| From: | ANGLISS BRIAN EDWARD <angliss@****.Colorado.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Magical Team, Maxim raid part 8 |
| Date: | Sun, 10 Mar 1996 22:22:28 -0700 (MST) |
>>>>>[Hello. I was planning on staying out of this for a while, but
Micheal
convinced me to tell my side of the raid before someone else did.
Considering that my side may seem to you to be a little strange, this is hard
for me. By way of explanation I'll only say that things have changed some
for me since I tried to kill Righteous and Dana, and that there's not a whole
drek of a lot I can do about it.
We on the magical team got in Cambodia a couple days earlier than everyone
else did because we needed the extra time to get out individual stuff going.
Lobster was the exception to that, but Shade was wheeling and dealing with
the local free spirits who really didn't like the Maxim facility for a
variety of reasons, and I because I needed to do some hard-core and
specialized summoning that I needed to be around the area for.
This also allowed us to do some up close Astral recon of the site ourselves,
and we ended up being glad we did. We found that Maxim was well protected
magically, which we already knew. But we didn't realize just how well
protected they really were until we saw the spirits and elementals and
watchers and critters around the fraggin place. But the strangest thing was
the background count. Not only was it higher than the place should have had,
but it just didn't feel right. It took me a while to tell what the frag it
was, but when I did, I told the others and they weren't too thrilled.
Astral space had an almost polluted feel and taste to it, almost as if it
was going toxic. This alone was probably the reason that the local spirits
didn't appreciate Maxim being around.
On the day of the raid, we did one last recon and nothing appreciable had
changed, except that Lobster found some evidence of some spirit he wasn't
aware of. He told both Shade and I about it, but neither of us could
determine what it was. I've you've been keeping up on the stuff about Maxim
that's been going on recently, you probably know what it was already, but we
didn't then, and Shade still isn't convinced that it's not some kind of known
spirit. I am, but he's not, and he's the PhD. But hey, who knows.
The day of the raid came and we three got up early and started prepping for
our part of the raid. In the previous days, I'd moved my...spirits into
location slowly and carefully so not to disturb Maxim and give anything away.
I guess it had worked, because they were all there when we arrived about
sunset. We had to be fraggin careful, and with Shade's spirits, we were kept
concealed from the drones, but we did see a good number of them. Maxim must
have a couple hundred of the fraggin assassin drones scattered around the
site, but they don't see cold and hidden bodies too well, nor do they spot
magicians moving under spirit protection, but they're fraggin explosive, have
large bore four of five shot pistols, and a poison in their power hypos that
will kill a paracritter in no time flat. Shade also helped us out with his
shadowhound friend, who helped with his shadowhound friends in the area. I
never really thought of those fragging big dogs as intelligent, but they're
fraggin close enough to keep our hoops out of the fire here and there.
We got into place about 20 or 30 meters back from the edge of the jungle, a
little closer than we would have liked, considering that Maxim has all kinds
of drek that they can throw at us if they want to, but any further back and
we'd be fraggin useless to anyone. It fell on me to do the astral recon, and
let me tell you, it was not fun. Astral space was fragging like walking
through Puget Sound it felt so sticky and sick. It was worse than it should
have been, and a drekload worse than it was even 12 hours earlier when we'd
done our last recon. And it didn't get any better, either. I was careful
to avoid anything that could have fragged with me or alerted the mages in
the facility, and got back out again after recognizing that, besides Astral
being fraggin polluted worse than usual and with the background count to
match, everything was pretty much normal. While I was doing that, Shade and
Lobster were sitting around making sure that they were in contact with their
spirits and Shade was spending a lot of time making sure that the local free
spirits knew what we wanted, and needed, them to do. They knew, but it was
almost as if they knew that something bad was going to happen here too, since
they have even a better connection to the Astral than Lobster and I do.
What with the shadowhound and a couple of lower force spirits keeping us
hidden really fraggin well, we didn't run into any trouble until just before
the first diversion was supposed to happen, when we were getting ready for
action anyway. Some Maxim magician must have felt that something was about
to hit the fan and sent out a fraggin watcher to patrol beyond the perimeter
fences, which was their usual limit because of some of the critters around
the area who could shred a watcher like nothing. Well, I was lucky to have
one of my loa around in Astral space just for that occurrence, and so
destroying the fraggin thing was null difficulty. Too bad that it let Maxim
know that there was someone or something out near the jungle's edge, and
they sent an elemental to see what the deal was. About that time the
diversionary team sent out the drek that let the teams get in without too
much trouble. Us, on the other hand, had to distract the mages, and that
meant keeping our location secret while still making their lives hell. A
couple of Shade's greater spirits just crushed the fraggin thing, which must
have surprised the drek out of the mages in the facility, because the quick
glace I took toward the facility showed that it was lighting up in the
astral, mostly from the quick and dirty summoning of nature spirits, and
they popped up all over the fraggin place. Maxim went from something like
15 or so spirits to 25 in less than a minute.
