X-COM (updated M-W-F)

[Lazybones]

Session 29 (November 17, 2008)
Chapter 132

The natural beauty of the underground grotto was transformed into a shooting gallery as the Alphas engaged a small horde of snakemen.

Vasily blasted a snakeman at close range, the plasma bolt punching through its torso. As the alien fell, Vasily darted behind a nearby pillar, plasma explosions chasing him as he ducked behind the stone. “Snakemen!” he yelled. “Not seen you guys in ages!”

He looked across the room, where his companions were likewise seeking cover. All except Mary, who was shooting one of the aliens…and who seemed to be oblivious to another that was just emerging from around the far side of the pillar to her left.

“Cover, Mary!” he yelled, firing a shot that narrowly missed, streaking past the alien’s shoulder. The Indian doctor let out a small shriek of surpise and darted back, grimacing as a plasma bolt clipped her thigh, staggering her but not really hurting her badly through her armor. She ducked back behind another pillar near the staircase; the aliens followed, but before they could get an angle they came under fire from Jane and Hadrian, who in turn forced the aliens to retreat back to cover. The Marine tossed a gas grenade that filled the air between two of the pillars with a bright burst of green smoke, obscuring several of the aliens.

Vasily heard Catalina’s shout of alarm, and moved around the far side of the pillar’s thick base. The British agent was trapped in a tight crevice in the cavern wall, darting out to snap-fire bolts from her plasma pistol at the two snakemen keeping her pinned down. One saw Vasily and shifted to face him, only to crumple as the Russian fired a bolt that clipped the side of its head. The other one nearly caught him in the face, but he dodged back, and the bolt hit the pillar, spraying him with hot plasma but doing little real damage. The alien slithered after him, but was distracted as Catalina emerged and shot it in the side. Her pistol didn’t hurt it too seriously, but as it turned to face her again Vasily reemerged and blasted it, his cannon burning a hole in its torso. The alien collapsed, still twitching, and continued to gyrate until Vasily finished it with one more shot to the head.

“You okay?” he asked Catalina, as she stepped clear.

“Okay. Thanks.”

The two of them moved around the perimeter of the room, staying close to the cover of the pillars. The fight was almost over; only two snakes were left, pinned down by the accurate fire of Jane and Hadrian. They didn’t spot Catalina and Vasily until the Alphas were almost on top of them, and they didn’t even get a shot off as the pair blasted them from behind.

“Clear!” Vasily shouted, and Jane and Hadrian emerged from their cover, the Marine flashing a thumbs-up sign.

None of them saw the dark form that crept down from the ceiling, or the second shadow that rose up near the top of the stairs. That one slipped across the edge of the landing that overlooked the grotto, until it crouched almost directly above Mary, who was leaning against the pillar as she checked her injured leg.

Catalina sensed the faint hint of movement as the alien lowered its body into position for a springing attack. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of the thing an instant before it lunged. “Chryssalid!” she shouted. She lifted her plasma pistol, but before she could fire, the other creature sprang down from the pillar above. It landed a few paces behind her, and even as her mind registered its presence, it lashed out with its claws, knocking her flying a good five meters, until her legs clipped the edge of one of the pillars, and she flipped over wildly until her back cracked hard against the wall, and she fell in a limp heap to the ground.

 

[Innocent Bystander]

Got to love that final mission. You get everything thrown at you except the kitchen sink.

 

[Vanya Mia]

That comes in the second week's instalments!

 

[Lazybones]

Session 29 (November 17, 2008)
Chapter 133


The other Alphas stared in surprise at the alien that had dealt so handily with Catalina, but they were quick to respond. Hadrian actually got a shot off, his plasma bolt exploding against the alien’s torso, but that didn’t stop it as it surged forward, grabbing Vasily and charging forward until it slammed him against the thick mass of a pillar four paces further back. The impact caused the entire column to shake, and bits of stone flaked off, tumbling down from the ceiling like hail. Vasily growled and felt a hot pain erupt in his back, but he’d held onto his gun, and as the alien’s jaws snapped at his faceplace he pulled the trigger. The white burst flared up between them, half blinding him, the heat searing him even through the layered insulation of his armor. But the alien felt it a lot worse, falling back as the connection between them was broken. Vasily slammed the weapon across its brow, knocking the alien back another step. “So much for scary terror weapon, huh!” he yelled at it. The alien shrieked and lunged at him again, but Vasily fell onto his rump, and the alien’s claws tore into the stone of the pillar, narrowly missing him. He poked the barrel of his cannon into its gut and fired again.

