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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5065441" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks for stopping by, Jenniza.  Mary and another of our late additions are coming up later in the story. We also had a few other players who only showed up for a few sessions. I didn't get their permission for including their characters in the story, so I replaced them with alternative characters in the narrative. "Moshe Yahav" was one of those. * * * * * Session 14 (July 14, 2008)Chapter 46“Anything?” “No… wait… no, it’s nothing.” “Damn it, we need to know where they going!” Vasily said.  “Grace say we may not get internal sensors back up before they can get into important parts of base!”“I heard her too!” Catalina shot back, shaking the motion sensor at him.  “I’m getting a lot of interference from the structure of the base.  Do you think you can do better?” “Here, let me take a look at it,” Buzz said, stepping diplomatically in between them.  He took the sensor, and started making rapid adjustments to it. Chief Hallorand and two base guards appeared at the next intersection.  Hallorand had his handgun out, and he looked ready to use it.  “Anything?” he asked. Vasily started to shake his head, but Buzz interrupted him.  “There,” he said, holding out the detector, so they could see the small dots moving along the edge of the screen.  “Where is that?” Vasily said, peering at it.  “Looks like the west wing,” Catalina said.  “Not much there but… wait.”Vasily came to the same conclusion at the same moment.  “Medical,” he said, leading them quickly down the corridor.  Hallorand and his men fell in behind.  With James staying with Jane and most of the other guards protecting the scientists and researchers, that gave them six; not the best odds, but Vasily wasn’t particularly worried about that at the moment.  “You evac medical?” Vasily asked Hallorand. “Jannsen wouldn’t leave.  She was working on some of the casualties from the lift collapse.  I think the new Israeli doc was there as well.  Harrison’s on duty there.”Vasily grunted and tapped at his communicator, knowing it was useless.  His leg still hurt, but he ignored it, picking up the pace until the others had to sprint to keep up.  As he ran, he checked the action on the G36 he’d grabbed from one of the fallen guards in the hangar.  They reached the access corridor and ran toward the new connector that opened onto the west wing of the base.  This part of the base was still new, the fixtures gleaming in the sedate glow of the emergency lights.  The medical bay was the only part of the wing that had been finished, and so there was only one working door.  “Maybe we should—” Catalina began, but before she could finish, they heard familiar sounds from behind the door ahead of them.  Gunfire—and plasma blasts. “No time!” Vasily yelled, charging forward.  The door’s automatic mechanism didn’t function, but the Russian hit the emergency release in mid-stride, and slammed his shoulder against the door to thrust it open. The medical bay was an L-shaped chamber, with walls and floor covered in broad white tiles.  To the left was a diagnostic center equipped with unusual gadgetry, while to the right was a recovery area with a long line of beds, culminating in a surgical bay that could be partitioned off with a sliding panel.  The room was a mess, and a scene of utter chaos.  Most of the lighting panels were dark, with sparks shooting from wires that dangled down from the ceiling and from ruined equipment along the walls.  A ventilation grate had come down from the ceiling, which explained the three cyberdiscs that were hovering in the middle of the room.  One fired as Vasily stepped into the room, the blast streaking toward a crude barricade where a unit of shelving and a pair of wheeled carts had been hastily overturned to provide cover.  Doctor Yahav crouched behind the makeshift barrier, along with Harrison, who was lying on his back, firing his pistol until the moment that the plasma bolt clipped the side of his head. “Yah!” Vasily yelled, darting to the side as he unleashed a spray of automatic fire at the alien drones.  At that range he could hardly miss, but most of the bullets were deflected by their armored hulls, sending up sparks as they caromed off across the room.  Two of the aliens swiveled to bring their weapons to bear, tracking his progress as he ran.  They fired at the same time, but by some miracle the shots bracketed the big Russian, blasting into the wall behind him.  Vasily fell to the floor, still firing, keeping the barrel of his gun trained on the aliens until the clip was empty.  His momentum carried him forward almost to the end of the row of beds, and he rolled the rest of the way, a moment before one of aliens blasted the bed into a tangled wreckage. More fire filled the room as the others followed Vasily into the room, spreading out to face the aliens once through the doorway.  Catalina and Buzz both scored hits, and one of the cyberdiscs exploded, filling the room with shards and fire.  That disrupted the other two for the moment, knocking them aside with concussive force, but they quickly recovered and returned fire.  Catalina was struck with a glancing blow to the hip that knocked her back into the wall, off balance.  She dove behind the barricade just as a second shot impacted the wall right where she’d been standing.  Yahav started to help her, but she pushed him back.  “Stay down!” she yelled.  Hallorand and his guards were the last into the room, and they added to the barrage of fire.  The first cyberdisc tilted off its horizontal axis as 5.56mm rounds pinged off its body, then jerked as Hallorand blasted a hole in it with his .44.  The alien started spinning, blasting off shots in every direction, randomly, exploding machinery and digging divots into the new wall panels.  Buzz had ducked back into the shelter of the entryway, so the other alien targeted Hallorand and his men.  Its first shot blasted through the ceramic breastplate of one of the guards, and he fell onto his back, a line of smoke rising from the ruin of his chest.  It shifted its aim toward Hallorand, but before it could fire, it was hit by a rapid-fire series of impacts from the side.  Vasily, rising from behind the ruins of the bed, had switched to single shots, and was blasting bullet after bullet into the alien, doing little damage but throwing off its aim.  The alien started to turn toward him, but it absorbed more hits, from Hallorand and Catalina, and suddenly fell to the floor, smoke rising out of the rents in its body.  “Take cover!” Hallorand yelled, dodging back to the door just before the alien erupted into a small fireball that blasted through the chamber.  The other crippled cyberdisc was caught in the blast and was flung into the diagnostic center, where it too exploded.</blockquote>

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