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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5177925" data-attributes="member: 143">Heh, is it that day already? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />* * * * * Session 21 (September 15, 2008)Chapter 84Hadrian dove for cover, but he couldn’t fully avoid the point-blank barrage from Vasily’s autocannon, and several rounds exploded against his side before he could get clear.  He was flipped over and flung roughly aside, landing hard against the wall of the room before falling, as rounds exploded along the wall directly above him, showering him with fragments and bits of hot shrapnel. Catalina screamed again and clutched her hands over her head, shaking back and forth as she cringed deeper into the corner.  Vasily started tracking the autocannon back toward her, but James kicked him hard in the back of the knees.  The actuated joints in his heavy armor absorbed the force of the kick, but the weight of his gun and the bucking recoil from the ongoing stream of fire conspired to knock him off balance, and he fell forward, the weapon bouncing out of his grip as he landed awkwardly with one arm pinned under his body.A moment of relative quiet followed, once the blasting cacophony of the cannon had silenced.  Vasily lay where he’d fallen, groaning.  Catalina, sobbing, looked down at her hands, which shook as lucidity gradually returned to her eyes.  “Bloody hell!” she exclaimed, looking over at Hadrian, who grimaced as he rolled onto his side, clutching at the bloody rents where Vasily’s rounds had torn through his armor. “Vas, snap out of it!” James said, getting slowly to his feet, giving the Russian a wary berth.  But Vasily just laid where he’d fallen, and made no move toward his weapon, which remained attached to him by the flexible ammunition feed belt. “I… I am all right,” he finally ventured.  James hurried over to Hadrian, who remained where he was, covering his wounds with a bloody hand.  His armor had kept his body cavity from being ventilated, but it was clear that he’d taken a beating from his comrade’s fire.  “What… the hell… what that?” the Marine asked, as James tended to him with a medikit.  Jane’s voice hissed over their comlinks.  “Are you guys okay up there?”“We’re…” James began, but he was cut off by a yell from Catalina.  “Vas, look out!” she cried, as a cyberdisc appeared in the mouth of one of the passages.  It fired its plasma weapon at Vasily, who was already moving, rolling onto his back, his autocannon coming into his hands as he flipped over.  The alien plasma bolt hit the floor between his legs, splashing them with hot plasma, but then the cyberdisc erupted in a hot echoing surge as Catalina shot it with her plasma pistol.  The alien emitted a high-pitched whine, then jerked back as Vasily poured a stream of rounds at it.  Only a few of the explosive-tipped shells hit, and most of those failed to penetrate its armor, but the impacts flipped it back into the corridor, where it bounced off a wall before settling awkwardly again on its correct axis.  It started to turn again, to bring its weapon to bear once more, but before it could shoot Catalina hit it again, and the thing exploded in a storm of metal shards that filled the passage and clattered out into the room where the Alphas waited.  The actuators of Vasily’s armor groaned as he rose to his feet.  His faceplate was partially obscured by black char, but his expression behind it was pure violence.  “Vasily, wait!” Catalina yelled, as he started toward the passage where the disc had emerged.  “No time to wait,” Vasily said, without turning or stopping.  “Give alien chance to invade minds again, maybe do something worse,” he added, and this time he did glance aside, where James was still tending to Hadrian.  “You going to pay for this,” he added under his breath, as he moved into the passageway.  He ignored the recessed doorways to either side and continued straight toward the wider door at the far end, and what was hopefully the ship’s command center.  Catalina glanced back at James.  “Go,” the doctor said, tossing the empty medikit away and taking out a second.  Hadrian tried to get up, but James held him down, an easy task given his condition. Catalina turned and hurried after Vasily, who was almost to the far door.  It hissed open at his approach, revealing a familiar-looking chamber, accounted with control panels and alien machinery, along with long viewing panels that were currently dead, showing only the curving form of the alien ship’s hull behind them.  A pair of sectoids turned from a panel near the door, their plasma pistols jerking up toward Vasily.  Both crumpled in a flash of bloody puffs as Vasily poured a stream of explosive metal into their bodies.  The alien controls flared and sizzled as the rounds chewed it up, and a stream of green gas fired into the room from a severed conduit.Vasily caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned, already jamming the trigger for another barrage.  The creature standing there was almost close enough to reach out and touch.  It wasn’t a sectoid, but it was impossible to tell more than that, for it was cloaked in a long brown cowled robe that was draped loosely over its slender frame.  It was almost as tall as Vasily, and as the Russian stared into the dark depths of its cowl he felt himself being drawn in to an endless chasm, one that swallowed up everything, all light, sound, and sensation, leaving him utterly helpless within.  He wasn’t even aware of the autocannon falling from his hands, or falling to his knees before the alien creature, or the alien lifting one shrouded hand, the folds of the robes falling away to reveal a small plasma gun that it pointed toward the center of the Russian’s faceplate.</blockquote>

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