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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5224004" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 23 (September 29, 2008)Chapter 101“What?” Vasily said.  Moving swiftly, James unhooked his pack and laid it next to him.  He dragged out a long black case, which opened to reveal several dozen tools and other components compactly arranged in individual sleeves.  “I need Mary,” he said to Vasily, again without looking up as he quickly started drawing out items from the kit and setting them up where he could get to them quickly.  Vasily hesitated, and James did look up then, fixing him with a hard look.  “I have three to five minutes before permanent brain damage sets in,” he told the Russian.  “Bring Mary here, now!” Vasily nodded and complied, hurrying over to where the Indian doctor was just getting back to her feet, still looking dazed.  He grabbed her and pulled her over to where James was cutting away Catalina’s torso armor, revealing the full extent of her bloody wound. “Cat, I’m sorry!  Cat!” Jane cried.  She started toward the fallen woman, but Hadrian grabbed her before she could get in the way of James and Mary. “The jugular vein and right common carotid artery have been perforated, but are still mostly intact,” James said to Mary, who looked down at Catalina in horror.  “I need you to seal the cuts…  Doctor Ranma!” She looked at him in horror.  “You cannot expect me to do a vascular repair here, now!”“If we don’t seal those vessels, nothing else we do will matter,” James told her.  “I need to clear access to the lungs so we can attempt resuscitation.  You can do this, Mary.  You have to do this.”Mary started, and took the tools that James offered.  “Yes.  Yes,” she said, going to work on the bloody mess of a wound. James worked from the other side, moving quickly.  The two of them spoke quietly as they worked, their hands darting back and forth in the narrow space.  All Vasily, Jane, and Hadrian could do was watch as they fought against the ticking seconds, while Catalina’s brain rapidly starved from oxygen deprivation.  Finally James drew back enough for them to see the chaotic jumble of tubes and wires jutting from Catalina’s neck.  “As soon as I jolt the heart, get ready to inject that medikit directly into the artery,” he told Mary.  “Ready,” she said.  “Clear,” James said, activating the portable defibrillator.  Catalina jolted slightly, but didn’t stir.  “Again,” he said, giving her another jolt.  “I’ve got a pulse.”“Injecting,” Mary returned.  “Some leakage,” she reported.  James tensed, but after a second she added, “Repairs are holding.”“Is she going to…” Vasily asked.James looked down at the ruins of the woman.  Her chest rose and fell as a tiny portable device the size of a paperback book pumped air into her lungs through the tubes that James had installed.  “We need to get her back to HQX,” he said.  “Ideally she shouldn’t even be moved, but…”“Do the best you can, doctor,” Vasily told him.  He looked at Hadrian, who nodded.  “Vasily, you’re not—” James began.“We still have job to do,” he interrupted.  “If this ship not stopped, millions more die.  You get her ready.  Jane, stay with doctors.”“I… no, you’ll need me.”“And if other alien come up from below?”“We’ve got guns,” James said, without looking up.  “And that ethereal, or whatever the hell it is, can apparently hit us wherever we are.”Vasily paused.  “Two of us against whatever’s upstairs isn’t good odds,” Hadrian pointed out. “I can do this,” Jane said quietly.  “I need to do this.”Vasily nodded.  “Come on,” he said.  He gestured to Hadrian, who led them toward the lift he’d spotted earlier. “See if you can find something to use as a stretcher,” James told Mary, as the other three Alphas headed up the next level of the alien ship. With Vasily and Jane covering, Hadrian stepped into the lift.  The bright glow surrounded him, and the alien antigravity technology pushed him up toward the iris in the ceiling, which opened automatically to allow him passage to the upper level.  As he passed through, he felt something hard kick him in the back, and felt a gout of hot gas sear his neck through the layered armor protecting him.  He lunged out of the lift field, which grew progressively weaker just above the level transition, and spun to see a sectoid there, hefting a plasma rifle.  The alien shot again, but Hadrian had kept moving, and the shot narrowly cleared him as he triggered his own weapon, firing a blast that hit the sectoid in the center of its torso.  The alien toppled over onto its back, killed instantly by the plasma burst.  Vasily came up next, followed by Jane.  Hadrian checked the body, and swiped the power cell from its gun, adding it to the collection of full and partially-full cells he carried in the pouches dangling from his armor.  He then moved to join Vasily, who’d crossed to the far side of the room, where a wide, arched opening led into another room beyond. That chamber was almost identical to the one they’d just left, except that instead of a lift it was dominated by odd translucent cylinders that rose from the floor to the ceiling around its perimeter.  The cylinders were filled with fluid through which small rising bubbles could be seen, but their purpose was a mystery to the three humans.  Oval panels set into the walls flickered with shifting patterns of colored light, adding to the unreality of the scene.  “Come on,” Vasily urged, leading them to a door visible on the far side of the room.  It hissed open as they approached, but only to reveal several sectoids armed with vibroblades.  The creatures hissed and charged, even as the Alphas opened fire. Vasily cursed as he shot too quickly, and his plasma bolt streaked past the head of his target to explode against the frame of the door.  The alien lunged at him, and he reflexively brought his weapon up to block.  There was a flare of gas and a sick crunch as the alien sword cut into the bulky assembly of the cannon.  Vasily twisted and dragged the sectoid off-balance, then smashed the heavy end of the cannon into its face.  The sectoid fell onto its back, thrashing as wisps of gray smoke trailed from the cracks in its shattered faceplate.  The other sectoid didn’t even get close enough to attack, as Hadrian and Jane cut it down with a pair of direct hits.  Vasily turned back to the doorway, which opened onto a long corridor reinforced with curving metallic buttresses.  There was a sectoid standing there, maybe five meters beyond the door. For a moment, he just stared at the creature.  It was carrying a weapon almost as large as it was, a cumbersome device with a ridiculously broad barrel atop a curved, sinuous grip.  The weapon must have been lighter than it looked, for the sectoid held it on its shoulder without apparent difficulty.  The dark opening that faced Vasily looked like a cave mouth as the alien pointed it at him.That sight jolted Vasily like a dash of cold water, and he reached behind his back to grab his pistol.  At the same time, he shouted a warning at his companions, knowing that he was too late.  Time seemed to slow as an oblong white missile, shaped almost like an American football, shot from the alien launcher and streaked toward Vasily.  To his amazement, it looked like the bullet steered toward him, arching in its flight as it streaked through the doorway.  Vasily jerked back, and the missile passed literally inches in front of his face, leaving behind a faint odor of burned meat.  His head turned to follow its path, and saw it continue to turn as it passed through the arch on the far side of the room, narrowly missing one of the fluid cylinders.  It passed out of view as it was heading toward the wall in the lift room, the turning radius of the guided missile obviously insufficient to allow for an easy reversal of its course.  Some instinct he couldn’t fathom had him close his eyes, a split second before everything exploded in a raging supernova of searing destruction.</blockquote>

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