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PATWARDHAN
After everyone is up on B deck, Patwardhan risks taking a peek out
into the hallway. She holds her shotgun at the ready, and motions
for the others to follow her. She slides along the wall trying to
make out any shapes in the darkness that is beyond the light of the
flares. Trying to make herself part of the wall, she slides down to
the door that is opposite the airlock, hoping that it will have the
spacesuits that they need. She waits for the other marines to get
into positon before hitting the control to open the door.
BOOTHS
Booths slowly limps along behind her, grimacing with every step. He takes up positon opposite hers, and
nods for Vitelli to go low and aim into the room as soon as they
spring the door.He holds up a bandage swathed hand, three fingers up,
two clenched.He begins to count them off.((OOC: Intentions are on the
final count to rip open the door, and if anything twitches in the
pov, we make it look like swiss cheese, agreed? :) ))
Vitelli makes it up no problem. With his rifle in his hand he
started following Booths and Patwardhan. He side-stepped, watching
everyone's back. As they made it to the door opposite of the airlock,
Vitelli gets into position. He checked his rifle, and then stood
ready to fire at anything that pops out of the door. "Knock, knock
who's in there," Vitelli said to himself. He chuckled and then tried
to focus. "So who wants to open the door?"
Booths struggles to find the energy to keep moving. Vitelli
shoves against his back, holding him up. Patwardhan's breath comes in
short gasps as she leads the way to the room opposite the airlock.
Checking either end of the corridor, she senses the writhing forms in
the darkness just beyond the jamb to the bridge. Why they aren't
moving toward her is unclear. She fights her fear, grabs hold of the
manualdoor lever, and pushes down hard on it. Booths slumps against
the wall behind her, clenching the under powered ship's shotgun in
his armpit. Vitelli scans the aft corridor quickly, frowning at his
ammo display. Something's down the hall, slowly creeping toward
them, maybe ten or twelve meters away. Back down the ladder to C deck,
something hisses. There's a tell tale clanking sound as carapaced claws
close around the aluminum rungs of the ladder. They're coming up. The
marines are surrounded.
Vitelli looks one way, then the other, struggling to find a strategy. Patwardhan hasn't yet opened the hatch
to what (she hopes) is the pressure suit storage. Booths is almost too
exhausted to pull the trigger on his scattergun. It's dark. It's cold.
The atmosphere is real thin. There's a tinny, weak voice crying over
and over: "Mole beach. Seabed. Mole beach. Seabed..." Except that
Patwardhan just realized that they're not talking about some sandy
beach. It's the voice of Brother, the ship's MindBank/electronic
caretaker, saying, "Hull breech, C deck. Hull breech, C deck..."
PFC PATWARDHAN posted by Max 04.03.2000
Aishwarya nervously wonders if the half-assed welding job she did on
the hatch to the lower deck will hold long enough for the marines to
come up with some escape plan."Dammit," she mutters as she hits the
control for the door and then throws a frag grenade down the hallway
at the aliens milling around aft. She then ducks into the unexplored
room, figuring that while she doesn't know what's in there, it isn't
that big a room so it probably won't hold too many aliens.
Patty knows her procedure. She whispers "Fire in the hole!" when
he tosses that grenade.STATUS: Patwardhan now has only one smoke
grenade. She scored a 43 to throw the grenade, which is going to blow
up in a second here.
PFC VITELLI 04.02.2000
Everything was getting claustrophobic again. Vitelli's
slick fingers could barely grasp the silver zippo lighter that had
been his magic armor. His head spun on his shoulders: When he looked
forward, through the hatch leading onto the bridge, he saw them,
slavering.He looked to aft. There were at least two of them, moving
fast toward him. He could hear the alien moving up the
ladder. "They're fucking EVERYWHERE!" he screeches. He watches
Patwardhan work on the door, and decides to strike the first
blow. "Booths, help her!"
Vitelli raises the butt of his pulse rifle
to his shoulder, trying to ignore the stinging sweat in his eyes. He
hoped the blur in front of him was alien in origin. The rifle bucked
in his hand, sparking as stray rounds hit the walls, spraying wildly,
screaming his eternal hatred and damnation. "Sons of FUCKers! Back
off!"
STATUS: Vitelli fires 12 rounds from his pulse rifle this round,
rolling a 48 to hit. He's got 77 rounds left in his rifle.
Booths ducks into the opened hatch the moment that Aishwarya clears
it. Behind him, he can hear Vitelli fire a burst into the advancing
creatures. Half hunched over in pain, cradling the shotgun in numb
hands, and breath crystalizing infront of him, Booths does not make a
pretty picture. "Help her indeed." He mutters under his breath. The
way it stood now, if, IF! he got out of this hell hole of a ship
alive, he was due for a medical pension.
"Vitelli, get your greasy arse in here." He shouts hoarsley over his shoulder, hoping that the
tech doesn't get overrun, or worse, made mince by the frag. He slumps
against the door, ready to use whatever his body had left to give to
close the door, once Vitelli made it through.
PATWARDHAN
"Hey, I'm willing to gamble," Aishwarya shoots back, "If you would
like to ask our guests to kindly wait while we conduct a room to room
search, be my guest. But right now I'm flipping the coin!"
Patwardhan fires her shotgun into the closest advancing alien before jumping backwards into the open hatchway. "I
figure we get suited up, then blow this joint," she yells, "how hard
will it be to get the three meters to the airlock and blow the
hatch?" She tries to sound encouraging, but her words sound oddly
flat.
Booths raised his haggard face to meet her words. "Are you kidding?"
Wiht painracked arms, he hefted the shotgun. If he fired, the recoil
would quite likely break his shoulder. "We'll be fucking lucky if the
suits are even here." Million to once chance. If that...
Bile filled Booths mouth. He spat it out, and it splatted on the floor. Though it is dark, the
little light there is makes parts of the saliva and bile seem flecked. Booths didn't have one doubt that it was his own
blood. "Right now I'd bet that Ringo'd walk through that door, hefting
Mean Machine and a crazy grin on his face."
Essentially, things in the tight confines of the corridor
become confused as Patwardhan's grenade explodes. The medtech had
been pushing her way into (what she hoped) was the suit storage and
EVA outfitting room. She had just gotten the door open and was
scanning for aliens... Thrown to the ground!
She blacks out immediately after hitting her head against the door frame. Vitelli
twists his head against the flash and noise; Booths tumbles after
Patwardhan, rolling over something soft on the hard corrugated floor.
He then rolls painfully over a pair of heavy work boots. With the
lights out, and his ears bleeding from the concussion, Booths watches
the stars dance in his eyes, and sucks at the air.
Smoke, debris, the smell of blood... Vitelli screams, a fading voice, sounds echoing
away down the halls, overpowered by an incessant hissing, like a
beehive...
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