Listening to the "Candy" transmission, Hugh grabs the mike and replies angrily.

"You can't get to the surface. You can't go back through the gate. Surrender or we'll hunt down and kill every last one of you."

The low din of Mesa Negras' power grid coming back online is promising and a small testament to government engineering gone right.

"Viva Las Vegas! Andy, let's go up to the Control Room and find out what systems we have access to."

*keys radio*

"Kitty, find out where the Exotic Materials lab is and radio the Captain. Then see if you can establish contact with anyone remotely related to the DoD. I gotta feeling Captain Verrill is going to want reinforcements. Andy and I are coming up."

There is a lot of undisciplined chatter, causing Semo to frown disapprovingly. At least the nerd herd appear to have gotten the lights back up, though that's a pretty mixed blessing.

As he's digging through the bodies, Semo comes to Gold Yamaka, whose defense spheres seem to have finally been overwhelmed. However, he appears to still be alive! "Luis! I think we got a live one over here!" he calls out.

Otherwise, Semo is ready to move out whenever the captain is.

"Patch him up, Stanhill!"

He nods to Semo.

"Let's move out."

Luis turns to Dietrich, "Can you hold on for a second?" Excusing himself, he goes to frisbee the robed guy.

Gold Yamaka shrinks back as best he can from Luis' device, shaking his head weakly. "Et, et, niup kauka!" He tries to motion to the gold yamaka itself - on closer inspection, it looks like it's wired directly into his scalp.

Andy and Max climb the short steps to the control room overlooking the Pit, where Kitty is trying to raise anyone else on the radio.

"Exotic Materials is sublevel 5, Max," Kitty answers. "Captain, sublevel 5. I can give you... yes, I can give you passcodes for that section. Whisky-lima-echo-niner-six."

"Max, somebody's in the intranet. Unclassified personnel records, operating theaters, maps, real low-level stuff," Andy says, tapping away at a console. "I've got... partial surveillance above sublevel 3, nothing deeper. I'll let you know if I spot any of them."

Hugh, Semo, and Angel crack the blast doors and roll out. The double-thick security windows are spattered with blood - the guard here coughed up an entire pint before succumbing to radiation. The stairwell doors creak open, revealing gray concrete steps lit by revolving yellow emergency lights. Another corpse, this one a lab tech. A geiger counter lies smashed on the landing next to her. So on and so forth.

Suddenly, the radio crackles again. *Who's on this channel?* spits a decidedly familar voice. *This is Colonel Paxton. Verrill? Kilgore? You're faint, where are you?*

"Affirmative, Colonel. We've secured the gateway room and are working our way up. I recommend that you grab the biggest gun you can find and wait for us. The turai...the intruders...are well-equipped, but they're not invulnerable."

*We're safe in the sublevel 2 armory, Captain. I've got two men in fighting shape and six wounded. Two of 'em aren't going to make it if we can't get them help. The beach balls are in the air ducts, and they key off of radio transmissions. Watch your six.*

"Roger that. We'll join you as soon as we've swept the lower sublevels."

Hugh looks to Angel.

"Keep your eyes open for air vents."

Luis looks up at the three ventilation ducts feeding cool fresh air into the Pit 20 feet above them. Ominously, two are missing their covers.

Mellish sees where Luis is looking and sighs. "Shit." He starts climbing the Gateway gantries to check the ducts.

Luis thinks he knows why the tall man doesn't want to be frisbeed. It's the yamaka implant. If it's wired directly into his brain or something, and Luis has no idea what it does when he activates the healing device, it'll heal the man's gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries but it might just fry his brain at the same time.

The dead litter sublevel 7. A briefing room half-full of rad-burnt men and women slump in their chairs. Dr. Raines' body lies on the ground next to the whiteboard. There are no signs of battle, just manually forced security doors. Hugh and his team stalk up the steps to level 6.

Sublevel 4, the security nexus, divides the complex. There are two sets of elevators, one for the lower levels and one for the upper. It's the same with the stairwells. One cannot simply walk to the surface from the Gate level. Two checkpoints with chemical sniffers, metal detectors, the whole gamut. It's the best place to expect an ambush as well - that level's set up to defend against incursions from above or below.

The ducts. Semo wants to smack himself in the head for not thinking of it. Those flying orb things would fit easily in the large air shafts in this compound.

The order goes to Angel, but Semo determines to keep his eye on the ducts as well.

There are bodies virtually everywhere they go. The Others seem to be efficient and determined when it comes to killing the humans here.

This has to end.

"Here we are, level 6. We sweep every room carefully, just like MOUT training. The last thing I want is Turai creeping up behind us. You find anything extraordinary, you call out. Angel, you're with me. Sarge, you cover our backs."

Hugh gets to checking the level's rooms for holed-up intruders.

Gatac

Your feet splish through running water on sublevel 6. The decontamination showers drizzle over more bodies, their burned flaky skin sloughed off to reveal wrinkly pink flesh. Angel spots the first victim of violence, a corporal splayed next to a call box. His radiation poisoning was followed up with a beam rifle wound to the chest. Charred clothing and meat sticks to exposed ribs.