During that minute, though, our spirits were keeping theirs busy. Except for
one. It looks like the fraggin thing ran into everyone. I guess that's
lucky, though, since the fraggin spirit could have destroyed one or two of
the teams totally if its controllers had let it instead of calling it off to
another area. You know, the fraggin black hole spirit? Let me tell you
what the fraggin thing looked like in the astral. A black fraggin rectangle.
Dad's got these old flat pictures, he collects them because they remind him
of when he was a kid. Well, this spirit looked like a monolith from the old,
1968 I think, movie 2001. You know, "1x4x9"? Well, that's what it looked
like in the Astral, only its surface was even stranger. It was black, and it
seemed to suck up even the astral around it, which is why I think the fraggin
thing's a new kind of spirit. Shade's not sure, but I'm sure he's going
through his old texts and contacting his friends in academia to see if they
have any clue what the frag it is. Hopefully we'll have an answer. You all
know by now what the fragger looks like in the physical: a black hole, or
void, in the air. And I can say that the fraggin thing has, without a doubt,
the ability to manifest, engulf, and it has psychokinesis too. I saw it
coming and sent one of my loa at it, the same one that had been a little
damaged by destroying the watcher, and then I popped back fully into my
mundane perceptions so it couldn't attack me as easily. Good thing, too,
because the next thing that happens is I feel the loa I'd spent so much time
summoning gets geeked and the fraggin thing is attacking one of the forest
spirits that was keeping us concealed here. It's concealment ability falls
as it gets hurt really fraggin bad and then gets geeked too. I guess it was
probably now that Maxim's radar penetrated the darkness that the shadowhounds
were keeping up for us, but that nearly fell too when one of the hounds cut
out running. Shade told me later that the fraggin spirit scared the drek out
of his shadowhound friend too, but that it stayed anyway. He also said that
he'd never seen his friend as scared as facing that fraggin spirit. Fraggin
strange....
But it knew we were there, and if it did, then it was fair to assume that
Maxim did too. I blasted the fraggin thing with a manabolt, and Shade sent
one of his greater storm spirits at it, and Lobster spelled it too. Nothing
we did seemed to hurt it except making it spark a little, and it just ate the
spirit as if it was a fraggin black hole. As soon as the spirit hit it, the
spirit just disappeared, and Shade said it had been killed almost instantly.
This thing must have been either totally alien or a free spirit to kill that
quickly a greater storm spirit. I guess it had had enough because it
attacked us, in manifest form of course. It tore a good sized rock out of
the ground from a good 10 meters away and threw it at Lobster, who was lucky
enough to have a spell that looked an awful lot like a claw, because that
spell crushed the fraggin rock before it reached him. Fraggin good thing
too, since it was large enough to kill him if he hadn't destroyed it. Then
it knocked a limb off one of the trees near us and dropped it on me. It
hurt, but one of Shade's spirits helped keep it off me so I didn't get
killed. Shade, on the other hand, was trying to banish the fraggin spirit.
It didn't work, and the attempt probably came close to killing him too. He
tried, and tried, but the spirit, even though it couldn't do anything else
in the process, was getting the best of him, and when he gave up he gasped in
pain and the spirit retreated. I guess Maxim didn't like the idea of their
super special spirit getting banished, so the recalled it. Good thing, too,
because if it had hung around, it might have geeked all three of us, and
that would probably have meant that the teams inside would have been geeked
too. Shade's hands, though, were as cold as ice when he was done trying to
banish the spirit, and he said at one point that it felt like he had liquid
death in his veins. Not a pleasant sensation.
In the process of all this drek happening, Maxim found out where we were and
sent a very unpleasant couple of mortar shells our way. They were most
unpleasant, because one was incendiary and the other anti-personnel
submunitions. We hauled our hoops the frag out of the area and moved a
couple hundred meters along the line. As we were doing this, we saw the
semi-ballistic go up in a huge ball of smoke, and as we were setting down
again, we saw the bunker get blown up. It was beautiful to know that,
regardless of what the frag happened from now on, our raid had been
successful. Now it was our turn to pull everyone out of the fraggin fire.
