X-COM (updated M-W-F)

[Lazybones]

Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 136


Jane turned and ran back toward the entry, as Vasily and Hadrian fell back before her, cannons ready to cover her retreat. Looking between them, Jane saw Catalina lift the snub-nosed blaster launcher, the dark opening of its barrel seemingly pointed right at her. She dove forward even as the British agent triggered the device, and the football-shaped missile flashed across the room, narrowly missing a charging chryssalid before impacting the far wall, where it exploded.

Shrieks erupted but were cut off as the fireball filled the room, blasting aliens to pieces. Vasily and Hadrian were flung from their feet, landing hard on their backs, while Jane was caught up and hurled against the far wall of the passage, clipping James’s legs out from under him as she flew.

Hadrian was the first to recover, coming up into a crouch, his cannon at the ready. But there was no need for it; none of the aliens emerged from the maelstrom of smoke and fire that filled the room.

“Next time try to aim it at the aliens, not us,” James groused, as he slowly got to his feet. Mary was already helping Jane, who was battered but otherwise intact.

“Aliens not complaining,” Vasily said, as he got up. “It work!”

They retreated back to the last fork, and resumed their forward progress through the alien base. They entered a room at the same time as a quartet of silent ethereals. The aliens attacked with a wave of psionic energy, but even as the Alphas staggered under the impact of the sudden assault upon their minds, they could each feel an invisible barrier spring up, and the surge of disorientation and pain retreated. The aliens didn’t get a chance to adjust their tactics, as a quick barrage of plasma bolts and a pair of explosive grenades left their smoking carcasses lying on the floor.

Vasily looked back at Mary. “That you?”

She nodded. “The psi amp. I got it to work, finally.”

“Good job.” He led them to the doorway that the ethereals had warded, and looked through into the room beyond. “Hmm. Some sort of control room?” He led them into the room, which looked like an enlarged version of the bridge of one of the larger alien ships. Curving panels arced around the edges of the room and around the tall banks of machinery in its center, alien technology that included both familiar devices and things they had never seen before. There were two other exits besides the one they’d come in through, warded by more of the thick alien iris-doors.

Vasily glanced toward the nearest control station. “Catalina, can you…”

Her was interrupted by a twinge in his mind, an odd twisting sensation that had him blinking and raising a hand reflexively to his helmet. Looking around, he saw that the others were feeling it too.

“I feel something… powerful,” James said, while Mary let out a small shriek and clutched at her helmet with both hands. “Never!” she shouted.

“What’s that?” Catalina said, looking around fearfully, her pistol in her hand.

HUMANS.

They all looked around anxiously for the speaker, before realizing that the word had echoed within their minds. The thought did not offer much consolation.

YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU DO.

YOU SEEK TO DESTROY THAT WHICH YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

“I only guy hearing this?” Vasily asked.

“We all are, I think,” James said.

YOU ARE US. WE ARE YOU.

“What’s it talking about?” Vasily asked.

YIELD. JOIN THE UNITY. IT WILL HAPPEN SOON ENOUGH. END THIS SUFFERING.

“It’s been in my mind,” Mary said, shaking her head, as if that would keep the alien presence at bay.

“Tell it to go and stuff itself then,” Catalina growled.

WE ARE GOING TO END THE SUFFERING. WHEN WE SEEDED YOUR WORLD. SO MANY LIFE GENERATIONS AGO. WE KNEW WE WOULD RETURN.

The Alphas waited nervously. “What the hell…” Jane began.

She didn’t get a chance to finish, as the large door in the fall wall of the chamber began to spiral open. It revealed a massive, tube-like corridor beyond, through which a coruscating green light radiated. As the opening widened, they could see four creatures on its far side. They looked somewhat like ethereals, only each stood a good three meters tall, and their skulls were distended, oblong orbs easily half again the size of a human’s. The aliens’ eyes were pure black orbs that shone as they fixed onto the Alphas.

