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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5142808" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks, ejja!* * * * * Session 19 (September 1, 2008)Chapter 70Plasma bolts shot from the lift shaft as more floaters drifted into view.  A blast caught one of the guards in the chest just as he was getting up, and he crumpled, bullets from his assault rifle spraying out wildly as he fell.  Another bolt clipped the top of the doorway where Vasily and Hadrian were standing, the plasma exploding in a spray of white-hot fire. “Fire in the hole!” Vasily yelled, hurling his grenade as he charged across the corridor to the shelter of the side hall that led to Musa’s armory and Storage Bay 1.  A plasma bolt streaked past him, and another followed him into cover, slamming into the corner and dislodging a spray of metal shards and masonry.  The surviving guard was already there, his hands shaking as he fought to unjam the mechanism of his weapon. The grenade landed just outside the base of the shaft, and exploded under a pair of floaters.  The explosion lifted both of them toward the ceiling, and they slowly drifted down, perforated by shrapnel. “More of them!” Hallorand yelled, as three more floaters appeared out of the lift.  The base chief stood over Hadrian, who was kneeling in the shelter of the doorway, firing with calm deliberation.  A floater dropped, two neat holes blasted into its chest.  Vasily leaned out of cover, and fired a shot of his own that exploded harmlessly off one of the lift struts.  His eyes narrowed as he studied the foe.  “Take one alive, these different!” he yelled.  He ducked back as a plasma bolt shot past his position.  The guard replaced him, spraying a burst of rounds until another bolt caught him squarely in the face.“Die, you bastards!” Inise Drake yelled, as she pushed past Hallorand and burst into the corridor, firing shots from her handgun.  She scored a hit, punching a bullet hole into the floater’s chest that then exploded from inside, tearing a fist-sized hole in its body.  The creature let out an agonized sound but fired back, its shot missing Drake by inches.  Another hit the wall near Hadrian and Hallorand, sending both men ducking back into cover.  Jane emerged with her laser rifle lifted to her shoulder, and drilled the floater with a perfectly aimed shot that drilled a hole through its skull.  Alien bodies and body parts littered the floor around the base of the lift, and the surge abruptly ended.  One floater drifted around behind the lift, trailing ugly splatters of fluid from wounds in its chest and arms.  Vasily lifted his gun, and yelled, “Not kill, not kill!” but too late; Drake’s hand cannon fired once more, and the alien’s head popped like a balloon.  “Grah!” the Russian yelled.  He bent to tend to the fallen guard, but one look was enough to tell him it was useless. Hadrian and Jane came forward warily, alert for any aliens that might be shamming.  “Damn it, they got Brooks and Rogers,” Hallorand said, his own uniform streaked with black lines where streaks of plasma from the near-miss had struck him.  The Marine started checking the bodies.  “Can we lock the lift down?” Jane asked. “It should have sealed automatically,” Hallorand said.  “The automatic systems must have failed.  It looks like they’ve blown the top of the lift, and are using their levitation ability to drift down.  Hell, there could be an army up there.”“They attack other parts of base before,” Vasily said.  “We need check medbay and engineering.”“No way in,” Hallorand said.  “The base should have locked down as soon as the power went down.”  He shook his head.  “No way an EM pulse should have penetrated all the way down here.”The door to the south wing groaned open, and two more guards appeared, accompanied by James Allen.  The doctor started toward the fallen men, but stopped when he saw that there was nothing left for him to do.  Garret appeared in the doorway, a grim look on his face.  “We’ve gotten partial backup sensors online.  Should have power back up in a few minutes.  There are no alien ships topside, but beyond that, we can’t tell much.”“Where’d they come from, then?” Hallorand asked. “I don’t know,” Garret said. “We need to sweep the base,” James said, echoing Vasily’s earlier comment. Garret nodded.  “We’ll have the doors open in a few moments.”“Let’s check medbay and engineering first,” Jane said, “then hangar, protect personnel first.”The lights came on in a few minutes as promised, but the main computer and their communications systems remained inactive as the Alphas coordinated with Hallorand’s men in securing the base.  They found no signs of other alien intrusions, and manual checks of the venting systems and sublevel access points proved clear.  The scientists and engineers were nervous but secure.  