was powered down, but swift work by the engineers brought the attomechanical interfaces up. No electro-optical interfaces were up, so omni-tools were useless, but the breaching packs had the (somewhat bulky) special equipment to interface with a Layer-2 net. In three minutes both the lift shaft and the adjacent stairwells were up and lit.

"Operation Floodlight, begin."

Liara and Miranda entered the elevators sixty seconds after more of Lemaes' commandos and Toombs' mercenaries began clearing the stairwells. They nonetheless arrived at the plaza level a few seconds in front, and softly took cover near Opold's store, dropping duffels of equipment.

The surroundings were a stygian black. Not even night visor overlays could penetrate without a few photons. Just a few green LEDs dotted the opposite and bottom of the plaza. On the arrival of the commandos, lights were set up for ten metres along Opold's shop front, but not switched on. Liara brought out two flare pistols.

"Actinic shields UP. Cover your eyes, boys and girls."

Two magnesium flare drones screamed toward the ceiling. The initial flash of two seconds was impossibly bright but human and asari eyes were covered.

Other eyes were not. Unearthly screams came from the hotel end of the plaza. Miranda's scream was a battle cry:

"CONTACT! AD is engaging, weapons free, marines to me!"

The great Hanshan turkey shoot

At least thirty Collectors including five assassin-class ran bellowing from the garage and hotel portals, accompanied by what was later determined to be two hundred and eight husks – about half the known staff of the administration plaza.

Where are the rest? flashed across Liara's mind, but there really wasn't a lot of time for that. The enemy was hampered by bumping into and falling over obstacles - clearly their night vision was badly compromised.

Miranda would later remark that the collectors must have used the husk-making spikes, but not a lot of them; most of the remaining admin staff bodies were counted, unaltered. Opold's corpse was in his shop.

First priority were the assassins. Three were clumped near the hotel and her singularity took them out almost at once. Miranda kept biotics in reserve but sniped them with a Scorpion while Lemaes did the same with a scoped Raptor. They were dead before the scorpion grenades went off.

The husks never got close enough to be dangerous. The first wave were shredded by two vanguards on Lemaes' team, and the second was ten meters off when eighty Alliance marines came charging through the stairwell and a deafening firestorm slew them all in less than half a minute. The collectors besieging the hotel doors were history too.

The illumination drones had settled to something like two eleven hundred watt fishing halogen bulbs. It was enough to see and be seen. Shepard had been following the helmet-cam footage from Overlord's gunnery threat board.

"Lemaes, dispatch a company of marines to clear the garage."

"Will comply. Miranda, can you send your engineers and Riley to Synthetic Insights with a really heavy escort, I'll break the safe and get the items we discussed. Join Liara and Jack. It's my guess the hotel lifts are offline, the stairwells mined."

"And barricaded. Hey, Coreen, Shep, we get motion detector readings."

"Welp. Any communication?"

"Sent a drone a few seconds ago. Patching."

The footage was rather grainy, even charge coupled devices didn't cope well with such low light levels. Just stair ascent so far. Gunfire echoed over the audio.

"Garage clear, just husk storage we think. Drone coming to the corporate level now. Wait. Here we go." Toombs shouted up the stairs, "Don't shoot, Council rescue." The drone footage showed armed human, turian and asari figures rising from barricaded corridors.

"Miranda! I see Quin and Parasini!"

"Never mind them! Where's Oriana?"

Next chapter: #51, "Ali Baba and his forty thousand thieves"

Tuesday, July 28, 2015