Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5284480" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 26 (October 27, 2008)Chapter 117The blaster bomb streaked toward its target, detonating in an explosion of coruscating white fusion fire.  Its targets were either vaporized, if they were close to the blast, or burned to a crisp and tossed roughly aside, if they were not.  There were no survivors.Catalina lowered the now-empty launcher and blinked. “Ah… nice shot?” Vasily said. The bomb had dented the floor and ceiling, and had ripped the doors in the back of the room off their hinges, revealing a short corridor that culminated in another of the anti-gravity lifts.  They made their way cautiously forward, the superheated alien material sticking slightly to their boots as they passed through the radius of the blast zone.  Blackened smears decorated the corridor, but the lift itself seemed to be intact, ascending to one of the familiar alien iris-doors above.  “It’s close,” Mary said.  “I can feel it.”Vasily stepped into the lift, with Hadrian just a step behind.  The lift was large enough for several of them to ascend at once, and the others followed.  The iris opened as Vasily approached, opening onto a huge chamber above. The place was obviously some sort of control room, with machinery, control panels, and display screens all around the perimeter.  A holographic depiction of the Earth hovered in the air, eight feet across.  There were mutons as well, several of them, armed with plasma guns that they started firing as soon as Vasily appeared. The alien commander was instantly discernible from the others.  The creature was a muton, at least in general physical appearance, but its bodysuit was a garish mix of orange and gold, covering a body that was significantly bulkier than that of its more conventional peers, and it wore a metallic helmet that stretched over an obviously distended skull.  It let out a feral roar as it saw the Alphas, who staggered under a pulse of raw mental energy.  Vasily took a plasma bolt to the shoulder, while Hadrian took another in the back, but the aliens weren’t using the big cannons, and their battered powered armor held.  Jane and Mary opened fire as they reached the top of the lift, while Vasily and Hadrian stepped forward.  Vasily blasted one of the mutons in the chest with his cannon, then tossed it down and unlimbered his stun rod, confronting the commander. “Okay, pal.  You and me.  Human race.  Let’s do it.”He rushed forward, narrowly avoiding a plasma bolt that streaked inches past his head.  Jane blasted the muton who’d fired it a moment later, and the alien collapsed behind a control panel, smoke rising from its savaged leg.  Hadrian followed Vasily, firing as he went, and another muton fell, its face a blackened mess. The commander reached back and hefted what looked like a steel rod, easily six feet long.  The rod started to blur as the alien activated a stud in its base, and as Vasily lunged at him it swung the weapon like a club, smashing him across the body.  The Russian went down hard, sparks hissing from his dented breastplate.  The commander turned toward him, but was briefly distracted by a bright flash of white plasma that scorched his armor, but did little apparent damage. Hadrian glanced over his shoulder.  “Jane, don’t shoot the commander!” he yelled into his helmet comm, charging at the huge muton from behind.  He stabbed his own stun rod into its side.  There was a hiss of electrical discharge but the alien seemed unaffected, spinning and slashing its rod at the Marine.  Hadrian dodged and stabbed it again, driving the rod into its armpit, but the alien kept turning, and smashed him with a cross that flipped him over onto his back.  Vasily was having trouble getting up; his armor had been damaged to the point where it was reluctant to obey his commands.  “Cat, stun this guy?  You still alive?”On command, a stun bomb exploded against the commander’s chest, enveloping it vapors.  But once again the alien seemed unaffected, stepping through the swirling gas without hesitation.  It lowered its rod and pointed it at the Alphas still lingering near the lift; a bright beam of white light pulsed from the end of it, and there was a flash that left Catalina and Mary on their backs, dazed.  Jane, a few paces distant, had the muton in her sights, but held her fire.  The rest of the aliens were out of the fight, leaving them alone with the commander. Vasily rose, staggering as the actuators in the left leg of his armored suit whined and bucked.  