They found Catalina with a pistol in the medical bay, limping badly as she protected the medical staff in the supply closet behind her.  “What the hell happened?” she asked.  “Little green men?”“Red floating men,” Vasily said.  “Damn, I miss all the fun,” Catalina said, grimacing as she leaned back against the nearest bed.  “Glad I didn’t let them take my little friend here,” she said, tapping her gun against her hip.  “Save a few for me, eh?”As they made their way back to the communications center, they heard some static hiss out over their communicators, with a few barely distinguishable words in between the white noise.  Drake was there to meet them at the door to the communications room.  “The hangar is clear,” she said.  “but we have other problems.”“Great,” Jane said. “We’re reading something up above.  Something… big.  There’s no alien tech, no ship, no drop pods.  Whatever it is, it’s organic.”“Wha?” Vasily said, as Hadrian echoed, “Organic?”“Yes.  At least, it’s showing green on the boards.”“Like… flying whale, or something?” Vasily asked. “Well now.  I suppose you will have to find out.”Vasily scowled.  “I love you too.”“Stay in communication… if the damned things work,” Drake said.  “And watch your backs.”Hallorand came in.  “The lift is still down, but we’ve cleared the access to the stairs.”“Wonderful,” Vasily said.  “I’ll send Zhang and Kolkowski up with you,” Hallorand said.  “We still haven’t heard anything from the guards that were on duty above when this hit.”  By the look on his face, he didn’t expect to hear anything good anytime soon. They paused just long enough to get the rest of their gear.  Vasily put on his Personal Armor, and James joined them, packing a satchel full of several of the latest generation of medikits.  Just ten minutes had passed since the end of the attack before the Alphas were on their way up to the surface, moving in silence up the tight, narrow staircases that folded back in on themselves as they made their way up landing after landing.  By the time that they got to the heavy door that led up to the interior of the surface installation, their legs were throbbing from the strain of it.  Vasily glanced back to make sure that the others were ready, then he tugged the manual release and pulled back the heavy steel door.  The interior of the room was dark, with the regular lamps still nonfunctional.  The glow of the emergency lighting was enough for them to see that the upper part of the lift had been breached; dark scoring marked the columns where the entry grate had been secured before.  As they moved around the lift they could see that the door leading outside was also missing, almost as though it had been simply yanked out of its moorings.  There was no sign of the guards that were supposed to be on duty, not even any blood, human or alien. It was dark outside, the sky a huge expanse of deepening purple as night settled in on the desert.  There was still enough of a glow on the horizon for them to see the landscape around them, and to mark the piece of machinery, roughly the size and shape of a standing child, stuck into the ground about thirty meters in front of the building.  Between them and it were the missing guards, or at least parts of them; one man was missing his head, and both of his legs ended in bloody stumps just above the knees.  The second… there were just pieces of him left, none of them much larger than a backpack.  For a long moment, the six of them just stood there, silent.  “My god,” Kolkowski finally said, in little more than a whisper.  “Shhh,” Vasily said, creeping forward up the recessed staircase, scanning the empty desert.  There was no place that an alien, big or small, could have hidden, except for…He turned, and looked back just as the alien came around the edge of the building.  It looked… no, there was nothing that came to mind, nothing terrestrial that Vasily could think of that would be even close to a basis for comparison.  It was a monster, bipedal but otherwise nothing close to human, a bulging thing of muscles and fur and bony ridges.  It walked hunched over, its body compressed like a spring, but even so it stood almost three meters tall.  Its arms jutted from its body, trailing down to claws that nearly scratched the ground as it walked.  Its face, which Vasily saw as it turned toward him, was a horror in and of itself, a feral visage flanked by curling horns, and jaws that looked big enough to accommodate a human without much effort.  Hot slaver trailed between teeth like broad daggers as those jaws opened, and it issued a deep, guttural noise that Vasily felt in his bones, even fifteen meters away.   The others turned and saw it, and felt the sheer primeval impact of it. Then the thing roared, and charged at them.</blockquote>

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