So with Jeremiah at the front, visor up and 'casually chatting' over his shoulder, they entered the room.

Lined floor to ceiling with banks of screens, data units, speakers and other communications gear, the room had only just room for two operators. One had his feet up, coffee mug in hand, and the other was bent over the equipment. They reacted calmly to the agents' entry, but when Jeremiah approached closer, the man in the chair jokingly said, "We've not been introduced, you know," he said. Jeremiah said "What's that?" and pointed, drawing the man's attention to a screen as he closed the gap, and a crashing blow from his rifle butt sent the man flying.

Vasquez had similarly disposed of the other operator, and the agents now proceeded to systematically disable all the comms gear they could find, ripping out handfuls of wires with their battledress-enhanced strength until Victor confirmed that silence had fallen on the airwaves.

Next they went along to the surveillance room, where they found rather more operators. Five men were scattered around the room, monitoring the screens controlling the perimeter around the secret base. Two huge holotanks stood in the centre of the room, for a bigger view of the interesting stuff.

Crashing into the room, the pair opened fire, sweeping the operators with silent gauss fire. All were killed without getting a shot off, although a couple of the screens and one of the holotanks also bought it from stray bullets.

Vasquez and Jeremiah spent some time investigating the displays before moving on. The remaining tank was showing a thermal scan of Anardir Base itself, with coloured blobs moving around, clearly marking living beings. None of the humans were trained with sensor equipment, but after a few minutes Victor pointed out that there was something peculiar about the traces; they would disappear for a couple of seconds and reappear again, not normal. Maybe something was wrong with the equipment. Vasquez shrugged, and put a bullet through it.

With the spyware knocked out, it occurred to them that there was no reason not to bring the Nemesis in to pick them up. Vasquez asked Victor if he was able to communicate with the ship from here. The robot shook his head, a movement he'd been studying and was almost entirely familiar with. His comms were short-range and not up to the job. Neither were the battledress units; under good conditions, they probably would have been, but 'good conditions' were almost unknown on Ariel. They needed bigger communications systems. Unfortunately, they'd just destroyed all the radio equipment in the security centre...

The only other rig which could do the job would be in the Imperial crawlers parked outside. First, though, they had to deal with the witnesses upstairs.

As they headed through the foyer to the lifts, the sight of the Vorka earnestly guarding the lifts sparked an idea, and Vasquez asked Victor whether he could bring the robots under his control. His answer was that he probably could, but only if given access to the maintenance computer in the robot storage room.

Approaching the lifts, they could hear banging and shouting from above, showing that people were trying to get the lifts working. Climbing in, the agents removed the blockage, and the lift began to ascend. For a couple of moments, the two above watched the lift rise, and then suddenly broke right and left, rolling out of sight and into cover. They had clearly recognized the two lichen farmers as escaped prisoners.

The lift opened, and Vasquez and Jeremiah exchanged fire with the two officers. Unarmoured and carrying only light pistols, they stood no chance, but one did manage to get a shot off, alerting the remainder of the floor.

Fastolfe and Kepler were left to guard the lift, and Jeremiah posted himself at the door of the 'bot room, while Vasquez and Victor ducked inside. Imperial soldiers - fortunately not armoured, but armed - began to emerge from the barracks rooms up the corridor, and Jeremiah, Fastolfe and Kepler were soon in a savage battle to defend their position. At first they were very successful, but then Fastolfe was caught off guard and sawn almost in half by a burst of gauss fire, and Jeremiah was badly wounded, forcing him to use the medical tab of his armour. His aim was affected by the drugs, and a few moments later a stray shot from his rifle hit Johann Kepler in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Jeremiah stood his ground, ignoring the pain, and fought doggedly, strewing the corridor with dead Imperial soldiers.

Meanwhile, Vasquez and Victor had walked nervously across a room packed with Vorka security robots to the maintenance computer, at which Victor was now working as Vasquez listened to the gunfire. She tapped the tongueswitch in her armour and tried to call Jeremiah, but nothing happened. Then she realized; the armour comms were all centrally routed, through the comms room. All interarmour comms were out of action after the damage they'd inflicted. Her implants meant she could talk to Victor, but that was it. However, the continuing gunfire from outside did show that Jeremiah was probably in need of help.

At that moment, Victor said "That's it," and all the Vorkas moved slightly in unison. "What do you want me to do with them?" the robot asked. "Send one to the lift," answered Vasquez, heading for the opposite side of the room, to rack up her armour's strength enhancement and smash through into the barracks on the far side.

Jeremiah ducked back as the robot hummed past him and shot down an Imperial soldier just emerging from a barracks. Reinforcements at last.

Vasquez smashed through into the barracks, just as the last soldier in those barracks collapsed back into them, shot by the quisling robot. Emerging into the corridor, she met up with Jeremiah and they advanced cautiously into the end corridor with a Vorka leading the way.

The end hallway had a mixture of offices and accommodation for the senior officers. The window at the left-hand-end was broken - clearly someone had preferred his chances in the snow to those facing the invaders.

The robot entered the commander's office, fired its' weapon, and was blown to bits by gauss fire, as was the next one they sent in. At that point, the penny dropped that the robots were armed with tranq, and that if the occupant of the room was armoured, they weren't going to be able to do him any damage. Jeremiah, not in the mood for any more sneaking about, fired a RAM grenade into the room, blowing it and its' occupant to shreds.

The open office from which the escapee had come turned out to be Garmil Kulikaan's. Their interrogator had escaped! A quick search turned up some interesting transcripts of past interrogations, which would look really good in the newsflecks, and an ID with a photograph of him, which they took.

Then they returned to ground level, and Vasquez raided the comms room for some walkie talkies which Jeremiah went back to the armour store for some more medical tabs.

The next idea was to get the robots to range out from the base and hunt down Kulikaan as well as any soldiers they could find. However, the bots were restricted to the interior of the base, so they had to give that one up.

Next, they checked the garage through which they'd been brought into the facility. There were six grav bikes under tarps, clearly unused since arrival, which Vasquez promptly disabled, and, parked outside, an Imperial crawler, probably the one they'd been captured by. No-one seemed to be about, so they made a dash for it through Ariel's eternal blizzard.

Vasquez clambered up to the hatch and opened it, to be confronted by a man seated in the driver's seat, alerted by the sound of the door opening, frantically trying to bring up a gauss rifle. Both fired together; the Imperial was splattered all over the bulkhead, but Vasquez took a bullet in the chest. Jeremiah dragged her in and shot more painkillers into her, while Victor used the crawler's comms to radio through to the Nemesis, to tell them to get over and pick them up. Jeremiah took the controls and reversed frantically into the whirling snow and out of sight of the base.

But what to do? With the security in tatters, and no-one aware at Anardir itself, the perfect moment to complete the mission was now, before the Imperials discovered what had happened, concluded the inevitable, and stitched the base up as tight as tight. However, both were pretty badly wounded, and in no state to walk into another firefight.

Aching, they stared out into the snow and waited for the ship to land.