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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5334729" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 30 (November 24, 2008)Chapter 134Jim rubbed his eyes and coughed as the hood of the cryo unit lifted up.  There was some kind of foul smell coming from the bottom of the unit, and he couldn't feel his feet very well.  He was also having trouble opening his eyes fully.  Cryo sucks.  Last time I'm going into one of these - except for the way home, if we make it.He rested his head back on the base of the unit, and kept on rubbing his eyes until they teared up.  After about a minute, he was able to open them and actually see.  As soon as he did, he closed them again fast. His feet didn't look so good.  There was something else wrong, something… missing.  He tried to yell, instead croaking weakly, "Hey, where is everyone?! Anyone there?"  He tried to get up, but it took him a few minutes before he was able to pull himself together enough to crawl out of the cryo unit. The ship was vibrating under him; they were still flying.  The other six units were all empty, and the Alphas’ gear was gone, most of it anyway, he thought, as he looked at his suit of powered armor sitting alone in its rack.  He picked up his communicator, and inserted it into his ear.  “Ken’s what’s going on?”“Doc, that you?  Glad to see you finally came out of it.  I’m, ah, a bit busy up here, got two cruisers on my tail, and the Avenger’s not exactly in top shape.”“What happened with the others.”“They’re already dirtside.  Are you okay?  Can you manage?”James was already fumbling with the straps holding the armor to the rack.  “Yeah, I can manage, “ he said, although his fingers felt thick and unresponsive, and his feet still hurt like hell.  “All right, I’ll circle back around to the base entrance.  I can give you ten, maybe fifteen seconds to offload.  Sorry, doc, but it’s the best I can do.”James was already busy getting into his gear.  Adrenaline allowed him to put on his powered armor, and get the rest of his gear in place, and before he knew it, the hatch opened.  He jumped even as the ship settled, and sprinted for the dark opening in the cliff face that he assumed was the base entrance.   The Avenger streaked back into the sky behind him.  There were bodies all over the place, blackened sectoid corpses that were already covered with a layer of the red Martian dust.  As he stepped into the shadow of the cave mouth, he felt a rumbling under his feet.  He glanced back, and saw that one of the alien ships had landed, and he didn’t need to jack up the magnification on his VDU to recognize the familiar forms of muton soldiers, disembarking from the hatch in the rear of the alien craft.  The sight gave him a strong impetus to get moving.  The darkness deepened as he made his way deeper into the cave, still limping slightly as his feet slowly recovered from the damage they’d taken in the cryo unit.  He’d injected the contents of a medikit shortly after waking, and it was helping, but he suspected that he’d suffered significant tissue damage.  He nearly stumbled as the tunnel began to slope downward, but at least it helped him maintain momentum as he continued forward, his plasma rifle cradled in his arms, charged and ready.At least it was easy to follow his comrades’ path.  He didn’t hear their radio chatter, but one he saw the breadth of the underground complex, suspected that the interference from the material would block the signal until he was close.  He passed through what looked like an ambush site in a deep grotto, full of the corpses of snakemen and the ugly insectoid forms of a pair of chyrssalids.  He gave those a wide berth, even though it was clear that they’d been blasted by heavy plasma fire.He found a passage that opened onto an even larger underground space.  This one was more than a bit startling; the place was full of buildings that looked to have been sculpted out of the raw stone, forming impressive structures that formed arcs and curves, blending in with the natural shape of the cavern.  The places were all empty, as far as he could see, although he found more bodies, a spread of maybe two dozen sectoids first, and then, atop a rise, a row of ugly splotches that he didn’t recognize immediately, until he remembered the Antarctica mission, and the floating blobs that shot acid.  Celatids, the X-COM team had named them.  It would have been a tough fight, by the looks of it, there had been at least five of the things.He caught a hint of movement from the far end of the cavern, back the way he had come.  He didn’t linger to see what it was, and hurried forward, where his LED beams indicated a twisting staircase that descended like a corkscrew into the ground.  The stairs descended for quite a ways, and transitioned from rough-hewn steps cut into the stone into more a more regular, deliberate construction.  By the time that his lamps indicated the base of the stairs, the walls and ceiling around him resembled the construction of the alien bases they’d invaded Earthside.  He entered a chamber at the base of the steps, and headed for the sole exit, a tall iris-door that twisted open at his approach.  He passed through several small rooms, and started to think he’d made a wrong turn somewhere before he came upon the dead ethereal.  The alien looked… deflated, covered in the dark shroud of its robe, part of it scorched black from plasma burns.  The wall behind it was splattered with smears of blood.  He went through the door next to the dead alien, and immediately his communicator came to life, hissing with static, but with the voices of the Alphas clearly audible in the background.“Cover!  Take cover!”“Watch out, on your flank!”“Get her out of there!  Get her out!” James ran forward.  He couldn’t see where the voices were coming from, of course, but the communications link grew stronger as he rushed through the complex, and after a few moments he could hear the sounds of weapons fire, the familiar sounds of plasma bursts.  He entered a room with an open doorway on its far side; the sounds of battle came from its other side, along with a haze of gray smoke.  He ran for the door, and was nearly impaled by a brilliant green blast that lanced through the opening, slicing across the room for less than a second, but long enough to leave a glowing afterimage on his vision.  He blinked and made his way warily toward the door.  Looking back over his shoulder, he could see the dark track that the beam had made in the far wall, and the smooth gash in the threshold of the door that the alien laser had cut before it had blinked out. He leaned out to take a look, and nearly fell as a massive explosion shook the room.  Smoke and debris shot out past him.  He didn’t hesitate further, and plunged through the doorway into the room.  The smoke was thick and swirling, and he couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of his face.  He could hear his teammates on the comlink, however, and knew that Catalina was down, and in bad shape. Vasily’s bulky form materialized out of the smoke; the Russian’s gun came up before he recognized the other.  “Allen!” “Where is Cat?” “Here!” He knelt beside the prone form of the British agent.  He could see what had happened at once.  The beam had struck her just above the left hip, and had sliced diagonally upward across her torso, ending just below her heart.  It looked like it had penetrated through her armor, but he couldn’t see the extent of the tissue damage, and he didn’t dare remove the suit to get at the wound.  He settled for unfastening the chest plate; it was all but ruined anyway.  He handed it to Vasily, who watched as he dug into his pack for his surgical intervention kit. “How is she?” Vasily asked. “She’s dead, is what she is,” he said, without looking up.</blockquote>

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