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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5123385" data-attributes="member: 143">I've been focusing on my non-D&D fiction, although I haven't much time to work on anything of late (luckily I had a good stack of X-COM updates ready before my busy spell hit). Still, I've made a resolution to publish two of my novels on Smashwords (i.e. as e-books) by the end of the year. X-COM should go through the summer at least, so I'll post any news here related to my other works. * * * * * Session 17 (August 18, 2008)Chapter 64The voices continued for a moment, the words muted by the noise of the wind.  Cat remained frozen there, willing herself to silence as the seconds stretched into a minute.  Then the bootsteps resumed, walking away, along the summit of the cliff, until they had faded from her hearing.  She waited another twenty heartbeats before retracing her steps down the cliff face, and another twenty before she headed back to where the others were waiting.  They were right where she had left them.  “Everything okay?” Vasily asked her.“Company up ahead, but human.”“No way past?” the Russian asked.  Catalina shook her head.  “The base is atop a bluff.  There’s a path up there, but there’s no way you’d make it up without the guards seeing you.”“How about we climb?”“I have climbing gear,” Jane said.  “I think I can find us a place far enough away from the path that the guards might not notice,” Catalina said.  She gestured for them to follow her, and started forward again into the blinding snow.  The approach took a good half-hour, in part because of their concern about avoiding detection.  They saw no sensors or alarm devices, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they did not exist.  Their VDUs remained blank, save for the power readings in the distance.  This time they headed in a more northerly direction, toward the second power source, away from the structure of the base that Catalina had detected.  They ended up at a rough cliff face that rose a good twelve meters above them, its summit just a rough outline, a jumble of protruding rock and built-up snow. Vasily took out a line of rope and a small folding grapnel from his pack.  Climbing gear was one area where they appeared to be overequipped; in addition to him, Jane, Cecilia, and Catalina all carried mountaineering kits.  Vasily took the lead, aware of the irony that his training in OSNAZ had specifically prepared him for this as he swung the grapnel and hurled it up the cliff.  It caught and he started up, but he’d barely gotten three feet off the ground when the ice he’d snagged gave way, and he slammed hard onto his back.  “Gah,” he said.  “You okay?” Catalina asked, as Cecilia reached down and yanked him to his feet.  He came up quickly, a bit surprised by the strength in the woman’s armor-enhanced grip.  The Russian scowled and waved Catalina toward the cliff face. The British agent took up the rope and attempted another toss, but this time the grapnel failed to catch altogether and dropped back to the ground.  Growling with impatience, Vasily took it up and gave it another attempt.  This time the grapnel seemed to stick cleanly, and the rope held while he scampered up to the top of the cliff.  Once he was up and able to securely anchor the rope the others were able to follow quickly, Hadrian bringing up the rear barely five minutes after he’d started his ascent.  While Vasily pulled up the rope, Catalina probed ahead, alert for any sign of the guards she’d detected earlier.  She didn’t get very far before she saw the source of one of the power readings, a massive dish that rose up out of a large mound that was too regular to be natural.  Still careful, she crept forward.  There was a snow-covered ramp that led up to the top of the mound; near it she could see the familiar dullness of exposed metal.  Looking more closely for a door or other access point, she found only a pair of vent outlets that were too small for access, even if they could get through the armored steel covers.  Hadrian and Jane had taken up a position amongst some rocks that provided an overlook to the east.  The outline of the base was visible there through occasional gaps in the snow; it was shaped like a giant “U”, with the open end facing toward them.  Jane tapped the Marine’s shoulder and pointed; he nodded as he recognized the two dark shadows moving along the ridge near the base.  Cecilia and Vasily joined Catalina at the mound.  Cecilia remained back, her bulky armor making it more difficult to remain unseen.  Catalina and Vasily crept up the ramp to the top of the mound, where there was a bulky metallic frame half-buried in the snow below the radar dish.  Vasily knelt over it, brushing away snow until he found an access panel.  The panel was locked, but a few seconds from Catalina’s laser pistol provided entry.  The Russian took out his xPhone, and after a moment found a port where he could connect the device.  The software on the phone immediately went to work, and within a few seconds, Russian characters started running in columns down the handheld device’s screen. “They’re coming this way,” Jane said to Hadrian, watching the approaching guards.  