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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4986873" data-attributes="member: 143">I remember playing X-COM, walking my first squaddie down the Skyranger ramp to see a chryssalid standing just a few squares away. Alien terror indeed.* * * * * Session 8 (June 2, 2008)Chapter 22The Skyranger’s engines roared as Ken shifted the craft from horizontal to vertical flight.  “Approaching the target area,” the pilot’s voice came over their communicators. “I still say we should have come down outside the security cordon,” James said.  “Time is of the essence,” Catalina said.  “And this saves us having to work out the jurisdictional aspects with the local constabulary.”“Don’t forget our orders, we’re to minimize civilian casualties,” Jane said, checking again to make sure that the cord connecting her laser pistol to the power unit in the small of her back was secure. The engines gave that change of pitch that announced that they were about to touch down.  “I’m reading gunfire on the external pickups,” Ken said.  “Could be alien energy weapons fire as well, I’m not certain.”“This just get better and better,” Vasily said.  He was up seconds after the jolt indicated that they’d landed, and he was beside the hatch as it crept open.  The street looked like any business or industrial district in any American city, with perhaps a touch of distinctiveness from the Southwestern style evident in the trim on the buildings and the decorative motifs evident in the street signs and business names.  The two-land street was fairly narrow, although the Skyranger had plenty of room to land astride the double yellow line running down its center.  It was hot, the dry, penetrating heat common to Phoenix for most of the year.  There was a helicopter in the street about half a block ahead, surrounded by the limp forms of what had to be bodies, but the street was otherwise devoid of both vehicles and people.  Scanning the street, Vasily waited until the entire squad had cleared the Skyranger, then he gestured them forward toward the copter.  Once they were clear, the X-COM craft rose up into the air to take up an overwatch position; it was still too vulnerable to ground fire to risk here in the open.  They hadn’t gotten more than twenty paces, however, when a man appeared from further down the road ahead, running toward them. “Help!  Help!” he yelled.  Catalina had been glancing down at the motion sensor, but she looked up as the man drew nearer.  None of them saw the hovering disk until a sizzling bolt of plasma energy blasted from a recessed driveway beyond the helicopter, striking the man in the side.  He screamed once and collapsed. “More of them!” Catalina yelled, taking cover in a doorway.  Another plasma bolt followed her, blasting out a head-sized chunk of masonry.  The second cyberdisk drifted down from a rooftop, sending out more blasts as it came. “Cat!  Get back!” Vasily yelled, as the doorway concealing Catalina dissolved into a fog of pulverized concrete.  Jane and James had taken cover on the far side of the street behind a stone planter box, and they’d opened up, but their initial shots either missed or glanced harmlessly off the alien drones.  Vasily headed toward Catalina’s position, firing controlled bursts from his rifle as he went.  A high-pitched whine sounded from the nearer disk as Buzz drew a bright white line across its upper half with his laser pistol.  It shifted toward him, but Jane pounded it with a direct hit with her laser a moment later, and it flipped over, exploding before it hit the ground.  Debris rained down all around them, peppering the entire street and the surrounding buildings in a wide radius. Catalina appeared out of the ruins of the doorway, coughing as she emerged from the eddying cloud of debris.  Vasily grabbed her arm and drew her back with him further down the street, where an alleyway between two storefronts offered better cover. Behind him the second cyberdisk appeared through the cloud of smoke rising from the wreckage of the first.  Jane and James fired at it, but their shots missed.  “Vasily, look out!” Jane yelled.  The Russian turned, but he couldn’t do anything to avoid the plasma bolt that caught him the chest, knocking him back off his feet, landing hard in the gutter of the street.</blockquote>

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