Jane and Hadrian had started to come to the Russian’s aid, but Mary’s scream had turned them around. The second chyrssalid was on top of her, its claws tearing into her armor. Mary screamed as it pinned her under its weight, all but helpless to do so much as squirm. Hadrian and Jane blasted the thing, the bolts punching into its chitinous body, but it refused to release its grip. Only when Hadrian approached to almost point-blank range, still firing, did it rise up, lunging at him, its claws tearing toward his face. The Marine dodged back but was clipped by that wild swing, the glancing hit still strong enough to knock him roughly to the ground. The alien sprang at him, but like Vasily the tough soldier had kept his grip on his gun, and he let the chryssalid impale itself on the barrel before he fired. The explosion seared Hadrian, but it knocked the alien over onto its back, where it lay there in a smoking and chittering heap.

Vasily got up under the burned-out husk of the other creature, kicking it aside as he rose to his feet. He started toward Catalina, but the British agent was already on her feet, still unsteady as the dose of regenerative serum she’d taken did its work. She waved him off, and he headed back over to where Jane was helping Mary up. The Indian doctor was conscious, but her face was a rictus of pain through the clear plastic of her faceplate.

“Aaagggh,” she said, as she fumbled at one of the cargo compartments in her armor.

“I think Mary is infected,” Jane said.

“That not good,” Vasily said, kneeling next to the injured doctor as she drew out the vial of countermeasure she herself had helped create. She waved off Vasily’s hand and flipped open the access port beneath the chest plate of her armor. The vial slid into the slot, and as she closed it there was a slight hiss, and she stiffened. The others watched and waited as she lay there against the pillar, breathing deeply.

“I… I’ll be okay,” she said. “I feel sick, but I’ll make it.”

“It looks like the self-sealing features of the armor dealt with the gash,” Jane told her. “When we stop, I can try to make more permanent repairs.”

“I’ll be all right,” Mary insisted, allowing Vasily and Jane to help her to her feet.

“Okay, no need to run forward all time, can be rearguard for a bit if you want,” Vasily said. “Okay?”

“I… I just want to help,” she managed.

“You helping just fine. Catalina, that passage you find, it lead forward?”

The agent nodded. “Looks like it.”

“All right. Let’s move out.”

 

[Lazybones]

Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 134


Jim rubbed his eyes and coughed as the hood of the cryo unit lifted up. There was some kind of foul smell coming from the bottom of the unit, and he couldn't feel his feet very well. He was also having trouble opening his eyes fully. Cryo sucks. Last time I'm going into one of these - except for the way home, if we make it.

He rested his head back on the base of the unit, and kept on rubbing his eyes until they teared up. After about a minute, he was able to open them and actually see. As soon as he did, he closed them again fast. His feet didn't look so good. There was something else wrong, something… missing. He tried to yell, instead croaking weakly, "Hey, where is everyone?! Anyone there?" He tried to get up, but it took him a few minutes before he was able to pull himself together enough to crawl out of the cryo unit.

The ship was vibrating under him; they were still flying. The other six units were all empty, and the Alphas’ gear was gone, most of it anyway, he thought, as he looked at his suit of powered armor sitting alone in its rack. He picked up his communicator, and inserted it into his ear. “Ken’s what’s going on?”

“Doc, that you? Glad to see you finally came out of it. I’m, ah, a bit busy up here, got two cruisers on my tail, and the Avenger’s not exactly in top shape.”

“What happened with the others.”

“They’re already dirtside. Are you okay? Can you manage?”