YOU CANNOT RESIST, the alien voice in their heads said, and then they were hit by a devastating wave of mental force, a surge of psionic energy that slammed into them with the force of a jackhammer. The Alphas screamed and staggered, stumbling as their brains overloaded with the sudden assault of stimuli.

They couldn’t even see the elder ethereals as the aliens shambled forward to claim them.

 

[Lazybones]

Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 137


Even with the psi-amp running at full power, Mary could barely see through the blue haze that swam in washes over her vision. So she closed her eyes, and tried to focus her nascent mental talents upon the attack.

She could sense the four aliens, but they were just puppets on strings, she saw, connected by an invisible thread to the presence that had spoken in their minds earlier. That entity flared like a small sun in her mind’s eye. It was close, surrounded by webs of power, ancient, mighty. Even with that brief contact she was nearly overwhelmed by it, and had to fight off the sudden impulse to throw herself down and abase herself before the power of the alien mind.

BRING THEM INTO THE ONE, it shouted into her mind.

“SILENCE!” she screamed, lifting her gun, firing it blindly at the approaching aliens. Her first shot streaked high and blasted into the threshold of the door, and her second missed even more wildly, the plasma bolt failing to come within even two meters of the closest alien. However, it did strike a glowing blue conduit to the left of the door, which hissed and sparked for an instant before exploding in a bright rush of flame and energy.

The explosion washed over the Alphas, almost knocking them down, but it also disrupted the alien mental assault. Hadrian, slumped against an alien machine, was able to trigger an alien grenade and bounce it into the midst of the approaching aliens. The explosion lifted all four into the air and hurled them across the room. Only one got up, and that one crumpled as James shot it in the face.

“Where… is… it?” Vasily managed, groaning as he pulled himself slowly to his feet.

“There!” Mary shouted, pointing at the open doorway. The iris-door had started to close, but the mechanism locked up, alien metal groaning as the damaged panels ground against each other. Vasily headed in that direction, half-staggering, but not pausing except to lift himself through the half-opened door. The others followed behind.

SO YOU REJECT THE UNITY. THEN YOU SHALL BE ENDED.

“Eesh,” Vasily said, moving up the tunnel, which rose slightly, a ramp that opened onto a larger chamber up above.

The place was lit by a penetrating green glow that issued from the walls. Huge translucent cylinders descended from the ceiling, gurlging with fluid inside before they dropped into a shallow pool that dominated the rear half of the room. Resting inside that pool was something, a big heap of undulating tissue that could only be described as a massive alien brain.

For a moment, all they could do was stare at it.

“Think we need to kill that,” Hadrian finally said.

“You going to pay for invading our planet!” Vasily yelled, lifting his plasma cannon. The bright bolt of superheated gas pulsed out toward the alien brain, but as it crossed the center of the room it exploded in mid-flight, the streaks of plasma flashing against a translucent blue barrier that reverberated for a moment before again becoming invisible.

The other Alphas joined in the barrage, unleashing the full power of their weapons at the alien. The brain’s force field absorbed them all without so much as a crack in the energy barrier, and when the smoke of the plasma explosions cleared, they could see the mass of it in its pool, unharmed.

“Crap, it didn’t work,” Catalina said.

MY POWER IS BEYOND YOUR WEAPONS.

“Any explosives?” Hadrian asked.

“If it withstand that barrage, nothing we have going to get through,” Vasily said.

“Why isn’t it attacking us?” Jane asked.

“I think...” Mary trailed off, an unfocused look on her face. “I think it can only act through intermediaries… not directly against us...”

What you want, huh?” Vasily shouted at it. “Why you do this?”

ALL MUST JOIN THE UNITY. IT WILL HAPPEN.

James heard something behind them, and turned to see a group of green-skinned aliens heading up the ramp. “Mutons!” he yelled.

As the Alphas turned and both sides opened fire, the voice of the alien mind continued to roil through their consciousness.

DO NOT STRUGGLE SO. YOU WILL BE BUT THE LATEST. SO MANY WORLDS HAVE ALREADY BEEN BROUGHT INTO US.

