Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5063406" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 14 (July 14, 2008)Chapter 45The deck of the hangar was choked with smoke, flames, and corpses.  The diminutive but deadly forms of the sectoids outnumbered the fallen humans, but that did not ease the ferocious expression that was fixed on Vasily Kasprjak’s face like a storm cloud. The Russian limped as he made his way forward, through the scattered wreckage of a cyberdisc, past the shouts of several techs as they sprayed fire retardant onto a burning mechanical loader.  A slight breeze stirred the air, sliding into the complex through the massive wreckage of the blast doors.  Doors that had been paired slabs of steel, four inches thick, and which now hung tentatively from their moorings like crumpled sheets of paper.  “How is she?” Vasily barked, scanning for any more signs of danger.  He’d checked the entire level after the last sectoid had fallen, and this was the only hangar that had been breached, but he wasn’t going to take anything for granted at this point.  “She’s stable, but it was close… she was dead there, for a minute,” James said, without looking up.  He and the medical tech knelt over the bloody form of Jane, whose skin looked almost white against the dark colors of her armor.  Her face was obscured by a portable respirator, which beeped as it pumped oxygen into her lungs.  “We need to get her to the medical bay, right away.  Where the hell is Stan?”“I saw him helping with the casualties from the lift collapse,” Catalina said.  She turned to Vasily.  “Communications are still down.  And no contact with the surface.”Vasily nodded; he hadn’t expected any better news.  The attack had been sudden, and had come with almost no warning.  The alien ship had descended from orbit like the hammer of some vengeful god, appearing on X-COM’s radar only a little over a hundred miles out, a bright streak as it penetrated the atmosphere.  There had been barely enough time to scramble the interceptors, but the alien had knocked them aside almost contemptuously.  Both pilots had bailed out, but that was the last bit of good luck that they’d had. The base missile defenses had exchanged fire with the alien.  The last thing they’d seen before the sensors were lost was the alien veering off course.  They wouldn’t find out until later that it had been damaged and withdrawn, but that hadn’t stopped it from dropping three assault pods that had descended onto the base.  Its return fire had taken out the Patriot battery, the primary radar and communications array, and the building that warded the lift on the surface, essentially leaving them blind.  The eight men manning the surface installations were killed instantly. Catalina looked down at Jane.  “She stepped in front of you, took fire while you were… out.”Vasily’s expression darkened further.  He still didn’t know what had happened, but he could see the results right in front of him.  With the Betas off site on a mission, Alpha Team had rushed to help the base guards repel the alien assault.  The blast doors on Hangar 3 had held long enough for them to rally there, just as the first cyberdiscs and sectoids had started pushing into the base.  The critical exchange had lasted just seconds, as bullets, laser beams, and plasma bolts had filled the nearly empty hangar.  An alien grenade had killed two guards and blasted Catalina and Buzz onto their backs, and shrapnel from an exploding cyberdisk had wounded several of them, but the aliens had taken heavy losses.  Vasily had taken the lead as a knot of sectoids had fallen back across the hangar, forming a defensive position in front of one of the niches that held the machinery that had operated the blast doors.  And then, somehow, he’d just… stopped.  It was as if someone had draped a blanket over his mind; dazed, he’d just stood there as the battle raged around him, able to perceive what was going on, but unable to react to it.  He’d been a sitting duck, standing their lamely in the middle of the hangar, and the aliens had started to take advantage.  He hadn’t even been able to dodge or dive to the floor as a blast glanced off of his armored shoulder, and then another scored a more penetrating hit on his right hip.  The pain certainly hadn’t been muted by whatever strange effect had held him in its grasp. And then Jane had run forward, firing her laser into the alien position, drawing their attention away from him.  Vasily had only been able to watch as they shot her, once, twice, and then she was falling, blood splattering out on the steel plates of the floor around her. Seeing that had somehow cut through the fog holding his mind like a sharp knife, and he’d found himself able to move.  Screaming something incoherent, he’d poured rounds into the alien attackers, and hadn’t stopped until his weapon stopped bucking, until the barrels spun empty, their feed of shells depleted.  James had run forward under fire to attend to Jane, while Vasily had made sure—very sure—that the aliens were no longer a threat.“Vas?” The Russian started; he’d been caught up in his musings, and hadn’t noticed Catalina coming up behind him.  “What?”“Doc says we need to get a gurney, or a stretcher, for Jane.  We’ll need to—”She trailed off as someone ran into the room behind them.  It was Grace, her hair in unusual disarray, a pistol in her hand and black marks that might have been grease or burns along the entire left side of her coverall. “Alphas!” “What?” Vasily yelled.  “More aliens?” Grace’s expression told them the answer before she spoke.  “They’ve breached the external venting… they’re in the ductwork!”</blockquote>

Verification