Session 23 (September 29, 2008)
Chapter 96
Plasma bolts slammed into the aliens, exploding bodies and searing frozen flesh with hot plumes of flaring gas. The barrage was inexorable, but somehow the alien charge survived it, and more than half of the aliens surged through, even though several bore wounds that should have killed or crippled them. Mary screamed as a sectoid lashed at her, steam rising from its vibroblade as it glanced hard off of the armored plate protecting her chest. The Indian doctor was caught apart from the others as the sheer violence of the alien rush drove the Alphas back.
Hadrian tossed his jammed rifle aside and unlimbered his plasma pistol, but before he could shoot one of the aliens sprang at him, stabbing with its vibroblade. The Marine dodged back, the alien in pursuit, until the cavern wall loomed up behind him. He shifted to the side, slamming the alien hard in the juncture where its head met its neck. The alien staggered forward into the wall, the vibroblade carving a deep arc in the ice. The blow had to have broken its neck, but somehow it managed to turn and come at Hadrian again before he could recover and fire. It lunged, but even as the blade carved into his heavy armor a blast of plasma energy slammed into the alien’s arm, separating it at the elbow. The arm and blade went flying, but the alien kept on attack, slamming ineffectively at the Marine’s body with its other hand. Hadrian kicked it in the chest, knocking it over onto its back, and finished it for good with a blast to the heart. He looked at Catalina, who’d shot away its weapon, and nodded thanks.
The HWP vaporized a charging sectoid, but was then overrun by two of the aliens, smashing at its turret with their weapons. The one with the rock wasn’t accomplishing much, but its cohort had a vibroblade, which it used to shear away the armor plate protecting the turret, savaging the machine’s innards. Vasily blasted the alien off it, the heavy cannon exploding the alien’s skull like a melon. The other alien shrieked and flung itself at the Russian.
“Mary, get out of there!” Jane yelled. She tried to get to the doctor, but was cut off by another sectoid, armed with a heavy spanner made out of alien metal. The weapon clunked against her powered armor, doing no damage, but it blocked her path, another blow to her knee knocking off her balance as she tried to bully her way past it. Still she focused on Mary, firing her plasma rifle into the alien, eyes widening as it shrugged off a hit that had punched a fist-sized blackened hole in the side of its torso. It hit Mary again, slicing through her armor as it jammed its weapon into her body with violent, vicious thrusts. The doctor stumbled and fell down. The alien sprang on top of her, looking almost comical at a fraction of her size, save for the fact that it seemed to be unstoppable as it lifted its blade for another strike.
Jane yelled out something as she swept forward, her own vibroblade glowing brightly in her hand. The alien turned to face her, but she dodged its clumsy swing and sliced down, the insanely keen edge slicing neatly through the sectoid’s skull. Half its head fell away, its brains spattering both women as the alien finally went down, its weapon clattering uselessly to the ground, where the heat of it caused the ice there to hiss and steam.
The last few aliens were down, some still struggling as James and Catalina fired a last few shots to make certain. The entire exchange had taken just a few seconds, but the Alphas felt like they’d been through a long battle. Mary gasped for breath as Jane helped her to a sitting position. She was bleeding from multiple gashes where the alien attacks had penetrated her armor, but she was able to administer a medikit to herself with the other woman’s help.
“Looks like the gas didn’t exactly work as advertised,” Catalina said, giving the nearest body a decent berth as she moved to check the others. Several of the sectoid corpses continued to twitch, and most had been blasted to pieces.
“Tank totalled,” Vasily reported, poking at the wreckage.
“I’m almost out of ammo,” James said.
“That one over here had pistol,” the Russian said, with a gesture. James recovered the weapon and extracted the power cell, frowning at the charge indicator. “You okay?” he said to Mary, who was standing again, if a bit unsteadily. She grimaced, wiping blood from her armored gloves, but nodded.
“Keep moving?” Catalina asked, pointing at the exit at the back of the room.
Vasily nodded, and they moved out, the British agent taking the lead, taking them deeper into the complex. The next room also looked natural, and the next, large caverns of stone and ice illuminated by the same odd glowing patches along the walls. The rooms were empty, put to no use by the aliens that they could see, although there was enough space to accommodate a hundred aliens, had they wanted to.
Finally, Catalina led them to another tunnel that was entirely worked stone, although still slick with a faint sheen of condensed ice. “I think it’s getting a little warmer,” she said, running a hand along the nearest wall. It was smooth, as though it had been bored cleanly through the rock.
“Careful,” Vasily said. “We not know if gas get this far in, or what it do to aliens if it did.”
The tunnel opened onto a larger chamber. While the passage had been a smooth bore, this place was a chaotic mess of angles and odd formations, some of which appeared to be natural parts of the surrounding stone, while others were distinct in color and texture, as though they’d been formed elsewhere and somehow transported to this subterranean vault deep under the Antarctic surface. Most of the surfaces glistened with moisture, and while there were a few crystals of ice visible, the air was noticeably warmer here, wisps of steam rising from their armored bodies as they entered the place.
“Catalina?” Vasily asked.
“Something’s moving in here,” Catalina said. “I’m not able to lock down the signal, though.”
“Careful, careful,” he said, easing forward warily. The others followed, their boots squelching on matter that was perhaps best not identified.
The cavern went back quite a ways. There were crevices in the rock that might have been exits, but when they shone their lights into them, none of them proved to penetrate back further than a few meters. Up ahead they could see a raised stone shelf, a platform that rose above the surrounding level of the chamber.
“What the hell is that?” Jane said.
They could all see it, a pink globule of alien matter that seemed to hover in the air above the platform, glistening in the light of their lamps. It bulged slightly and seemed to quiver as they approached, as if alive.
“Whatever it is, I don’t like the looks of it,” Catalina said.
“Shoot it?” James suggested.
“How do we know it’s hostile?” Mary asked.
“Watch out!” Jane warned, as the thing pulsed violently, caught in a spasm that passed from its base to the top, where a gap opened, and it discharged a gout of fluid across the room toward the Alphas. Most of it spattered directly on Vasily, who stumbled back, the alien matter sizzling as it bored into his helmet, shoulder, and breastplate.
“Aaa!” the Russian exclaimed, as an ugly cloud of yellow smoke enveloped him.
Weapons discharged as the Alphas opened fire; both Hadrian and Catalina struck the alien organism, which emitted geysers of the noxious substance as the bolts punctured its body. Mary and James tried to help Vasily, who was trying unsuccessfully to wipe the caustic alien substance from his armor, and was only managing to damage his gloves in the process.
With all of them distracted, no one spotted the dark shadow moving through the rock formations until it was almost on top of them.
“Look out!” Catalina yelled, too late. Hadrian turned just as the chryssalid broke through a lattice of purple stone and sprang into their midst. It slapped the plasma rifle out of his hands, and slashed into him with its claws, flinging the hapless soldier halfway across the room.
I never actually played XCOM, and the players in the group who had generally respected my desire to stay uninformed, so the whole thing was new to me. LB cut the in game detail over the rooftop surgery, for expediancy with regard to length of post probably (... I do go on somewhat lengthily in game...) but it was rather cool to play through. I am the Queen of Bad Dice Rolls, on top of my PC being constitution wimp, so no way Cat was going to make the fort save against infection. Which, if I remember rightly, our walking tank Vas did on multiple occasions much to LB's chagrin!