 

[Innocent Bystander]

Becuase you know it couldn't be that easy

Although the whole shield thing, is that your creation LB? In the original game an alien grenade going off near the round ball sitting on a pedestal was enough to do the trick. Of course it's not like it was a graphic intensive game, but it sure made up for it in fun.

 

[Lazybones]

The shield was something I came up with. There are certain things you could do in the Aurora engine that didn't work well with what was in the original X-COM game, and vice versa. I also modified the final sequence coming up to better suit the narrative flow of this story. In the actual game, the end of the Mars mission was somewhat more abrupt.

* * * * *

Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 138


The Alphas dodged into cover behind the corners where the sloping passage entered the brain-chamber, and fired down into the alien ranks. There were at least a dozen of the hulking aliens in their green suits, and while several of them provided covering fire with their heavy cannons, the rest formed up into a wedge and started up the ramp. They carried huge vibroblades, almost lances, their heads blazing red with heat as their Elerium power cells shook the shafts of alien metal at a high frequency. Those blades would cut through even heavy armor with little problem, the Alphas knew.

The Alphas’ fire was accurate, and several of the leading mutons took direct hits in the first exchange. But none of the aliens so much as flinched, the flaring explosions clearing to reveal black smears on their armor, but little else.

“We need to get out of here!” James yelled. The doctor fired and ducked back into cover just as a plasma bolt hit the wall near him, punching out a segment of the corner as big as his head.

Jane found a small access panel a short distance back from the entry, and slung her rifle as she headed over to it. “Cat, help me, you’re better at this,” she said.

“Go on!” Vasily yelled at the British agent. He stepped out into view, drawing fire. A plasma bolt clipped his arm, and he grimaced, but held his ground. He took an alien grenade from his belt, triggered it, and rolled it down the ramp. Behind him, Catalina ran across the room to where Jane was trying to access the alien computer systems.

The grenade missed the lead alien, but it struck the foot of the one behind it to the left, and exploded. The explosive force of the blast lifted the muton into the air and then slammed it hard into the ground. Its companions were flung aside, and three of them fell. For a moment the alien ranks were obscured by a gray haze of smoke, but then a muton materialized out of the fog, followed by another, and then the rest of the aliens, reforming their ranks as they resumed their march forward.

“More grenades?” Vasily asked, looking at Hadrian, but the Marine shook his head. “I’m out!” Neither man bothered with the gas grenades they carried; against the mutons they would have little effect.

“They’re not going down!” James yelled, as he scored another hit on the lead muton. The alien’s body was covered with black smears now, and its armored hide had been penetrated in several places, but still it kept coming, moving in unison with its companions, step by step closing the range.

“Catalina!” Vasily yelled.

The agent smacked her hand against the wall above the alien console. “I’m locked out!” she shouted back. The alien symbols flashed across the display.

Mary leaned in, and pressed several of the symbols, and to Catalina’s surprise, the control panel came to life. “It works both ways,” the Indian doctor said, tapping the side of her helmet.

There was no time to discuss the matter; the aliens had covered more than half the distance up the ramp, and the others were following behind the vanguard, firing as they came. Vasily and Hadrian blasted the lead muton with their plasma cannons, and the alien finally fell, its body all but torn apart. Even then it kept crawling forward, dragging itself forward with the one arm that it was able to move. The other six aliens closed ranks and resumed their march.

“We have problem!” Vasily shouted, rushing over to where the women were gathered around the console.

“Can’t access any of their primary systems from here,” Catalina said, her fingers dancing over the odd controls of the alien panel. “Here!” she said, activating something, and a small opening in the wall appeared, revealing a narrow passage beyond.

“I don’t know about this,” Mary said, but Vasily yelled, “No time! Go!”

Jane unlimbered her rifle and darted into the tunnel, the other Alphas close behind. Hadrian brought up the rear, firing blasts at the mutons until his energy cell was depleted, then he turned and ran after them.

