The Stars Await - Mists of Europa

[MWBailey]

Bailey walked the walker back inside to park it, and did so in the alcove he had found it in -- and found the machine's weapons attachments, and a rather severely-dented Turret Helmet. A huge-bore gatling, one of the old 90-caliber models, lay in the corner on its side, three boxes of chained ammo beside it. The date on the boxes made Bailey wonder if it was worth it to attach and arm the thing. "Hafta see," he muttered. "Give 'em a chance. At least it'd be good for a club." More attractive was the gargantuan suit-cutlass, propped in the corner; it's frighteningly-serrated edge looked as if it were freshly-sharpened.

"Well, it'd be nice t' 'ave some artillery," Bailey muttered, and using his long experience with such machines and devices, had the claw-forks off and the weapons (which also had their own grippers) on the walker, and switched the batteries for a set that had been plugged into a cable that seemed to run off toward the engine room. The difference in the machine's operation was immediately apparent, and after using the suit to pick up the turret helmet and attach it,  soon he was stomping back out of the hold and down to join the others on the elevator platform, switching the floodlights off and on to test them, and rolling the gatling's barrels to make sure it would operate. "I know it's kinda big, but it's got artillery," he said. The The turret helmet had a huge dent in the side of it, which made it look slightly cockeyed, but overall it was an intimidating piece of hardware.
---
Hermes rocked back on his heels, disappointed. "Looks like no high adventure for you, old son," he muttered to himself. He took a medium-sized flask from inside of his briefcase."Bottoms up..."
---
Heinrich came down the ramp at a run, his pistol in the holster and the horse-length katana buckled to his side in a European-style harness. "Sorry for the wait, Kapitan. The locker, it was stuck. It is less stuck now--!" his jaw dropped when he saw the freshly-armed walker. "You got it working? Splendid!"

[steamcowboy92]

When the miner came running out, shouting about "something got Jonas" Talon hauled ass back into the ship and dissapearred into his bunk room.

A little while later while Bailey was arming the walker, Talon reemerged from the ship, armed and loaded for bear. His fringed black leathers, freshly cleaned, almost seemed to meld with the shadows.

[Stella Gaslight]

Lou nodded as she checked the plans by lamp light.  "A mark 7 nice choice, very sturdy and I have rebuilt them before.  It is most likey the central intake or the blowers.  That is the quickest way to take them out.  Is everyone ready to face a slathering space monster?  Because I sure as hell am."

[MWBailey]

"Lemme at 'em," Bailey rumble-growled, the etxerior loudhailer taking his already-basso voice and making it gravelly and mean-sounding. He again rolled, and then loaded  and armed the gatling on his left arm, and deployed the spring-loaded cutlass on his right, and then retracted it again. "It's good to be back in an infantry mech suit," he said.

[Alexis Voltaire]

"Alright, lets see if we can find this thing." Mariah replied, and with her crew headed with Roberts down the sloping walkway that wound its way down to the first level of tunnels two hundred feet below. The first level gallery was a huge, almost hangar-size room (though it wasn't as high) that had been hollowed out for use as a garage and storage space as the mine had expanded. Much of it was lit by the half-powered electric lights, which flickered every so often as the backup generator coughed as it rumbled away in a side room. Several compact mining vehicles used for work in the tight tunnels were lined up along one wall, and there was a fully-equipped garage set into an alcove behind them.

The damaged generator sat in another alcove in the opposite wall, and thin wisps were drifting from it, adding to the haze of acrid smoke and escaped steam that filled the room. Pieces of broken metal were scattered across the stone floor in front of the generator, and Roberts moved over to look at them, kicking a few aside. He then turned to examine the damage to the generator, waving aside the thin smoke.

"This was intentional." He said darkly. "Don't ask me why, but someone did this on purpose. The damage looks like a boiler line ruptured, but it's bent all wrong. Whoever did this used explosives."

