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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5262435" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 25 (October 20, 2008)Chapter 110Hadrian Jones heard someone calling his name.  The awareness was unwelcome, for it brought with it a wave of pain that started in the small of his back and radiated upward, eventually meeting up with a separate tendril of agony that trailed down from the base of his skull.  “Jones!” He blinked, and found that he was staring up into the sky.  It was blue, startlingly so, clear of clouds for as far as he could see.  Someone had taken off his visor, and he could smell the unpleasant ozone of burned plastic underlaid with the more pedestrian stink of roasted flesh.  He tried to move, but could only fumble his arm, accompanied by a noise of grinding actuators.  Vasily stepped into view, looking down at him.  “How you… how you survive that?” he asked. Hadrian tried to shrug, but it didn’t accomplish anything but to stir up the pain in new ways.  “God likes me,” he managed. “Doctor?” Vasily asked.  “I’ve done all I can here.”  Hadrian could hear James’s voice, although he couldn’t see him through the opening in his visor.  “His vitals are stable, he should be okay to move.”“Hold on there, we’ll get you a stretcher,” Vasily said.  Hadrian shook his head, again not something he could easily manage in the blasted suit.  “Help me up,” he said. After a slight pause, Vasily nodded, and grabbed onto the Marine’s armor, lifting him to his feet.  Hadrian saw that Vasily’s suit had taken a beating as well, with black flash-burns covering him from hips to helmet.  He looked past the Russian at the alien ship, which was now a good sixty yards away.  The ship was now little more than a blasted hulk that continued to pour a stream of ugly black smoke into the sky.  “No commander?” Hadrian asked. “It looks like it was a trap, all of it,” Catalina said.  “We’d better get out of here,” James said.  “Once they figure out it didn’t work, they may decide to follow up.”“Did you see anything inside ship?” Vasily asked.  “Before it blow?”“Just pods, a lot of pods.  For mutons, looked like.”“Must be how they got so many onto such a small ship,” Jane said.  “We’d better tell Drake her intel sucks,” James said.  He fell in on one side of Hadrian, while Vasily took his arm on the other side.  The Marine was in no shape to protest; he could barely move at all in his crippled armor. “So, would this be a win, loss, or, um, draw?” Mary asked. Vasily glanced back at the ship, which continued to burn.  “Depend how you count it,” he said.  “We survived, so it’s a win in my book,” Hadrian said, as they returned to the Lightning.</blockquote>

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