The tunnel was crowded with conduits that pulsed blue and alien machines that they could not identify, and was barely big enough for them to fit in their bulky armor. But it sloped steadily downward, and the tight squeeze at least suggested that the mutons would have a difficult time following them. They passed several side-passages that were even smaller, probably intended for sectoid technicians, and finally came to another access door that Catalina was able to trigger, the wall splitting apart like a blinking eye to reveal another chamber beyond.

They were in another control room, much smaller than the one they had left earlier, with only about six control panels clustered around a pillar that supported a number of staggered display units. They weren’t alone; several sectoids were at the panels, but the aliens didn’t even look up, even when the Alphas started shooting.

Catalina went immediately to the nearest panel, pushing aside the carcass of the dead alien technician slumped across the controls. The room had two visible doors, and Vasily gestured for Hadrian and Jane to secure them. The Russian stepped forward and looked over Catalina’s shoulder. “What they working on?”

Catalina frowned at the alien controls, focusing on her VDU as her computer translated the symbols that flashed there. She pressed one of them, and an image materialized on the display above.

The space it showed was cavernous, massive, so huge that wisps of cloud formed near its ceiling. They could see movement, but the aliens looked like ants, tiny specks moving across the huge structure that filled the chamber. Huge machines attached to control arms arched down from the walls, enfolding the structure like caressing fingers. Other machines rolled into access ports in the alien construction, laden with cargo. The display didn’t carry sound, but they could almost hear the din of furious activity through the visuals alone.

“What are they doing?” Mary asked, hanging back as she stared at the display.

“Alien battleship,” Vasily said. “They preparing to launch.” He looked down at Catalina. “How long?”

The agent’s expression grew even more focused as she worked the alien controls. Symbols flashed on her panel, and were echoed in one corner of the display above. For a long moment she could only stare at the translation that appeared on her VDU.

“Cat?”

“Fifty-one minutes,” she said, looking up at them in horror. “Fifty-one minutes.”

 

[Lazybones]

Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 139


For a moment the Alphas could only stand there and watch the alien ship being loaded for its mission of destruction. This one looked even bigger than the last dreadnought that had blasted three Earth cities off the face of the planet. Catalina pressed a control on the alien panel. The view shifted and zoomed, and they saw a ramp extend out from the wall to a panel that opened in the side of the alien battleship. Even as the ramp connected to the ship rank upon rank of aliens began trudging forward. They recognized most of the aliens they’d faced thus far. Sectoids, cyberdisks, snakemen, mutons… even the mechanized forms of a dozen sectopods, they kept coming, an unbroken stream that flowed into the alien vessel.

Catalina shifted the view again, and they could see another familiar sight that chilled their bones: a conveyor that was carrying the silvery orbs of fusion bombs, each powerful enough to destroy a city.

“We have to stop it,” Jane said.

“Where is it?” Vasily said. “Where!” he yelled, shaking Catalina’s shoulder.

Catalina shrugged him off and bent over the controls. Alien symbols flashed across the control panel. “The base is huge! The hangar… it’s nowhere near here…”

“There has to be a way we can stop it,” James said. “You can’t do anything from these controls?”

“These controls only access secondary functions,” Catalina said, smacking the console in frustration. “Do you want to try?”

“Mary?” Jane asked, as the doctor flinched, and took an involuntary step back. “What is it?”

She didn’t have to respond, as the voice of the alien brain echoed again in their minds. MY CHILDREN. COME TO ME.

“More aliens coming?” Hadrian asked. “How many?”

Mary’s face was pale as she stared at her companions. “All of them.”

 

[Lazybones]

Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 140


Catalina stepped back up to the control console, and started entering commands. The image of the alien battleship disappeared, and was replaced by a multilayered schematic, overlaid with shifting patterns of alien symbols.

“We can’t stay here. We have to try to stop them!” James repeated.

“What’s the plan?” Hadrian asked.

“Power…” Catalina muttered to herself, as the display zoomed closer, through more layers of diagrams and symbols.