---

Meanwhile, Mariah had noticed that the man Morris had said was injured in the blast wasn't anywhere to be seen. She looked to the floor, and it wasn't long before she spotted a thin blood trail in her lamp beam that led away toward a dark tunnel opening. It appeared that Jonas had been dragged, or dragged himself for some distance, and then the trail became drips and spatters. She shone the light into the tunnel entrance, seeing the blood trail continue to the edge of her light beam. She motioned for the others to follow, and headed down the tunnel.

She hadn't gone far when she saw a form lying curled up and shaking on the floor. "Watch the tunnel ahead." She said, moving to check on the man. He moaned oddly and tried to rise as she came close, and she had been about to help him when she caught sight of his face in the light of the lamp and stopped.

A bleeding gash that looked like a bite ran up his cheek and across one eye, but it was his eyes that were most unsettling, translucent pale gray and featureless, bulging oddly from thier sockets. It didn't look so much as if he were blind, as if something had replaced his eyes entirely. Before she could react he moaned and fell to the floor, suddenly limp. One of his gray eyes bulged, and suddenly something thin, tentacled, and a pale translucent gray that blended almost perfectly with the stone of the floor slithered from his eye with shocking speed.

Mariah reacted almost automatically, her first shot going wide, but the second winged it and the third hit it dead on and almost blasted it in half. It writhed and  went limp, a grayish ooze spreading from it across the floor.

---

From further down the tunnel, the sounds of movement and a loud crashing of something metal falling could be heard...

[Stella Gaslight]

"I can fix this, it will take some welding but it is better than it could have been.  Talon I need you to watch my back and check for other explosives.  Who ever did this was relatively smart they may try and trip us up if we get it back on line."  She pulled down her mask and triggered her head lamp. It cut through the gloom like a knife.  "Get me some no 12 and no 5 pipe.  Once I get the slaged conection off I can build a better part and have it up within a hour."

[steamcowboy92]

Nodding to Lou, Talon sent Roberts back for the pipe and switched on the heavy duty lamp he'd strapped to the bottom of the big greener. Gun shots came from Mariahs direction and Talon brought the gun up to his shoulder, earing back both hammers as he called out "EVERYTHIN OK UP THAR?!?"

He'd handloaded the shells hisself when he'd gotten back on the ship, and he knew the 0000 buckshot he'd cast himself would put a world of hurt on anything short of a pissed off "old one" Thinking about the buckshot he had to snicker to himself, the cook was in for a surprise when he found the pot Talon had "borrowed" to melt down the lead for his molds.

After a few moments, he realized that he had moved to cover Lou after the first shot, his large frame completely hiding her from sight and shielding her from anything that might come flying out of the dark.

 He was surprised at himself for such a selfless, stupid action. Normally he'd have taken cover and waited for the lead to stop flying but something about this new crew, and the little wrench turner in particular, was starting to change him and he wasn't sure if he liked it.

[MWBailey]

"Good job, Talon, but I'm armored, and you're not," Bailey said through the suit mic. Better get behind me, and let me take a few --!'

PING! POING! piiiinnggg...

"--a few rounds." Bailey swore, tuned up the volume, and called, "You OK Cap'n? Cap'n Harper?

pingettty poing pingping pong PINGK!

The armor rang like a demented alarm clock, as heavy smallarms fire showered the walker. "Cap'n wherever yer at, take cover, 'cause I'm cuttin' loose!" he shouted as he flipped up the arming lever on the left grip control and squeezed the trigger lever with his left forefinger.  the barrels spun and the tunnel was filled momentarily with the roar of the 90-caliber gatling, intermittent tracers and exploding rounds showing where the shots were landing. Someone -- or some thing -- screamed once, a final sort of sound that Bailey barely caught above the din. He stopped firing, and deployed the massive, springloaded cutlass. As an afterthought, he also turned on the suit's floodlights, which poked furthe rdown the tunnel than Talon's improvised light -- straight into a cloud of rockdust and apparently smoke. "Stay back 'ere wit' Miss Lou, Talon, I'm gonna go have a look-see..."

