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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5308722" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 28 (November 10, 2008)Chapter 124Catalina’s hand shot forward, and a grenade slid down the floor of the passage, spinning past the armored trooper before exploding in a cloud of greasy green smoke.  The stun gas, designed to incapacitate aliens, wouldn’t do much to hurt the French agents, but it would distract them, and block their line of sight, at least for a few seconds. She rolled to the side even as plasma blasts started exploding all around her, as the French fire struck the wall behind her and the floor in front of her.  She managed to get up into a crouch before the armored trooper shot her in the chest.  Her armor held, but the force of the blast knocked her roughly back into the wall, and she gasped as searing flickers of white flame pulsed against the helmet seal protecting her neck.  The French agent’s lips twisted into a grim smile, but it was quickly erased as Jane leaned around the corner and fired a bolt from her plasma rifle that exploded against the agent’s shoulder, spinning him half around.  He held onto his gun, but as he lifted it to fire again Vasily and Hadrian barreled around the corner, firing as they came.  Vasily’s shot narrowly missed, exploding against the sealed door, but Hadrian shot the trooper in the forehead, punching a hole in his reflective visor that dropped him like a bag of rocks. More fire was coming up the corridor as the French reinforcements kept shooting through the cloud of gas from Catalina’s grenade.  The dense green mists were already dissipating, and both Vasily and Hadrian were hit, glancing impacts that briefly wreathed the men in halos of white flame.  But their return fire, in turn, was devastating.  The lighter armor worn by the French agents couldn’t withstand the powerful bolts from the Alphas’ cannons, and within a few seconds, four men were lying on the floor, their bodies charred by blackened wounds.  The last two guards tried to fall back, but Hadrian threw a grenade after them, and in the aftermath of the explosion, no more shots came toward them.  Jane followed Hadrian and Vasily down the corridor, while James tended to Catalina, who was more stunned than seriously hurt, thanks to her armor.  He injected her with the contents of an X-COM medikit, then they hurried to catch up with the others. The room at the end of the passage was an office of some sort, much of it a wreck now in the aftermath of the brief firefight.  Hadrian was checking the bodies of the French agents, while Vasily checked out an adjoining room that appeared to be empty.  Jane had found a working console, and she gestured for Catalina to join her as she tried to access it.  “Looks like it needs an encrypted login,” Jane said. “Not sure what I’ll be able to get,” Catalina said, but she took out her xPhone and jacked it into the console.  “Locked down” she said, as a message in French appeared on the screen. Vasily reappeared.  “Lift in here!” he said.  “Need someone to get door open!”“Going,” Catalina said, turning on an automatic decryption program on her xPhone, and gesturing for Jane to keep an eye on it.  She followed Vasily into the back room, ignoring the few pieces of mundane furniture in favor of the armored doors.  There was an access panel there, but Catalina wasn’t surprised when the technician’s access card failed to activate it. “Damn,” she said.  She got out a tool and got to work on the panel, but it quickly became obvious that she was being locked out from another location.  “Tough, really tough,” she said.  “Explosives?”Vasily looked at the lift. “Will lift work if we blow door?”Hadrian popped back into the room from the corridor.  “Need to hurry, we’ll have more company soon,” he said, taking up a position in the doorway leading back out. Vasily took out several small demolition charges from the compartments in his armor, placing them along the edges of the lift doors as Catalina directed.  “Back!” the Russian said.  They drew back hastily before the charges exploded, briefly filling the room with a gout of smoke.  James lingered too close, and let out a cry of pain as a shard of metal struck him in the arm, piercing the flexible coupling protecting his elbow.  Mary went to help him.“Not say I not warn you,” Vasily said, shaking his head. “I’m fine,” James said, grimacing as Mary pulled the bloody piece of metal out of his arm.  The doors were still closed, but Vasily applied his augmented strength to them.  The door on the left refused to budge, but the one on the right groaned as the mechanisms holding it gave way, and the door finally slid open to reveal an eight-by-eight chamber within.  “Can you get it?” Vasily asked, as the Alphas filed inside.  Catalina looked at the numeric keypad inside the door, which had a five-digit LED readout above it.  “Coded,” she said. “Six-three-six-two-six,” Vasily said.  “Hopefully that isn’t the self-destruct code,” James said. Catalina entered the code, and to her surprise, the lift started to descend.  They stood cramped into the interior of the lift, waiting.  Jane handed Catalina her xPhone; the agent nodded in thanks and tucked it back into her pocket.  Another set of doors appeared as the lift reached the end of its journey.  There was a hiss and they slid open, revealing a broad corridor ahead of them.  The strident pulses of an alarm klaxon filled the air. Also waiting was a remote-operated plasma cannon, its barrel glowing.  Even as the doors clanged fully open it fired, unleashing a stream of blazing energy at the surprised Alphas.</blockquote>

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