James was already fumbling with the straps holding the armor to the rack. “Yeah, I can manage, “ he said, although his fingers felt thick and unresponsive, and his feet still hurt like hell.

“All right, I’ll circle back around to the base entrance. I can give you ten, maybe fifteen seconds to offload. Sorry, doc, but it’s the best I can do.”

James was already busy getting into his gear. Adrenaline allowed him to put on his powered armor, and get the rest of his gear in place, and before he knew it, the hatch opened. He jumped even as the ship settled, and sprinted for the dark opening in the cliff face that he assumed was the base entrance. The Avenger streaked back into the sky behind him. There were bodies all over the place, blackened sectoid corpses that were already covered with a layer of the red Martian dust. As he stepped into the shadow of the cave mouth, he felt a rumbling under his feet. He glanced back, and saw that one of the alien ships had landed, and he didn’t need to jack up the magnification on his VDU to recognize the familiar forms of muton soldiers, disembarking from the hatch in the rear of the alien craft.

The sight gave him a strong impetus to get moving. The darkness deepened as he made his way deeper into the cave, still limping slightly as his feet slowly recovered from the damage they’d taken in the cryo unit. He’d injected the contents of a medikit shortly after waking, and it was helping, but he suspected that he’d suffered significant tissue damage. He nearly stumbled as the tunnel began to slope downward, but at least it helped him maintain momentum as he continued forward, his plasma rifle cradled in his arms, charged and ready.

At least it was easy to follow his comrades’ path. He didn’t hear their radio chatter, but one he saw the breadth of the underground complex, suspected that the interference from the material would block the signal until he was close. He passed through what looked like an ambush site in a deep grotto, full of the corpses of snakemen and the ugly insectoid forms of a pair of chyrssalids. He gave those a wide berth, even though it was clear that they’d been blasted by heavy plasma fire.

He found a passage that opened onto an even larger underground space. This one was more than a bit startling; the place was full of buildings that looked to have been sculpted out of the raw stone, forming impressive structures that formed arcs and curves, blending in with the natural shape of the cavern. The places were all empty, as far as he could see, although he found more bodies, a spread of maybe two dozen sectoids first, and then, atop a rise, a row of ugly splotches that he didn’t recognize immediately, until he remembered the Antarctica mission, and the floating blobs that shot acid. Celatids, the X-COM team had named them. It would have been a tough fight, by the looks of it, there had been at least five of the things.

He caught a hint of movement from the far end of the cavern, back the way he had come. He didn’t linger to see what it was, and hurried forward, where his LED beams indicated a twisting staircase that descended like a corkscrew into the ground.

The stairs descended for quite a ways, and transitioned from rough-hewn steps cut into the stone into more a more regular, deliberate construction. By the time that his lamps indicated the base of the stairs, the walls and ceiling around him resembled the construction of the alien bases they’d invaded Earthside. He entered a chamber at the base of the steps, and headed for the sole exit, a tall iris-door that twisted open at his approach.

He passed through several small rooms, and started to think he’d made a wrong turn somewhere before he came upon the dead ethereal. The alien looked… deflated, covered in the dark shroud of its robe, part of it scorched black from plasma burns. The wall behind it was splattered with smears of blood.

He went through the door next to the dead alien, and immediately his communicator came to life, hissing with static, but with the voices of the Alphas clearly audible in the background.

“Cover! Take cover!”

“Watch out, on your flank!”

“Get her out of there! Get her out!”

James ran forward. He couldn’t see where the voices were coming from, of course, but the communications link grew stronger as he rushed through the complex, and after a few moments he could hear the sounds of weapons fire, the familiar sounds of plasma bursts.

He entered a room with an open doorway on its far side; the sounds of battle came from its other side, along with a haze of gray smoke. He ran for the door, and was nearly impaled by a brilliant green blast that lanced through the opening, slicing across the room for less than a second, but long enough to leave a glowing afterimage on his vision. He blinked and made his way warily toward the door. Looking back over his shoulder, he could see the dark track that the beam had made in the far wall, and the smooth gash in the threshold of the door that the alien laser had cut before it had blinked out.