[Alexis Voltaire]

Mariah had seen several other men with the same gray eyes heading toward them down the tunnel at the edge of her lamp beam. When she saw they were carrying a shotgun and several pistols between them, she had scrambled to the side and turned off her lamp to make herself harder to aim for. Thankfully they seemed to have decided to aim for Bailey's armored strider instead, and she was able to duck back behind cover.

"I'm fine!" She called up to Bailey. "Have at 'em."

--- ---

[Stella Gaslight]

Lou repeated the steps in her head drowning out the gunfire.  With a loud clang she broke off the last twisted part and pulled out her pocket promethous.  It's bright blue flame cast odd shadows on the wall as she forsed the metal in to a new shaped.  Somthing strange and gray was moving below the macine but Lou could not see it among the sparks and shadows.

[MWBailey]

Bailey moved down the tunnel, firing off short bursts in response to the fire from up ahead. it didn't register with him immediately that every time an exploding round detonated, the tunnel would vibrate slightly. At about the same time that he fired the sixth or seventh burst, a loud rumble erupted from over head and to the left. He had passed by Mariah a few seconds before, and was now standing beside the bodies of two of the gunmen, firing back in the direction from which the bullets seemed to originate and make chiming noises on the suit's plating. Suddenly there was an impact on top of the suit's helmet, then another, much heavier than the first, and then a hard, violent impact on the left side which caused him to stagger and yell out in surprise and frustration, the suit coming to rest in a leftward crouch.

Bailey flicked on the left flank glowlamp, and through the cloudy-dusty gloom, saw a distressing sight: the gatling gun on the left arm was pinned under what looked like a huge, thin, vertical slab of rock, the roller bent in several successive directions like a fancy exhaust manifold. He tried the trigger and gripper levers, but there was no response, and when he managed to make the arm pull back, the gun stayed pinned, the innards of the socket connection shattered. As he watched and tried to free the limb, the shattered gun-side socket-plug parts trickled out of the socket on the armstump,  and the gun detached from the arm completely.

"Damn!" Bailey cursed loudly, and then had more reason for profanity , as he saw fojur figures through the forward vision blocks suddenly rush out of the dust-cloudy darkness, two of them leaping on top of the suit, banging away at the helmet turret and trying to open it's hatch. Pure adrenaline and desperation caused him to leap sideways, causing the mech to follow suit, and smash up against the right-hand wall of the tunnel, dislodging more of the ceiling, further denting the helmet, and incidentally crushing his two assailants. "Mariah!" he roared in desperation, "Cap'n, look out, I'm down and I think a couple got past me!" he swung the serrated cutlass to the left at another figure that ran at him swinging a pickaxe, slashing the body and simultaneously flinging it against the  lefthand tunnel wall like a broken doll.

This was bad; no exterior guns, and only a huge sword (meant for fighting other suits) to use against agile-bodied suitless enemies. They couldn't get in at him unless they blew holes in the suit with explosives, but he couldn't shoot them down, either, unless he unbuttoned the turret and cut loose with his pistols. Otherwise, he was reduced to waiting for them charge like Mr. Pickaxe, or charging them instead, and taking them out with the sword. "Well, there's nothin' for it, boy. Time ta go a-choppin..."

[Alexis Voltaire]

Mariah had run back behind cover of the wall at the end of the tunnel, and emptied her peacemaker at a figure that darted in front of her lamp beam. From the screech that followed she guessed she'd hit it, and her searching lamp found the fallen form after a few seconds. She couldn't see a second one, but a bullet whined past her ear and two more struck the corner of the wall, spraying chips of stone. She ducked back behind the wall, reaching for the cartridges in her gun belt.

"Talon, can you get that one?" She called out as she reloaded.

