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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5348031" data-attributes="member: 143">Session 30 (November 24, 2008)Chapter 140Catalina stepped back up to the control console, and started entering commands.  The image of the alien battleship disappeared, and was replaced by a multilayered schematic, overlaid with shifting patterns of alien symbols. “We can’t stay here.  We have to try to stop them!” James repeated.  “What’s the plan?” Hadrian asked.  “Power…” Catalina muttered to herself, as the display zoomed closer, through more layers of diagrams and symbols. Vasily paced back and forth.  “I not think we have plan right now.  Wait, what are you doing, Catalina?”Catalina zoomed the display onto a bright blue point, connected to the complex web through a series of bright lines.  “This entire base, it’s built on a huge complex of Elerium crystals.  The power flows are massive…”“Can we blow the power plant?” Jane asked. Catalina stared at the diagram.  “Record visual,” she said to her suit computer, zooming out the alien screen out slowly, then fixing on it for a last moment.  “Come on,” she said to the others, leading them to one of the exits.  At her touch the door spun open, revealing a long passage beyond.  And a dozen sectoids, armed ones this time, who opened fire as soon as the door opened. Vasily grabbed Catalina and yanked her out of the doorway, a scant instant before multiple plasma bolts streaked through the air where she’d been standing.  Hadrian replaced her, leaning around the edge of the door to fire into the alien ranks.  Jane did the same from the other side, and every shot they fired blasted a sectoid, the air thickening with smoke from the plasma bursts until the Alphas had to use the muzzle flashes from their guns to guide their aim.  The exchange lasted maybe all of fifteen seconds, and it ended with Hadrian striding into the whirling smoke, looking for a moving target, and finding none.  “Let’s go,” he said, loading a fresh energy cell into his cannon. Catalina directed their course, staring at the grid superimposed on her VDU, directing them through the network of corridors.  At one intersection they were confronted with a dozen snakemen, but the Alphas stopped only long enough to bracket them with gas grenades, rushing through the dazed aliens before they could recover.  They were each aware of the ticking clock counting down, and that kept them moving.  Jane helped Mary, whose damaged leg was holding her back, but none of them stopped even for a moment.  Catalina felt her own strength flagging, but she bit down hard on her lip and dug deep, driving herself forward.  The alien medicines that had brought her back had repaired her body, but there was only so much even they could do.  Focused on the grid, she pointed to a bend in the corridor ahead.  “There!” she said, pointing.  James moved ahead of her, and he stepped around the corner to see another large doorway ahead.He also saw the sectopod standing guard, flanked by a half-dozen mutons, including one carrying a very familiar and very dangerous weapon.  “Gaaah!” he yelled.  He stopped, turned, and dove back for the corner.  There was a bright green flare, which sliced across his path, drawing a line across his body.  The alien laser touched him for only a fraction of a second, but he could feel the surge of heat along his hip, and the subsequent flash of pain as his muscles were roasted by the beam.  He landed awkwardly on a leg that failed to respond to his orders, but his momentum carried him forward, and he slid around the corner in front of the rest of the surprised Alphas.  They’d seen the beam, which had gouged the far wall of the corridor, knew was was waiting around the bend.  But they hadn’t seen the other threat he’d spotted.  “One’s got a launcher!” he yelled, even as the heavy clop of the sectopod echoed through the corridor.</blockquote>

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