Art David Deitrich, retextured Michael Hunter
A rare treat these days, Loz joined us, so Merrick Sturnn was among the party - and yah boo sucks to those who tried to remind me that he was a parsec away on the Short Walk!
As the rolling echoes of the ATVs' destruction bounced off the mountains, Timo tuned his communicator to the frequency that seemed to have Zhodani conversation on it. Leaning into his local accent, he said sternly "This is the Tarsan Military. You are here illegally, I suggest you surrender immediately or be forcibly removed." While speaking he'd worked his way around the long way to the cliff to one side of the cave, then as close as he could get.
There was a pause, and then a heavily-accented voice said "We do not recognize your authority - "
Traditionally, we have represented a Zho accent as Russian for obvious reasons. Unfortunately I can't do one and German seemed too obvious.
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Before the speaker could finish his sentence, Timo had lobbed a plasma grenade across the fortification. Nevada, Wombat and Feng opened up with HEAP RAM grenades, targeting the same spot on the gabion wall across the cave. The massive explosion left a positively mediaeval breach in the wall, and scattered bodies were visible behind it.
Timo dashed across and vaulted into the cave beyond, Feng hard on his heels, and laser fire glanced from his armour as he did. Bodies were scattered around from both the grenade and the bits of stone displaced by the destruction of the wall. He backhanded a frag grenade in one direction and slashed clean through the one trooper still on his feet in the other with his Arclight sword. Behind him, Feng cleared the breach just in time to be neatly targetted and hit by four laser bolts from two robot sentries emplaced further up the tunnel. Her armour shrugged them all off, and she turned and shot one as Nevada's heavy sniper gauss rifle destroyed the other.
The radio channel had now become encrypted, and they couldn't even hear the Zdetl they couldn't understand anyway. Removing a dead trooper's helmet - and scraping out the worst of what was left of his head - they managed to use the built-in comms to get on the commnet again. Timo couldn't resist taunting them; "Your front door is destroyed. You can't get out, consider surrendering." A very accented voice replied in broken Anglic; "We have Imperial Liars on the net, Sir." A second voice, more educated sounding, cut in in Zdetl, by the sound of it chewing out the soldier. Then the encryption changed and the transmissions returned to gibberish.
Zhodani regard Imperial citizens as untrustworthy liars living in unmitigated chaos as they have no benevolent oversight of their minds to correct and re-educate incorrrect, disloyal or immoral thoughts. Imperial citizens believe the Zhodani to be rapacious mind-rippers, intruders into the innermost sanctum of a man's private self, slaves to the most effective totalitarian regime in Humaniti's history. Both are right - and wrong.
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Timo made sure all the Zhodani were quite dead, and noticed as he did so that one of them had been equipped with Battledress and a fusion gun.
Leaving Nevada's, Sturnn's and Timo's Shadowcats at the cave mouth as a rearguard, the crew started the mile-long walk to the base proper inside the Mountain, Nevada's drone silently hovering ahead of them. Timo wasn't walking; he was riding his one-man gauss cannon skimmer.
As they did, the wind was getting up and it was beginning to snow outside.
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Reaching the base entrance, they stopped beyond one of the tunnel's doglegs and sent the drone forward to 500m from the door to scout.
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Another gabion berm had been built across the corridor inside the corridor outside the lobby. Two more turrets protruded over it, and troops could be seen inside. A piece of equipment a foot square stood near the doorway with a cable leading through and around the corner. Nevada regarded this as suspicious and managed to cut the cable with a well-placed shot.
Another heavy bombardment, this time of gauss cannon rounds, broke this defence, and the soldiers defending it were rapidly killed. The turrets had been knocked over by the blast and were no threat lying on their backs.
As the drone passed through the door, two Zhodani who'd been lurking behind where the corridor opened out lunged out and attacked. Their lasers were no more effectual, and Timo gunned his skimmer at one of thm and literally ran him down. The man had sensibly dropped rather than be ground against the tunnel wall, but Timo cut his drive and a ton-and-a-half of metal dropped onto the prone Zhodani. Like his comrade, shot by Nevada, he was dead when Timo backed away.