---

The gray-eyed men still ahead of Bailey howled an odd, almost speech-like warcry, but then most of them darted away into the cover of the dust and the dark of the side tunnels, using the grid-like structure of the tunnels further down to spread out in all directions. A few stayed behind, teasing at him and taking quick shots from around corners while the rest vanished into the dark.

---

The squid-like things had taken cover from the light and noise under the silent hulk of the generator, but now there was suddenly light and noise again, and stinging bright sparks falling from above. There were more warm things up there however, fast, but not quite as fast as they could be for short bursts. One crouched low, or at least as much as a nearly boneless thing could crouch, and launched itself into the air, stretching out a pair of membranes on thin supports of strong but flexible cartilage.

It was almost blind in the bright light of the room, but it could sense the heat of the warm things as it glided, and the one with the painful blue light and the sparks in particular...

[steamcowboy92]

Bringing the big Greener to near, Talon fired his left barrel at the muzzle flash Mariachi had indicated just as something launched itself at Lou.

Pivoting on his heel, he fired the second barrel, unleashing a swarm of large caliber buckshot that smeared the creature against the wall in a macabre eruption of blood and viscera that splashed a bit on Lou.

Palming to more shells from his pocket, he broke the big shotgun open, the spring loaded ejectors sending the spent rounds flying over his shoulder and into the darkness as he shoved the shells into the 8 gauge and closed it with a snap.

[Stella Gaslight]

"Thanks Talon."  The part was almost done and Lou was proud of her ability to work under pressure.  As she soldered the last joint and turned off her flame to start putting the part in to place. She set her pocket Prometheus aside and lifted her visor only to jump back and scream as four more of the gray things came out from under the generator and launched at her.  There was some cold gray thing wrapped around her arm.  Lou grabbed a wrench and smacked it hard into the thing.  It let out something like a scream and took off like a bolt up her body trying to get under her jumpsuit top and to her skin. Lou scrambled to her feet tossing off her outer coat and trying to get the thing off her as more came out from under the generator.  "There is a a dammed nest under here and I can't get the part on if these bastards eat me."  Lou grabbed out her pocket Prometheus and tried to turn on the flame but another creature wrapped around her hand and the bastard refused to some off no matter how hard she smashed it in to the wall.

[steamcowboy92]

Running over to Lou, Talon grabbed her by the arm and said "hold on missy. This might hurt a bit." Grabbing her wrist where the alien was attached,he squeezed hard. Feeling the bones in the girls wrist grate together until finally the little bastard exploded from the pressure.  Giving the swarm both barrelshe smashed his lantern and spilled oil all over the little monstrosities, setting them ablaze with his lit cigar. They screamed like children as they burned

[Stella Gaslight]

She was going to have one hell of a bruse later but now she lit her little pocket torch and smiled as the things screamed in the light.  "Talon I have an idea.  So you think you can get a flame under there without hurting the genarator while I get it up to speed?  Then while they are scattered I turn on the lights blinding the little bastards and we whipe them out."

[Alexis Voltaire]

Mariah had just looked around the corner to see how Bailey was faring when one of the gray things suddenly attached itself to her right arm and bit hard into her hand, causing her to yell and loose her grip on the peacemaker. Just as quickly the thing turned and twisted around her arm, slithering up toward her neck. She dug her fingers into the thing and tried to pull it away, but it was as slick as a fish and it was quickly writhing from her grip.

She could just manage to reach the knife in her left coat sleeve, and she stabbed sideways at the thing with her right hand as it wriggled up to her shoulder. The thing squealed and relaxed its grip enough that she was able to pull it halfway off and slash at it from a better angle. It twisted around and tried to bite her wrist before she managed to cut it clean in half.

She threw the limp slimy thing away with a shudder, and quickly knelt down to pick up her peacemaker. Seeing that there weren't any more of the things heading for her, she reholstered the peacemaker for the moment and looked at the bite on her hand. It was aggravatingly painful, but it didn't look too serious and she could still move her fingers properly. She found a handkerchief in her pocket and wrapped it tightly around her hand, tying the loose ends and pulling the knot tight with her left hand and her her teeth.