The people on the level below died where they stood. The victims here had a few seconds to maybe half a minute to panic. Hugh spends extra time searching the shielded test rooms and the like, anywhere that might have shielded a lucky man or woman from the radiation. No dice.

Hugh pulls Angel back at the stairwell doors to sublevel 5. Hugh could swear he saw something silhouetted in the pulsating emergency lights, a long shadow cast down the steps. A moment's silence confirms it. You hear the faint scrape of armored feet on concrete. The Turai doesn't appear to have noticed Angel, but it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the invader is in the stairwell.

At the signal from Captain Verrill, Semo goes silent. He's not sure if he hears something or not, but the others are.

From what Max said, the aliens are working in pairs. That means that if there's one here, the other is likely not far away.

While Hugh and Angel deal with the xenohuman they've spotted, Semo watches carefully in all directions for any sign of the other.

Hugh puts up his left hand in a fist.

Stop.

He turns to Semo, points at the big guy, then at his own eyes and finally at the staircase behind them.

You - watch - behind.

Then he turns to Angel, points at the scout, then lowers his left hand. He touches his right wrist with his left hand, then holds up two fingers. Finally, he waves his left arm in the direction of the staircase ahead.

You - crouch. Enemy - two. Ahead - move.

To finish it up, he points to himself, then to his eyes, then to Angel.

I - watch - you.

He brings his left hand back up into the Stop fist, then pulls down rapidly.

Go!

Angel and Hugh stalk forward, leaving Semo a few feet behind to cover the stairwell and levels below. Angel's SCAR sweeps the steps before him, ready to spit lead at a second's notice. Moving backwards in a crouch, Angel reaches the split-level landing between levels 6 and 5. The Turai stands next to the sublevel 5 security door and is actually presenting its back, craning its cloaked helmet towards its partner within the level proper. It's shouting something muffled by the helmet, something that connotates frustration at the second Turai.

You get it in an instant. The power came back on, the security door locked down, and now these two warriors can't get the door open. They're separated.

The two Turai are about to be seperated by more than a security door. Angel strikes like a snake, spearing his rifle's barrel into the Turai's helmet just behind and below the ear.

BANG! The contact shot is deafening in the concrete stairwell. Blood sprays across the door's viewport, prompting a barely-audible "Bakata nahwhetu!" from inside.

The Turai drops where he stands. You hear furniture scatter from inside the level.

Angel glares, slinking back to a more covered position and letting the ruined alien corpse fall with a thud.

That's right...we have killers too.

Mellish starts dismantling covers from breakers and cabinets and carries them up to the open ducts while Luis sees to Hethna Varos' (Gold Yamaka's) wounds the old-fashioned way. Stanhill's not looking to get the old man into fighting shape, he just needs him stabilized and secure, and that doesn't prove a problem.

The man babbles in his native tongue while his wounds are dressed and his hands zip-tied. In addition to the somewhat familiar term "Napai", there's a "Narsai" that gets referred to with even more reverence.

"Shut that fossil the hell up!" Taylor shouts. His arm seems to be fully regenerated at this point, and he swaps out weapons with Kitty.

"No, Sarge, listen..." Dietrich mumbles. "He's... he's talkin' bout Earth - Narsai. My head hurts... Luis, can't you get me somethin'? These aliens think they're takin' back their home. I dunno, it's all jumbly, can't you understand what they're sayin'?"

"No, Junior. We can't." Taylor shifts his stance ever so slightly to cover his sergeant.

"Some shit about the Blank Pillar, Halls of Tranquility, I dunno. Fuck Stanhill, my head's killin' me here!"

Amo glares, a malicious grin on his face. "I say no kauka on dead. Shoot him head now. Shoot him he-" Taylor slams his SCAR into Amo, sprawling him to the deck.

"Keep talkin' motherfucker, 'Me shoot you head', you get me?" Taylor growls.

Hugh passes a frag to Semo, who stacks up on the left side with Angel. Hugh keys the passcode. W-L-E-9-6.

The heavy door slides open, Star Trek-style, with a metallic clank. Semo crouches and peeks in low, then immediately whips his head back as a whap-beam shudders the doorframe, leaving a white-hot crater. Semo wings his M67 over three lab islands into the aisle where the shot came from. The Turai knows those green bombs kill his kind through their armor and rolls OVER the lab table, shattering glass equipment and knocking analyzers to the floor. The grenade explodes and rips through the xenohuman's legs and back. Something in the lab reacts explosively and there's a blinding green fireball. The Turai lands smoking in the next aisle over, half-out of cover. Hugh and Angel breach the lab in perfect CQB formation. Hugh bounces a 3-round burst off the Turai's chestplate, while Angel's burst penetrates the underarm.

Slipping on his own blood, the alien warrior pushes himself back into cover in a surprising show of tenacity.