Vasily paced back and forth. “I not think we have plan right now. Wait, what are you doing, Catalina?”

Catalina zoomed the display onto a bright blue point, connected to the complex web through a series of bright lines. “This entire base, it’s built on a huge complex of Elerium crystals. The power flows are massive…”

“Can we blow the power plant?” Jane asked.

Catalina stared at the diagram. “Record visual,” she said to her suit computer, zooming out the alien screen out slowly, then fixing on it for a last moment. “Come on,” she said to the others, leading them to one of the exits. At her touch the door spun open, revealing a long passage beyond.

And a dozen sectoids, armed ones this time, who opened fire as soon as the door opened.

Vasily grabbed Catalina and yanked her out of the doorway, a scant instant before multiple plasma bolts streaked through the air where she’d been standing. Hadrian replaced her, leaning around the edge of the door to fire into the alien ranks. Jane did the same from the other side, and every shot they fired blasted a sectoid, the air thickening with smoke from the plasma bursts until the Alphas had to use the muzzle flashes from their guns to guide their aim. The exchange lasted maybe all of fifteen seconds, and it ended with Hadrian striding into the whirling smoke, looking for a moving target, and finding none. “Let’s go,” he said, loading a fresh energy cell into his cannon.

Catalina directed their course, staring at the grid superimposed on her VDU, directing them through the network of corridors. At one intersection they were confronted with a dozen snakemen, but the Alphas stopped only long enough to bracket them with gas grenades, rushing through the dazed aliens before they could recover. They were each aware of the ticking clock counting down, and that kept them moving. Jane helped Mary, whose damaged leg was holding her back, but none of them stopped even for a moment.

Catalina felt her own strength flagging, but she bit down hard on her lip and dug deep, driving herself forward. The alien medicines that had brought her back had repaired her body, but there was only so much even they could do. Focused on the grid, she pointed to a bend in the corridor ahead. “There!” she said, pointing. James moved ahead of her, and he stepped around the corner to see another large doorway ahead.

He also saw the sectopod standing guard, flanked by a half-dozen mutons, including one carrying a very familiar and very dangerous weapon.

“Gaaah!” he yelled. He stopped, turned, and dove back for the corner. There was a bright green flare, which sliced across his path, drawing a line across his body. The alien laser touched him for only a fraction of a second, but he could feel the surge of heat along his hip, and the subsequent flash of pain as his muscles were roasted by the beam. He landed awkwardly on a leg that failed to respond to his orders, but his momentum carried him forward, and he slid around the corner in front of the rest of the surprised Alphas. They’d seen the beam, which had gouged the far wall of the corridor, knew was was waiting around the bend. But they hadn’t seen the other threat he’d spotted.

“One’s got a launcher!” he yelled, even as the heavy clop of the sectopod echoed through the corridor.

 

[Lazybones]

Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 141


The Alphas drew back, readying their weapons. Vasily helped James to his feet, supported him as the doctor tried to ignore the crippling pain of his injured hip. They shared a look; both knew their chances. But James took his plasma rifle back as Vasily handed it to him, and together they turned back to the corridor, waiting for the inevitable alien surge.

Jane let go of Mary, leaning her against the wall of the passage so she could ready her own weapon. Mary had heard James’s warning, and she felt a cold chill in her gut, but she forced through her fear, closed her eyes, and activated the psi amp.

The aliens appeared as faint golden outlines to her perceptions, all save the sectopod, which resolved as an ugly shadow that was darker than the surrounding black. It was close and getting closer, but she ignored it, focusing on the mutons until she found what she wanted.

It only took a slight tweak, a bit of pressure, but it still felt like trying to grasp an eel with her bare hands. There was no time to warn her companions, she just did it.

A wall of flame exploded down the corridor, sweeping around the bend, flinging the Alphas onto their backs. It was followed by a dense cloud of thick, blinding smoke, which swirled around them as they staggered back up, those least battered helping the others to their feet.

