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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5154985" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 20 (September 8, 2008)Chapter 75The Alphas opened fire, but their initial shots failed to do much; striking the chain-link fence, the plasma blasts exploded prematurely and left gaping holes but little more.  The HWP’s laser beam did somewhat better, lancing through the fence and slicing across the flank of the first reaper, leaving an ugly black scar but failing to stop or even slow the oncoming monstrosity.  Hadrian fell into a crouch and fired short bursts from his M4, but the bullets might have been spitwads for all the effect they had on the reaper.  The pair reached the fence and kept coming; the chain links barely slowed them as they tore through it and left a cluttered wreckage in their wake.  The Alphas were scoring hits, now, as Jane clipped the lead creature on the shoulder with a plasma bolt that exploded in a nimbus of white fire and alien blood.  Vasily’s explosive-tipped rounds pattered across its chest, and Catalina hit it on the meat of its left thigh, but still the alien kept coming, the other one just a long stride behind it. “Into the building!” Vasily yelled, standing at the door, pouring more rounds into the alien as it bore down on them.  The others darted in around him, and as the alien lunged he slid inside.  He saw the HWP fire one last pulse from its laser cannon before a long claw slapped the machine aside, knocking it end-over-end as though it had been a toy.  Hadrian started to shoulder the door shut, but then the whole building heeled over, as though it had been kicked by a giant.  The door was flung back open, and both Hadrian and Vasily were knocked to the ground.  The reaper’s arm thrust through the door as its outline filled the frame, the claws clutching at the fallen Alphas.  Vasily and Hadrian tried to get out of its way, but the probing claws found Vasily and dragged him down, seeking a secure grip as he struggled to get free. “Blast it!” Catalina yelled, firing her plasma pistol into the doorway, filling it with white fire.  Jane stepped forward and aimed her plasma rifle point-blank at the alien’s probing arm, shooting it in the elbow.  The alien roared and jerked back, knocking Hadrian into the wall before it withdrew fully.But the aliens weren’t giving up, and the whole building shook now as the reapers came at them in earnest.  Daylight shone into the tiny building as great rents opened in the walls and ceiling, and the whole structure started to lean as it came apart.  Reaper claws were replaced by the unholy visages of the creatures as they pushed their way inside, and the Alphas unleashed their full firepower to greet them.  At that range they could hardly miss.  Hadrian thrust the barrel of his carbine almost into a reaper’s snarling jaws and fired a complete magazine at full-auto, the bullets caroming off its teeth and battering at the slightly softer flesh on the inside of its mouth.  The alien roared in fury and redoubled its efforts to get in, and the entire front left corner of the building collapsed under it.  It lunged at Hadrian, who leapt back and ducked behind the ruins of the filing cabinets where the others had taken shelter behind him.  Multiple plasma bolts wreathed its head and upper body in streamers of superheated ionized gas, and the scent of charred meat filled the air inside the remnants of the hut.  Vasily screamed something unintelligible as he poured fire from his autocannon, the barrels of his gun beginning to glow as he kept firing, the recoil driving him against the back wall.  The entire building collapsed, the slat roof crumpling onto them in pieces, coming apart under the continuing reaper assault.  A huge slab of it was flung aside as the first reaper lunged forward, oozing blood now from the terrible wounds it had absorbed, half its face a blasted wreckage.  Jane shot it in the throat, the backblast seeping from the sides of its jaws, and it fell, crushing the file cabinets and knocking Catalina roughly over onto her side.  For a moment they were blinded by the swirling cloud of dust and smoke that wreathed the dying creature, then the second reaper suddenly loomed over them.  They kept firing, even Catalina, on the floor, screaming as she fired shot after shot into the alien.  It lunged forward, and punched Vasily through the back of the building, the only wall left standing.  The others glanced at the hole with incredulity; the thing had batted the armored Russian through the fiberboard as though he’d weighed nothing.  The alien kept on attacking, sweeping a claw at Jane, who ducked just in time to avoid a pulverizing blow that scattered the fragments of the wrecked desk, one half flipping up and over before vanishing over a fence a good twenty meters distant.  She fired back, the plasma bolt savaging its elbow joint.  It lunged forward to take a bite out of her face, but before it could seize her, Hadrian reared up behind the remnants of their barricade and thrust the barrel of his plasma rifle into the hollow under the reaper’s protruding ribs.  He fired, the weapon making a dull thump as the plasma bolt bore a hole into its chest cavity before exploding.  The reaper tottered for a moment, a weak groan hissing from its jaws before it toppled over onto its back.  Hadrian reached down and helped Catalina to her feet; behind them, the back wall of the hut finally gave out, and fell over, leaving nothing but scattered wreckage and two huge alien corpses where a building had stood just moments before.</blockquote>

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