"Hello," Miranda murmured to herself, lowering her binoculars before lifting them again. She watched the single shuttle break out of the queue lining up to set down, to disgorge their dozen or so refugees. The small ship landed, then opened to reveal a heavily-modified Kai Leng. He hadn't been nearly so teched out the last time she saw him. It wasn't an improvement to his looks, either. If anything, quite the opposite.

Well, Shepard had warned her about Leng.

After months of painstaking research, after tidbits, breadcrumbs, and atoms of inference, she felt almost ready to make her move. That Leng was here, in a place like this, with preferential parking, that almost confirmed the presence of a major Cerberus operation. Who else did the Illusive Man have to delegate to, after all? You couldn't trust drones to do anything but exactly what they were told. They lacked the imagination trusted lieutenants tended to have.

Miranda wriggled back from her observation position, then to her shuttle, hidden carefully so as to avoid notice. Not that Sanctuary was being particularly watchful of the surrounding area. Not that she could tell.

She wasn't sure when to stage her rescue. Charging in there was stupid. More than that, it would mean failure. She needed a distraction.

Sending her poor shuttle crashing into the facility would do for that. Particularly with the amount of explosives currently in a locked crate behind the cockpit. She'd call Shepard and ask for a ride later…assuming Shepard didn't show up in response to the ping she'd sent as soon as she entered orbit.

Part of her wished she'd taken up Shepard's offer of help, but she was too accustomed to self-sufficiency where Henry Lawson was concerned. It was a private, personal matter, besides. She needed to handle him on her own.

Miranda took a drink of water, than opened a tube of nutrition paste. She knew Cerberus. They might leave a small garrison here, but they wouldn't concentrate the bulk of their forces in the same place those forces were created.

It sickened her, the depths to which the Illusive Man had sunk. She wondered if his vision of humanity had always been warped, or if it was just getting a little too close to the enemy.

She knew that it wouldn't matter what time of day or night she staged her attack. It wouldn't take long for the facility to lockdown and mobilize.

"Is there any good reason you shouldn't tell Shepard about this, and invite her to the fight?" she asked herself out loud.

The answer was no, there wasn't a good reason. Merely her own pride and preference to do for herself.

Miranda bit her lip. She wouldn't want to jeopardize Oriana's safety on account of her own pride…and it wasn't as if Shepard had never helped with Lawson family matters before. And where Shepard went, her crew went, and more hands would be better, once the shooting started.

Miranda returned to her observation point, scowling at the facility as it stood there, so serene and unassuming.

She would ask Shepard for help. This was as much the Alliance's business as it was anyone else's. While she counted on the high price Henry Lawson would put on Oriana's life, and while a single infiltrator could do a lot of damage…it was better not to take any risks.

The first thing she noticed was that the flight pattern of the shuttles had changed. Some were hastening to land near the facility, regardless of the marked-out landing field; these opened their doors and their passengers immediately began running for the facility. There was fear and desperation in their motion.

Other ships, those at higher altitude, were breaking off, exiting the atmosphere. Cutting and running.

Her stomach clenched as she watched the queue breaking up. Why would they…

Her blood went cold. Her breath stilled. What if…

She closed her eyes as the first few objects dropped from the sky. They did not disgorge geth come to liberate the facility. She brought her binoculars up to her eyes…

Reapers. Lots and lots of Reapers, of all makes and models, from the big heavy Brutes to the spindly asari Banshee, to the standard husks and bright red Abominations.

Dropships continued to fall, some smashing into the facility before opening, others peppering the land around it. She expected to see the finger-like tentacles of the flagships, or the bug-like smaller vessels, descending out of the bright clear blue sky.

If any were present, they stayed up in orbit, releasing their bombardment.

She hoped the Reaper delivering all these shock troops stayed up there, then left once it dropped its payload. She didn't see how the terrain or scenario could be arranged to fight one of the truly massive Reapers.

So much for waiting for help, Miranda thought numbly as she watched the Reapers descend upon the facility. She couldn't afford to wait. Within minutes, people would be fighting to get out of there. At least they had a whole planet on which to run, and the Horizon colony the Collectors attacked was a quarter of the way around the globe. Hopefully, the Reapers would focus their attention here, and not worry overmuch about one small colony and the survivors from this facility who fled into the wilderness.

She could still make use of her original plan, though, to slam her shuttle into the facility, adding to the chaos.

Miranda hurried back to the shuttle, opened the pilot's interface and programmed its flightpath. Then, she set the time, and withdrew, taking all the equipment she hoped she wouldn't need with her.

At five minutes, the shuttle rose from its hiding place, sailed up into the sky, then came down like a comet. The shuttle didn't hit up front, where the refugees were likely to be, but drove into that space through the back. People started flooding out of the various doors, clearly in a panic.

Good. It was better they ran.