Vasily stumbled forward through the smoke and flames. As he rounded the corner he came to the wrecked outline of the sectopod. One leg of the alien mech had been sheared off by the blast, and flames shot from openings in its body, but it was still moving, sparks flying and metal grinding as it tried in vain to get up. Vasily barely paused to fire a plasma bolt into a broken gap in its armor before continuing forward. It took him a while to get through the next stretch of passage; the metal plates covering the walls and floor had buckled, and a good eight-meter stretch had been nearly vaporized, leaving a slightly glowing crater that the Russian dutifully crunched through before reemerging on the far side. He could hear his name being called, although thick static over the communicator masked the identity of the speaker. He kept going, past the bodies of the dead mutons, past the wreckage of the alien door, blasted off its moorings, the spiral plates jutting inward like broken teeth. One came off as he pushed past it, clattering as it landed on the floor.

There were more aliens on the far side of the door, all dead. He passed a sectoid that had a metal wedge at least a foot long jutting from the wrecked faceplate of its helmet. Still he continued, until the smoke began to clear, and he found himself staring out over a vast open chamber.

The place was vertically organized in several stacked tiers, accessible via narrow catwalks that looked more than a little treacherous, sized more toward sectoids than to armored humans. Dozens if not hundreds of niches were visible along the walls, most of which held the brilliant blue radiance of an Elerium storage crystal. Vasily registered those in the back of his mind; his attention was drawn to the impressive sight in the center of the chamber.

There, suspended in the open space by dozens of silver struts, was a huge irregular crystal. Shaped like a dagger, the crystal had to be at least six meters tall, and was as thick as a full meter across at its core, tapering almost to points at its ends. The glow from within it made the brightness of the smaller crystals seem pale by comparison, and the vision filters on his VDU automatically kicked in to compensate, dimming the crystal until it was just a gray outline on his visor.

He heard the others come up from behind him, take it in. Meanwhile, he reached into the cargo compartment in his armor, and took out the demolition charge within.

“Get ready to run,” he said, though the looks the others sent him told him that they understood what he had, that time had all but run out.

“This way, there’s another door over here,” Catalina said, leading them around the edge of the room. Hadrian lingered behind, moving over to one of the smaller crystals, while Vasily moved forward to the edge of the central shaft. He carefully made his way down to the next-lower tier, looking for a way to get close to the huge central crystal. Short of climbing out onto the struts, however, there was no easy way to access it, and he decided it would be better not to use his jump packs to try to leap over to it. Instead he looked at where the struts anchored, and found that each was surrounded by a matrix of six smaller crystals, all pulsing with energy as they either fed or were fed by the central shaft. He went to work there, rigging charges, making his way around the entire tier until his kit was empty. He’d initially set the charges for twenty minutes, but as he held the master control in his hand, he sighed, and turned it down to five minutes. He waited until he was back up to the main tier, and then triggered the control, tossing the device into the chasm behind him. Hadrian and Jane were waiting in the open doorway; the others had gone on ahead.

“Go!” he yelled.

They ran, for what it was worth. The corridor twisted, took them through an empty room, then into another passage. They caught up to the others quickly; they weren’t moving very fast, with James supporting Mary, or perhaps the other way around, and Catalina barely able to keep from toppling over. The British agent kept them moving, however, following the twists and turns that flashed on her VDU. Doors closed behind them, but Vasily knew it was an empty gesture at best. From what he’d seen of Elerium explosions in the past, there wouldn’t be much left once that master array went up.

“Where we going?” he shouted, as they came to an intersection, and Catalina took them to the right without stopping. She didn’t get a chance to respond to the question, as the ground started to rumble under their feet, the very fundaments of the base trembling under their feet.

Vasily frowned and looked at the timer in the corner of his VDU; only two minutes had passed, not long enough. “Too soon!” he said.

“The ship!” James said. “It must be lifting off!”

