Clusterfrag

<"There is something wrong about the soldier's aura. It's familiar somehow, I can't quite place it. But it must have something to do with our previous encounters with Bell. Whatever it is, it's not good! Let's get the frag out of here then. We discovered they were equipping any army. Isnt that enough to call the mission successful?">

After visually inspecting the area containing the rifle receivers, the soldier turns towards the control booth.

Clear of immediate danger, Max pauses and turns back around to watch the guard from a place mostly hidden behind I grouping of steam pipes. His gaze darts in the direction of the control room, obscured from his vantage, and he wills his teammates to get the frag out of there. To his horror, the guard seems to be making for his comrades! Max acts without thinking, drawing Marlowe off his sling and to his shoulder. The elf keeps low and dead quiet as he sneaks up behind the Legionnaire.

Max's boot encounters a loose bolt on the railing. It's a sound which might not even register to normal ears. The Legion soldier whirls with superhuman agility and locks the Redline on Max, just as Marlowe is pointed at her. The two are in a stand-off, staring visor to visor. All is silent, except the low hum of the Redline's battery pack feeding the emitter. An eternity seems to pass.

The Legion soldier cocks her head to the side, apparently examining Max's weapon.

A voice--heavily disguised by a modulator--says, "...Max?"

Max stares back in bewilderment, his mind churning and drumming along at a thousand kilometers per hour. The answer is simple and came to him Immediately, but he scrambled for any other explanation. Finally, he concedes the plain truth, and says, "I don't recall you looking so feminine, Marcus."

"Is that the way you swing these days, Max?"

The Legion soldier slowly lowers the Redline, letting it dangle by it's sling. She reaches up and removes the skull-shaped helmet, which vents with a hiss as she does so. The woman underneath shakes out long braids of raven colored locks and smirks at the elf. Looking more or less the same since the team last saw her, with the exception of a scar from brow to chin, Pandora stands before them.

Max is dumbfounded. Coming face to face with Bell through nanomachine fueled manipulation of a Legion soldier wasn't nearly as far-fetched as bumping into his former guide in the guise of the enemy. Max drops his aim from his former acquaintance, and asks,

"Jesus, Pandora. What the frag are you doing here?"

"I tracked Bell's movements after you left. I've been keeping tabs on his troops and their fortifications. It is my backyard, after all. I've been staking out this facility for awhile."

She looks disdainfully at the Redline and unclasps the strap before tossing it to the assembly floor.

"For the record, all of these weapons are connected to the biometrics of their owner. Works for me, I prefer mine anyway."

With a deft movement, she withdraws a compound crossbow from the small of her back and flicks it into full-size operation.

"I'm guessing you came for a little revenge?"

Max shakes his head, and begins,

"I got revenge for everything you know about when I exposed him and got him court marshaled. No, we're here on a recon mission doing the UCAS's dirty work. Be careful, though. What you might not know is that Bell has been working with nanomachines trying to build himself an army of mindless drones that he can literally control. What have you learned here?"

Pandora flexes her legs.

"That Legion armor is uncomfortable, for one thing. But more importantly, they're not just building small arms and demolitions. There's something much larger going on, here. You may have noticed the complete lack of, well, anyone?"

Max looks around briefly, and says,

"Hadn't stuck out just yet. This is the first part of the facility we've poked around in, and not seeing anything living outside isn't massively surprising."

"This way."

Pandora mounts the stair, retracing her steps. She salutes to Doc as she approaches.

"You still stitching these fraggers up?"

Adams instinctively touches his recently closed gut wound.

"Hey Pandora. For a second there, I was worried you'd drank the Kool Aid and started worshiping a dead AI," he gestures at the Legion armor, "And yeah, but my patients lately seem to consist primarily of, well, me."

Pandora stops and takes a single step back, turning towards the shadow where Sinjin lurks.

"Finally decided to add one of us to your ranks, I see."

Max chuckles dimly, and says,

"He comes in handy when we need something beaten into submission without ever seeing what's coming. That's Sinjin, the mousy looking one is Val, and you'll remember Tyros... though you'll probably never actually see him."

The elf follows Pandora along her way, asking as they proceed,

"So this place is completely deserted? No organic security presence? Any non-military personnel?"

The tension bleeds out of Val's nerves slowly. He stuffs the signal jammer slowly back into his pocket, his gaze sweeping over Doc and Max, and finally coming to rest on the apparently-not-so-Legion soldier.

"Pleased to meet you, Pandora."