He leaned out to take a look, and nearly fell as a massive explosion shook the room. Smoke and debris shot out past him.

He didn’t hesitate further, and plunged through the doorway into the room. The smoke was thick and swirling, and he couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of his face. He could hear his teammates on the comlink, however, and knew that Catalina was down, and in bad shape.

Vasily’s bulky form materialized out of the smoke; the Russian’s gun came up before he recognized the other. “Allen!”

“Where is Cat?”

“Here!”

He knelt beside the prone form of the British agent. He could see what had happened at once. The beam had struck her just above the left hip, and had sliced diagonally upward across her torso, ending just below her heart. It looked like it had penetrated through her armor, but he couldn’t see the extent of the tissue damage, and he didn’t dare remove the suit to get at the wound. He settled for unfastening the chest plate; it was all but ruined anyway. He handed it to Vasily, who watched as he dug into his pack for his surgical intervention kit.

“How is she?” Vasily asked.

“She’s dead, is what she is,” he said, without looking up.

 

[Innocent Bystander]

Cat's dead?! Say it ain't so LB...Say it ain't so!

 

[Richard Rawen]

She's only dead! Stand back and give the Doc room to work

Although it's sad to miss those wicked sounding fights in detail, it was a great way to bring him, (and us) up to date.

So, have you snuck any more books onto then net lately?

 

[Lazybones]

So, have you snuck any more books onto then net lately?

I am working both on a new novel and on revising/editing one of the ones I wrote a few years back. I hope to have at least one new completed work to post on Smashwords by the time that this story wraps up, or shortly thereafter. Which won't be long now, as Alpha Team reaches the nerve center of the whole alien operation.

But first they might have a wrong turn or two to contend with...

* * * * *

Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 135


“Dead?”

“Yes, and she’ll stay that way, if I can’t get to work.” He tore the kit open, and spread its components out next to the body. “There are mutons behind me,” he told the Russian as he worked. “They were chasing me down here, we don’t have much time.”

“How many?”

He didn’t look up. “Many.”

“One thing at a time,” Vasily said. “Can you… help her?”

“Give me a sec,” he said. The intervention kit represented the pinnacle of their medical technology, and he’d worked on each of its components himself. But it was still experimental, and the conditions here were hardly ideal. He paused just long enough to hook up his monitor to the biofeedback unit in her armor, then went to work.

Hadrian materialized out of the smoke. “Alien robot’s kaput,” he said. “Looks like the blast took out those ethereals in the back as well. Jane’s keeping an eye on the door.”

“Allen says many mutons behind us,” Vasily said. “Can you do something about that?”

The Marine nodded and headed back into the smoke.

“Doc?”

James ignored him as he worked. The armor and the insulated suit under it had absorbed most of the energy of the alien laser, but her body was covered with full-thickness third degree burns, and he didn’t need to cut to know the condition of the organs underneath. But her heart and lungs were probably intact, and he forced himself not to look at the silent EKG monitor as he injected first a dose of regenerative serum, then thickly smeared the burned area with the gelatinous intervention fluid. That would get to work right away on the tissues, but he went ahead and inserted the long nanite probe directly into her body cavity, taping the control unit into place against her suit. That wouldn’t start until he’d gotten her heart going again, but that was getting ahead of himself.

“We’ll need to seal this up,” he said. “Pressure’s higher down here than outside, but it’s still not healthy. Where’s Doctor Ranma?”

“Mary!” Vasily yelled. He turned to head off into the smoke, but before he could leave the Indian doctor appeared, dragging one leg behind her. Sparks hissed from the crippled knee joint of the armor, and it was obvious even through her faceplate that she was in a great deal of pain. “Sorry,” she said. “Is she…”

James laid a plastic sheet over the wound; the material automatically began to tighten, sealing the entire area he’d worked on, the plastic melding to the fabric of her pressure suit. “We’ll know in a moment,” he said, activating a defibrillation patch, and touching it to her chest. The tiny unit jolted her, but there was no change in her cardiogram.