They hurried down the long tunnel. This part of the base did not seem to be powered; their lamps were the only illumination as they made their way down the length of the passage to an armored door at its end. Catalina was the first to reach it, and by the time the others had all caught up she had overridden the controls. The layered panels opened slowly, revealing a cavernous shaft, maybe twenty meters across, which rose up into the darkness above them. The chamber was deserted, with even the fittings in the walls for machinery and conduits gaping empty.

Catalina stared up the shaft, clenching her fists at her side. “Damn! This came up on the map as an ancillary hangar; I’d hoped there would be a ship here, or a lift, something!”

Mary leaned against the wall of the hangar, her eyes closed, her brow furrowed.

“Now what?” Hadrian asked. The rumbling had continued, and now it deepened, bits of stone dropping from the walls of the shaft, clattering noisily as they spattered on the deck at their feet. There was another sound as well, a faint, echoing shriek, originating from the long tunnel behind them.

“Company coming,” Jane sad.

Vasily opened the barrel of his cannon, tossing the half-discharged cell aside, dropping a new one into place. He said nothing, merely turned to face the dark tunnel. In the corner of his VDU, the seconds continued to tick down, passing to double digits as the timer dropped to under a minute.

“It’s been good serving with you,” Jane said, stepping forward to join him.

 

[Richard Rawen]

Well, you've got me gritting my teeth in anticipation - once again - as one of your stories comes to a dramatic conclusion! Great reading!

 

[Lazybones]

Thanks Richard! Here we go!

* * * * *


Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 142


Suddenly a massive explosion drew their attention back behind them, up into the darkness of the shaft. The Alphas fell back against the walls as a huge slab of metal came crashing down, accompanied by a shower of stone that send up a wild cascade of dust and debris. Catalina was knocked from her feet, and James almost had his head taken off by a broken metal strut that shot from the wreckage and bounced hard off the wall of the chamber before settling to the floor. For a moment they couldn’t see anything, even each other, as the cloud of dust swirled around them.

Then, out of the cloud, they heard the familiar whine of engines, and the Avenger appeared, its VTOL jets firing to arrest its descent. They caught a momentary glance of Ken in the cockpit, then the ship began to turn, the hatch in its rear opening as the pilot furiously worked to keep it stable in the relatively cramped confines of the shaft.

“Move, MOVE!” Vasily yelled, pushing the others forward. He all but threw Mary and Catalina into the open hatch, then boosted James, who in turn helped pull Jane up, then Hadrian.

A jagged metal spar jutting from the rubble scraped off the Avenger’s belly, and the ship jolted to the side, nearly knocking James from his precarious perch. Ken fired the jets to compensate, and the ship rose into the air, with Vasily now alone in the hangar below. A white flash exploded in the rubble behind him, followed by the bright streaks of plasma trails as a shot flashed past him, then another.

“Ken! Vasily’s still down there! Go back down!” Catalina yelled.

The pilot screamed something back, but they couldn’t hear over the violent rumbling that now suffused the shaft, which seemed to be shaking itself apart. The Avenger’s engines whined as Ken struggled to compensate.

Vasily glanced back, long enough to see the alien forms materializing out of the darkness, their features brightened by the flashes coming from the barrels of their guns. Mutons, and behind them, another hulking, mechanical form…

Vasily looked back up, fixed on the hatch, and fired his jets. He shot up into the air, and for a moment, the hatch seemed to yawn like the bright opening at the end of a tunnel. But the turbulence in the shaft grabbed the Avenger and shifted it, and the Russian slammed hard into the rear hull of the craft, hard enough to stun him. He was falling… and then he clipped the extended edge of the hatch. He balanced there for an instant, precariously, but gravity took hold, and he started slipping over the edge.

He blindly reached out for something, anything, to arrest his fall.

A hand seized on his, and he was held.

“GO!” he heard, and then his full focus was on holding onto the hand anchoring him, as the Avenger’s engines blasted on full, and the ship ascended up into the shaft. He looked up, and saw it was James holding him, the doctor’s other arm looped through the supporting strut of the hatch. Then other hands were reaching for him, pulling him inside the ship. The Avenger jolted as something struck it, then he caught a glimpse of jagged stone, almost close enough to reach out and touch, and then they were through, and the familiar red skies of Mars were there, stretching out almost to infinity.