Another appeal for surrender met with no response.
It was noticed that people inside the base could not communicate with those outside. Examination of the small device outside the door revealed that it was a radio, and that it had been connected to an identical device just inside. Repairing this, and retuning both, allowed the crew to make use of this simple but clever fix.
Before moving on they checked with the Shadowcats. All was quiet at the cave mouth, but Gromit reported that the weather was worsening very rapidly - unnaturally rapidly. Leaving them instructions to retreat into the cave if it got too bad, the crew pushed on.
Exploring the base cautiously, they found no further intruders. All the corpses Nevada and Feng had left behind were gone, and there was sign of considerable investigation and slight dismantlement. Notably, one of the silver interface caps was missing from the control room to the north. More, an orange circle now hovered over the location of the Mountain on the holographic map.
The only major difference was a ramp down which had suddenly appeared (opened) in the corridor beyond the berm. It was similar to the one in the other base, and the crew immediately surmised it lead to another 'subway' station. The drone was sent down to reconnoitre.
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Below was, indeed, a similar station, with the same metal-mesh boxed in gantry above three platforms. The only differences were that there were no 'cars' on the tracks, and that six figures were clustered around a control box on the far platform; two troopers, one in the armour of a Zhodani noble, and three civilians matching the images of Holloway, Shaw and Fifield. Holloway was facing the console, had one hand on it, and was concentrating intently with her eyes closed. "She's trying to call a train!" said someone.
Rapidly, the Cats headed down. With a shadowcat ahead, Feng and Sturnn raced across the gantry, bouncing a smoke grenade ahead of them, while Timo and Nevada headed for the nearest drop tubes. Leaping in, Nevada and Twinkles the cat discovered that they were indeed grav drop tubes as they descended safely and - annoyingly - slowly towards the platform.
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Wombat had wedged his gauss rifle through the mesh of the gantry, realizing that he couldn't use the scope or any of the advanced sights as those were facing onto where there wasn't a hole. However, Holloway was a stationary, unarmoured target within fairly close range, and "open sights" was quite sufficient. A full burst of nine rounds tore through her, splattering her all over the console.
Shaw spun, reaching for a pistol, while the two troopers lifted their rifles to respond as Twinkles bounded terrifyingly towards them. Twinkles shot the nearest man, noticing he was equipped with another FGMP, his laser bolt staggering him, and Feng finished him as she reached ground level. Nevada had concentrated on the noble, correctly identifying him as potentially the most dangerous combatant. Two of the bullets of his first burst of three punched through his armour, and the man jerked convulsively. The other six rounds ... bounced off. Baffled, Nevada stared at the Noble as he regained his balance - and vanished. "Teleport!" cursed Nevada.
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Back on the platform the last trooper, realizing that lasers weren't going to help here, dropped to a knee, grabbed the fallen man's FGMP, and made a snap shot at the gantry - although it was largely irrelevant, taking a lethal dose of radiation as he did so. The bolt of fusing plasma blasted into the gantry to Wombat's right, blowing a huge hole in the bridge but luckily missing our heroes. Wombat traversed his aim and cut the man down before he could fire the damned thing again as his suit's Geig bleated with alarm. Landing behind Feng, Sturnn drilled Shaw as he waved his innefectual pistol around.
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It dawned on Feng that they had no prisoners and no chance to find out what was actually going on, so she pulled a stun grenade and flicked it into the tracks at Fifield. With a bang the munition went off and the medic went down stunned.
Wombat turned at a flicker of movement, and realized that the Zhodani noble was suddenly standing to his left, between him and his cat inBoots. How he'd got there, he had no idea, but he and the cat both opened up almost by reflex. Bullets and laser fire struck the figure - and passed straight through as the illusion collapsed, narrowly missing Wombat and inBoots. Nevada goggled at this. Psionic illusions weren't supposed to affect those wearing psi shields. How had he done that?
As Wombat got his breath back after the encounter, he also noticed that the ramp leading back up to the base above was closed. They were technically shut in, though they were confident they had enough explosives to remedy that. The Noble commander, though, was loose in the base above.