"How's the generator?" She called to Lou.

[Stella Gaslight]

"I got the part replaced now it has to build up steam and then let there be light."  Lou said waving a flame at the advancing hord from below.  "There is a nest of the gray bastards under there and they aren't happy with us at all."

[steamcowboy92]

Smiling cruely as he remembered how he had set a choir boy on fire during the war, Talon reached inside his vest and pulled out a polished silver flask. Taking a quick pull on the bottle, he emptied the rest of it down the hole.

A quick kick was all it took took to launch nt one of the still burning aliens down the hole. Blue flames shot out the hole as the shine combusted violently and the little monsters screams of pain were music to his ears.

[MWBailey]

Bailey retired back to where Mariah crouched, figuring it would be better to cover the bottleneck than try to swim in the bottle, as it were.

"You OK, Cap'n?' he asked through the mic and loudhailer; the speaker made his voice sound gravelley and hoarse. "There're humans and gray things back in there, all workin' together, I reckon. It's like a city neighborhood, all gridded streets and blind alleys and weird little rooms.I'll dive back in and go a-huntin' if'n you want, but all I got now is this suitblade and a stump; the cave-in crushed th' gatling."

---
Heinrich stood at the tunnel entrance, slashing at and cutting down anything gray or gray-eyed that came within reach; The katana steamed with the blood of his kills, and he crouched in a ready stance, still full of fight.

[Cpt Wallace]

He'd sighed at the screaming man turned into the ship and strolled off heading for the kitchen he claimed his coat then swung by the captains quarters side stepping as Heinrich barrelled past.

"Steady lad there be no rush."

He continued on his way pausing as he caught sight of Jameson and Morrison.

"Not you two! you stay here with the ship, get yourselves armed and shoot any bugger not a member of the crew or passenger and for Christ's sake find Bilge!"

He stepped into the captains quarters pushing the ruined door aside and claimed a trio of the rayguns before heading out of the ship towards the mine, the others had gone ahead he found himself a lamp and headed down the shaft leading into the mine when the gunfire started he broke into a run he joined the rest of them.

"Sorry for the delay Captain, here you might find this useful."

He tossed one of the raygun in her direction the heavy disintegrator that had been used against her when she'd taken the ship.

"Talon here."

He offered Talon a long rifle type raygun he wasn't sure of what it actually did but he knew it was Schmidt's prize in the collection, he kept the aether lance pistol for himself and moved toward Heinrich.

"Step back lad,"

He levelled the pistol and fired as Heinrich ducked back taking a breather the weapon discharged with a high pitched whine a bright green steam of coming from the gun like a light beam it cut through the on coming grey eyed humans and squirming grey things as if they were water, the weapon weapon snapped and the beam vanished.

"Ah that didn't last as long as I'd hoped."

He dropped the pistol and drew one of his longer blades and a knife with a flick of his wrist he sent the knife through the air pinning a grey squid to the wall as he dropped into a defensive stance.

"Heinrich I could do with your sword again."

[MWBailey]

"No sooner said," Heinrich answered, and waded into the enemy, cutting them apart like a chef slicing and chopping calamari. H was joined soon by Bailey aboard the walker, now sans gatling gun but swinging a massive serrated spring cutlass, and swatting would-be assailants aside with the machine's left-hand stump, the socket dripping with and drooling the gray things' fluids, including what seemed to be an ink-like substance.

He had managed to locate the suit's dispatch tube, a port with a springloaded cover that locked from the inside, with which one suited person could make available to another a written message in a scroll-like roll of paper that could be plucked fromn the half-tube that slid in aind out of the port; it was an old trick to wrestle the tube out and stick the muzzle of a pistol or longarm through the rubber pressure fitting, effectively adding a fraction to the suit's overall firepower. One could only fire within a small vector in the direction in which the front of the suit was facing, but in Bailey's case, it was better than no firearm at all

... But the .50 caliber Walker Colt and his hideout pistols were all running out of ammunition.