Both of them readied their weapons, but suddenly the pair turned and ran to the south, away from them. Jane looked at Hadrian; the Marine shrugged, but a moment later they heard a loud noise in the sky, followed by a light that appeared within the storm, growing rapidly brighter.  Above Catalina and Vasily, the dish suddenly creaked into motion, swiveling toward the south.  Catalina moved into the cover provided by the console, while below, Cecilia concealed herself in the lee of the ramp. The sound and light resolved into the familiar lines of an alien small scout, which descended out of the storm toward the base.  Within the area bounded by the rugged outlines of the facility, a pair of horizontal doors groaned and wheeled open, revealing an open space below.  The alien ship descended, and as soon as it moved past the doors, they started to close.    Meanwhile, Vasily, crouched low next to the console, shielding the display with his hands, tried to make sense of the information that he was intercepting.  He tensed as he found a folder, opened it, scanned the contents. “Idiots,” he muttered, under his breath. “What?” Catalina asked.  The display on the xPhone suddenly went blank; Vasily checked, and confirmed that the signal coming from the relay was dead.  “Come on.  We got to find others.  Tell when we find them.  Move quick.”Cecilia fell in behind them as they moved toward the crest overlooking the base where Jane and Hadrian had taken cover.  “Any luck?” Jane asked. “I got transmission from dish.”“And?” Catalina asked.  “Useful?”“Stupid idiots working behind Moscow’s back.  Getting… something in return for working with aliens.  They receiving alien visitor, now.”“Well, what do we do?” Catalina asked.  “I figure this is your call.”“We need to get this back to X-COM.  And this place… need to die.”“It’s a long way back to HQX,” Cecilia said.  “And any signal we tried to send from here, they’d probably pick up.”Vasily’s expression was dark.  “I… we need take this place now.  I want this ‘special visitor.’  You with me?”Catalina nodded.  “Yes, Vasily, always,” Jane said. Vasily turned to Hadrian.  After a moment, the Marine nodded. “We’ve got company,” Cecilia said.They looked up to see that the guards had returned, and were approaching their position, moving quickly.  “Maybe they figured out what you did to the comm array?” Catalina suggested.  “They certainly seem irate,” Cecilia said, checking her laser.  “We do quickly, as quietly as possible,” Vasily said, laying down his autocannon and unlimbering his stun rod.  But the Russians must have seen some movement in the rocks, for they suddenly stopped, and lifted their automatic rifles.  One reached for a small device at his belt, but even as he lifted it to his face, a bolt of plasma from Hadrian’s gun blasted it into fragments.  The guard collapsed, clutching his ravaged hand.  The second guard cried out, but his shout died as a bright line lanced across his throat.  He fell over, dead or dying.  The other guard lasted just a heartbeat longer, as Catalina pulsed a beam from her laser into his head.  The entire exchange had taken barely two seconds.  “Nice shot,” Cecilia said to Hadrian, who merely nodded and re-holstered the alien weapon.“Good!” Vasily said, picking up his gun and charging forward toward the hangar doors.  They were as he feared, reinforced steel, but the point where the two doors came together was the weak point.  He reached for the demolitions kit he carried, trying to judge whether the plastic explosives he carried would be enough.  “Suggest we get these bodies out of the way,” Hadrian said.  “On it,” Cecilia said.  With her augmented strength, it was a simple matter to grab hold of both guards, dragging them to an out of the way space behind the rocks. “They’ll be missed soon, even if nobody heard that,” Catalina pointed out.  Vasily didn’t look up, kneeling beside the doors, placing the explosives.  He set out half of the charges in the kit, then after a moment’s hesitation put down the other half, connecting the detonators and setting the delay for fifteen seconds.  “Might be wise to kill their sat dish as well,” Hadrian said, as he came forward to join them.  “I use everything we got,” Vasily said.  He made the final connection.  “Maybe I can take it out with this,” Catalina said, lifting her laser.  The moment of distraction was costly, as Vasily triggered the delay, and immediately surged up, charging back toward the nearby wall.  Hadrian was just a step behind him, and Jane and Cecilia, still covering up the signs of the brief firefight, saw and threw themselves down to the ground.  It wasn't much of a hesitation, but it was enough.  Catalina had barely made the corner when the explosives detonated, hurling hot air and shrapnel in her direction.  Though her torso was out of the main blast, Catalina's left leg was trailing as the blast hit.The force of the blast simultaneously knocked her off her feet and twisted her around.  She had enough time to swear loudly before the momentum spun her into the wall.  The curse became a shriek as her lower leg reached an unnatural angle, and then silenced as her helmet connected with the wall.  She fell to the ground, and lay still. [OOC Note: When a player has to miss a session in my campaign, they have to accept that something unpleasant might happen to their character in the interim!]</blockquote>

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