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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5314116" data-attributes="member: 143">I think they were out at that point, but even if they'd had some shots left, they were close enough so that a blast would have killed a PC or two along with the alien. * * * * * Session 28 (November 10, 2008)Chapter 126Vasily grabbed Jane’s arm, grunted as he tried to pull her up.  He couldn’t see how far through her armor the laser had cut, and for a moment he feared that he was trying to heft a dead woman.  But then her helmet shifted, and she reached out with her other arm and took hold of his, and together they were able to get her back on her feet. Then they both almost went down again as something slammed into Vasily’s back.  He felt as though he’d been kicked by a mule, and he glanced over his shoulder to see the muton who’d shot him coming through the hangar door.  The barrel of its plasma cannon began to glow as it powered up for another shot. It never got a chance to fire, as Hadrian blasted it with a point-blank shot from his own cannon.  The muton, its armored suit already heavily damaged from the pounding it had absorbed, staggered back a step and fell to the ground.  A second muton followed almost immediately on the heels of the first, and Hadrian had to dodge back as it fired a streaking bolt past his head that exploded against the wall of the room.  Vasily reached for his gun, but Catalina and James bracketed it with a pair of shots that knocked it off its feet.  The alien continued to struggle, but it was clear that for now at least, it was out of the fight.  But over the sounds of the gunfire Vasily could still hear the heavy THUMP of the alien mech’s approach.  Wafting swirls of smoke from the multiple plasma explosions obscured the hangar, but he knew that the thing was close, and getting closer. “Fall back!” he yelled, all but dragging Jane after him as he retreated along the wall of the room toward the small control room where Catalina had overridden the door controls just a few minutes before.  Mary took her and helped her into that dubious shelter.  On the far side of the room, Hadrian, James and Catalina likewise made their way back, toward the doorway of a storeroom they’d cleared earlier.  That side of the room was cluttered with a few loose objects: storage drums, a few wheeled toolbenches, and a powered lift truck burdened with a pallet of black steel canisters.Vasily saw the green glow before he saw the alien, and saw where it was aiming.  “Down, Cat!” he yelled, even as the mech cut loose with its laser. The beam sliced across the room as Catalina dove behind the lift truck.  Vasily saw it clip her arm, just for an instant, and then she was clear.  The laser tracked after her, slicing across the contents of the lift truck, and for a moment he felt a cold fear that the canisters held explosive material..  But there was no explosion, only a heavy thud as the top of one of the canisters dropped to the floor, sheared off by the laser beam.  Catalina crept back into view behind the lift truck, scrabbling desperately across the floor.  Vasily could see that she’d dropped her pistol, and was favoring her injured arm, which hung limply at her side. “Over here!” Vasily yelled, as he blasted the alien mech with his cannon.  He scored a direct hit; he’d been aiming for the juncture where its leg met its body, but the shot merely exploded against a sheet of armor plating.  The alien responded, its turret swinging around toward him, the green glow already visible in the mouths of the recessed barrels.  He didn’t wait around to see what would happen; he turned and dove into the control room.  Mary and Jane were already there, and they ducked behind the control console as he came in, landing hard and awkwardly on the floor.  A green light filled his visor as the alien laser blasted through the armored plastic of the control booth, slicing through the console as though it was made of paper.  Sparks flashed and vaporized streamers of material erupted over the heads of Jane and Vasily, who very quickly separated as the beam sliced down to the level of the floor between them.  Mary screamed and threw herself to the floor, narrowly avoiding the deadly path of the beam.  In its wake, the metal it had cut glowed cherry red. The beam finally flickered out, and Vasily could hear more plasma explosions from the room beyond.  He rose up to see the alien mech pivoting back toward the others.  It stepped forward, crushing the hapless wounded muton under it.  Hadrian and James each fired one more time from the doorway of the storeroom, both scoring hits, but without any apparent effect.  Then Catalina reared up from behind a row of storage drums, her laser pistol in her hand.  The beam looked puny indeed as she flashed it across the front of the alien machine, but while it clearly hadn’t penetrated anything vital, the alien jerked as it took aim at the British agent.  Catalina ducked, but she needn’t have, as the beam sliced a good four feet above her head, cutting a long diagonal slash across the far wall of the room.  Vasily got a sudden intuition, and leaned out from the doorway of the control room.  “Hit it hard!” he yelled into his comm unit, putting his own words into action as he fired again, aiming for the same joint in the alien machine’s body.  Again he hit the body but missed his specific target, but a moment later the alien twitched  as Hadrian blasted it just behind and above the turret, causing a secondary eruption of sparks and smoke as the white-hot plasma seared the alien’s internal components.  The Alphas kept on shooting, and the alien fired back, the brilliant green rays slicing across the room.  Its shots were wild, though, cutting almost random gashes in the walls.  Hadrian and James were forced back into cover as the alien sliced a wide line across the threshold of the storeroom, but that was the closest it got to another hit, and meanwhile Vasily and Jane were pummeling its left side with precise fire.  Vasily’s third shot finally hit the joint he’d been targeting, and as the alien turned back toward them it moved stiffly, its left leg dragging.  It got off one more wild shot that barely missed Jane’s head, then Hadrian and James bracketed it with a fresh barrage that penetrated into the thing’s interior, and with a final wild eruption of light, smoke, and fire it toppled over with a massive thud.</blockquote>

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