Heinrich and Bailey made a bizarre dancing pair, dodging, weaving, covering each other's backsm anbd generally slicing and chopping the gray crawlies to pieces. All in all, it was a veritable ballet, interspersed with counterpuntal gunfire, but with one rather ungainly-looking and unlovely participant; it was as if a small electric locomotive had suddenly sprouted hind legs, stood up, and begun doing pirouettes with a monstrous parody of a rapier...

[Cpt Wallace]

He moved in behind the dancing pair his own blade much shorter than Heinrich's but just as deadly as his size gave him the all important reach as he slashed and hacked and ducked under Bailey's sword stepping past Heinrich's sword as he cut and thrust, every so often his empty hand flashed out embedding a small blade in an attacker.

"Well you're surely more interesting than me last captain, captain!"

[Alexis Voltaire]

"Thanks." She said, catching the raygun he'd tossed her. She glanced at the power and beam settings, and decided not to change them. She didn't trust rayguns all that much, having had a few bad experiences with the earlier unreliable models, but she liked the weight and feel of this one.

She stepped into the tunnel, aiming the raygun at one of the gray-eyed men and giving it a test fire. The kick was surprisingly light for the amount of damage that it did, the purple-white beam lanced clean through the man's body and the one behind him before gouging a smoking hole into the stone wall behind them. She smiled grimly, but turned the power down a little in hopes of preserving the batteries, aiming for a lone gray thing as it launched itself into the air and blasting it into mist.

The creatures seemed to be trying to overwhelm them by sheer force of numbers, and although they were making short work of them for now, the gray things kept coming and they were bound to win eventually by tiring them down and making them run out of firepower, if nothing else. They had to find some way of getting an advantage here...

She stepped back from the tunnel, and called to Roberts, who was watching the floor and shadows of the room, and shooting every so often at the gray things as they escaped thier dying hosts and tried to slither under cover. Roberts looked up and headed in her direction, kicking at a half-dead squid thing as he came.

"These damned things are bound to overrun us eventually." Mariah said, at the same time adjusting the power and beam of the raygun some more while she had the time. "Is there anything you can think of that we could use to clear out this whole place? There just aren't enough of us to keep at this."

"Well..." Roberts said, thinking it over. "The only way to clear the whole place quickly is to put something in the air. I can do that, there are a few waste chemicals in the smelting plant up in the crater that will make a hellaciously toxic fume if you mix them. Routing that down the ventilation wouldn't be too difficult..." He bit his lip and his face darkened, as if a problem with that plan had occurred to him. "Only thing is, there's automatic air sensors and regulators in the vents that will reroute everything in the system toward cleaning the air and venting it outside. We'd need the power and the ventilation fans running to spread the gas, but the sensors are tied into the power too. You can override the sensors, but that has to be done by bypassing the control boxes on all four levels one at a time."

Mariah frowned. Hell, we've tried madder things... she thought. The majority of the gray things were probably on the top level by now, and if they could somehow bypass and get below them... "Can that elevator there reach all those levels?" She asked, looking to the huge shaft that opened at the far end of the room. Roberts nodded "Yes, that's what I was thinking, the controls for each level aren't far from the shaft."

"Alright then... can we get this tunnel blocked off?" She said, shooting at two more gray things that were slithering away from the entrance and heading toward her.

"No, that that shouldn't be too difficult. Just need to do a little structural rearrangement with the loader over there..." Roberts said, heading for one of the compact machines that were lined up next to the garage area.

Mariah then headed back into the tunnel, calling to the others to come back toward the entrance as the loader Roberts had gone to get rumbled to life behind her...

[steamcowboy92]

Throwing Lou over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes Talon ran for all he was worth, not wantingto get caught in whatever it was Marian had planned. The whole way he muttered darkly to hisself about bonus pay.