Val cocks his head toward the team and whispers, more loudly than he likely intended, "Who the frag is Pandora?"

Pandora grabs the rung of a ladder and casts a backwards glance.

"I'm the one that's competing with your elf friend for Bell's head on a platter."

Max smiles wryly at the sentiment, and says,

"May the best elf win."

The team follows Pandora through the bowels of the complex to a large, hangar style room. The periphery of the room is littered with discarded crates and materials, and a viewing platform adorns one end. In the center is a massive trap door of sorts, measuring about 10 square meters.

"There it is," says Pandora. "Can't figure what to make of it. I don't see any controls nearby. It's almost as if it only opens from the inside."

Max kneels down and runs his fingertips over the seams between the floor and the trap door in an attempt to get a sense of it.

(( If it's applicable, can I get a military security procedures roll on this? Kinda like how a security procedures roll would light upon structural elements like safe rooms, perhaps Max's knowledge might indicate the possible need for such a door. ))

Doc stands back as Max examines the trap door.

"Pandora was a guide that our former employer set us up with when we went to Alaska some time ago," he says in a low voice to Val.

"Back when we first met Bell."

Tyros takes a look at the hatch in astral vision to see if there are any magical wards about it or spells which might open and close it.

Pandora watches Max's meticulous examination of the trap door.

"I've seen some tough mercenaries in my time, but they don't hold a candle to these Legion foot-soldiers, Max. These guys are sporting so much 'ware that they're barely human anymore. From the limited intelligence I've gathered, it seems like they operate in squads of five. There are always two rifleman, a sniper, a physical adept and a hermetic of some kind. If that's not bad enough, they all wear one of these."

She slaps one of the ballistic plates covering her abdomen.

"I've never seen gear like this before. I was lucky enough to steal this suit out of the back of a Legion caravan. Barely made it out, that's how I got this," she says, gesturing at the scar on her face. "Anyway, a techie friend of mine says that the suits react to the biometric pattern of the wearer. If I was a Legion adept, the suit would constrict in key places to stimulate and restrict blood flow for optimum efficiency. The suit becomes a part of the soldier."
Although Max is certainly no expert, the hatch reminds him of something one would find in a missile silo. Without more education on the subject, he can't venture a guess as to how one would go about opening it.

Likewise, Tyros finds no traces of astral activity in the immediate vicinity of the mysterious hatch.

Val nods his head to Doc, thanking him silently for the brief elaboration on Pandora's background, and turns his attention to the hatch. He scans the matrix space surrounding the hatch and the observation platform, checking for any wireless nodes which might control the panels.

Max offers a cursory glance in Pandora's direction as she tells her story, but offers no significant commiseration for her tribulations. Instead, Max continues to examine the hatch before standing. Before he speaks, he looks briefly at her armor in the best response to her explanation he has to offer, before saying,

"It reminds me most of the sort of hatch you'd see in a missile silo, but it doesn't really make sense in this place. Anything about that strike you as appropriate, Pandora?"

Val's scan doesn't bring up any wireless nodes, but his EMF filter indicates a power conduit running from the hatch to the viewing platform.

Pandora arches a brow.

"Missile silo? I knew Bell was a power hungry player in the contract military market, but I didn't think he'd consider an act of war."

"Well, I'm stumped. Haven't we gotten the intelligence we came for...let's get out of here and report back to the UCAS. We've earned our paycheck."

Max turns to the ghostly, disembodied voice of his enormous counterpart, and says with a modicum of irritation,

"We don't know what the frag Bell is up to here, Tyros. We're not done. All we know so far is that he's making weapons, but we have no idea for what purpose, when they'll be put to use, or where in sweet fraggin' drek he is. We'll get you home in plenty of time to catch up on your stories."

The elf turns back to Pandora, and suggests,

"I don't think anybody knows just how glitched with power Bell is, but I have a feeling it's depthless."

Another rumbling reverberation unsettles the foundation of the compound. A lone snowflake drifts lazily from above Doc and lands on the scope of his rifle.

Doc narrows his eyes at looks at the snowflake for a second.

"The frag is going on in there?" He says aloud, his eyes turning to the ceiling.

Max glances up at the ceiling and then to his compatriot's weapon, finally turning his attention back to Pandora to ask,

"How long has that been going on?"

"For the past fifteen minutes or so. I was looking for the source when I--"

Another tremor assails the ground, accompanied by a mini-avalanche of snow assaulting the runners. The ceiling has split into two distinct halves which appear to be retracting to reveal daylight.