“Help me,” she said to Vasily, who assisted her in kneeling next to him. “Have you injected the nanites?”

“Done,” he said, charging the unit again. The portables had enough juice for ten jolts, but he was conservative, increasing the voltage only slightly before applying it again. This time, Catalina stirred, sucking in a violent breath that came out in a groan of pain.

“Oooh, that hurts,” she managed.

“Don’t move right away,” James said. He checked the seals on his impromptu bandage, making sure it had restored the integrity of her suit, and that there were no pressure leaks that could be fatal later on. There was a rumbling behind them, and Vasily turned, his plasma cannon held at the ready.

Hadrian reappeared. “Time to go,” he said.

James and Mary shared a look. “Come on,” he said, taking Catalina from one side, while Mary lifted from the other. They lifted her to her feet, and each took one arm across their shoulders, carrying her between them. They crossed the room, to where Jane was warding the exit on the far side. There was a pile of wreckage in the center of the room, still on fire, with just enough of it left for James to recognize the mechanical bulk of a sectopod. It was the same type of alien mech that they’d confronted in the hangar under the French base. James remembered how its laser had sliced through the steel doors of the hangar, and shuddered at the thought of how close he’d come to ending up like Catalina.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I couldn’t move,” Catalina said. “Couldn’t…” she trailed off, coughing weakly.

“Ethereals,” Mary said.

The door was both larger and more substantial than the others they’d encountered thus far. But it opened when Jane operated the recessed trigger mechanism, the iris slowly retracting until a circle a full three meters across stood before them. Jane moved through first, the doctors carrying Catalina after her, then Vasily and Hadrian bringing up the rear.

“Hold on,” Catalina said, stirring. “Move me to the door controls on this side.”

James and Mary complied, holding her up while she worked on the alien access panel. She prodded at it with her tools, and the panels of the door twisted shut. “Shoot it now,” she told them. For a moment James and Mary just blinked at her, then she shook her head, took Mary’s pistol, and fired a plasma bolt into the mechanism. The panel exploded. James helped Catalina back, but she shrugged him off. “I think… I think I can manage,” she said, grimacing as she took a few tentative steps away. Mary was in little better shape; although a medikit had eased some of the pain of her wounded leg, the damaged actuator in her armor meant that the best she could manage was an awkward limp.

They headed deeper into the complex, with Jane taking Catalina’s position as scout. There were several corridors to choose from, so they steered toward the largest, a long cylinder bolstered by curving alien buttresses every fifteen paces. The passage curved to the right and then forked. They chose one path at random after a quick scan from Catalina’s sensor proved inconclusive.

The tunnel started to twist back in upon itself, then deposited them into a broad circular chamber. For a moment the Alphas merely stared in surprise; the place was certainly eye-catching.

Plumes of gas issued from vents in the walls, creating a thin fog in the air that slightly obscured their vision. That wasn’t enough to fully conceal the bulbous pods that lined the perimeter of the room it two offset tiers, the upper level accessible via a tiny ledge that circled the room at about four meters above the floor. The center of the room contained a narrow shaft, maybe two meters across, lined with curved protrusions that almost resembled teeth. There was a freestanding panel adjacent to the shaft, familiar enough to possibly be some sort of alien control mechanism.

Jane was already halfway to the panel. Catalina stared up at the pods, a dark sense of foreboding rising in her gut even before the sensor unit riding on her hip started to click. “Hatching pods,” she said.

The space between the pods came alive as dark forms shifted and emerged into view. Chryssalids, nearly a dozen of them, hissing challenges as they came into view.

“OUT!” Catalina yelled, too late as the aliens surged forward from their perches, and sprang at the intruders.

 

[Innocent Bystander]

Yay, Cat's alive! Although for how long appears to be up for debate.

 

[Vanya Mia]

Everyone knows it takes a lot more than being nearly cut in half by a laser to kill a MI6 agent.

She'd certainly have loved to know she was appreciated though!