The Avenger continued to turn as it rose into the air, and Vasily’s heart froze as he saw the alien battleship, also rising out of the landscape, ascending above a massive crater, maybe a few kilometers distant. The ship seemed to defy gravity itself as it fully cleared the level of the ground, slowly lifting into the air like the fist of some defiant god.

In the corner of his VDU, the last digits clicked down to zero.

His first thought was, It did not work. Nothing happened; the Avenger continued to rise, as did the alien ship, now high enough that he could see the far side of the crater underneath its rising bulk. A wild image of the Avenger crashing into it popped into his mind, but it was crazy; even a suicide attack would do nothing to stop such a monstrosity.

Then, the ground rose up.

The Avenger jerked forward, and the Alphas cried out as the ship was nearly flipped over, spinning in the air. They felt a moment of terrible vertigo as they felt themselves falling, then the disorienting spin eased, and the ship leveled out again.

Clinging to the straps holding him, Vasily crawled back toward the still-open hatch. He had to know.

The battleship was there, hovering in the sky. Underneath it, the ground bucked and roiled, a new landscape being formed before his eyes. And then a light appeared at the base of the crater, a flash like the glow of a new sun. It stabbed up into the air, piercing the alien battleship, driving through it, up into the sky. For a moment it lingered, a bright marker visible throughout the Solar System, then it flared out and died. It was as if it had been keeping the battleship aloft, for as the spear of light died, the alien ship fell, plummeting back into the crater. Vasily didn’t see it hit, for the hatch closed as the Avenger straightened and shot up into the sky, rising on full thrusters back into orbit. Leaning back, tears sliding down his cheeks, he closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of its death.

 

[Lazybones]

Session 30 (November 24, 2008)
Chapter 143


The Alphas sat where they’d fallen, just simply breathing, overwhelmed. At least until Ken’s voice sounded over the intercom.

“Um... we still got a problem, guys.”

They looked up at the speaker. “What is it, Ken?” James asked.

“Well, evading that cruiser, I sort of used up all our fuel. We’re down to zero-point-five percent of our Elerium supplies. We won’t even get back into orbit, I’m afraid.”

“Did you guys get any?” Catalina asked.

Hadrian reached over and picked up the containment unit he’d jammed into one of the empty armor racks when he’d boarded. “Filled up.”

Catalina sagged in relief. “Let’s get it in place.”

They inserted the canister into its rack, and hooked up the power leads that Grace had installed. “Wow, you’re lucky it didn’t blow,” Ken said, as the display panel brought up the status of the unit. “It’s reading at one hundred and seventeen percent!”

“Is it enough for us to get back?” Catalina asked.

“Should be. But I’ve got more bad news. The computer was able to override the glitch that screwed up Allen’s cryo unit, but it sort of blew out the whole system doing it.”

The Alphas looked around the interior compartment of the Avenger, which suddenly looked a lot more cramped then it had just moments ago. “So I guess we’re going to be real good friends on the way home,” James said.

“Guess I’d better break out the emergency rations,” Catalina said, groaning as she pulled herself out of her armor. Leaving the broken wreckage lying at her feet, she crawled over the now-useless cryo unit to the locker holding their supplies. She was able to get it open with a few tugs, but as she stared into it, her face fell. “Crap,” she said. “Oh, crap.”

“What’s the matter?” James asked.

She dug into the compact locker, scattering packets of food concentrate. Defeated, she lifted one so they could see it. “When we get back, I’m going to kill whoever packed these,” she said.

James peered at the label of the packet. “Don’t like split pea soup?”

Mary looked up from where Vasily was helping her out of her crippled suit. “Oh! I love split pea soup! It’s one of my favorites!”

“Yeah, well, we have two hundred packets of it in this locker,” Catalina said dryly.

James shot Vasily a look. “I have a feeling this is going to be a long trip.”