Hadrian had rolled out of the alien’s reach, and was getting up as well.  “Stun rod doesn’t do anything to him,” he said.“Hell it doesn’t,” Vasily said.  “Keep trying!” The two came forward again, flanking the alien between them.  Vasily slammed his rod into the alien’s chest, but it countered with a jab of its rod that drove the Russian back and nearly took him off his feet again.  Through some last desperate reserve of effort Vasily surged forward again, meeting the alien’s swing with a parry that nearly tore his stun rod in two.  He thrust his weapon at the alien’s face, and actually scored along the side of its helmet, but the alien merely reached out and grabbed hold of his wrist, smashing down with the rod in its other hand.  The first blow crumpled the armor plate protecting Vasily’s shoulder.  The second pounded him in the side of his head, denting his helmet and tearing away the visor.  Hadrian, meanwhile, was stabbing the alien in the back, the neck, the legs, counting off with each hit.  Mary shot the commander with her plasma pistol, but it barely heeded the hit, and Jane put a hand on her arm, lowering the weapon.  “Mary, can you do something with your mind?”The Indian doctor shook her head.  “I’ll… I’ll try.”  She closed her eyes and focused on the alien, groaning as the sheer power of its rage surged over her.  “Six!  Seven!  Eight!” Hadrian yelled.  “I get it, he tough!” Vasily yelled back.  He tried to tear free, but the alien spun him around, knocking Hadrian down.  Its iron grip on the Russian didn’t soften in the least, and the alien bent him down to his knees, lifting its rod again.  It might have killed him had it struck him on the head once more, but he brought his free arm up, taking the blow but breaking his arm in the process.  Catalina looked on helplessly as the alien battered Vasily.  She drew her plasma pistol, but hesitated, unsure what, if anything, she could do to stop it. Hadrian did not hesitate; he got up again and lifted his plasma cannon.  Vasily saw him and yelled, “Not shoot him!” even as the alien jerked him roughly by his pinned wrist, almost breaking that arm as well.  The alien pointed its rod at Hadrian, but the Marine stepped into it and knocked it aside even as it discharged another stream of energy that exploded a console ten paces behind him.  The muton snapped the weapon across Hadrian’s face, but there wasn’t as much force behind the swing, and he took the blow, coming up almost close enough to touch it.  Vasily groaned and pulled with every bit of leverage he could still manage, dragging the alien slightly off balance, pulling its face down even as Hadrian thrust the barrel of his plasma cannon into its helmet and pulled the trigger. There was a violent explosion and all three combatants were separated and knocked down.  The others were running forward, not expecting to find anything left, but the alien commander was still intact, although the left part of its helmet had been blasted away, leaving its face blackened and ruined.   “Oh my god,” Catalina said.  “Use a kit on him now,” Hadrian said, getting up painfully.  Mary ran over to Vasily, but he pushed her away, standing unsteadily.  “We run out of kits, remember!” he yelled. Hadrian reached into the satchel at his belt, the one that all of them carried.  “I have one,” he said, taking out the last precious injector carrying alien biotic material.  He bent down and stabbed it into the alien’s thick neck.  “Is it going to live?” Catalina asked.  Mary knelt next to the alien commander, while Hadrian took out restraints to secure its hands and feet.  “I don’t know,” Mary said, after a moment.  “It’s alive, for now.”Catalina limped over to Vasily.  “Can we get out of here?  They had time to call reinforcements.”Vasily painfully unlimbered the atomic bomb, and laid it in the floor.  It only took a few seconds to arm the device and activate the timer.  “Time to go,” he said.  “What about him?” Jane asked, pointing at the unconscious alien.  Vasily nodded at Hadrian, who helped him get the alien to its feet.  With Vasily favoring his crippled arm, the two carried him between them, grunting under its weight.  They made their way back to the lift, as a timer appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the VDUs of those whose visors were still working.  The digits slowly counted down as they made their way down the lift, then back out through the complex.  