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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4999898" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 9 (June 9, 2008)Chapter 27Vasily and Catalina dove forward, the Russian taking cover behind a stack of crates, while Catalina fell behind a computer console that was set up facing the center of the room.  Sparks and metal shards showered around the door, and there was a sudden gout of steam as a round penetrated a thick metal pipe.  But at least in the immediate moment, none of them were hit.  Catalina looked up in surprise as Buzz threw himself down next to her.  The hacker looked almost as surprised.  He started to get up, to get a look at the console, but Catalina jerked him back down.  “Wait,” she whispered. “Buzz!  You shut it down?” Vasily yelled, ducking lower as a cannon shell penetrated the crates he was hiding behind.  Jane opened up from the doorway, her laser lancing a bright beam across the room.  She hit the weapons platform but failed to destroy it, and was forced to duck back as the device sent several shells her way.  Part of the door came off as a round clipped it, and the entire assembly creaked alarmingly as one of the hinges was struck.  James, crawling along the floor, reached forward and grabbed the fallen scientist.  Careful to keep his head down, he pulled the man over the threshold, where a guard helped to drag him to safety. “Let me get its attention,” Catalina said to Buzz.  She darted out from behind the console, running around the perimeter of the room, trying to get behind the weapons platform.  The device sensed her and started turning its turret.  Buzz rose carefully and started working on the console.  “Look out!” Vasily yelled.  He lifted his rifle, but didn’t have a shot; a miss could have easily struck Catalina.  The British agent dove behind a row of crates just as the cannon lined up and fired, the shot hitting a line of shelves behind her and knocking it down with a loud clatter of metal parts and machinery.  The back of the HWP’s turret began to glow, as Jane focused a steady beam of coherent light upon it.  The device started to turn, but suddenly something inside it gave way, and with a blast of smoke and sparks it abruptly stopped moving.  It continued to hiss and roil and it lay there in the middle of the room.Catalina started to get up, but Vasily stopped her with a raised hand.  Warily, the Russian came forward, his rifle trained on the thing.  Deactivated, it looked somehow smaller now. A woman dressed in the scrubs of a surgical nurse leaned out behind the stacked crates and unused machinery in the back corner of the room.  “Is it… dead now?”Two men emerged from cover after her.  “The device was never alive, my dear,” Doctor Okwelume said.  “A simple equipment malfunction.”Fadil Sandesh was less sanguine.  “Ah, my device!” he exclaimed, standing over it like a man finding his dog struck by a car on the edge of a road.  “Ruined!”Buzz came over to him.  “Wow, this looks bad,” he said. “Weeks of work, wrecked!” Sandesh exclaimed. “Apologies, Doctor Sandesh, but it was them or it,” Catalina said.  “Doctor, you forget yourself,” Okwelume said.  “These people saved our lives.” James came into the room, blood smeared on his hands.  “We lost Gordon here.  Took one right through the chest cavity.”  Sandesh looked as though he’d been struck.  “If you’d given me the resources I asked for… this would never have happened!”  He stormed off. “Engineers, never will understand them,” Catalina muttered.Chief Hallorand came in, accompanied by a pair of guards.  “Damn it,” he said.  “Medical team is on its way down, to get the body.”  He scanned the room.  “We’ve got a tough enough time without taking casualties here.  What happened?”“Better ask Doctor Sandesh,” James said. “Okay, we’ll clean this up,” Hallorand said.  “Better report in.  I don’t want to be the one to tell Garret about this.”“I will submit my own report as well,” Doctor Okwelume said.  “I believe it is unfair to pillory Doctor Sandesh for this, until there is evidence.”Buzz had been working on the console during the exchange, and he muttered to himself, “Something is very wrong here.”Catalina, who was standing not far from the console, heard him.  “What have you seen?” “Look,” he said, indicating the screen in front of him, where a complex scrawl of machine language had filled the display.  “I can’t read that,” Catalina prompted. “The security protocols were bypassed,” he said.  “Sabotage?” Jane asked. “Bypassed?” Hallorand added.  “Deliberately?”Vasily muttered angrily.  “Reports not say, ‘if you not give me more resources, then machine will flip out and kill man.’”  He clenched his fists.  Buzz continued searching through the database.  “Someone has tampered with the AI protocols, someone good with hiding his or her tracks.”“Can you find out who did it?” Hallorand asked.  Buzz looked up at him.  He looked uncertain, but before he could respond, a voice interrupted over the base intercom.  “Alpha Team, report to Briefing Room 1.  We have an alien incursion in progress.”</blockquote>

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