You should have seen the place, everyone. It was impressive. Muzzle flashes
everywhere, small and not so small explosions, magic flying all over the
fraggin site, everything. And that's when I sent _them_ in. All 34 of
_them_. Maxim went nuts. They apparently don't know what the frag to do
against people who just keep on coming. It was beautiful. Absofragginlutely
beautiful. _They_ just kept on marching, admittedly slowly, toward the
perimeter. I didn't even bother hiding _them_. I wanted fraggin terror, and
I got it. Maxim started shooting, their hellhounds and barghests didn't
hang around and dragged their trainers all over the fraggin perimeter(a
couple got themselves blown up when they stepped on mines, more's the pity),
drones came out, spirits too, and mortar shells started dropping, followed by
shells. Maxim apparently decided at one point that they couldn't see what
they were shooting at well enough, because they fired a couple of giant
flares into the air, which lit up the perimeter killzone like day. That was
a big mistake. Sure, _they_ didn't like all that light, but Maxim didn't
like what they saw. I guess Maxim decided that they liked it dark better,
because they didn't fire any more flares after the first few burned out.
That way they could pretend that they were only fighting normal people that
were just hard to kill. But _they_ aren't even close to normal, as Maxim
found out.
As I started _them_ on the march, Lobster spotted the HALO team with his
binoculars. Too bad that this was about when the first flares ignited, and
he got flash blinded for about a minute. But he had seen them, and he told
Shade, who told the free spirits. There were at least four of them, one who
looked like a person, another like a panda, a third like an elephant, and the
last like a rabbit. A terribly cute little rabbit that had really fraggin
big teeth and a tatoo that said "Vorpal" on it. You could tell by it's
manner that, regardless of it's manifest size and terminal cuteness, it was
not a rabbit you fragged with. I borrowed Lobster's binoculars and was
looking through them when something blocked my field of view. This fraggin
thing was huge, dripping slime, stank worse than drek, and moved like a
fraggin spirit.
Toxic fraggin water spirit. Luckily for me, I saw it just before it was
about to rip my head off, and sent my last loa to distract it. It worked,
for about 2 seconds. But that was enough to keep me alive to see two more
toxic spirits appear in front of the other two shamans. Not cool, and Shade
had to scramble to avoid being engulfed by the one after him. The local free
spirits started to help when he shouted at them to help the people inside the
compound. Three out of four took off, but the elephant stayed behind.
Lobster was just starting to get his sight back, and so he sent his last
spirit at the toxic. He was cooler than I thought he would be, but he still
looked as if he was a little scared. He did really well for the first time
he's ever faced toxics. Me, I probably looked terrified out of my mind,
considering that the last time I faced toxics....well, was a long time ago
and I didn't do so well. The fraggin things are really fraggin hard to kill,
even with hard core astral help. Well, my loa got geeked pretty fraggin
quick, and the spirit came after me again. This time I didn't have any way
to stop the fraggin thing, so I cast darkblast at the fraggin thing while I
drew my knife. I was lucky, because all the mana I poured into that spell
almost knocked me out but also hurt the spirit really good. It was
staggering and barely alive, so I just sliced it with my knife and it
collapsed, destroyed. Lobster was still doing ok, pumping manabolts into
the spirit while his spirit was attacking it from the astral. Well, the
toxic spirit had enough of that and went astral instead of staying manifest
and it just ate the fraggin spirit before rushing off. Lobster went half-
astral and tracked it.
Somewhere in all that, Shade did something really fraggin foolish, which was
try to control the fraggin spirit that was working on him. No sane shaman or
even a conjuring specialist can control a toxic spirit, and he should have
known that. But he tried anyway, and actually broke the control of the toxic
shaman, wherever the frag he or she was, but he couldn't maintain control.
So we suddenly had a free toxic earth spirit. Shade took us from bad to
worse, I'm afraid, but the elephant was still around. Fraggin good thing,
too, since it saw what was about to happen and stepped in to take on the
newly freed spirit. Shade was fraggin tired already, but he sent a greater
spirit to help the elephant, and the two spirits eventually destroyed, we
think, the free toxic spirit. But we had another problem, which was Lobster.
One of the toxic shamans torched us with a spell from astral space, grounded
through one of Lobster's foci. Acid bomb, the love of toxic shamans
everywhere, and it just exploded around us. It was NOT fraggin fun, having
Lobster suddenly start spraying acid everywhere. It got all of us some, with
Lobster being the worst off, obviously. His armor was ruined, and he got
acid burns all over him. But he was still doing well enough to tell us that
the rabbit was fighting with another free spirit in astral space and that
the spirit that ran from him ran up into the jungle a little ways before he
lost sight of it. Shade looked up there and saw, through the shadows that
his eyes are a drekload better at seeing through than mine, two figures that
looked like zombies.
Two toxic spirits. Now, I've dealt with fraggin toxics a few times, and I
really don't like them, so I did something that probably wasn't the smartest
thing in the world to do. I astral projected while Shade turned to keeping
the free spirits going strong and Lobster sent a spark spell up the hill
through the jungle. It never reached the toxics, though, because of the one
who was astral still and about to ground another spell through Lobster.
