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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5303234" data-attributes="member: 143">Heh, happy to oblige. There's an Excel file attached to the download at the Vault, it has d20 stats for the aliens I used in my campaign. * * * * * Session 27 (November 3, 2008)Chapter 122Catalina didn’t dare take a look around the corner, but the voice had been closer; she could imagine the French guard standing in the doorway of the foyer, looking down the hallway.  She saw Hadrian a short distance down the corridor on the far side of the intersection, hefting his plasma cannon.  He started to move back toward her, but she froze him with a small gesture.“Nah.  Sensors would let us know if there was trouble.”“Yeah, right.”“So you see that new cherie down in Accounting?”The voices moved off, but Catalina waited a full minute before risking a look.  The hallway and room beyond were clear.  She motioned Vasily forward, and followed him, rejoining the others further down the corridor. “You have any way of sensing the stuff we’re looking for?” Hadrian asked.Catalina shook her head.  “No, but I’ve got a solitary signal on this floor, twenty-three meters northwest, looks like the corner of the building.  In addition to those guards we just missed, I picked up another group, maybe nine meters ahead and five down.  I think some of the ones downstairs may be aliens.”“The one guy, down this way.” Vasily asked.  “You think we can take him silent?” Catalina nodded, drew her vibroblade, and started forward.The corridor continued along the back wall of the castle, the wall to her left broken by the occasional slit window paned with armored glass and protected by steel bars to boot.  After about twenty steps the hallway turned to the right, but at the turn an arched entry opened onto a large chamber that was obviously some sort of library or records-room.  She caught a hint of movement in the stacks along the left side of the room, and headed that way, silent despite the considerable bulk and weight of her armor.  I owe Grace dinner for those stealth-mods, she thought, creeping up past one row of freestanding shelves, then slowly up to the next.  The man had his back to her, poking through a shelf crowded with white file boxes with hand-lettered index markings in French and English.  He was dressed in plain blue coveralls, and did not appear to be armed.  One of the boxes was open in front of him, and he was taking out ledger books, looking through them briefly, and putting them back.  “Now, where did I leave that book?” he muttered to himself.  The first indication he had that he wasn’t alone came when Catalina reached around him and pressed the blade of her knife to his throat.  “Quiet,” she hissed, in French.“Aaah,” the man said.  “What do you want?”  He started to turn as the other Alphas came in, but Catalina held him close, and pressed him against the wall.  “Look, I’m not a soldier,” he managed.  “I’m just a technician!”“Information is what technicians have,” Catalina returned.  James came forward and lifted the barrel of his plasma rifle to the man’s head.  He swallowed, and Catalina saw that he recognized the weapon.  “You… you’re not aliens, are you?”“Checked last time I took a shower, and no,” Catalina said. Vasily came forward so that the man could see him, and removed his helmet.  “Oh, this is not my day,” the technician said.  He closed his eyes.  “Don’t hurt me, I don’t know anything!” he said. “Fastest route to the Elerium store,” Catalina said.The technician blinked.  “Elerium?  Ah… um, what’s that?”Catalina narrowed her eyes.  “Crystals, blue ones, where are they?”“Um, yeah, I don’t know anything about those.”“He’s lying,” Mary said. They turned to her.  “I can tell,” she said.  Out of the technician’s view, Catalina tapped her head with a finger, and Mary nodded. “You know where they are, or suddenly you’re not very useful any more,” Catalina said. “You want to live, right, we just want information,” Jane added.  Her French wasn’t quite up to Catalina’s but the man got the message.  “Please, just let me go,” he moaned.  “I haven’t hurt anyone.”Catalina nodded to Mary.  “She says you’re lying, and she would know.  Last chance, fella.”James activated the power feed on his rifle; the weapon hummed, and a faint glow flickered along the weapon’s conduits. “All right, all right!  I’ll tell you.  Just… just put that down.”  When neither the knife nor the rifle budged, he quickly added, “The alien power source is in the secret base.  Underground, underneath us.”“And we get there how?” Catalina prodded.“It’s accessed by a lift in the cellar.  I don’t know the access code for the lift, though.”“Lie,” Mary said.  “He knows the code.”Catalina translated what she’d said, and moved the knife a bit, scraping his flesh.  “I’m getting irritable, and my hands shake when I’m irritable,” she told him. “Aah, all right!” he said.  “The code is six three six two six.”Jane looked at Mary.  “Is that correct?”“That is the code.”The technician blinked at her.  “How… how do you know?”“She’s gifted,” Catalina said.  “And the lift is where?”The technician visibly deflated.  “The stairs down to the ground floor are just off the south corridor.  The stairs to the cellar are on the far side of the castle, there’s a long corridor that connects them.”“Any traps to warn us about?” Jane asked. “Well… there are security systems, yes.”“Is there an override?” Catalina asked him. “Umm…” he opened his mouth, looked at Mary.  “Here, take it,” he said, handing over a keycard.   “What… what are you going to do to me?”“Anything else we need to know that could save your life?” Jane asked. “I told you everything!  I’m not an alien!  I hate them!  I had to do what they said, I was just following orders!” Vasily shrugged and clonked the technician on the back of the head with a metal-clad fist.  He crumpled, and would have fallen had Catalina not held him up.  Catalina tied him up and stuffed a wad torn from his shirt into his mouth, then stashed him behind one of the shelving units where he wouldn’t easily be seen. “Let’s go,” Vasily said.  DM’s Note: we broke for the night at that point, and picked up the infiltration mission the following week.</blockquote>

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