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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4965473" data-attributes="member: 143">And your regularly scheduled update:* * * * * Session 6 (May 19, 2008)Chapter 17The alien had him dead to rights, Vasily knew, but he still reached for his rifle, hoping for a miracle that would cause the alien to miss at point-blank range.  The alien staggered back, dark smears of blood appearing from holes that appeared almost magically across its chest.  Vasily looked up to see James running around the back of the SUV, his rifle flashing in his hand.  The sectoid fell back out of view as the medic ran up to join Vasily against the wall, breathing heavily.  “Good job,” Vasily said.  “Keep an eye out there,” he said, lifting the grenade.  He waited for James’s nod before he leaned out and tossed the grenade into the orchard, ducking back into cover before the device exploded.  The explosion rocked the orchard, and bits of dirt and wood rained out from amongst the trees.  Vasily peered out around the corner again, his rifle ready, but didn’t see any targets, until a squat gray form meandered forward out of the trees, moving awkwardly, as if drunk. Vasily lifted his rifle, but a red beam bisected the alien’s skull, and it crumpled.  Catalina circled around the edge of the pasture toward the far side of the orchard, her pistol at the ready.  After making sure that James was ready to cover him, Vasily moved to join her, coming around the side of the house to approach from the other direction.  They found only two dead sectoids, the one that Jane had lasered, and another perforated by shrapnel from Vasily’s grenade.  The Russian waved the others forward, while Catalina took out the motion sensor.  The device made a quick clicking noise as she activated it, white pulses radiating outward on its small LCD screen. “You detect anything?” Vasily asked quietly.  “Scanning,” Cat replied, circling slowly.  She hesitated as she faced the northwest, where they could make out the outline of the hill beyond the farm.  “You hear that?” Jane asked, as she rejoined them.  Buzz and James were a step behind her.  “The one behind the house is dead,” James confirmed.  “I didn’t see any others.”“Quiet,” Vasily said.  They all listened, and all heard what Jane had detected; a high-pitched whirl, a noise that sounded unlike anything that might have belonged in this desolate place.  It came from atop the hill. “Come on,” Vasily said, leading the way. The hill was only about thirty feet high, its gently-sloping sides covered in thick grass that clung to their pants as they ascended.  They saw the alien ship before they reached the summit, a familiar-looking oblong that was shrouded in shadow, its hull absorbing the faint moonlight.  There was a hatch in the rear of the vessel, which was slowly closing.  Vasily cursed in Russian.  “Go, go!”  He ran for the hatch, the others close behind.  Vasily jammed his rifle into the mechanism of the hatch, arresting it half-open.  He squeezed into the opening beyond, whipping out the stun rod as he went.  Catalina was just a step behind him, her gun at the ready.  The inside of the ship might have been identical to the one they’d boarded in the Rockies mission, down to the complex alien machinery that subdivided the interior space.  The two operatives saw what looked like a hint of movement up ahead, but they couldn’t clearly make out the alien.  “I not see—” Vasily began, but he was cut off as the entire ship began to trmble.  “What—” Cat hissed, stumbling against the adjacent wall.   “It taking off!” Vasily said, looking back at James, who was helping Buzz through the hatch.  “Stop it taking off!”  The Russian ran forward into the front compartment.  He and the alien pilot spotted each other in the same instant, but Vasily was faster, stabbing the end of the stun rod into its face.  With an electrical hiss, the alien staggered back and collapsed in a limp heat.  Vasily gave it another poke for good measure, then started looking around at the controls, which were utterly unfamiliar.  Whatever sequence the pilot had indicated continued, for the entire ship began to shake, and bright lights began to shine out of one bank of machines, filling the compartment with a red glow.  Buzz came forward, looked over the control panel.  “Can you work the system, shut it down?” James asked.  The hacker was already at work, crouching and using a small tool to insert a probe into the alien control panel.  He hooked it up to his xPhone, and started tapping at it as the display came to life. “Buzz, do something, please,” Jane said nervously, as they felt the ship surge under them.  “Um, is this supposed to be doing that?” Catalina asked, pointing to a glittering fluid that was seeping from one of the machines, forming a puddle that began to spread across the floor. “This can’t be good,” James said.  Catalina hurried behind the machine that was leaking fluid, looking for some sort of mechanism to turn it off.  “Whoah,” she said, coming to a niche where a blue crystal, resting in some sort of armored cradle, was starting to shine with a bright glow.  She held out her xPhone.  “The power readings on this are off the charts,” she said.  “Maybe we’d better leave it alone,” James said.  Sparks flared from a panel on the far side of the ship.  A dense and unpleasant fog started to fill the interior of the compartment.    “Buzz!” Vasily shouted. “I’m working on it,” he said, without looking up.  Giving the crystal a wide berth, Catalina was scanning the controls that ran along a bank of machinery on the left side of the niche.  She paused at a prominent lever that was recessed into the panel near the floor.  “I think this is a fuel dump,” she said, pointing to the lever.  “I can lose the fuel!” “We’re off the ground!” Jane yelled from the hatchway.  “We’re going up!”“Buzz!” Vasily repeated. Buzz’s brow was furrowed as he entered commands on his xPhone.  Red lights flashed across it.  “Damn!” “Sod it!” Catalina yelled, slamming the lever down.  The vibrations shaking the shift abruptly stopped, and it plummeted down fifteen feet.  The impact of striking the hilltop knocked them all off their feet.  Jane cried out as her ankle twisted, and Buzz knocked his forehead on the main control panel as he fell, stunning him.  “Everyone all right?” Vasily asked, groaning as his body resisted his commands to get back up.  “Look!” Catalina hissed.  They all turned to where the glowing blue crystal had begun to quiver in its nook.  As they watched, it crumpled in upon itself, vanishing in a micro-implosion with a faint huffing noise.  “What the hell?” James asked of no one in particular. “All out, all out,” Vasily said.  The five of them made their way out of the ship, which now lay at a slightly crooked angle atop the hillside, the ground crushed under the ship by its sudden descent. Ken’s voice sounded in their ears.  “How are you guys doing?” Vasily touched his earpiece.  “Everything secure.  We got the ship.”“We should do a through search of the area, the house,” Cat suggested.Vasily nodded.  “Ken, we searching perimeter.  Looking for survivors, or clues about aliens.”“Roger that, Alpha.  I sent word to base, the salvage crew is en route to your position.  Fortunately none of the Ranger’s critical systems were hit by the sectoids, but she’ll definitely need a fresh pain job.  I’ll continue to monitor and let you know if we pick up anything on the radar.”The members of Alpha Team made their way back down the hill, Catalina sweeping with the motion sensor, James supporting Jane with her bruised ankle.  Vasily paused and glanced back at the ship, which sat their quiescent, faint wisps of smoke rising from the hatch.  It was their third, now.  He shook his head, then followed after the others.</blockquote>

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