Vasily and Hadrian were moving slowly, both because of the awkward weight of the commander and the damage the two had suffered to their powered armor and their bodies.  By the time that they made their way back to the first level of the base, the counter was ticking toward eight minutes left. “Guess we better hope Lightning still fly, huh?” Vasily said, as Catalina and Jane cleared the way ahead.  They encountered one wounded muton who got an inaccurate shot off before the women finished it off with a pair of plasma bolts.  The rest of the base was empty, and they let out a relieved sigh as they saw the light of the shaft leading back up ahead of them.  “Ken, fire her up!” Catalina said, as soon as they’d cleared the entrance, and their comm units were clear of interference.“What’s up!” the pilot’s voice came back to them.  Their timers had passed six minutes, and continued to pulse downward.  “Bomb live!” Catalina said.  “We’re coming!” “Damn it, I could have used some notice!” the pilot shot back.  “Get stasis chamber ready too,” Vasily said.  “We got commander, but he kind of half-dead.”They hurried down the hill and back through the forest.  They had a few hundred meters to cover, and all of them were helping each other now, with everyone but Mary carrying part of the commander.  By the time that they saw the Lightning ahead through the trees, the clock had ticked down to less than two minutes.  “Is Lightning fly?” Vasily asked, as they approached.  The rear hatch was open, and they could see parts scattered along the length of the wing, the engine housing cracked open.  The damage that the ship had suffered earlier was emphasized from their current perspective. “Working on it!” Ken’s voice came over their headsets.  A high-pitched whine came from the ship.  They boarded the craft.  Vasily cracked the stasis unit open, which seemed tiny in contrast to the bulk of the alien commander.  “Oof, this one is fat,” he said, trying to wedge the muton into the compartment.  “Fatter than Allen.”  With Catalina’s help they were able to get the thing fully inside, and the closed the chamber, which hissed as it sealed shut.  In the meantime Hadrian and Jane were struggling with the exit hatch, which had been damaged and didn’t fit cleanly into its mounting, the hydraulic systems that normally managed it inoperable. An alarm sounded in the passenger compartment and pulsed twice before dying.  “Ken!” Vasily yelled. They could hear the pilot’s curses through the cockpit hatch.  “Damn it!  Hold on… overriding safeties…”“Safety be damned, it’s going to be really unsafe here in two minutes,” Catalina said.  “Okay, here we go…” Ken said.  The engines started revving up, although the sound coming from the one on the right side of the craft sounded anything but healthy.  Cursing, Hadrian closed the rear hatch as much as it would go and then jammed the barrel of his handgun into the gap, hopefully wedging it shut.  The Alphas got into their seats, but Jane flinched back as sparks erupted from a console near her position.  “To hell with it!” Ken yelled.  “Firing main thrusters, hope we don’t explode!” The ship lurched into the air, the entire Lightning wobbling like a toy boat in a whirlpool.  A conduit near the damaged console exploded outward, and flames flickered into the compartment.  Jane grabbed a fire extinguisher and blasted the conduit, then was almost flung out the back as the ship shot forward roughly.  Hadrian and Mary were able to catch her before she was knocked into Hadrian’s jury-rigged hatch.  “Gyaa, come on, alien plane, we not want to die!” Vasily exclaimed.  The engines roared as the Lightning continued its erratic flight.  Through the gap in the hatch they could see the landscape shooting past, not far below them.  “Just… gah, just out of China Ken, just out of China!” Catalina yelled, as the counter clicked down to single digits, and then down…The Lightning was jolted under them, as though it had been kicked by a giant.  For a single terrifying moment they could feel it tilt downward, then Ken corrected, and they again surged up into the sky.  The aircraft continued to buck and rattle for another fifteen seconds, and then the turbulence eased, and they continued on a more or less level flight plan. “Okay,” Ken reported.  “We’re clear.”The Alphas let out a collective sigh of relief.  “Setting course back to base,” Ken reported.  “What signal should I send to HQX?”Vasily looked at the others.  “Mission accomplished,” he said, then he promptly leaned back and passed out.</blockquote>

Verification