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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5311438" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 28 (November 10, 2008)Chapter 125Catalina hurled herself forward and aside, clearing the lift and rolling as she hit the floor.  Behind her, the bolt from the plasma cannon exploded in a white inferno, filling the lift compartment.  The British agent could hear her companions’ cries of pain over her comlink, but she focused on the cannon, which was already starting to glow again as it charged up for another shot.  She drew a bead on the tiny LEDs on its control console, and fired.  The remote cannon exploded, streams of plasma filling the passage as bits of metal pinged angrily off the walls.  Catalina got up as the Alphas emerged from the lift, their armor blackened but otherwise intact.  Hadrian was being helped by Mary and James; the Marine had been directly in the path of the cannon’s shot.  A medikit restored him enough for them to move out; all were cognizant of the passing seconds now that the enemy knew they were here.  They pressed on, moving quickly.  They came to another door, this one a more typical construction of tempered aluminum.  It was secured by another electronic lock, but this time they didn’t bother stopping to place charges; a pair of heavy plasma bolts blew it off its hinges.  They were greeted by weapons fire, but the three Frenchmen inside couldn’t withstand the firepower of the Alphas.  “Ammo check, anyone need some?” Jane asked, while Hadrian bent to check the bodies. “Am good,” Vasily said, as he loaded a fresh power cell into his cannon.  Catalina slid behind a console where one of the dead men, an officer of some sort by his uniform, had been working when they’d blasted the door.  “You in?” Vasily asked, coming over to her. Catalina’s hands flew over the computer keyboard.  A map of the complex appeared on the screen.  “Hangar here,” she told him.  “Looks like a big power signature here.”“Door here,” Vasily said, pointing to the grid.  “You open it?”“I’ll try to override the lockdown,” she said, sticking her tongue between her teeth as she went to work. * * * The heavy pressure doors let out a ponderous hiss as the locking mechanisms retracted, and they parted, the heavy steel slabs sliding on their hidden rails into the surrounding walls.  The hangar beyond the doors was spacious enough to accommodate two aircraft the size of the Lightning with room to spare, although part of it was taken up by a bulky apparatus of tubes and cylinders that was obviously of alien origin.  A single alien scout ship sat on the landing pad, a sleek elliptoid resting on a triad of extended struts. The hangar was also occupied by aliens, three mutons that opened fire with their plasma cannons as soon as the doors opened.  The Alphas returned fire from the cover of the doorway, and with the mutons just standing there, not even bothering to move behind the cover of the alien scout, they took several hits in the initial exchange.  The mutons proved as tough as ever, though, and continued their barrage.  James was clipped on the shoulder as he leaned out from cover to take a shot, and he fell to the floor, fumbling before Hadrian grabbed hold of his arm and dragged him out of the line of fire.  But with the humans in a good position and the mutons exposed, it seemed like there could only be one outcome. Vasily heard it first, a jarring mechanical noise, like heavy machinery, drawing closer.  It was accompanied by a rhythmic thumping that he could feel through the steel plates covering the floor, like the tread of an approaching giant.  Catalina, across from him on the far side of the doorway, felt it too.  “What is that?” she yelled, the shout all but lost over the sound of exploding plasma bursts.  5Vasily leaned out for a look, just in time to see a robotic monstrosity stride into the room.  It looked like something out of a movie, a bipedal construct that strode forward on nine-foot-long, bird-like limbs that jutted from the sides of its body.  The ground shook at its coming, and Vasily guessed that it had to weigh thousands of pounds, the thick floor plates groaning from the strain of its passage.  Its body was segmented and every inch of it seemed to be covered in overlapping layers of armor, including the turret that jutted out from under the front of its body, from which a pair of ugly barrels protruded.   There was a flash as a plasma bolt exploded against the side of the alien walking tank, but the shot had no effect, as far as Vasily could see.  What he did see was a bright green glow that erupted from within the mech’s turret. “Down!” he yelled, ducking back behind the dense steel threshold of the hangar door.  The flare that followed nearly blinded him, but he recovered in time to see a bright green beam cutting through the wall just above his head.  It drew a line across Jane’s torso, and Vasily could see it penetrating through the thick armor of her breastplate like a stream of boiling water through a block of ice.  Reflexively he lunged and tackled her.  His suit’s warning systems blared an alarm as the alien laser sliced across his back, then both were down.  Looking up over his shoulder, he saw the beam keep going another foot before it died, leaving an ugly glowing slash in the wall.  The foot thick, reinforced plate steel-over-concrete wall.  He expected it, but even so, when he felt the thud of the alien mech’s steps again, his heart sank.  It was coming for them.</blockquote>

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