Lobster, you really need to hide those foci somehow. But he never finished.
If you've ever seen a toxic spirit, you have my sympathy. But if you've
seen a toxic shaman in the Astral, then you know what it was like to face
this fraggin person. This one was a toxic Wolf-looking thing, with mange,
radioactive looking eyes, and claws like the spines on a volleying porcupine.
But he(I think it was a he, but I didn't stop long enough to check) didn't
have a weapon focus like I do. No match. It didn't take too long to kill
the fragger, but as I was heading up the hill toward the other one, I almost
got nailed by one of Lobster's spark spells. I'm glad I got out of the way
and let it through, since it hit the shaman full in the head. His aura just
blacked out, even though I could still see the meat twitching from the power
he poured into the spell. Two shamans down, none to go. And Shade had
apparently gone and banished the last one before the shamans were killed,
making fraggin sure that we wouldn't have another free toxic spirit, which
the elephant was still fighting.
As I turned around to see what was going on back toward the Maxim site, I saw
the first spirit returning with someone in their hands, but then I got
broadsided by another spirit. This one, however, looked a little less
dangerous than the others, but wasn't. I've never seen this guy before, but
he still looked fraggin familiar. He was dressed all in blue, different
shades, with a bolo tie and eyes that glowed a lot like toxic or radioactive
waste. I think that it's a free toxic spirit of some kind, but I never saw
anything to be sure. And it had this fraggin huge grin on it's face, and it
started taunting me too. It said drek I still remember, and which has
haunted my dreams for the last couple of nights. Stuff like "Hello, Janice.
It's been a long time." after which he threw me in to a tree. Do you have
any idea how much it hurts to have your astral body thrown into the astral
presence of a fraggin tree? It hurts really fraggin bad. Then it said
"You've spoiled my plans on occasion, you know." and I responded "Glad to
hear it." It didn't like hearing that, and he attacked again. This time I
was ready and left a long gash with my knife in his arm. It bled green for
an instant before it sealed the wound. It said "You and your friends stopped
my plans for the little girl after I'd spent so much time on creating the
perfect circumstances." and it lunged at me again. I was getting tired, and
it manifested a knife and sliced my arm exactly as I had just cut his. But I
was working closer to my body every time, if only I could live long enough to
reach it. And the last thing it said was "And your friends are trying to
spoil my fun again. I liked have the nukes here, I really did. It gave
Cambodia a totally new ambience that I really liked. You fragged with my
plans one time too many, Janice, so now I'm fragging with yours." It lunged
again, but I just leapt back into my body. I don't know if it wasn't quite
fast enough to stop me or if it just let me go for some reason, but I sat
bolt upright in my body again, with Slash bleeding and covered in chemical
burns laying next to me. The fragger appeared right before me, smiled a
crooked smile, and then disappeared and manifested right next to Shade.
Shade tried to start a banishing right then, and Lobster nailed it with a
manabolt spell, but it just ignored the manabolt as if it didn't even feel
it and grabbed Shade's chin, lifted him off the ground by his neck, and said
"You're not powerful enough to have any chance of banishing me, mortal. And
your greater storm spirits taste so good to me. Remember, Shade. Remember."
And then it went back into the astral, leaving Shade to fall about two meters
to the ground. He was fraggin lucky that he was wearing his armor, because
it probably kept his head from being torn off.
When he landed, he was stunned for a couple of seconds, but then snapped
back, swore a little, and got the rest of the armory team out of the armory.
The problem was that the spirit we'd just run into appeared in front of the
last free spirit, the one who looked like a panda, and forced it into the
astral long enough to drop the last two people into the center of the
minefield. One of them got turned to stone by a fraggin basilisk before I
could kill the fraggin critter, and the other stepped on a mine that fraggin
near killed her, as you well know. The panda never reappeared and the human
looking free spirit went back and grabbed one of the two, the wounded woman,
and I recalled my last one of _them_ to carry out the other one. With the
help of a quickly summoned forest spirit by Shade to keep _it_ from being hit
and to protect the cargo _it_ was carrying, they got up to us where we
started doing emergency healing to keep people alive. It was about now that
Lobster saw part of the IFV team, who he IDed as AJ, Jasmine, and Gunny way
off down along the perimeter. He and Shade sent some help their way in the
form of spark spells and a couple of spirits that carried AJ out of the area.
We started moving everyone back into the jungle under the cover of a couple
of shadowhounds and spirit concealment.
We connected with Ripley and his team at the backup rendezvous point since
he'd had troubles at the original, and got everyone loaded and off to Phenom
Penh. There were a couple of times when Maxim's units, trying to track us,
nearly killed us with drones, but we made it out without any further
casualties.]<<<<<
-- Diana, Mistress of the Night <10:22:47/03-10-57>
